Continuity in Comics

SaMoKo wrote: Why can't Batman have just one series instead of ten? No kid is gonna buy all that shit.

Let me just interrupt you right here. Neither of the big two comics companies gives half a shit about kids. Their audience is 40 year old men who grew up on the stuff, and they are quite aware of it.

Continuity within a series is great. Continuity within a publisher's universe is as tangled as a plate of spaghetti. Why bother if the sauce isn't good?

Continuity in comics is hilarious. I really only like limited runs and one offs. Very few of my comic books are long standing continuity driven beasts. So to me it's a non-issue. But the times I have delved into that it's been pretty funny. I love when they do weirdo shit to try and tie it all together like that awful, so awful, Crisis on Infinite Earths series or whatever it was called. Oh my God that was a tough read. So much garbage... but kind of hilarious and compelling for those same reasons. Some writers use it to their advantage here and there like Morrison did in his JLA stuff (some of it anyway).

All in all I don't really like comics continuity but I do enjoy it. If that makes any sense. Short term sure, long term... geez, it's become a joke hasn't it?

Legomancer wrote:

SaMoKo wrote: Why can't Batman have just one series instead of ten? No kid is gonna buy all that shit.

Let me just interrupt you right here. Neither of the big two comics companies gives half a shit about kids. Their audience is 40 year old men who grew up on the stuff, and they are quite aware of it.

Yep. Kids aren't going to buy many $4.00 comics.

So, given these issues with continuity and the other stuff that's been brought up here, I have an honest question for those of you who read mainstream superhero books. Why do you read them? Given how much has gone out the window, how much has been endlessly recycled/rebooted/resurrected, what is left there at the core that keeps you coming back?

I totally respect the desire to read superhero books, but I'm curious as to what you like about them these days. I loved them as a kid but got fed up some time in the late 80s I think. I still read them occasionally as a professional obligation, but I'd rather not. Leaving aside the fact that most mainstream a comics are not visually pleasing to me, I can't escape the feeling that, instead of reading a story, I'm watching a property get manipulated to maximum financial effect.

Jason Lutes wrote: So, given these issues with continuity and the other stuff that's been brought up here, I have an honest question for those of you who read mainstream superhero books. Why do you read them? Given how much has gone out the window, how much has been endlessly recycled/rebooted/resurrected, what is left there at the core that keeps you coming back?

I totally respect the desire to read superhero books, but I'm curious as to what you like about them these days. I loved them as a kid but got fed up some time in the late 80s I think. I still read them occasionally as a professional obligation, but I'd rather not. Leaving aside the fact that most mainstream a comics are not visually pleasing to me, I can't escape the feeling that, instead of reading a story, I'm watching a property get manipulated to maximum financial effect.

It's been a long time since I bought mainstream superhero comics for specific characters or to follow continuity. Now I only buy if there is a great creative team on a book, telling stories that I enjoy. So while I generally ignore modern Marvel comics, I did enjoy reading the first trade for Waid's Daredevil run. That way, I can just focus on the quality of a limited set of stories by a strong creative team. Unfortunately, I am now avoiding the entire DC 52, because heavy editorial oversight has driven away too much talent, so I am voting against the current regime with my wallet.

I have not been keeping up on comics as closely as I used to. I mostly buy trades that interest me rather than trying to keep up with single issues.

Why do I read them? I like the characters. There are specific artists or writers I like as well, but the reason I generally enjoy them is they make the characters interesting. Yes, it is quite true there is not a lot of originality in most stories but the characters still interest me even if the story itself is not all that great.

I am definitely a continuity junky but I have no problem with retcons and irrational explanations, just throw me a bone and I'm pretty happy.

I read mainstream superhero books because...well, because I like them. I've always liked superhero books, going back to when I was very small. In reading these Iron Man books from '79/'80, one of the things that keeps hitting me was how much of the ADS I remember from this time. It's CRAZY. I flip the page, and suddenly there's an ad for a Battlestar Galactica Cylon pen that you can get for sending in Mallo Cup wrappers. I actually did that.

But anyway, I still like superheroes, I like the characters, I like (some) of the stories. As others have said, it is highly dependent on creative teams. I won't read Batman books from shitty writers like the recent Dark Knight series, which was terrible, or the Peter Milligan follow-up to Morrison's run on Batman & Robin (which was EPIC). If I see a good writer's name on something I'll check it out. Like those Waid Daredevils- that book is stupendously good by mainstream standards or otherwise. It's definitely NOT just a "shiny muscle and mean muggin'" book at all. Hawkeye is like that too.

No doubt, there's a lot of mainstream superhero books that fit EXACTLY into all of the negative perceptions of them- repetitive, uncreative, badly written/drawn, apparently created in some kind of heartless/soulless comic book mill- but some are not. And some are just silly fun if you like the genre- like most of the Green Lantern books over the past decade. They aren't great comics. But they're fun and unpretentious about what they are, which is stories about guys flying around in space and shooting laser beams from magic rings.

There are plenty of superhero books that are VERY intelligent, insightful, and written with heart and respect for the audience. I went through a whole "no tights" phase myself, but it was in the 1990s when mainstream superhero books really were as bad as everyone makes them out to be with a few notable exceptions. I wouldn't read anything that wasn't indie, B&W, crime, documentary, or Vertigo. But I _missed_ reading about Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Green Lantern, and so forth.

