Post by Mark Gallagher, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor, Mark Gallagher, is an Associate Professor in the department. Today’s entry is the second installment in a two-part post, and resumes with the third point in a five-point diatribe. Part One of this two-part post appears here.

Avengers: Age of Ultron opens with a battle scene that recalls a comic-book splash page. But don’t be fooled.

3. As a magnet for fandom, superhero movies violate the implicit contract between producers and consumers. At the risk of bowing to nostalgia, I point to the letters pages of 1970s Marvel comics for their evidence of fan engagement and for editors’ own discursive efforts at artistic legitimation.

A Thongor fan weighs in on Creatures on the Loose‘s letters page.

On one side, consider the hair-splitting response of one 1973 letter-writer to Marvel’s horror-fantasy series Creatures on the Loose, a fan distressed with the company’s depiction of obscure pulp-lit creation Thongor of Lemuria. (You know, THAT Thongor of Lemuria.) “Thongor just does not sound like the Thongor I know and love,” writes the aggrieved reader, Brian Earl Brown, before lavishing praise on the (soon-to-be-cancelled) series.

Fandom is of course about returns on investments of time in the form of (sub)cultural capital. Brown’s implied engagements with neo-pulp novelist Lin Carter‘s 1960s Thongor stories licenses him to judge the adaptation’s fidelity, and to weigh in subtly on transmedia style considerations (by noting the difficulty of adapting Carter’s “deceptively simple and lucid style”). Still, as purveyors of fantasy adventure, pulp fiction and comic books appear complementary textual forms, and both in the realm of low culture, hence the letter-writer’s concern with fidelity rather than legitimation.

Soon enough, though, readers and editors did take to the front lines (or at least comics’ letters pages) to argue for comics’ place in the landscape of art. Consider in this respect Marvel editors’ own sympathetic response (also in Creatures on the Loose, in early 1974) to another reader’s losing battle to legitimate his favored leisure form.

More dispatches from the id on the Creatures on the Loose letters page.

Addressing the letter-writer’s experiences of being “ridiculed, scorned, pitied” and more, Marvel’s editors note not only that “college courses in the literature of comics are springing up all over the country” but also, prophetically, that “filmmakers are studying the techniques” of then-prominent comics artists. Uh-oh.

Fast-forward 40 years, to the present. With the question of artistic legitimacy either resolved or simply abandoned—either way, think pieces about the merits of “graphic novels” appear less commonplace in the current climate than in the 1980s and 1990s heyday of Art Spiegelman‘s Maus (1991) and Joe Sacco‘s initial dispatches from war-ravaged Central Europe—mainstream comic books and their cinematic offshoots may now lack the fundamental transgressiveness that lent them vitality in the 1960s and beyond. Thanks to longstanding distribution practices, comics remain a fundamentally niche product. Recent digital-distribution initiatives notwithstanding, for the past thirty years in the U.S., serial comics have been sold only in specialty comic-book stores, limiting their readership to those people who set foot in such stores. Yet by serving up this niche commodity in adapted form to all four key quadrants of the filmgoing population, rights-holders Disney and Time Warner deplete the subcultural capital of their properties and their readerships.

4. Superhero movies relocate film-industry resources from more original material and siphon talent from richer projects. Many people involved in superhero films’ production are doing the best work they ever will, which is a compliment or insult depending on one’s judgment of the finished product.[2] Others—particularly actors given the visible evidence of their work—appear to be squandering their considerable talents. Mark Ruffalo may use his Avengers paychecks to bankroll his political activism and to appear in films that make greater demands of his craft, but his normally prolific output slows to a trickle in the Avengers films release years of 2012 and 2015.

Elizabeth Olsen shows off her casting-a-spell pose on The Daily Show.

Elizabeth Olsen delivered an impressive debut performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) but as the Avengers’ Scarlet Witch spends much of Age of Ultron frozen in a “I am casting a spell” pose (as she memorably demonstrated on a Daily Show appearance preceding the film’s release).

Scarlett Johansson has enjoyed a succession of compelling roles, but any bipedal runway model could just as well play her Black Widow character in the Iron Man and Avengers series given the role’s limited requirements. (#1: Look good in body-hugging outfit. #2: Talk sassy.) Is the sprawling Avengers franchise the price we pay to get Under the Skin (2013)? I hope not (but note to studios: please do give us another Under the Skin, even if you wouldn’t fund the first one).

Some actors—Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in the X-Men films (2000-2014), and Robert Redford in last year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier—have benefitted from scripting that allows them to, in a word, act. Perhaps no one loses if Jessica Alba’s work in the 2000s Fantastic Four films (2005, 2007) prevented her from making Into the Blue 2, but certainly many people with talents in front of and behind the camera turn down other film projects in favor of the high visibility (and possible residuals) of tentpole superhero films. (Sure, I know too the scientists who could be developing the next Internet are instead hard at work on iPhone fart-simulation apps, but still.) Even those whose performance styles suit the material well can be ill-served. The Iron Man role, for example, limits Robert Downey Jr. to vocal and facial performance in support of his body double or CGI avatar’s screen image. He’s skilled at both but is capable of much more.

Age of Ultron literally gives Robert Downey Jr. little space to act.

5. Superhero movies pollute film discourse. Like Donald Trump’s Presidential candidacy, superhero movies appear a harmless diversion but actually refocus the cultural conversation in unproductive ways. As dreadful acronyms such as “MCU” and “Phase 3” (the latter meaning, “we’re determined to run this thing into the ground”) infiltrate entertainment discourse and popular consciousness, one might reasonably assume that superhero films represent some kind of high-water mark of contemporary cinema.

Many other high-calorie multiplex products occupy comparatively less intellectual real estate—the Transformers series (2007-2014), for example, does not excite viewers and commentators in the way recent superhero adaptations have done. To me, more than anything, a film such as The Avengers looks expensive. As a vehicle for directorial artistry, or acting talent, or narrative complexity—or for more expressly technical categories such as impressive cinematography, sound design and visual effects—it’s pretty unmemorable. Like most other Hollywood superhero films, its contribution to film economics is substantial, its contribution to film art is negligible, and its contribution to film culture is dare I say dispiriting.[3]

Make what you will of this lament from an aging white male who finds his cherished Rosebud replaced with a 160-horsepower Ski-Doo. And credit superhero films with managing to make even fare such as this summer’s Jurassic World—the “why not another one?” sequel to a calculated-blockbuster franchise that sprang to movie life in full bloat over two decades ago—appear fresh and original. But perhaps the violation I feel is instead resentment at receiving studio superhero behemoths at the wrong moment. After all, I thought Watchmen (2009) was one of the year’s best films—if the year was 1989. And Quentin Tarantino’s remarks in a New York magazine interview last month ring at least partly true for me:

The Black Panther’s first appearance, in a 1966 Fantastic Four issue.

