Marv Wolfman, Crisis, and Continuity

[Lorendiac]

INTRO: As I write this, preparing to post the following material again, it is 18 September 2006. The first version (almost everything you see below this "Intro" section) was posted way back when, in January of 2005, when word had just recently been leaking out that DC was planning to do something vaguely similar to "Crisis on Infinite Earths" for its "twentieth anniversary," but we didn't even know what the follow-up Big Event would be called! In this piece, I referred to it as Crisis 2 for lack of any better name!

But at the time, in anticipation of whatever "Crisis 2" would turn out to do for the DCU, I spent some time gathering together quotations from Marv Wolfman relating to why he thought the old Crisis on Infinite Earths would be a good idea at the time he wrote it, etc. Now that "Infinite Crisis" has come and gone, and we've all had about four months to calm down and form our opinions of what it actually accomplished, what it should have accomplished, where it "succeeded" or "failed" in a particular area, et cetera, it seems like a good time to dust off this old piece. Those of you who remember reading it before may be interested in looking it over to see if your attitudes on the subjects Wolfman refers to have changed any after what we've been through in the last twenty months or so. Those of you who haven't read it before may find Wolfman's comments thought-provoking, whether you agree with all of his opinions or not! :)

***** OLD POST BEGINS *****

Everybody keeps talking about how some sort of Crisis 2 is coming our way on the 20th Anniversary of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and lately I've been feeling the need to do a little online research to see just what Marv Wolfman, the writer behind that Crisis, had to say about why he did it, how it turned out, how he feels about "continuity problems" in general, and so on and forth.

First I'll present you with a choice selection of quotes from Wolfman on relevant points; then I'll offer some commentary of my own.

1. Quotations
2. Comments

1. QUOTATIONS
http://www.marvwolfman.com/WHAT%20TH%202.html
This Question is apparently a composite of various questions he gets in his email (and by other mediums, I'd imagine) over and over and over again. The Answer, of course, is pure Marv Wolfman.

Q: Why didn’t DC Comics stop you from killing Supergirl/Flash/ Earth 3/The Green Stringbean, etc. in “Crisis On Infinite Earths?”

A: Well, the truth is I went behind the backs of the company; the president, publisher, proofreaders, assistants, production department, curious bystanders, my dog, Tala, and random others to see if I could sneak in the deaths of major characters, all by myself, without anyone noticing. Also, because I don’t like green stringbeans and he deserved to die anyway! Final also, I personally get a visceral thrill in taking things that don’t really exist in the first place and murdering them.

There! At last I’ve told the truth. I’m glad to have gotten that off my chest after all these years. You have no idea how many times I’ve lied about this when I repeatedly said I worked hand-in-hand with the company in choosing our “death list.” Fortunately, nobody believed my lies and you’ve now forced me to come clean. I already am sleeping better. Thank you.
In "What Th--?" #7 (http://www.marvwolfman.com/WHAT%20TH%207.html), he says in part, while discussing the reasons for Crisis and its aftermath the way things turned out:
The problem comes down to continuity. I personally hate it. With a passion. I like in-book continuity where you keep characters in character and their histories straight, but I am completely against inter-company continuity. With each new concept added to the mega-universe, story possibilities are limited rather than expanded. In my mind, continuity means the best writer at a company is held hostage by the worst. We need to keep expanding what we can do in comics, not contracting it by adding more and more continuity nonsense that everyone has to adhere to.
And later in that same column:
I designed Crisis to get rid of all the old continuity so there would be no stranglehold on ideas. I would have liked to have seen a deliberate desire to avoid shoving that continuity right back in again, but that didn’t happen.

Fortunately, although it took a little while, it appears that DC and even more so Marvel, have finally come to believe the same.
In "What Th--?" #11, he returned to that theme, saying in part (at http://www.marvwolfman.com/WHAT%20TH%2011.html)
As I’ve made mention more than once, I’m not a big fan of continuity and I grow less a fan of it every time I see a useless footnote to a story. Were I given the power to change everything today, I would simply say that all books published from January 1st will start over with issue #1. If you want to bring back something from the past and establish it as new continuity, be my guest. If you want to forget something in the past, then you’re free to do that, too. At this point I’d also say I don’t care how many Atlantis’ there are in the DC or Marvel U. If the FF wants one Atlantis and Sub-Mariner wants a different one, go right ahead. I’m more interested in seeing great new ideas than in having everyone having to write one possibly boring vision. I want to see comics continue to expand outward rather than contract inward and that’s what I think company wide continuity does.

I don’t think it’s a big surprise that the major hits of the late 90s were Astro City and Alan Moore’s ABC line. Each creator put together his own new universe and wasn’t hampered with a million issues and the two million other writers that preceded them.

At http://stlcomics.com/columns/tftlof/V/ the interviewer raised the subject of Crisis on Infinite Earths by saying:
AN: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS: Roy Thomas has called this book a tragic event and unnecessary whatever the critical success of it.

MW: That's Roy's opinion and he's entitled to it. Fortunately, the fans have always supported it. As for whether it was necessary, the answer is yes it was because it got Marvel readers to buy DC Comics for the first time and prior to Crisis they weren't. That each time it's been reprinted it outsells all DC's projections indicate the fan's feelings for it as a real classic. Also, that it was voted in the CBG poll as the 2nd best comics story of the 20th century says what the majority feels. By the way, Roy and I were, are and remain good friends. We can disagree with creative choices but that's okay. I believe every number of years you should clean house and start over again for the new generation of readers.
On Wolfman's website, he says something at http://www.marvwolfman.com/Q&A.html, in response to a question about how some DC heroes seemed to remember things about the Crisis (and the people from one Earth or another who had died in it) in their monthly titles, while the characters in other titles seemed totally oblivious. Here's Wolfman's reply on what he originally intended:
As people may or may not know, I never wanted the DC heroes to remember the Crisis ever happened or to ever have it referred to after the series was done. But against my wishes I was overruled by the other DC editors. That is why the heroes went back to the dawn of time so they, and only they could remember. I always thought that was a terrible mistake, and it certainly proved to be so. But, when you're working in a collaborative medium, and the Crisis was just that, they had the right to overrule me. I wasn't happy, but I did the best I could and don't think it hurt the Crisis story although it made the DCU very difficult to navigate through. If my original idea had been accepted the problems you mention would never have happened.
Further down on that same page, Wolfman reveals something else about the death of Barry Allen. (Including the part about what loophole he thought he left for bringing Barry back someday, but I'll let you go read that for yourself if you really care.):
Please note that I didn't think it was a good idea to kill The Flash but those were my marching orders, so I did the best I could to make his death as moving as I could.
And on the subject of Kole, who only got a few appearances in a Titans title before being slaughtered in Crisis, Wolfman said in a letter to the "Women in Refrigerators" site about the mistreatment of female comic book characters (http://www.the-pantheon.net/wir/c-mwolf.html):
Of the list I killed only two, and two were created to die (Terra and Kole) though Kole was, in retrospect, a mistake which I did because other writers complained we weren't killing off any of my characters in Crisis, and if I wanted their characters to die I had to kill one of mine.
In an interview at http://www.collectortimes.com/2003_04/Clubhouse.html Marv said about the success (and subsequent imitations) of Crisis:
Well I think because this was a book that I strongly believed in and had worked on for years and thought about for years before that, I did something from my heart. I did something that I thought was vitally important. Also, nobody ever predicted that this would sell. They just had no concept of it. So, when it proved to be a good seller, suddenly all of the companies mandated this on a regular basis. The problem was they all sold. If you're going to do these type of stories, there should be a reason to do it. Yeah, I think they went far too overboard. I think that there's no reason to do all of those stories outside than the fact that they'll sell. Now, that maybe is a good enough reason, but I think ultimately it hurts but because they see the increased sales, they don't really care.

