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Fiction Friction: Reboots, Remakes and Reimaginings

Alex Richards said:
I feel like with comics, the more obscure the original, the more successful the reboot tends to be.

I mean Gaiman's Sandman is technically a reboot.
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Not by the definition Tom is using.

It's a fascinating example of the way comics work, I agree, but not really what Tom is interested in.

For those who don't know, Gaiman pitched a story about the old 1930s character Wesley Dodds, aka the Sandman, who was a pulp detective who wore a gas mask and gassed criminals and was later somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into the superhero genre, crossing over with superman and the like in the justice society books. DC basically told him they wanted something less tied to the mythos and more original and so Gaiman instead came up with the idea of telling the story of the god of dreams, who was an original character not previously depicted in comics, instead.

Only they kept the name, for no real reason, and Gaiman threw in a reference in the first issue to Dodds being inspired by Dream's godlike presence in the same way Shakespeare was.

Which isn't a reboot, the dodds stuff still happened, it's just using the same name to tell a story about a different character, which is how a lot of new comic characters are introduced in DC and Marvel lines. Which is weird because like I can understand why you might want to call your new character Miles Morales 'Spider-Man' to appeal to fans of his but it's often characters noone has heard of before. Like did Gaiman's urban fantasy tales really benefit from the name recognition of 70 year old fans who remembered when Dodds last had a solo series and wanted pulp detective stories?

Of course the punchline of it all, is four years after Gaiman got told not to write about Dodds, the Sandman became such a known brand that Matt Wagner got to write a, very good, 71 issue Wesley Dodds pulp detective series called 'Sandman Mystery Theatre' with him busting criminals in 1930s new york. Which was the story Gaiman originally pitched and got knocked back on.
 
Gary Oswald said:
Not by the definition Tom is using.

It's a fascinating example of the way comics work, I agree, but not really what Tom is interested in.

For those who don't know, Gaiman pitched a story about the old 1930s character Wesley Dodds, aka the Sandman, who was a pulp detective who wore a gas mask and gassed criminals and was later somewhat awkwardly shoehorned into the superhero genre, crossing over with superman and the like in the justice society books. DC basically told him they wanted something less tied to the mythos and more original and so Gaiman instead came up with the idea of telling the story of the god of dreams, who was an original character not previously depicted in comics, instead.

Only they kept the name, for no real reason, and Gaiman threw in a reference in the first issue to Dodds being inspired by Dream's godlike presence in the same way Shakespeare was.

Which isn't a reboot, the dodds stuff still happened, it's just using the same name to tell a story about a different character, which is how a lot of new comic characters are introduced in DC and Marvel lines. Which is weird because like I can understand why you might want to call your new character Miles Morales 'Spider-Man' to appeal to fans of his but it's often characters noone has heard of before. Like did Gaiman's urban fantasy tales really benefit from the name recognition of 70 year old fans who remembered when Dodds last had a solo series and wanted pulp detective stories?

Of course the punchline of it all, is four years after Gaiman got told not to write about Dodds, the Sandman became such a known brand that Matt Wagner got to write a, very good, 71 issue Wesley Dodds pulp detective series called 'Sandman Mystery Theatre' with him busting criminals in 1930s new york. Which was the story Gaiman originally pitched and got knocked back on.
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Yes, bit of a stretch to call that a reboot, but it an incongruous early example of 'keep the name and nothing else'. I suppose the same applies for the Human Torch.
 
Gary Oswald said:
Of course the punchline of it all, is four years after Gaiman got told not to write about Dodds, the Sandman became such a known brand that Matt Wagner got to write a, very good, 71 issue Wesley Dodds pulp detective series called 'Sandman Mystery Theatre' with him busting criminals in 1930s new york. Which was the story Gaiman originally pitched and got knocked back on.
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That would be after Gaiman's work essentially left the DC universe but still sort of slotted in right?

EDIT: And before they decided to pull it back in again.
 
Alex Richards said:
That would be after Gaiman's work essentially left the DC universe but still sort of slotted in right?
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Yes, though Gaiman and Wagner co wrote a crossover issue (that isn't collected in the Sandman anthologies) in which Dodds and Morpheus have a chat.

From what Gaiman has said, he always intended the stories to be firmly in the DC universe even when very much doing his own thing and if it had been up to him, there'd have been a lot more cameos of superheroes rather than less, which is perhaps surprising.

Like for instance he had written for a Joker cameo in the first book, only to be told that the month that would come out the Joker was doing something else in the batman books, and so he had to use Scarecrow instead. And after about four or five times of asking to use a character and being told no, he just stopped asking.
 
Gary Oswald said:
Yes, though Gaiman and Wagner co wrote a crossover issue (that isn't collected in the Sandman anthologies) in which Dodds and Morpheus have a chat.

