Superman Through the Ages! Forum

In yours opinion the continuity is a good thing? I dont'know.When in 40s and 50s (and mostly in 60s too) the continuity was vague and the stories were developed in one or two numbers at most,change of directions was more easy.Exemple:Batmite,Batdog,Batwoman and the first Batgirl were important characters in Batman comics in early 60s.With a vague continuity they have been cancels from comics like if they were not never exist.Moreover,lack of continuity not get old the characters,because not exist  "before" and  "after",but only "The present".Is like this that Superman is passed from Golden to Silver age,without nothing "crisis" ,but day by day. "Continuity" is one cage?

It depends on what stories you're trying to tell.

Many superhero comic book problems with continuity involve one vast shared evolving universe with continuous cycling of creators, an implied imperative that Earth not diverge too radically from Earth-Prime (our world, the world of the reader :) ), and protagonists that age slowly (if at all).  Continuity hassles are an almost-inevitable consequence. 

You say that continuity was vague in the 40, 50s, and mainly 1960s.  I disagree.  I think that continuity was extremely tight, especially in the 1960s.

I think it worked well, primarily because it was a good continuity and added a lot to Superman's characters and strengths and to those of his supporting cast.  It clearly defined what made Superman "Superman."

I think that a big part of the problem with modern comics is that there is virtually no continuity at all.  It literally changes from issue to issue.  Loose continuity - or "vague" continuity - can be OK at times - but not nonexistent continuity, or continuous non-continuity, which, unfortunately, seems to be where we are now.

I don't understand how anyone can be interested in reading stories that all take place in different universes with different characters.  Why invest any time or interest in anything if your know that it'll be tossed out, ignored, and contradicted within weeks?

People used to complain that Mort Weisinger ruled with an Iron Fist.  But now it's the opposite end of the extreme.  Editors and writers don't even know what each other is thinking - witness the statements in the recent "Ask Matt" column - but it doesn't even matter, the stories just get published anyways then ignored down the road.

The Iron Age was a mixed bag.  I think that any new continuity needs to value the continuities that it is replacing.  But the Iron Age reboot clearly disliked the previous continuities and was implemented in a vindictive manner.  Thus, it was a "sick" continuity.  However, as much as I disliked the characterization of "Superman" during that time, one of the things that I really appreciated about the era was its tight continuity.  Sure, I hated Byrne's Krypton - but at least it was adhered to.  The whole "exile in space" thing, the eradicator and cleric - all extremely well handled.  Whether the writers agreed or disagreed with the rules, they followed them.  And at least there were rules.

But since then, Superman's continuity had been replaced with each new writer and/or editor.  I liked Loeb's retcon, but it was tossed.  I liked Birthright, then it was tossed.  I like the new Donner inspired continuity, but why should I risk investing any interest in it when it might just be tossed out again in a month or two?

I hope that DC sticks with this latest continuity and that the Birthright and Loeb/Superman 166 things were just birthpangs.

In short:

Having no continuity is bad (the various birthpang eras, including the lame Sandman Saga), having a bad continuity is bad (Iron Age), but having a good continuity is a really beautiful thing (Silver/Bronze/All-Star).  The Mercury Age continuity is enjoyable and seems to be adding a lot to the character.  Now DC just has to stick with it to make it a good thing.

For the record, I agree with everything Great Rao just said.

Wondering whether continuity is good is like wondering if oxygen is good. Try going without it and see what happens.

The very fact this conversation is even taking place is a discouraging sign of how dysfunctional the DC Universe was for a very long time (a period that only now, thanks to Johns and others who take the DCU and its interconnectivity seriously, we are emerging out of).

Continuity is good because it's the only way the events of stories matter.

Continuity makes everything one big story. It's a thrill to watch the Legionnaires become adults, fall in love, fall out of love, lose their powers, and occasionally die. It matters because their lives are REAL and four-dimensional. A story here or there might not be great, but the OVERALL story of the Legion is what you buy the book for.

Characters should change as a result of their experiences, and their experiences should be in play and mentioned. Nothing cements Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl's love like that occasion when she stood by him even when he was accused of treason, all the way back in 1965. The fact that the Legion has such history with Mordru is what makes him so terrible, NOT his powers (and certainly not that costume).

Screw kids, and screw so-called "new readers." There's no need to bend over backward to appease them: fears of their leaving books because it is complicated are overexaggerated. People read things that make no sense yet are still captivating because there's so much THERE there: LOST is currently America's favorite show, yet I have no idea what the H-E-L-L is going on (and I doubt anyone else does either, including the people that work on the show). Something not being accessible at first - like DUNE or WORLD OF PTATH or LORD OF LIGHT is GOOD, not bad: it arouses curiosity.

Continuity creates suspension of disbelief. Undermine that, and it draws you out of the work. Let's take an example from my hated archnemesis, the foe of all continuity purists everywhere, Grant Morrison: He had Magneto destroy a good part of New York in Ol' Helmet-head's battle with the X-Men. Marvel New York at that point has more superheroes than it has Puerto Ricans and Italians put together. I can't believe everyone else was busy that day - that's illogic that draws me out of the story.

"But the book is called X-MEN, Julian, not 'X-Men plus Fantastic Four plus Nova." True, but comics are not, and should not, be compartmentalized entities where Atlantis is one thing in FF and another in X-Men. Just because something is a fantasy element (like the presence of Fantastic Four), does not mean it can come and go at the convenience of the writer. The Marvel and DC Universes are not "real" (that we know of, anyway) but the writer has an obligation to make them feel that way.