[Lorendiac]

2. COMMENTS

I provided URLs and Quotations from them to minimize the risk of being accused of treating Marv Wolfman unfairly by recklessly "paraphrasing" or "misquoting" his actual thoughts on Crisis, and Continuity Issues in general.

First, I don't really believe the funny claim I quoted at the very start, wherein he claimed that killing off all those characters and their homeworlds and so forth in Crisis was a nasty trick he pulled on DC when everybody else was out to lunch or something. Though I get the strong feeling that he's been accused of exactly that evil deed from time to time by angry fans, and was gently teasing them by trying to suggest how unlikely it would be that he could get away with it.

In fact, it's interesting to note that he claims he didn't propose to DC that he kill Barry Allen; but instead was ordered to use Crisis as an opportunity to kill Barry Allen! I don't know what that was all about. (But then, I was never really a collector of Flash comics as a kid. Nor am I now, for that matter. I have heard that in the mid-80s, for a loooong time, the Flash title was bogged down in a "Trial of the Flash" storyline after Barry killed Professor Zoom in defense of his own bride at a wedding, a storyline which just dragged on and on without making much sense . . . I've read reprints of some columns by lawyer and comics fan Bob Ingersoll that take various Flash issues from that era and tear them to shreds, describing all the errors in legal procedure that crept in.)

Wolfman does criticize all the other "Great Big Universal Crossover Events" stuff that Marvel and DC (and sometimes other companies) have played around with ever since Crisis became a surprise hit. In other words, when he wrote Crisis, he saw it as a one-time project that dealt with something he really cared about, but he wasn't trying to start some sort of regular trend with everybody else jumping on the bandwagon. That's good to know!

Things he says about wanting Crisis "to get rid of all the old continuity" seems to support rumors I had heard before (unless he was exaggerating just how much continuity he wanted to get rid of at the time?). The rumors said that ideally, Wolfman would have liked to see every DC title turn back the clock and reboot its continuity from scratch, and perhaps had reason to hope this would happen? Of course, as it turned out, that is exactly what happened with Superman and Wonder Woman, but most of the writers and editors dealing with all the rest of the DCU tried to maintain as much of the old pre-Crisis continuity as possible. (With a couple of exceptions, like whatever it was that happened to Hawkman - I'm not a regular collector of his stuff, but I've heard it got confusing and disjointed.)

On the other hand, some of what he says basically implies that he felt any writer should feel free to dust off any particular piece of continuity from the old days if it suited the new writer's purposes . . . otherwise, he should feel free to pretend it didn't happen at all (using Crisis as an excuse). That is fairly close to what Jeph Loeb, for instance, has often been accused of doing in his work on Batman. The Long Halloween, Dark Victory, and Hush all had inconsistencies with other people's work, for better or for worse.

[Note, added 18 Sept. 2006: In an introduction he wrote for the TPB collection of the Loeb/Sale "Challengers of the Unknown" miniseries from the early 90s, Jeph Loeb said something like this: "My basic attitude toward continuity is that Jimmy Olsen did not become Robin the Boy Wonder, and everything else is negotiable." In an interview with Newsarama (http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Sams_story/sam_superboy.html) he reiterated that perspective if you want to check it out. At the time I wrote the first draft of this piece, I had never seen Loeb's comment in the "Challengers" TPB and he had not yet given that Newsarama interview.]

Wolfman also wanted the fact that there had even been a Crisis to completely disappear from Post-Crisis dialogue. But I can see why other writers wanted to explore some of the ramifications in their own way, if it would have profoundly influenced (but not erased or totally rebooted) their own characters. I seem to recall Roy Thomas, for instance, in Infinity Inc., wanted to describe his character Lyta Trevor, aka Fury, feeling very bad about the fact she no longer had parents to go home to, before eventually "resolving" that problem. Also, I think Paul Levitz in his work on Legion of Superheroes in the mid-80s had a long running mystery about someone named "Sensor Girl," a masked blond with mysterious powers whom Brainiac-5 was obsessively convinced must be the 20th Century Supergirl somehow come back from her heroic death during the Crisis, or words to that effect. I can certainly see why both of those writers wanted to deal with those loose ends at their own pace instead of just having their beloved characters develop total amnesia and never refer to those emotional issues again.

One thing Wolfman doesn't seem to specifically address in the quotes I found is this: Did he think it would have been a good idea for his own dearly beloved "The New Teen Titans" series to get rebooted from scratch post-Crisis? Or was that a case where he would have felt free to exercise his right as a writer to say "As much as possible, all the Pre-Crisis continuity I wrote about these characters still happened because that's the way I want it?"

Beyond that, I think I see a possible logical flaw in Wolfman's avowed positions that A) One writer shouldn't be held prisoner by the dumb ideas of another writer in the "same continuity" of a comics universe, but B) Crisis on Infinite Earths was meant to throw out a lot of the restrictions created by the old continuity and make life easier on writers.

Think about the original Captain Marvel and his friends and family, for instance. I think the Big Red Cheese worked better when he and his fellow Fawcett refugees were over on their own Earth, one where Cap didn't find himself surrounded by a zillion other heroes who presumably had similar degrees of physical strength (Superman, Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter, and I don't know how many others).

Similar points can be made about Roy Thomas's two series in Earth-2, the All-Star Squadron dealing with the old Golden Age heroes in their heyday (World War II, that is to say), and Infinity Inc., dealing with their kids and proteges and so forth. By squeezing characters from several different Earths into one tight timeline, didn't you inevitably force the same continuity assumptions upon all of them and make it "feel" much more necessary to make sure that future episodes of each new series with any DC heroes would have to be more "consistent" with what everybody else was doing, now that they all lived on the exact same planet?

Did it really hurt anything to let Roy Thomas basically have his own Earth to play around on, separate from the "mainstream" Earth-1 where the 1980s titles about Superman, Batman, the JLA, the Titans, etc., were set?

