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My own personal hypertime

 
  

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Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
03:15 / 26.06.06
I just read through the horribly confusing mess that Marvel created with Xorn after New X-Men, and how they've now had to do THREE expository dumps to try and explain away the the plot of New X-Men 144 - 150. It is AMAZING to me that they go to such lengths to try and undo something that was approved just a couple of years ago.

And when someone asked me to explain it, I said, "I don't know how Marvel explains it, but in my own Hypertime, Xorn was a fake Magneto created to infiltrate Xavier's school. He was killed, and then Wanda brought him back in House of M, kind of like how she did anything the writers wanted her to."

I remember when Mike Barr was writing for DC, and whenever anyone would complain about continutiy errors he would say that it happened in a story that DC didn't publish so that they would leave him alone.

Aft6er reading an entire issue of The Avengers AND an interview with Joey Quesada to make sunse of Marvel's "new" version of Xorn, I'm starting to think that it's time for my to use my own hyper-time explanations of things. After YEARS of Marvel saying that they wouldn't let continuity get in the way of a good story, has the pendulum swung the other way?
 
 
Billuccho!
03:19 / 26.06.06
I've always promoted the practice of selective personal continuity.

Here's my explanation of Xorn:

Xorn was Magneto. He died. The end.
 
 
This Sunday
03:44 / 26.06.06
Xorn was Magneto. Magneto was Xorn. The Special Class wanted Xorn. Wanda wanted her dad. Wanda was a space phantom. Space phantoms are skrulls. Immortus did it.

Anything at DC is just 'The Writer did it, outside that Suicide Squad appearance.'

Everything else is John Byrne's fault and everybody's going to ignore it anyway.

Out of interest, is there anything anybody would love to be - and is kept in their personal - continuity-line, but for most, it's not? Personally, I have no problem with, and in fact a great love for the possibility of, those fruit-pie onepager comics adverts, being in-continuity. Also, 'Son of the Demon' goes in Bat-continuity, and 'Destroyer Duck' plugs right into the Marvel U.
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
05:01 / 26.06.06
Maybe obvious, but: Selina Kyle started to defend the East End because her sense of duty, family, and desire to change her life, and those of others. Zatanna wasn't in any way involved.
 
 
Mario
10:50 / 26.06.06
There's an old New Mutants fanfic called "Kid Dynamo" that I prefer to the official continuity. I also prefer the Kirby/MacGregor/Priest Black Panther to the Hudlin version.

On the DC side, it's hard to say, because I'm not sure what IS in continuity these days. But my personal Adam Strange continuity diverges from the end of his mini, and I preferred the reboot Legion to the "threeboot" ones.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:31 / 27.06.06
My technique for the practice of selective personal continuity:

(1) If a comic starts sucking, stop reading it immediately.

(2) Define the point at which the comic in question started sucking.

(2) Ignore everything after that point.

(4) Under no circumstances start reading the comic again.

This technique has stood me in good stead for many a year.
 
 
The Falcon
17:35 / 27.06.06
What if the comic is made by completely different people, whom you might like, from suck-era?
 
 
Aertho
17:59 / 27.06.06
I would saved so much money had Mr. Fear been my high school guidance counselour.
 
 
Jack Fear
20:35 / 27.06.06
What if the comic is made by completely different people, whom you might like, from suck-era?

What's interesting about my technique is that it can be—and is—used by comic creators, as well as readers.

As to whether you would want to read the results—well, honestly, Duncan, aren't you getting a little old to be reading X-MEN anyway?
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
21:27 / 27.06.06
Mr. Fear, I tend to follow creators, not characters, so there are times when a good writer (say, POter Milligan) can toss out a few stinkers, and I don't give up on him because he's had a few bad issues. Sometimes, it's a deadline problem, sometimes it's a problem with communication with the artist, and sometimes (like on the X-Men) the creator may just not work well with the editor/characters/series.

So, there are times, I just kind of need to rewrite the continuity a writer creates in my own mind.
 
 
Mario
21:56 / 27.06.06
My technique is similar:

"Only buy trades that do not suck".

(I buy very few singles nowadays)
 
 
Jack Fear
23:35 / 27.06.06
Solitaire: They're stories, man. Just enjoy the stories as they are, self-contained, and don't worry about how they fit together. Even if they feature the same characters.

I like to think of the characters as being like actors. We like certain actors because they exude a certain personality that remains essentially the same: whether he's calling himself Rufus T. Firefly or Otis B. Driftwood, he's always Groucho Marx. And whether he's written by Grant Morrison or (god help us) Chuck Austen, he's always Cyclops.