I wish I didn’t have to wait until my 50s for this to be the dominant genre. Back in the ’80s, when movies sucked—I saw more movies then than I’d ever seen in my life, and the Hollywood bottom-line product was the worst it had been since the ’50s—that would have been a great time.

Still, this year, even de facto industry cheerleaders show signs of unrest. Media outlets trumpeting spotty opening-weekend performances for recent releases such as Ant-Man and Fantastic Four (both 2015) appear to exhibit exhaustion with the superhero phenomenon, and perhaps for oversized tentpole releases generally. As for me, I’ll start looking elsewhere for costumed characters onscreen, whether it’s the pleasingly ridiculous tussling models of Taylor Swift videos (de facto superheroines all, but sullying no previous creations), or better yet, the delirious art mutants who parade through Ryan Trecartin’s outlandish chamber dramas. Just keep me thousands of miles away from that Black Panther movie, because I like that character just fine in two dimensions, on yellowing newsprint.

[1] Preview of corrective coming attractions: for an international, and more level-headed, take on this trend in contemporary cinema, join us on September 24, when Nandana Bose contributes to this column with her analysis of recent Bollywood superhero films. For other recent, thoughtful takes on superhero films, head over to Deletion for its current “episode” on sci-fi blockbusters, and particularly to the entries from Liam Burke and Sean Cubitt.

[2] In this respect, I have only praise for the giant canvas afforded Sam Raimi for three Spider-Man films (2002-2007) and for Anthony and Joe Russo’s helming of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) as a 70s-style conspiracy thriller.

[3] Consult the comments section of this link for raves about The Avengers‘ rumored $260 million budget, which for many fans translates into sure-fire “epic” quality.

Post by Mark Gallagher, University of Nottingham

This post continues the ongoing “From Nottingham and Beyond” series, with contributions from faculty and alumni of the University of Nottingham’s Department of Culture, Film and Media. This week’s contributor, Mark Gallagher, is an Associate Professor in the department. Today’s entry is the first in a two-part post, with the conclusion appearing tomorrow.

As the 2015 summer movie season winds down, let this modest scholar now go on record as saying I hate superhero movies.[2] Clearly this is a headline-worthy news flash: another snobbish egghead rails against consumerist popular culture. Beyond trying to prove that such a view is at all novel or should matter to anyone, I have worked to develop some kind of empirically sound hypothesis, or at least a not totally argumentatively unsound one. What follows is a five-point screed (prevented by blogging convention from being a 500-point screed, though even this condensed rant may test the limits of readers’ patience). It’s no Defence of Poesy, but read on anyway.

1. Superhero movies repackage subcultural esoterica and sell it back to us in bloated, unrecognizable form. Or, speaking personally, movies such as 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man, the 2013 superhero sequel Thor: The Dark World, and this year’s repackaged Fantastic Four cynically monetize my childhood objects of wonder. Did the baby boomers, I wonder, feel this way when the 1960s were endlessly repurposed for later generations’ consumption? Maybe they found themselves in a warm cocoon of familiar pop cult as the world around them evolved, both in and not in their own image. As for me, when confronted with entertainment spaces and referents repurposing youth-centric popular culture from deep in the past century, I feel I’m inhabiting an adolescent dystopia far more disturbing than anything presaged in Lord of the Flies (1954) or Wild in the Streets (1968). Message to Paramount, Columbia, Fox, Universal, Warners and Disney (and of course, Marvel Studios): please stop.

Or if not, let the rest of us submit, with or without protest. Earlier this year, Ta-Nehisi Coates, award-winning journalist and student of systemic power imbalances, gave an interview to New York magazine published in print as “The Superheroes Won.” Coates flags up comics’ familiar selling points for progressives—Marvel has long had more than zero black characters, and even a Native American X-Man for five minutes in the 1970s—but says little about the grindingly market-centric logic now animating corporate rights-holders, or the fairly small slice of the population that actually reads comic books. (Sources indicate that comic-book sales have risen in recent years though still speak chiefly for and to white men.)

On superhero comics and films, Coates does make a plea for the unmoving image, arguing that “superheroes are best imagined in comic books.” He continues:

The union between the written word, the image, and then what your imagination has to do to connect those allows for so much. I always feel like when I see movies, I’m a little let down by the [digital] animation. […] Avengers movies will always disappoint me. X-Men [movies] will always disappoint me. […] I feel sorry for people who only know comic books through movies. I really do.

All the glitz of comic conventions in 1973.

I share Coates’ sentiments and would go further to address the ways this production trend infects larger constituencies, including film journalists and reviewers who labor to accommodate it. A popular coping (read: denial) strategy in this regard is to tune out corporatism in favor of ostensibly utopian fandoms. Reporting on this year’s consumer showcase Comic-Con (which not that long ago was a glamour-free used-collectibles bazaar), the New York Times‘ A.O. Scott remarks of comics and superhero culture that “What were once subcultural pursuits have conquered the mainstream.” He continues: “What was once a body of esoteric lore is now a core curriculum, and what was once a despised cult is now a church universal and triumphant.”

Would that I could join in Scott’s even-handed, or mostly celebratory, appraisal. Corporate product has undoubtedly spawned legitimate fan cultures that allow for myriad forms of self-expression and contingent identity formation. In moving comics materials from dispersed subculture to the center of a globalized monoculture, though, studios and their corporate parents dilute the artistic and political qualities that accompany subcultural production and circulation. The 2000s and 2010s wave of comic-book adaptations, particularly the as-yet inexhaustible roster of Marvel films both before and after the company’s 1999 acquisition by media giant Disney, sharply limits opportunities for creativity and imagination on the part of both producers and receivers. Ironically or not, superhero films’ outsize scales foster an inverse degree of imagination (though Dumb Drum‘s sweded trailers are pretty wonderful). Which leads into my second point…

2. Superhero movies distort the scale of their modest origins. At the time of Disney’s purchase of Marvel, Disney chief Robert Iger claimed that “Marvel’s brand and its treasure trove of content will now benefit from our extraordinary reach.” I don’t know if he then let out a maniacal laugh, or spoke those words in an ominous Darth Vader voice, but it sounded portentous to me. Five years later, the gifted, and highly opinionated comics writer-creator Alan Moore observed that “I found something worrying about the fact that the superhero film audience was now almost entirely composed of adults, men and women in their thirties, forties and fifties who were eagerly lining up to watch characters and situations that had been expressly created to entertain the twelve year-old boys of fifty years ago.” Moore muses further that “this embracing of what were unambiguously children’s characters at their mid-20th century inception seems to indicate a retreat from the admittedly overwhelming complexities of modern existence.” (An odd claim, perhaps, coming from a professed black-magic practitioner, but a notable point nonetheless.)