[MatterEaterLad]

I think its rather contradictory that he said in one interview that the Crisis was necessary to boost sales and attract Marvel readers, and then in another interview say that it was his brainchild that no one knew would sell...

[glennsim]

I think its rather contradictory that he said in one interview that the Crisis was necessary to boost sales and attract Marvel readers, and then in another interview say that it was his brainchild that no one knew would sell...

Why is that contradictory? It was a way to boost sales and attract Marvel readers that he thought of and had to convince others would work.

Sometimes good ideas aren't obviously good to everybody.

[Lorendiac]

I think its rather contradictory that he said in one interview that the Crisis was necessary to boost sales and attract Marvel readers, and then in another interview say that it was his brainchild that no one knew would sell...

Well, I don't think he said that he knew in advance that "Crisis on Infinite Earths" would end up being very popular with Marvel readers when he got permission to start writing the silly thing. I think he only means that in hindsight one of its major achievements appears to be that it drew in a lot of Marvel readers when they became aware that Wolfman was really "shaking things up" in the boring old DC Multiverse that they had previously spent the last five or ten years ignoring as corny, old-fashioned, and incredibly overcomplicated (or whatever their objections were at the time?).

Then he may feel that once the DCU was finally back on their radar screen again, a fair number of them may have bought the first "Post-Crisis Reboot" issues of such things as the Superman or Wonder Woman titles in order to see if there really had been some fundamental changes in how DC told its superhero stories about those old character concepts?

That attitude would not contradict his statement that DC never expected Crisis to be a bestseller when they gave him the green light for the project in the first place, would it?

[glennsim]

In general, I agree with some of Wolfman's comments and disagree with others. While I suppose it's true that tight continuity would keep you connected to poor stories, that's offset by the ability to create a more interesting environment for your characters.

What if every new character was the first super-hero of his world? Every one of them would have to go through the process of realizing that super-powers exist, and have to have a reason to put on a costume and fight crime, etc. Having the shared world lets you take some shortcuts and focus on other things.

Plus, let's face it, crossovers are inevitable. And if the Batman in "Superman" is different from the Batman in "Batman", there's still going to be confusion.

I do think they should have rebooted everything, Titans be darned. A Wolfman/Perez series featuring the teenage Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, etc. would have been as much a top seller as the New Teen Titans.

Plus, just because you reboot doesn't mean your stories have to take place at the beginning of the story - you can start several years into the history, it's just a new history.

[Shellhead]

It was great the way Gardner Fox reconciled DC's golden age with it's silver age: he treated them as two separate realities with very limited interaction. That gave DC the ability to have it both ways: keep their timeless icons and also explore the possibility of aging heroes.

Crisis was an epic story, but it didn't need to happen and ultimately caused as many problems as it solved. At first, the results were great, as DC's excellent creators at that time seized upon the idea of mixing and matching all kinds of heroes and villains that hadn't previously occupied the same reality. We got an interesting new Justice League, a startling Suicide Squad, and a really challenging Question series.

The problem with chucking all the continuity is that some writers and many fans enjoyed that continuity. Too much continuity makes comics inaccessible to new fans, but an absence of continuity ultimately would render the stories completely disposable. When comics were cheap, that was okay. But when new comics cost $3.00 each, many fans need the motivation of following some sort of continuity to justify paying such a high price for such a brief form of entertainment.

[JulianPerez]

Why are we still talking about what the Big Bad Wolf thinks, anyway? He's an irrelevant nonentity, except he lacks the occasional entertaining Michael Jackson-ish moments of sad hilarity that John Byrne occasionally gives.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Wolfman is a bad writer at all (though I don't think he's a good one either), and the problem is he sports a perspective antithetical to good storytelling and contemptuous of characters, which with CRISIS he got the opportunity to shove down the throats of the comics buying public whether they wanted it or not.

Still, it's fascinating to look into the mind of the man that marked the time of death on comics' original universe.

The problem comes down to continuity. I personally hate it. With a passion.

So, here we have it, plain as day, why Wolfman essentially ended the DC Universe: he doesn't like shared history, worldbuilding and cohesive characterization.

Well, I could have told you that, but it's nice of him to be so nakedly crass.

In my mind, continuity means the best writer at a company is held hostage by the worst.

I find this statement radioactively ironic, considering how Wolfman's apalling Superman stories, including the Vandal Savage battle, meant that occasionally nearly every other talent in the Superman office from Bates to Bridwell had their stories placed on the backburner.

At this point I’d also say I don’t care how many Atlantis’ there are in the DC or Marvel U. If the FF wants one Atlantis and Sub-Mariner wants a different one, go right ahead.

I have never read anything more wrong in my entire life.

Consistency is required for suspension of disbelief, something even more important in fantasy/science fiction and superhero books than it is in other genres. It's how good writing in a serial medium works, whether it be THE GODZILLA ACTION HOUR or a BABYSITTER'S CLUB novel. It's why some shows and book series have large fandoms, because the detail of a world creates a large fandom.

It requires professionalism and maturity to work in a serial medium, which is why the same writers that whine like women about "continuity" are always the most petulant children.

Also, because I don’t like green stringbeans and he deserved to die anyway!

That shouldn't be Marv's decision to make. If you're a professional, you have an obligation to write every character as if they are someone's favorite.

Final also, I personally get a visceral thrill in taking things that don’t really exist in the first place and murdering them.

What a totally irresponsible attitude for a writer to have. A writer has a responsibility to see the characters they are writing as real and treat them as such.

AN: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS: Roy Thomas has called this book a tragic event and unnecessary whatever the critical success of it.

Roy Thomas, an extraordinary writer and extraordinary professional with a profound love of comics history greater than any, has an absolute right to be righteously indignant when said comics history is flushed down the toilet by a fraud that hates comics history anyway.

I don’t think it’s a big surprise that the major hits of the late 90s were Astro City and Alan Moore’s ABC line. Each creator put together his own new universe and wasn’t hampered with a million issues and the two million other writers that preceded them.

First, let me say it's wishful thinking to say that books as extraordinary as the ABC line and ASTRO CITY are "big hits." They don't do anywhere near as much business as books of their caliber ought.

And it's ironic that he's bringing up the example of Astro City, a world with an extraordinary long term history that is CONSISTENT, to justify the elimination of said history and elimination of said consistency.

That each time it's been reprinted it outsells all DC's projections indicate the fan's feelings for it as a real classic. Also, that it was voted in the CBG poll as the 2nd best comics story of the 20th century says what the majority feels.

Like hell, Marv! DIE! DIE! DIE! I'm sorry, on reading a superhumanly smug comment like that, my lizard brain just turned on and triggered my Kill instinct.

And just what the hell do the people know, anyway? This reminds me of a rock magazine from the 1980s (Rolling Stone, I think) where the Greatest Guitarist of all Time in the reader poll was voted to be the guitarist from the Bay City Rollers.

And just because something is popular, DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY GOOD.

