Superman: The Man Of Tomorrow Animated Feature (2020)

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by sdp

I pretty much stopped caring after New 52, what reboots have they done since then?

I never understood New 52 since it was only another "somethings from the past are canon but not all", especially when it came to Batman being young but still having like 10 different robins, it was bound to be a mess. I remember reading that Classic Wally would be coming back and there was the whole watchmen being in DC comics now but never dwelled much into what happened.

Ehhhhh, "Watchmen" still happened in its own universe, they just did a cross-over. It's not like Watchmen is technically "DCU canon" any more than Silver Surfer is just because he once met Kyle Rayner. So it's not like they're "in the DC Universe" so much as "two universes owned by the same company had a cross-over", which happens all the time. It was only made a big deal of because it's Watchmen and therefore sacrosanct.

New 52 was DC giving up when Final Crisis and "World Of New Krypton" didn't set the world on fire with their sales as expected. Those were their "Big Guns" that were supposed to do huge business for the company, and they didn't. Not knowing how to top them, or what to do otherwise, they just said "F*ck it, start over." Which was very stupid and a total panic move, but hey... DiDio and WB.

The general idea behind the execution of New 52 itself was, "Make DC more like Marvel Comics so Marvel fans will jump over," or that people who'd never read comics at all would feel safe jumping in with a "blank slate". But it didn't work because you can't cross-pollinate between comic book companies any more than you can with wrestling companies; people watch their preferred show/brand for a reason. When WCW went out of business, their 10 million fans didn't start watching WWF instead, they just quit watching wrestling. They hated the WWF product, that's why they watched WCW. Same thing. Marvel fans like Marvel. They won't suddenly jump ship and pledge loyalty to DC because they become "Marvel-Lite", that's never happening. And we've seen that, now. That's what DC was hoping for, that they'd steal a big chunk of Marvel fans, but it absolutely did not work. SOME Marvel fans checked in out of curiosity and some of them even liked what they saw, but they eventually got bored and went back to their own sandbox, as expected. And that's perfectly fine; like I said, very few fans of one company are ever gonna "jump ship" and even fewer like both companies equally; they appeal to different fans for entirely different reasons. Always WAS the case, always will be the case.

New 52 was a failure before it happened because 1. It was a total desperation move made out of sales panic rather than storytelling reasons, and 2. "Make DC appeal to Marvel fans" was an inherently flawed and stupid idea to even attempt. For every one Marvel fan who picked up a DC book for the first time, they lost 50 loyal DC readers, and then most of the curious Marvel fans and casual non-comic book readers all went away very quickly, but the old DC fans didn't come back, and now they're all screwed up and don't know WHAT to do.

As you mentioned, stuff like "Batman and Green Lantern books sell, so we won't go full-reboot with them" definitely made it bumpy and messy. But the whole thing never should have even been attempted in the first place. "Brightest Day"-era was going fine, it just wasn't making boat loads of money. But it was better than anything they've since tried to replace it with, that's an absolute certainty.

The BEST thing they could do would be have Waverider or Booster Gold wake up and declare everything since 2010 was a bad dream, and pick up immediately where they were pre-Flashpoint. That's literally the only good thing they could do, but there's a ton of reasons why they won't and can't do that. But they should. Anything else is a Band-Aid on a bazooka hole.

As far as "other reboots" since New 52: "Convergence" was supposed to make all the different and conflicting DC timelines and continuities make sense, but instead they made it a lot worse by declaring the ending of "Crisis" never happened because they went back and stopped the Anti-Monitor from ever destroying the Multiverse, and that was stupid and annoyed a lot of people. So THEN they just sort of said "never mind" and had "Rebirth" happen, which is essentially, "Dr. Manhattan got bored and screwed up the DCU and that's why everything is screwy now", which allowed some wiggle room for the characters and concepts people liked from pre-Flashpoint to creep back in. But it's still a total mess, story-wise.

