Continuity Schmontinuity

(Originally posted at my livejournal, 16th Nov, 2007 )

Everybody at all familiar with the ins and outs the comics internet is already aware of Dick Hyacinth, I'm pretty sure. You know who he is, he's that guy who hates your blog.

Well today he posted a piece that started out being about him pruning the list of blogs he reads, but ended up being about the various types of complaint he most often sees in the comics blosmos.

I'm guilty of most of them, I think. The first and third in particular. But I'd like to think that the fifth type of complaint on his list, "fan ownership of corporate owned properties" is one that I have thus far managed to avoid.

It's not always easy, I'll admit. I've always advocating buying comics based on who writes and draws them (and colours them and letters them for that matter) rather than on the basis of which popular icon they happen to be about, but you know what? I own a Batman t-shirt, that I wear with pride. I have a batman action figure standing on a bookshelf in my living room, and I have very little interest in action figures. I dig Batman, is what I'm saying. As a concept. I think Green Lantern is pretty cool, as well.

I'll even admit to bristtling slightly at Hyacinth's comment that: "DC has never published anything remotely approaching the quality of Lee/Ditko Spider-Man and Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four".*

But I know that it's stupid. I don't buy every comic with Batman or Green Lantern in it. I buy Blue Beetle (on and off) because it's written by John Rogers, not because I liked the previous version when I was a kid. And I honestly could not tell you what the hell is going on in current DC continuity (a fact that I understand doesn't differentiate me all that greatly from an awful lot of avid DC readers, but still).

Well, all right, I know there's something big going on to do with alternate universes and stuff. But I only know that from surfing the net. And I know about the religion of crime thing, because I'm reading Greg Rucka's Question book.

In fact, the nearest I get to blind character loyalty is with The Question, but that's a subject for a blog post all it's own.

But anyway, I'm wandering away from my point. There's this one thing Hyacinth says in his piece that I think is really quite pertinent to the way the two major comics publishers are doing business right now:

"Even if all the writers and artists who had worked on Spider-Man over the years had been competent (which they haven't), Spider-Man would still be a completely broken character simply because he's appeared in hundreds and hundreds of comics over the last 45+ years."

He's absolutely right.

You know what I think? Fuck continuity. Seriously. That shit really does not matter.

It is no coincidence that the two most respected works of superhero fiction ever published- Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns- are both "outside continuity".** It makes them more accessable, for one thing. But more importantly, when Alan Moore sat down to write issue one of Watchmen, he didn't have to worry about whatever any hypothetical previous writer had been up to. Frank Miller did not have to explain what had happened to Robin, or tie up any dangling subplots. Neither of them had to suddenly completely alter the course of their story half way through in order to accomadate the events in someone else's book.

Now, don't get me wrong, I actually like shared universe stories. Alan Moore's ABC comics are among my favourite of his work. And I actually think that the multi-creator cross-over is a story telling method with a huge amount of potential (as yet, sadly unrealised, in my reading experience).

A little bit of continuity can be a good thing. Of course it can. But it shouldn't have to be set in stone, and rigidly adhered to at all times. If the current writer on comic A wants to continue on from where their predecessor left off, then great, they should do that. But if the next writer doesn't ... then hell, it's not exactly the end of the world, is it?

Here's the thing- what one person writes about The Skintight Gimpsuit Avenger tomorrow does not affect what Oldguy McGoldenage wrote about him twenty years ago. It doesn't matter if it's a sequel, a prequel, or a complete re-invention of the character. The original piece is not altered in any way. So it really doesn't matter whether or not I like the current run of Detective Comics. Alan Grant's run is still bloody good. I don't know if that took place in current DC continuity or not, and I don't care.

We all have our own private versions of what is and isn't "canon". And there are things we all agree to ignore, as well. If everything that's ever happened in every Marvel comic ever published is in continuity, then Spider-Man is a little old to be swinging off buildings by know, and Aunt May should be in the Guinness Book Of Records for living so long. Well, either that, or it's still nineteen sixty-something in the Marvel universe.

So, why bother with all that fussing over keeping everything in line? Apart from anything else, all this extra shit to keep track of definitely puts off readers who aren't prepared to buy every single comic put out by a specific publisher. And it seems to distract those who do from the quality of the work, too. I've heard quite a bit about Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts comic around the net. Pretty much all of it has to do with people's opinions on the character Penance, though, so I have no idea if people thought the comic was actually any good. I'm betting it's probably not bad, what with it being written by Ellis, but I also know that it is connected in some way to Civil War. I'll give you three guesses how that affected my purchasing decision.

Oh fuck it. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, and I need to get back to work.

So I'll leave you with this: Once again, FUCK CONITNUITY. When working with pretty much every single intellectual property franchise outside of the American comics industry, from James Bond to Sherlock Holmes, each new writer takes what they want from the earlier works, and discards the rest. The average movie goer doesn't bat an eye when James Bond's hair changes colour- why can't we apply that aproach to super hero comics?

*because OH MY GOD DC PUBLISHED WATCHMEN AND DARK KNIGHT RETURNS AND RONIN AND PLANETARY O'NEILL AND COWAN'S QUESTION AND AND AND ANDANDAND

**Or at least, they were when they were published, I understand that's under review at present.