Is anyone getting tired of the constant superhero show reboots?

C

clemsonbasketball12_2004

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It looks like the next wave of superhero cartoons for the 2010 decade are being prepared, and once again its the same characters:

- The Ultimate Spiderman. We have yet another Spiderman reboot, and the last series just ended after only 26 episodes a year ago!

- Young Justice features another young Robin, which again is Dick Grayson, which we just had on Teen Titans and The Batman. Not to mention Superman/Batman etc. are in this show.

- A new Batman cartoon unrelated to Young Justice is also being made. This is following B:TAS, The Batman, and Brave and the Bold. Everytime a Batman cartoon ends another one begins.

- A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon is being made by Nick. This will be the third series in the TMNT franchise.


Most likely there will be another X-men cartoon soon enough too, which is after X-men, X-men Evo, and Wolverine and the X-men.


Is anyone else wondering why these cartoons need to constantly be rebooted so often? Why not let one series last a couple of years, than have a break, before immediately making the next one?
 
There will be super hero reboot series as long as there are fans who have a desire to see them. it's necessary to strike while the iron is hot. Anyway, it's not like anyone is forcing you to watch them.

What do you suggest that companies/studios do as alternative to making more of them?
 
Something original, like Ben 10 or Avatar (though maybe those aren't good examples considering they both have sequels...) Or at least revamp the show enough so it's completely different each time (Iron Man: Armored Adventures compared to 90s Iron Man cartoon) If you use the same basic premise all the time, I can see it getting tiring. Or maybe just feature other superheros for a change.
 
No, I am not tired of superhero cartoons. I find them much easier to get into than quite a few long-running comic books, and their existence offers an alternate & invaluable outlet of creativity for superheroes.

I say repetition is not much of an issue. X-Men Evolution was a very different approach from Wolverine & the X-Men (many fledgling teens vs. a smaller group of matured X-Men), Ultimate Spider-Man is on a different path compared to Spectacular (Spidey' working w/ Marvel heroes vs. Peter Parker's early years in high school). The three Batman shows listed don't overlap very much; Batman Beyond is a fourth cartoon and perhaps the most radically different of the bunch (BATB is tough competition on the opposite end of Beyond's grittiness). There may come a time when Batman outstays his welcome and nobody can use him well anymore, but it sure isn't here yet.

TMNT: How different was 2k3 from the 80s series? I'm not going to write off the third one as derivative yet.

Young Justice has plenty of characters besides Dick Grayson and the regular Justice League are secondary support to the main characters. Teen Titans has been over since 2006. Also did that big ol' debate over Robin's identity in Teen Titans actually get settled at some point? At any rate, the show is even having a revamped Aqualad as the team leader--not Robin, not Superboy. The producers could've easily had a bigger name lead the team, but they didn't choose to do things that way. That deserves some credit. I also applaud the series' ambition to tell the story of a very young DC universe, which hasn't really been done in an animated series yet.

Let's also not forget the upcoming Avengers show, which is pretty much the show we should have gotten in the 1990s on Fox but didn't. It's got Hulk in an animated series for the first time in awhile, Captain America and Thor will hopefully finally get some devoted attention in a TV series for the first time in my lifetime along with a some secondary heroes like Black Panther, and the show appears poised to depict a veritable horde of Marvel villains. Fresh enough for me!

Not that there's no merit to what you're saying. Could more time & resources be spent on more original programs or more obscure superheroics? Sure. Anyone who agrees and gets The Hub should check out The 99. The Thundercats will be reborn on Cartoon Network next year.

But yeah, in general I think superhero shows are doing just fine.
 
Studios are making original shows. The fact that you and CyberCubed seem to be ignoring is that as long as people keep watching super hero shows, companies are going to keep on making them. Since when is it a bad thing to give people what they want? Just don't watch the reboots if you don't like them. It just seems as though some people need to have something to complain about.
 
The amount of super hero shows aren't bothering me, but a break between how long each series premieres on TV would be nice. There was barely a few months between The Batman and Brave and The Bold and that feels like barely enough time to let the show leave some sort of final impact on the audience.
 
Oooo... is anyone else feeling the irony?:anime:

Anyway, I can understand people getting annoyed by these reboots.

But theres usually good stuff coming out of them.
Like Spectacular spiderman!
If you don't agree I'll hate your forever till I forgive you.
 
Indeed. You people have to accept that most of these shows are in phoenix states of constant death and rebirth. It's a way of constantly getting their franchise to viewers while making sure the blood doesn't get old.
 
Well the shows are usually cancelled because they're not making enough money for the network to fund more episodes, or they hit 65, but the franchise is still hot so it can still make money with something new and different from the old show.

Now most of the "rebooted" shows are actually different from the shows that come before them. Spec Spidey is different from the MTV series, as well as, Spidey Unlimited, SMTAS, Amazing Friends, and the 80s Solo show. That's 6 shows going back to the 80s and using the same set of characters in different and unique ways. The same can be said of all the recent superhero cartoons going back to the 80s.

The upcoming shows will undoubtedly be different as well:

Ultimate Spider-man (which is coming in 2011 not '10) is set in the Ultimate 'verse and a team-up show, both not done by a Spidey cartoon before.

