No One Can Eat Just One

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.