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1. Hypertime. In a nutshell. Does it matter, and why the hell should I care?
Hypertime is a nice way of saying "Continuity is what the writer wants it to be" and a very elegant solution to the problem of trying to have a consistant universe after 70 years of comics, at least 50 of which editors didn't care about previous issue continuity, let alone across different series. I don't think anyone should care, since it's been ignored since it came up, and will be moot after the current Crisis.
2. Vertigo. Constantine is a very cool character, and I want to see him hang out with Batman and the rest of the normal DCU. He chills with Doctor Fate, Doctor Fate hung out with Bats...Why can't Constantine just have an adventure with Batman and everybody else? I get that to put him into a DC book would be watering him down and making him not be able to swear as much...but other than that, is there any real reason that he can't? Some sort of continuity jumping problem? He's Vertigo, but he's not self-contained like The Invisibles or Preacher...So whats the deal?
The deal is that DC did not want to mix its adult line with its all ages line. Constantine started in Swamp Thing right as DC started having a "mature readers" line (which consisted of one book, Swamp Thing). Constantine actually came out of Swamp Thing's "Crisis" tie-in and was the first tiem DC tried to get rid of a lot of their magic based characters. When his book started, it was also a mature readers only comic, and because it was primarily a horror comic, they kept the super-hero elements out of it...pretty much after the JLA appearance in Gainman's "Sandman", the mainline DC heroes were kept out of the Vertigo books and vice versa. Rumors are that it was because Paul Levitz didn't want to have to explain the Vertigo stuff in case a younger reader picked up one of the books to get a "Hawk and Dove" tie-in or somesuch. It was a blurry line, to be sure, what with Animal Man in the JLE for a while, and a few isolated others, but for the most part, the lines were kept separate.
I think it was smart of Vertigo to keep the line between the two lines. It let Vertigo be more than just "adult super-heroes", and could explore new genres.
As for a Batman "mature readers" bok...they've done a few, but they keep them in the high priced formats to keep them from being considered kids books. I don't know how well it works, but I haven't seen a story about parents angry about mature super-heroes in a long time, so it must be working. |
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