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Underground > Comic Books >

Should DC abandon continuity?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:09 / 21.11.05

So, every year it seems like there's at least one miniseries concentrating on 'the early career of the Dark Knight', there's 'All Star Superman' doing the same for Truth, Justice and the American Way Kid, for ages DC was really pushing Elseworld stories because for some reason it was vitally important for them to tell us stories that didn't work with regular continuity, rather than ignore the past as Marvel does (the Marvel universe is what, about permanently 15 years old or something?), DC has to keep confronting this issue of time passing, with Crises to reset the internal clocks of everything and worrying about why villains used to be dumb...

So would the DCU be happier if they gave up the idea of continuity and just told us stories? Sure, people would moan that there are no consequences for anyone but does anyone really think Batman will marry? Swamp Thing and Hal Jordan have both come back from heaven (it's only a matter of time before Jim Corrigan does the same) so obviously the fans don't want stories with change and consequences.

06:56 / 21.11.05

It seems as though change and consequences are only really useful in fiction - in serial fiction, that is - during a story with a noticeable beginning, middle, and end. Be that one tale, a sequence of related tales (usually by the same creative staff), or one of those things where there's only really about four good stories that the concept supports strongly.
Batman should be the lonely loner who occasionally is saved from his loneliness by friends and wards until somebody gets too touchy and suddenly he's alone again.
Same from John Constantine, really.
You just retell them. Polish them, put a new spin on, a new air, and ride the concept for what it's worth before moving on. Repeat as necessary.

yawn - thing's buddy

09:09 / 21.11.05

nah.

continuity creates the necessary complexity for the DC paperverse to become self-aware.

keep continuity.

09:40 / 21.11.05

No, but they shouldn't INSIST upon it either. There's room for both kinds of stories.

09:51 / 21.11.05

I thought any problems with continuity had been neatly sidestepped with hypertime...

09:55 / 21.11.05

You are, of course, joking.
Hypertime has been rather neatly ignored and side stepped ever since its inception.

10:16 / 21.11.05

Boboss - Hypertime may be 'forgotten' by the creators (although I'd bet my sandwiches that Mark Waid still remembers it), but if we keep mentioning it, maybe they'll bring it back. Hypertime neatly explained everything, from what happened to Kal-L to where all the elseworlds stories came from.

BTW, I don't think it has been forgotten. This is really geeky, but I read the Kingdom last week, so it's not like I have some kinda scary memory, but there was a panel in the hypertime kalaidoscope double-spread with the commie Supes. Now, those with sharp eyes (and dodgy taste in comics) will have noticed the commie supes pop up in a recent Batman/Superman issue, along with a parallel universe/DC version of the Ultimates.

See? Hypertime, mofos.

Anyhow, continuity is important, necessary and fun. Just becasue 'mainstream' culture doesn't appreciate the history of popular characters, there are many of us that do, and without continuity, there's no history, there's just stories. Good stories, mind, but continuity is the thread that links these ideas together. It's a good thing.

10:22 / 21.11.05

Isn't continuity what keeps the more autistic-spectrumy readers bulk-buying?

10:25 / 21.11.05

Long running saps like coronation street manage to have a fairly consistent continuity with significantly more story going on than say all the bat titles over a given year, the difference is that the soaps characters get old and die in real time as their actors do, and the DC frachise couldn't really cope with that, so we have a kind of stasis and iterations on themes as a rule (alfred, gordon, batman) and ageing / dying / replacing as an exception (the robins) with character developments coming and going at the whim of the writer in residence. and all in all i quite like that.

10:29 / 21.11.05

I like Hypertime, K, but let's face it, it *has* been brushed under the carpet. Whether it will return is another question.

And, Ganesh, I'd say yes.

21:23 / 21.11.05

Since I dont follow characters and only writers I'm all in favour of putting an end to continuity. There should be a continuity within that story which follows its own continuity for obvious reasons but bring back the dead, murder whoever you want to just concentrate on telling good stories. Not that its going to happen.

02:23 / 22.11.05

I think Krug's hit upon something. At the risk of coming over all Zen, it's not the industry that needs to abandon continuity—it's the fans.

Of course, the prevalence of fans-turned-pro in the industry makes this (like many questions surrounding the comics business and its culture) rather a chicken-or-egg sort of proposition, reducing down to an implosive tipping point of recursion—where eventually, every comic is written by continuity geeks for other continuity geeks, all of whom are also pros writing their own books by and for continuity geeks, and so on—the market defcreasing constantly through attrition until it's one guy, writing stories for himself and selling them to himself.

