All New Marvel NOW

[Nellisir]

AHA! I have it! My new SecretComix(tm) business plan -- all issues will be issue #1!

Can you get Rob Liefield to do all the covers too? Because that'd be awesome. Surefire hit.

 

[Kramodlog]

There can only be 1.

 

[delericho]

I have a feeling what's bugging me is how the two are dealing with their yearly world-shaking-crossover events. I feel like DC is being a little more consistent in their approach as opposed to Marvel's shuffling characters from book to book like "New Fantastic Four #1; now with Spider-man or Wolverine (again)." Also, Marvel's pricing is bad. Same price for 5 issues as I get for 7 -8 with DC.

Thoughts?

Comics have the same problem as the Star Wars EU, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Forgotten Realms, and pretty much any other long-running series: canon accumulates with time, and becomes a barrier to entry for desperately-needed new readers. But at the same time, they can't just reset and start again because that will lose them a huge chunk of existing readers, who are also desperately-needed. So they have to find some way to square the circle - keep the series accessible to the new while retaining enough continuity to satisfy the old.

And, actually, there's another problem - there's enough crossover from comics (and some of the others) to the mainstream consciousness to make some things really awkward. A new reader of Batman will expect to find Bruce Wayne under the cowl, with his trusty butler Alfred, possibly with his sidekick Robin, battling villains such as the Joker, Penguin, Catwoman... This was true twenty years ago, it was true ten years ago, it's true now, and it'll be true ten years from now...

This forces comics, or at least some comics, into a weird sort of stasis - Bruce Wayne has to have decades of adventures, but can't ever age. He can retire, he can even die... but within about a year we have to somehow get Bruce Wayne back under the cowl, still struggling with the death of his parents, and assisted by a 50-year-old Boy Wonder. (The same applies to Superman, Spiderman, and (now) Iron Man. Other comics can probably be more flexible.)

I don't think there's a good resolution to this. They seem to have settled on periodic World Shaking Events, each coupled with a semi-reset-button approach. Star Trek went for an "alternate timeline" coupled with a semi-reset button. Star Wars seems to be in the process of just jettisoning 30 years of continuity. Forgotten Realms has run into trouble. The James Bond movies largely just ignored the issue, up until "Casino Royale" sort-of reset everything (though "Skyfall" seems to have reset back to the status quo as from "Goldfinger").