Page 33, Vol. I, #12

Or why nerds ruined comics.

There is little that annoys me more in superhero comic books then constant retconning.

In most speculative fiction there are rules to the genre. In science fiction, for example, you have to maintain certain that everything in the setting goes along with established rules of science. A few leaps in the believability are accepted, but these are minimal and tend to be specifically related to the setting or events of the story. In fantasy (good fantasy, anyway) one establishes rules and systems by which the magic and setting work, even if these are vague at best.

Supers, as a genre, typically has no such restraints. Elements of science fiction (of various ilk), fantasy (also of varying styles), and horror mix with plain old imagination. Thus Superman can have powers granted by a yellow sun (a "scientific," if absurd, proposition), but it can be firmly established that his companions are vulnerable to oxygen deprivation, while at the same time giving him vulnerabilities to magic. Space exploration exists side by side with the astral magic of Dormammu and the Vishanti.

But we should keep in mind that many fans of supers are fans of other speculative fiction, and for the same reasons. These reasons, naturally, include the fantastic and amazing foundations of the genre, but also extend to it's manipulation of the rules.

In supers, the rules don't dictate the setting or the plot. They dictate the history.

This has of late extended to other series, and there are great efforts and arguments in such properties as Star Wars and Star Trek, for example. The drive for internal consistency has led us to demand consistency throughout the entire existence of a character or setting.

This has led to some ridiculous stretches in all the properties mentioned, but it is especially bad in supers settings like the DCU or the Marvel Universe which have been going for 60 years.

So bad, in fact that they keep rebooting. Start over! Kill most of 'em off!

Then of course, all the characters that get killed off will eventually return (Kara, anyone?).

But it's not necessarily the rebooting itself that drives me to this position. After all, the constant amending bothers me too. Venom is from space. Then they'll ignore it, then he'll be from a lab. Then ... Whatever.

The problem is that people take the supers genre too seriously.

Let me clarify that. I take the comic book medium very seriously. I think you can tell serious stories well with it. I think you can tell serious superhero stories very well. But I'm baffled that there is some sort of qualification of complete and total congruence with every previous story told about the character to be serious.

I like Medieval literature (trust me, this comes back in real quick). Particularly, I like King Arthur and related stories (which includes a lot of French, Celtic, Briton, Welsh, and even Irish literature). However, the tellers of tales about Arthur (or most mythic figures) weren't worried about continuity. They told a good story. They didn't say when or how this story fit into the larger saga. They just told the story using characters you already know. In fact, many of these stories directly disagree with one another. In "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" Gawain is noted for his courtesy toward women. In The Wife of Bath's Tale, he is certainly not. And since Chaucer lived after the Green Knight was composed, he ruined the character completely and we need to retcon that story out of the canon. It'll make a decent What If? or Elseworlds title instead.

No.

Superheroes are inherently mythical. You can be as heavy handed as pointing out Hercules, Thor, and Wonder Woman's important roles in both of the Big Two's cannons. You can take a middle road and parade out works like Kingdom Come. Or you can do some in depth studies about the reflections of other mythologies in the very nature of a "superhero." Anyway you go about it you can't miss that there's more relation between Spider-Man and ancient myth than there is between Batman and a detective novel.

So, here's my solution:

Forget continuity! At least for long term stories. I don't care if some event that showed up in a now defunct title contradicts the Batman story the current writer wants to tell. To me, it makes less sense that the Joker keeps escaping from the asylum anyway. Just tell me the story.

Discuss it in our forums.

Written by SaintEhlers on February 28th, 2006