(Time once again for ROBOT 6 contributors Tom Bondurant and Carla Hoffman to email each other about the year in DC and Marvel superhero comics. This year’s exchange took place between Dec. 26 and Dec. 30.)

Tom Bondurant: First let’s address the elephant in the room -- or, more accurately, the infinite number of parallel rooms, each containing a slightly different elephant. In 2015, both Marvel and DC are building Big Events around their respective multiverses. Conventional wisdom predicts that DC is doing this to address fan criticisms of the New 52, perhaps resulting in some continuity tweaks.

Carla Hoffman: Oh, man, I hope that’s true! Honestly, I have a hard time judging the inner workings of our respective companies sometimes because I always hear more from the fan side than the production team. Enough customers come in, day in and day out, with a piece of their mind on how things should be run or changed, but rarely do the people in charge -- not creators and editors, mind you, the people who sign the checks at the end of the day with real power -- come forward to say, “We feel this is the right direction.” Tom Brevoort on Tumblr comes close with his tireless open forum, but even then there’s always going to be company policy. If DC is brave enough to go “Maybe we shouldn’t have thrown the entire baby out with the bathwater” and massage their continuity into a more pleasing shape for fans, that’s going to be a heck of thing that will have an effect on readership, for sure.

Tom: On the Marvel side, rumors and speculation are once again centering around a line-wide reboot. Now, these sorts of rumors have been flying at least since the New 52 started three years ago, so it’s likely that nothing will come of them this time either.

Carla: Yeah. It didn’t work at all when they called it Heroes Reborn. Marvel did want to use Ultimatum as a reboot to freshen up their Ultimate line, but that turned into possibly the worst mess Marvel has sent to the printers. The idea of a reboot is almost better than an actual reboot sometimes because it will keep readers anticipating the big moment where nothing will be the same and, at the same time, makes the current timeline more precious than ever, because it might all go away. Especially looking at the New 52, it’s surprising how much I still recommend older graphic novels over the newer series, mostly because of how unpredictable the New 52 was. I know what a George Pérez Wonder Woman story is going to be like, so I can tailor it to the reader, whereas the Finches could bring anything to the table for the Amazon Princess. We want change, but we really like the comfort of the familiar.

Tom: So is Secret Wars ‘15 just goofing on the whole “multiversal housecleaning” idea? Is it Spider-Verse for the whole MU?

Carla: If you had asked me this at the beginning of the summer, I would have said no. But the more things happen, seemingly recklessly, to characters and the more events we see that deal with time travel and the multiverse, the more I’m thinking Secret Wars is going to be really big. Setting aside any backstage politics about mutants becoming Inhumans because of the movie studios at war over rights and anything else we could dream up, there’s been a lot of changes to characters and continuity that don’t seem to have a clear purpose or return trip back to the status quo. It’s funny you mention Spider-Verse, because my current theory is that Secret Wars is going to have the multiverse battle each other, and whoever survives becomes the new 616, so to speak. A little reshuffling rather than a Crisis might work out a little better.

Tom: It’s the culmination of Jonathan Hickman’s mega-story, but does that still mean what it did a couple of years ago? (In other words, has Marvel moved its focus away from the Avengers?)

Carla: There’s just nowhere for them to move their focus to instead of the Avengers. It’s a good idea to make them your central story hub, as they have the largest and most diverse cast (and you own more of their rights than Spider-Man or the X-Men in terms of cross-media promotion) so they should, by all rights, be fighting the most dangerous enemies. Earth’s Mightiest Heroes should be fighting Earth’s Biggest Threats. As far as Hickman’s mega-story, I don’t think it means what it did two years ago because his story is so long and so complicated, most of us have lost sight of what the original intention was to begin with. Wasn’t there supposed to be an Avengers World? Are we that world? Aren’t there other Avengers Worlds? Are we fighting a Thanos World or something? I am so lost.

Tom: Has DC screwed up its superhero line to where the only solution, once more, is some degree of reboot?