Either way, ignoring history and consistent characterization is bad writing. There's no such thing as "it's okay to ignore continuity if its a good story." A story that violates continuity is by definition, bad.

Heck, even bad stories fit in somewhere if you use continuity; remember those awful tales of the Black Widow leading the Avengers in the 1990s and failing miserably? That was actually USED later on for very powerful stories about Tasha wanting to redeem herself.

(Though George Perez did draw Natasha in this period as the world's worst-looking drag queen.)

Getting back to Superman here, though I am not a fan of the 1990s no more than I am a fan of the 1950s, I *LIKE* the fact that the 90s stories are still in play. "Bad" continuity is worse than no continuity at all, because at least there's SOMETHING there to build on. And even 90s characters like Bloodsport have a purpose, as Busiek and Johns proved in "Up, Up and Away."

And one thing that is essential to being REAL is remembering your past. Len Wein wrote a story where Ra's al-Ghul tried to frame Batman for murder. Only a little while later, Englehart wrote a story where the Tobacconists Club tries to run Batman out of town. It would not have been realistic if Ra's earlier plan never so much as even got ONE mention.

And ultimately, that's why continuity is important: superhero characters aren't, and shouldn't just be Archie Andrews in Riverdale who is always seventeen. This is why I find the fifties for Superman under Otto Binder so nauseating: there was never any real change in the character; it was back to the sitcom status quo always.

I don't think anyone argues that continuity is bad, just that using continuity doesn't make a story good on its own.

Arguing that the 50s stories were "bad" takes them out of the context of their time.  Here was a super hero that survived a comics purge and was barely over 10 years old.  Most readers were still young and threw away their comics when they were finished with them. Tthe thought that readers would stay loyal for 20 years and remember incidences from a decade ago was far away. These stories were not without "oxygen", they were stories about a super guy from an alien planet who disguises himself and has a new adventure every month.

I see the 50s as an era where a lot of plot devices were thrown against a wall, and the 60s as an era where editors and writers started seeing what things stuck and made a richer character.  For example, after 20 years of bringing Luthor on to the stage, maybe it was time to give the guy a planet of "fans" and it was time to see what Krypton was really like etc.

Comics were actually ahead of TV at the time, how many episodes of "Mission: Impossible" reference other episodes?  When "My Three Sons" switched to CBS and Mike got married, he sent cards back home for three episodes and was never mentioned again in 7 years.  I would actually argue that TV and movie continuity may have emerged from comics and their kin.

The problem is that, quite indepdent from the human error involved with maintaining continuity across a line of comics with multiple genres and different flavors of story to tell, the DC Universe has rules that make decades-long continuity a bit difficult:

DC Universe Earth must persist in resembling our Earth such that any new readers can catch onto it.  That's easy to do in the here-and-now, harder to do over the course of a long stretch of time.  It's amazing how many 20-30 year old stories fall apart or need extensive rejiggering in a contemporary or "only a few years ago" context because of cell phones and the Internet.    For that matter, given all the mad science possibilities, it's amazing that the World's Finest didn't lay out a cell phone infrastructure in the 1950s/1960s in their spare time.  One story idea I've toyed with is exploring how general acceptance of innovation is stifled in comic book universes due to it being so easily abused by super bad-guys.  "It's taken generations for Motorola to warm the world to cell phone technologies.  Y'see, way back in 1952, Luthor introduced cell phones all over the world, but he was just trying to con the world into believing he had reformed and the cell phones were all really a trap for Superman..." -- for example.  Try coming up with reasons why the comic book Earth still resembles our Earth despite the flood of innumerable alien technologies. 

Also, characters mature, but don't age so much.  Particularly, they don't apply lessons if said lessons result in any fundamental change to the character's visual look or conception.  Superman should have some force field device and a "beam me to the Fortress" emergency button for the 47 gazillion times he's been exposed to Kryptonite and the prevalence of the technologies (e.g. imitation GL rings), but that'd make too much sense and give the writer a harder problem to solve.  Robin should not be bare-legged in any city that has a winter, and the same goes for most females.   Heaven forbid if there are any scars or extenal signs that most encounters from the past changed you -- the branding people are gonna have a fit!  It's hard to make "past history" have a lot of meaning if you're limited in how you can really show it. 

At some point, there has to be a way to not be encumbered by all that -- a reboot, a universe concept that effectively factors that out (e.g. any story told more than 10 years ago simply doesn't exist with a VERY short list of exceptions -- yes, Superman can meet up with the hot mermaid once a decade). Something's gotta give.

To answer the question.... it depends.

I disagree with the 1950's Superman not having continuity, since of course they did. They were also trying out lots of new ideas, some didn't work out and were never used again, but that happen in the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's as well!

But that's a whole other thread.

Continuity could be good, if done right, but I am not sure if doesn't create more problems than it solves. If everything counts, then all you need is one bad writer to come in and muck everything up. Continuity works best IMHO, on a book that has one person with total control.

One writer for the complete run then the book ends, never to be brought back again. That's the only way to have perfect continuity.

I don't know if it works as well, when you have an army of rotating writers, artists, and editors on a book all with different ideas and tastes, changing everything once they take over and leaving the geekiest of nerdy fanboys to try and make the different puzzle pieces fit when they were never suppose to.

