What If....Superhero Fiction Had No More Flashpoints?
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Does anyone remember the “What If….?” comics from Marvel?
Yeah, I know it’s a show on Disney + currently, but I mean those original books back in the day.
The first one I ever read was Issue #25. What If the Marvel Super Heroes Had Lost Atlantis Attacks?.
Ah, my childhood.
They were all great out-of-continuity stories where the writers had complete freedom to raise the stakes and do pretty much whatever they wanted.
Tell me, do you remember the end of the movie Justice League Dark: Apokolips War?
Half the DC superheroes are dead, the rest disfigured. All irreparably damaged, just like the Earth. 31% of the molten core is gone, the planet’s rotation compromised. Billions more projected dead in the best case scenario. And it ends with the Flash creating a new timeline so that they don’t have to suffer through that hell.
It seems weird to mention a Marvel comic series that originally ran from 1977 to 1984 and a DC animated movie released in 2020 as if they make the same point, but they do.
Because, to me, they represent stakes in superhero fiction. Or, that is, the lack of stakes in longrunning superhero titles.
They represent the only place you can introduce them, and what happens when you introduce them somewhere else.
I ask you, what if….superhero fiction had no more flashpoints?
The Cosmic Reset and the Status Quo
While the Justice League movie I mentioned before may not be a perfect example of this due to it being the end of its own movie series, I mention it because it ends with the Flash undoing all the permanent damage and status quo changes by running so fast that the Speed Force allows him to go back in time and change things.
That’s not the first time he’s done this. The comic Flashpoint details how his attempt to go back in time to save his mother creates a brand new timeline; the New 52 line that served as a reboot of the entire DC comic line.
This isn’t the first time DC’s done this. Since 1986, they’ve made about three hard reboots of their entire universe, with characters disappearing, others returning from the dead, and prior changes being tweaked or played around with if not undone completely.
I bring this up because, in a world of cosmic reboots and hard resets, there just are no stakes to anything in comics anymore. In the main Big 2 superhero universes, at least.
It’s always been the case that characters come back to life even when it seems they are dead and gone. Gwen Stacy came back as a clone after she died for a couple issues back in the 1970s, as did the clone of Peter Parker that eventually became Ben Reilly did during the Clone Saga of the 1990s. Barry Allen was killed off as the Flash, and eventually came back. Jason Todd came back, and so did Bucky Barnes.
So did every superhero ever. Here is an outdated list of Marvel superheroes that have died and come back. Add Peter Parker and Kamala Khan to that list. Multiple versions of Peter Parker.
Aunt May has died twice and has come back. She’s done more resurrections than Jesus.
Even without continuity reboots, characters come back from the dead constantly due to Lazarus Pits, the Speed Force, cloning technology, being secretly hidden from the main cast by another character, being thrust into the Phantom Zone, being locked in a stasis pod underwater, having been an advanced synthetic shapeshifter this whole time, so on and so forth.
But once you add continuity reboots to the mix (and, again, in DC, Flash could do that at will), then it’s not just deaths that can be undone. It’s everything.
One More Day is reviled by fans for erasing the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson from continuity. But don’t forget why Peter and MJ made that deal with Mephisto. It was to save Aunt May from dying (again) after she was shot by a sniper who was aiming for Peter. Why was the sniper aiming for Peter?
Oh, right.
Peter Parker reveals to the world that he’s Spider-Man. That gets undone in a low level cosmic reset by Mephisto. That same reset undoes the deaths of both Aunt May and Harry Osborn. Harry, whose character was brought to a beautiful and fantastic end in Spectacular Spider-Man #200.
That’s just one example with as low level a cosmic reboot as possible. With the major comic book universes having cosmic reset buttons on demand, there is nothing of consequence that will stick because it will all be undone within a few years. Or even a few months.
A character has their secret identity revealed to the world? Something that earth-shattering? That would never last. The collapse of the US Government, or the destruction of the city a hero patrols? Expect that to be erased from history in at most two years. Remember the ending to Batman: Arkham Knight? If that were in the main DC comics continuity instead of a video game, there would be a major universal reset within six months if the company was feeling bold.
I know characters come back from the dead all the time. It’s become such a staple for Jean Grey that Red vs Blue compared their character of Church to her. And when people were outraged about the death of Kamala Khan and a member of my gaming group shocked that they would kill off the world’s first Pakistani superhero during AAPI Month, I told him it didn’t matter because she would be back in less than five years. I don’t even think it was five months before she came back as a mutant.
But with cosmic resets, nothing will ever stick. And that means that every story lacks stakes.
Reading a version of Justice League Dark: Apolokips War that took place in the main DC continuity would just be boring, because you would read it knowing that every last death would be undone. Every last injury–from Wonder Woman’s arm being ripped off to Starfire being torn apart–would be healed. The emotional trauma and character growth that would come about from the injuries and the lost loved ones would never be explored. And the whole thing with the Earth itself being compromised and the new widespread status quo change that creates? Poof. Gone.
