Continuity: The Dirty Word
Is continuity good or bad? Does it add or take away from the story?
In the last couple of years, notable mainstream comic book companies and characters have been celebrating their 60th, 70th and even 75th anniversaries. A quarter century of stories, can lead to some confusing back stories so how are comic book companies dealing with this? Before you say "badly" and start telling me they should focus on "telling good stories instead", can I say that what is considered good is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I think comics are currently having a new creative golden age, and the output of most publishers has never been better.
There is an absolutely relentless onslaught of comic book movies, and TV shows that fans may wish to follow into their native medium. So how on Earth can publishers satisfy long term readers whilst still being accessible to new readers?
First a little history about what has already been tried.
Superhero book's golden age, were insanely popular on the newsstands in the 30's and 40's, yet a number of factors including the comic code and the belief that comics were for kids and couldn't feature anything unsuitable for kids led to comics as we know them, slowly vanishing for a couple of decades. What is considered the silver age of comics started with a new Flash in the late 50's. Rather than say what happened to the previous one who was last published in the late 40's, we simply started a fresh with a similar name and powers. It wasn't long before people questioned what happened to the original so DC introduced an Earth 2. All of the Golden age characters still happened but were in their own world. They later added an Earth 3 where DC bought up defunct smaller publishers characters and shoved them all together.
On their 50th anniversary DC decided to streamline their continuity from all of their various Earths into just one. Crisis On Infinite Earths, destroyed all but 5 of their worlds and put them into one long coherent history. One Flash now influenced the next. Legacy characters became the norm and a Marvel style sliding timescale explained the rest.
Meanwhile at Marvel, they started using a sort of sliding timescale, retcon technique. Retcon meaning retractive continuity. Whereas characters that originally served in World War II could no longer feasibly be that age still they now served in more recent wars like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Sometimes this was simply a namedrop or a flashback to re-tell or subtly hint at the change and sometimes this was a new mini series or graphic novel that did the job instead. Most recently the Season One graphic novels have been made to do a modern retelling of each characters history.
This doesn't always work however as characters like Magneto that are heavily linked to the holocaust now have to be constantly de-aged in more and more nonsensical ways.
DC's attempt worked well incorporating new characters to the universe, and did poorly at attempting to accommodate characters like the Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and Legion of Superheroes. There where some characters that logically just couldn't fit into a continuity together so they did another Crisis story called Zero year to straighten out the kinks. When that didn't work they introduced Hyper Time.
Hyper time is possibly the best way to tell stories in my opinion but beyond hard to explain to most people. Essentially everything counts. Alternate worlds have simply splintered off the main timeline and can come back into the fold at any point a writer desires. There was now a simple "a wizard did it" style response to any mistake. Essentially a "shut up and just read" response to nit pickers of continuity. Stories could just be told and incoherences explained away as still being valid.
Marvel on the other hand tried to have their cake and eat it. They kept trying new universes alongside their continuing one with the sliding timescale. Notably New Universe a complete origin story for their characters done over again, MC2 a realtime answer to continuity where the children of the original characters took over their legacies. Most notably their Ultimate universe hit big time success and influenced their current movie slate quite heavily. Sadly after 10 ongoing years of the same stories, even in a new universe, they got bogged down in their own universes. Ultimates wound up doing complete shock moments in an attempt to get sales boosts, and got even more bogged down. The Ultimates ended with Marvel's Secret Wars story early this year.
Secret Wars is a very mild reboot, in the style of DC's Crisis books, that destroyed all of Marvels multiple worlds and smushed a lot of characters deserving of being kept into the main continuity. Everything else was kept as is, but notable additions like Old Man Logan, Miles Morales and Weird World made their way over. There were no major continuity issues from this so far.
DC had yet another Crisis after so long of playing around with the concept of Hyper Time, after deciding that most people simply didn't get it. Infinite Crisis brought back the idea of multiple Earths but limited it to 52 of them. Barely years later they then scrapped that again! The New 52 the fallout from Flashpoint, a Flash story at heart, with a nod to the character that started this whole problem in the first place. The New 52, I've discussed before. It was a lot of number 1 issues in one month and was a really pricey way to have people try to buy everything to try new things. It was essentially stealing the small audience comics have off other publishers and getting a few lapsed readers back in with a jumping on point.
The trouble with the New 52 was it kept continuity for characters like Batman and Green Lantern that were doing well, but completely reset characters like Superman and Wonder Woman that were doing bad sales wise. They then forced all of this new and old history into just 5 years. Batman now had 5 robins in as many years. He also had a 12 year old son he'd conceived during his 5 year run as Batman. In the Batman book Tim Drake was a Robin and in the Teen Titans book he never was a Robin. There were continuity issues that distracted from the stories been told. No amount of sweeping it under the rug would hide that.
