Why does every Superman reboot have to be an origin story?
I offer this as the reason, although it should really apply to the start of every story arc:
It was an inerrant article of faith, back in the 60's and the 70's, that (as DC editor emeritus Julius Schwartz so often phrased it) "every comic book is some reader's first comic book." To that end, a simple, sales-elegant procedure was rigorously observed, month in and month out: the stories and characters were intentionally fashioned to be as inclusive and "reader-friendly" for the comics neophyte as they were for the aficionado.
This meant, for instance, that the average DC Comics super-hero offering was complete and self-contained, within any given issue... and that -- in the exceedingly infrequent instances where a given story was allowed to elongate into a story arc -- the writer and/or editor undertook every conceivable effort (i.e., multi-page story "recaps"; extensive expository captions and dialogue; etc.) to ensure that no one shelling out cold, hard cash for a DC comic book would walk away from the experience feeling "cheated," comprehension-wise.
(The Marvel comic books of the day -- while more given, certainly, to the multi-installment telling of the tale -- were no less assiduous in making certain that any tyro's initial issue of, say, AVENGERS or SPIDER-MAN had all the major characters, plots and sub-plots decently explained away no later than the third or fourth page... tops. And anyone doubting the veracity of that statement need only leaf through one of the Marvel Masterworks volumes, reprinting the stories of said era. The proof -- as they say -- is in the puddin'.)
Compare this methodology, if you will, with any given issue of (say) X-MEN or SUPERMAN published during the last five, ten years. I defy anyone to look me squarely in the eye and tell me -- with a perfectly straight face, mind -- that an eight- or ten-year-old reader whose first exposure to the characters consisted of something as studiedly oblique and self-referential as "The Trial of Gambit" or "The Millennium Giants" would have a prayer in hell of knowing what was going on in the story, sans the tutelage of a fanboy-in-residence.
This, by definition, is simply b-a-d w-r-i-t-i-n-g... even if such inbred, quasi-Masonic fare is the current storytelling flavor-of-the-month of the hardcore contingent. It is Bad Writing precisely because (pay attention, please) it discourages the casual reader from ever becoming a regular one... plain and simple.
-- Unca Cheeks, "Why the Slow,Agonizing Death of the Comics Industry Is (Mostly) All Your Fault"
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I offer this as the reason, although it should really apply to the start of every story arc:
It was an inerrant article of faith, back in the 60's and the 70's, that (as DC editor emeritus Julius Schwartz so often phrased it) "every comic book is some reader's first comic book." To that end, a simple, sales-elegant procedure was rigorously observed, month in and month out: the stories and characters were intentionally fashioned to be as inclusive and "reader-friendly" for the comics neophyte as they were for the aficionado.
This meant, for instance, that the average DC Comics super-hero offering was complete and self-contained, within any given issue... and that -- in the exceedingly infrequent instances where a given story was allowed to elongate into a story arc -- the writer and/or editor undertook every conceivable effort (i.e., multi-page story "recaps"; extensive expository captions and dialogue; etc.) to ensure that no one shelling out cold, hard cash for a DC comic book would walk away from the experience feeling "cheated," comprehension-wise.
(The Marvel comic books of the day -- while more given, certainly, to the multi-installment telling of the tale -- were no less assiduous in making certain that any tyro's initial issue of, say, AVENGERS or SPIDER-MAN had all the major characters, plots and sub-plots decently explained away no later than the third or fourth page... tops. And anyone doubting the veracity of that statement need only leaf through one of the Marvel Masterworks volumes, reprinting the stories of said era. The proof -- as they say -- is in the puddin'.)
Compare this methodology, if you will, with any given issue of (say) X-MEN or SUPERMAN published during the last five, ten years. I defy anyone to look me squarely in the eye and tell me -- with a perfectly straight face, mind -- that an eight- or ten-year-old reader whose first exposure to the characters consisted of something as studiedly oblique and self-referential as "The Trial of Gambit" or "The Millennium Giants" would have a prayer in hell of knowing what was going on in the story, sans the tutelage of a fanboy-in-residence.
This, by definition, is simply b-a-d w-r-i-t-i-n-g... even if such inbred, quasi-Masonic fare is the current storytelling flavor-of-the-month of the hardcore contingent. It is Bad Writing precisely because (pay attention, please) it discourages the casual reader from ever becoming a regular one... plain and simple.
-- Unca Cheeks, "Why the Slow,Agonizing Death of the Comics Industry Is (Mostly) All Your Fault"