I am a fan of reboots, actually, especially when done right.For instance, Aquaman is one those characters who always seems to be in the middle of a reboot. Usually, the only time they get it right is when someone finally realizes that all you need is this: orange fishscale shirt, green tights, swims underwater, ruler of the Seven Seas, Justice League/Super Friends, giant seahorse with saddle: optional.
BOOM. Aquaman.
Some folks like Matt Fraction get the utter absurdity of a billionaire white guy from a mythological Asian city who also possesses the ability to harness his chi into a mystical iron fist only after defeating a dragon and ripping out its heart.
And then, we get pirate queens.
That's a reboot and a great one at that.
It seems to me the reboot goes one of two ways: honor what came before and build upon it or simply throw out what you know and build anew.
Neil Gaiman's Sandman did a bit of both, as did Grant Morrison's Animal Man or Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.
Those reboots weren't so terrible, I guess.
Nowadays, reboots seem to come about out the blue. Not because, "You Demanded It" or "Back By Popular Demand," more because well... because.
For every Thor reboot, where a writer artist/team actually has something to say about the character and his surroundings, we get multiple inexplicable reboots.
Such as the recently relaunched Marvel reboots of Black Panther, The All-New Savage She-Hulk and Exiles. All three had been unceremoniosly cancelled over the last six months. Were they brought back "Because You Demanded It" or was it more, "Heck, people buy issue ones?"
It's my opinion that a reboot should add to the mythology of a character and area surrounding it. It's my opinion that if a company is even going to bother with bringing a character under the glare of the reboot spotlight, they'd best make it worth doing.
Y:The Last Man and Runaways creator Brian K. Vaughan did a Swamp Thing series a few years back featuring the daughter of The Swamp Thing and Abby Holland. It was cancelled. Vaughan rightly know he could never duplicate the zeitgeist of of an Alan Moore Swamp Thing but in being a writer, he asked of himself, what could he bring to the character's overall story.
You could see him writing the sort of comic that would appeal to him.
It was a reboot. Was it the one we all expected? No but it was one that was fairly considered.
In today's reboot crazy world, does anyone ask themselves, "Would I bother showing this comic to someone who'd rebooted a book that I admired, such as a Sandman, an Animal Man, a Swamp Thing or even an Iron Fist?"
If the answer is, "No," then, why bother?
So, I ask you, what, for you, makes for a good reboot?
