The Perfect (Re)Introduction | Falcon Talks
How to (re)introduce a character to a potentially new audience
Hi everyone!
So, how would you (re)introduce a character who has a fair bit of backstory established in previous stories to an audience who may or may not have read said stories featuring said character?
Well, if you’re the creators of The Unstoppable Wasp Vol. 1 #1, you summarize all of the relevant backstory in one page!
To explain - Nadia, the new Wasp, was first introduced in All-New, All-Different Avengers #9.1
Her backstory is then established in All-New, All-Different Avengers and after a stint in that book, she gets a solo series - The Unstoppable Wasp.
When I first picked up The Unstoppable Wasp, I had not read All-New, All-Different Avengers, and I didn’t really know what her backstory was.2
Lucky for me, though, this page was placed near the very start of the series, and it was able to succiently tell me what I needed to know about Nadia so that I could enjoy the story!
To this day, I still think that it’s one of the best (re)introductions that I’ve read - it was concise, it was beautifully drawn and laid out, and it naturally came up at the beginning of the story. Thanks to this page, I was able to enjoy the rest of the series - and enjoyed it I did! 😄
But, sometimes, you don’t want to info dump.
Sometimes, you have enough of a main plot that doesn’t rely on the reader knowing your characters’ origin stories before they can enjoy the current story - so you have some time before it needs to be elaborated on.
Such was the case with Green Lanterns Vol. 1: Rage Planet.
(Because a lot of DC and Marvel comics are written “for the trade” these days, even though this book collects the first six issues of the series plus a prologue, I'm counting it as the “first episode”.)
Green Lanterns stars Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz, two of Earth’s newest Green Lanterns3. Both of them had been featured in previous books before, but this is Jessica Cruz’s first time as a title character. Both of them have had their origin stories and their backstories established and explored in previous books before this. Simon’s backstory is also well woven into the book, but we’ll focus on Jessica for this article.
At the beginning of the book, we are introduced to Jessica and Simon - two Green Lanterns who are then forced to team up with each other to protect Earth due to circumstances in deep space calling away Earth’s other Green Lanterns.
Throughout the book, we see that Jessica is struggling with a deep anxiety - her sister is even surprised to see her out of her apartment, and there’s references to how she had hid in her apartment for a long time before being able to leave again. Every day, she overcomes her anxiety and her fears so that she can help people as a Green Lantern!
Over the course of the book, the Red Lanterns4 attack the Earth and establish a base there.
With everything on the line, Simon and Jessica launch an attack on the Red Lanterns… but it goes awry.
Suddenly Simon finds himself in trouble, while Jessica has gone missing…
She feels her anxiety and fears creeping in, and she remembers the incident that traumatized her…
But she pushes past her fears, and…
And now, renewed with confidence and power, she launches her counterattack so that she can join her partner in stopping the Red Lanterns!
And that’s how you weave and hint at a previously established backstory throughout a book until it’s time to (re)reveal it! 😄
But, what if there just isn’t a natural point in the story to bring up all the relevant backstories, characters relationships, and plot events that will be important to the new storyline?
What if you were adapting from existing source material that didn’t bother catching up newcomers, but you have to do it for your adaptation - and there’s 8 years worth of storylines and characters to catch newcomers up on?! 😱
Such was the case with Kinnikuman: Perfect Origin Arc.
Kinnikuman is an iconic battle shounen manga which started all the way back in 1979.
Though iconic in its native Japan, it’s a bit obscure everywhere else (though it is apparently popular in Latin America as well).
24 years after the original run of the manga ended in 1987, it was revived in 20115 with new storylines - the first of which would be called the Perfect Origin Arc. From what I’ve been able to find, there was no attempt to onboard new readers to the new storyline.
So, when it came time in 2023 (to celebrate the 1983 anime adaptation’s 40th anniversary) to adapt the Perfect Origin Arc, the creators of this new adaptation had an interesting conumdrum.
A 40th anniversary celebration would surely bring in a lot of newcomers, not to mention that it would be getting a worldwide release on Netflix as well!
How would you get everyone (newcomers and returnees alike) up to speed so that they could enjoy your new anime?
The answer to that, of course, is to start with an entire recap episode! 😆
It would take too long for me to recap this… recap episode 😉, but for someone who hadn’t really read or watched anything related to Kinnikuman, this Episode 0 did a great job in catching me up to speed!
It did a great job explaining who the main character, Kinnikuman, was; it recapped the character relationships and the relationships between the different factions; and it explained how the Chojin (the wrestling aliens that this series stars) work.
Through deft narration, well-animated scenes, and the precise pinpointing of relevant information, this well-paced recap episode managed to get me invested and gave me enough understanding for the new story that was about to unfold.
Kinnikuman: Perfect Origin Arc’s Episode 0 stands tall as one of the most brilliant ways to (re)introduce characters and backstories to newcomers and returnees that I’ve ever encountered!
And those were three (re)introductions that I found to be excellent!
Let me know in the comments below if you’ve encountered any other notable (re)introductions.
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For now though…
She does technically first appear in Free Comic Book Day 2016 (Civil War II), but that’s a backup, in media res story with no real explanation as to what’s happening. So her actual introduction is All-New, All-Different Avengers #9.
As for why I was interested in the book in the first place, that’s for a reason which is a spoiler - so I’ll have to talk about that another day. 😅
Green Lanterns are essentially a sort of space cop with a ring that lets them create energy constructs powered by willpower.
Similar to the Green Lanterns in powers, but they run on RAGE. 😡
There was an attempt at a sequel before this, called Kinnikuman: The 2nd Generation, but the new run in 2011 continues directly from where the original run leaves off.