DC then tried the ignoring continuity altogether and hoping it didn't detract from stories with the DCYou branding. Launching an extra Justice League book that wouldn't tie in with events and could just tell a story. Sales took no boost whatsoever and now we are quickly approaching DC's Rebirth event/ branding. DC has rebirth-ed characters like Flash individually. It's a reinvention of the character and from the sounds of their announcements so far they will be trying the reinvention to their whole line. Hopefully this New 52 style light reboot, will consider the universe as a whole from the get go and have less continuity issues.
Movies try to reboot all the time. The amount of modern remakes, of horror films must show that theres minor short-lived success to it, but that it doesn't work log term. Star Trek's most recent films have bent over backwards in a hat tip to alternate universes featured in the original TV show. So it's simultaneously a new and old continuity. While fans of the show would get this kind of hard sic-fi would the regular cinema goer let it fly? Bond soft rebooted with Daniel Craig in Casino Royal. M was portrayed by the same actress but Bond was on his first assignment. Huh? Is James Bond a title that is taken with the 007 moniker? Should we just shut up and accept this stuff? Doctor Who's Ecclestone reboot, took away the complicated, convoluted history of the Time Lords, which led to the cancellation originally, and simply had him as the last of his kind. It took almost a decade before the in-between story was filled in. It was for the best. You eased viewers back into the sic-fi nonsense before edging the harder concepts back in.
For me the best solution is the sliding timescale. Bring things forward as and when needed. Don't selectively delete what you don't like, selectively fix what needs fixing. Don't reboot and fix everything when not all of it is broken. So long as what is done doesn't distract from the story that's fine.
The occasional up to date mini-series or graphic novel retelling a now out dated origin story is a small price to pay to mature these comics. Splintering into new universes is a short term solution.
Time will never pass for these characters that we love. Batman will sometimes be in his 20's sometimes his 40's. Depends on the writer or the story being told. Long running characters like Ironman, Spiderman and Superman can't be replaced. If someone else takes up Captain America's shield or Thor's hammer or wears Batman's Cowl, the audience gets really upset and confuses "stories" with "gimmicks" and wants things returned to the normal status quo ASAP. Comics are cyclical, the writer will always put the toys back in the box when they are done for the next creator to play with.
Maybe if the needless hate stopped these worlds could progress? Some fans would seemingly, only be happy, if they got Amazing Fantasy #15, reprinted for 10 cents a pop, on original newsprint of course, on a monthly basis. People complain when Peter Parker gets married, people complain when that goes away, people hate that he runs a company. Sadly the character is a human and humans grow up and change. That's what stories do. Character progression. They go from A to B and change. Don't confuse stories and gimmicks.
Grant Morrison decided everything that ever happened to Batman, silver age and all, was in continuity, and his Batman run, from Batman and Son through till Batman Incorporated, was better for it. On the other hand Tony Stark and the Punisher are practically babies having fought in the Iraq war. The Fantastic Four had their cosmic waves mishap in this millennium. The X-men recently brought back their original teen selves back from 60's issues. They can't be more than 20 years older than their teen selves yet their teen selves had never seen cell phones etc. Those 60's X-men in their 60's fashions where now technically from the 90's.
Final Thoughts
Don't worry about it, would be a general consensus. Don't let continuity define your stories, let your stories define your continuity. Slide characters into modern day when you need to. Don't delete them and their past, reinvent them. Try new branding and the odd #1 when it's necessary, just don't over do it. Don't reset everything when the majority still works. It's the huge immersive worlds with rich history that I find so compelling and that keeps me coming back.
Above all else, don't humour the fanboy in the comments section, that has quit comics for the 18th time this year, that hates everything about the thing he's a fan of. Hate isn't good for the community. Hate is toxic, and stumps creativity, and community growth. If you were a new reader that wanted help to pick up a new title, and someone said "ugh don't read that it's rubbish and hacky", you'd wonder how much of this world is deemed bad, and be more likely to avoid it. Best way to discover what your personal taste is, is to try it. Sample everything. I got into comics with issues in the 300-500 range. Yes it's daunting. Just pick it up though. The industry bends over backwards for new readers nowadays, with the constant barrage of issue 1's. That's not a bad thing. Long term readers should view them as new story arcs for characters they've known for 75 years. New readers get the start of a new story too.
