I think that Kurt Busiek and John Byrne represent two extremes of comic book writing.

John Byrne is the cornerstone (possibly the progenitor) of the movement that prefers to rewrite classic stories and give them a few "new" twists and turns. Basically they just retell the same stories again and again, but shake up the casts, or the powers, or the attitudes. They call it "updating" or "fixing the characters." But to me, this is an extremely lazy and empty form of entertainment. I do not enjoy it. The same thing is happening in movies, where they pull an old TV show from the 70s and blow it up into a ridiculous and bloated movie with none of the charm or panache of the original show, just better effects and updated characters. Boring. This is killing both industries, as people lose respect for the medium and lose confidence in its power to produce anything new or worthwhile. The "creators" cite demographics, or artistic yearnings or nostalgia, but in the end it's just easier to rewrite a classic story than it is to come up with something original.

The sad part about this trend is that some of the young fans see these new comics, with the hip talking and dressing characters, and think that this IS new and original, even though it is simply a rehash of stories that were told better 30 or more years ago. Then when they do encounter a book that uses characters that have organically grown from where they where 30 years ago and are capable of sustaining new fresh stories and situations because they have the benefit of a past with depth and character development, the young readers mistake this book as a throwback or a rehash because the characters don't look radically altered, even though they are involved in new story lines.

But how long can the mainstream comics industry continue to fool its readers? How long before these kids see their new hip comics updated into newer hipper comics and realize that it's really just the same classic plot being retold yet again?

Shakespeare said there were only nine plots. I think it was nine, anyway. I could be wrong, feel free to correct me. The point is that he said there were only a limited number of plots. So isn't every story doomed to merely rehash some older tale? No, because a plot is not all there is to a story. Out of those nine plots, Shakespeare was able to create dozens of original and unique plays. Writers from that time forward have continued to find new and fresh ways to use those plots to tell brand-new, never before experienced stories as varied as Robert Bloch's Psycho, or Capote's In Cold Blood, or Clarke's 2001. There's a big difference between making a movie about a crazed killer and giving it a life of its own, as DePalma did with Dressed to Kill, which played with the audience's expectations and used them to trick and fool the audience, and simply doing a frame by frame remake of Psycho with new actors and a "90's sensibility," as is about to be inflicted on a bored and apathetic public.

On the other hand, there is an all-too-small movement in comics spearheaded by writers like Kurt Busiek. He is using the past as building blocks toward the future. He does not follow the trend to retell the same old stories with a few updated twists, or worse, to ignore the past altogether. As a reader I don't want to turn my back on the past, but neither do I want to live in it. Busiek is telling brand-new stories that have grown out of events from the past. His characters are shaped by their histories, but not trapped in them. For instance, in AVENGERS #10, Hank Pym is reluctant to remind himself of his traumatic days as Yellow Jacket, but that doesn't mean he has to be the eternally unbalanced hero in perpetuity. His past is a part of him, but not all of him.

In Avengers #10, which has been the best of the series to date, Busiek has given us a wonderful tribute to AVENGERS volume 1, #150-151. The story follows a structure based on those classics and is filled with in-jokes, tributes and asides. But Kurt isn't rehashing any old stories or retelling a story "his way." He is using the rich history of the Avengers to give us a totally fresh and wonderful new story. This is one of the reasons why I think Kurt Busiek is Marvel's strongest and most important writer. His Avengers will be considered a high watermark of 1990's comic books.

Busiek understands that readers must be given new stories and not just stories that appear to be new. He knows that for every classic story that has been told (and retold ad nauseam) about Superman or Batman, there is a fresh new one that can be told, if one is willing to dig, sweat or work hard enough to find it. He knows that a different perspective, a new angle, a fresh situation is always going to be available in this ever-changing world, and that each time a new one is discovered there, a dozen new stories fly free, waiting to be captured by someone with enough gumption to chase them down. It's easy to take an idea that has already been captured and slap a new coat of paint on it and proclaim yourself a genius for rediscovering the "roots" of a character or story, but it isn't so easy to hunt down your own new and untried concept.

Instead of deciding that The Avengers should start over in 1998 and retelling Stan's first 12 issues with hip lingo, cool new costumes, a few surprising cosmetic changes and one or two conceits that needed fixing from those primitive issues, Busiek has chosen to give us 12 brand-spanking new issues that are the culmination of all that has come before (even the "bad" stuff; even the stuff he doesn't necessarily think was a good idea). It's all in there, and it is all being used to determine what happens. Because of that, he's got new stories to tell, because the road the characters have walked down give them miles of new possibilities.

During Heroes Reborn when many of the major Marvel heroes were out of action, Marvel apparently needed a new super team to fill a void left by their absence. Instead of deciding this was the perfect time to retell the first 12 issues of Defenders, or rehashing the best elements of that title's run and telling it the way it should have been told if written by "better" writers, Busiek decided to come up with a brand new team all his own. He gave us the Thunderbolts, a team of already established villains who have brilliantly decided to pose as heroes.

Wow. A brand new idea. One not ripped off from Stan or Jack. How did he manage to take already established Marvel characters and put them into a new situation that hasn't been used and reused a dozen times? How could he do a title called Untold Tales of Spider-Man and not simply retell the best stories from the Lee/Ditko Spider-Man? How did he find new stories to tell that fit between those classics? How could he take a project like Marvels, which was essentially a retelling of the first 10 years of Marvel continuity, and not simply rehash the most classic stories? Instead, he managed to find a brand new character with a brand new story--a story that was affected by the events of Marvel's rich history, but still had a life of its own. How did he pull off these seeming miracles, finding new stories when some of the biggest names in the business can do little more than tell the same few stories again and again?

That's a good question. The only answer I can think of is that he simply made the choice to do so. He made a decision not to follow the quick and easy path. I for one hope he is rewarded for it, because if he isn't, it may be a good long while before anyone else dares to venture outside the safety of the insular village that mainstream comics has become.