Out of continuity stories: The only place where writers can have fun
The most fun thing about out-of-continuity stories is that they are places where anything can happen.
From DC’s Elseworld books, to self-contained stories like Red Son, Kingdom Come, and The Dark Knight Returns, you had stories where nothing was off the table. Nothing was sacred. Anything could happen. Anything could be destroyed. Anyone could die.
What If….? often embellished in the “Everyone dies” gimmick, but even still, my point stands.
With the knowledge that no one will be saved by universal resets, reading these stories filled you with actual tension.
You just didn’t know what was going to happen next. Whether the heroes would win or lose, or whether they’d even survive.
You could have the type of story you had in Apokolips War.
You couldn’t have that in the main continuities. You couldn’t have any major changes in the main continuities nowadays. Because you would just shrug and say “That’ll be undone within eighteen months, tops”.
But these stories had stakes and tension. Like the second to last episode of any season of Game of Thrones, anyone could die and anything could be irreversibly changed. And you were on the edge of your seat.
The issue, of course, is that they were all out-of-continuity stories. They weren’t canon. Didn’t count.
Little side curiosities in superhero fiction that were meant to be cast aside as soon as they were forgotten?
What if Aunt May was killed by the burglar instead of Uncle Ben? Who cares? She wasn’t. What if the Fantastic Four had different powers? Who cares? They don’t. What if Wolverine had killed the Hulk? Who cares? He didn’t.
Fun stories on their own, but they don’t count.
It’s a shame that, for there to be any tension at the possibility of major changes to the status quo, the story has to “not count”.
What If….Superhero Fiction Had No More Flashpoints?
What if the main continuities of superhero fiction universes didn’t get universal reset buttons? What if DC couldn’t crash a bunch of parallel Earths together and create 52 new universes? What if Marvel’s Ultimate universe couldn’t just disappear and have all the fan favorite characters (like Miles Morales) just head over to 616 and continue on like nothing happened?
What would it all look like?
I think the landscape would actually be a bit more conservative. Writing and editorial teams would be less likely to take those big risks. To kill off characters and make huge, sweeping changes to the status quo.
But I think it would still be better, because those changes would be more likely to stick.
Before they started resetting the entire universes every six months, there were major changes to the status quo of the Big Two books.
The deaths of Gwen Stacy and Jason Todd were unthinkably shocking. Clark Kent revealing himself to be Superman to Lois Lane, and the two marrying and having children changed the fundamental dynamic of the main cast in a way that remains today. The birth of Franklin Richards was also a major change to the dynamic of the Fantastic Four.
But at the time, those changes were shocking. When Peter Parker graduated high school, people didn’t expect him to go back or anything like that. The story moves forward. When Jean Grey seemingly died as the Dark Phoenix, people didn’t really expect her to come back. The story moves forward.
I don’t think superhero comics can meaningfully return to that time. Everyone just knows too much about how they work at this point. We all know that every change will get undone. We know that nothing will stick
The only way to get around this is to have comics like Invincible, where there is a definitive end. But you’ll never see that for the well known superheroes in Marvel and DC. The sun will go supernova before DC stops printing Batman. So it’s only original superhero fiction universes that can deliver stories in their canons that have stakes and tension.
Alternatively, the answer might be as simple as not having a shared universe.
The problem with crossovers, shared continuity, and canon is that it creates too much murk and muddle. The superhero universe becomes too expansive and convoluted. Too many contradictions and too much established lore blocking otherwise great potential stories from coming into fruition.
That’s something that original superhero fiction novels do far better than the established superhero properties.
The Reckoners is a trilogy of books by popular fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. Starting with Steelheart, it is a straightforward trio of books with a definitive beginning, middle, and end.
Same thing with Karen Diem’s Arca series. Or Lucas Flint’s Legacy Superhero series. Straightforward, self-contained storylines that have an eventual end. They don’t have complicated shared universes that intersect and conflict with a hundred other properties.
You should give these indie authors a chance and check out their work. They’re stories you can read knowing that the shocking moments in them won’t be undone because a character can just randomly reset the timeline whenever things get tough.
The Legacy Superhero was actually my first book review on this site.
And, of course, I’d be remiss not to mention my own work. While still in progress at the time of this writing, my main series is a seven book series following a former sidekick now leading his own team of teenage superheroes on a series of epic adventures that pits them against the likes of supervillains, government conspiracies, and interstellar empires. All without the confusing shared continuities and confusing canon that makes it impossible to really get into modern Marvel and DC.
Superhero prose books and comic book series that have definitive ends and no shared universes are what a series without cosmic reboots and resets would look like. They’re a stark reminder of the old days where the stories had weight and impact, where the events in the stories–even the episodic floppies–had lasting impact that wasn’t retconned out of existence by some complicated 12 part crossover that only makes sense to people with a PhD in Marvel history.
What if superhero fiction had no more flashpoints? Pick up a superhero novel and see.
For exciting superhero fiction written by me, be sure to check out the BLUE EAGLE Universe!