Remain Calm. Trust in Science. Atomic Robo Overview.

My gaming group has been experimenting with Evil Hat's Atomic Robo RPG. I've been itching to try out Fate for ages. I'm somewhat surprised to discover Aromic Robo as the setting, being as it is a comic book series I only had peripheral awareness of. Essentially, what I'd heard of the RPG as a good introduction to Fate got me to check out the RPG, figuring even if I didn't use the setting I could mine it. But the RPG is designed to greatly emulate the comic which caused me to go on a Comixology binge and obtain all of the digital Atomic Robo collections. I was hooked pretty quickly.

I'll be talking about the RPG in the future (I hope - I also still plan on writing about some of the Delta Green stories I've read and my update frequency has been horrible of late.) Here I'll want to talk a bit about the Atomic Robo comics.

Atomic Robo is the creation of writer Brian Clevinger and artist Scott Wegener. Atomic Robo is the creation of Nikola Tesla, "born" in 1923. The comic books follow his life through different eras of history. Though physically he does not change, Robo's personality does change depending on the era. Stories set in the 1930s have him acting like an older teen rebelling against the father he still loves. The 1940s see lots of war stories, with Robo matching up against Nazi super-science. After the death of his father Tesla Robo founds the Tesladyne Corporation which evolves into an organization dedicated to science - action science. Lots of smashing things, dealing with various threats such as horrors from other dimensions, leftover Nazi superweapons, mobile pyramid monsters, artificial intelligence dedicated to destroying all life, etc. As he grows older Robo becomes more confident of his ability to handle crises and becomes a mentor to the employees of Tesladyne (though still often goes out in the field, being near indestructible).

The key to these stories is both the planning and execution. The stories bounce throughout Robo's life. Some all take place in one period and others span multiple periods, such as when he confronts a monster  from beyond space-time. The creators have mapped out (and even published) this timeline, avoiding the dreaded cosmic retcon so common to comic books. Beyond the great planning the stories are just fun to read. They embrace the eras they are set in with guest stars like HP Lovecraft, Charles Fort, Thomas Edison, Carl Sagan, Bruce Lee, Annie Oakley, etc. The stories are optimistic - to quote the creators -

ATOMIC ROBO is not a comic that will be 100% sunshine and jokes, but we aren’t going to delve into melodrama either. You are not going to see Robo mope about his lack of emotions, or pine to be human, or throw a tantrum over daddy issues.

The creators also have a "no cheesecake" clause. Women are drawn will realistic proportions and wearing realistic clothing. Women Action Scientists wear the same outfits in the field as their male counterparts, an all female fighter squadron in the aftermath of World War 2 wears normal aviator clothing with their mechanic wearing a non-formfitting jumpsuit. I do wish they would make use of more historical female characters - the historical domain guest starts have been overwhelming male but the original female characters have been written and drawn excellently.

The stories have a love of science. That seems obvious but with all the mistrust placed on science in the political arena over the past several years it is refreshing to see. We see Tesla embracing failure as a step in the path to knowledge. The stories don't shy away from the fact that science can be used to build weapons but our heroes use science for the betterment of humanity (even when they destroy things with science - they're bad things!)

And the stories themselves are fun to read. Lots of action, fun dialogue, and awesome baddies. My own favorite is Dr. Dinosaur, an intelligent time-traveled velociraptor right out of Jurassic Park. He claims to be a velociraptor but Atomic Robo doesn't believe him, pointing out he's little in common with the fossil record and a lot in common with Jurassic Park. Robo suspects him to have been genetically engineered but as of now his origin is still a mystery. However he's always a blast to read with his obsession with crystals and his bizarre logic.

I can see why Evil Hat wanted to do an RPG based on Atomic Robo. Fate, with its emphasis on narrative play and player control is an excellent fit for the setting.

Reading what I've written it seems I've written a commercial for the comic book. No one asked me to - it's just a ton of fun. And the good thing is you can check it out for free - the Atomic Robo website has its Free Comic Book Day comics archived. Also if you use the ComiXology app they have the Free Comic Book Day comics for free as well as all issues and collections. Completed stories are also collected into volumes which you can find at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.

Read More

See You at Munden's

Back in the 80s and 90s my brother and I were perplexed by a frequent letter-writer in comic books, one "Uncle Elvis" who used to close his letters "see you at Munden's". What the heck was he talking about and why was the editor replying as if she knew what he was talking about? You know nowadays one simply Googles for the answer to such questions...

