Where is the line for what can and can’t be changed in regard to certain characters? Or rather, where is the line for what changes can be permanent as opposed to those inevitably reverted by future writers? This question has been on my mind a lot last month (well, in addition to being terribly sick and having to do my end of term grading – but all my extra mental energy has been focused on this). As a genre, comics demand new stories for their most popular characters every month (sometimes multiple times a month) unceasingly for decades without allowing characters to age more than five or ten years. It’s easy to see why reboots, alternate realities, Legacy Characters assuming a mantle, time travel, alien doppelgangers, mind-wipes, and so on always pop-up. How do you keep an unending story fresh? One trope employed to this end is the redemption of a villain and this, specifically, has been on my mind. Continue reading
My Comic Relief 