The Three Stooges are always the same characters, essentially, but there's no point in trying to figure out whether the events of "Beer Barrel Polecats" takes place before those of "Monkey Businessmen" or vice versa. It's both, and neither, because it doesn't matter. Is A Night At The Opera in the same timeline with Duck Soup?

Starsky & Hutch and Zoolander have no connection in continuity, but we enjoy them for the same reasons—the interplay between Owen wilson and Ben Stiller.

I've been drinking, by the way.
 
 
Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo
05:49 / 28.06.06
Mr Fear, I understand. But the little fanboy in the back of my brain that was born of Stan Lee's OCD and Jack Kirby's visuals force me to make sense of it all.

You don't want to know how upset I was when I first read Phillip Farmer's attempt to make every fictional character part of the same family. To this day, I STILL get a sick feeling in my stomach when I see my copy of his Doc Savage book.

Maybe I should drink with you.
 
 
Spyder Todd 2008
06:13 / 28.06.06
Some personal continuity stuff.

Marvel:
Wolverine's real mutant power is that he always wins, no matter what. This is why every team in the Marvel Universe wants him for themselves.

Everyone knows Tony Stark is still Iron Man, they just play along with him whenever he pretends not to be. They figure he's an eccentric billionare, whatever.

Gwen Stacy and Norman Osborn NEVER DID ANYTHING. It didn't happen. I'm sorry, but no. Also, whenever Peter denies having ever slept with Gwen or Felicia, he's totally bullshiting everyone. It simply doesn't work for me, and whenever Kevin Smith or JMS talks about it or writes it in, I just want to light something on fire. Especially when it comes to Felicia. Didn't they live together or something? Grr.

That being said, MJ and Peter's baby is still real, and Norman totally has her.

DC
Everyone in Metropolis who's met both of them has secretly figured out that Clark Kent is Superman, except Lois and Jimmy. Everyone else thinks they know, but they'd never blow Superman's cover because they like him too much.

Hypertime is real. There, I said it. And so's pre-ceisis Earth 1. And Captain Carrot, damnit! That way, I can one day write my mafia story set on Earth-c with a family of tiger gansters and their super-genius turtle lawyer. I must have it!

... Ahem.
 
 
Triplets
09:03 / 28.06.06
Hypertime is real. There, I said it. And so's pre-ceisis Earth 1. And Captain Carrot, damnit! That way, I can one day write my mafia story set on Earth-c with a family of tiger gansters and their super-genius turtle lawyer. I must have it!

Flying through life through thick and thin in another Talespin!
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
09:47 / 28.06.06
Marvel:
Wolverine's real mutant power is that he always wins, no matter what.


Dude, Wolverine is on the X-Men, the team that always loses, even when they win.
 
 
The Falcon
10:39 / 28.06.06
What's interesting about my technique is that it can be—and is—used by comic creators, as well as readers.

As to whether you would want to read the results—well, honestly, Duncan, aren't you getting a little old to be reading X-MEN anyway?


Oh, meeow.

Do you mean used on creators? I can be down with that, yes.

As to whether I'm too old, and I'm flushing a fanboy sweat of undesired humility here, I believe I'm still at the younger end of Barbelith at 27 - I'll read superheroes by writers I like until they stop stimulating me. I don't believe there'll be a magic number for this. Didn't you read Seven Soldiers, dude?
 
 
The Falcon
10:42 / 28.06.06
Oh no, you mean creators who have a cut-off and ignore all storylines thereafter, possibly pausing only a moment to bemoan the current state of superhero x. Who does that sound like, I wonder?
 
 
Jack Fear
11:27 / 28.06.06
Oh no, you mean creators who have a cut-off and ignore all storylines thereafter, possibly pausing only a moment to bemoan the current state of superhero x.

No bemoaning, just ignoring. Using what works, chucking out what doesn't, as if it never happened. Because, y'know, they're all stories: none of 'em ever really happened.

Who does that sound like, I wonder?

Sounds like any franchise comics writer with an interest in actually telling good, resonant stories that actually speak to people—as opposed to an OCD mental-defective obsessively filling in the blanks of a meaningless pseudohistory written in an echo chamber, lacking the necessary distance to simply disregard the work of other writers and relying instead on convoluted workarounds to "explain" them away.

Now who does that sound like, I wonder?
 
 
Jack Fear
11:35 / 28.06.06
Also (and this is purely parenthetical,all of it, but you brought it up): I didn't say "Aren't you too old to be reading superhero comics, full stop." I said, "Aren't you getting a little old to be reading X-MEN?"

And, well, aren't you?

X-MEN is an enormous extended metaphor for the adolescent experience, and it was tremendously important to me—when I was an adolescent. It's what you need, when you need it; but after a certain point, not so much.