I personally rather read a really great Elseworlds one shot that is not in continuity than a crappy run on a canonical book that is actually in continuity.

That's just me though.

At the end of the day, I just want to read a good book, I really couldn't care less if it is in continuity or not. Continuity doesn't make something great in and of itself, when use correctly it can be a great thing, but it is not necessary to make a story great.

 

I don't agree.In 60s,until at the end of Silver age-early Bronze age (late 60s) was not a real continuity.The case of Batman is emblematic There were firm points on the characters:Superman has been Superboy,Clark work at Daily Planet,Ma and Pa Kent are died,Luthor is a evil genius,Superman and Lois are not married,Mr. Mxyzptlk return every 90 days, and so.But this is not "continuity",are rules.            No,i think that a big part of problem is that there is not rules at all.  
Because the "original" Superman disguised in 90s,so are not more a "real" Superman,but many interpretations (or misinterpretations) of the character.

And this is not a problem of continuity but of rules.
And this was a big mistake,Iron age reboot was crazy.Some characters start to zero (Superman,Wonder Woman)some others no (Flash,Batman...)And in my opinion Byrne was too much influenced to the 1978 movie.  And after? we can watch the Legionnaires become old,and die of old age? with you continuity Superman and Batman must have 90 years almost "REAL" a characters that fly and have super powers?? If i want real things read a newspaper,not a super heroes comic book.In a real world an alien from a planet like Krypton would be totally different from humans,and maybe could not also survive on earth.Batman would be ended in lunatic asylum or would be died in his first adventure.In the real world kids not become superheroes sayng "SHAZAM"!

Why not?  and,Clark Kent-Superman is 44 year old? If he have start is carrer in 1986 (Byrne "man of steel")at about 23 year  he must have 44-45 years ,Lois too,Jimmy Olsen 38 years,Batman is about 48,and Hal Jordan...Oh boy,60? So, Superheroes ARE like Archie Andrews who is always seventeen.Yes,in fact now are soap opera characters.I agree totally. ;)

Like Golden-Silver age Superman.I agree totally. ;)

Not all "breaks" in continuity are created equal. For instance, if a writer has Kang's forcefield broken by Thor's Hammer (a weapon that his forcefield has deflected easily time and time again), that would be sloppy and stupid writing born of laziness.

It would not, however, be as bad as violations of characterization: for instance, if Cyclops left an X-Man behind when retreating. Not only would that make Cyke look bad, it would also contradict Cyclops's most basic character trait: he sees the group as being more important than himself as an individual.


Hmmm! Interesting you should point that out.

I was just talking to a friend the other day about how the style of storytelling developed in comics seems to be everywhere: a primary "A" story with the main (usually physical) conflict, combined with long-term mysteries and character subplots (whose continuing developments are what keep you tuning in and interested in the show). THE X-FILES had this style of storytelling in a very basic, embryonic form. You see this really blossom in shows like HEROES, ALIAS, and LOST, which are more like issues in a comic book than singular episodes with "tight" resolutions.

Single "standalone" episodes have a purpose...but I don't watch LOST to see if Jack and Locke will find a source of fresh water on the island. I watch it to see if there are any new developments with the hatch or the Others or the Jack/Sawyer/Kate love triangle, or to find out why Hurley was in a mental asylum.


I'm not frightened or threatened by this at all.

I'd love to see Superman get married, have children, get old, and die. I don't think the writers will ever do that because Superman and Batman have to be on seven-eleven slurpee cups and beach towels...which is one key point of difference between them and people like the Legionnaires or (until recently) the X-Men: you can do that sort of thing with them and marketing won't howl.

And it took 20 years for the Legionnaires to become young adults. I seriously don't think they're in danger of being sent to the Old Folks Home. And if they ever did, new characters can be created to replace the ones that retire.

You could probably identify Timber Wolf's baby as the only kid in the maternity ward with a five-o-clock shadow.


I disagree. If something has elements that are fantastic or science fiction, it has to try EVEN HARDER to be realistic as possible (ironically). Just because something is fantasy doesn't mean writers can slack off when it comes to keeping straight important things about the world and the characters' histories.

Just because Ultron is a robot made of adamantium doesn't mean you get to change his motivation, how we know he behaves (at least without good reason), or the past stories where he has fought the Avengers (some of which are pivotal moments in Avengers history).

It's a pet peeve of mine when people say "the character acts like that because its science fiction."


Whether it is one person or three writing is irrelevant. If Jim Shooter established the Avengers have to log the Quinjets' flight plans with the F.A.A., unless something happens, that's something Kurt Busiek should have the Avengers do as well.

If its established that the Wasp will only date blond men from a line of dialogue in AVENGERS during the Roy Thomas years, that's something Bill Mantlo should keep in mind too.

Here's another advantage to remembering your past: you're guaranteed to not see the same thing a second time. If Batman has a long-term relationship with an intelligent, formidable woman that he feels very special about, he ought to remember Silver St. Cloud and behave differently as a consequence.


NEW TEEN TITANS comes right to mind. remember the "Titans Beeper?" A beeper was a pretty high-tech gizmo back in the Byzantine Era (approximately when "NEW" TEEN TITANS was made, making it officially the most ironic title ever). But if "New" Teen Titans was supposed to happen "seven years ago" DC-time...even THEN, a pager was a laughably out of date technology. And it's just going to get worse as time marches on.


Maybe, maybe not. Nuclear proliferation continues on DC and Marvel Earth despite the fact that supervillains are always capturing nuclear weapons to threaten world governments.