Again, it's like trying to clean up dog sh*t with a dry piece of newspaper. You're just making a bigger mess. Don't let the dog sh*t on the floor.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

Originally Posted by Leo656

In the last decade of their comics I'd pretty much agree since they've had, like, three reboots when not even one was necessary. New 52 never should have happened; remove that one, you remove the successive ones. The later ones were only done to fix what that one broke; if they hadn't done that mess, then everything would be fine.

Pre-2011, though, DC only really had one "hard reboot" (Crisis on Infinite Earths) and two "soft" ones: Zero Hour (not even really a reboot at all, so much as "Tying up loose ends from Crisis") and Infinite Crisis (which again, didn't "reboot" anything so much as "retcon" and clean up more past continuity issues). That's really not too bad at all, considering.

If New 52 had never happened, we'd still only have one "real" DC reboot in 80 years. And any sane person will agree that New 52 was horrible, so it's kinda "preaching to the choir" on that one. Yeah, "Convergence" and "Rebirth" and whatever's coming later this year is all pretty excessive and ridiculous, but if you remove New 52 from the equation entirely and just leave well enough alone, then none of the other crap happens, either.

It's just that implying DC's continuity is and forever has been a mess is false and an over-simplification. They've generally been very good about continuity and keeping it straight, or at least explaining inconsistencies in a creative way. It's not entirely fair to make blanket statements based on the past 10 years of mismanagement. Everyone pretty much agrees by now that New 52 was a mistake, and that their attempts to sop up the sh*t has instead just smeared it even more, but before that they were fine.

Yeah, I agree on most of this, was mostly meaning the "modern" era post-Infinite Crisis, or really post-New 52. Ever since then, they seem to be retcon and reboot happy, and it's such a mess I don't see how they can even keep any of it straight anymore.

Granted, Marvel has had their share of retcon snafus, (cough, One More Day, cough) but most of their reboot material has just been minor tweaks. Nothing as major as an entire reset of the past 60 years or so, so much as updating some heroes' stories.

[Leo656]

Even Infinite Crisis didn't really "hurt" anything or change anything MAJOR in the DCU; the biggest casualty/change was that Superman's John Byrne origin was thrown out completely once and for all, so that Geoff Johns's "Secret Origin" could replace it. Most of the rest of the DCU was almost exactly the same except for a tweak here and a tweak there. I mean, yeah, they brought the Multiverse back, but it wasn't as messy and screwy as the Pre-Crisis Multiverse, and they were already using "Hypertime" for years before that as a way to sneak in some of the "alternate reality" stuff, anyway. So even that wasn't as big of a deal as they made it out to be. Ultimately, not a lot changed in the DCU post-Infinite Crisis, they just cleaned up more loose ends, which is an unfortunate necessity of mainstream comics.

Frankly, the stuff DC put out between 2004 and 2009 was far and away some of the best stuff I'd ever read from them, while 2000-2003 was some of the worst. So Infinite Crisis helped a lot more than it hurt, as far as I and many are concerned. The event wasn't the problem at all, it was that less than five years later it "didn't matter" anymore, after all the work that went into it. Infinite Crisis created a great version of the DCU, which they sh*tcanned and replaced with a much sh*ttier version, for very bad and shortsighted reasons.

I generally don't think "hard reboots' are ever necessary. "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was a specific case and a rare one where I'd say that "Let's just start over" was justified. Especially since it gave us the best-ever version of Superman, who'd been pretty much a joke by 1985. And if "Crisis" was a bad story, I'd be more pissy about its existence, because whenever you do a "hard reboot", you throw out all the bad stories but you also lose some good ones, and that always sucks. But DC's continuity had become so badly tangled up by 1985 that Crisis really was necessary.

After that, though, I think the occasional "pruning" that they'd done every 10 years or so with stuff like "Zero Hour" and "Infinite Crisis" was more than enough to keep things smooth. Pruning, not cutting down the entire tree and planting a new one. You don't do that unless it's absolutely necessary. New 52 was not at all necessary.