02:23 / 22.11.05

I have suddenly been struck with a thought. With this thread in the back of my brain, I stumbled across the answer to inter-comics continuity. And the answer is: Age of Apocalypse. If you just read, say, 'Wolverine' and no other X-title, when it shifted over to 'Weapon X' for four issues, there was continuity in action - history had been changed and the world remade - but in that series, you were never given an explanation, really, of what changes were made or how. From one issue to the next, the title changed, the characters suddenly had vastly different histories and relations, and the very world, the context in which they operated, shifted. Without proper expository.
All comics should be able to do that. All serial fictions should be able to just pick up a new atmosphere, a new history or context, without invalidating, necessarily, anything that came before.
To put it another way: it doesn't matter how many times Mike Moorcock puts Jerry Cornelius in a completely different set-up, or how different the various worlds and histories and characterizations Leiji Matsumoto can put Harlock through... you take it in stride. None of the presentations invalidate the others. The angles, the alternate presentations, in fact, enhance the central conceits. Jerry as angel-of-death does not invalidate Jerry as failed-rocker-living-with-mother. Harlock the dopey cowboy does not invalidate Harlock the WWI pilot in combat with a fucking moutain... or Harlock the suddenly-pitched-into-Wagnerian-Space-Opera.

07:43 / 22.11.05

That's pretty much a description of Hypertime.

scipio africanus

17:29 / 23.11.05

also very similar to the technique of warner bros. looney toons animators, with Bugs, Daffy, Yosemite Sam and so on constantly shifting timeframes and realities with no rationale beyond "musta taken a wrong toin at Albequrque". incidentally, it is cool that there are hypertime realities where Superman has hung out with Bugs fucking Bunny

18:29 / 24.11.05

Comics in general, and DC in particular, deal in mythology. Not a new concept, I know, but it bears repeating in terms of continuity concerns. Part of what made Morrison's JLA so celebrated was it's usage of the mythology of it's characters. The characters were all very easy to follow and understand. Batman=smart. Superman=noble. I just picked up a used trade paperback of the 'World War III' storyline, the close of Morrison's run, and I didn't feel out of step with the characters, though the run was how long ago? Five or or six years? Maybe more. I didn't need to know who anybody was, who they had married, and so-on.

Back to the point of continuity: it doesn't matter but it matters. A perceived history makes the characters more resonant, and riffs on that history gain a lot of momemtum, not to mention the sheer dramatic tension of finding out what else will be different. (Millar's Red Son, as an example.) Continuity (perceived or actually published) is what makes the characters larger than life, yet it can, will, and should be broken when a story demands it.

Lastly, I usually find continuity to be a thru-line, a document of that character in relation to their defenition. If Batman fights crime to avenge his parents, the continuity will both document that activity, but also document where it departs. Batman will never hang up the cape, but some of the best stories have been about either the beginnings or endings of him wearing it.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that any fictional character can have a history, but they can also rise above it, since that history is itself a fiction.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

18:54 / 24.11.05

DC has officially said that they won't be using it anymore, with Dan Didio saying that it won't be referred to in their books as long as he is with the compnay.

Which is a shame, since it was a beautifully simple concept that worked wonderfully well as a background device to keep things orderly for the continuity obsessives and fun enough for those of us who aren't.

My feeling on continuity is simple: As long as it doesn't get int eh way of a good story, I have no problem with it. Once it does, I tend to quit reading the writer and or editor who feel they need to show slavish devotion (or destruction) to old stories.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:09 / 25.11.05

I must admit that I did get bored with the vast bulk of Elseworlds, where it soon dropped into a game of 'well, if they're casting Batman as Marco Polo you just know the Emperor of China will be the Joker', 'if they're doing the Trojan War with the JLA as the heroes of Greece then you know the Injustice Gang will be the Trojans', in many ways it seemed to be using exactly the same tropes as the (often pre-Crisis) DCU, just altered to the locale, often in a rather smug "Did you see what I did there?" kind of way.

09:44 / 27.11.05

Did anyone other than me read 'Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham' and if so, what's your call? The maid was meta-conscious enough and I liked her 'What do you need a husband for, when you have me" line, but the Two-Face feminized analog? It's a woman, so she can't be a DA, obviously, so they make her a model cum CEO of a perfume company or something like that. Bruce Wayne as manic and nigh transparent stalker? It could almost be commentary on the canonical character, but somehow....
I think the Elseworlds books should probably be required to have something to say/do other than just swapping location/era and plugging familiar fictional characters into the identities of familiar historical characters. The Adam Warren Teen Titans, or even 'Kingdom Come', even if it's just an excuse for a Batcove and other bad piratey puns. Something more than just Bat-Davinci or that trinity of German classic cinema riffs, 'Blue Amazon' and such, which is fun in concept, but the execution pretty much falls short of having anything relevant or useful to say.