Fin Fang Foom wrote:

...all these other characters have been "redefined" so many times by so many hands that the fans neither recognize nor care about them anymore.
I wonder if a key part of this problem isn't that, for the most part, the only people left who have an interest these characters to begin with are the same people who had an interest in one of the previous incarnations.

It often seems like the biggest selling point in this sort of situation is, inevitably, that it's the relaunch of a licensed property -- and sure, I understand, that's an attempt to build on whatever equity there might be. But the problem is, by this point, that might not be much. And I wonder if making too big a point about these properties as an acquired license, doesn't turn people away -- as though if you aren't already familiar with these characters, you shouldn't bother. (Never mind that readers of mainstream comics seem loathe to stray too far out of their comfort zone, to begin with).

So you remake the characters in a new image, then, to try to make them more new -- but then you're just pushing away those people who liked those characters as they were.

We might be at the point where all of these acquisitions and licenses and whatnot just don't have the build-in advantages they used to.

I remember when Valiant started doing Magnus: Robot Fighter. This was a character who'd been gone from the comics scene for a decade or more. And Valiant didn't reinvent him so much as they presented him as he was, yet with a more modern storytelling approach. They didn't set about repudiating his origin or Gold Key series; they pretty much just added to what was already there.

That said, it would be difficult to just re-start Magnus from where they left off, because by the end of the Valiant series they'd totally burned him out. And the Acclaim series hardly helped, since it was more like Magnus as Nick Fury played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The story had already been told--twice. And badly at that. And we already saw Magnus grow older and have a son and defeat all the robots...it was over. The show was over and nobody told Jim Shooter or Dark Horse!! I don't know what possessed them to start those mags up again. What the comics industry really needs is fresh new concepts and creators--they need to find the storytellers of today, not yesterday. They need creators and characters who reflect life as it is today and can relate to the youth of today. I don't know why it's so difficult for them to understand that.

Last Edited By: OwlzinDaBarn Jun 15 11 9:47 PM. Edited 1 times.