A big part of Sentinel Comics’s original schtick is that it’s C&A’s imagining of what comic book companies should have done, if they’d done things right. They changed that later on by introducing intentional mistakes that are consistent with real-world companies, but it still doesn’t include the worst bits, like repeated retcons and “crises.”
3 Likes
Note that I’m not saying either approach is inherently superior to the other, but they do lead to different styles of stories getting told, as well as very different approaches to multimedia franchises. A successful anime adaptation doesn’t change the trajectory of its parent manga the way the MCU has irrevocably altered the face of Marvel comics, and going by past sales figures most Western comics directly adapting films don’t do as well as manga that are adapting original anime. Text fiction in the form of light novels is also a bigger deal (financially speaking) with anime/manga than similar adaptations and spin-offs have generally been in the West, although that is starting to change.
Sentinels doesn’t really do much with that aspect of things, but my headcanon insists that there were Freedom Five and Prime Wardens Big Little books back in the day. And a Guise vinyl album, done in purple of course.
Don’t know about that. Oblivaeon is very much a Crisis On Infinite Earths line reset, complete with isolating the main setting from the multiverse and “big name” character deaths that may or may not stick. They’ve already hinted at how the shards might lead to a return of the problem in some form and the “sandwich bag” getting popped, setting up to emulate DC’s descent into the madness of countless line-wide “event” stories, each with diminishing returns.
Yeah, but it’s the only one, and it took until 2016. Marvel and DC had had multiple “resets” each by then.
2 Likes
Marvel would adamantly deny ever having done a true reset, and with some justification. They’ve fallen into doing endless line-wide events whose effects frequently seem to be minimal the moment the story ends, but I can’t think of anything that’s mangled continuity as broadly as what DC has over the years, starting with Crisis On Infinite Earths in 1984-ish. Closest Marvel has come is the explicit differentiation and numbering of multiple universes, which is more akin to DC’s original Earth 1, 2, etc. concept or establishing other 'verses via Disparation stories than anything. Individual characters have been retconned willy-nilly (and even Bucky won’t have the decency to stay dead) but those are small-scale changes compared to the paroxysms of DC’s multiversal restructuring.
DC is definitely much, much worse, but Marvel did try to do a true reset in the '90s, which was canned and reverted after only a few months due to how horribly it was received.
Marvel certainly does like to spin out its alternate universe stories, though. Ultimates was ridiculous. Not much like Disparation, which is largely one-and-done, very rarely even short arcs.
1 Like
What, Heroes Reborn? That never affected more than a few characters, even if they were immensely important characters at the time. Most of the Marvel line went on with hardly a bump aside from the “reborn” heroes stuck in the Franklinverse being believed to be dead.
The event lasted about a year, not a few months, although Rob Liefeld had his contract cancelled after six months owing to “poor sales” (partly resulting from his traditional inability to meet deadlines, although his godawful artwork didn’t help any - that’s where the “impossible pecs” Captain America image came from) and his books shifted over to Jim Lee’s company. While the change certainly wasn’t universally well received, Marvel made a mint on the fool things (mostly to speculators, I suspect - it was well into that boom) and actually offered to continue the setting ad infinitum, but only if Jim Lee agreed to do at least one of the books. Much more successful gimmick overall than the slightly earlier Clone Saga in the Spider-Man titles, and I’d argue it acted as a direct inspiration for Ultimates - which briefly saw similar success before flopping.
Disparation is a lot more akin to Marvel’s old What If? title, or DC’s many Elseworlds - at least before they both became “real” through Marvel’s numbered-universe thing and DC’s Omniverse concept.
I’m pretty sure Mist Storm / Vertex was their version of Ultimates.
2 Likes
Speaking of Ultimate universe, it is supposed to be coming back.
With a dash of DC’s more superheroic Vertigo titles thrown in as well, yeah. I can also see some similarities to the aforementioned Heroes Reborn - but of course that’s true of Ultimates as well. They all fall into the broad “Bold Imaginings!” trope to some degree.
1 Like
Huh, I never realized that Heroes Reborn lasted a whole year. Probably because it took 12 issues of Fantastic Four vol. 2 to cover less than Fantastic Four #1 did.
1 Like
Heh. Too right.
Might actually have been a bit more than a year, Marvel was very bad at meeting deadlines in that era and the stuff licensed out was even worse - hence Rob Liefeld getting his contract yanked. The poor sales came partly from being late. I was working in a comic shop during that whole run and apologizing to subscribers and off-the-shelf buyers for overdue issues was an everyday thing - as if it was our fault.
That was the same stretch where TSR started showing undeniable signs of collapse. I remember going eight months with the core AD&D 2nd ed books out of stock because they had none to sell us and no money to pay the printers for more.
1 Like
In case anyone is interested, here’s the FRG Wrap-up video: Flat River Games on Instagram: "Okay, okay, we know @gen_con is officially over (😭), but we couldn’t move on without thanking all of our publisher partners, demo team, and - last but not least - YOU, our fans!! 🤩 It was our biggest show ever, but that’s just the beginning. Buckle up because we’ve already started brainstorming for #GenCon 2024! 💪 Stay tuned for bigger, better fun and even more #boardgames! 😍"
That was a lot more games I didn’t recognize than I expected.
We demoed a lot of non-GTG games.
1 Like