comic reboot
 

I'm wondering what your idea of a "Total Reboot" is. If you mean make a new team and act like what already has been written never took place, nah! Or if you're saying same characters, just start over like nothing happened, then "nah!". What I'd like to see is the team get replaced slowly. Have the old members retire and new Joes take over their code names and replace them. Lonzo Wilkinson retire and someone new come in and take his code name. There would still be "Stalker", he just wouldn't be Lonzo Wilkson! That's the way it would work in a real military unit. As the old guard steps out, new faces fill the billets.

With that Idea you could make a new Oktober Guard and replace fallen warriors like "Flash" and "MainFrame".

So for a reboot, throwing out all the existing story continuity, we'd basically get Reloaded, Sigma 6, or more likely the Sunbow series in comic form where everyone looks like their original figure and there's never really any doubt that everyone (on both sides) is going to be fine at the end of each story...?

I know people moan about characters being killed off -- I myself have been upset by many of those who've been lost over the years -- but I do appreciate how having that precedent, that memory in the minds of the characters, allows for genuine peril and drama (which kinda fits when everyone's running around with firearms and explosives) and for some great characterisation. And it's not like the roster of characters left to choose from isn't HUGE, not to mention the prospect of bringing in new characters which was a key element of the Marvel series for pretty much its entire run (and has been done to an extent with DDP).

The nature of GI Joe is relatively unique in that it can have a progressive roster (like Frank said); it's just got somewhat bogged down in the nostalgia of so many fans (a large portion of whom criticise the comics without actually reading them -- for instance, Snake Eyes has been all-commando, no-ninja and hasn't been a focal character for a couple of years, yet people still say that a key problem with the comics as they are now is all the "Snake Eyes super-ninja stuff").

I wonder how many people would honestly still be buying a rebooted series a year in, and how that number would be different from what it'd be if they continued with the existing history? It's widely accepted that kids just aren't reading comics these days (note that the Transformers comics out there are G1 and Beast Wars, not related to current toys & cartoon) so it's not like rebooting the Joe mythos is going to bring in scores of new readers. Really it's just going to cater for people who haven't read the comic in ages and will like the nostalgia, but if they've not read a Joe comic for so long it doesn't bode well for their commitment to a new series. Whereas there's the existing readership like me, who're engrossed in the ongoing stories of the characters' lives yet would be perfectly happy to read stories that don't keep directly referencing the previous plotlines so long as there's nothing written to contradict them.

Really, a new start with a new issue 1 by a new publisher, just telling good stories with enough recognisable characters without openly wiping the slate clean, is probably going to do the same job with the people who aren't already reading the comic as a full revamp would. You don't have to base everything on what's come before, but similarly you don't have to give the middle finger to those of us who have been faithfully following the story either!

Oh, and I've heard Marvel floated as a possible producer of new comics but IDW seems to be the frontrunner. I'd say the chances of Dreamwave doing it are slim to none, after the complete mess they made of the TF license (stuff like not actually paying Hasbro, not to mention their creative teams, apparently...)