In our modern remix culture, we are used to reboots, relaunched, soft-boots, revamps and endless reimagining of existing imaginary friends in new context. Wanna see the Disney Princesses as The Beatles? Wanna know how the Green Hornet would do against The Shadow? Wanna see Kirk and Spock as merchant marines in a steampunky world? If so, pop culture today is your burrito. Still, I was really impressed with the first few episodes of ‘Archer: Dreamland’, which takes the snarky super-spy and puts him firmly in a 1947 noir film context, even visually referencing ‘Sunset Boulevard’ in the opening scenes. It’s well-thought-out, the characters fit the context and even the reasoning makes sense (in an ‘Archer’ black-comedy sort of way), leading to today’s familiar-yet-new query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) is kind of wondering now how the cast would do in a cowboy setting, asking: Which “reimagining” that could have been a disaster actually worked the best for you as a reader/view?
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“Transformers Animated” comes to mind. Before it even came out, I was certain I wasn’t going to like it due to the animation style, the light-hearted tone and some of the creator comments about changing some things about the TF mythos (like changing Optimus Prime from a noble warrior leader to some unsure young bot with a team of misfits). But I actually found it to be pretty enjoyable, if a bit goofy at times, and it became one of my favorite Transformers series (currently third after G1 and “Transformers: Prime”).
When they “modernized” Superman after the Crisis with John Byrne run. It could have gone wrong but actually its probably my favorite Superman run. They showed how it could have been in the 90’s with ridiculous designs and changes to the character.