Eventually my brother discovered that Munden's was a bar in a city at the nexus of realities, Cynosure. Cynosure was the setting of the comic book Grimjack, published by First Comics and created by John Ostrander and Tim Truman, both still active in comic books last I checked. At the time my brother discovered all this First Comics was either out of business or about to go out of business, though over the years (and with the help of eBay) he was able to get a complete collection of Grimjack comics. I've inherited that box of comics and I've also been purchasing the collected versions from IDW, though they aborted the publication halfway through and have begun again with smaller sized omnibus editions. I've yet to do a complete read of Girmjack but I've been thinking about the setting of Cynosure.

Cynosure is a "pan-dimensional city", one where multiple realities meet. You could be walking down a street that is straight out of Lankhmar, take a few turns and find yourself walking down a street that would fit in perfectly in Mos Eisley Spaceport or Coruscant. On one block magic and technology might work perfectly while on others one of those might be partially or completely limited.

It's a tough concept to fully wrap your brain around, one that I think requires some suspension of disbelief. I'd always try to figure out how such a city works. How tightly together is the city? Do people use it to travel from one dimension to another? What do the inhabitants of the component cities, the parts not part of Cynosure, know about Cynosure?

That said, it makes for an awfully neat place for gaming. I think it would be especially appropriate for games like Dungeon Crawl Classics where other planes and dimensions are an expected part of the game and many of the source materials make use of such concepts.

As far as RPGs go I can think of just one RPG which is about a pan-dimensional city, Nexus: The Infinite City. Nexus definitely feels like a game of its period, the early 90s, when a lot of interesting game ideas came out - it saw the birth of The World of Darkness and also saw lots of little-remembered games such as Nazis in space in Reich Star or after the rapture in The End (the latter having a d20 version several years ago). Nexus was published by Daedalus Games which also did the first edition of the better known Feng Shui RPG. Looking at the credits for Nexus it had a lot of people who have gone on to be very well known in the gaming industry - Robin Laws, Bruce Baugh, and Rob Heinsoo coming to mind. It's worth picking up for inspiration if you can find it but it is hard to find - I stumbled across it in the discount box of a game shop several years ago.

To do a full-fledged game in such a city I would think you would need a game which can handle genre crossing easily. On the crunchy side games like GURPS or Hero could certainly handle such things. If one is more on the storytelling side of the axis various incarnations of Fate would certainly work well. Grimjack features scenes where its protagonist, John Gaunt, uses his knowledge of the city to know just where to go to make bullets not work against him - a great example of the sorts of actions taken with Fate points.

However, one would not need to do a full game in such a city - it certainly could be used for an interesting adventure in a game like Dungeon Crawl Classics where adventurers encounter such a fantastic city.

Read More

The Superhero Blues

Batman is not impressed with my
genre emulation issues.

Despite my loving comic book superheroes I've had limited luck in long-term superhero RPGs. I've been thinking that a bit of late with the summer movie season in full swing with an allotment of three superhero movies (I remember a time when there would usually be none...) Sooner or later I'll want to try my luck at another one so it's with a little bit of self-interest that I give some thought as to what it is that makes superhero campaigns challenging, at least for me.

I think that genre emulation is something important to the superhero RPG, typically balanced with how it handles action. In games such as  Smallville genre emulation is the most important thing, even linked to the action. Why you are using your powers and for whom plays a huge role in how effective you are in a game of Smallville.

The game I think handled genre emulation best while keeping the action level high was TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Game (MSH). MSH wasn't a perfect - its handling of powers was far less precise than games like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds but it had several systems to handle things vital to mimicking the feel of a comic book. You had your Popularity system, measuring how well a hero or team was liked or trusted by the public at large. Some groups like the Avengers were generally well-regarded and trusted. Spider-Man did OK in the popularity department but had to walk a fine line. And then you had mutants like the X-Men, "feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect".  But popularity wasn't an absolute. It waxed and waned based on your heroes actions or perceived actions. A great example of this is the ending to 2008's Dark Knight movie where Batman chooses to take the fall for a number of crimes committed by an insane and broken Harvey Dent to preserve his reputation. He didn't do those things but everyone thought he did.