Moore’s charge could be leveled too at any film since the 1890s adapted from children’s stories, fairy tales, newspaper cartoons and more. Moore in this instance ignores comic books’ expanding audiences—comics were of course popular among soldiers in the 1940s and 1950s, and beginning in the second half of the 1960s, increasingly among university students and eventually graduates, to name just a few groups beyond preteen boys.

Still, his remarks indicate the degree to which a decidedly low-budget cultural form with discrete readerships became, in glossier cinematic form, not just legitimate but omnipresent. The Onion tweaked this emerging sensibility, and the increasingly recognizable figure of the Gen-X comic-book nerd, in the still-novel headline “Area Man Has Far Greater Knowledge Of Marvel Universe Than Own Family Tree” (a cautionary tale for those of us who also, like the article’s Area Man, can better gloss comics chronology than our family medical history).

Area Man’s pop-cultural literacy may now pay modest dividends in the form of semi-useless knowledge deployable in film consumption, though he may have to divest himself of any emotional attachments to familiar characters and storylines. Or for maximum outrage, he could curl up with Iron Man 3 (2013), which not only offered up the dismal cliché of a precocious orphan boy who helps our super-inventor hero get his mojo back after a first-act crisis but also tramples on the legacy of the armored character’s longest-running adversary, the Mandarin.

The Mandarin in his first appearance, in 1964.

Apparently not seeking to offend Chinese audiences with the Cold War Orientalism of the comic-book Mandarin—instead, it was superfluous scenes only appearing in the mainland-Chinese release that roiled audiences there—the filmmakers reimagine the character as a connotative Arab terrorist.

The film does not explain why this nowhere-near-Chinese foe would be called “the Mandarin,” but it matters little, as this Mandarin turns out to be nothing but a for-hire actor with no integrity. Perhaps Ben Kingsley—excuse me, Sir Ben—appreciated the meta-joke here. So much for the fiendish Mandarin as comics readers had known him, though.

Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin in Iron Man 3, styled as an Arab terrorist.

I don’t mean to suggest that textual fidelity is an essential criterion of judgment. In any case, film adaptations of comic books are not really comparable to serial comics anyway. Abundant film sequels aside, the recent wave of superhero television adaptations, such as Netflix’s atmospheric, psychologically-minded Daredevil (2015–) or the CW’s vigilante family melodrama Arrow (2013–), more closely match comics’ serial narrative form. As preconceived event movies, superhero films mirror the event comics Marvel and DC began publishing extensively in the 1960s—miniseries, giant-size issues, annuals that culminated epic serial storylines, and the like. Reviewing this year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron in Sight and Sound, Kim Newman reminds us that “these get-togethers feel like comic-book annuals or crossover events,” packing the screen (or page) with minor characters and subplots (most of which take us to other films or television series for completion, or help fill out toy-store shelves with expanded merchandise lines).

Why is Age of Ultron 141 minutes long? Not only because of its closing credits (clocking in at a mere 7 ½ minutes), but also because of its padding with character subplots that will continue in later films and TV series. Why does Thor depart mid-film for a bath in mystical waters? We may never know (or need to), though the film’s editing by committee and focus group apparently played some part. Even shortened from director Joss Whedon’s over-three-hour pre-release cut, the film’s surfeit of story compels viewers to search for explanations in other Marvel franchise film and TV output, if not diverting us back to the characters’ comic-book sources.

Comics fans have tended to read annuals more out of duty than enthusiasm, hoping for resolution of protracted storylines rather than nuance and narrative depth. Multiplex patrons may approach superhero movies with the same attitude, but lacking any extended-chronology alternative aside from derivative minor-character tie-ins such as ABC’s brand-named Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013–). Even this might be less objectionable than the parallel permanent-first-issue trend, with characters’ origins retold in slightly altered form with each successive reboot. (With the Fantastic Four’s 1961 first issue filmed three times since 1990 with ever-younger casts, I await 2022’s Fantastic Four Infants, with uniforms to match.)

The fundamental distortion of superhero films is one of scale. The superhero comic books of the late 1930s to early 1980s that form the basis for contemporary films (in the most recent vintage, last year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past adapts a 1980 storyline, and the Guardians of the Galaxy first appeared in comics in 1969, though last year’s film adaptation derives from a 2008 miniseries version of the group) were produced by small groups of men (and a handful of women) laboring over drafting tables in low-rent offices or spare bedrooms.

Action scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron in comic-book splash-page style.

The comic-book Avengers in battle, as rendered by Don Heck in 1967.

Despite films’ occasional nods to comic-book compositions in action set pieces, a good deal more than the Benjaminian aura is lost when this artisanal work becomes the province of thousands of software technicians working in discrete teams on modular tasks. And back in comic-book world, Marvel now milks the long-ignored Guardians of the Galaxy characters for all they’re worth, with at least eight different spinoff comics series under way or announced. It’s hard to feel anything but cynical about this short-sighted franchise stewardship.

Return tomorrow for the gripping Part Two of this two-part post.

[1] For the record, I have given a lot of time to superheroes so can claim more than passing knowledge of the subject. If any value lies in asserting the depths of my interest, let me note that I am the proud owner of somewhere in the neighborhood of 7,000 comic books, including nearly all of Marvel’s 1970s output and beyond, and enough DC, Archie and indie comics to dampen my marriage prospects forever.

[2] This is not to say that certain forms of popular entertainment do not merit critical attention. I remain a proud contributor to the upcoming anthology The Many More Lives of the Batman (ed. Roberta Pearson, William Uricchio and Will Brooker, BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Stimulation and repulsion apparently are not mutually exclusive.