Carla: Keep in mind I pretty much read one DC title right now -- Justice League 3000; no new 52-ness -- but I still think the New 52 can be saved. There are some fantastic stories out there, but they don’t seem unified enough. I don’t feel like I’m reading the same Superman in Action Comics, say, that I am in Superman/Wonder Woman. When the whole line kicked off, some of the books were written in a different time setting than others, and the Justice League didn’t make any sense. Which, of course, is the problem when you lose decades of continuity: No one knows where to start. I am all for a comfortable massage to continuity to save things that worked in previous eras and to erase the more disappointing aspects that simply didn’t work in the new era. Maybe Convergence can marry both the old and the new and create the comics we were all hoping for at the first reboot.

Man, all this Christmas cheer has me really optimistic. Check back in a couple months, and I’m sure I’ll be on the street corner with a "THE END IS NIGH" sign held high ...

And speaking of ends (segue!), we’re going to can the Fantastic Four. AGAIN. Tom, you’re a smart man: Why do we hate the Fantastic Four so much? Are they too dated and corny for modern readers? Is Dan Didio right when he says that superheroes just shouldn’t have families?

[We interrupt this analysis for an important digression.]

Tom: Sorry I am late getting back to you [from Friday evening to Sunday morning], but I have a superstition about University of Kentucky basketball [Tom’s alma mater] and the Fantastic Four going back exactly 20 years. I bought a big stack of FF back issues right before the UK/UCLA game [of Dec. 3, 1994], and UK lost in the last minute [81-82]; and then I did the same thing the day before the UK/Louisville game [Jan. 1, 1995], which UK also lost [88-86]. Yesterday [Dec. 27] was the Louisville game, which UK won, but I didn’t want to jinx it by talking FF ...

Carla: Dude. DUDE. That Fantastic Four anecdote is PRICELESS! Tell me we’re keeping it in!

[Yep. Moving on.]

Tom: I don’t think the “family” element enters into it as much anymore as the “institution” element does. By this point the family dynamics are pretty well settled -- Sue’s not leaving Reed for Namor, Johnny’s not settling down (and especially not with Alicia), Ben’s more comfortable with his appearance, etc. Hickman’s creation of the Future Foundation was a step in the right direction, because it moved the group from a collection of individuals to an organization that can do FF-type things. However, making the FF an institution -- both in-universe and as a publishing obligation -- means that Marvel has to keep justifying its existence. If that means comics about Reed&Sue&Johnny&Ben, then those comics have to find something new (or at least entertaining) about those characters, and that’s not always easy after 50-plus years. Byrne did it, Simonson did it, Waid and Wieringo did it. Conversely, Dwayne McDuffie and Paul Pelletier and Matt Fraction and Mike Allred produced very good FF comics using a different set of characters.

The problem is that no one will ever do Fantastic Four comics like Stan and Jack did. Many have tried, and some have come very close; but the original run of Fantastic Four was a mind-blowing reaction to a square status quo. You just don’t have that combination of creators, characters and marketplace today. Instead, it seems like the FF have become something that Marvel feels like it ought to publish (most of the time) instead of something about which it feels passionate. If that now makes the FF dated or corny, then Marvel needs to figure out how to make them subversive again. Such a feat truly would be a job for the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.

Carla: Or one Tom Bondurant! Seriously, I think you might have solved the problem at hand: The Fantastic Four can be a style of comic rather than a specific set of pieces? A “Fantastic Four vibe” that can be applied to different sets of characters and a dynamic of storytelling that we all agree is pretty awesome. Maybe we’ve just solved the problem! Perhaps if editors and creators looked less as the FF as a series of tropes, let’s say (i.e. the “Ben feels like a monster!” story, the “Reed and Sue have a marital dispute!” story, etc.), and more like an an actual institution, a “mechanism of social order governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given community,” no matter who those individuals are or what the specific community is. Of all things, the X-Club comics really came close to that idea: a bunch of super science types interacting with one another socially as well as the bizarre sci-fi atmosphere around them. Plus Si Spurrier is a hoot. I think you’re on to something as far as the published comic goes, anyhow.