Well, for one thing, even a genius like Reed can barely make heads or tails of things like the Kree Sentry. Shi'ar tech is lent to the X-Men, but with an agreement it is to be used for their own use only.

Asking why LMDs aren't in common use in industry, is like asking "Since we know how to build tanks, why is it everyone not driving a tank now?"

The tech is in the hands of organizations like S.H.I.E.L.D. and Roxxon Oil, who certainly are very, very different as a result of the presence of this technology: witness things like the Guardsmen and the Mandroids.

As for supertechnology...

Paste-Pot-Pete/Trapster would make tons of dough selling his paste as an industrial adhesive, but he's a megalomaniac and only uses it for crime. This is the same explanation for the Flash's Rogues Gallery and why they don't sell the basis for their technological devices.

Villains like the Beetle, Stilt-Man and Titanium Man have expensive suits of armor that cost about as much as a fighter plane, if not more. It may not be feasable financially for governments to use or duplicate them.

As for Reed Richards's inventions...his rocket was inadequately shielded against Cosmic Rays, and so it makes sense nobody would be interested in it. As for the Negative Zone projector, its use is mainly scientific. It's not like there's oil in there.

Diablo's alchemical secrets are based on formulas known only to him. Further, most of them were lost down a whirlpool, which is why there's never been more than one "Dragon Man."

Hank Pym's size-changing "Pym" particles can cause serious harm with overuse: the poor guy was trapped at 10 feet tall. Plus, the particles caused his psychological unbalancing as Yellowjacket.

As for Hank Pym's work in robotics...gee, that sure worked out well, didn't it? The only way Hank Pym's robot experiments could be any more insane is if he builds his next robot in the shape of a Great White Shark. "It'll work THIS time, honey! I SWEAR!"

And as for his communication with insects...this DOES have practical, industrial applications: he was building a machine to utilize insect minds in Kurt Busiek's Ultron stories!

The very thought of a government or an enemy getting ahold of a machine like Cerebro is frankly, terrifying. It's understandable why the X-Men would want to keep it to themselves.

Magneto himself provides an explanation for why his research in genetics isn't more widespread: he isn't interested in a Nobel Prize, or anythiing else except the benefit of mutantkind.

The Black Panther's inventions require Vibranium (an element he can use freely), or alternatively, like the Prowlers and the Flying Subs, are Wakandan state secrets.


Everything you just said is why...and I hesitate to say this on this forum...I've always mostly been a fan of Marvel Comics. I've often wondered why, between Superman, the Flash and Green Lantern, there was any crime AT ALL on Earth-1.

(The answer becomes "because its a superhero comic!" And that's not enough for me.)


This is a contemporary mentality that I just don't understand: the idea that something as truly unusual and insanely severe as a reboot - truly, a "bazooka to kill a fly" solution if there ever was one - is somehow inevitable, when it ISN'T.

We're still reading about the Stan Lee version of the Marvel characters. There have been a few off runs here and there, but the MU being published NOW is the same MU Stan Lee and Kirby created in the sixties. Hal Jordan is still the exact same character he was when Eisenhower was President; I doubt a single story has been taken out of continuity. Ditto for the Flash, whose now a diffent guy in the mantle, but almost no Flash tale "never happened."

I will agree the so-called "sliding timescale" creates problems but a reboot is trying to sweep up the floor by planting dynamite.

Funny, especially since he purports to love the character so much.  Variations on her already crappy classic Kirby costume only seem to be for the worse as well.

I wonder if Morrison's X-Men was limited editorially to the X-Men and didn't allow for crossovers --a side-effect multi-editor universe continuity --it gives over to petty fiefdoms (Schwartz/Weisinger a prime example).

Ironic since Marvel was built on inter-book continuity.

All the doubletalk in the world doesn't get you out of the predicament that it's been really hard for superheroes and their ilk to really to change the world around them on any permanent basis.  Stuff gets too far out there, and the world becomes really hard to relate to.  There's SO much fantastical science portrayed back in the comic 1950s and 60s that would reasonably percolate into the world that it wouldn't look anything like it does today.

I'd like to think it was because of concerns about invasion of privacy and sublimation of free will, but given all the x-raying and hypnosis that was in vogue, I doubt it. 

I cited that as -an- option, along with rolling continuity, or "something".  Alan Moore's Supremacy concept works.  Just letting the old continuity run its natural course, possibly ending in something epic that isn't necessarily related to the start of some new continuity.  Planning a logical end to a long series of stories at the beginning.  Look at how the last Thor run ended, where he takes the world over in a possible future, or the awesome PAD story where the Hulk is the last mammal on Earth.  I dunno.  The hard part is that so much is tied to so much else. 

The Marvel Universe is more a soap opera than DC, and persists only on those principles.  C'mon, they''re doing a team-up special with Guiding Light!  The relationship dynamics hold things together even when the actual storylines all piled up together make no practical sense and called for a fix a long time ago. 

What we're seeing now is more "multiple worlds" concepts...  Marvel's Ultimate line, the DCAU, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, etc.  They're not reboots, but retellings with twists.  Some of those twists add value, some are just different, others needlessly different.  The Japanese fans get by with three anime and two manga continuities for the Tenchi storylines, or something like that.   Some stories go on and one, others have logical beginnings and endings, etc.  The characters trump the stories. and the stories trump the universe.  Heck, there's Superman fans that can even stand Smallville, despite its radical departure from mainstream continuity.  I guess I'm not a slave to some world-without-end illogical congruous canon.

