Challenging the comic book status quo

Status quo is the bane of comic book creators. A Latin term that refers to the current state of affairs, in comics it’s the essential things about a character that everyone knows. To creators and publishers, it’s that sense of familiarity with a character that grows bland even though fans love it.

Fans like their characters to stay the same. They want Spider-Man to be married to Mary Jane to fulfill a sense of nostalgia. To comic creators, though, it can represent a narrative dead end that needs changing for more story ideas.

The status quo change can happen in a number of ways with varying degrees of approval from fans. Something like shifting character origins to a more modern era (like Iron Man) is usually met with approval since it can be done easily and better fits the character’s current mythos.

Tweaks that aren’t taken well are the ones that change something dramatically in a completely ridiculous way.

The best example of this is when Peter Parker and Mary Jane made a deal with the devil to save Aunt May from dying. Their end of the bargain was to erase their marriage. It was as awful as it sounds, and fans still see it sorely despite the aftermath leading to the best Spider-Man comics in years.

The major status quo changes, like the massive DC reboot this month, occur through something called event comics. Event comics are the big summer blockbusters of the comics world. Different events and plots happening in a publisher’s universe finally connect, and the status quos of a lot of characters are changed for not-quite forever. 

Publishers pump out a number of short tie-in miniseries to help illustrate how widely the event comic is changing the universe. For example, the main series of “Flashpoint” didn’t show you how different Batman was, so DC insisted you read the Flashpoint Batman tie-in.

The tie-ins can be fun and some great stories can be told with them, but they can also make a huge dent in the wallet just to follow the main plot.

The best event comics are those that get single elements right. They have tie-ins that are good and add to the main story, which is easy to follow without having to read the tie-ins. The main series keeps a breakneck pace like a summer blockbuster and the event concludes with an entirely new story that changes the status quo for the universe involved. All these qualities culminate in making you feel like you just witnessed something important.

To me, the event comic that best illustrates how to do make one correctly is 2005’s “House of M” from Marvel.

To be brief, “House of M” showed a universe where mutants were the majority and humans the minority. It was great to read how drastically the X-Men’s lives were altered because of this. The fallout from it, culling the mutant population down to a slim 198, led to a greater sense of danger for the X-Men that is still felt to this day in their comics.

Again, status quo changes can be a good or bad thing. They can create great, fun stories or dramatically stupid plots.

Regardless, the characters will always end up reverting to the status quo eventually, but in the meantime, why not throw a wrench into their stories, like changing The Punisher into a Frankenstein monster (as in “Franken-Castle”) for some fun new ideas?