I wondered about your previous "opera" comment, India, and now I know what you meant.
India Ink:
Some Bugs cartoons tell us that he's an actor for the Warner Brothers studios, and he and his repertory company put on these shows for the viewer....
I love this angle on Bugs. But it's not unique to Warner Brothers. This was also (sometimes) Mickey's angle, if I remember rightly.
Mickey's "adventures" were not consistent with any particular continuity. He was an "actor" for Disney. One storyline could see him as the captain of a boat, the next as a crusading newspaper editor, in yet another as the civilian assistant and investigative drive behind O'Hara, Chief of Police. In some adventures he was a daring aeroplane pilot...
Even Goofy was an actor, really. I have a healthy collection of SUPER GOOF, a real childhood favourite of mine -- yet, when convenient, in many stories Goofy was just plain ol' Goofy.
India Ink:
It's fun to think about these things--even if I often was driven nearly mad by thinking about them when I was a kid--but I'm glad WB never made it clear what was supposed to be "real" and what wasn't. I was left to compartmentalize these different types of Bugs cartoons, and I could accept all of them as being equally important to the "continuity" of the character.
I couldn't agree more!
Now, Superman isn't a Warner Brothers cartoon ( :shock: waitaminute!), but of all the super heroes, he more than any other lends himself to a little flexibility when it comes to "continuity". He is the first, the best, the longest-lived, the most famous, and the archetype for the whole super hero bunch. Think of all the eras in which he has been top dog. Part of his success is his flexibility. And this also requires a little flexibility from his readers.