Anonymous
asked:
Tom, I know its a sales thing, but the whole restarting new teams with new #1s is a Marvel thing over a DC thing, because I feel like DC pushes its creators to say everything counts, even if that involves destroying everything the previous team set up (as in Batgirl, Finch's WW, or every Green Arrow run so far since the new52 started). A lot of Marvel books when relaunched just kinda ignore previous runs, and maybe have off handed comments about the events of them, while DC acknowledges it all.

I think those are two different approaches to continuity, and there are instances where one might work better than the other. but I think that, overall, it’s wiser to do things the way we do it–especially if all the next team is doing is destroying everything that the previous team did. How is that satisfying to you as a reader/

Speaking for myself, I thought that the aspects of the BATGIRL relaunch that didn’t work and helped to make the series less accessible were all of the callbacks and business dealing with the previous run. And it was all stuff that didn’t need to be there–you’ve got Batgirl moving into a new apartment in a new place, you don’t really need to see her old apartment or her old roommate and so forth–that’s just a lot of information that’s clogging up the reading experience, and while it may make a reader who’s purchased the previous 35 issues of BATGIRL feel warm about the time and money they’ve spent, it simultaneously makes it that much harder for a new reader to get on board with the new book.