What's the Deal with Marvel Comics' Reboots?

Comic readers know at this point how the big companies will reboot their respective comic universes to keep content fresh, and to reorganize their properties into a new status quo.  There's a dire situation, heroes may band together, but despite their efforts either lead to a "reality shattering" event, possibly a time travel mishap or parallel worlds colliding. When the dust settles, readers are re-introduced to a new world with characters and elements, some familiar, others revamped for a more contemporary re-telling or to blend acquired properties and alternate timelines into continuity. DC did it in 1985 with Crisis on Infinite Earths,  which famously destroyed the multiverse and combined the company's disparate properties, onto one earth. And again in 1994 when Zero Hour altered the timeline to include golden age versions of the Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman in WWII (except Superman who always seems to have landed on Earth a couple decades ago) while modern versions continue their legacy in the modern era. In 2006 the series 52 revealed that events of the previous year's Infinite Crisis had separated the single earth into fifty-two identical earths, and by the end of 52 a time-traveling creature altered the timeline altering the parallel earths effectively recreating the multiverse. In 2011 DC broke their ten-ish year rhythm with a story called Flashpoint in which the Flash has to restore the timeline and in doing so altered the entire multiverse. The appropriately named New 52 relaunched the entire DC line with fifty-two titles, mostly relaunches of old titles, some new ones including properties from the defunct Wildstorm comics. Now it's 2015, so I guess it's time for a reboot again. Since my return to reading current books, I haven't caught up on the DC titles, but I've read a whole bunch of Marvel, who are also rebooting their multiverse, so this series of articles will break down what I loved about the era called Marvel Now! (I wanna be clear, this is not a declaration of tribal preference for the company, it's just that the frequent sales on the Marvel app have made it easier to catch up digitally. I'd love to talk about some New 52 Bat-titles when I am properly read-up on those).

Frankie Richards and his ball containing
the Heroes Reborn universe

Marvel have had their reboots and relaunches. Nothing as huge as a relaunch of their whole line, Marvel tends to preserve the "mainstream" continuity known as Earth 616. In 1995 Marvel announced that they were killing off Charles Xavier and cancelling all of their X-titles. They let the confusion from this news hang in the air momentarily before announcing the launch of the first Age of Apocalypse universe. For months, alternate titles replaced all X-books before the timeline was fixed creating a new status quo. The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man were unaffected continuing their adventures in 616 until another event called Onslauht: Marvel Universe. This title was the conclusion of the Onslaught Saga, in which the title character was a being who had the powers of Xavier and Magneto had taken over New York and abducted Franklin Richards, the son of Reed and Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four, in an attempt to add his reality-altering powers. The finale was a truly epic battle, in which saw the combined forces of the X-Men, Fantastic Four, The Avengers and even Doctor Doom. The non-mutant heroes were forced to sacrifice themselves, apparently lost forever. Secretly, or perhaps without knowing himself, the young Franklin Richards saved them all by creating a 'pocket universe' which allowed Marvel to launch Heroes Reborn, a world where the Fantastic Four and Avengers were got all-new origin stories and existed without the X-Men, who were back on Earth 616 watching over Franklin among other things, nor Spider-Man, who didn't show up that day. Interestingly though, during this time, Franklin was often depicted holding a blue ball which was thought to contain the Heroes Reborn world. This too, didn't last, and with the aptly named Heroes Return about a year and a half later reuniting the classic heroes with the rest of Earth 616. In 2000 Marvel introduced a rebooted universe, separate from the 616 continuity. Called Ultimate Comics this line reintroduced classics starting with Spider-Man, and X-Men and eventually the Avengers, and Fantastic Four. Since Ultimate Comics was a completely distinct continuity, it was able to continue without disrupting the rest of Marvel and has since has ended, was reintroduced as its popularity wavered over the years, and is also known as Earth 1610. This universe also introduced the young Miles Morales who, inspired by Peter Parker's self-sacrifice, took up the Spider-Man legacy (look for more on Miles in the upcoming "What was cool about Marvel Now: Spiderman"). All of these re-imaginings are distinct from those of DC comics, in that Marvel's main continuity persisted. 2005's House of M would change that, not through time-travel, or any world crushing event but because of the instability of one classic Marvel character: Scarlet Witch. Her mutant powers have changed over the decades but they were always described as "chaos magic" or "hex powers." In House of M, Dr. Strange explained to the New Avengers that there was no such thing as "chaos magic," instead her mutant powers gave her access to magic, but her lack of formal training just made it seem like chaos. After her lack of control caused the deaths of Hawkeye, Vision and Wonder-Man in the previous story Avengers: Disassembled the New Avengers and X-Men set out to confront her. Before they could, she suffered a complete mental breakdown and an eruption of her magic changed the entire world and its history. Magneto was a world leader, an all-mutant S.H.I.E.L.D. served as his royal guard, Scarlet Witch lived like royalty, Hawkeye never died and Vision not only survived, but was father to Scarlet Witch's twins. It was not technically an alternate timeline, this new world was still Earth 616 albeit magically altered. After having to overcome their magically altered memories, the heroes finally confront Scarlet Witch who restores the world mostly back to normal. Hawkeye stuck around leading to his popular solo series written by Matt Fraction. Scarlet Witch, whose instability and  seemingly limitless power also stuck around, de-powered the majority of the world's mutants reducing the population to about two-hundred, which was a consequence that the X-Men and the rest of the mutants have had to deal with since, and in terms of the brand, was a much needed change to the status quo that I will discuss at length in the upcoming "What was Cool about Marvel Now: X-Men."

In House of M Scarlet Witch changes the world with no more than four words

Throughout the years Marvel has avoided using the word "reboot" to describe these events. They could reasonably claim that the full-multiversal- reboot is more of a DC thing, and that Earth 616 has persisted since comics' Golden Age. This was true until just this past year when, as a result of Time Runs Out, a story Jonathan Hickman has been building since the start of 2013's New Avengers, Earth 616 physically collided with Earth 1610 destroying both the Ultimate and mainstream Marvel universes. Since everything is blowing up and starting over, I'd like to get into the last few years of Marvel, the era we call Marvel Now! and why it's got me reading current Marvel comics again.