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Marvel Mythology Surgery

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15:58 / 25.05.04

broad question -- how come the DC universe has always been plagued by multiverses and reboots and continuity clashes from different timelines, but Marvel's has not? Is it just that the DC characters were around for so much longer and the company kept buying other companies' properties? because even if this was the case back in the early eighties, the following 20 years of material may have done the same thing to Marvel -- what are people's thoughts about this? is this something that really distinguishes the universes?

16:09 / 25.05.04

Why do you think Marvel created the Ultimate universe?

I think it was Gerard Jones who suggested that comicbook universes tend to get re-invented roughly every 20 years. DC simply had a head start.

19:11 / 25.05.04

Marvel's *has* been assailed with continuity problems, just different ones.

I started reading comics right before the Secret Wars thing. Do people remember that? I think that came before Crisis on Infinite Earths. Both were ways for the respective companies to simplify their universes.

I tend to believe Marvel's continuity thangs are different because Stan Lee was such an active part of the company and had definite ideas about all the flagship characters. DC, on the other hand, was doing different sorts of things with Superman in different places -- and had, in the case of Green Lantern, Flash, Hawkman and a few other big names, actually made them different people when they revived the titles. I think the timeline goes
- 1930s, superheroes show up
- 1940s, superheroes fight in WWII, then gradually taper off in popularity
- 1950s, superheroes eclipsed by other comics (romance, sci-fi, horror, humor), many titles discontinued
- 1960s, superheroes reborn (Silver Age), and sort of fused with the other genres (Legion of Super Heroes was a sci-fi romance, for example).

So, that's when Marvel kind of came into the scene. They made monster books in the 1950s, then sort of carried that aesthetic over into the Fantastic Four. But DC just brought back old titles with new, flashier contents. Instead of Alan Scott, this kind of magical dude with a vulnerability to wood and big, dorky cape, Green Lantern became Hal Jordan, a cop from space. Flash changed from dashing college sports hero Jay Garrick to romantically vexed police chemist Barry Allen -- and lost the hat & gymnast's uniform in favor of an expandable rubber suit. Superman, however, just got tweaked a little -- enough that they had to explain that the old familiar one was on one Earth, and the newer, "more exciting" one was on another Earth.

Which, as it turned out, just turned into a major problem down the line, for people who really cared about consistent history in their comic-reading experience.

Marvel just got into trouble with time travel and alternate origins and stuff, as far as I know. Both sets of problems came to a head in the 80s.

Matthew Fluxington

19:39 / 25.05.04

how come the DC universe has always been plagued by multiverses and reboots and continuity clashes from different timelines, but Marvel's has not? Is it just that the DC characters were around for so much longer and the company kept buying other companies' properties?

A lot of the problem with DC was that the characters were never meant to be part of strict continuity, and the company tried to shoehorn its mythology into a "universe" because of Marvel's success. DC's characters work better outside of continuity primarily because they were built to exist without it. Marvel's characters were designed for longterm soap opera-style writing, so generally speaking, Marvel has fewer continuity issues.

However, after years of crap writing, Marvel really could be well-served by a continuity reboot. I don't think they need to do a full-on ground floor retooling as DC did post-Crisis (or something like those awful Ultimate comics) - I don't think they need to retell the old stories all over again. I just think they need to come up with some ridiculous story that undoes some weird continuity problems and bad editorial decisions like Spider-Man getting married or Colossus getting killed off.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:40 / 26.05.04

how come the DC universe has always been plagued by multiverses and reboots and continuity clashes from different timelines, but Marvel's has not? Is it just that the DC characters were around for so much longer and the company kept buying other companies' properties?

Mostly because DC never really cared about that sort of thing until Marvel beat them in sales by doing it. And, for most of the 40's, DC was two different companies. Through DC's history, they woudl buy up companies that folded, and then try to absorb the characters into what they had.

There was also a much different editorial hand at DC in the 60's, with a number of different editors who actually saw each other as competition, while Marvel was all under Stan Lee, who used crossovers to pump sales of failing books, and to help with his own overworked schedule.

I don't think Marvel needs a big "crisis" type reboot, since they have creators who have shown that they can reinvent series without it. Daredevil springs to mind. They don't DEAL with the stupid crap of the past, just what they need to for the current stories.

14:10 / 26.05.04

By the way -- because I was, at the time, among the scoffers -- what exactly DID Marvel's "Secret Wars" solve?

