Multiversity 101: What’s Continuity Got To Do With It?

First, An Introduction

Since comics were invented, there’s one internal narrative device which has become prolific that is just the absolute worst: continuity. Seriously – it’s just the absolute worst. It makes comics hard to follow, inaccessible and needlessly convoluted (so I’m told by some), creating a mythology that is impossible to adhere to and foolish to subscribe by (so I’m told by others), and no matter how many times I say “oh, continuity doesn’t matter,” it always seems to come back and find a way to make my eyebrow twitch ever so slightly (so I’ve experienced). Why? Because it’s just the absolute worst.

Because you see, the whole continuity thing is just a ridiculous burden on mainstream comics, for all the aforementioned reasons and more. Continuity is one of those things that non-regular readers can’t get behind and regular readers can’t seem to do without, but it makes life difficult for both. In fact, it’s actually just fodder at this point. And, sure, the whole “oh, beware the dangers of continuity!” shpiel is not new, or ostensibly that exciting. Everyone has times in their life where they both love and hate it; it’s a thing that doesn’t matter, but it always finds a way to somehow “matter” regardless. But, really, looking at comics on shelves today (or maybe just what I myself like to read), it’s becoming increasingly apparent that this is something that we would all do quite well with just throwing away.

Yes, that’s right: just absolutely throw it away, and introduce a brand new system to storytelling.

There are two reasons why. The first is a matter of history. The second is a matter of consumption. To help us each get to the same end point, the complete abandonment of a shared timeline, lets split the column into two sections. Yes? Yes.

Part 1: It’s Just a Little Bit of History Repeating

Before we get to the part where I talk about the Next Big Thing and any and all associated revolutions associated with it, lets start by looking at books coming out today – specifically over at DC Entertainment. DC rebooted their whole line because of this burden of continuity because they wanted people to be able to just hop into their stories without having to know what happened twenty years ago. For better or for worse, that’s an amazing move; it was an incredibly bold action that every commentator and commenter in the comic community had a thought on, and while I’d still say it’s pretty debatable as to whether or not it paid off for them, it’s a truly innovative attack on the traditional idea of comics in the year 2011. You may not like all the changes, sure, but hey, there’s suddenly a place for a book like “Dial H” or “Frankenstein” or “I, Vampire” (the latter two cancelled, sure), and that’s pretty cool.

But when you look at the subsequent execution of this idea, that all of their comics could have a fresh new jumping on point where the history of the universe can be easily charted by a scholar and a neophyte, we’re just presented with a tangled mess – perhaps one that is even more hard to comprehend than the litany of changes and clean slates that had come before (“Crisis on Infinite Earths,” “Zero Hour,” etc).

Why? Well, for starters, they couldn’t keep their story straight. Everything supposedly happened five years ago, with a big superheroic boom in the year 2006, but then it turns out that everything that had previously happened in DC continuity – things such as “the Sinestro Corps War,” “No Man’s Land” or “Infinite Crisis” – all still happened on a truncated timeline. A guy like Batman or Green Lantern, to DC, already comes with such a huge built in audience that to throw everything away (y’know, following through with their big reboot) just seems silly, because folks like Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns were telling stories that weren’t just going to be junked by some big reboot. So a clean slate became a partial clean slate, and as editors and creative teams repeatedly tried to justify why Event X or Thing Y still happened, this big accessible new-reader friendly entry point suddenly just became like every other comic on the stands, as opposed to something that stands apart. (Your opinions on the quality of stories aside, of course.)

Not only that, but a couple weeks ago DC announced a new book called “Batman/Superman” in which Greg Pak and Jae Lee will endeavor to give us the early days of the New 52 versions (that’s a problem – that we have to say “version”) of Batman and Superman, including how the duo first met and got into working with one another as young heroes. From what I understand, the book deals specifically with the earliest days of both Batman and Superman and how these new heroes have to learn to compliment each other’s skills while also learning to be heroes themselves, given this whole “everything started five years ago” thing with the New 52. The one glaring error to all of this, though, is that we’ve already seen the first time Batman and Superman met: in the pages of “Justice League” by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee — specifically the first issue where Superman pops in at the end like a “total bad ass” ready to F some S up. And then they punch each other in the face.

