REVIEW: End of Month Reviews #96 - December 2011 [spoilers]

[Martin Phipps]

On Jan 24, 8:16 am, Saxon Brenton <saxonbren... at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>      (As an aside, I have been wondering to what extent the LNH20
> reboot might suffer from 'classic storyline repeat-itis': the observed
> tendency of particularly DC (with its various reboots, particularly of
> the Legion of Super-Heroes, since the original Crisis On Infinite Earths
> in the mid 1980s) to retell - with or without major variations - the
> origins of its protagonists and the major villains as well as to retread
> the major storylines of the past.  And by the time they've done that
> they've chewed up at least a year of publishing before they can get to,
> you know, actual original stories, thereby effectively trapping them-
> selves in loop of perpetual long-form recap mode.  I'm suspecting the
> LNH20 aren't likely to suffer from that.  After all, the major comic book
> publishers have also had policies to recap their protagonists' origin
> stories regularly, on the grounds that "each comic is someone's first".
> The LNH, or any of the net.fiction imprints published on RACC for that
> matter, don't have that problem both because the easy accessibility of
> back issues in the archives as well as the fact that this writing is a
> non-paying hobby rather than a business model that can't afford to risk
> alienating potential readers due to obscurity.  The LNH in particular
> would simply throw out a gratuitous footnote or editorial note and then
> proceed with the story.)

Yeah, imagine if somebody were to attempt to reboot the LNH by
retelling the origins of Irony Man and Sing Along Lass.  Wow, that
would suck. :)

>      The other significant design factor explicit in the reboot is the
> availability for use of characters.  This has long been an issue with
> the classic LNH, even though for the most part it has been able to be
> dealt with amicably.  Nevertheless, over the decades there is an
> accumulation of in-practice free-for-use characters that are actually
> abandoned writer characters (like Cheesecake-Eater Lad, Occultism Kid,
> and Fuzzy), instances of different writers having different interp-
> retations of characters and having to come up with contrived explanations
> (ie, the duplication of Catalyst Lass into Catalyst Lass and Hell
> Catalyst),

I said at the time and still say that this was a mistake.  Jameel
objected to Catalyst Lass reading romance novels on the basis that he
thought Catalyst lass was intelligent but who says that a person can't
read romance novels and still be intelligent?  Well, granted, if she
were to ever read Twilight...

> of reserved characters continuing to be used because of their
> links to other characters (such as the way aLLiterative Lass was
> romantically linked to Cheesecake-Eater Lad, and rather than make a big
> fuss in-story about why they should break up has instead incrementally
> ended up with a 'happy ending' of being semi-discretely married off to
> him and becoming the mother of his child, so that she can now be referred
> but is perpetually off-stage), or characters like Ultimate Ninja who
> were given over for general use on the condition that their status quo
> isn't altered, but whose popularity or position in the Legion is such
> that they get used a lot and thereby accumulate unwanted baggage (such
> as the way Ultimate Ninja's real name being revealed as Lenny).

You know, ironically, reboots are often touted as a way of maintaining
the status quo: a lot of retroactive continuity gets introduced over
the year and the reboot allows you to choose what to keep and what to
discard while keeping to the basics of the character.  In theory
anyway.

Martin