Aside from giving Spider-Man that funky black uniform....

14:15 / 26.05.04

Low sales?

Actually, I think it allowed Marvel to synchronize all their titles to a common present. But I could be wrong.

flufeemunk effluvia

14:40 / 26.05.04

Secret Wars did have that whole bit about Doom getting uber-powerful...

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

18:30 / 26.05.04

Secret Wars was a toy tie-in. Shooter has said so in most of his post-Marvel interviews, but at the time he said it was Marvel's answer to the "not yet released" Crisis by DC. Mattel asked them to help push their new Marvel toy line, and Shooter proposed a story that would get the heros into a place where it wouldn't use up regular issues, and give an excuse for the different accessories the heroes would be given (shields, weapons, etc...)

What did it solve? Nothing really. Just started the wave of "every super-hero fights an insanely powerful bad guy" event that plagued comics until the mid 90's.

19:07 / 26.05.04

So it didn't have *anything* to do with continuity? Or future versions of heroes coming into the present and whatnot?

----

On a related continuity note, notice that both DC and Marvel have rights to a character named "Captain Marvel." Since the "Shazam!" one was originally from Fawcett and not DC, he was described as "The World's Mightiest Mortal" -- which led to problems when he wound up in the same "universe" as Superman. I can't remember much about the Marvel Captain Marvel, except that he was completely different.

19:54 / 26.05.04

Fawcett Publishing’s Captain Marvel and the life and death of Marvel's Captain Marvel

20:12 / 26.05.04

Also some tid-bits on Secret Wars

21:07 / 26.05.04

I've always wondered why every company is allowed to use the name "Sentinel".

DC has Sentinel (Alan Scott, former GL)
Marvel has it's Sentinels (Big effing robots)
Image has Sentinel (forgettable character from Youngblood or some shite)

I'm sure there is another one I'm forgetting..

Did they just not trademark the name or is it in the public domain, like THOR?

22:07 / 26.05.04

I just think they need to come up with some ridiculous story that undoes some weird continuity problems and bad editorial decisions like Spider-Man getting married to Colossus.

You know you liked it.

23:39 / 26.05.04

I believe that you cannot legally trademark a common word. This is why some companies use "kewl" spellings...because you CAN trademark new words.

BrianFitzgerald

19:29 / 27.05.04

Is Sam Guthrie (Cannonball) still immortal? Did anything significant ever result from that whole Xternals plotline?

Matthew Fluxington

19:42 / 27.05.04

Cannonball is just an ordinary guy. All that Xternals stuff has been excised/contradicted - all of those characters were among the first to die of the Legacy Virus.

23:19 / 31.05.04

actually Selene killed off all the Externals except for Apocalypse. So technically I guess she is the last External.

04:34 / 01.06.04

What happened to X-Force before X-Statix took over? I remember (in that Revolution relaunch?) they were taken under the wing of Pete Wisdom, but I lost interest in that whole thing.

Now that X-Force is coming back, I'm curious (not that I really plan to buy the relaunch...). And why did Warpath have his old costume in NXM (the one where they go to Afghanistan)? Did he get the "revert to spandex" memo early and lose the leather costume from X-Force?

Oh, and what happened to Cable? I stopped reading about the time he rid himself of the techno-virus, so I missed the whole Soldier X thing.

05:00 / 01.06.04

Warpath says in that same issue that the Indian people love the Bollywood-style spandex costumes, hence why they wear them there.

16:42 / 03.06.04

Now that Mar-Vell story got me all weepy, dammit.

11:02 / 01.07.04

When was Wolverine born? Has the exact date been confirmed? How old is he and could he have a 83 year old daughter/son somewhere?

Brigade du jour

23:23 / 03.07.04

I would have thought that, like any other characterm Wolverine can't have an actual birthdate because his age has to remain constant. Which is why Tony Stark no longer fought in Vietnam because he would have been a baby at the time, if he'd even been born.

So, why don't we just say Wolverine's about 120 years old, and therefore his date of birth is circa 1885.

Or did you want to know so you could work out his star sign? I pull that shit all the time!

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:30 / 04.07.04

I would have thought that, like any other characterm Wolverine can't have an actual birthdate because his age has to remain constant.

Yeah, but as Wolverine is functionally immortal, that's a non-issue. As long as he had reached majority, he could have been involved in any historical event.

Sooo... at present, according to Origin, Wolverine was born in the late 19th century, but that could end up revealed as yet another memory implant...

