You're on your way back from your local comic shop, or your latest batch of issues have just arrived from whatever online service you use, and naturally, being a comic reader, you're pretty excited about where your favorite character(s) will take you next. Picking out an issue, you sit down, open it up, and discover a particular character's origin is explained… again.

Frustrated? You're not alone. For as along as I can remember, a character's origin pops up now and again to remind us how, exactly, that character came to be. The purpose, for the most part, is to educate any potential new readers on how that character became who they are, and once that bit of business is complete the reader can continue reading the latest adventure. Unfortunately, for readers like myself, this becomes a tired, old method of origin retelling.

Granted, there are exceptions to the rule. Anyone who is reading Green Lantern these days knows how Geoff Johns is weaving a tale that, essentially, retells that character's origin. In fact, it's a whole arc! The difference, however, is that Johns isn't just retelling the origin; he's fleshing it out. He's adding to it, making it more meaty all the while not changing anything that is fundamental to that character's origin.

Getting older hasn't helped me particularly, since things like money become a factor as my obsession chugs along. When I open up the latest issue of a character I like and see a quick primer on that character's origin, I cringe, because I'm thinking that those few pages could have went towards more story. If you're like me and have been reading comics for over 25 years, you've found yourself re-reading the origins of Batman or Spider-Man countless times.

On the other hand, the comics industry can't afford to alienate anyone, let alone potential new readers, and frankly, those of us who fall under the "currently reading comics" category can't afford to let the comics industry do that either. Imagine if no new readers existed, how long do you think it would be before more of your less-popular titles got cancelled? Where would that leave us readers? It's a scary thought, and while the current mainstream attention to our little community is a step in the right direction, some of us collected through the 90's enough to know that the bottom can drop out real fast.

So, what can be done? One solution is, literally, staring you in the face, and that's the Internet. Sure, anyone can surf and find out a character's origin, and so forth. But many readers, new and old, aren't aware of places to go and learn about the characters. Websites like Marvel's have a database full of their characters, and while it's useful, it's not enough. All of the publishers should have a section on their websites that detail each character's origin, and it should be reachable with just one click. The comics themselves should have notations from the editor reminding the newer readers that a certain character's background is a few steps away.

This would likely free up more pages for something current, as opposed to something that happened back in the golden and silver ages, while keeping the new readers in the loop. What do you think?

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