I'm with Slam_Bradley on this. If you don't like it, don't buy it. You will read and buy what interests you. I really liked the Kyle Green Lantern. Hal was always a bore to me. Only Neal Adams art made him digestible.

I would love to see more natural diversity in comics but think that needs creative people or those who claim to be creative to use more brain power and make something original and awesome. As nice it is that some effort is made now think overall changing establish characters to be something other then caucasian/hetro/or male just highlights how lacking in diversity comics are in the first instance. I don't read DC/Marvel stuff so someone who knows more can say but is/has there been a character that is originally gay for example? 2000ad has Devlin Waugh, he was made in 1992, think mention guy have as my avatar Thrax has been vaguely implied is not hetro either and his original strip was out in 1986. If a comic could do that in still homophobic times then I see no reason can't take a risk now.

Who in their right mind is going to do that?  At least not for the Big Two.  What possible incentive does a creator have to give intellectual property to a multinational corporation to exploit when there's a chance (albeit a very slim chance) that it the creator can retain property and hope it will be the next Walking Dead.  

If superheroes are truly a modern mythology, then they have to be strong enough to exist in multiple iterations, versions and interpretations. There is no one correct story of Robin Hood. There is no one interpretation of King Arthur. There is no correct version of Hercules. The characters grow and change with their audiences. That is what makes them archetypes, that is what makes them iconic, and that is what makes them enduring myths. If super-heroes are to be myths, if they are iconic, and if they are to endure, they will undergo the same process. There will be no one correct Spider-Man story. There will be multiple interpretations of Captain America. There will be no correct version of Batman. They will grow, change, evolve and survive with each new audience through multiple generations and beyond the life of any one single fan or generation of fans.

If they are forced to remain stagnant by a generation of fans who falsely believe they are "their" characters (you hear it all the time, that's not my Spider-Man, or that's not my Star Wars), they will stagnate, entropy will take effect, and they will die and be forgotten as a relic of that generation.

That's not even bringing up the fact that no two fans can agree on exactly what is the correct version of X hero or y heroine, or z villain, and you will never be able to please all of them, and in trying to do so you will please none of them. You can only tell the best story as true to the vision you have for the story and see whom it resonates with. If that means striking out in a different direction, so be it. Things like the new X-Men or Barry Allen/Hal Jordan would never have happened if creators weren't willing to move beyond what was the accepted version of characters within fandom. Comics like Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four would never have been done if the creatives were simply trying to please the fanbase as they fanbase expressed what it appreciated in the forms of correspondence available at the time (at that time letters o the editors). Books like Maus, Watchmen, Moore's Swamp Thing, Sandman etc. would never have come about if creators and publishers simply listened to what fans said they wanted and catered to it.

Meyer and his ilk are the worst type of reactionary fandom, but that streak of entitlement and false sense of ownership of the characters is prevalent in several levels of fandom, even some that aren't quite as toxic as Meyer and company, and these things are what keep comics from growing and finding new audiences, larger audiences, and healthier markets. A lot of it is a byproduct of the direct market and the 3-4 decades where comics catered exclusively to that hardcore fan base market and saw it's market continually plagued by speculator bubbles, gimmicks, new #1, variant covers, events and shrinking units moved because there was no influx of new readership to keep comics growing, so stagnation and entropy set in and publishers had to rely on ways to sell more copies to a shrinking customer base to remain profitable. Fans lament these things and say do something different, yet when publishers do something different to try to find new readers, new markets, and growth potential the same fans cry you are taking away my comics and that's not what I meant by do something different, you should keep things the same...

You can't please them either way, so the best bet is to just ignore them and just put out the best stories you can that will find the widest possible audience. Of course, pricing, format, and accessibility and availability of product in a non-returnable market model are factors that will limit that, but that is a different discussion.

-M

Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four, on the other hand, were only created 60 odd years ago, and are in no way oral folktales. Spider-Man's origin in Amazing Fantasy #15 reads the same now as it did in 1963. What's more, due to the relative youth of the character, people who were fans of the character back then might even still read the comics today. As a result, who and what Spider-Man is, is much more set in stone than a predominantly oral legend like Robin Hood was in its earliest days.

