Is continuity too great a price for storytelling & character development?

[bkey313]

Contitunity means more to long time fans than newer ones. It is easier for then if stories that they can read and not have to know year of backstory. There are lots of stories for them if the look hard enough.

[stewart48]

Batman isn't a character that has to worry about th continuity quagmire. People know his core pretty well and that's why they can pick up any bat arc pretty easily.

Superman, spiderman, and captain America are books I was able to jump into pretty easily, because their cores have already been pretty well defined, though as an occasional superman reader, it was much easier for me to jump into superman prenu52 than it was post.

[Randumbz]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPh8aIdR-4

[Superdog]

It's sort of a toss up really. Some of the best Batman stories are explicitly out of continuity, like DKR or Pope's Year 100. On the other hand, Grant Morrison's epic Bat Saga uses past continuity to enhance the story.

The X-titles do place a bit of burden on the reader to keep up, but it makes you feel like you are reading one Epic from House of M(which was sort of terrible) through Messiah Complex and then through Second Coming. That does increase the appreciation. There are good and bad ways to use backstory. I would never look down on something for being out of continuity, but something too continuity heavy can hurt it.

[edge007]

Personally, I think continuity was the Superman titles biggest problem back in the '90s, meaning they relied on it way too much. As someone who used to pick up the X-Men books religiously in the '80s and '90s and haven't picked up any with any real regularity since Whedon's run, just taking a look at everything that's going on now, it just seems impossible to just jump into a book and understand what's what. Batman's generally handled continuity pretty well. With a few exceptions, if there's something a reader doesn't like, it's easy enough to ignore if you wanted to. For example, as someone who's never cared for the least about Batman, Inc., pretending it doesn't and has never existed is pretty easy.

[booyah]

Batman isn't a character that has to worry about th continuity quagmire. People know his core pretty well and that's why they can pick up any bat arc pretty easily.

Exactly. But with Dick in the cowl it was harder for the casual reader to 'get.'

[Conway]

Batman isn't a character that has to worry about th continuity quagmire. People know his core pretty well and that's why they can pick up any bat arc pretty easily.

Superman, spiderman, and captain America are books I was able to jump into pretty easily, because their cores have already been pretty well defined, though as an occasional superman reader, it was much easier for me to jump into superman prenu52 than it was post.

It depends on the story. Something like Knightfall is easy to jump into without too much background. Something like HUSH requires you to know about; every Robin except Damian, the death of Jason Todd, the crippling of Barbara Gordon, the background of Harvey Dent, the sexual tension between The Huntress and Batman, and the story of Clayface wouldn't hurt. And if you want to read Heart of Hush (much better story) you need to read Hush first

The only way to change that into a movie is 5 prequels or change the continuity.

[ForeverYoung8]

It depends on the story. Something like Knightfall is easy to jump into without too much background. Something like HUSH requires you to know about; every Robin except Damian, the death of Jason Todd, the crippling of Barbara Gordon, the background of Harvey Dent, the sexual tension between The Huntress and Batman, and the story of Clayface wouldn't hurt. And if you want to read Heart of Hush (much better story) you need to read Hush first

The only way to change that into a movie is 5 prequels or change the continuity.

In the example of Hush, most of the things you listed are explained in the story. That's why it's always high on the recommended list when people ask "where do I start?"

Todd's murder and Oracle's paralysis are covered in flashback while Batman is beating Joker silly, for example. I agree about Knightfall, though.

[Rugal 3:16]

Both are important but if I had to choose one over the other in terms of sheer importance

then Story > Continuity

I wouldn't want solid continuity with a crappy story. and I wouldn't mind an excellent story that conflicts continuity because at the end of the day it's all entertainment.


BTW in an Infinite Medium like comics.. Continuity will always bring the characters to a point where it's very narrow to progress them so the best in that scenario would be to stop them where they are a concrete sum of their parts.. continuity works in a finite media better like anime and such but for an infinite medium like comics.. trickier and more prone to ridicule.

[hanotsri]

I wouldn't want solid continuity with a crappy story. and I wouldn't mind an excellent story that conflicts continuity because at the end of the day it's all entertainment.

The Black Mirror is an excellent example of a story that kind of dumps on continuity, but is a great story as well

[booyah]

The Black Mirror is an excellent example of a story that kind of dumps on continuity, but is a great story as well

Damian isn't even in that one - which I liked because the twerp is annoying, even tho that's kind of the point of the character. And if it was Snyder's intention not to have him talking crap and taking up chunks of dialogue for no reason, than kudos. For that and other reasons I would say TBM exists with one foot in continuity, one foot out.

[carabas]

Damian isn't even in that one - which I liked because the twerp is annoying, even tho that's kind of the point of the character. And if it was Snyder's intention not to have him talking crap and taking up chunks of dialogue for no reason, than kudos. For that and other reasons I would say TBM exists with one foot in continuity, one foot out.

That's weird. Just because Robin isn't in it, it's supposedly non-canon? There's tons of Batman stories that don't mention any Robins.

[booyah]

That's weird. Just because Robin isn't in it, it's supposedly non-canon? There's tons of Batman stories that don't mention any Robins.

The conversation I think was about how much continuity bogs down a story. I didn't mean Black Mirror wasn't canon, I misspoke I guess - what I meant is that Snyder chose to avoid certain tropes of continuity when he wrote it. IMO the story is more approachable than, say, Gates of Gotham, which involves Damian, Tim, Dick as Batman, Bruce and Cassandra. In TBM you don't really need to know THAT much about coninuity to understand it, and I admire that about the story.

[Tupiaz]

As I see continuity is essentials for the development of (a) character(s). I agree that it is a problem for a comic that it is never ending and yes a reader has several opportunities to catch the story online. Bu lets say a person don't have that oppoerunitie or can find the story act either because or low search skill or because it is not online. Shouldn't the publisher do more to help the reader. I remember in the danish version of Marvel comics (only spider-man and X-men was publish at a regular basis and is to my knowledge not published any more) there was a summary at page 2, not more than half a page. But it gave a introduction to how the character(s) was and what he/she/it/they were about and were they were in a given story act.

As I see it the movies should in some way reflect what is going on at the giving point and yes that is difficult because it takes time to make a movie, but sometimes the movies a to far behind in story telling. Isn't it confusing coming readers more that for instance that Harry Osburne from Spider-man was alive in the first couples of movies, when he at that point was dead in the comic. And isn't it going to be more complicated that Gwen Stacy is going to be in the coming Spider-Man movie, when in fact she has been dead for 39 years?

The reason I have used Marvel examples is because my knowledges here are better than my knowledge about the DC universe. Here I only read a few Batman TPB's.