Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26478094-20150713211627/@comment-61022-20150716185851

Except for it's not a reboot as stated here, here, and here on top of multiple other sources that say that they are not rebooting their universe. Had you Googled and read all relevant sources you'll note that Marvel has said straight out of the gates that Secret Wars was not going to be a reboot. It seems even less likely since Marvel and DC usually do similar things these days when they both do big events. Since Convergence over at DC re-opened the DC multiverse that has been written off in countless reboots and restarts, it doesn't make any sense that Marvel would do the opposite. That's not the trend, because the two companies regularly try to one-up themselves by doing very similar stories when it comes to their big events.

Yes, the Ultimate imprint is being discontinued, but 616 is going to continue on as usual. If anything they are just migrating successful characters from a flagging franchise (Ultimate Marvel) to their most enduring (their mainstream universe). Ultimate Marvel may have been the preferred "standard" of their story telling, but it just doesn't have te sales to back it anymore. The whole point of it was that in the early 2000s they created the imprint to bring in new readers and do things vastly different than the mainstream universe. That's because at the time long time fans were incredibly vocal about any lasting changes. Over the last 15 years that spectrum has changed, particularly with the introduction of the cinematic universe. Readers are now more inclined to want stories that are very much similar to that. Granted the cinematic universe was based partially on the Ultimate universe, but the fact was fans of their more lucrative mainstream titles wanted those sorts of elements without switching over and seniority ruled.

Frankly, they're not going to reboot their universe any time soon. I can't fathom why people find it so hard to follow what's going on. There are resources available out there to get you up to date, and even if that's too daunting a task, Marvel has adopted a writing style over the past 15 years where you don't entirely need to know everyone's detailed backstories in order to follow along. Anything that is over a decade old is usually not overly relevant anymore, anything that's over five years old is a dim memory even. And even if they do bring up old concepts or reintroduce older characters Marvel is very good at reprinting old stories as primers for new readers.

Rebooting origin stories is rather pointless, it's been done to death, and if Marvel movies are any indication, fans are tired of the endless rehashing of origins. Also historically speaking, any attempts to "modernize" or reboot characters origins have been commercial failures. Heroes Reborn, Spider-Man: Chapter One, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Adventures of Captain America, "Season One" and so many others that have been printed in the last 30 years have been widely panned by long time fans and new readers, in most cases these tales have been relegated to alternate realities.

The only ones that have been any sort of success are the most recent line of "Origins" series (Avengers Origins, X-Men Origins, Avengers: The Origin, Black Widow: Secret Origins etc.) primarily because the characters that are the focus of these series is that they focus on lesser known characters, ones with ambiguous origins, or origins that are spread out over some 50 years of publications. Also they were meant to focus on characters that were appearing in upcoming titles or movies so new readers could familiarize themselves with them.

Also keeping in mind that Marvel operates on a Sliding Timescale, Marvel is constantly "updating" origins in flashbacks and retellings in a characters title series. You read a title long enough and they are bound to rehash the origin and give it modern day tweaks.

Failing all that, if you can't get your hands on those stories, Marvel regularly publishes handbooks that give a history of popular characters during the time of publication, the odd obscure character, and all the information is current up to the date of publication.

The argument that origins are dated, are hard to puzzle out or need to be rebooted shows a lack of willingness of the reader to do even the most minimal amount of research. Otherwise, it's a lack of financial resources, which if that's your limiting factor then that's always going to be a problem and a company is not going to really cater to you because they're looking for the most amount of profit and you're a small fish in a very large pond.

We're talking about a 75 year franchise that has built itself up on having a long running continuity. Take a look at any other long running franchise and you'll see that they choose to move forward. They keep their greater continuity for the sake of long time fans, and weave their current stories based on the foundation of whatever was written before.