And before you get your knickers all twisted up in a poststructuralist knot, it is necessary to construct definitions before we can even begin to analyse, examine and debate how cultural processes operate. The idea that concepts can be interpreted any which way possible is to misinterpret poststructuralism that suggests that language.

Let’s get down to brass tacks here. The term “reboot” – as in rebooting your computer – is only forty-three years old, its birthday being 1971. Relatively speaking, that’s a squealing, squawking baby! If words could grow legs and arms, reboot couldn’t even clench a fist, let alone walk or run.

Etymologically, a reboot-as-narrative-analogy is even younger, a foetus, a seedling even (1989 is its birthday according to the Oxford English Dictionary). Many have commented that the reboot narrative concept comes from the comic book medium. Indeed it does. But this is where the problems begin, you see? This is where the genre process and rebooting get all entangled and entwined in a Gordian knot of conceptual hodge-podge. Comic books have been rebooting for decades, since “minute zero,” as Michael Chabon calls the publication of Action Comics #1 which introduced the world to Superman in 1938.

Not true.

To be sure, comic books have always sufficiently engaged in periodic revisions, regenerations and reformations. As Geoff Klock has argued, one of the principle reasons why long-running vast narratives, such as DC and Marvel, have managed to expand and enhance their brand “life” is by delicately dancing the dialectic between standardisation and differentiation to great effect as an elemental part of their survival code, a kind of Darwinism, a natural (textual) selection.

This is how all texts operate and not a description of the reboot process. “Mere repetition would not satisfy an audience,” claims Steve Neale. I concur, Steve. For Derek Johnson, “product differentiation is the key to profit.” Well said, Derek. Or, as Stringer Bell would no doubt say: “word” (which is cool-talk for “definitely,” or so I am led to believe).

What, then, is a reboot, I hear you ask?

In 1986, DC Comics sought to purge their labyrinthine story-program of continuity errors and a narrative history that deterred potential “newbies” from jumping on-board. Sales had been declining rapidly for over a decade and Marvel “ruled the roost.” A twelve-part mini-series, Crisis on Infinite Earths, was the answer to their problems. Annihilate the DC Universe and start over from scratch. In short, reboot the system. Wipe away a publication history and begin again with a new story-program.

To be sure – and I do not mince my words here – engaging with the DC comic book hyperdiegesis at that time could not have been helped by three PhDs in Quantum Physics, a Macarthur Grant and a five-year long sabbatical from life, the universe and nutritional necessity! Douglas Wolf describes fans who can successfully navigate the chaotic contours of the DC and Marvel hyperdiegetic continuities as “super-readers.” I think this does them a disservice. Comic book readers of the 1980s who consumed and understood the continuity are nothing less than geniuses, gurus, veritable professors of alternate realities and monstrous geographies. I say award them MBEs, each and every one of them. Stick ‘em in a laboratory and watch them create the time machine. Hell, throw in a Delorean, let’s see life really imitate art….

The notion that comic books have been rebooting since its inception is misleading and fallacious. One technique which DC and Marvel have adopted over the years is that of the “ret-con,” an abbreviation of “retroactive continuity.” A ret-con retroactively changes continuity by altering the details of an event in the past to make sense of a current storyline. Sometimes this technique can be extreme, such as the Spider-Man arc, One More Day, which ret-conned Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson’s marriage out of continuity – and created a fan backlash in the process for good reason: it was just too darn silly!

It is not only comics that engage in ret-conning. If anyone remembers Dallas, and the infamous season where Bobby Ewing is killed and is miraculously resurrected the following year. How did he return? It was all a dream! This ret-con wiped away an entire season’s worth of episodes in one fell swoop. Of course, it was all downhill from there and Dallas had “jumped the shark.”

A ret-con is not a reboot. A reboot wipes away a publication history or, in film or television, a screen history and begins again with a new syntagmatic layer.

Of course, rebooting can never truly wipe the slate clean. The slate is a palimpsest and contains all the traces and ghosts of previous incarnations. However, we can see (hypothetically) intertextuality and dialogism spiralling along a horizontal axis – the paradigmatic – and the story itself unfolding sequentially along a vertical axis which is the syntagm. Intertextuality may “destroy the linearity of the text,” as Laurent Jenny argues, but linearity is still preserved. I prefer to understand narrative as a dialectic between linearity and non-linearity, chaos and order, paradigm and syntagm. Intertextuality vandalise the text while at the same time readability is guaranteed. As Mark J.P Wolf states, “without causality, narrative is lost.”

Next time, I shall illustrate how the reboot terminology has been marshalled by academics and journalists in ill-conceived ways, one which has birthed a buzz word – fuzz-word even – that has set in motion a range of non-sequiturs.

[I]t was necessary to do what we call in comic book terms “a reboot”… Say you’ve had 187 issues of The Incredible Hulk and you decide you’re going to introduce a new Issue 1. You pretend like those first 187 issues never happened, and you start the story from the beginning and the slate is wiped clean, and no one blinks…So we did the cinematic equivalent of a reboot, and by doing that, setting it at the beginning, you’re instantly distancing yourself from anything that’s come before. (Goyer, quoted in Greenberg, 2005: 13 – 14)

Upon closer examination of Nolan’s statement, however, we can see that he expressly states that a reboot is “new terminology” in the “movie business.” To some extent, then, Nolan is correct. The principle of rebooting did not exist as a film concept prior to Batman Begins which influenced other producers to follow the conceptual conceit. It was burrowed deep within the cultural ghetto of the comic book medium.

What is a reboot, then? This is the overarching question of this series of articles and one which I have been wrestling with for six years or so (yes, I possess nothing you could unequivocally describe as “a life”).

A reboot is an economic and narrative strategy that ignores or disavows a pre-established series of texts to inaugurate a new narrative sequence, a beginning again. Despite what journalists, academics, and other commentators would have you believe, a reboot is not a prequel, a sequel, or a remake. A reboot can also be a remake or an adaptation – all reboots remake or adapt, to a greater or lesser extent; but not all remakes or adaptations are reboots. Prequels, sequels, and other derivations are all part of an “already-existing narrative sequence” (Wolf, 2012). Simply put, if new episodes in the story architecture are installed onto an “ongoing, aggregate content system” (Johnson, 2013), then this is not rebooting. Conversely, then, a reboot is a syntagmatic disconnect (with the proviso that reboots always enter into dialogic relations with other texts along the paradigmatic axis).

