Comics: Forever? I hope not.

Yeah, I know that at first it looks like some sort of political statement from me but in this case it isn't about that. It's really about my dislike for the idea that some eras of comics are so special that they should have been captured in glass to forever be examined in their own little bubble of time.

An example is X-Men Forever (And soon X-Factor Forever) which seeks to show us what would have happened in writer Chris Claremont had never left the title back in...oh who really cares.

Here's my problem; Time Marches On.

Unless someone comes along and decides that time, instead, does the moon walk.

Every writer in the business who has ever walked away from a title he or she wrote for more than 12 issues, probably has a drawer full of notes all about what they would have done had they not left that title.

It's often a damn good thing that they moved on then.

Now I am a fan of many concepts in mainstream comics. I like a good old parallel universe story alot more than most people do. I love stories about giant monkeys (or apes if you're anal retentive). I like stories about evil relatives, I have a stated love for anything involving a crime fighting vehicle.

What I don't have love for is a comic book title designed to prevent comic book readers from growing and getting over their past selves.

I don't need a Fantastic Four Forever where John Byrne comes back and tries to pick up exactly where he left off back when he was destroy our enjoyment of the Fantastic Four.

I don't need a book like Spiderman comic where Spiderman is transported back to a simpler time when he didn't have a hot super model wife...wait...that just happened in Spiderman too didn't it?

Crap!

Now I know these books aren't in continuity because that would be stupid (I'm looking at you web head) but this is besides the point. If creators of yester...century want to come back and write comics then they should offer up new ideas which can be seen as contemporary and we fans ought to have the stones to say, "There is no way in hell I want to go back to 1996 with my comics".

Now my guy, Lord Toede in Middle of Nowhere, Alberta, Canada happens to like X-Men Forever and states that thousands of others do as well.

He's right. just over 19K folks were down with some retro X-Men love in November BUT this is a deceptive number.

I tried posting a chart I got from ICV2.com but I blow at that so here's a link to it and while X-Men forever came in at a respectable #109, take a look at what came in at #76. It is being outsold by the Archies.

I want to make a greater point about that too but I won't because the Archies beat a lot of books I like too. I just want to call bullshit on X-Men Forever.

http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/16433.html