A Comic Book Manifesto

Wolf Gnards has tacked his ninety-five theses -- well, five, anyway -- to the cathedral door. He addresses, at length, five problems that he says plague the comic book industry. Among them is the proliferation of parallel universes in DC:

I'm just not a fan, I guess I'm a one universe kind of guy. The multiverse to me is the ultimate example of covering bad writing with more bad writing. The overuse of the mulitverse is a big problem with DC Comics in particular. Just thinking about Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Crisis Crisis, Crisis of the Stars, Crisis in the Crisis: The Final Infinitude, all make me want to tear my eyes out. The problem with DC is that they give their writers almost free reign over their titles (Marvel writers are kept on very short leash), the results are some great comics and many continuity errors. After a while so many continuity errors start to pile up that the DC universe becomes unmanageable, and time for a little spring cleaning, which brings us to the multiverse. Instead of correcting problems with good story telling, they choose a convenient magic wand approach. Basically, every comic book is part of some multiple DC universe, and after a nice convoluted miniseries, all these universes get parred down into one universe. Poof, story fixed. But, of course, a couple of years later they always have to wave the magic wand again.

Wolfie also objects to variant covers, the lingering effects of the Comics Code Authority, the resurrection of dead characters, and everyone imitating Alan Moore.

So what's your beef with comics? What, if anything, bothers you about the way modern comics are produced?

Link | Image: DC