Over the past six years or so, I have been researching the reboot phenomenon in comic books and film; firstly, for my undergraduate final dissertation – which was also my first peer-reviewed publication – and then extended into a PhD thesis which I am putting the finishing touches to as we speak. My first encounter with the reboot terminology came in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins as the word came to be increasingly used in popular film and TV magazines in the UK, such as Empire and Total Film, to describe an array of contradictory texts, many of which did not qualify as reboots at all. Indeed, the study of reboots has been made all the more frustrating by a kind of semantic fashion which I have tracked and mapped by consulting journalistic paratexts over the course of the past fifteen years to examine precisely when the terminology came to be in vogue. Following the success of Batman Begins and, more notably, The Dark Knight, the reboot terminology semantically exploded as a buzz-word, a fuzz-word even. This may sound like hyperbole, but let me assure you, I have many more examples populating my hard-drive than can be fit within the confines of a single book.

I also signed up for Google Alerts, an online service that sends weekly reports to my e-mail account detailing when the term reboot had been used, where and in what context. Since The Dark Knight was released in 2008, I have witnessed the emergence terminological “virus” as the term was first picked up by film journalists, TV critics, console game reviewers, industry personnel, and (the horror! the horror!) academics – and, then, on into the cultural vernacular of the everyday: Obama is rebooting the Presidency; Alex Ferguson is rebooting Manchester United; Reboot your wardrobe, your sex life, your business, your brain, your diet… and so on and so forth ad nauseam.

If I may be so bold and candid, one of the principle reasons why I set out to deconstruct the principle of rebooting was because I was irritated. That may not be the most praise-worthy or legitimate rationale for embarking on a research project that (let’s be honest here!) eats into a significant chunk of your life, if not consuming it in one hearty calorific meal.

Why was I irritated? Well, these journalists (and eventually scholars, too) were using the terminology incorrectly and incoherently. So I decided to look under the hood of the car, and investigate the engine, the cultural and linguistic mechanics, to see what was going on. The premise of this series of articles is to explain what I discovered “under the hood.”

Today’s not over yet, but for the moment the biggest scandal rocking the DC company and fan community is the abrupt departure of Batwoman’s creative team, J. H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman.

A strong start

Williams and Blackman have made the series a bestseller since the New 52 reboot in 2011, and managed to snag a GLAAD award for their portrayal of Batwoman/Kate Kane’s romance with Gotham policewoman Maggie Sawyer. When Kane proposed to Sawyer in February 2013, there was little fanfare or DC-motivated press around the event. At the time, this was a surprising silence; both Marvel and DC have a tendency to announce any plots points that might attract positive press attention, especially for portrayals of homosexual characters (see: the hype around the marriage between Northstar and his boyfriend in Astonishing X-Men, and the build-up before DC’s announcement that Green Lantern protagonist Alan Scott is gay). In a cultural landscape where companies demand to be lavished with praise for achieving the bare minimum level of minority representation, the quiet engagement of Kane and Sawyer appeared to be more earnest: a natural progression of their relationship rather than a cheap publicity stunt.

Yet their romance appears to be star-crossed; Williams and Blackman attribute their departure to disruptive editorial intervention, including a decree that Kane and Sawyer will not be getting married.

A surprise proposal

While on a panel at the Baltimore Comic-Con, DC executive editor Dan DiDio was quick to clarify that the decision to erase the marriage had nothing to do with the fact that they’re lesbians. Instead, DiDio explained, heroes and heroines shouldn’t be happy or have fulfilling personal lives, suggesting that DC remains committed to the gritty, “realistic” aesthetic that has plagued comics since the 1990s.

DiDio also chided, “Name one other publisher out there who stands behind their gay characters the way we do,” leaving DC fans to wonder–what gay characters? Since DC rebooted their universe with the New 52 line, there seem to be fewer LGBTQ characters than ever. Even limited to the purview of Batman characters, there has been no mention of Catwoman sidekick Holly Robinson or sometimes-cop, sometimes-superheroine Renée Montoya. Although Robinson appears to have never existed within the rebooted universe, there is evidence to suggest that Montoya, a former lover of Kate Kane’s, has been killed off. (Notably, the outing of Alan Scott and the subsequent proposal of marriage to his boyfriend was immediately followed by the boyfriend being killed off–or put in the refrigerator, in comic parlance.)

This is not to say that LGBTQ representations are missing in Gotham; there has been considerable innuendo around Birds of Prey character Starling (although no confirmation) and Batgirl features DC’s first openly transgendered woman, Alysia Yeoh. But can a company really be considered to stand behind their gay characters when they replace them so readily? Is there a limit to the number of LGBTQ characters they’re allowed before Orson Scott Card refuses to write for them?

Hardly had the news broken when DC-appointed author and gay man Marc Andreyko to head up the book, presumably to head-off any accusations of homophobia. After a few days, artist and heterosexual Jeremy Haun was hired to do the line art. However, questions remain for fans: Are Kate and Maggie still engaged? Will Maggie survive the engagement, or will she be forced into the fridge? How will the new creative team handle their inability to get married? One thing is certain; the new team’s pliancy with DC’s editorial interventions mean Kane and Sawyer won’t be hearing wedding bells anytime soon.

Kate and Maggie re-commit

At the 2010 TED Global conference, an annual event that brings together innovators and entrepreneurs in the fields of technology, entertainment and design, Dr. Naif al-Mutawa gave a 20-minute presentation on The 99, his global superhero franchise inspired by Islamic archetypes. Published first as a comic book by al-Mutawa’s Kuwaiti-based Teshkeel Media Group beginning in 2006, by 2010 The 99 was well on its way to becoming a global cross-media brand designed to reach Muslims around world through theme parks, social media, merchandizing and a television series co-produced with Endemol Entertainment.

Toward the end of his talk, al-Mutawa explained his motivations and aspirations for the project while expressing frustration with a popular trend amongst some Muslim families to dress their children up as suicide bombers as a form of protest, which he linked to the absence of positive contemporary Islamic heroes for kids to emulate. Choking up slightly, al-Mutawa argued that by linking enough positive things to the Koran, Muslim children would begin to take pride in a different set of representations and embrace the shared universal values that Islam already advocates, like kindness and generosity, rather than being taught to revere its more fanatical and fringe elements. Or, as al-Mutawa explained, “an entire generation of young Muslims is growing up believing that Islam is a bad thing. They are put in a situation to defend the indefensible. My thinking was, how can I expand the boundaries of what Islam is, talk about stuff that all human beings share together, and not allow people to sabotage and hijack Islam.”