Young Justice is completely new with no previous cartoons or any Supers cartoons with the same premise. The Robin complaint is a bit nitpicky as a) he's in a different role than TT or TB and b) if the show didn't use any characters that have been previously used in cartoons it would just be the Aqualad and Miss Martian show.

We don't know anything about the new Batman show so it?s hard to say anything about it here. All we know is that it'll be cgi, James Tucker is working on it, and it'll be different than BTBATB.

Same deal with TMNT, but I must point out the 80s series and 2k3 one were completely different from each other.

The X-men cartoons are completely different from each other in story, characters, animation style, and structure. When a new X-Men series is made I'd expect the same thing to happen.

I hardly see how these "rebooted" shows are repetitive or stale considering how different they are from each other, or why the companies need to stop making new shows.
 
This is pretty much what I came in here to say. But since this has already been stated, I have to ask: do long running franchises such as Scooby, Tom & Jerry, Mickey Mouse, et all; annoy you as well?

Each of those has been brought back for successive decades and successfully re-invented and introduced to a new and very receptive audience time after time with some exceptions.

Realistically it would darn foolish to just turn your back on anything that has proven itself to be a perennial cash cow.
 
One thing Im really surprised about is how much Image comics characters fell off the map. Especially now that comics are hot. We havent even gotten a new Spawn toon. Back in the day we had Spawn, savage dragon, wildcats, and the maxxx and an unreleased Gen X. Youd think wed have more now. But i guess because of the almost selfmade business plan as opposed to a corporation, there isnt a lot they can do without putting up there own money.

Id like to see more indie stuff get made like Yusagi Yojimbo, Elf Quest, Cerebus, Bone, the Crow, and others get made into adult toons. The availability is there now with stuff like Adult Swim. Its really sad we arent seeing more of it.
 
I completely agree, I'm tired of the constant reboot of common super hero characters. There are so many other super hero characters, who have not had any cartoon series produced at all.

Too many recent reboots seems to simply de-age the characters, in order to try to appeal more to children. But fail to take the series in completely new and different directions, compared to previous series. And frequently end up worse, compared to previous versions of the series.

I recently re-watched Spider-Man Unlimited, and that is a good example of taking a series in a completely new direction. I enjoyed the comics book styled animation, futuristic angle, and Spider-Man battling against the odds, against the beastials and the high evolutionary.

Not all remakes are bad though, the Japanese version of the 2003 remake of Astro Boy was fantastic, although the English version was butchered. I'm currently enjoying the 2002 remake of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe too. The development of characters, and stories are much better, compared to the original series (which was designed solely to sell off the related merchandise).

I enjoyed the more recent productions for Mickey Mouse (new shorts, not House of Mouse), Scooby-Doo (What's New Scooby Doo?) and Tom and Jerry (Tom and Jerry Tales) though. Those productions seem more like more faithful continuations, rather than reboots.

I'm looking forward to Young Justice League, which I hope will be a more serious, compared to earlier Teen Titans, which was often too silly.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming Thor series too, although I had not heard anything about that series for awhile now.
 
The truth is that despite all of these adaptations appearing, comics haven't really recovered from the 90s crash. And a good lot of indie stuff nowadays doesn't sell anywhere near the amount that mainstream comics do, so the chance of any of them becoming shows are a snowball's chance in hell (Generator Rex was a very rare exception to this).
 
The only thing that's bothering me is how short lived and continuity-less everything is. I hardly want to get into any of these new universes, because I feel that the show will probably be canceled in one or two seasons and will have no sequels or spin-offs.
 
That's what I loved about the Dini/Timm DCAU. Four shows over the course of nearly fifteen years that shared the same continuity. :eek: That's why I can't get into any of the post-DCAU shows and one-shot movies.
 
Like I mentioned a while back, Scooby-Doo and Batman are the WB's cash cows when it comes to animation, so those two will always get rebooted...probably forever.
 
That's the main reason I prefer superhero cartoons to the comics, I hate how everything is connected and if you want the full story you need to read/watch a bunch of stuff. I think the main problem is most of these shows don't really have their own identity and just regurgitate what came before it, only modernized or tweaked slightly. Say what you want about the quality of The Batman and Batman: The Animated Series, you're still watching a guy in a bat suit fight the Joker and his other villains at the end of the day. Even though I'm not a fan, Brave and the Bold at least does something different. Kind of. Same with 90s Spider-Man and Spectacular Spider-Man compared to Spider-Man Unlimited, and the two Fantastic Four cartoons. It just seems like you get into a rut of 'Seen one Batman/Spider-Man cartoon, you've seen them all.)
 
Disagree. When it comes down to it, there is no bad idea. Just bad execution.

The DCAU is an example how to incorporate continuity without leaving newcomers out. A person can watch JL/JLU without heavey knowledge of BTAS or Superman. Twilight alone sums up (via Batman) why Superman has a grudge against, therefore making it unnecessary to watch Superman The Animated Series to keep up.



Frankly, if a show is entertaining already, I see continuity as the hot fudge on my ice cream (Don't like cherries). I enjoy it if added, but can enjoy my ice cream without it.
 
My only issue with superhero xartoons and their remakes is their episodicness. Episodic works only for comedies. It doesn't work for story-driven fiction. I too would like to see more continuity in these series.
 
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