Something that I’ve noticed in Marvel’s announcements from Comic-Con is that they’ve got three different projects based around retelling origins in the works for the next year: Avengers Origins, the Season One graphic novels, and the storybooks that Disney are producing based on the Marvel characters. Now, putting aside the immediate snark of “Can’t they come up with any new ideas” – and that’s tough, I admit – I’m struck by the obvious idea that Marvel has that origins are where new readers need to start, if only because… I’m not sure that that’s true.
I get that origins make a lot of sense as a starting point, because – well, it’s the starting point for the character, and it allows the reader to get in on the ground floor. But, I can’t help but wonder whether that common sense formula is beginning to wear a little thin, given not only these projects, but also Superman: Earth One and the various superhero movies that are, essentially, origin stories that these new readers are, presumably, familiar with. Isn’t the “they were schlubs, something fantastic happened, and now they are heroes” arc something that readers have come to expect these days – and wouldn’t it be better to offer them something that’d surprise and impress them, instead?
It’s not true that origins are the only way into characters – I think that most current readers of comics found entry points that weren’t origin stories, and there are definitely all manner of fan favorite characters that appeared (and found success) well before their origins were revealed, after all (Hey, Cable! Good to see you, Wolverine! Not to mention Superman, of course…). Is it that modern audiences aren’t able to process the idea of not knowing how our heroes ended up that way at the very start, or that creators are overly paranoid about providing sensible jumping-on points? And, either way, is there some way that we can get away from obsessing over origin stories and start telling new stories, instead?
July 25th, 2011 at 1:42 pm
“And, either way, is there some way that we can get away from obsessing over origin stories and start telling new stories, instead?”
So basically, just to make this snarky point, you ignore all the other books being published that have absolutely nothing to do with origin stories, like the main Avengers titles, Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-Men, SHIELD, FF, Iron Man, Hulk, the list goes on…
July 25th, 2011 at 9:22 pm
I often puzzle at this whenever I read or listen to comics commentary bemoaning heavy continuity and the desperate need for new readers.
I jumped in to comics in the 80s first with Marvel and then DC – It wasn’t all that difficult to work out what was going on in the stories- and I mean, really all I wanted was to read about cool characters doing cool stuff. I always preferred the in-story origin re-cap to the full on ‘year-one’ style of origin.
I always kind of enjoyed the mystery of not really knowing the specific details of the earlier continuity.
July 25th, 2011 at 10:35 pm
I don’t think it’s that new readers need the origin story as a must-have jumping-on point. I think that the origin story is inherently any given characters most interesting story.
Think about any person’s actual life. Their most interesting years are always periods of transition and no period of transition is more tumultuous and rocky and therefore prone to creating stories than their formative years. After the formative years, once everything is solid and the ground has stopped shaking, what’s left to tell? The year-in year-out business of doing Whatever You Do. What superheroes do is battle villains and that can get repetitive and formulaic, just like any job. But there’s that one crucible moment, that catalyst that started everything and changed something ordinary to something extraordinary and that’s what is always interesting. HOW did they get to be how they are now? What makes them feel the way they feel and what are their motivations? You can’t tell a story about any given character that’s more interesting than their defining story… the story of how they were defined. Look at the movies: Chiefly origin stories and they’re hugely popular. In the comics, we want to re-read and re-create the origin stories just because they tell us so much about what we care to know about these characters… and after the origin story, we are mostly interested in, like I said, the transitional stories, the stories that shift the safe foundations of day-to-day activity, which is why every story has to “change everything!” and “nothing will ever be the same!” or else nobody gives a damn.
This is hard to do again and again for the same handful of characters over the span of 80 blasted years. So the answer is not “stop telling origin stories” but rather “start telling origin stories for new characters”. You won’t get very much of that from Marvel and DC (in some small doses, of course) because their primary goal isn’t telling stories but rather keeping brands identifiable and popular and ingrained in the public’s collective subconscious for decades at a time, with storytelling being incidental to this and origin stories (again, the most interesting stories possible) being rehashed over and over.
Thank goodness for indie and creator owned comics!
July 26th, 2011 at 4:26 am
“Think about any person’s actual life. Their most interesting years are always periods of transition and no period of transition is more tumultuous and rocky and therefore prone to creating stories than their formative years. After the formative years, once everything is solid and the ground has stopped shaking, what’s left to tell?”
You must lead a profoundly depressing existence if this is your actual life.
July 26th, 2011 at 8:18 am
Stuff keeps happening, of course but it’s always the periods of transition that are most interesting and there is never a greater period of transition than during formative years. It’s always the case.
July 26th, 2011 at 9:49 am
This is why I was a bit disappointed with the new Spider-Man trailer. I won’t pass judgment until I see it and it could end up being an awesome movie, but when I saw the trailer it was like “Seriously, you’re doing Spider-Man’s origin story again? I think even non-comic book fans are familiar with the gets bitten by a radioactive spider, gets superpowers, uncle dies, power and responsibility=Spider-Man thing.” Certainly not for every character, but for the really iconic ones, I just don’t see a need to keep rehashing the origin story when even non-fanboys are familiar with it.
July 26th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
“it’s always the periods of transition that are most interesting”
For you. For me, I prefer the periods when people have some years of experience under their belts and actually have a bit more of a handle on what the hell they’re doing. You seem to want an endless montage of Daniel-Sans learning how to do the crane-kick from Mr. Miyagi. I want to see Nathan Ford from “Leverage” and the Doctor from “Doctor Who” outsmarting people with superior skills that have already been honed over time. I think competent adults are far more fascinating than myopic adolescents, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was a small child myself.
You know why “Die Hard” is such an awesome film? Because we don’t NEED to see Hans Gruber raised by a rich but distant father, or John McClane developing a childhood contempt for elitist Eurotrash assholes, to understand who and why they are. If the original “Die Hard” was being remade today, at the very least, we’d be forcibly subjected to the slow disintegration of John and Holly’s marriage for the first quarter of the film, before the action finally picked up at the Nakatomi Plaza tower.
July 27th, 2011 at 1:49 am
“K-Box” –
Maturity and sophistication beyond your years are immediately evinced by your choice of DIE HARD and a TNT original series as examples of effective and aspiration-worthy characterization. Kudos on your fine taste, sir.
Imma bounce. Audi 5000.
July 27th, 2011 at 3:25 pm
D. Peace: Just as much as your preference for original and inventive storytelling is revealed when you cite hoary decades-old misogynistic genre tropes and endless retellings of origins as a creative ideal. Good to see you still resorting to ad hominems when you can’t actually counter any of my arguments.