A very long time ago, I got to ask Kevin Feige and Joe Quesada about the lack of tie-in comics to the Incredible Hulk movie. When Iron Man came out a month before, the comics on the stands very much matched up with RDJ’s performance, but Incredible Hulk under Bruce Jones was, to be more frank today, garbage. At that time, it was made clear to me by the president of Marvel Studios and then-editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics that “creators have to be able to ‘stretch their legs’ and do what they want without a corporate influence.” I remember this clearly now in 2015, where the multimedia aspect of both Marvel and DC is getting way beyond a couple movies. We all know the Josh Trank-directed Fantastic Four reboot will be nothing like the comics -- so much so that Kate Mara apparently was told not to read them, as “the plot won’t be based on any history of anything already published.” Is Fox killing the Fantastic Four? How much is synergy worth between comics and other media?

Tom: I’m curious about the new FF movie mainly to see how it handles those pesky family dynamics. Part of the “obligatory” nature of the FF is the apparent need to show them fighting Doom, the Mole Man, the Frightful Four, etc. This is where the Tim Story FF movies fell flat, with Doom in sensible slacks and Galactus being a big space-cloud.

Carla: Ehhhhn, I’d say the set pieces were not the problem with the Tim Story movies. It was more the utter lifelessness of the fantastic settings they tried to pull off. It’s not that they had to put in Doctor Doom, it’s that were had no reason to care Doctor Doom was even there in the first place outside of name recognition. Khan had the same problem in Star Trek Into Darkness: The characters couldn’t react to the gravity of Khan’s appearance as much as the spectators watching a movie could recognize him. Modern updates aside, the last set of Fantastic Four movies had very little heart, an essential element of the First Family.

I mean, you can’t tell me wacky concepts don’t work when a raccoon and a tree can make a space jailbreak in the biggest summer blockbuster of this year.

Tom: If Fantastic Four turns out to be a bunch of young’uns fighting a deranged hacker, then no, it won’t be like anything in the comics -- except if they do right by the characters. Again, the future of the FF may rest on which paradigm wins out. Is Fantastic Four (comic or movie) about blue jumpsuits, weird science, and outsize villains; or is it about a guy, his girlfriend, her brother, and their best friend? At its best the FF excels at both, but I’m starting to think that one approach works for one medium, and one works for the other.

Carla: Oh, I don’t want that to be true. Mark Waid gave us the best of both of those worlds in his landmark run on the title with the late, great Mike Wieringo, and I can’t imagine that another excellent team wouldn’t be up for the challenge. Still, I agree that it’s absolutely essential to see how the new movie does and where the Fantastic Four will land in the future ...

Tom: As for corporate synergy, I’d say the other media have consistently been disproportionately influential on the comics, going back to the days of the Superman radio show. If my non-comics-fan friends are any indication, Wonder Woman is Lynda Carter, and William Moulton Marston’s unorthodox ideas (to say nothing of the utopian feminists of the ‘20s) don’t even enter into the conversation. More recently, RDJ’s Iron Man seems to have had a pretty profound effect on the comics’ portrayal, while Scarlett Johansson has almost single-handedly made Black Widow an A-list character. Obviously, I doubt we’d be seeing a Peggy Carter miniseries (comics or TV) if not for the Cap movies.

Carla: Too true. Not all corporate synergy is as bad as the buzzword makes it sound. At the same time, however, I always wonder how many of the people clamoring for a Black Widow solo movie actually read her series; which by the way, is amazing and comes with a bigger budget than a movie ever could. Just saying. But still, being known by the public is one thing, being consumed in the comics medium is another.

Tom: Yeah, Man of Steel, Gotham and Arrow haven’t done much for Superman, Batman and Green Arrow comics (although GA’s New 52 makeover has muddled things somewhat), while the Flash show is very comics-friendly.