Well I think because this was a book that I strongly believed in and had worked on for years and thought about for years before that, I did something from my heart. I did something that I thought was vitally important. Also, nobody ever predicted that this would sell. They just had no concept of it. So, when it proved to be a good seller, suddenly all of the companies mandated this on a regular basis. The problem was they all sold.

Now this just sounds like rewriting history. When Crisis came out, nobody cared, because everyone was too busy paying attention to SECRET WARS.

(But then, I was never really a collector of Flash comics as a kid. Nor am I now, for that matter. I have heard that in the mid-80s, for a loooong time, the Flash title was bogged down in a "Trial of the Flash" storyline after Barry killed Professor Zoom in defense of his own bride at a wedding, a storyline which just dragged on and on without making much sense . . . I've read reprints of some columns by lawyer and comics fan Bob Ingersoll that take various Flash issues from that era and tear them to shreds, describing all the errors in legal procedure that crept in.)

I've got to disagree with you here, Lorendiac. The Cary Bates period on Flash was one of the most extraordinary times for the character; he was never smarter and more heroic than here; his plots were sharp and he really made use of his power in extraordinary ways. Don Heck's occasional art didn't hurt, either.

Wolfman also wanted the fact that there had even been a Crisis to completely disappear from Post-Crisis dialogue. But I can see why other writers wanted to explore some of the ramifications in their own way, if it would have profoundly influenced (but not erased or totally rebooted) their own characters.

The best exploration of the Crisis was in Englehart's GREEN LANTERN CORPS, where Ch'p, the young Green Lantern and his sworn archenemy Dr. Ub'x reunite because "if the other goes...I'll be alone." Tugs at your heart.

[Dubbilex]

Regarding continuity in a shared universe:

Bronze Age writer Martin Pasko said what needed to said here (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=3369294&postcount=41).

But if you don’t have a process that allows you to selectively edit out concepts that are arguably ill-conceived, doesn’t that undermine believability more in the long run, and burden the reader with a demand for even more suspension of disbelief? Wouldn’t it be more productive to take the energy that routinely goes into looking up the first name of the 3rd supernumerary from the left in the crowd scene on pg 6, panel 2 of Overcrowded Comics #357 and focus it on something else -- like, say, trying harder to believably imagine how the super-protagonist would behave if he were a real human being? That, I think, is the real way to achieve believability. If writers concentrated more on learning what real characterization is and how to build it, instead of trying to straitjacket each other with gimmick piled on gimmick, there would be less of a perceived need for all the preposterous baggage these characters get buried under. The readers would connect emotionally with the compelling stories of relatable, engaging human beings in extraordinary circumstances and would be less susceptible to distraction by inane minutia.


I mean, is there a single person who's unhappy that Mopee, Bruce Wayne's living brother, the Metal Men really being humans, and who knows what else were quietly swept under the rug, their existence ignored?

[JulianPerez]

Regarding continuity in a shared universe:

Bronze Age writer Martin Pasko said what needed to said here (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showpost.php?p=3369294&postcount=41).



I mean, is there a single person who's unhappy that Mopee, Bruce Wayne's living brother, the Metal Men really being humans, and who knows what else were quietly swept under the rug, their existence ignored?

Marty Pasko is of course, correct - that the top priority of writers should be on characterization, and making the character feel as real as possible. STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN is full of bad science, but it is nonetheless watchable because of how great the characters are.

But I think the specific instances you're talking about (ideas that are so violently lame that nobody ever mentions them again, which also includes things like Superman's parents surviving Krypton in suspended animation) are truly extraordinary and rare instances, SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE they're a sudden, sharp reversal from everything we know, e.g. Flash getting his powers from a magical elf, and so on.

There's a difference between Mopee and something like CRISIS.

As wonderful as it would be, you can't just "ignore" the Crisis at this point because it's so completely recontextualized everything, including history, that it totally undermined the criteria by which something like anti-Mopee judgments can be made: namely, history and the more or less consistent spirit of characters.

Though Marty is right: I for one do like to pretend MAN OF STEEL, LONGBOW HUNTERS, HAWKWORLD, TWILIGHT, and the Giffen JUSTICE LEAGUE never happened. :p

Though the thing about ignoring stuff you don't like...that's not entirely fair to character development. Though I found Simon Williams's behavior in VISION QUEST wildly out of character in his treatment of his adopted "brother," Kurt Busiek used that so-called "bad characterization" as a part of Wonder Man's overall story, a very classy and professional, as well as insightful thing to do.

Bad ideas can be used to create good ones, and good stories, if they're placed in a context where they make sense.

[TheTen-EyedMan]

And just because something is popular, DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY GOOD.



Julian...you may well be right.

http://www.extrasuperfantastic.com/esf/blog/uploaded_images/hanson-712656.jpg

After reading this self-indulgent crap, I am concerned that on Nightwing we have given up a writer in the wrong genre to a writer in the wrong decade.

Dare I remind people that popular opinion got Larry Hama off Batman because he did shamelessly superheroic stuff in Batman and in return we got Batman Murderer/Fugitive, with dug up corpses, Bruce buying a gun to see what it felt like and the worst...hands down ABSOLUTELY WORST...supporting character in Batman history in Sasha "Domo Origato Roboto" Bordeaux.

Be careful what you wish for is my motto.

If I was forced into a corner, tied up and made to watch epsiodes of the O.C. if I didn't tell the truth, I would say I'd like nothing better than to go and hide out in the mid-60s to mid-80s period of D.C. Stopping stone cold dead in my tracks and going back to 1964 again when this comic comes out.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f2/Crisis1.jpg/180px-Crisis1.jpg

Marv might have stuffed himself with me with this article.

[Joe Acro]

I have a big problem when writers say they don't want to be limited by what others write. It's almost like me saying I don't want to be limited by what an instructor tells me to do for an assignment. Sure, it may be limiting, but it doesn't stop creativity. There are clever things to be done in such a universe. For example, Daredevil fought Blackheart during Inferno. In DC, complying with other mags should be easier, considering how widespread the heroes are. But the fact that Batman and Superman have three titles makes it hard for those writers. (I miss the triangles.) By why must you feel the need to drag Nightwing and the Teen Titans into your story? Why must Batman and Superman be making appearances outside of their mags? Why can't we have context? I'm all for allowing creative freedom, but if you write a story that directly contradicts one somewhere else (Infinite Crisis and related items are especially bad about this) you confuse the reader, or at least me. If Wolfman isn't going to play nice with his new run, I could be in for some problems.

[glennsim]

That shouldn't be Marv's decision to make. If you're a professional, you have an obligation to write every character as if they are someone's favorite.



What a totally irresponsible attitude for a writer to have. A writer has a responsibility to see the characters they are writing as real and treat them as such.

I'm almost 100% sure Wolfman was being sarcastic here. People act like he's soley responsible for the deaths of Supergirl and the Flash, and act like he somehow managed to do so without anyone else at DC knowing it. He's pointing out how ridiculous that is. Marv Wolfman didn't kill Supergirl. DC Comics killed Supergirl.