From what Gaiman has said, he always intended the stories to be firmly in the DC universe even when very much doing his own thing and if it had been up to him, there'd have been a lot more cameos of superheroes rather than less, which is perhaps surprising.

Like for instance he had written for a Joker cameo in the first book, only to be told that the month that would come out the Joker was doing something else in the batman books, and so he had to use Scarecrow instead. And after about four or five times of asking to use a character and being told no, he just stopped asking.
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Doesn't surprise me. The whole situation with the Triumvirate in Hell first time round was because DC mentioned that they'd established that somewhere else and he had to do a work-around.
 
I think one of the things you don't get in hindsight is how much the Sandman was obviously perceived as introducing new elements to the Dc universe that other writers could play with rather than telling a self contained story, because that's how the big superhero comics worked.

The letter columns at the time are full of people asking about who'd take over when Gaiman quit cos obviously DC wouldn't just end one of their big sellers.

And we forget just how many spin offs using minor sandman characters came out in those years.

Mind I feel bad for poor @Thande cos this has nothing to do with his excellent column. But it was interesting the way the standalone completed series you can sell and you don't need to read anything else, which sandman pioneered in terms of making comics viable in book shops happened without anyone quite realising it was happening.
 
Gary Oswald said:
I think one of the things you don't get in hindsight is how much the Sandman was obviously perceived as introducing new elements to the Dc universe that other writers could play with rather than telling a self contained story, because that's how the big superhero comics worked.

The letter columns at the time are full of people asking about who'd take over when Gaiman quit cos obviously DC wouldn't just end one of their big sellers.

And we forget just how many spin offs using minor sandman characters came out in those years.

Mind I feel bad for poor @Thande cos this has nothing to do with his excellent column. But it was interesting the way the standalone completed series you can sell and you don't need to read anything else, which sandman pioneered in terms of making comics viable in book shops happened without anyone quite realising it was happening.
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Of course to bring it back round to what Tom was talking about, they've actually used Sandman as a way of doing a reboot of the minor characters Stanley and his Monster where, instead of the Phil Foglio canon of the monster being too nice for hell and getting thrown out, it's instead a rather elaborate situation involving Stanley's demon-worshiping grandfather getting inspired by Morpheus's imprisonment to do something similar, but ending up with the monster bonding with his grandson instead of him.

Comics are weird you know?
 
Gary Oswald said:
I think one of the things you don't get in hindsight is how much the Sandman was obviously perceived as introducing new elements to the Dc universe that other writers could play with rather than telling a self contained story, because that's how the big superhero comics worked.

The letter columns at the time are full of people asking about who'd take over when Gaiman quit cos obviously DC wouldn't just end one of their big sellers.

And we forget just how many spin offs using minor sandman characters came out in those years.

Mind I feel bad for poor @Thande cos this has nothing to do with his excellent column. But it was interesting the way the standalone completed series you can sell and you don't need to read anything else, which sandman pioneered in terms of making comics viable in book shops happened without anyone quite realising it was happening.
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I don't mind the discussion FTR, it is relevant.
 
re Tomb Raider, a chum has the theory that Bike Courier Lara is because of fear that you can't have posh Lara, she has to be Relatable.

Supergirl post-Crisis is a hilarious one because people who grew up with Supergirl went "I want to bring Supergirl back" and DC also wanted that Supergirl money, but instead of going "this other Kryptonian survived after all", they decided they had to stick to The Rules so Supergirl was actually a shapeshifting blobby alien from a "pocket universe" (COS THERE WAS NO MULTIVERSE SO IT'S NOT A REAL ONE!!) who takes a teen girl Super-form. And then she starts dating Lex Luthor. And this sticks for years, until someone says "we can't do teen girl stuff with this" so she merges with an actual teenage girl who then becomes Supergirl. But then that's too convoluted so they go "okay there's a teenage cousin of Kal-El" in the end (and have to hope readers accept the other Supergirls are being ignored)

But before that, they had an implied survivor-of-Krypton blond girl on a lost space city in... Superman VS Aliens. With the door open for her to survive the aliens and arrive at Earth to gain yellow-sun powers. Which is the most US comics thing of all time.



Gary Oswald said:
Like for instance he had written for a Joker cameo in the first book, only to be told that the month that would come out the Joker was doing something else in the batman books, and so he had to use Scarecrow instead. And after about four or five times of asking to use a character and being told no, he just stopped asking.
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Oh GOD, and it strikes me now how much that scene is just Gaiman changing "Joker" to "Scarecrow" in word balloons and adding a few lines about fear. Scarecrow even says he's doing a "prank" like Joker cos the guiy's not there!
 