After all, that was the whole point. “Flashpoint” ended and “Justice League” #1 followed on the same day, showing us the history of the DCnU. I know I’m lobbying for continuity to be put in the trash, but with my negativity towards that institution aside, “Justice League” #1 was a place to start a new history book, to create new fans of continuity. A regular reader can barely deal with continuity being a tangled mess of wires; how are we supposed to expect a new reader, someone who has no inherent ball in this game, to care enough to stick around when things start to fall apart?

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Greg Pak? Totally dig his writing. Jae Lee? The guy is a champ in the world of artistry. I have no complaints about the creative team, and I’ll happily give a look to just about anything the two do, together or seperate. But unless I’m completely misunderstanding the following quote from Greg Pak as seen in USA Today:

“We’ve been given the incredible opportunity to show these two icons meeting for the first time at this very early and raw stage in their careers,” Pak says. “Neither one of them has ever heard of the other guy.”

Then this is what we call a “continuity error.” And what comes from a continuity error? Headaches. Really stupid headaches.

The general disregard to the idea of the New 52 doesn’t stop there, mind you. In fact, others with more interest than I have attempted to figure it all out, but you can only get so into the minutiae of it all before things start falling apart. It only takes one loose thread to unravel a sweater, you know? (And if you don’t, there’s a whole Weezer song about it.)

This imaginative timeline that exists to keep all of our fiction together within some kind of historical architecture just makes being an avid fan of a company like DC an effort in futility. And, really, while everybody points to the New 52 as this big creative way to make books specifically for a new audience while still somewhat pleasing the old ones (again, something I applaud in theory, to an extent), lets not forget that Marvel attempted to do this first with their Ultimate Universe — and look how that turned out! As someone who has quite literally read every single Ultimate comic ever written (even “Ultimate Adventure” – remember that?), I can tell you with 100% certainty: none of it makes sense within a shared timeline. At all. Like, not even a little, tiny bit. Thor changes hammers, people die left and right and come back with little to no thought or explanation, Sabretooth is Wolverine’s son but then also he isn’t… you would’ve thought building a history from scratch would’ve made it very easy to keep everything in check, but apparently it just made everything harder, with books like “Ultimate Origin” just making things worse.

You know what helps, though? Pretending that some stuff never existed.

We’ll come back to that, though.

Part 2: The Tuberculosis of Comics

This, to me and probably most regular readers, is one of the bigger issues when it comes to continuity. History? Yeah, that’s a pain in the noggin if you think about it too long, and that’s why handwavium exists. If you just play favorites with what stories you like, none of it really matters!

What does “matter,” though, and what is pretty much singular to the world of comics (although not entirely, as Community fans are currently experiencing), is that you have multiple/different creators all working with the same singular character within a shared storyline, which in turn has an often negative reaction towards how we consume the damn things — and if you don’t understand what I mean by this, watch what happens when I try and talk about “Fantastic Four.”

Now, let me start by noting that “Fantastic Four” is one of my favorite Marvel titles, and has been for some time now. I know, I know, we all pretty much hate the stories about how the writer of an article first came to whatever and how that makes them some kind of expert. I apologize in advance for the added hubris. While I’ll do my best to avoid too much of it, I’ll at least note that I’m not exactly sure at what point I started really getting into the First Family as a thing in which I wanted to know almost everything about (to an extent, anyway). Ever since doing so, though, and moving around a lot with what stories I put into my brain, I’ve quickly discovered that – for better or for worse – “Fantastic Four” is a book I will probably always read until I no longer have the ability to do so. That’s the important bit to take away from this lack of objectivism. They’re just that cool.