To prove his point, al-Mutawa juxtaposed two photos: one of a young girl dressed up in a white robe, a green headband bearing Hamas’ Shahada emblem, and a mock bomb belt holding a Koran in one hand and gesturing to the sky with the other. The other was photo-shopped image of the same little girl, with her headband now branded with The 99 logo and her bomb belt replaced by a t-shirt featuring a selection of The 99 superheroes. Tellingly, she is still depicted holding the Koran – as opposed to a copy of The 99 comic book – while gesturing skyward.

In al-Mutawa’s vision, The 99 is a transformative brand that normalizes Muslim youth by inaugurating them into the realm of consumer capitalism. As such, it is part of an effort to repair and redefine Islam’s reputation through branding and marketing, but also through the marketization of Islam. Or, to quote Al-Mutawa, “someone had tarnished the name of Islam, and I wanted to go in and help rebrand it.” While The 99 are marketed as new role models for children to emulate, al-Mutawa is repeatedly positioned as the ultimate prototype for the new Muslim superhero, whose entrepreneurial powers inspire new forms of investment in Islamic identity.

In some ways, al-Mutawa’s approach to repackaging and repositioning Islam for Muslims seems very much in the spirit of development paradigms that the West has been promoting for decades. He seems to be a cross between a modern-day version of Daniel Lerner’s (1958) “grocer,” enthralled with consumer capitalism and eager to spread the gospel of Western entrepreneurialism, and a proponent of Everett Rogers and Arvind Singhal’s (1999) entertainment-education thesis, which argues that modernity is best taught through popular rather than didactic means. Indeed, al-Mutawa is a self-professed social entrepreneur who wants to build a better world through capitalism. He has gone on record that he believes “Entrepreneurship is based in the United States… in Kuwait, education is free and food is subsidized. The State takes care of the population, but by doing that they don’t force the population to take care of itself. That becomes the biggest impediment to entrepreneurship.” His efforts to rebrand Islam through The 99 have earned him numerous awards and recognitions, including the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Marketplace of Ideas Award and the 2009 Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award. President Obama gave al-Mutawa and The 99 a special shout out at the 2011 Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington DC for their super heroic work promoting tolerance. Meanwhile, Forbes Magazine recognized The 99 as one of the top twenty hot trends of 2010.

With such positive credentialing, one would think that al-Mutawa’s efforts to build The 99 into a global cross-media franchise would be welcomed as evidence that Western values are being positively inculcated in the Middle East. Yet, attempts to bring The 99 animated TV series to US audiences have been met with accusations that al-Mutawa is attempting to indoctrinate non-Muslims into Shari’a law. In 2010, The Hub acquired the US rights to The 99 animated series, which offered the brand potential access to 60 million households. Almost immediately, conservative organizations began a campaign to have the series removed, accusing it of foisting “sinister Muslim values” on non-Muslim children in an attempt to “Islamify youth.” One critic asked, “Will children learn about democracy, modernity, tolerance, Enlightenment, women’s and gay rights from these ‘Islamic’ figures?” while ignoring how US cartoons rarely offer children much insight into these issues either. Ultimately, al-Mutawa’s efforts to rebrand Islam by emphasizing the positive and pro-Western attributes of the religion were dismissed as forms of “Dawah proselytizing” by critics who insisted that The 99 should have been critical of Islam, rather than celebrating its archetypes. According to this logic, the only good Muslims are the self-hating kind. The pressure critics placed on the Hub was sufficient to cause the cable network to indefinitely postpone the series’ debut.

American resistance to The 99 reveals both the limits of consumer capitalism as a great equalizer and some of the incompatibilities of brand marketing with correcting misconceptions about Islam.

1. Remember how I said in every spring post that Spotify was coming to the US and it never came? Well, wouldn’t you know it, while WAYM was away, Spotify finally draped itself in the Stars and Stripes! Not surprisingly, Spotify has started out strong, is on track for its very first profit, and could pose a threat to iTunes. Meanwhile, Pandora says Spotify’s launch hasn’t affected its service, which despite posting losses is growing in revenue, and Pandora’s ad rate potential is even getting into traditional radio territory.

2. Lots of lawsuit and negotiation news in the music biz lately, including a Village People singer suing for copyright credit, artists like Bruce Springsteen getting a shot at reclaiming ownership of recordings from labels, music publishers dropping a suit against YouTube, and AFTRA working on a new contract with labels. The most potentially impactful case for the future of music services came down last week, when a judge ruled in favor of EMI and against the online service MP3tunes but at the same time affirmed the legal foundation for music locker services like the ones Google and Amazon are fostering. The judge decided these services don’t violate copyrights, but Peter Kafka says this mainly keeps the status quo for consumers. If you want to see status that is not quo, check out this pie chart animation of recording industry revenue from 1980 to 2010.

3. Another big event WAYM missed on hiatus was the new Netflix plans, and despite a lot of grumbling from consumers, James McQuivey says Netflix is still doing fine. Additional developments at Netflix include a kids’ section, rumors of a VOD rental option, and future expansion into Britain and Spain, a country which others have stayed out of because of struggles with piracy. We know DVD sales are plunging, but digital downloads and rentals aren’t doing so hot either. Amazon is touting new digital movie deals, but Wal-Mart’s Vudu has zipped past it in market share, and Miramax is trying out Facebook, which is now ranked third as an online video destination.

4. The lineup for the Toronto Film Festival, which runs from Sept 8-18, has been released, and indieWire highlights some of the surprises among films that won’t be there. This summer’s specialty hits included Midnight in Paris and Senna, while The Worst Movie EVER! turned out to have the most prescient title ever, at least box office-wise. Unfortunately the economy doesn’t bode well for indie filmmakers, so the Weinsteins are looking to Broadway to make more money, and you can check record stores (if they still exist in your area) to find David Lynch.

5. A Disney executive admitted that studios don’t care at all about story when it comes to tentpole films, which makes it extra hilarious that Disney’s Lone Ranger reboot with Johnny Depp has been shut down because of a sky-rocketing budget. Same deal with Universal’s Ouija Board film. Just a thought: Maybe shooting for a good story would be cheaper. If those projects get cranked back up again, the writers might want to consult Sean Hood’s essay about what it feels like to have your film flop at the box office. And apparently the Chinese don’t care about story either, because Hollywood is really making a push into that market.