Hit-Girl from the movie "Kick-Ass"
She just lost all her karma (again)

Also in MSH you had a Karma system. In MSH karma served as your "fate points", your ability to influence the dice. It also served as your experience system. Karma could be spent to improve your abilities and powers or gain new ones. The catch was you could gain it or lose it based on your actions. And the deliberate act of killing stripped your hero of all karma. Hope you weren't saving some to improve that Fighting score. And superhero teams could pool their karma together and the act of killing would strip the hole pool of karma. "Wolverine, I need you to put him down very gently."

Essentially in MSH you have a system that rewards and punishes players based on how well they emulate the genre. With the right group of players this works fantastic. But you might not always have the right group. And by right, I don't mean superior, I mean an appropriate match for the genre - or players who are comfortable buying into such a reward system. But that isn't everyone. Some people can't stand the genre blindness they are expected to partake in. "Why on Earth would I let the police arrest the Joker again? How many people has he killed? I'm snapping his neck." And this isn't necessarily the mark of a bad role-player - we all cheered the scene in Firefly when Mal tried to convince one of Niska's henchmen that their deal with the crimelord was off. The henchman swears he will hunt Mal down and kill him. Mal broke genre convention and kicked him into the engine...

Similarly, in the Superhero genre very often superheroes do not follow superpowers to their logical conclusion - why hasn't the US government made better use of all the super-scientists and alien technologies around?  It's a similar issue I've found in Star Trek games - characters on the television show know the transporter doesn't exist to rescue them from all dangerous situations because that would make for boring television. Star Trek GMs find themselves using an awful lot of atmospheric disturbances...

So what to do in such cases? You need to start with knowing your players - what can you expect from them? You might get this by simply asking or by just knowing them from a bunch of games with them. It gives you knowledge that lets you know what dials to fiddle with. If open-ended powers are a problem then don't have a game with open-ended powers. The World War 2 Superpower RPG Godlike is a great example of this. What Talents are and are not capable of is clearly laid out. A super-genius? His inventions are essentially a prop - they won't work for anyone else. A 98-pound strong-man? How does he have leverage to pick up a tank? Part of his powers are the violation of physics that allows someone with minimal leverage to pick up a massive object. Perhaps even more importantly, Talents vs. Talents becomes a battle of wills as their influence over reality threatens to fizzle out when faced by another Talent. This isn't the superhero universe of Marvel - heck the characters are superpowered but they are not necessarily heroes.


If one is committed to staying closer to genre it may be best to look at the variety within genre. For example, one could take the examples of the earliest comics, before even Superman, which took their nod from the pulp magazines - heroes that sometimes had some mystic powers but were little more than regular men. You've got your mystic investigator Doctor Occult, invented by Superman's creators Siegel and Shuster. The Crimson Avenger borrowed much from The Shadow.

The heroes of the Golden Age were not the genre-blind heroes they often became later. Superman was a fan of brute force, gladly breaking into the governor's mansion should he have a need to. Batman was ok letting a criminal fall to his death - "a fitting end for his kind". Plus the heroes of the Golden Age tended to have simpler powers.

The Silver Age may seem a horrible era for your typical modern gamer who may have his issues with the superhero genre. But that depends on the lens one uses. This was an era of casual racism, committees on unAmerican activities, etc. Darwyn Cooke's excellent New Frontier series injected an amount of realism into era of the 50s and early 60s.

And if one wants grim and gritty, an era of heroes blowing away their opposition, you've got your model in comics. The late 80s and most of the 90s were the era of the antihero, as superheroes added lots of belts, armor, spikes, and guns to their uniforms. Why not embrace this? Create a world where the heroes decide to be the law. This could make for an interesting Watchmen-like game. The heroes of the 90s tended to be moderately powered so they won't be able to patrol an entire city or world. What happens if the police go on strike? The people go against them? Might the nation itself become unstable as "heroes" battle over the streets of the cities?


I mentioned Godlike as a game where powers are more rigidly defined in what they can or cannot do. Also of interest in this setting is the assumption that heroes are somehow involved in World War II. It does occur to me that Godlike heroes could work in other genres (and indeed they are an option in the more open-ended sequel game, Wild Talents) - but it is worth noting the narrower focus does help define what is expected of the characters - they are to defeat the enemy. And this is war, no one wants heroes who won't take out evil Nazis. (Or go behind their lines to gather vital intelligence for an upcoming battle.) Another game which goes this route is Pelgrane Press' Mutant City Blues. Like Godlike the limits of superpowers are well defined as is the genre - while Godlike assumes a World War 2 setting, Mutant City Blues assumes the characters are superpowered police detectives - dealing with superpower-related crimes.