Any given comic is a stop along the way, not a final destination; even Stan and Jack had this idea, in the back of their minds, that their readership would roll over every four to five years.

If that were true, all this blather about "continuity" would be entirely moot. And I think that would be a good thing.
 
 
The Falcon
11:47 / 28.06.06
Geoff. Johns.

I suppose; actually, I'm inclined to agree here with most everything you've said, but you're still talking about long-running franchises which will have, to many, 'jumped the shark' (as they say) long since Gardner Fox, or Jack 'Fucking' Kirby, or whomever was originally responsible for the title departed; most people, in my experience, seem to believe the best days of a franchise were when they originally read it (e.g. why was Identity Crisis so popular? I think because it was inherently 'Dark Age' writing sold to people who grew up in the 80's) because - I dunno - things are better when you're eight or twelve, etc. You can infuse these things better then; but I think there are cases where this is not correct, Morrison > Claremont being primary to my mind.

This is all kind of aside to the topic; I don't need or desire baroque history, they should just be able to dispose of things as and when, perhaps the companies should even release a guide for the Aspbergers elements which references what's presently in and out of teh continuity. It would almost certainly sell several thousand. It's clear to me that subtler rebootings go on perennially along with ludicrous events like Infinite Crisis (which I suppose I have to cop to buying, not because I care, but because I never read a ludicrous event before - for all that, it was kind've wooden.)
 
 
The Falcon
11:52 / 28.06.06
Hmm, the mutation process is the metaphor for adolescence - I don't really agree that X-Men comics, as they stand, be it Morrison's, Milligan's, Whedon's or Brubaker's have had this, particularly or indeed anywhere centrally, as a touchstone.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:14 / 28.06.06
Jack Fear doesn't actually read the comics he's snarky about! And neither do I, really.
 
 
Jack Fear
12:17 / 28.06.06
...you're high right now, aren't you?
 
 
Jack Fear
12:19 / 28.06.06
Seriously, I'm not being snarky here. I mean, you all did read the same "Riot at Xavier's" trade that I did, yeah? The same X-FORCE trade? And you're telling me with a straight face that you didn't find those books to be steeped in the adolescent experience?
 
 
Evil Scientist
12:51 / 28.06.06
Joker knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne, he just doesn't care because it's the Bat-personality he wants to beat.
 
 
The Falcon
13:46 / 28.06.06
Okay, yeah, 'Riot', mm-hmm - I'll give that, unquestionably. A story around a character who appeared for 5 of 41 issues.

X-Force? Milligan's first issue and the first arc in X-Statix, maybe, but that wasn't what I was thinking of, and is clearly more about celebrity and identities therein than about adolescence; the characters have overblown emotional issues, which are occasionally rooted in the time period of, and could be proscribed as, adolescent... if you were trying very hard to make a case.
 
 
Aertho
13:54 / 28.06.06
So NXM wasn't about Cyclops' adolescence?
 
 
The Falcon
13:56 / 28.06.06
In fairness, there are several ancillary characters in NXM (I don't know how much you've read, Jack) who are young, but they are not central; I think the central arc of the book is about letting a lot of these things go - Scott moving on from his doomed relationship, Charles realising his idealism has been damaging, etc.

A lot of people will equally tell you X-Men is really all about civil rights, and while that's covered; again, it's not to me the thrust of the run. It's... uhm, it's about saving the future, I think - and these are both tributaries of that, rather than the converse.
 
 
The Falcon
13:58 / 28.06.06
Cass, I think it was - in part - about him getting over it.

I hope I'm not making a terrible fool of myself here.
 
 
Aertho
14:04 / 28.06.06
No. I get what you're saying, I just think you're working your way through it. Like zoom out a bit more is all. Adolescence isn't an age, as Byrne Robotics will show you. It's a FRAME OF MIND that you grow out of. That works culturally, personally, biologically, etc.
 
 
Aertho
14:16 / 28.06.06
I suppose it might be difficult to biologically grow out of a frame of mind. Ah well. Hope the points made.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
14:38 / 28.06.06
New X-Men is really about SAVING THE CHILDREN. (Like Wu-Tang.)
 
 
The Falcon
14:40 / 28.06.06
Yeah, it's for the babies.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:31 / 28.06.06
Also, of course, we have the idea of mutancy as non-standard sexuality. In those terms, what a straight man sees as a process of adolescence can, in terms of self-discovery, come much later. I refer you to... damn. It hasn't been written yet. Anyway, the coming-out narrative often presupposes that sexual self-realisation, although it often happens at the same time as adolescence, may not be tied to it.

I'm just sayin'.
 
  

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