6. According to Nielsen stats, older people are increasingly using tablets and eReaders. That has to be good news for Reader’s Digest, which is now on the iPad. It’d be great if the olds would read digital comics too, which are now available via a digital storefront initiative. While some fear that the book’s days are numbered, Paul Carr argues that eBooks are helping to make this a Golden Era of books, and he also doesn’t see books suffering from piracy issues. eBooks may suffer from over-pricing issues, though, as a class-action lawsuit against Apple claims. But if you want to over-pay for good old-fashioned magazines, there are plenty still on shelves.

7. Big computing news in HP dropping out of the tablet business, which led to a TouchPad fire sale. Plus HP might spin off its PC business, which Erica Ogg sees as a sign we’re at the end of the PC era, and others see as a sign that HP is a poorly-run company. Most companies involved in mobile device manufacturing are busy suing each other over patents, while mobile phone users are busy texting and picture-taking, and nearly a third of young adults are busy pretending to have phone conversations so as to avoid talking to nearby humans.

8. Google+ is the new social media service on the scene, which Facebook claims not be worried about, especially since it saw record traffic in July. Some say Facebook really should be worried, as it’s in danger of losing even more rich suburban parents. At least it’s got the millionaires over Twitter, and the celebrities still haven’t found Google+ yet, but all social media still has about 50% of America yet to get on board for anything. Just don’t ask all of Germany to get on board with the “Like” button.

9. Video game sales were way down this summer, with July bringing the lowest sales numbers in nearly five years. Sales are about to get even worse at GameStop, which has angered some consumers by yanking a coupon from sealed game boxes after determining it favored a competitor. And a planned videogame museum is on the ropes. At least Xbox Live seems to be doing well, and Angry Birds is headed for 1 billion downloads and even better gameplay.

10. Some of the finer News for TV Majors (@N4TVM) links from the past two weeks: Louie’s Magic, RIP iTunes TV Rentals, Summer Viewing Up, TV Ad Problems, British Timeshifting, Fox Defending Wall, TWC Uses Slingbox, Shorter Seasons, Doctrine Gone, State of Network TV, Future Trends, Real Housewives Tragedy, Google Buys Motorola Mobility, Breaking Bad Renewed/Ending.

Bryan Lee O’Malley’s indie comedy/action/romance series Scott Pilgrim has cultivated a rabid fanbase quick to shove the first book into the hands of any non-comics reader expressing even the vaguest interest in the medium. As they should. Because it’s glorious. Get in on the action before Universal’s film adaptation arrives this month.

Scott Pilgrim’s storyworld operates akin to a sort of 8-bit videogame magical realism in which a heartfelt “I love you” gives the protagonist enough experience points to gain the “power of love” achievement bonus . . . and a flaming sword to wield against his enemies. The series, told across six digest-sized graphic novels (starting with Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life in 2004 and culminating in last month’s Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Moment), propels itself forward with a bombastic Ritalin-and-Pixy-Stix mania perfectly at ease with inhabiting the space between Street Fighter and Gilmore Girls. It follows twenty-three year-old slacker hero Scott Pilgrim’s effort to find love, employment, a venue willing to book his band Sex-Bob-Omb more than once, and generally get his act together.  The impetus for change comes when Scott meets and (so very awkwardly) woos oversized mallet-wielding street samurai and Amazon.ca delivery girl Ramona V. Flowers. Before he can win her heart, however, Scott must first defeat her seven evil exes in physical combat, which isn’t as unlikely as it seems in a world where your prowess playing beat-‘em-up video games directly translates to your fighting skills in real life, and in which your opponents, once vanquished, burst into a shower of coins familiar to anyone who’s ever played Nintendo games in the 1980s.

O’Malley chooses a deceptively simple style for the series, combining expressive manga-tinged character work with a visual representation of Toronto faithful enough to inspire at least one “Scott Pilgrimage.” His ability to convey the series’ cartoonish action is impressive, but O’Malley’s capacity to capture his cast’s emotional motivations and reactions—subtle and outrageous—is key as they negotiate an ever-increasing spiderweb of interpersonal relations threading in and out of multiple timelines.  Dozens of characters populate O’Malley’s work, both as part of the Toronto scene’s larger social circle and several subcliques (every primary character has his or her own group of friends and rivals), all realized with their own backstories, impulses, and quirks, united only in their penchant towards highly quotable buffyspeak. Indeed, perhaps the most treasured page of the series is the map at the end of the third book (the halfway point) that traces out the top dozen characters’ relationships with each other. It, for instance, reminds us that minor player Julie Powers is on-and-off dating Sex-Bob-Omb frontman Steven Stills, loathes band hanger-oner Young Neil, and wants to re-friend college roommate (and Scott’s ex) Envy Adams now that she’s  famous.

Scott Pilgrim’s status within the canon of comics is assured. Excitement over the movie and the final volume is at a fever pitch. The former, buoyed by a pair of Apple.com-crashing trailers, a series of seven video remixes featuring original music and previously unreleased footage as part of a massive internet marketing campaign, and above all else, director Edgar Wright’s reported obsessive adherence to the source material, has driven fans to extremes of anticipation so great that Wright himself has attempted to temper their excitement. The series currently occupies the six top spots on the New York Times’ Paperback Graphic Novels list, and the final volume ranked #5 overall in Books (topping the Julia Roberts film cover edition of Eat, Pray, Love) and #1 in Comics and Graphic Novels at Amazon on the day of its release. All that said, Scott Pilgrim might very well end up being more of an orphan than progenitor—despite it’s success, few, if any, creators have attempted to replicate its success in either style or content in the half-decade since Oni released the first volume.

To put it simply, there’s absolutely nothing out there like it. Those interested can find a lengthy preview of the first book here.

1. The Supreme Court will consider if the sale of violent video games to children should be outlawed, thus deciding if video games are more like movies or more like pornography. Millions of Boy Scouts await the ruling with great interest. This debate is playing out elsewhere: Rob Fahey says concern in the UK about video game effects has died down in recent years (replaced, of course, by concern over social media effects), while in Australia, gamemakers are frustrated that the highest age rating is 15+, and they feel that without the addition of an 18+ rating, they have to censor their content for adult gamers.