Hmm, to help me get my superhero fix maybe a monster or two from early Fantastic Four can show up in my DCC game. Paging the Mole Man...

Here I am!!!
Oops, wrong one...

Fear Me!!!

Read More

Non-Fiction Review: "Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero" by Larry Tye

I've been in a bit of a superhero mood of late. This summer has seen  The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man in the movie theaters and The Dark Knight Rises is just being released to theaters at the time I'm writing this.

My introduction to superheroes was through cartoons. Being born in 1971 I used to watch reruns of the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon ("Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can...") as well as The Superfriends. We used to always mock the Wonder Twins. Now that I think of it, I also used to see a very silent Spider-Man on The Electric Company television show.

1979 saw the release of Superman: The Movie. To this day it is probably the Christopher Reeve incarnation of Superman that I think of when I picture Superman.

You'll note I've not yet mentioned comic books. I began slowly discovering comic books after a bunch of us started playing TSR's Marvel Superheroes RPG. We had familiarity with the characters from shows like the aforementioned Spider-Man cartoon as well Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. But we slowly discovered the comic books. Starting out with Marvel I crossed over to the other side and also began reading DC titles, just in time for the post-Crisis universe of DC Comics, after they shook up their entire multiverse. I first began reading Superman comics in the late 80s with a storyline featuring Superman exiling himself into space.

While I listened to the unabridged audiobook of Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero I found myself thinking about my own history of superheroes. This book covers the history of Superman from the childhood of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, to the present-day legal disputes between DC Comics and the heirs of Jerry Siegel and his collaborator Joe Shuster. It covers Superman in all of his mediums: comics, serials, radio programs, big-screen adventures, etc. It discussed how for most people their exposure to Superman was not through the comic book but rather through other forms of media such as the radio show, the movies, various television shows... And that described my introduction pretty well. I'd been exposed to Superman in Superfriends and through the Christopher Reeve incarnation long before I started reading his comic book (something I've not even come close to doing uninterrupted). 




As I mentioned above, the book casts a wide net on the history of Superman. It begins with young Jerry Siegel, not quite fitting in in tje Jewish Cleveland neighborhood in which he grew up. It talks about the impact losing his father to a robbery had on him. (No fear, I'm not going to give the full history of Superman). 


The book is organized roughly chronologically though it has chapters dedicated to topics which cover the entire history of Superman. For example, the third chapter is dedicated to religious aspects of Superman - begininning with his origin as the creation of two young Jewish men and discussing the Christ-like characteristics that are often seen on Superman - most obviously seen in Superman: The Movie with his father, Jor-El, saying "they can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."


While the author Larry Tye clearly admires Superman, I believe he succeeds in producing something more than just a work of praise. He discusses the pittance National Periodicals paid for full ownership of Superman. At the same time, he doesn't let co-creator Jerry Siegel off the hook, discussing frankly his own less pleasant characteristics. He points out low points and high points for Superman. We see how Superman and DC Comics as a whole rapidly lose ground to Marvel Comics starting in the 1960s. He discusses various efforts to reinvigorate the character for new generations, some more successful than others. And he never loses sight of the fact that Superman exists to make money for various entities.

Throughout the book we see both the creative process and a discussion of the results of the product. The history we are getting treated to is most definitely intended to be that of his history in our world - the history of his creation, his comic books, his various spin-offs, etc. but in so doing we get some discussion of various storylines, popular villains, etc. Especially enjoyable was the discussion of how Superman's radio show took on the Ku Klux Klan.

This book, being a recent publication, goes as far as the latest Superman reboot in DC's New 52. I read this in audiobook fashion, as read by Scott Brick. I've noticed that Brick has read a lot of books related to Superman - off the top of my head he also narrated Tom De Haven's It's Superman (which I previously reviewed) and Brad Meltzer's The Book of Lies. He's a great choice for these works, brining a clear enthusiasm which does not get in the way of a clear reading.

Read More

Reboots, Reality Shifts, and Retcons

In the 1980s DC Comics felt they had a problem. If you were new to comics you could pick up two comics with Superman in them and be unaware they took place in different universes. All the DC Heroes of the 1930s, 40s, and early 50s were from a universe called Earth-2. More modern heroes lived in a universe called Earth-1. Both Supermen had a secret identity Clark Kent, though the Superman of Earth-2 began his career in the 1930s while the Superman of Earth-1 began his career "a few years ago". Similarly the Flash of Earth-2 had as a secret identity Jay Garrick, also beginning his career in the 30s/40s while the Flash of Earth-1 was Barry Allen, beginning his career "a few years ago". Sometimes characters from these universes met each other.