Now this just sounds like rewriting history. When Crisis came out, nobody cared, because everyone was too busy paying attention to SECRET WARS.

I'd say that's an over estimate in the opposite direction. Certainly everybody who was a DC fan at the time was interested in Crisis, and they were telling their non-DC friends.

I've got to disagree with you here, Lorendiac. The Cary Bates period on Flash was one of the most extraordinary times for the character; he was never smarter and more heroic than here; his plots were sharp and he really made use of his power in extraordinary ways. Don Heck's occasional art didn't hurt, either.

I believe Lorendiac was referring to the run at the end, which was drawn by Carmine Infantino, wherein we had things like the Flash's lawyer trying to prove he's innocent in the death of Reverse Flash (who killed Iris Allen, Barry Allen's former wife*) by trying to reveal to the court that the Flash was actually Barry Allen. So we go from Flash have no motive to having a clear motive. What?

And a storyline that should have taken a few months took like 3 years.

*Yes, we know she wasn't really dead. But the lawyer didn't know that.

[titanfan]

How often has Marv actually ignored continuity when he's been writing his stories? Not much, if at all.

I think his work (both past and present) speaks for itself. He may not always want to be limited by continuity, but he's always respected it.

[MartinPasko]

The point that's being missed here is that the argument is not against respect for continuity, in the sense of treating a character in, say, Justice League consistently with its treatment in its own title. The argument I and like-minded people make is against a slavish, hidebound fidelity to continuity -- one that is so restrictive it stifles improvements, because meaningful, genuinely innovative changes (e.g., the kind that make the fantastic underpinnings more relatable and credible to the readers and do not overtax the dependence on suspension of disbelief) get rejected by editors because it's impossible to introduce the innovations without quietly ignoring or contradicting something that has gone before.

Nor is it a matter of "ignoring what you don't like;" it's about ignoring what doesn't work in the writer's creative judgment, which is what you pay a writer for, as much as for time spent with hands on keyboard or -- to indulge in an inane and crude neologism -- "wordsmithing." The writer exercises that judgment -- which is part of his craft -- by identifying past mistakes that undermine the content's integrity in the present, then sets out to correct them. (Of course, these judgment calls are by definition subjective, and often peculiar to the writer in question. But, as someone who holds no brief for "shared universes" -- to me, comics are a form discrete from RPGs or interactive content -- I say, "So what? Let the other writers handling the character follow the lead of the 'primary' writer, and 'summit meetings' be damned as a needless expense.") Moreover, if an editor feels he can't trust the writer's judgment in wielding that much creative control, then maybe the editor shouldn't hire that writer in the first place.

Once engaged, the writer tries to redirect the feature by reinterpreting the character(s) within the context of the established lore, if possible -- as Alan Moore did with SWAMP THING. But if he can't, I say he should go ahead and introduce the changes anyway (the fanboys will get over it), because the resulting improvement is ultimately more valuable than the "continuity error" is destructive. Especially if the changes make the property more attractive to producers and potential licensors.

But all this may ultimately be moot. My heretofore unspoken premise is that when the publishers embrace and pander to the priorities of the fanboy readership, their priorities are misplaced. That's because I believe that, while continuity within a "shared universe" is a known asset to comic book sales (which are only a minuscule piece of the pie), they are irrelevant, if not actively destructive to, the mass-media exploitation of the characters, which is where the real money is. To put it another way: Is having Spider-Man meet The Fantastic Four onscreen worth all the costly and time-consuming dealmaking necessary to bring Sony Pictures and Fox to an agreement? Probably not...although, truth be told, the idea wouldn't come off the table till the focus-group testing results came in.

Super hero comics seem likely to continue being lucratively exploitable by Hollywood for some time to come. Meanwhile, mainstream comics publishers are being ever further integrated into the operations of their corporate parents, and we see phenomena like Warner Bros. Global Brand Management asserting its supposed mandate to tell DC Comics how to market its brands.

From all this I conclude that in the future we might see less indulgence of fanboy anal-retentiveness where continuity is concerned. Probably, the licensing and merchandising will always be a bigger revenue stream than the books themselves. (I think the decline in literacy rates is just another symptom of the entropic nature of the universe.) Thus, going forward there is less and less incentive -- from a business perspective that doesn't suffer from the tunnel vision of seeing only ink-on-paper -- for allowing the process of creatively revising a comics feature to become a massive, time-consuming, and expensive co-ordination effort across dozens of titles.

[Joe Acro]

From all this I conclude that in the future we might see less indulgence of fanboy anal-retentiveness where continuity is concerned.
I believe the reason for this is that many new readers (and a few old ones) care little about widespread continuity. I think many are still annoyed with betraying in-comic continuity. ("But it said three issues ago that he can't do that!") My main problems with continuity involve writers throwing characters they normally have no control over into the mags that don't concern them.

[Matt Algren]

Holy cow, but that's one huge axe you're grinding, Julian. A few selected disagreements, submitted for your pleasure:

Why are we still talking about what the Big Bad Wolf thinks, anyway? He's an irrelevant nonentity, except he lacks the occasional entertaining Michael Jackson-ish moments of sad hilarity that John Byrne occasionally gives.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Wolfman is a bad writer at all (though I don't think he's a good one either), and the problem is he sports a perspective antithetical to good storytelling and contemptuous of characters, which with CRISIS he got the opportunity to shove down the throats of the comics buying public whether they wanted it or not. Use all the ten dollar words you want, you're still saying "Crisis Sux!"

So, here we have it, plain as day, why Wolfman essentially ended the DC Universe: he doesn't like shared history, worldbuilding and cohesive characterization. I have never read anything more wrong in my entire life.

Consistency is required for suspension of disbelief, something even more important in fantasy/science fiction and superhero books than it is in other genres. It's how good writing in a serial medium works, whether it be THE GODZILLA ACTION HOUR or a BABYSITTER'S CLUB novel. It's why some shows and book series have large fandoms, because the detail of a world creates a large fandom.

It requires professionalism and maturity to work in a serial medium, which is why the same writers that whine like women about "continuity" are always the most petulant children. There's that axe again! You missed his point. Yes, Plastic Man should be consistent with Plastic Man and Nightwing should be consistent with Nightwing, but if Plastic Man needs the inhabitants of New York City to exist as sentient rutabagas, that's what they should be. If Nightwing (I think he's in NYC now) and Plas meet? You don't mention the slugs, or have someone say "huh, that's weird" and be done with it. We understand this all the time in other media. Even back in the days when NBC was having Golden Girls and Empty Nest cross over, they didn't have to have Harry hear a siren if Sophia was going to go to the hospital. It wasn't mentioned, and both stories were better for it.

Yes, I just used NBC's Saturday night lineup from 1989 to make a point. I'm a very sad man.
That shouldn't be Marv's decision to make. If you're a professional, you have an obligation to write every character as if they are someone's favorite.

