I love comics and believe there is a lot of potential for stories to be told in them. All too often though in the mainstream titles there is a limitation to what can be done. You can't have too many lasting changes otherwise you might alienate certain readers. Part of it is that you don't want to upset the fan boys, who are the ones paying cover price for comics and not just buying them in trades. I can understand not wanting to disregard your core audience, but in attempting to placate them means the ability to have progression is lost. Well at least seriously hindered. Add to that there is always that desire to draw in new readers. Many of the characters are iconic. There is a standard for each title that has to be maintained so that your typical person off the street won't be overwhelmed. Spider-Man is always the misunderstood hero. Batman is always fighting crime because of a sense of loss from his murdered parents. The X-Men are a band of renegade heroes that society doesn't understand and even hates.
There have even been several resets within comics to make sure things don't get too far ahead of themselves. Spider-Man got married over 20 years ago. He revealed his identity to the world. He had left his job at The Daily Bugle and became a teacher. Thanks to "magic" all that's been erased. He's back to living with the seemingly ageless and perpetually sick Aunt May. No one knows his identity and his marriage never existed. Not divorced. Just gone. It was felt that readers wouldn't be able to identify with a married Spider-Man. The guy dresses in blue and red spandex. Anyone who could identify with him is in need of serious help. Plus most serious comic readers aren't teenagers anymore. They're middle aged men. Some of whom have wives of their own. The mutant population was in the millions. They lived on islands and even had an entire district in New York City that was like Chinatown, but with mutants. It got to be that mutants weren't really special anymore. So again with "magic" all the mutants were gone (except of course for all the main characters and popular ones that brings in money). Mutants are again this weird little subset of species with their backs against the wall. The biggest resets are death itself. It's been joked about that no one stays dead in the comic world. The only real exceptions seem to be Uncle Ben and Thomas & Martha Wayne. They only stay dead to drive the main character to keep doing what they're doing. Hal Jordan dies saving the universe. He is replaced as Green Lantern by Kyle Rayner. Ten years later Hal Jordan is returned to life and restored as the primary Green Lantern. Nearly every character has been "killed" only to come back. Some take longer than others. Captain America's World War II sidekick, Bucky Barnes, was dead for nearly 40 years before coming back. Jason Todd, the second Robin, stayed dead for half that time. How someone cheats or beats death varies in its believability and quality, but the end result is the same: return things back to how they were.
It makes me wonder what these various comic worlds would look like if there was actual progression within them. Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four has always been called one of the smartest men in the world. In several comics he’s making quick comments about some random invention that’s for lack of a better word, fantastic. (Side note: The Thing has been essentially trapped in his rocky form for the better part of 40 years. Reed should have been able to come up with a cure by now. Ben being stuck as The Thing supposedly makes for a more interesting character, but it’s been 40 years. I think it’s safe to say that well has been tapped dry. In a world of make believe it comes off as unbelievable.) Their costumes aren’t even costumes. They’re unstable molecules which conform to the wearer’s body and don’t get destroyed when Human Torch bursts into flames. It also makes it easier for the artist so they don't have to draw fabric, but that’s really beside the point. He’s created super computers to help with his experiments. He has a flying car that can fly across the US in a short amount of time. Imagine if a good-natured scientist, who is already insanely rich was coming up with these breakthroughs every day. Would we still be using computers or driving in cars that burned gasoline or flying like cattle in a plane that takes hours to get you two states over? Hank Pym named subatomic particles after himself. These Pym Particles allow for size-alteration. Think of the medical advances that could be done by shrinking something. Cancer cells could be reduced to nothing. Imagine the applications of making something giant sized. Food grown at regular size could be expanded in size as needed. World hunger would be a memory. Tony Stark invented a suit of armor that essentially allows the wearer to fly, have super strength, and even go into space. The world of prosthetics would be drastically different. Stark even provided Misty Knight with a cybernetic hand to replace the one she lost. There are normally offhand comments about its expense, but with any technology the first is always the most expensive. So Cancer is gone. World hunger is gone. Reliance on fossil fuels is gone. If you’re hurt, you can be rebuilt to a point where you’re actually better than before. With those types of inventions why is the world still basically the same? Sure it’s possible that various governments or evil organizations could stop the spread of these advances. People sure do like their status quo (kind of the whole point of what I’m writing). Still at some point there would have to be some sign of advancement with just the sheer number of inventions being done.