But I _never_ stopped reading Batman. I've been reading Batman since I was five. Not necessarily following continuity or keeping up with issues, but I've always had tons of trades, books,and other paraphenalia.

Thanks for the responses. It's pretty interesting that superheroes seem to exist in this unique narrative realm, where people will read new stories about them with interest, over a 60-70 year period of continual publication. It's an interesting aspect of characters that exist as properties, which can be utilized as the owners see fit. Comics seems to be the main stage for this kind of thing (even the Peanuts characters continue to appear in new stories), but things like Dr. Who and James Bond also seem to fit the same basic model.

There are plenty of superhero books that are VERY intelligent, insightful, and written with heart and respect for the audience. I went through a whole "no tights" phase myself, but it was in the 1990s when mainstream superhero books really were as bad as everyone makes them out to be with a few notable exceptions. I wouldn't read anything that wasn't indie, B&W, crime, documentary, or Vertigo. But I _missed_ reading about Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Green Lantern, and so forth.

Yeah, I missed that stuff too, but I ended up looking outside the medium for satisfaction. the closest I ever got to reliving the thrill of comics I loved as a kid was playing Freedom Force on the PC.

I've avoided even looking at this thread because I figured it would just make me angry, but when I saw that Jason Lutes posted it made me kind of curious. His post made me semi-curious to read the previous posts, but I only got as far back as Barnes saying that Waid's Daredevil and Fraction's Hawkeye are "stupendously good by mainstream standards or otherwise" and couldn't read back any further.

Hopefully I'm rehashing what someone's already said, but: it's a stupid question that should only have one answer. Continuity ONLY exists to serve the corporations; the entire *idea* is anti-artist. A corporation can't (usually) own an artist, so they trick you into wanting the character, which they DO own, over the artist. I don't even want to know who said here "I love continuity!"

Up to a point, continuity is an enjoyable result of world-building and guest appearances. After that point, it becomes a load of baggage that only accumulates mass and decreasing quality over time.

In my country, it's about what you're growing with. I'm lucky enough to be to be in a generation that is hit by all kinds of comics: European, American, and Japanese. The generation before me is all about European. The generation before them is all about American and Indonesian comic. The generation after me is all about Japanese comic. They HATE each other with passion.

Depends on how you define continuity. 500+ issues of Dragonball, all written and drawn by a single artist* - does this count as continuity? I don't see how that could be ever seen as anti-artist. That's exactly how I want my comics - long stories with lots of world building and development.

Or are we talking about company-wide crossovers? Writer N shitting on the stories of Writer N-1? Those I can live without.



* I'm not looking that up btw

I don't really like long, drawn-out stories. I like ends. I like completed arcs. I'd rather read a pretty good single issue that tells a complete story than 50 volumes that poke around getting to...somewhere? I don't read superhero stuff partly because I don't care about superheroes but partly because I want there to be something there after I'm done. And there to be a "done".

The most superheroey, continuity thing I'm reading now is BPRD, which I'm about to drop. The story has gotten huge, a world-wide catastrophe, and as a result it's lost the interaction between the characters that I originally enjoyed in BPRD.

Actually, I lied. The most continuity-heavy thing I read is probably Usagi Yojimbo, but that never feels overwhelming to me the way X-Men was back when I tried to read that.

I heard lots of praise for 20th Century Boys but when we were dicking around in volume 11 and not even halfway done yet I quit. There just aren't any stories that can hold my interest for that long.

I'd like to add that I'm tired of "continuity" and decompressed storytelling in my TV as well. Ever since Buffy it's been decided that good TV means season-long story arcs with big bads, and it usually just doesn't work (It didn't work in Buffy after Season Three, even). It usually requires the main characters to be criminally stupid or incurious in order to stretch out the plot, and results in buildup that no reveal on earth can live up to.

Right now my beef is with Doctor Who in this regard. The Moffat Era has been godawful with this, opting for long, drawn-out storylines that collapse under their own weight instead of solid episodes. One critical article I read -- and this ties it back to superhero comics -- described the writing as more interested in making you want to see what happens next instead of thinking about what you just saw. In other words, each episode is a throwaway just building to the next episode, which will be a throwaway for the next, and so on, a parade of sizzle that the steak -- assuming there ever is a steak -- can't possibly deliver on. (And, in the case of Doctor Who, god help you if you don't find River Song or Amy Pond fascinating because we're going to ride those horses into the fucking ground.)

Look back at the X-Files, which also contributed heavily to this trend. What do you remember, single-shot Monster of the Week episodes, or that ridiculous "mytharc" that ultimately just ran in circles until it imploded. How many modern-day shows gave a promise that the "central mystery" was going somewhere, only to eventually shrug and admit they were just making it up as they went? Few shows do this well and yet it's all the rage.

It's one thing to look at a story and say, "this is going to take a while to tell." But intentionally padding it out to the point where you have to find ways to get your characters NOT to solve the mystery too fast, or working to make an obvious reveal more dramatic (or worse, make the reveal unobvious by having it make no goddamn sense) should be a warning sign. Yet people seem to eat this shit up.