Let me say this: I really like comics and superhero stories, as I'm sure most people on these forums do. But I haven't kept up much with comics in the last few (10...whew) years, except for reading the occasional website. So when I saw something called Ultimate Marvel in a store recently, I was curious.

It seems Marvel just decided to start over with some characters and 'reimagine' them? Do I have that right?

Does this make them less authentic, less interesting, less authoritative, less anything? More anything?

Hmm, maybe if they kill off cyclops they might be good. But otherwise, they'r just returning to the "tried tested and true" formula of rehashes. Except the original X Men series almost went bust in the 70's, so that's not a good indication.

Personally, I think reimagined things are often better.

The first time around authors don't always plan everything ahead, and the characterisation is not always there.

When they recreate something this is rarely the case, so it's often end up better.

Of course ther eare exceptions.

Yes, but Marvel already did that, with the "Marvels" series in the mid 90's, a reimagining of a reimaginings would be pretty much useless.

You can always improve things.

But as for marvel. I see there is a new x-men tv show, where the characters are teens. Personally, I don't really like that, because it's totally different.

An example of a reimagining I like is the Smallville tv show for superman, for example. A little different, but still pretty close to the original source.

The Ultimate series', as has been explained to me, exists alongside the original ones. Marvel felt that some of the series (particularly X-Men and Spiderman) have such a long, convoluted history that it is difficult for new readers to pick them up. Given the influx of new fans brought out by the movies, they wanted to make their signature characters more accessible. Thus, Ultimates was born. They haven't (I am told) done away with th originals-- these are just alternate titles (I suppose a type of What If? universe, but as ongoing series, not one-shots).

Re-imagined can be good sometimes, but I am a big fan of good continuity. I enjoyed the Age of Apocalypse stuff years ago, which was a sort of re-imagining. I actually wished that there had been a permanent, ongoing series in that universe. Overall, though, I prefer the original. Those who say that the original material becomes stale and no new stories can be written are just not trying hard enough.

But even if they don't plan ahead, isn't the evolution of the characters/story part of their identity? Maybe reimagined stories speak better to a contemporary audience. Maybe they help revitalize them. But for every Grendel (derived from Beowulf) you get five Cruel Intentions (from Dangerous Liasons).

Every serial has this problem. But then again, keeping up with any history gets convoluted, particularly cultural histories, and nobody is suggesting we rewrite the history of Baseball or video gaming. They're enjoyable, right, but only true enthusiasts follow all the details.

Yes, I realize comic books are much more story-driven than the above examples. But it feels weird to have to choose which of 10 versions of the X-men to think about.

On a not entirely related note, I played through X-men Legends on the PS2 recently. Iceman is described in the story as being one of the original X-men; an adult, then. The story itself kind of unfolds from the perspective of Magma, who is portrayed as a mutant who has just...um, come out...or whatever you call it. In other words, she's in her early teens. But in the story she and Iceman are totally hitting on each other. Isn't that just a little bit dodgy?

Age of Apocalispe is my favorite series ever. I have almost all the comics of that Era.

One thing that did disapoint me. They carried X-Man over to the regular world, and it turned out horrible. You would think the story was written by a monkey on crack.

I've read them all until they canceled it, and it was like watching a trainwreck. That suck because I liked the character.

X-Man...I vaguely remember that. And hey, by the way, wasn't Cable supposed to be Cyclops and Jean Grey's son from the future or something.

Convoluted plot lines, no?

X-Man is what Cable would have been had he not been infected with the technovirus. He was the son of Scott Summers and a clone of Jean Grey, sent into the future, this of course hasn't stopped him from returning on a fairly constant basis to meddle in the affairs of our time.