Back in the day,
Lays potato chips had a slogan: "
No one can eat just one" (on occasion, it was put as "
Betchya can't eat just one"). Easy, winning concept--our product is so good, if you try to limit your snack to one chip, you will fail, and probably end up eating the whole damn bag. No one can resist the temptation...even if an inability to stop stuffing your face with chips might, ultimately, be a pretty bad thing for your health.
Well, let's turn that into an overwrought metaphor, shall we? Just as, after one delicious chip, you can't resist going back for more, there are
story ideas that are great, even brilliant the first time. But future writers can't
resist going back to that well, again and again, even though it might not be a healthy idea for the franchise. No one can use X just once.
An example from another medium:
the holodeck.
Hey, the holdeck is a clever idea. And there were several
pretty good holodeck stories. But the writers couldn't resist going back to the bag for just one more chip, time and time again.
That's not to say that every later holodeck story was bad. Hey, some were pretty good. But lordy, there were some goshawful ones, and they basically wore the concept into the ground. And yet they still
couldn't stop going back to that well, again and again.
A comic book example? How about
Franklin Richards' powers?
For the past almost 40 years, we've been going back time and time (
and time) again through the cycle of Franklin
gets powers/powers are too dangerous/FF finds a way to lock off Franklin's powers "forever."These stories haven't all been bad...heck, I even rather enjoy
Hickman's take on the idea.
But the idea is something that
never really should have been repeated--having an essentially omnipotent member of the family that you can pull out whenever you've written yourself into a corner is probably not healthy for the concept of the
Fantastic Four. Even non-FF writers will
play the Franklin ex machina card, illogically, in the midst of their epic mega-event. No one can eat just one, it seems.
Oh,
DC has their infinite cans of worms, as well:
Hey, I loved
Crisis On Infinite Earths. And, while you can certainly argue whether or not it was wise, or even necessary, on its own terms it was largely successful.
Yet DC
couldn't stop with just one reboot. What should have been a once in a lifetime action became DC's prime option every single time someone had a burr under their saddle about some issue.
Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis,
the whatever-the-hell-that-was of
Final Crisis, multiple ridiculous re- and de- and re-re-boots in
Legion, and of course the magic that was
Flushpoint.
Of course, those are just my opinions. Surely you all have your own bugaboos, your own thoughts on what was a good idea the first time, maybe the second time, but annoying or damaging when the creators couldn't eat just one?
Have at it.