[MsMarvelDuckie]

I feel the same way about One More Day/Brand New Day, Spider Island, and Secret Wars II, among a few others. Especially the combining/killing off of universes Marvel did a few years ago, just to have their own, CoIE type event to prune down the number of heroes. On one hand, a lot of it would never have been necessary if they hadn't been trying to constantly one-up themselves with big event after big event, like Secret Invasion, Spider Island, and the like. I pretty much gave up around that time, mostly due to lack of funds and the fact that I hardly recognized "my" universe anymore.

Thor as a woman? Doc Oc in Peter's body? M-J getting powers? (The last one I was kind of cool with, but eh.) Or Tony handing over the Iron-Man suit to a girl? Nope, not right. Same goes for a lot of the other changes over the past decade. It's like they're TRYING to drive all the ling-term fans away.

[Leo656]

It's amazing how many popular franchises we're seeing that with, isn't it? And it's a very recent trend, too. Because as we've seen in the past, as in say, 15 or 20-ish years ago, you can present a long-running franchise in ways that both appeals to old and new fans, but it's only been in the last 5-10 years that we've seen it unilaterally become, "We only want new fans. Old fans can f*ck right off because they're old". This dismisses the fact that older fans have a lot more emotional investment in the brand(s) they follow AND a lot more disposable income on average, but hey, I never said marketing people were smart. Because marketing people are not smart, they're manipulative, which is much different.

Let's take a look at just a few popular brands that have had at least two "relaunches" or at least retoolings in the last 20 years and see how they compare insofar as how they're marketed, presented, and/or spoken of towards the fans by the Powers That Be, beginning with one specific example:

- Star Wars 1999 (Prequel Era): "We want to give older fans some backstory on the movies they grew up loving, as well as give their children a trilogy of 'their own'. We want to unite generations with the Star Wars franchise!"

- Star Wars 2015-Now (Sequel Era): "We want women and young, socially 'woke' people. If you're a man, or an older fan, we don't really care about you, and in fact would prefer you go somewhere else because you're toxic."

That's a specific and recent and prominent example, but you can also see it in, for example, the He-Man relaunch in 2003 vs. the She-Ra relaunch in 2018 or whatever, and the TMNT 2003 relaunch vs. "Rise" today. "Back in the day", relaunched or retooled brands were still welcoming to fans of the original or older versions, and tried very hard to straddle the line between Old and New. Today's standard is, "If you're an older fan, we want nothing to do with you." Same sentiment was prominent with the New 52 in DC, and from what I've seen online it's been the case over at Marvel, too. I don't understand it, but a person would have to be blind not to see it.

Like you, I don't quite understand the forceful urge to drive away existing fans in the hope of making new ones, OTHER than, most of the pen-holders right now are incredibly liberal, and to liberals, "old" means "out-of-touch and 'problematic'," so at the risk of overly-politicizing the issue, it would be silly to think that has NOTHING to do with it at all. It most likely has a lot to do with it, frankly.

If *I* were a corporation, I would try and play to both sides of the aisle and try to keep my existing fans happy while also courting the younger crowd, but at some point in recent years some genius decided that it had to be an all-or-nothing game. You can see the results as these retooled and rebooted versions of once-popular things continue to flame out time and time again, leaving all the pen-holders scratching their heads and wondering what they did wrong.

And you can tell them what went wrong over and over again; they simply won't listen. That's ultimately the problem, the holier-than-thou, "We know what our audience SHOULD want, so we don't have to listen to them when they tell us what they DO want" mentality that exists at the top these days.

[TurtleTitan97]

Originally Posted by MsMarvelDuckie

Doc Oc in Peter's body?

Actually from what I've heard, the Superior Spider-Man story arc was actually pretty well liked. Still need to get around to reading it.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by TurtleTitan97

Actually from what I've heard, the Superior Spider-Man story arc was actually pretty well liked. Still need to get around to reading it.

