Guess who's back?
I guess you can't keep a good Robot Fighter down for long. And one suspects Jim Shooter is extending a huge middle finger at DC right now.
This raises another question, though. A lot of the comic book companies these days are spending mucho dinero and investing much effort to resurrect past superheroic creations: Marvel gloms Marvelman and brings back public domain golden agers; the DC Borg Collective assimilates the Milestone, Red Circle and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent universes; Dynamite resurrects 175,000 public domain Golden Agers; and now Dark Horse brings back the Gold Key portion of the Valiant line. Heck, I'm now have expecting someone to announce a Warriors of Plasm revival next week...
The question is, why the recent groundswell of reviving old, derelict properties? A attempt to make bucks based on rampant nostalgia for franchises many fans don't even remember? A tacit admission of a lack of creative imagination, a sub rosa confession that the companies really can't come up with any new properties of their own anymore? An attempt to make sure that when Hollywood studios come around with their fat option checks, they'll have something "new" to sell them?
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing (although I predict dismal, flaming failure followed by a thorough under-the-carpet sweeping for DC's attempts to integrate 3 disparate continuities into their recently re-convoluted universe). I'm just curious about the trend, that's all.
Meanwhile, welcome back, Magnus. May you fight many robots, you magnificent bastard.
I guess you can't keep a good Robot Fighter down for long. And one suspects Jim Shooter is extending a huge middle finger at DC right now.
This raises another question, though. A lot of the comic book companies these days are spending mucho dinero and investing much effort to resurrect past superheroic creations: Marvel gloms Marvelman and brings back public domain golden agers; the DC Borg Collective assimilates the Milestone, Red Circle and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent universes; Dynamite resurrects 175,000 public domain Golden Agers; and now Dark Horse brings back the Gold Key portion of the Valiant line. Heck, I'm now have expecting someone to announce a Warriors of Plasm revival next week...The question is, why the recent groundswell of reviving old, derelict properties? A attempt to make bucks based on rampant nostalgia for franchises many fans don't even remember? A tacit admission of a lack of creative imagination, a sub rosa confession that the companies really can't come up with any new properties of their own anymore? An attempt to make sure that when Hollywood studios come around with their fat option checks, they'll have something "new" to sell them?
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing (although I predict dismal, flaming failure followed by a thorough under-the-carpet sweeping for DC's attempts to integrate 3 disparate continuities into their recently re-convoluted universe). I'm just curious about the trend, that's all.
Meanwhile, welcome back, Magnus. May you fight many robots, you magnificent bastard.
I think that the revival of elder properties like the Gold Key characters and the recent maneuverings of DC do indicate a sort of creative austerity that both companies are attempting at this time. With it being so difficult for up and coming writers to break in to the larger companies like DC (though to be fair Dark Horse does allow for writing submissions on their own, which is a nice exception to the rule that if you don't have an artist kindly piss off), Marvel, or Image, it can make a certain fiscal sense to utilize properties that don't belong to independant creators but rather an heir or holding interest that can be given a lump sum in exchange for use of their property.
ReplyDeleteThat said I love Magnus. He breaks open robot skulls with his bare hands and fights evil in go-go boots and a mini-skirt. Beat that John Conner.
Stac
I love Magnus. He'll never be as good again as he was in Russ Manning's hands, but I love him.
ReplyDeleteAs for why so many Golden Agers are coming back, part of it is probably due to the fact that almost all of them are now public domain, so anybody can come along and experiment with them. The Golden Age heroes are irresistible to a LOT of comic fans, because so many characters had a great deal of potential that was just never tapped.
If DC ever does anything with the Blue Tracer, though, I'll be shocked.
What gets me is the attempts to "modernize" the characters, which naturally means darker, "edgy", and not as much fun. Which doesn't mean they can't turn out interesting (I've enjoyed the first few issues of Buck Rogers, on the other hand there's the recent Flash Gordon comic), but sometimes it's just not the same.
ReplyDelete(See also my main issue with the new "Galactica". They're actually going to make a 1980 comic that allegedly the way it should have been. I have little hope for that one.)