Brand New Same Old Stories?

Standing in the comic book store with friends, looking over the latest installments of our favorite heroes and anti-heroes, and the same comments kept coming up; "They did this before.", "This storyline has been done before.", "Why are they trying to rewrite that period of crap?", "Retconning again"?

These comments come up for some of the books and major events happening lately: Secret Invasion, Final Crisis, Ultimate Clone Saga, One More Day, Deaths and Resurrections

Been there, done that. Here is my take on all of it. The writers today were kids that read the original stories, same as the readers, in the 70s and 80s. Those stories were either great or sucked salty chocolate balls. Most kids said to themselves, "I can do better." Some of those kids grew up and became writers that we currently enjoy and follow the adventures that they write with a cultish fervor (Luv ya Garth Ennis). Now those writers have an opportunity to re-write whatever wrongs or plot holes that were in comics decades ago and shore up history or strengthen the reasoning behind the original story in the first place. That takes guts; to make a stand to clean up messy continuity or to re-jigger confusing, and sometimes pointless, plotlines. Other things, like One More Day, give users a chance to see the development of new characters. Like the Lee/Ditko era, some will stick, others won't. Some will become classic, others, Mort-of-the-Month infamy.

Consider this a new collectors era; regardless of what was sacrificed to get to this point. A lot of characters that were prominent in 70s kinda disappeared or writers of the time couldn't see how to make those characters relevant anymore. Certain dated characters were favorites of today's writers, and they wanted to make those characters more powerful, smarter, meaningful to today. There was something to those characters that other readers didn't see, that the writer's of today are shining a light on. Take Luke Cage for example (Kudos to you, Mr. Bendis). Ms. Marvel. Spider-Woman. Hercules.

We have had our golden age, we have had our silver age. Let this be the Revisionists' Age. Or maybe I am thinking with glass more than half full. Twice a year, look through the books you are buying. If you are reading something you don't like, drop it. And go and pick up something new.