What a totally irresponsible attitude for a writer to have. A writer has a responsibility to see the characters they are writing as real and treat them as such. He was kidding. Being sarcastic. Winding you up. Tired of answering the same question over and over and over and over as if he had complete control of what happened.

Roy Thomas, an extraordinary writer and extraordinary professional with a profound love of comics history greater than any, has an absolute right to be righteously indignant when said comics history is flushed down the toilet by a fraud that hates comics history anyway.Man, you really don't like Marv Wolfman, do you?

First, let me say it's wishful thinking to say that books as extraordinary as the ABC line and ASTRO CITY are "big hits." They don't do anywhere near as much business as books of their caliber ought.From a creative standpoint, I'd call Astro City and ABC hits. The fact that Busiek and Moore got them out there is a major victory. As for commercial hits, you're right, they haven't gotten the sales they each deserve.

And it's ironic that he's bringing up the example of Astro City, a world with an extraordinary long term history that is CONSISTENT, to justify the elimination of said history and elimination of said consistency. Again, I think you missed his point. AC is indeed consistent with itself, with one writer who doesn't have to contend with what Scott Lobdell had Wolverine doing twenty years ago, or the fact that Superman and Robin first met in Detective #ABC, which was before whatever happened, not after it.
Like hell, Marv! DIE! DIE! DIE! I'm sorry, on reading a superhumanly smug comment like that, my lizard brain just turned on and triggered my Kill instinct.

And just what the hell do the people know, anyway? This reminds me of a rock magazine from the 1980s (Rolling Stone, I think) where the Greatest Guitarist of all Time in the reader poll was voted to be the guitarist from the Bay City Rollers.

And just because something is popular, DOESN'T MAKE IT ANY GOOD. I'm confused. Are you saying that Marv is wrong that Crisis reprints outsell expectations, or are you saying that popular doesn't equal good. I don't have information on the first, and agree on the second.

Say what you will, but the Bay City Rollers ROCKED OUT!

[JulianPerez]

Use all the ten dollar words you want, you're still saying "Crisis Sux!"

I'm unapologetic about not liking CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

It was a mistake then and it was a mistake now. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater for the DC Universe. Obviously this isn't entirely CRISIS's fault, but CRISIS got the ball rolling that lead to the Original Universe becoming unrecognizable with MAN OF STEEL, LONGBOW HUNTERS, HAWKWORLD, and so forth.

And just what CRISIS alone did was a mistake: the shock value death of Kara Zor-El added nothing to the overall story of CRISIS. Say what you will about INFINITE CRISIS, at least Conner Kent's death was the turning point of the series, a significant plot point that changed the story of three main characters. Kara's death did not serve a significant in-story purpose; she was peripheral to the story. And the death scene itself made me throw up in my mouth just a little bit; Marv Wolfman, when he wants to make a scene "touching," lapses into baby-talk.

The elimination of the Multiverse, the purpose of the miniseries, was a mistake too. Lorendiac put it far better than I can in the first post all the relevant points.

Man, you really don't like Marv Wolfman, do you?

I don't like the decisions he made with CRISIS, and his personal "mission statements" that he makes over and over in the interviews here about continuity being terrible, are really off the mark and I disagree vigorously with that entire mentality. But do I not like Marv Wolfman...?

Actually, except for CRISIS and his Superman stuff in the eighties, I'm something of a fan of the Big Bad Wolf.

His AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was tons of fun (better than Gerry Conway's, anyway), TOMB OF DRACULA was a well-plotted and well-drawn horror comic, NEW TEEN TITANS was the kind of book you can follow and get excited about with its combination of action-centered plots and long-term subplots, and "The Return of Optimus Prime" is my favorite TRANSFORMERS episodes.

There's that axe again! You missed his point. Yes, Plastic Man should be consistent with Plastic Man and Nightwing should be consistent with Nightwing, but if Plastic Man needs the inhabitants of New York City to exist as sentient rutabagas, that's what they should be. If Nightwing (I think he's in NYC now) and Plas meet?

That's doesn't make sense, however, because Nightwing and Plastic Man are supposed to live on the same world (Earth-1, or whatever it is now called). And if they live on the same world, the writers are required to be consistent about whether New York has rudabega people in it or not, because otherwise it would try suspension of disbelief.

Whether something happens in one title or another isn't relevant. If Green Kryptonite shows up in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA or in ACTION COMICS, it should have the same properties in either appearance. If Lois Lane has personality traits like curiosity and recklessness, she should have these personality traits whether she shows up in SUPERMAN or DC COMICS PRESENTS.

We understand this all the time in other media. Even back in the days when NBC was having Golden Girls and Empty Nest cross over, they didn't have to have Harry hear a siren if Sophia was going to go to the hospital. It wasn't mentioned, and both stories were better for it.

That's not a fair comparison (though Papa Julian loves Bea Arthur ;) ). The reason is that it isn't expected for ordinary people to cross paths unless there's a good reason for it, even if they live in the same city.

This is also true, to a lesser extent, with ordinary non-superheroic people in different spheres of life. Indiana Jones and James Bond could live on the same world and just never meet because their paths don't cross. But this is not as true of superheroes. If New York is attacked by Godzilla, not EVERY hero in Manhattan has to show up...in fact, maybe only one has to (I've always suspected that super-menaces are a little like fly balls; superheroes can "call" them)...but statistically, the odds of two heroes meeting is pretty darn big after a little while.

A good example of a bad example, would be the recent NEW WARRIORS series (you know, the bad one with the reality show). There was no reason for them not to mention Firestar and Justice. These two are the FRIENDS of the characters on the team...surely they'll call or talk about their pals? But they didn't, and I just don't buy that.

I'm confused. Are you saying that Marv is wrong that Crisis reprints outsell expectations, or are you saying that popular doesn't equal good. I don't have information on the first, and agree on the second.

Surely my meaning is clear - Marv is saying (paraphrase) "my decisions were justified because CRISIS sells well in TPB," but that doesn't reflect on the quality of his books, and doesn't make his ideas good ideas.

The point that's being missed here is that the argument is not against respect for continuity, in the sense of treating a character in, say, Justice League consistently with its treatment in its own title. The argument I and like-minded people make is against a slavish, hidebound fidelity to continuity -- one that is so restrictive it stifles improvements, because meaningful, genuinely innovative changes (e.g., the kind that make the fantastic underpinnings more relatable and credible to the readers and do not overtax the dependence on suspension of disbelief) get rejected by editors because it's impossible to introduce the innovations without quietly ignoring or contradicting something that has gone before.

Well, it's hard to really judge when talking about generalities, but if a proposal is so totally based on an idea that other comics contradict, to the point where an editor has to turn the idea down flat...maybe it should be turned down.

This is not to excuse laziness and letting titles fossilize at all. Change is ultimately good, but when it is a change that makes sense, that, as you say, that has the effect of making characters and the books feel more real.