The people who like Superior are edgelords who think they're older in the head than they actually are.That story is garbage and you're better off not reading it. It's a thoroughly cold mean-spirited tale that does everything but prop up Otto and makes everyone else out to be an imbecile who can't see through his subterfuge, and does nothing but routinely kick Peter along the road like an old can.

You're better off reading Nick Spencer's run. When the man best known for making Steve Rogers a Nazi can fix Spidey in three years when Marvel couldn't in ten, you know you done goofed with the likes of Slott.

[Leo656]

Gotta say, never read it but it's intrigued me on a conceptual level.

When I was, like, 3, before I had a strong DC preference, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Hulk were my "Big 4". The latter two kinda dropped off but I remained loosely interested in Spider-Man, particularly when Venom and later Carnage came along. I collected DC books and my Dad collected Marvel so I'd usually read his Spider-Man books, but then the Clone Garbage happened and we both stopped caring very early on in that.

Since then, I only picked up Spider-Man again for "The Other", which was... something. And out of curiosity and a recommendation I picked up "Reign", which was... also something. That was twice in a row that someone recommended I check a Spider-Man story out and I didn't really care much for it, so I've been pretty gun-shy ever since.

I check out what people are saying sometimes about this or that story, just out of curiosity, and frankly, much of the last 20 years sounds just dreadful. So I'unno. I kinda just play the Spider-Man video games, now, it's safer.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I check out what people are saying sometimes about this or that story, just out of curiosity, and frankly, much of the last 20 years sounds just dreadful. So I'unno. I kinda just play the Spider-Man video games, now, it's safer.

The latest game progressed the character far more than the regular comics have in a long time. It is the best mainstream representation of him out there at the moment now that the newspaper strip and the Renew Your Vows book is done. They even teased something based off that abandoned 80s pitch of Felicia having Peter's baby for one of the game's side-missions!

Spencer's run is great, but the general reception feels like most are only hanging onto it just to see if he'll ever 'fix' OMD, if it turns out the whole thing is just one big **** tease it'll hurt it in retrospect.

As for Clone Saga, I have a lot of love and respect for it...it was the last time Marvel truly advanced the characters and Ben Reily to me was a superstar in the making as the Scarlet Spider...then they made him Spidey and the magic fizzled, and from there you were counting down the day 'till Peter returned. The saga led to Spider-Girl though, which to me remains the definitive conclusion to the whole Spider-Man story and was a fun book I would recommend tracking down.

[Leo656]

I didn't play that one yet, I don't have a PS4.

I fell in love with Web of Shadows a couple'a years back, though. Before that I really liked the one with the four Spideys... Shattered Dimensions, I think? That was really good. People bitch about any Spider-Man game that's not open-world but I thought that game was terrific and fun for what it was, which was "something different". As good as the open-world ones I've played are, there's a "same-ness" to most of them that makes me not immediately reject any game that strays from that formula. Like most criticism I've seen about that one was, "Why bother? It's not open-world" and that's hardly fair.

If/when I do get a PS4, it's on the list, but who knows with all that's going on in the world.
-------

Clone Saga..... ehh. To me, if Dan Jurgens throws up his hands and says "I can't make this work", then it probably ain't gonna work. I mean.... Dan Jurgens, man. He's the industry's "We broke this... you fix it" guy. And he couldn't fix it!

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

If/when I do get a PS4, it's on the list, but who knows with all that's going on in the world.

You'll love it, it's great fun. I won't spoil the story but it's definitely a worthwhile one.

[Leo656]

Am I drinking White Claw and wearing a pink tank top, son? Do I look like the kinda guy who cares about Spoilers? I encourage that sh*t, it's saved me a lot of time and money over the years, as well as encouraged me to look at things I otherwise never would have given a chance. I love Spoilers. Half the stuff I own is stuff I already read all about and went, "Huh... that sounds very intriguing", and I was not disappointed. Fact is, I'm almost never disappointed in the media I consume, because I generally know exactly what I'm in for beforehand. It's only when I don't listen to my gut and give something a chance that already sounded terrible that I'm disappointed. And then it's my fault. "You knew exactly how that chick Ghostbusters movie went and you watched it anyway! Your fault, dumbass!"