In the last couple of years, notable mainstream comic book companies and characters have been celebrating their 60th, 70th and even 75th anniversaries. A quarter century of stories, can lead to some confusing back stories so how are comic book companies dealing with this? Before you say "badly" and start telling me they should focus on "telling good stories instead", can I say that what is considered good is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I think comics are currently having a new creative golden age, and the output of most publishers has never been better.
 |
| It's a big Multiverse out there. |
There is an absolutely relentless onslaught of comic book movies, and TV shows that fans may wish to follow into their native medium. So how on Earth can publishers satisfy long term readers whilst still being accessible to new readers?
First a little history about what has already been tried.
Superhero book's golden age, were insanely popular on the newsstands in the 30's and 40's, yet a number of factors including the comic code and the belief that comics were for kids and couldn't feature anything unsuitable for kids led to comics as we know them, slowly vanishing for a couple of decades. What is considered the silver age of comics started with a new Flash in the late 50's. Rather than say what happened to the previous one who was last published in the late 40's, we simply started a fresh with a similar name and powers. It wasn't long before people questioned what happened to the original so DC introduced an Earth 2. All of the Golden age characters still happened but were in their own world. They later added an Earth 3 where DC bought up defunct smaller publishers characters and shoved them all together.
On their 50th anniversary DC decided to streamline their continuity from all of their various Earths into just one. Crisis On Infinite Earths, destroyed all but 5 of their worlds and put them into one long coherent history. One Flash now influenced the next. Legacy characters became the norm and a Marvel style sliding timescale explained the rest.
 |
| DC's Multiverse is even a thing on the Flash TV show. |
Meanwhile at Marvel, they started using a sort of sliding timescale, retcon technique. Retcon meaning retractive continuity. Whereas characters that originally served in World War II could no longer feasibly be that age still they now served in more recent wars like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Sometimes this was simply a namedrop or a flashback to re-tell or subtly hint at the change and sometimes this was a new mini series or graphic novel that did the job instead. Most recently the Season One graphic novels have been made to do a modern retelling of each characters history.
This doesn't always work however as characters like Magneto that are heavily linked to the holocaust now have to be constantly de-aged in more and more nonsensical ways.
DC's attempt worked well incorporating new characters to the universe, and did poorly at attempting to accommodate characters like the Hawkman and Hawkgirl, and Legion of Superheroes. There where some characters that logically just couldn't fit into a continuity together so they did another Crisis story called Zero year to straighten out the kinks. When that didn't work they introduced Hyper Time.
Hyper time is possibly the best way to tell stories in my opinion but beyond hard to explain to most people. Essentially everything counts. Alternate worlds have simply splintered off the main timeline and can come back into the fold at any point a writer desires. There was now a simple "a wizard did it" style response to any mistake. Essentially a "shut up and just read" response to nit pickers of continuity. Stories could just be told and incoherences explained away as still being valid.
Marvel on the other hand tried to have their cake and eat it. They kept trying new universes alongside their continuing one with the sliding timescale. Notably New Universe a complete origin story for their characters done over again, MC2 a realtime answer to continuity where the children of the original characters took over their legacies. Most notably their Ultimate universe hit big time success and influenced their current movie slate quite heavily. Sadly after 10 ongoing years of the same stories, even in a new universe, they got bogged down in their own universes. Ultimates wound up doing complete shock moments in an attempt to get sales boosts, and got even more bogged down. The Ultimates ended with Marvel's Secret Wars story early this year.
Secret Wars is a very mild reboot, in the style of DC's Crisis books, that destroyed all of Marvels multiple worlds and smushed a lot of characters deserving of being kept into the main continuity. Everything else was kept as is, but notable additions like Old Man Logan, Miles Morales and Weird World made their way over. There were no major continuity issues from this so far.
 |
| Your world is equal parts immersive/ inaccessible if you require a map. |
DC had yet another Crisis after so long of playing around with the concept of Hyper Time, after deciding that most people simply didn't get it. Infinite Crisis brought back the idea of multiple Earths but limited it to 52 of them. Barely years later they then scrapped that again! The New 52 the fallout from Flashpoint, a Flash story at heart, with a nod to the character that started this whole problem in the first place. The New 52, I've discussed before. It was a lot of number 1 issues in one month and was a really pricey way to have people try to buy everything to try new things. It was essentially stealing the small audience comics have off other publishers and getting a few lapsed readers back in with a jumping on point.
The trouble with the New 52 was it kept continuity for characters like Batman and Green Lantern that were doing well, but completely reset characters like Superman and Wonder Woman that were doing bad sales wise. They then forced all of this new and old history into just 5 years. Batman now had 5 robins in as many years. He also had a 12 year old son he'd conceived during his 5 year run as Batman. In the Batman book Tim Drake was a Robin and in the Teen Titans book he never was a Robin. There were continuity issues that distracted from the stories been told. No amount of sweeping it under the rug would hide that.