And good thing for that or this site would be meaningless, all those pre-crisis stories are no longer part of the current continuity. Rao better take them down, right?

Good thing people here are not slaves or we would have never gotten K-Metal, which was never part of any canon.

Might as well throw away that Birthright book too, since that's no longer canon, it must not worth reading right?

All of these stories must be worthless since they are no longer part of Continuity?

I don't think so...

What about John Byrne's "Generation"?



Yes,but for chacters like those what is "real"?  which is the gradation of realism? Is Lobo more real of Batmite? Is Doomsday more real of Toyman? Superheroes  continue to live at "Riverdale" (and havings always 30 years"),but "Pleasentville" now is not more much pleasent. At last i think that the best manner to use "multiverse" is give different version of same characters at different type of readers.I imagine two or three regular series,one with a "contemporary" version of Superman,another with the classic Silver age style Superman,another more "cartoon style" for childrens and Kids.If i can have Coke and Diet Coke Why i cannot have the "my" Superman?

How do you create a consistent continuity for a character from the Golden Age? It hasn't been done right.

I can think of only one case of a Golden Age hero surviving through today with a proper continuity: Captain America. And that's because he had the "luxury" of not being published for twenty years during the postwar period. (Not to mention that they just killed him.)

The advent of multiple earths helped two Silver Age DC characters to have a constant continuity to this day: Flash and Green Lantern. Their origins/descendants/etc were not changed by Crisis, and even though Barry is dead his sidekick and grandson continue on. Meanwhile, in Batman and Superman titles nothing has changed except for 15 reboots. I actually found myself hoping that Superman would die during Infinite Crisis and be replaced by either Connor or Kal-L, just so that something would change. (For the record, I really like Kurt Busiek's work though.)

The only sense of continuity that you'll find in Superman books right now is All-Star Superman, IF you read it with Grant Morrision's statement in mind: This is earth-1 Superman, and several years have passed.

Read: Saving Faces

http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/?column=13

Behold: the continuity destroying Mount Rushmore

http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/3219113.html#cutid1

52!  :D

I like the idea of an aging superhero dynasty, a la Gasoline Alley.

I think it would work with the Marvel Family --there is already quite an age range.  Morrison's All-Star and One Million deals with a Superman dynasty that was hinted at in the Silver and Bronze Ages.  And I guess Alan Moore's Tom Strong and Promethea did something of the sort as well.  The original E-2 comics toyed with the idea, Roy Thomas perfected it right up to Infinity, Inc., and it survives in a watered down form in today's JSA (I've only read one issue --the Perez illustrated "jump on board" issue but I think it still deals with the children of older JSA-ers).

Are there any non-Marvel and DC aging-in-"real-time" superhero dynasties?   

I have to say, all the attention to detail and continuity in a comic book universe is totally undermined, not by the suspension of disbelief required to read stories of super-powered heroes, but by the idea that they don't age (or age very slowly, or age according to some algorithm or sliding scale that changes every decade).  On the other hand, this never bothered me as a kid, because the characters did seem to grow and change, their adventures would continue, etc.

Alan Moore wanted to do it with his Twilight of the Superheroes (http://www.hoboes.com/html/Comics/Twilight/twilite1.html) proposal, but it was rejected. Some of his ideas were used in Kingdom Come.

Actually, now that I think of it, Alan Moore's success is based on the fact that he does allow characters to grow, develop, and age. He did it with Marvelman, Swamp Thing, and Superman. The aging superhero dynasty was done in Watchmen. He seems to be one of the only authors in comics to do this successfully.

WOW!! Earth-1 Archie meet Earth-2 Archie!                                           (http://img117.imageshack.us/img117/5020/ad236hy2.jpg) (http://imageshack.us)

Don't forget Tom Strong, who is a great example of a super-hero family told in real time.  Having a main character that doesn't age much helps.


He'll graduate high school one of these days.

Wait, I forgot.  He already did (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie:_To_Riverdale_and_Back_Again).

He's not going to get killed by Mooseday or something, is he?

and yes, Dr 13 is consistently fantastic !

I only picked up one issue, the one where Superman and Batman's descendants team up with the Legion to fight Darkseid.

I learned several things from this:

1) The Fourth World seriously needs to be given a rest. It was innovative to throw Kirby's concepts into DC-proper when Levitz did it in the early eighties, but like Celtic Myth, "airport novel" theories about Jesus's bloodline, Angels, and Vampires...Kirby's Fourth World has become way, way too trendy. Familiarity has strip-mined it all of coolness at this point.

2) 30th Century Batman's night-black spaceship (with the 1950s style "Batman face in front" look) is the coolest vehicle since the Millennium Falcon.

3) Man, Byrne's art has been getting steadily worse for 20 years, and now he's hit the bottom of the spiral. His action-centered, three-dimensional panels in everything from IRON FIST to his heyday on UNCANNY X-MEN was easily the most mindblowing art of that wave of creators, but nowadays everything looks like its drawn by a lazy amateur bored in art class?


I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but just because something is a superhero or fantasy story does not mean that the obligations of writers to create emotionally believable people changes (and a big part of that is people who can remember their past).

GARGOYLES was very "realistic" despite the fairies and gods and robots because of the way it told its story: stories building off other stories, characters remembering their pasts, and so forth.


