I guess it depends on how persistent the change is. As in, if Doctor Manhattan becomes an antagonist in the same mold as the Beyonders or the Anti-Monitor or the Gentry or something, and then DC uses this character indefinitely, then essentially the original book is pushed to the margins by the broader comics fandom,…

any reality stating otherwise is the creation of a deus ex machina

People cared more that AXIS was awful

Yeah, well, there's a difference between 20 years of continuity and close to 100 years

For me, it's not so much the Watchmen characters generally as it is Doctor Manhattan specifically. Everything about the character feels so antithetical to how superhero books in general and DC in particular operate. You'd have to fundamentally change the character's persona to make him a compelling and essential part…

Which bad things specifically? Also: wouldn't it be easier to correct those bad things by just tasking the writers with doing things differently? Is it necessary to symbolically eradicate the characters that brought the bad things by fundamentally changing who they are ? (well, Doctor Manhattan anyway. You could…

There's a difference between taking the origin story and power set of a character to create a new persona and character versus taking an established character from another work and completely changing their persona to fit what you need. Doctor Manhattan was a distant and detached god who sees no value in participating…

Yeah, but how much of that is good faith earned by DC hitting the rest button and returning the characters/fictional world to the way people wanted it before? A lot of people have been going on and on about how great Rebirth is, and I agree to a large extent. The event has led to a lot of great stories and allowed DC…

But Doctor Who already had a one year hiatus…

In fairness, the one bit of the review I kinda agreed with is that the Cosmic Cube is one of the laziest plot devices in Marvel. I guess it allows for character shifts that allows for stories like Secret Empire, but it's sonic screwdriver levels of contrivance

So like the way Stan Lee had Cap brainwashed by the Red Skull into being a nazi for a bit in 1965?

Finally, I just dislike that Marvel decided to either temporarily kill off or alter so many of its classic characters within a five year span

Which is what leads me to question the validity of this review. There are some interesting ideas in Sam's book, but the storytelling has been pretty bad overall. It doesn't help that Spencer attempts to have his cake and eat it too (being super progressive about identity politics while also mocking and sometimes…

Jonathan Hickman would like a word

It's more about respecting certain writers' capacities and talents and then giving them the appropriate responsibilities. Spencer has done some great comedic writing and low key mystery stuff, like in Superior Foes of Spider Man, Morning Glories, Secret Avengers, and Iron Man 2.0. But he's much worse at the more…

His work in the original run, especially during its beginning, is generally good to great. The myth arc episodes in the first few seasons in particular were actually very well done and stand up to even modern viewing (outside of the general visual aesthetics of TV being far better). But as time progressed, his…

Even the trash golem episode was pretty decent and had a nice quiet character moment with Scully that I thought might justify the whole revival (ie, resolving the plot line with their son). But nope. Why focus on the characters when you can spend the last hour tracing smart phones and vilifying vaccines to build up to…

I would actually be okay with a conspiracy narrative, but Carter needs to back away from the writer's desk and director's chair. He was always pretty ham fisted in the original run, and his work on the revival was overkill. With 10 episodes and a better crew behind the story-telling, they could do a better job with…

Anti-government conspiracy theories generally lean right, but in the original run, they tapped into military cover-ups as the dominant conspiracy meme, so there was some space for leftist sympathies. Now the show's tapped into the dominant theories of government social engineering/public welfare programs as a means of…

In that case, it should be entertaining. The only time that happened in the revival was when they want the comedy route. When trying to pull off horror or suspense (ie, the defining characteristics of the show in its heyday), it had much less success, and the myth/conspiracy episodes written by the main producer in…