DC then tried the ignoring continuity altogether and hoping it didn't detract from stories with the DCYou branding. Launching an extra Justice League book that wouldn't tie in with events and could just tell a story. Sales took no boost whatsoever and now we are quickly approaching DC's Rebirth event/ branding. DC has rebirth-ed characters like Flash individually. It's a reinvention of the character and from the sounds of their announcements so far they will be trying the reinvention to their whole line. Hopefully this New 52 style light reboot, will consider the universe as a whole from the get go and have less continuity issues.
 |
| Same goes for your Universe! Grant Morrisons Multiversity despite needing a map, was surprisingly light and fun! |
Movies try to reboot all the time. The amount of modern remakes, of horror films must show that theres minor short-lived success to it, but that it doesn't work log term. Star Trek's most recent films have bent over backwards in a hat tip to alternate universes featured in the original TV show. So it's simultaneously a new and old continuity. While fans of the show would get this kind of hard sic-fi would the regular cinema goer let it fly? Bond soft rebooted with Daniel Craig in Casino Royal. M was portrayed by the same actress but Bond was on his first assignment. Huh? Is James Bond a title that is taken with the 007 moniker? Should we just shut up and accept this stuff? Doctor Who's Ecclestone reboot, took away the complicated, convoluted history of the Time Lords, which led to the cancellation originally, and simply had him as the last of his kind. It took almost a decade before the in-between story was filled in. It was for the best. You eased viewers back into the sic-fi nonsense before edging the harder concepts back in.
For me the best solution is the sliding timescale. Bring things forward as and when needed. Don't selectively delete what you don't like, selectively fix what needs fixing. Don't reboot and fix everything when not all of it is broken. So long as what is done doesn't distract from the story that's fine.
The occasional up to date mini-series or graphic novel retelling a now out dated origin story is a small price to pay to mature these comics. Splintering into new universes is a short term solution.
Time will never pass for these characters that we love. Batman will sometimes be in his 20's sometimes his 40's. Depends on the writer or the story being told. Long running characters like Ironman, Spiderman and Superman can't be replaced. If someone else takes up Captain America's shield or Thor's hammer or wears Batman's Cowl, the audience gets really upset and confuses "stories" with "gimmicks" and wants things returned to the normal status quo ASAP. Comics are cyclical, the writer will always put the toys back in the box when they are done for the next creator to play with.
Maybe if the needless hate stopped these worlds could progress? Some fans would seemingly, only be happy, if they got Amazing Fantasy #15, reprinted for 10 cents a pop, on original newsprint of course, on a monthly basis. People complain when Peter Parker gets married, people complain when that goes away, people hate that he runs a company. Sadly the character is a human and humans grow up and change. That's what stories do. Character progression. They go from A to B and change. Don't confuse stories and gimmicks.
 |
| Dan Slott's Spider-verse equally had fun playing in a larger sandbox of characters and worlds. |
Grant Morrison decided everything that ever happened to Batman, silver age and all, was in continuity, and his Batman run, from Batman and Son through till Batman Incorporated, was better for it. On the other hand Tony Stark and the Punisher are practically babies having fought in the Iraq war. The Fantastic Four had their cosmic waves mishap in this millennium. The X-men recently brought back their original teen selves back from 60's issues. They can't be more than 20 years older than their teen selves yet their teen selves had never seen cell phones etc. Those 60's X-men in their 60's fashions where now technically from the 90's.
Final Thoughts
Don't worry about it, would be a general consensus. Don't let continuity define your stories, let your stories define your continuity. Slide characters into modern day when you need to. Don't delete them and their past, reinvent them. Try new branding and the odd #1 when it's necessary, just don't over do it. Don't reset everything when the majority still works. It's the huge immersive worlds with rich history that I find so compelling and that keeps me coming back.
Above all else, don't humour the fanboy in the comments section, that has quit comics for the 18th time this year, that hates everything about the thing he's a fan of. Hate isn't good for the community. Hate is toxic, and stumps creativity, and community growth. If you were a new reader that wanted help to pick up a new title, and someone said "ugh don't read that it's rubbish and hacky", you'd wonder how much of this world is deemed bad, and be more likely to avoid it. Best way to discover what your personal taste is, is to try it. Sample everything. I got into comics with issues in the 300-500 range. Yes it's daunting. Just pick it up though. The industry bends over backwards for new readers nowadays, with the constant barrage of issue 1's. That's not a bad thing. Long term readers should view them as new story arcs for characters they've known for 75 years. New readers get the start of a new story too.
Continuity: The Dirty Word
Reviewed by Matt
on
03:19:00
Rating:
Reviewed by Matt
on
03:19:00
Rating:
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