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The Cancer of Continuity Fatboy Roberts
Please join me in welcoming the newest sucker writer to Geek in the City. The one and only Fatboy Roberts of the Mighty Cort and Fatboy Show. Not one to shy from Geek controvery, Fatboy jumps head first into what he believes the greatest threat to the comic industry. Enjoy! - AD
Eventually, everything in Comics gets killed off. Robin. Superman. Your Innocence. John Byrne's legitimacy. But, comics being the superpowered soap opera for men that it's become; unless you're Uncle Ben, you’re getting brought back to life. Norman Osborn. Superman. Crises on Earths. And stringing all this dying/living/changing/mutating nonsense together is the spine of superhero storytelling: Continuity.
And if Continuity is the comic book's spine, Comics has scoliosis. And missing vertebrae. Continuity has comics paralyzed and stuck in a motorized chair, chin resting on the lever. The wheels are spinning as fast as the tinker-toy motor will push it, but the crippled industry atrophying in the worn leather seat isn’t moving anywhere. The continuity won't let it.
Let me be Benny Hinn for a second. Let me lay hands upon Comics weary forehead and utter a few words of thin wisdom, praise hallelujah. Some will mock and deride, but when Comics gets up out of that chair, back straight, and strides with purpose towards a heyday it hasn’t known since the late 80’s, just remember where to send the donations.
Kill Continuity... Comics are at a point where the characters still carry weight, but it’s the arcs, and the writers, that are getting the draw. Brubaker on Captain America. Vaughn with Y the Last Man. Kirkman's Walking Dead and Marvel Zombies. Ennis on Punisher. Ellis on Transmetropolitan. Johns on Superman. Check your trades shelves. Which ones keep moving? Dark Knight Returns by Miller. Superman for All Seasons by Loeb and Sale. Birthright by Waid and Yu.
Readers are obviously just looking for good stories, first and foremost. Comic editors seem to think that chaining themselves to the continuity addicts’ whims and whines is the way to go. This makes absolutely no sense.
1) It’s bad business to base editing decisions on the couple thousand Aspergers sufferers and functional autistics who chart comics continuity with the sort of fervor Raymond Babbit had for Wapner. People who update Wikipedia at least once every hour is a kind of limited market. That’s the financial argument.
2) Marvel has What If, and DC has Elseworlds but we’re dealing in FICTION, here. It’s ALL Elseworlds. It’s ALL What If. NONE of it happened. Give the reader enough credit to create a fictional universe of their own making, their own decision. Let them build a continuity that links stories together. If I wanna believe that Batman starts with Year One, continues with Long Halloween, then Dark Victory, and ends with Dark Knight Returns, let me. That malleability is one of the joys of fiction.
But Comic Editors can't help but try to fuse bone, gristle, and tendon and create this tortured, broken spine of continuity, attaching gimpy limbs like John Madden crafting a turducken for Thanksgiving.
You wanna revitalize comics? You wanna get new readers? You wanna have better film adaptations by hungry studios looking to pick that turducken clean? Jettison continuity completely.
Take a character. Match him with a writer and an artist. Give him 12 issues. Let him craft a story arc. Let that arc have a beginning and an ending. Let them play with as much or as little of the characters history as possible. And once that year is over? Hit the re-set button, and let another artist/writer combo play around in the sandbox. Every book is one part in a 12-issue miniseries event, every year.
This way, you can pay respect to a character's legacy, their continuity, but not be chained to it. Let them pick and choose which parts of the mythology to highlight. Which ones to re-invent. Let the story possibilities open up the way they want to, without the choke chain of continuity and semi-professional nitpickers who buy comics to draw timelines instead of to enjoy the stories. These same people watch movies just to update the "goofs" section of imdb. At some point, catering to these people should seem like a really bad call.
Cater to people who enjoy good stories with great characters whose potential doesn’t have to be limited to what came before. Give some of the best writers in the industry a yearlong crack at some of the most venerated characters we know, and then wipe the slate clean. You’re not gonna lose readers. If anything, you'll gain more casual fans. Because it’s not the infantilization of comics that keeps casuals away; It’s the intimidating, stories-tall, feet-thick wall of continuity that comics keeps adding to for reasons I'm not sure editors even UNDERSTAND anymore.
Let's do this wall like they did in Berlin. Except maybe without so much Hasselhoff playing. Let’s open the game up. If Hollywood can cherry pick from comics eras and mash them into cinematic stories that feel just as faithful and alive to comics fans AND regular audiences (Iron Man/Spider-Man 2/Batman Begins) why can’t comics do the same thing?
Continuity is a tumor. Cut it off.
Again, a huge thanks and welcome to Fatboy Roberts. If you agree (or don't) drop him a line at the Cort and Fatboy Message Boards... I know I will. Oh yea, keep them votes coming in at the Willamette Week's Best of 2008. You all rock!- AD
Thursday May 8, 2008
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