Alright guys, it’s time to talk about reboots. Not of films, although I could go on for weeks about that subject, but of comics. I felt I needed to write this after all of the hate that the Marvel and DC reboots have been going through recently. That paired with the idea that their upcoming events, Secret Wars and Convergence respectively, are going to be nothing more than hasty re-reboot, which they are not. I will go into more detail about why they aren’t later. First things first, we need to get all of the nay-sayers 
straightened out.
When people talk about recent relaunches, they seem to focus the entirety of their argument on things like Marvel Now and The New 52. Whenever news is posted about a new comic renumbering or a new change in the series, the comments are a barrage of hate. I don’t think that’s the way comic lovers should act. Honestly, I believe most of these people don’t read further than the headline (See my article on Click-Baiting). I want to use this article to explain why they, in my opinion, implemented these “Reboots” and why they are something that needs to be excepted and not scoffed at or hated on. First things first, lets look at the current “resets” and why they aren’t really starting from scratch again.
I’ll talk about Marvel Now first, because that is going to be the easiest one to refute. Marvel Now was 
never a reboot, but a way of renumbering series’. Despite it being nothing like a reboot, this garnered a lot of negative press. The fact is, the universe stayed the same, only creative teams and issue numbers changed. I still can’t wrap my mind around why people disliked this so much, but something tells me it has to do with change. How some people don’t like change and see no point in it. I think change is one of the most critical things about comics. These characters often get stuck, because of the mentality that they can’t die, that they’ll be brought back. So if they can’t change the characters, there has to be some aspect that does change. Whether it’s a girlfriend dying, a hero hanging up the mantle or passing it down, someone going to the dark side, or in this case, turning the page in their story and starting a new story. These things happen to change the status quo and they are necessary.
Now what is this Secret War? The secret war is a way of doing all of the things I mentioned, changing the status quo of the comic, en masse. Leading up to the Secret Wars, a lot of crazy things have been going on, but I’ll do my best to highlight the important bits without spoiling things for the people who still want to read it, and I suggest everyone does because it has been an amazing story. So, the cliff notes 
are, something is causing all of the universes colliding with each other. The point of collision is always on Earth, in something called an “incursion”. The only way to stop these incursions is to destroy the Earth of another universe. The Illuminati, consisted of Black Bolt, King Namor, Black Panther, Iron-Man, Beast, Captain America, Mister Fantastic, Doctor Strange, and eventually Bruce Banner, decide it’s time to do what needs to be done, and begin saving their world by destroying others. After the first world is destroyed, Captain America becomes opposed to this plan and has his memories of the Illuminati wiped from him by Doctor Strange. Skip forward eight months and Captain America is waging war on the Illuminati for their horrible deeds, while they have gone on the run. It is discovered that a major power is behind the incursions and only a few universes remain. All the surviving universes battle on Battleworld to finalize who makes it out of this multiverse ending disaster. The end is coming for the Marvel Universe.
Very promising territory, but this will leave Marvel with only one universe. No more Ultimate Universe, no more What if.. or alternate universes. Only one will survive. This means everything we know about the Marvel Universe will change, but it is not a restart button. It doesn’t take our characters back to the beginning. Now onto DC’s plans, which are, to be honest, very very similar.
Stay Tooned to our Convergence coverage coming up next Wednesday here on DFAT!