2. paidContent has a striking chart of the decline of music sales, but Glenn Peoples at Billboard says this is similar to a dip in the 1980s and, like then, sales will rise again with innovation. Gordon Smith says it’s the internet, not radio, at fault for music’s decline; We All Make Music considers the challenges musicians have with promoting themselves over the net; and fans debate whether the indie band Grizzly Bear writing an ad for a commercial is selling out or just doing what has to be done.

3. New York Magazine’s Logan Hill observes that the internet is taking music videos in audacious new directions, and Vulture provides a list of 14 music video directors to watch. A number of music videos grabbed attention this fortnight: Christina Aguilera released a Lady Gaga-esque video for “Not Myself Tonight”; Miley Cyrus got dirrty in “Can’t Be Tamed”, and M.I.A. got people talking and even yanked from YouTube with “Born Free”.

4. Mashable showcases a social media stats video that contains some grabbers, like that if Facebook was a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. Given what Facebook has been doing to its privacy settings in recent years (which Matt McKeon puts in a striking image form), I don’t want to live in that country. Tim Jones looks at how deceptive Facebook’s interfaces are, and while Jeff Jarvis says Facebook actually has an opportunity to turn around the privacy outrage by actually listening to it, Ryan Singel calls for the creation of an alternative to Facebook.

5. Christopher Mims says Twitter is the future of news, but it’s looking like a lot of people will go uninformed in the future, then, as a study says 87% of Americans are aware of Twitter, but only 7% use it. Teens in particular say they hate it and the celebrities who use it. 17-year-old Arya Zarifi says in the latter article, “It’s something for adults who feel like it makes them hip or something.” Arya, I use Twitter; I don’t feel like it makes me hip or something. However, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off being played out on Twitter, now that’s hip. Or something.

6. Apple didn’t come off so well this fortnight. There was the lost iPhone debacle, Apple’s shutdown of the Lala music service, which the AV Club says makes it that much more likely that iTunes “will one day control all the music in the world,” and the Ellen incident. What also got techie keyboards tapping was Steve Jobs’ dismissal of Flash. Dan Rayburn accuses Jobs of being disingenuous, while Christina Warren says it’s not Apple but HTML5 which is dooming Flash, with Scribd’s ditching of Flash for HTML5 as an example.

7. In Hollywood news, Kevin Maher explains Hollywood’s 1980s remake obsession (at least we don’t have to worry about any more Rambos); Matt Zoller Seitz stirred up a lot of dust with his anti-comic book movie position; and studios are ramping up cross-promotional efforts. In indie news, Anthony Kaufman wonders where the under-30 audience for indie cinema is, Michael Cieply looks at the process of rebuilding indie cinema, and Peter Knegt found six cases where indie documentary distribution has gone right, but Michael Moore fears for the future of documentary with a recent federal court ruling. In film criticism is dead news, Pete Hammond says theaters and studios can’t survive without critics.

8. Movie Gallery is shuttering its doors, while Bloomberg’s Tiffany Kary says it appears bond holders expect Blockbuster will go that way too, but one man thinks he can save Blockbuster. Redbox rentals are shooting up, and Chuck Tryon responds to a Redbox publicity piece about the  labor involved in keep Redboxes running.

9. Megan McArdle considers the theory that file-sharing is killing the entertainment industry, while Nate Anderson reports on a study that says file-sharers are the industry’s biggest customers and also points to India as the most consumer-friendly copyright country. The US has dropped further down on that list with the FCC ruling that lets the MPAA enforce the blockage of copying capabilities for first-run video-on-demand movies. Cory Doctorow says this is a ridiculous decision that opens to door for corporate control over all of our electronic devices in the future; David Poland is not so outraged.

10. The best News for TV Majors links of the fortnight: FCC Internet Control; Lost Ending; TV Future; CBS & CNN; Soap Lessons; Dramas Dominate; Economist Series; MSNBC Following FNC Lesson; FlowTV Conference; Gender Imbalance; Sets Statistics; Reclaiming the Multi-Cam; Sports on Cable.

I am, however, referring to the chain of ongoing narrative events taking place on Buffy: Season 8 in comic book form. Debuting in March 2007 and currently 33 issues in, the Season 8 moniker is, on the one hand, a gimmick intended to convey to readers that as overseen by Joss Whedon, the comic book is officially in continuity with the TV series, picking up where season 7 ended. On the other hand, labeling this series as somehow “televisual” is also perfectly in tune with the ongoing cross-fertilization between the comic book and TV worlds, with talent like Whedon, Mark Millar, and Damon Lindelof moving between both media, adaptations and spin-offs on both sides of the pond, from Smallville to Battlestar Galactica, and genre/style comparisons abounding, whether we’re talking short-lived praise for Heroes or references to Alan Moore’s Top Ten as the Hill Street Blues of superhero procedurals.

Amongst all of this blurring and borrowing, however, the one television concept that simply does not work for comic books is “the season”. Seasons imply definite temporal boundaries. There is always an end in sight and part of the pleasure as well as the pain of viewing a season’s worth of TV is knowing that it will wrap itself up, well or poorly, within a finite number of episodes. Yes, serialized TV may leave viewers sweating through a season-ending cliffhanger or eight, but viewers still know that at a certain point the season will end, whether things are resolved or not, and that anticipatory foreknowledge is essential to the TV viewing experience.

And herein lies the problem with Buffy: Season 8. As a comic book, it does not follow the same narrative rhythm as prime time network television. There is no end in sight, just an infinite succession of story arcs, whose relation to the overall series is designed to be expansive, opening up future storytelling possibilities. This is perfectly in line with the economics of comic book retail sales that increasingly rely on trade compilations available at chains like Barnes & Noble and Wal-Mart to hook new readers by offering self-contained mini-book-length stories that form part of an on-going franchise.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: I like reading the Buffy comic. It is well written, capturing the clever dialogue and pathos that made the television series so appealing. The artwork is compelling, with snippets of manga-esque imagery interspersed with some near dead-on recreations of the original actors’ likenesses. The opportunities it provides for exploring parts of the Buffy universe impossible to capture on TV without radically blowing up the budget, like Dawn’s years-long transformation first into a giant and then into a Centaur, add texture and spectacle that enrich the franchise. But as a television season told in comic book form, it has really sucked precisely because it insists on adopting the organizational schema of “the season,” leading to expectations that all of this is somehow driving toward a climactic confrontation between Buffy and Angel rather than exploring multiple facts of the Buffyverse that chart its expanding boundaries.