ANYONE is more real than Bat-Mite.  ;)


I don't know if that would work.

For one thing, Silver Age-style pastiches are seldom any good. Even Waid himself regrets THE SILVER AGE, and SUPREME is (at best) hardly Moore's best work. At worst, it's a blight on his resume.

I made an observation a while back: if someone wanted to tell a good Silver Age-style story today, if it was sincere, if it was any good, it wouldn't immediately be recognizable as a Silver Age-style story. Paul Levitz's LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES run duplicated the "epic battle" Silver Age Legion story formula, and even directly built on sixties stories.

But because it chose to be sincere instead of half-mocking, maudlin nostalgia...because he chose not to laugh at the characters, his stories didn't dwell on making sure the Legion future looks laughably "Buck Rogers." And so people don't immediately see that Levitz's Legion was so very, very "Silver Age."

And another thing: I don't think separate superhero comics need to be created for kids.

Remember that TREK episode where Kirk was beamed into a good and evil version, but it was the evil version that had Kirk's command abilities and the "good" version was a wuss? That's what happens when you break superheroes up into adult and kid stories: you get a toothless lamb on one hand, and then on the other hand you have a vicious, mean rattlesnake...yet he's one that has the grit and grandeur.


As interesting as some of the "planned ending" series have been, isn't it possible there are some things that are just not designed to end? Legion of Super-Heroes, for one, can reasonably continue forever even under the worst circumstances.

Alternatively, there's more than just the individual stories of the character or group to think about. Certain things benefit the shared universe beyond just what it means to a single character, and it may be shortsighted to eliminate it when it can offer a lot to other comics. For instance, even if Man-Thing as a series was winding down, the MU would be all the poorer if they eliminated the Nexus of All Realities.

I said a while back the idea of characters aging and dying isn't problematic, but perhaps what I should have said was that there ought to be a way of taking time into account. That is, you can have change by characters yielding their identity to their successors (e.g. Flash) and you can have characters that don't age because there's an explanation: e.g. Nick Fury and his Infinity Formula.

Tarzan for instance, as PJF points out, ought to be immortal and ageless.


I don't agree. Stories don't and shouldn't happen in a vacuum. Superhero comics aren't an anthology series like THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

If a writer has a story that is centered around Ultron being a cold and emotionless robot, whether that is a "good" story or not is totally irrelevant, because that's not how Ultron is characterized as being. It is by definition, a "bad" story because they gpt it wrong: Ultron is calculating and ruthless, but he can be very passionate and violent.


Here's an observation of mine: opponents of continuity (which really, is as nonsensical as opposing gravity) seldom give any examples of what they see as being wrong with the shared universe. There's a tendency to talk in generalities. As in "I think this."


I don't know if I agree with that. There have been some moments where writers really got sloppy with the science fiction elements, certainly (introducing something that should have been a much bigger deal), but you have to hand it to the MU in one respect: the introduction of most new fantasy elements is carefully considered. It's not like Reed Richards created a machine that cures paralysis or cancer in one issue, and then "forgot" about it.

Of course, this is seldom as true over in Silver Age DC-land, where Lex Luthor can create a sattellite that turns all lead on earth into glass.


 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) to the power of Infinity.

Actually, your statement might be true if your definition if continuity is "whatever Grant Morrison says is true at any given moment."

Even if you ignore the baldfaced lie that the aptly-named ASS is in some way a continuation of Earth-1 Superman (a belief that somehow persists despite its obvious falsehood - Jimmy Olsen being seventeen, no Morgan Edge or WGBS, a "jerk" Steve Lombard: a characterization he moved past during in the Byzantine Era), ALL-STAR SUPERMAN is a glorified Elseworld. It has no more continuity weight than that issue of WHAT IF? where Wolverine became Lord of the Vampires.

I am seriously looking this up.

re: ASS
We as readers, and Morrison as writer, have a tendency to believe too much of Morrison's own hype, when much of that hype, I think, should be categorized as "thinking out loud" while talking to comics fans and media.  He just can't turn it off.  I have enjoyed parts of the 2 issues I've read but have to agree your quibbles about its continuity with pre-Crisis E-1 have weight.  Of course, in 20 years, many things could have changed: Jimmy, just like Ma and Pa Kent before him, could have reversed the aging process; WGBS could have been swallowed by Murdoch; Morgan Edge either sits on the board of AOL/Time Warner as the originator of CNN and Edge Classic Movies, or he has had a heart attack or has moved to a kibbutz; Steve Lombard's mother died and he has issues; etc, etc.  Earth-shaking, within-continuity events happened to the Superman Family pre-Crisis (death of the Kents, Clark switching jobs, arrival of Supergirl, Kandor, Legion, etc) so who can say what happened since 1986?

And Devil,Spiderman,fantastic four,and 90% of Marvel characters have drink infinity formula too? Because are around from early 60s,and would have 60-70 years almost (Mr Fantastic and the Thing 85 years).

Maybe ALL-Star Superman is the Superman of SILVER AGE (1956-1970) and not of BRONZE AGE.So,nothing WGBS,Morgan Edge,and others 70s-early 80s things.And in my opinion in this strange times  ALL Superman versions are elseword.

All comics are Elseworld to me.

The point about the Bronze Age is actually reasonable to me, I really didn't like the introduced continuity there at all, I would have preferred more science fiction like Superman spending time on a another planet for a decade over WGBS and all the sturm and drang of Lombard, Lana, Edge and Lois trying to find herself etc.  But it all depends on what you are used to and think, all the comics in the world won't change what I prefer.