Speaking of evil organizations, you’d think they too would have progressed beyond just a bunch of henchmen grouped together listening to a leader rant about how he’s going to take over the world. Think about what happens if you ever took over the world. Can you imagine the amount of administration that would go into something like that? It’s not like these things just take care of themselves and unless you want to be the ruler of a dead planet there is a lot of general upkeep to deal with. In a recent reboot of G.I. Joe Cobra Commander was revealed to be someone who thought of himself as a patriot. He was using terrorist actions to take back his country from what he thought was a corrupt government. In his mind he was essentially leading a revolution in the same way the colonists broke from the English. This felt more believable than just some former used car salesman who managed to convince everyone that he was going to rule the world. Of course eventually the comic turned back into the typical story of how Cobra comes up with some insane and outlandish plan and the Joes foil it again. It could have been an interesting twist on who was really the bad guy.
While we’re on the subject of bad guys, there are several instances where you’re forced to suspend disbelief. Considering these are worlds where people can teleport through force of will or manipulate the weather with a thought, it’s saying a lot that something is hard to believe. Lex Luthor was a criminal mastermind responsible for numerous deaths. He was sent to prison on more than one occasion for various crimes. Despite this he was somehow elected President. Granted given his past he was still not the worst President ever elected, but come on. How does that happen? Anyway he eventually wanders off the reservation in attempt to kill Superman and is removed from office. Once again he’s known as a criminal, an ex-President criminal at that. Still given time he’s cleared of all charges and attempts to return to being what most people know him as, just another businessman. As of right now he’s in full bad guy mode, but I’m sure given enough time he’ll somehow be restored back to evil billionaire bent on destroying Superman. He's one of the most well known people in Metropolis and it's expected that people will just forget all the horrible things he's done in the past. I'm a relative nobody and I still have a gym hounding me for membership dues from ten years ago. They never forget.
Another example of disbelief is one of Batman’s most known villains, (although the same can really be said about most villains) The Joker. He’s been around from the very beginning and is the complete antithesis of Batman, which I suppose is what makes him so popular not just among readers, but with writers as well. He’s killed countless people in countless ways, including the previously mentioned Robin (although since Jason Todd eventually got better from being dead, I guess it would only be considered attempted murder). Every time he’s caught by Batman and sent to Arkham Asylum, where given enough issues in between, he escapes to do it all over again. There comes a point where rationality has to supersede morality. Batman has a major no-killing rule even though he’s a vigilante and has no problem breaking bones, removing teeth, and causing serious psychological trauma to criminals. So of course the worst Joker ever has to worry about is getting beat up and tossed into a padded cell. This man will continue to spread pain and death as long as he’s alive so why is he allowed to live? No wonder Gotham City is always depicted as a festering cesspool. The criminals know that sure they may get hurt once and awhile, but just wait a bit and you’ll be able to keep doing what you’ve been doing. There is a Punisher series under the MAX label, which has taken Frank Castle out of the regular Marvel Universe and kept him in a seemingly self-contained world. It actually frees him up to do what he’s supposed to. He doesn’t go around beating up thugs, leaving them tied up for the cops to pick up. Instead he ends the threat by ending them. Now his character is very much on the extreme side of things, but I have to believe there could be a more reasonable middle ground. Cops are issued weapons and are expected to kill if needed. That doesn’t mean they’re killing every single criminal they come across. If you have a mass murderer who has killed before and is in the process of killing again, you don’t wring your hands about how crossing some invisible line is going to make you as bad as them. It’s such a lame argument and really just used as an excuse to make sure that the popular characters never are eliminated.
So with all that said, I’d love to see what these various comic worlds would look like if a writer actually attempted to expand on what things would really be like. What would the world be like with amazing technology that advances society into tomorrow? The world would have real consequences because death is a permanent state, not some place where you rest for a bit so you can become popular again. The villains have true motivations beyond just they’re evil, it’s what they do. They should be people, not sharks. The world should keep spinning and things shouldn’t always be the same.