Yet, reading it from run to run is always a bit of a jolt. It’s something I’ve experienced a few times now, and I always have to readjust my expectations accordingly in order to just sit back and enjoy myself. It’s not that hard to do, mind you; I’ll complain about it for a little bit (similar to what I’m about to do), but I – and hopefully you – eventually get acclimated, because we want to keep reading new stories with the characters. Yet “Fantastic Four” is a perfect example of a book operating as isolated cases of any particular creative team just choosing to go a bit bonkers with their own versions (again with that word) of the group in a way only they can, while the following team doesn’t even really bother to pick up the pieces left over by whoever came before before moving on. Maybe a thing here or a Galactus-related plot point there, but for the most part the last few examples of “Fantastic Four” runs have been entirely isolated to themselves.

And that is, in the ultimate “first world problem” way, annoying.

Look first at Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch’s run, which infamously ended like this:

For those that don’t remember, there was this whole big story arc throughout Millar and Hitch’s run with and about the “Masters” of Doctor Doom, which – through various convoluted reasons – ended with Doom as a million year old diety of sorts that was now so powerful that he no longer cared about the Fantastic Four. The years of grudges and battles and death and destruction were all just thrown away, and Doom went to do whatever he wanted in his own little world. Because. I mean, college was just soo long ago, like, who even cares any more, you guys.

Yet, this was rather quickly ignored in two ways. First, there’s “X-Factor” #200, “The Invisible Woman has Vanished,” in which Doctor Doom replaced the regular Reed with a false version (continuing his vendetta against the team) because he’s a villain and that’s what Peter David wanted to do. To compensate, #201 featured this scene:

Because, you know, that’s all it takes. Add to that the second way in which this was ignored, that being all of Hickman’s subsequent run in which Doom played a large part, and you begin to get a clear picture of how this works So, hey, friends forever?

But, for those of you worried about history, it’s ok! It’s ok, I promise, because there is an explanation. Kind of. Sort of. Not really. If you’d read Jeff Parker’s run on “Thunderbolts,” you would’ve run into this scene in #176:

Which is done to lightly clarify a few things about the time traveling Doom and his inconsistency. But you can read all about that yourself by going and buying that book, if you so choose. (And, I should note, emphasis on lightly.)

Do you see where the problem arises, though? Something happened in “Fantastic Four” that was thrown away in “X-Factor” because it was ignored in the next “Fantastic Four” before some clarity was brought years later in “Thunderbolts.” I’m lucky enough to have read all these books on my own, but for someone just reading Millar/Hitch “Fantastic Four” through to Hickman and Co’s “Fantastic Four,” this completely changes how you interact with the material — “Wait, Doom is now Val’s Uncle? What? And what’s all this about apathy and brain damage, did I miss a story?” (You did – “World War Hulks,” to be precise.)

Still, this is just the tiniest of examples of wrinkles in how no one can seem to get things straight. After all, a guy like Doctor Doom is pretty easy to manipulate accordingly from a creative standpoint – he’s incredibly smart, uses magic and has a lot of passion; if you want to figure out a way for him to change his mind and decide to come back to kill the Fantastic Four, it’s not that hard. But even with Hickman’s run, you need to read a completely seperate book to see why his version (that word! Again!) of Doom becomes apathetic, and that sort of thing is always a bit groan inducing. You shouldn’t have to read anything else to get a larger question answered (and that even ties into the previous section, with all the history).

A bigger “continuity” “issue,” though, currently exists post-Hickman’s run with how Matt Fraction writes Franklin and Valeria. At least, in my mind. In what way, you ask? Well, Franklin and Valeria have gone from this:

And this:

To this:

And this:

Which is essentially a complete mental regression for two characters that had been pushed by Hickman out of the background and into more “bad ass” roles now back into the background, where the emphasis is that they are children and not the children of Reed and Sue Richards, super geniuses.