Yes! Finally someone said it! Kirby originally intended for Darkseid to die at the end of his story, which he didn't get to finish. So now DC mines a character who should be dead for all he's worth, and will continue to do so until he becomes more profitable by dying. Isn't that how DC works?


 
How rude not to include my complete original quote, which was


By leaving out half of it, you completely changed the meaning of what I said, which is that, like you said, my "statement might be true"  :-\

That's because those stories can be segmented from contemporary DC Earth continuity with a little effort.  It's been the contorted efforts to try and tie them too tightly to mainstream DC universe too strongly that have been responsible for most of their downhill trends.

It can get a little torturous when you start looking at Justice Society, much less all the nooks and crannies. 

Good characters aren't brought down by bad storylines -- we're still talking about Superman despite the Iron Age :).  But, bad characters can ruin good stories.  Alan Moore didn't just write some good Supreme stories, but had to cleverly scrap Liefeld's Supreme character altogether.  Liefeld's Supreme would be toxic to most Alan Moore stories (at least those ones that don't have "Liefeld's Supreme character gets eliminated as the main focus at the very start" :) ).  What I was actually thinking of as I was typing this were all the old Batman stories where he's fighting aliens in space and time.  Some of those stories were all fine and good, but weren't "Batman" stories and would've been better served with some other action adventurer.

I take it you haven't gotten the memo about Ultron being a "she" (and I'm not talking about Jocasta).

Fundamentally, sequential art implies continuity -- it's a question of what span of time, and what degree of continuity, and what sort of story you want to tell.

The commercialization of unstable molecules in the 1960s alone would've meant huge changes for our way of life now. 

MEL, I actually prefer Silver to Bronze myself, but have a perverse fascination with and love for it in part because Maggins' LSOK was the first Superman story I consciously read as a kid aside from the animated cartoons and 50s tv show.  So, after finally getting around to actively picking up older Superman comics as an adult, the 70s comics always resonated in a different way with me.  If they had to change Superman at all in the 70s (they didn't), I think they changed it in a respectful, logical way.  One or two major characters were added (I think Lombard as a rival/pest is a good addition, whereas Morgan Edge, the caustic boss, is just a bland, unlikable version of Perry White).  The lack of good new classic villains outside Parasite and Terra Man is also a Bronze Age minus.  But the "sturm and drang" shenanigans with Lois, etc were really nothing new, except in terms of tenor and attempts at maturity --one of the most obvious signs of the aging audience, different editors & writers.
The covers were uglier too, minus Swan.

 

Well, its always down to what you are used to.  I actually stopped reading all comics when the Sand Saga ended (as well as Denny O'Neill's Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Wonder Woman giving up her powers etc.). The "relevence" of the more modern update seemed just as artificial as the Silver Age, and not nearly as fun.  Most of the people here are younger than me, I actually thought Maggin and Bates took Superman a little too seriously.

But I have a different attitude toward comics - I like them BECAUSE they remind me of being a kid, not because I would keep reading them for decades.

Well,i fear to be a disperate case:I love Silver Age Superman and...Batman-Adam West version. :'(

The one true Batman:

(http://superman.nu/images/batfr2.jpg)

I disagree - I think a lot of Legion's best stories are based on interacting with the DC present-day, and it's a shame the Weisenger insularity persisted in Legion years and years after it dissolved everywhere else. It was just plain COOL to discover that the Science Police on Polaris had permission to wear the uniform of their forebears, the Hawk Police. It was fascinating when the Legion interacted with modern times, as in the Englehart JLA/JSA/LEGION team-up and the Martin Pasko Batman/Legion team-up in DC COMICS PRESENTS.

We were just talking about Laurel Gand in the other thread. Not just because she was interesting, but because of the concept she represented.

And Legion isn't all that insulated. Heck, Geoff Johns used Mordru in his now classic initial "grab you by the balls" JSA story arc.

When I mean Legion can persist indefinitely, I'm NOT saying because it is "compartmentalized." It isn't, and it shouldn't be, either. I'm saying that the Legion isn't all dependent on individual members or a specific situation. You can have the Legionnaires move off-earth, or have characters die or retire, and the book can continue. This is true of many, many other teams: TEEN TITANS, X-MEN, AVENGERS, etc. And they can be substituted for the Legion in my point.


I don't know about that. Geoff Johns is the only writer that has ever gotten me to LIKE a character I dislike as much as Kyle Rayner. By eliminating the nauseating comedy and having them behave in a mature fashoin, Geoff Johns "character doctored" the pain in the ass Young Justice kids in a similar fashion. Forgive me if my point is obvious here, but I don't think at this point there's such a thing as a character whose presence totally poisons a story.

(I'll be willing to eat my words about the leather-jacket wearing, jackass Starman in Robinson's "too-hip-for-words" run, which is so smarmy and self-referential it might as well be the the Godfather of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. I wince every time I see him on panel in JSA. Thank goodness Johns had the sense to get rid of him early on.)


What the - ?

Nothing can possibly be more tedious than a classic Avengers fan whining about Brian Michael Bendis, so I'll spare everyone the indignity here. But JEEZ.

There are some villains that are like James Brown: they keep up with the times so they're always hip and cool. Then there are some villains that are the equivalent of Alice Cooper, or like the cockroach: they're "classic formula."