Add to these universes ones where heroes and villains swapped, universes for characters from companies DC Comics had acquired, etc. and DC felt their continuity had become convoluted. Their solution was Crisis on Infinite Earths, a 12-issue series was designed to simplify things, combining all these universes into one. Great battles took place, with entire universes being destroyed and a new universe was created, largely from Earth-1, but with elements from other universes. The heroes of the 1930s and 40s still existed unless that character's incarnation was still in use, in which case the hero was removed from the "Golden Age" era of the 30s and 40s. For example Superman was established to have begun his career a few years ago as did the Barry Allen Flash but the Jay Garrick Flash still existed from the 30s and 40s - and was still around, albeit semi-retired. Many of the Golden Age characters were explained to have had exposure to some magic anti-aging effect used to justify how despite their early adventures actually having a definitive date they were still in excellent physical shape, typically being portrayed as no older than late middle age.

Given all this tweaking, the editors decide this would be a fine time to revisit the origins of their classic characters. For example Superman's backstory was changed such that he was never Superboy and his parents were stil alive. This had some nasty side-effects - much of the history of the 30th century Legion of Superheroes involved time travel allowing them to have adventures with Superboy. A modification Hawkman's backstory made a number of comics actively being published an apparent contradiction. It became difficult to know if a given story from the past ever happened and if it did if it had any changes. DC dealt with this by having additional "crisis crossovers" which made additional changes to the universe, re-introduced in a limited way the concept of parallel Earths, and made additional changes to the backstories of heroes.

Finally DC had a crossover known as Flashpoint which, at the end, redid the universe yet again, leading to DC's New 52. All comics were reset to issue 1. This included, rather surprisingly, some comics whose numbering was beginning to close in on an issue 1,000, having been in continuous publication since the 1930s. Some heroes have had large changes to their backstory - for example, the marriage of Clark Kent and Lois Lane was eliminated - actually it now never happened. On the other hand, the main Green Lantern comic book continued pretty much where it left off, albeit with a new focus based on what happened previously.

DC Comics is probably the best known entity to have done such operations in retroactive continuity though they are by far from the only one. Marvel has tended to avoid radical retroactive redefinitions to their universe wholesale, though one notable exception was the "One More Day" storyline in Amazing Spider-Man, where Peter Parker, alter-ego of Spider-Man, and his wife, Mary-Jane, made a deal with the devil to undo their marriage in exchange for saving the life of Peter's elderly Aunt May. This was met with a great deal of unhappiness by the fans. I'll be talking about reactions to retcons below but I'll touch on this one specifically. The issue that Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada wanted to deal with is they felt Peter Parker's marriage inhibited storytelling potential. I don't necessarily agree with that assessment - I think not having story potential due to marriage is a bit of a cop-out but even assuming that to be the case, the solution was very inelegant. It was a retcon that Peter Parker chose for himself. Though he loved his aunt, it is difficult to believe it is what she would want for him - heck she was the one that pretty much shoved Peter into having a date with her. But moreover the "deal with the devil" aspect of this was particularly unsatisfying. It is true that some marriages do not work out and it would seem a divorce would be a more reasonable solution than a deal with the devil. As I understand it Marvel was hesitant to have Peter Parker get divorced, not liking the stigma of it, but a deal with the devil seems a lot less acceptable. It's a difficult balancing act - on one hand they wanted Peter to make a choice and his whole motivation for being a superhero was his failure to stop a criminal led nearly directly to his uncle's death - so it is easy to understand how much he would want to save his aunt. But the choice he made just... it left a very bad taste in my mouth as a reader and I imagine others felt similarly.

Moving outside of comics into films and television we find retcons to be less prevalent. There what seems to be the new trend is that of a "reboot". An example of this is the Batman films of the 80s and 90s followed by the modern Batman Begins/The Dark Knight/The Dark Knight rises series. On one hand a reboot can make some sense if a series left on a bad note or it has been a long time since the last installment. On the other hand it can be overdone - for example it seems rather odd for Spider-Man to be getting rebooted so quickly.