I'm not saying change is bad or that the job of consistent characterization is to keep change from happening. What I am saying is that there is a TYPE of galumphing, unexplained, contradictory change that IS bad.

In the seventies, Green Arrow went through a stunning makeover from being a character based on the Batman blueprint to being a more unique character. But this transformation wasn't done without explanation, with Ollie popping into one of Steve Urkel's Transformation Chambers and coming out with an "endearing crank" personality and a stylish goatee. They didn't have Ollie pop up and say he had "always" been a hard travelin' hero. They gave an explanation for why he was so different: he lost his money.

Contrary to popular belief, this isn't that hard to do.

Supergirl went from being a hero-worshipping girl to a confident adult woman (you yourself were a part of that change, Mr. Pasko, with some great Supergirl stories in SUPERMAN FAMILY), but this was done gradually and naturally. Likewise, since he first appeared, Hawkeye went from a brash loudmouth that picks fights when he's insecure, to being a much more mature hero and leader.

Returning to Hawkeye for a minute, Kurt Busiek, a guy that really knows how to do characterization, realized that whether he wants to or not, whether it would be a good decision or not, Hawkeye won't go back to being Kato to Captain America's Green Hornet. Hawkeye used to LEAD an Avengers team. if someone thinks someone as proud as Hawkeye is going to go back to being the Second Banana guy after that, and writes it as such...it wouldn't be doing credit to Hawkeye's personality. Busiek did real change to the Cap/Hawkeye dynamic, by taking into account new things that have happened.

But if he can't, I say he should go ahead and introduce the changes anyway (the fanboys will get over it), because the resulting improvement is ultimately more valuable than the "continuity error" is destructive.

The problem is, this operates under the assumption that a change will be an improvement, while not every new idea is a good idea.

But all this may ultimately be moot. My heretofore unspoken premise is that when the publishers embrace and pander to the priorities of the fanboy readership, their priorities are misplaced.

I disagree. There is nothing wrong with books that appeal to the strengths of the fan audience. Not every book ought to be that way, of course.

[Dubbilex]

How often has Marv actually ignored continuity when he's been writing his stories? Not much, if at all.

I think his work (both past and present) speaks for itself. He may not always want to be limited by continuity, but he's always respected it.

You know, that's a good point. Just because someone doesn't like the rules doesn't mean he or she will refuse to follow them. A person can accept that the rules are what they are and play along, even if they disagree with them. People still drive at the speed limit even when they think it's unnecessarily low and overly-cautious. Er, maybe that's the wrong example... Well, you get the drift.

Of course, whether the rules in this specific scenario should be there in the first is another matter entirely.

[Matt Algren]

That's doesn't make sense, however, because Nightwing and Plastic Man are supposed to live on the same world (Earth-1, or whatever it is now called). And if they live on the same world, the writers are required to be consistent about whether New York has rudabega people in it or not, because otherwise it would try suspension of disbelief. This is where we disagree. If the two are sharing a book, it should be consistent with itself, but I think the rules should change when their stories are completely separate. The characters should exist in the same reality only when it serves the story.

I'm not saying writers should make changes willy nilly for no reason, but if it serves the story, they should be able to do so without worrying that it will disagree with something that happened umpteen years ago in another book or having to spend valuable story space explaining it. Much space has been wasted, for example, on Donna Troy and where she came from. At the end of the day, the stories just aren't worth telling, make no real impact on the character, and end up confusing things rather than explaining them. Wouldn't it be better to spend time exploring the character and her future rather than trying (again) to explain her past? I think so.

(And by the way, countering my Golden Girls/Empty Nest reference with Steve Urkel's transformation chamber? Check and mate.)

[Joe Acro]

This is where we disagree. If the two are sharing a book, it should be consistent with itself, but I think the rules should change when their stories are completely separate. The characters should exist in the same reality only when it serves the story.

I'm not saying writers should make changes willy nilly for no reason, but if it serves the story, they should be able to do so...

It's thoughts like that are the reason Thing appeared in Civil War #3, the Bludhaven fallout was handled inconsistently in Infinite Crisis, and Batman appeared in the recent Spectre limited series. I hate it.

[Matt Algren]

It's thoughts like that are the reason Thing appeared in Civil War #3, the Bludhaven fallout was handled inconsistently in Infinite Crisis, and Batman appeared in the recent Spectre limited series. I hate it.
That's the thing; the companies either needs to do it or not. Either continuity is important and everything has to tie together, or it isn't important and nothing should tie into anything else. DC and Marvel can't have it both ways, which is what you're describing.

[glennsim]

That's the thing; the companies either needs to do it or not. Either continuity is important and everything has to tie together, or it isn't important and nothing should tie into anything else. DC and Marvel can't have it both ways, which is what you're describing.

I do think that's the rub. If someone wants to create a new line of comics where each book exists on its own, that's fine. If DC and Marvel want to reboot their entire lines and set up that each book exists on its own, that's fine too. But as it stands, the DC and Marvel universes each are just that - universes, and a healthy respect has to be had for that.

I don't want a particular continuity - I just want some sort of continuity.

[Matt Algren]

I wanted to elaborate a little on my last post, since it reads confusing to me.

I'm in favor of a universe where crossovers are the rare exception, not the norm. I loved (loved!) the first dozen or so issues of the Johns Teen Titans, which is about as continuity heavy as you can get. But I see the benefits of separation as outweighing the benefits of continuity. So many storytelling options are opened up when a writer doesn't have to worry about whether mermaids are native to Atlantis or whether the Norse Gods are already represented.

One of the reasons I'm such a fan of the Legion is that it is (ideally) somewhat separated from the DCU proper. If they left it that way, it would be so much better a book. But everytime they try to explain how it all fits together, it comes apart a little more. (See Supergirl after Crisis, Valor after 5YL, etc.)

That was Wolfman's point. The original plan with Crisis was for all continuity to be dumped at the end, and that's not what happened. He's saying, right or wrong, that if they'd had the sack to follow through with the plan it would be a simpler, richer universe.

[Joe Acro]

I'm in favor of a universe where crossovers are the rare exception, not the norm.
I'm not sure I'd want crossovers to be rare, but I would like to see them limited.

[JulianPerez]

This is where we disagree. If the two are sharing a book, it should be consistent with itself, but I think the rules should change when their stories are completely separate. The characters should exist in the same reality only when it serves the story.

I don’t agree. A character’s behavior should be constant from one book to the next and details of the setting should be constant from one book to the next. We, the readers know there’s a different writer and book, but the characters don’t. It always really, really bugged me that Superman in his own books was an Einstein-IQ’d supergenius, but in some team books and in WORLD’S FINEST, he was often nothing more than a muscleman.

(And by the way, countering my Golden Girls/Empty Nest reference with Steve Urkel's transformation chamber? Check and mate.)