Ultron is the Alice Cooper of the villain world.


Waid answered this question in his first FANTASTIC FOUR arc: unstable molecules are a potential hazard outside of controlled conditions, which is why Reed protects his patents. Their instability spreads like a virus, which nearly engulfed the city.

Yes, there are some problems, but these are problems that have solutions. Like why Jor-El had the only rocket on Krypton.


Truly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because while Curt Swan delivers on interior art, his covers are flat and sexless, unlike the dynamic, adventurous cover art provided by Nick Cardy and Neal Adams and Bob Brown.

Heh, we could do this forever.   :)  Swan's covers are examples of wonderful composition, humour, storytelling and style.  Hallmarks of his interior art as well.  I will give you Neal Adams --his work marked a stylistic departure from old-timers like Swan that had a freshness to it.  Very distinctive.  I think that both Swan and Adams, both "realistic" artists, are indebted to similar schools of advertising art and strips like Rip Kirby, etc.  Now I just find Adams flashy and repetitive.  Cardy's covers I find jumbled and ugly, his figures oddly elongated or squashed.  Not as warm as Swan.  And Swan's interior art trumped them all as well.

It was Laurel Kent, not Laurel Gand.  The concept Laurel Gand represented was "fill-in for Supergirl", trying to keep future Legion mythos consistent with contemporary Super mythos.  Laurel Kent's Manhunter end, and the Laurel Gand stuff, were part of Legion stories gone wrong.  It's one thing to have ties to the past, quite another to be slavish to it.

The problem with super-tech is that there's far too much of it for it to not have a transformative effect.  The rationalizations against it wear thin in the face of SO much super-tech.  A few years, and comic contemporary Earth morphs into a world unrecognizable relative to the current one.  You have the same problem with the transformative effect of super-heroes of course, but there's less heroes than tech, and (generally :) ) less cloning of heroes than of tech. 

 Personally, the whole reason why I like the pre-crisis Superman is because I don't consider it a continuity. Certainly not in the sense that Marvel is a continuity. Let's be honest, very few things published between 1958-1985 stayed the same throughout that time. They were constantly doing "revisions" of events like how he went from being Superboy to Superman in college, or how his parents died. Some stories say that he started his Superboy career in elementary school while most versions of his origin suggest he was a teenager when he first put on the cape and long underwear.

 This is not continuity in the traditional sense, and it certainly leaves open the possibility for individual interpretation. For instance, I don't particularly like the Superboy #69 story that says he didn't even know he could fly until his parents told him he used to do it as a baby (a Superboy who didn't know he could fly is not Superboy, it's just Smallville with a costume). Since this particular scene was never acknowledged again in future retellings of his origin, it is up in the air (a little pun) whether or not it counts as official cannon (Action #500 suggests that the whole reason he didn't fly as a kid is not because he didn't know he could, but just because he was very careful with his powers growing up, what impression does that give someone who never read Superboy #69?). Then there is the question of whether or not you really want everything published to count as official cannon. A lot of the Lois Lane stories were more then a little bit sexist with her always trying to trick Superman into marraige and Superman always trying to wiggle his way out of it. In 1958 when the primary audience were eight year olds that kind of thing is cute, but by 1985, it does look, at best, outdated and at worst, downright insulting to women. Would you really want that as part of his history if you didn't have to include it?

 Marvel doesn't have that choice, if Sue Storm acted like a helpless female in a 1961 issue, (and from what I understand, she did) that still counts today as part of her history because of the way the Marvel continuity is set up. If you look at issues like when Jimmy goes back in time and becomes a Beattle you realize it might be a good idea to ignore certain elements that are either dated or unflattering to the character if you have the option. I don't see the pre-crisis Superman as a continuity so much as a series of very limited rules. We know what Krypton was supposed to look like, we know that when Kal-El's rocket crashed he was propelled out by the force of the impact, we know that the Kents found him near by and took him to the orphanage and later returned to adopt him, we know that his first super feat was pulling a tree stump out of the ground and getting hit by a bull, we know that Martha Kent made a playsuit out of his blankets because he kept burning up his clothes as a toddler, we know that around the time he started school the Kents sold the farm and opened a general store in town, we know that sometime between that point and fifteen he decided to start his career as Superboy, we know that Martha turned his playsuit into his costume and we know that Jonathon Kent had to take him out in the woods to teach him to control his flight, we know that some time after that Krypto landed on Earth. That's about it for the carved in stone stuff, but what about things like Beppo? He is never mentioned in future retellings either, did he still count in the later years? What about Streaky or Comet? They hardly got mentioned either in the last decade of the pre-crisis universe.

The pre-crisis Superman works for me becaue he is "reader friendly" in the individual interpretation department, that's something you don't have with traditional continuity, and I'm not sure you could do something like that today. Some people argue that the origin revamp was necessary simply because it was so hard to figure out what still counted and what didn't in the later years.      

And this worked ! If a thing was not good was not spoken more,and after some numbers was  like if it were not never happened  :). Naturally the secret was not to introduce  radical changes.A character like Superman would have be timeless,like an historical European city in which in comparison at one photo of sixty years ago only the clothes of the peoples and the cars are different,but the buildings and the streets are the same.In my opinion for Superman (and Batman too) would be good thing that if continuity were much vague but the firm points (the rules) for the characters were extremely solid and not not changeable.Then for things like the dead of Superman or the wedding between Clark and Lois there are the "imaginary stories".