Brigade du jour

21:18 / 04.07.04

Yeah I suppose Wolvie's a special case, one way or another!

So how old's Spider-Man then? I read on some website he's now 27, which inspired my 4x theory of superhero ageing. Anybody want to hear it?

Assuming someone else hasn't already come up with it or something like it which they probably have because there are literally millions of people who talk loads more about comics than I do.

14:35 / 11.07.04

Hey, don't forget the Clone Saga!

what actually happened in that?

peter parker wasnt peter parker for a while and he was called ben... is he still ben, or was it all a dream?

who came up with that shit anyway?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:55 / 11.07.04

You'll be wanting this site then. The Clone Saga was thought up by the Spiderman writers and was ruined by the Marvel suits.

21:01 / 12.07.04

Um, once again - the new Magik? Hunh?

>> This was also massively pushed in Marvel's letter pages, and was the subject of the infamous Jim Shooter "little fucks" memo (in which he said "Every letter needs to be answered in a way that pushes Secret Wars to get the little fucks to buy it" or something close to that).

>> But hey, if you liked it, then it worked.

Wow, I never heard of the 'little fucks' memo.

This thread (and the corresponding DCU thread) is truly joycore.

15:27 / 13.07.04

Thundra died in the early pages of JLA/AVENGERS, her universe (where she had settled down with Arkon, lightning-bolt Conan-type dude) wiped out by the Crisis-type wave that just kept obliterated universes. The Crime Syndicate's universe was also destroyed, but apparently they're coming back cause of the universe egg thing referenced at the end of JLA/AVENGERS:

>> Kurt Busiek takes over JLA with issue #107, teaming with Ron Garney and Dan Green on art. The solicitation reads: “Fan-favorite writer Kurt Busiek (ASTRO CITY) joins the JLA art team of Ron Garney & Dan Green for “Crime Syndicate of Amerika,” an 8-part story that explodes from the pages of Busiek’s JLA/AVENGERS!

>> “Research has continued on the mysterious “space egg” left behind at the end of JLA/AVENGERS, leading the JLA to take steps to ensure that Krona stays put in his “prison.” But this distraction could prove fatal, since the real threat at the moment may come from another Earth!”

So maybe Thundra can live again after all, all you Thundra fans out there.

15:35 / 13.07.04

The new Magik is Amanda Sefton. I have no further information on her BEING the new Magik, except that it was revealed at the end of the Black Sun event a few years ago.

15:38 / 13.07.04

Amanda Sefton, huh? That kinda makes sense, in a cool weird way, since she was a sorceress. KKKeeewwwll....

Spyder Todd 2008

15:40 / 13.07.04

Heh. JLA?Avengers. I remember the first time I read it. When it was called Crisis.

17:02 / 13.07.04

Wait, so JLA/Avengers is honest-to-god continuity? It happened? Two years from now, Batman will still remember meeting Captain America?

19:51 / 13.07.04

Heh. JLA?Avengers. I remember the first time I read it. When it was called Crisis.

it's not just Crisis. it's a sort of fusion of/homage to Crisis on Infinite Earths, Avengers/Defenders War, and some other stuff, as far as i can tell. personally, i thought it was pretty brilliant overall for a mainstream uber-mega-cosmic crossover deal, especially in terms of the commentary on the differences of the two universes.

Wait, so JLA/Avengers is honest-to-god continuity? It happened? Two years from now, Batman will still remember meeting Captain America?

it looks that way. which, to me, is really cool.

00:11 / 14.07.04

Flamingoes: That exhaustive run through the Clone Saga was terrifying--it's like Exhibit A of everything that's wrong with corporate-property comics--the marketing driven by arbitrary "events," the capricious Editorial diktats, the writing-by-committee--but just as much an indictment of the fanboy-as-creator phenomenon: the deep artistic conservatism, the distaste for change, the sheer institutionalized character of these long, nitpicky debates over "continuity," like Hasidim niggling over an interpretation of the Torah.

My favorite bit: all the writers creating characters willy-nilly, characters that are just blatant waldos, sock-puppets, Mary Sues, wish-fulfillment figures (you know, like a fictionsuit, only far more crass and creepy)--all of them praying for a "breakout" character, a franchise.

I stopped reading Marvel altogether in about 1992: the handwriting was on the wall even then, re: the corporate direction, and I've never had cause to regret that decision.

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