Far be it from me to not jump on a bandwagon when it comes along…
The entire internet broke in half with DC Comics' big announcement, which (in case you've been living under a rock, on Mars, with your fingers in your ears) is rebooting/restarting its entire comics line in September 2011 as well as publishing same-day digital versions.
There are many opinions out there, but here is mine--
Don't worry.
I mean, yeah, it sucks that there are incredibly complex stories that won't seem to "matter" if you are going to reboot a universe of characters from the beginning (which no one is sure they are really doing, but still. Bandwagon with me here.) However, be careful. Once you get into that argument, it's really self-defeating. After all, no stories really "matter," do they? I understand if you were gripped by the plight of our heroes when parallel worlds started crashing down upon them, that you were moved to pity and fear when a hero's wife was the victim of a brutal attack. You sigh in satisfaction and put the collection on a shelf in reverence. But at some point, you have to figure out what's for dinner, how you can finish that deadline for work, and buy your dad a Fathers' Day gift.
How much are we really investing into these characters? I once wrote one of the first comprehensive online resources for the Marvel Universe in the pre-wiki days of the innanet. I understand the appeal of investing in these stories, of honoring their continuity, and of relishing their complexity. We collect the stories and ideas of these comics just as much as we collect the paper (or zeroes and ones?) they are printed on. I would love to return to the dynamic Avengers written by Roger Stern or the anything-goes Excalibur by Claremont/Davis. But just because the Avengers are so different nowadays and there has been no Excalibur series for 20 years doesn't mean that the stories I love don't matter. Does Photon's absence from the current Avengers' series mean her stories don't matter? Does Nightcrawler's recent death mean his Excalibur stories don't matter?
Does the recent Transformers movie mean its original TV series doesn't matter? Does Nolan's Dark Knight movie invalidate Tim Burton's Batman? Does Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen invalidate Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? I'm going to share a smile and a nod of the head with anyone when reminiscing with these stories. I can laugh in spite of myself when I stumble onto a compilation of 80s Saturday morning cartoon intros on YouTube. I can revisit those stories anytime I want to, just as much as I can revisit any memory. Perhaps it's simple nostalgia, or perhaps I recognize that these stories matter in and of themselves. They were there for me at the time, and I can thankfully recreate that time because these stories will forever be consecrated as their own entity. The context may have changed, but that doesn't mean I have to change what I think about the content.
If a story mattered to you at all at one point, it will continue to matter to you forever. If they cease to matter to you at all, then you probably will have left the hobby and found new stories that matter to you. So go ahead and put those mattered-stories back on the shelf. They will still be there when you need them.
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