Actually, it was my wife's fault, because she insisted, but yeah. I knew it was gonna be terrible because I read all about it first. And then it was terrible. She knows there's no forgiveness on my end, it's just sort of something we live with, now.

Anyways yeah, no, I don't care, Spoilers are awesome.

[Turo602]

Spider-Man in Spider-Man PS4 is everything MCU Spider-Man isn't, which is Spider-Man. God, I hate that sentence. But it does absolutely capture at least my idea of who Spider-Man is and the story is so good that I actually cared about everything Peter was going through and feeling at the end of the game. The only thing I really didn't care for was Miles and the way they set him up for the sequel disappoints me because I only care about Peter Parker as Spider-Man and these days it feels like Miles is being shoved into everything Spider-Man.

Game-wise though, the game is extremely polished and feels incredible to play, but it falls into all the same trappings of previous open-world Spider-Man games and can be quite dull in certain areas, like boss fights, repetitive tasks and missions, and unnecessary stealth sequences as other characters. It's nothing groundbreaking or amazing like most people pretend it is, it's just a triple A quality version of what's been done already.

I don't get the love for open world Spider-Man games. I mean, sure, Spider-Man in New York, it makes sense. But I feel like people who get a hard on for open-world Spider-Man just love the fact that you can swing around and not actually play the game. Just like how people play GTA just to blow sh*t up. The formula really needs tweaking, which is why I absolutely enjoyed Web of Shadows and The Amazing Spider-Man. They didn't feel like the typical open-world Spider-Man game because one is overrun by symbiote and the other is more a less just a hub world to play around in between the traditional linear levels.

Shattered Dimensions was great too and while Edge of Time wasn't as good, it was very entertaining, and both games definitely brought me back to the days of Spider-Man on PS1. I see the appeal of keeping Spider-Man games open, but games like Shattered Dimensions really show the potential of ditching the overused New York setting and taking Spider-Man to unique locations with traditionally designed levels.

[Leo656]

I generally agree very strongly with much of what you say. This has been one of those times.

[PApagreg]

You know with digital purchasing being more of a thing I wish the DC movies would either

Appear in the DC Universe streaming service for free or have better production values because I really don't see myself paying 20$ for this movie.

[snake]

I thoroughly enjoyed the initial Superior Spiderman run. Yeah, Otto's a complete dick. That's the fun in it. The ending wasn't very good, but for awhile it was enjoyable. Come to think of it, the Marvel NOW era had some pretty decent stuff going on. Hickman's Avengers, Superior Spiderman, Thor -- all great runs.

[ZariusTwo]

I actually love how the overall Superior Spider-Man saga and One More Day have the exact same ending

[Leo656]

Enough with your insider shoot comments, Russo, us casual marks don't know what you're on about.

[ZariusTwo]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Enough with your insider shoot comments, Russo, us casual marks don't know what you're on about.

My apologies bro...I mean Mr. Cornette...bro.

Nah, I'm just talking about what happened to Otto after Slott's Superior Spider-Man ended, when he came back using a back-up of his consciousness stored in an Octo-bot and he wound up being revived in a clone body by The Jackal (aka Scarlet Spider) that was young, athletic etc. He went on to be Superior Spider-Man again until he ran into an alternate universe Norman Osborn who exposed him publicly and threatened his girlfriend, so Otto made a deal with Mephisto to restore his original body and make him evil again so he could stop Osborn.

[Leo656]

"Well god dammit, son, that's the most cuckoo-bananas load'a bullsh*t I ever heard since that dumb beaver Becky Lynch got herself knocked up while makin' a million dollars a year! The hell's wrong with her? An' not fer nothin' but how the hell's Seth gonna knock anybody up with a pecker like a half'eaten Tic-Tac inna first place? F*CK Joey Janela, that impotent little piss-ant! Back in my day we'da dragged that little prick out back an' took turns knockin' his dick stiff!"

How was that? Was that good?