Subscribe Feed (RSS)Reestablishing characters
June 27th, 2007 by Derek | Filed under Commentary.Wow. I just finished reading Planet Hulk and I am even more jazzed to read the rest of World War Hulk. This is what more creators need to do with their characters. Strip down all the rest of the bullshit, take the core of the character and put them in a new setting and then reintroduce them to the rest of whatever universe they live in. Pak took the core of Hulk, a fighter who cannot be stopped despite what is thrown at him, and rebuilt him as a force of nature.
Simone is doing something similar with her run on The All New Atom. She’s just using a different character to tell stories built around science, physics and really tiny people. These are the kind of stories that they should have been using Ray Palmer for, but weren’t. Ryan Choi is a worthy successor, but the readers seem to not be willing to give him a chance.
Miller did it with Daredevil in Born Again. Take away the costume and revert Murdock to being a man who wants to fight crime. The destruction of Matt Murdock and rebuilding of Daredevil was a treat to watch. I still remember getting chills when Murdock thought that the Kingpin shouldn’t have signed his handiwork. Powerful stuff. Just thinking about it makes me want to find the Bendis stuff and finally get around to reading it.
Bilson and DeMeo were on the right track with their version of the Flash, take a guy who can run fast and make him run, but they put too much other stuff in and removed a lot of Bart’s personality.
Ennis’ recreation of the Punisher was perfect. (By the way, who had the bright idea to make him a demon hunter?) Take away the supernatural crap and the technological crap, put a gun in Frank’s hand and point him towards the bad guys.
Rereading some of the examples I gave made me realize that the characters don’t even really need to be changed all that much. For all the complaints about superhero comics not changing their status quo, I think people forget that if the story is strong, a lot of change is not needed and can sustain a character for years.
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