You’re a cool dude, Necktie. Confused, but cool. You’ll see the light eventually. :D

One of the reasons I'm such a fan of the Legion is that it is (ideally) somewhat separated from the DCU proper.

Really? Because the Legion is a spin-off from Superman/Superboy, an extension of that whole mythos. I agree that all sorts of shenanigans happened after MAN OF STEEL, but that was because they didn't respect continuity enough, not too much. It's really insulting to the intelligence of the reader to assume some random dude could fill the shoes of a character with the gravitas of Superboy.

And I did think it was really cool when we saw the Science Police officers on Thanagar had permission to wear the outfits of their ancestors, the Hawk Police. It was interesting to see the post-Weisenger guys bring in DC elements, like the discovery of the Batcave.

[djm72]

Couple of opinions of my own:

1. The biggest mistake DC made was not rebooting the entire DCU right after Crisis. They should have started over with a clean sheet. The world has no super-heroes and then one day Superman appears and it begins this heroic age. We would get fresh stories unburdened by decades on continuity and free from the post-Crisis confusion of mixing old continuity with new. Wolfman and Perez advocated this and even had a plan for the Titans if this happened, but DC was too afraid to take that leap.

2. Continuity, even a shared continuity and a shared universe, isn't necessarily a bad thing, if used properly and there are two ways of doing that. The first is what DC was doing leading up to Infinite Crisis, which was having everything interconnected and making the entire run of DCU titles essentally one huge epic. While that was fun, it isn't something DC can maintain forever because it is such a large task and, frankly, it limits writers creatively.

The other approach is similar to what Marv Wolfman mentioned, which is continuity within a title. Because of the nature of the DCU, I don't think you can simply do a book and ignore what is happening in others.

However, much of the problem that exists in the DCU (and I think the Marvel Universe as well) is there are too many crossovers and big events. At one time, character rarely left their own titles and when they did, it was a big event. Now, it's nothing for that to happen. Heck, DC doesn't bother to promote the fact anymore.

If heroes stayed confined to their own titles most of the time, you wouldn't have the continuity nightmare you have now. Obviously you need some continuity. I don't think if Bludhaven is destroyed you can have Green Lantern show up their next month and the city is completely intact as if nothing happened. But heroes show up on other heroes titles they way rappers make guest appearances on other rappers albums.

Obviously if you have Tim Drake appearing in his own title, two Batman books, the Teen Titans and then with the team making a guest appearance in another book, all in any given month, you're going to run into problems keeping stories straight.

[Dubbilex]

I've gotten to wondering, has there been a single writer for the Marvel or DC Universes who hasn't willingly ignored continuity numerous times in his/her career? I don't mean really tiny inconsistencies like stating Character X is close to his mom when it was stated once -- and never again -- that he never met his parents, but rather significant inconsistencies that people who aren't walking encyclopedias would have a chance of noticing. I'm not counting accidental continuity errors, either. Writers are only human. Still, even with those caveats, I'm guessing the answer would be no; the way these shared universes are arranged, it'd just impossible to maintain 100% continuity while still having enough freedom to write good stories. That's what I'd imagine to be the case, anyway.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Anyone got any possible candidates?

[Joe Acro]

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Anyone got any possible candidates?
Geoff Johns certainly fits the bill with his current work in Green Lantern.

[curefreak]

ive always been unpartial to major continunity glitches most of the time only cause i dont remember them or havent read them.
they should be ahered to in a realistic manner and using over the top examples like the one wolfman did doesnt really prove or solve anything
if you want to tell the tale of two atlantises you should be able to by just explaining how it happened .
and sometimes you have to realize that the batman in his own series is a different batman thats in justice league is it unrealistic?
yes but unless you wanna put the batman that has problems with two face and riddler in a team that faces world conquering villians and make him look out of place theres not much that can be done about it.

my thoughts on crisis is equally confusing
cause while i love the book the partial rebooting of the dc universe caused them headaches that theyre still reeling from today
and it also did away with earth 2 and its heroes wich with all star squadron and infinity inc was really building up some steam and made for lots of interesting stories that i miss.

[JKCarrier]

I've gotten to wondering, has there been a single writer for the Marvel or DC Universes who hasn't willingly ignored continuity numerous times in his/her career?

My favorite example is Stan Lee. When he reintroduced Captain America in AVENGERS #4, he said Cap had been in suspended animation since WWII -- even though Stan himself had written previous stories showing Cap still active in the 1950s! But the suspended animation angle (plus the death of Bucky, etc.) made for such a good story, nobody really cared. (Well, except for Roy Thomas, who went through great pains to "explain" the discrepency, but that's Roy for ya. ;) )

Another example: In the classic "Anatomy Lesson" story, Alan Moore explained that Swamp Thing was not a transformed Alec Holland, but rather a plant that had absorbed Holland's memories. Thus, he could never be "cured". Unfortunately, there had been a couple of previous stories where Swamp Thing was temporarily cured. If Moore had felt bound by those earlier stories, we'd have missed out on one of the greatest Swamp Things stories ever (and it would've negatively impacted his entire run, since Swampy coming to accept his true nature was a major theme throughout).

[curefreak]

My favorite example is Stan Lee. When he reintroduced Captain America in AVENGERS #4, he said Cap had been in suspended animation since WWII -- even though Stan himself had written previous stories showing Cap still active in the 1950s! But the suspended animation angle (plus the death of Bucky, etc.) made for such a good story, nobody really cared. (Well, except for Roy Thomas, who went through great pains to "explain" the discrepency, but that's Roy for ya. ;) )

Another example: In the classic "Anatomy Lesson" story, Alan Moore explained that Swamp Thing was not a transformed Alec Holland, but rather a plant that had absorbed Holland's memories. Thus, he could never be "cured". Unfortunately, there had been a couple of previous stories where Swamp Thing was temporarily cured. If Moore had felt bound by those earlier stories, we'd have missed out on one of the greatest Swamp Things stories ever (and it would've negatively impacted his entire run, since Swampy coming to accept his true nature was a major theme throughout).but couldnt there be a way for moore to explain the inconsistencies? after all its a comic book it doesnt have to be realistic.

[TheTen-EyedMan]

but couldnt there be a way for moore to explain the inconsistencies? after all its a comic book it doesnt have to be realistic.

They retconned/changed it to be that it was other people as Cap...like the Spirit of '76.

[curefreak]

They retconned/changed it to be that it was other people as Cap...like the Spirit of '76.
im talking about the swamp thing cure.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

DC to me rolled after the Crisis. You had the Grell " Green Arrow " where he changed and became more harsher. The world was darker and after getting The Longbow Hunters mini-series it was a great read.

Man of Steel , another good hit as was Frank Miller's Batman ect ect...

We've went over the problems DC had post-Crisis with the LSH and Hawkman. Those are like the oldest problems ever to date. But DC started fresh and Wolfman did his job. He gave newer fans a way in and the result was some good stories we recieved. ;)