Carla: New 52 comics-friendly or just comics in general?

Tom: The Flash show is both faithful to what people say they want out of a Barry Allen Flash comic (i.e., cheerful science adventure) and to the general details of those comics (for example, Captain Cold’s blue parka).

Carla: So comics-in-general-friendly. It’s not like anyone’s picking up a Flash comic off the stands and going, “Hey, this is just like that TV show!”

Tom: Well, I think Marvel sees the comics as more integral to its corporate strategy, while DC sees them as more of their own thing. Whether that means Warner Bros. uses DC as a “content farm” (harvesting Easter eggs, ha ha) is less clear to me. Certainly they’re not using Gotham to sell Batman comics. I think both companies would rather have hit TV shows and movies than million-selling comics series (Star Wars notwithstanding), just because of the economics.

Carla: (One does make far more money than the others ...)

Tom: So no, I don’t think Fox is necessarily killing the FF in any sense; but that doesn’t mean the movie’s fortunes have anything to do with the comic’s. If the movie’s a success and Marvel still doesn’t want to publish FF comics, it can have the group show up in the background, like S.H.I.E.L.D. used to. If the movie’s a failure, that could mean the return of a “traditional” FF comic, or it could give Marvel an excuse to keep the FF comic on hiatus. However, if the movie’s such a success that Marvel has to relaunch the FF comic, then Marvel would probably have to harmonize the two somehow.

Carla: Well, not that long ago I would have said that there’s a time and a place for everything and that’s called “the Ultimate Universe.” In fact, the Ultimate Universe was great for getting X-Men in leather, Spider-Man continuity-free and even the FF with a ... well, large, threatening space cloud. Still, it was a place for the continuity line to blur and more modern origins to flourish. Sadly, the Ultimate universe is more of an ongoing What If? at this point; and with Secret Wars on the horizon, might be on the chopping block sooner than later.

Tom: Speaking of synergy, though -- when do you think we’ll see Rick Jones in the Marvel Cinematic U? (And where’s he been in the comics?)

Carla: Technically, I’d say we already have seen Rick Jones in the MCU: His name is Phil Coulson. He’s the human observer to the world of the superhero who gets mixed up in their crazy adventures due to an ambiguous "destiny" kind of thing. Bruce Banner didn’t save him from a gamma blast, but Coulson fits the Rick Jones role rather well. As far as where Rick’s been in the comics ... yeesh. He was gamma-powered in World War Hulks and became ... ugh. The hero known as “A-Bomb.” No, this wasn’t the 1990s. The most recent Hulk series had him depowered and returned to normal. At least, normal for Rick Jones.

Tom: Yikes! OK, are Metro’s customers excited about the Marvel Netflix Universe, and/or TNT doing a Teen Titans series?

Carla: Metro Entertainment (in Santa Barbara, California; come on down!) happens to be a very movie/TV-savvy crowd, so a lot of folks are excited for the Daredevil series and the crazy future plans of Marvel Studios. Who knew we’d be announcing movies up to the year 2018? Wow! All this from a comic publisher who tried to be a movie studio.

I can’t say there’s been a lot of chatter about the Teen Titans series, mostly because the comics have gone from being an exciting series with a wide age range readership to people having to be reminded it’s still published. DC is still making a Teen Titans comic, right?

Tom: Yes, but you don’t hear a lot about it. Maybe after Convergence things will pick up ...?

Carla: We can hope! It’s a great concept and a huge hit for DC in general, so maybe the momentum gained from the show can follow through to the comics, even if they are synergized a little to make it happen.

If anything, Arrow and Flash are huge, especially among people who have never been in our store before. A lot of kids asked for Flash comics for Christmas! We had a similar trend when Smallville was on the air so my hat is off to the WB TV division. Also to that one writer on The Flash, Chris Rafferty? I hear he used to work at a really cool comic book shop ...

[Come back Friday for Part 2!]