The whole bit about Bond is quite incisive, and makes me think about how utterly corporatized media has become in the twenty-first century.

Ultimately, characters are just names to sell tickets or streaming subscriptions or what have you, in this view of this paradigm. As Tom says, Lara Croft was hit by this hard.

I also think that this paradigm makes companies ignore fundamental aspects of the characters they use, and the broader discourse has accepted this logic hook, line, and sinker. To most people, Bond is just an action star, and as such can be given different backgrounds interchangeably so long as the Bond name sells.

What I think this does is minimizes how Bond is very much a product of postwar Britain. He is of aristocratic background, with the aristocratic views that now seem outdated. He views the world in the manner of the Colonial Office, where the world's problems are merely inconveniences to be solved and people are tools to be used. He is the sort of person that would agree with Harold MacMillan that Britain should be the 'Greeks in the Roman Empire' in regards to America; note how he is often at least vaguely patronizing towards American teammates.

It's an aspect of the character I think that this paradigm often obscures.
 
Charles EP M. said:
re Tomb Raider, a chum has the theory that Bike Courier Lara is because of fear that you can't have posh Lara, she has to be Relatable.
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I wouldn't be surprised. As we all know, it's not as if anyone posh is popular with the general public (BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IS SOLVING JACOB REES-MOGG'S MURDER OFFSCREEN WITHOUT USING DEDUCTION AT ANY POINT, IT TURNS OUT TO BE BORIS JOHNSON BUT THE JURY LETS HIM OFF).

SpanishSpy said:
The whole bit about Bond is quite incisive, and makes me think about how utterly corporatized media has become in the twenty-first century.

Ultimately, characters are just names to sell tickets or streaming subscriptions or what have you, in this view of this paradigm. As Tom says, Lara Croft was hit by this hard.

I also think that this paradigm makes companies ignore fundamental aspects of the characters they use, and the broader discourse has accepted this logic hook, line, and sinker. To most people, Bond is just an action star, and as such can be given different backgrounds interchangeably so long as the Bond name sells.

What I think this does is minimizes how Bond is very much a product of postwar Britain. He is of aristocratic background, with the aristocratic views that now seem outdated. He views the world in the manner of the Colonial Office, where the world's problems are merely inconveniences to be solved and people are tools to be used. He is the sort of person that would agree with Harold MacMillan that Britain should be the 'Greeks in the Roman Empire' in regards to America; note how he is often at least vaguely patronizing towards American teammates.

It's an aspect of the character I think that this paradigm often obscures.
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An excellent point. The Bond example is slightly complicated by the fact that Sixties Sean Connery Film Bond is already quite a different beast to Fifties Ian Fleming Book Bond; most obviously, the earlier version actually fights actual Communists from actual Russia in From Russia With Love, whereas by the time the films roll around, the Cuban Missile Crisis has scared everyone off that simplistic worldview, so now it's all a plot by a third fictional faction behind the scenes to engineer war.

So, while it's reasonable that Bond can mutate and evolve with the times (Jonathan Ross' programme on GoldenEye when it came out made some points along these lines) at some point you do have to ask if there's anything consistent behind the name. We haven't got there yet, but the modern focus on name over content could send us in that direction.
 
Thande said:
So, while it's reasonable that Bond can mutate and evolve with the times (Jonathan Ross' programme on GoldenEye when it came out made some points along these lines) at some point you do have to ask if there's anything consistent behind the name. We haven't got there yet, but the modern focus on name over content could send us in that direction.
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I wonder if to some degree it's safe because the last 20 years have already provided the alternatives.

If you want to do 'spy against the agency' you could just get the rights for Jason Bourne

Comedy spy film? Johnny English/Austin Powers

Bond but its a kid? Here's Kingsman

Mission Impossible gives you a different angle as well. Fast and Furious. Arguably John Wick or Taken or even Tenet if you're going to do something really bonkers with time travel.
 
That's a list that says you can do new things even now, as Kingsman and John Wick are new 2010s film franchises (and one is even its own original thing!), but then what did it take for them to pull it off and various other films with killer spies not? Having a famously good set of directing and visuals backing an actor who everybody knows for John Wick, and that's a bigger arsenal than most films can pull off just to get its foot in the door.
 
Charles EP M. said:
That's a list that says you can do new things even now, as Kingsman and John Wick are new 2010s film franchises (and one is even its own original thing!), but then what did it take for them to pull it off and various other films with killer spies not? Having a famously good set of directing and visuals backing an actor who everybody knows for John Wick, and that's a bigger arsenal than most films can pull off just to get its foot in the door.
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My point was more that if you don't have those and want to do something completely different to Bond, there are now other big name franchises to try and hang your hat on instead.
 
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