One technique that I was particularly fond of was the one Doctor Who took when it returned to television after not being a regular show for over 15 years (with a single made for TV movie in that gap). Doctor Who simply continued but did so in a way that did away with a number of continuity concerns. The original television series delved into a lot of backstory involving the Doctor and his people, the Time Lords. The new series added a new backstory where the Doctor's people were wiped out in a Time War with the Daleks. The Doctor was shown to be able to regenerate into a new incarnation (and new actor) in the previous series so this series started with a new actor as the Doctor - but it did not even mention regeneration until that actor departed. The new show was largely from the perspective of his companion Rose who was a stand-in for the audience who knew nothing about all the backstory of Doctor Who. And the show was careful to not expect detailed knowledge of previous continuity - if something from the original show was introduced it was introduced in such a way that it could be explained to someone who knew nothing about that thing. Doctor Who is an unusual case in that its premise as a time travel show allowed the removal of the Time Lords as something absolutely appropriate to the concept - indeed in the original show the Time Lords were shown attempting to wipe out the Daleks before they ever existed. This technique was very wise in my opinion - the made for TV movie involved lots of "info-dumps" to explain all sorts of things. It started from the perspective of the Doctor vs. making use of a human stand-in for the audience.

Role playing games have had to deal with such matters as well. The transition from 1st to 2nd edition Adcanced Dungeons & Dragons was, in the Forgotten Realms, explained via The Time of Troubles where certain gods ceased to exist, certain classed stopped being available, and certain changes to magic took place. It wasn't a retcon as the characters were expected to have actually experienced the transition. The transition from 2nd to 3rd edition was oddly ignored despite being a larger change in rules. Interestingly in the Eberron setting the transition from 3rd to 4th edition, involving another large change in rules was never touched upon whereas the Forgotten Realms introduced the changes during a large time gap.

Some games upon changing editions, even if those changes did not involve "reality shifts", make massive changes to the background. For example, in the Traveller RPG the default setting is the Imperium, an empire which rules much of known space. The next edition of Traveller, MegaTraveller did not introduce large changes in the rules but rather added lots of details and new rules while leaving much of the core intact. Despite that the default setting changed to that of the Rebellion - a massive civil war as various factions formed trying to claim the throne of the Imperium. A larger change to the rules in Traveller: The New Era advanced the timeline of the default setting even further, making it into something of a post-apocalyptic setting with a sentient computer virus wreaking havoc on civilization.


When dealing with non-interactive entertainment my reaction to retcons, reboots, and the like is variable. If I was actively following a series and was quite happy with it my reaction to the change is less likely to be positive. An example of this was what was done in Spider-Man. I was greatly enjoying the storylines that were taking place.  Not only was Peter Parker's marriage undone but major changes like his public revelation of his secret identity was undone as well. Moreover it was done in such a way that just didn't feel all that "heroic" to me.

On the other hand I had a more positive reaction to DC's New 52. I'm in a bit of minority in that I suspect so I'll explain what it was I liked vs. what I didn't like. First of all, the change in continuity, triggered by the Flash, was not something like what was done in Spider-Man - it was done to undo a dystopian timeline and the restored timeline was not as deliberate as what was done for Spider-Man. It was still most certainly an editorial decision. But I think it was one that made a certain amount of sense. In the years leading up to it I believe DC overdid it on there "crisis of the year" storylines. Moreover books like Superman and Batman had become so convoluted with their stories spread out over numerous monthly comics - it had reached the point I had long prior given up trying to read those characters. While I'm not too crazy about the undoing of the Clark Kent/Lois Lane marriage, it's worth noting that at this point I'm reading a lot more DC comics than Marvel ones at this point.

One comic I'd like to address directly is one just recently begun and at the time of this writing has only had two issues - Earth-2. This comic re-introduced the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths idea of Earth-2 characters. It had parallel versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, using their original identities. However, unlike the original Earth-2 the superhero boom that followed takes place later than it does in the original DC Earth-2 continuity. Instead of the Jay Garrick incarnation of the Flash who began his career around World War II this Jay Garrick incarnation becomes the Flash before our eyes. It was a bold move but I think it was necessary - I love the original pre-Crisis versions of the the Flash, Green Lantern, etc. but in my opinion those characters in the mainstream continuity just seemed out of place as permanent "elder statesmen". (A notable exception to this being the excellent James Robinson Starman series of the 90s). Earth-2 seems to make these characters relevant again in a way they hadn't been for several years.

I guess in my mind my view on retcons or reboots is if the end result is good I'll likely enjoy it. I'm less crazy about changes to RPG settings. Generally speaking I prefer those that set their setting at a specific point in time and give it to the GM to do with as he or she will.

Read More