So, for me, that analogy simply doesn't work, I'm afraid.









But it's not really about agreeing, is it? It's about fans saying, "I hate this new direction", for whatever reason. That's a perfectly acceptable sentiment for fans to express, surely?

It's also an entirely obvious response to fundamental changes to a beloved character, I would've said.






Suddenly having Spider-Man come out as gay, on the other hand (let's just say, as a wild example ), just to satisfy some vague diversity quota, when there was never any evidence of him being sexually oriented that way before, is probably gonna annoy a lot of people. That really shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody.





But that's part of the gripe of a lot of these disgruntled fans though, isn't it? That these diversity changes haven't been working out too great for sales either, at least according to Marvel's vice president of sales...

www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/03/marvel-executive-says-emphasis-on-diversity-may-have-alienated-readers

Confessor

Storytelling is storytelling. Oral tradition is storytelling. It allows for adaptability and growth so the story changes with the audience.

Check out Albert Lord's book on the oral storytelling tradition...



Many times those stories have been recorded in written form. Mallory's Morte d'artur is one form of the story written down. Geoggrey of Monmouth's is another. White's Sword inthe Sotne another. They are all echoes of the first time a stroy is told.

Somehow when mass produced print entered the picture, stories became calcified into the form they first appeared. That is an inherent weakness in the format, not a strength, and an obstacle to good storytelling. It trades ease of recording and transmission for adaptability of the story, and adaptability is the true key for a stories survival, not permanence of format. Permanence locks a story into a single time and place making relevant for a limited range of audiences, and storytellers get trapped by the format of the storytelling, beng unable to continue to evolve and alter the tellings allowing the story itself to endure and transcend the teller and the initial telling.

We see this in music too-a song that is recorded becomes calcified in the eyes of many artists and audiences and any variation from the recorded version is considered inferior, even when done by the artist's who recorded it initially. To the point where audiences want to hear the studio version of the song when tey see an act perform and are disappointed in variations in the live version. Some think permanence is a benefit. It is not. It is a calcification of the art form. It makes it a commodity for sale not an art form. It is the corpse that remains behind after an act of creativity that is sold to multiple audiences again and again, no longer a living breathing evolving art form. Amazing Fantasy #15 is one act of telling the Spider-Man story that has been recorded. If it is a living breathing art form, there will be other tellings of the story, each adapted to the time and audience it is told to. That is what the storytelling tradition has done for all of the history of humanity until technology created permanent formats which calcified the stories leaving them dead husks and a shadow of what storytelling was before. Stories and characters that do not continue to evolve with each telling of the story have no future. And just because it has only been x number of years since the first telling of the story doesn't mean it cannot evolve and grow. 1962 was three generations ago, and the story should have evolved through three generations of telling. That's how stories remain relevant and vibrant and continue to connect with audiences through time. Amazing Fantasy 15 itself is a relic of one telling of the story. It is not the only way the story can be told nor should it be. It works for some who heard it that way first and may work for some who encounter it that way in the future, but that is hardly iconic or universal.

You can certainly argue the concept of super-heroes as modern myths. They could just be products of their time. But if that is so, there time will come to an end when they no longer resonate with audiences. More stories and character shave been forgotten over time (even those in permanent mediums like print) than are remembered. Very few have the adaptability to endure beyond the circumstances which made them relevant and entertaining for audiences of their time. Super-heroes seem to be transcending the time of their creation and the medium in which their stories were first told. New tellings growing and adapting to new audiences with characters changing details but remaining true to the thematic core of the story. That pretty much is the essence of a mythic/archetypical character. Once that transcends its initial telling (in form and in potential audiences) to become something more.

But to each their own.

-M

I don't have paragraphs to write, after I have read everyone else's. But I think another, if not the, determining factor in who is on what side, is not necessarily who likes change and who doesn't, as much as who self inserts into fiction and who doesn't.

That's how the skinny, bullied nerd, Peter might have more common with me, than Luke Cage. But he's more interesting of a character to me. This is why race, gender and sexuality are immaterial to me. But I'm not everyone. And I think that is the dividing line more than anything when it comes to changes. Especially in well established characters that have been in print for decades.