This is where the larger aspect of comic consumption comes into play. Speaking entirely for myself, I prefer “my Franklin” a fearless and creative force of nature with the power to shape universes, and I prefer “my Val” as the smartest girl in the room, a little bit manipulative but always three steps ahead of me, the reader. From what we’ve seen with Fraction and Bagley’s current “Fantastic Four” run, it looks like those kids are gone, now replaced with two children who are on a trip with their parents. The book still focuses on the family aspect of the Fantastic Four, but with a large emphasis on the family – what makes them work, what their home life is like – as opposed to how they operate as a family unit in a world where a giant man with a tiny silver beacon man eats planets. It’s decidedly different.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s an inherent caveat to this, in that for all intents and purposes I am actually loving Fraction’s work on “Fantastic Four” and “FF.” I think these stories are pretty great, and the last issue of “Fantastic Four,” #4 (where the above excerpts come from) was a lovely issue. The scene above with Franklin and Val? For anyone with a heart, it’s absolutely warming. I won’t contest that, nor say anything to ostensibly diminish it (any more than I potentially already have, I suppose). It probably seems like quick backpedaling to say, “Hey, here’s a negative example of what I’m talking about, but it’s from a book I really like so it’s OK,” and I won’t contest that either.

Not only that, but it should be noted that writer Matt Fraction agrees with me about the whole “continuity is annoying” thing. In a quote from Marvel’s Pint o’ CB ECCC 2013 panel, Fraction stated (30ish minutes in):

Continuity is the devil. Continuity is the devil! It’s awful. It makes for bad stories, right? Because suddenly, well, wait a second, you said Wolverine hates ham sandwiches, he’s clearly eating a ham sandwich! That’s trivia. … But consistency’s important. Like with what Dan said, it’s about truth to character. The rest is ultimately trivia, and time isn’t really time in comics, you know?

Because, ok, here’s a six-part storyline that takes place over two days, but you think it takes place over six months because it took you six months to read it, right? And it doesn’t work, but no, this is Tuesday and Wednesday in his life, and it just sort of all ends up as this thing, and otherwise you end up like the other guys, like, “god dammit, this all has to make sense! This has to work, moment to moment!” It doesn’t. It’s not time. It’s not real. And you get these stories that are all about trivia, and it becomes comics about comics that you’ve read – “well, I’ve read these comics, you haven’t read those comics, so this doesn’t make sense to you but I know more than you know, and he hates ham sandwiches.”

It just becomes trivial. So what’s true to the character, what’s interesting to the character, what makes a good story, what makes a compelling Marvel character thing happen? That’s it’s own art form. That’s it’s own thing, and to get mired down in… Time is ultimately trivia in this stuff, and it becomes punishing and alienating to new readers. God, why can’t he have a ham sandwich? Well, 34 years ago Wolverine had a very bad experience at brunch.

So I’m not alone here.

Yet still, Marvel’s “we’re relaunching without rebooting” endeavor in Marvel NOW! is something that – if done New 52 style – would’ve clearly helped the above’s scene within the realms of consumption for an avid “Fantastic Four” reader like myself because then, for folks like me who were elated by Hickman’s versions (that word) of Franklin and Valeria’s personalities and their prominent role in the books, this would’ve been viewed in completely different context with different related expectations and thoughts. Not for nothing, but from where I’m standing Fraction’s statements about what is true to the character don’t line up with my perceptions of the characters, and while his version is “the right version” (in whatever way you want to perceive right or wrong in this) it’s something directly effected by my own relationship with the material – i.e., “comics about comics that you’ve read.”

Still, all New 52 changes in character behavior at least have an “explanation” of sorts. When you pick up “New DC Book” #1 and some character you read about a few years ago is back and has a new personality, there’s an understanding there that thanks to the New 52 modus operandi – “It’s a reboot! Everything’s new!” – allows you or I to just sort of go with it. While I’m not going to stop buying “Fantastic Four” any time soon, and I know a lot of others will think “shame on you” because I’m clearly voting with my dollar, it would be at least mildly nice to have Franklin and Valeria stay as stronger individuals in the same place they were a year ago, fighting Celestials and saving the world from destruction.

And, yes, I know: they’re children. Children will wake up in the middle of the night crying for their parents. I get that, and as a former child myself, I did that. Yet still, you can’t help but think that if this scene had been written by Hickman, Val’s response would’ve been to poke fun at Franklin. That’s one take on it, anyway.

Or, I don’t know, maybe Franklin will try and just re-write the universe or something.

My Point Being…

I once had a conversation with someone much more eloquent than I in which I was told, and admittedly agree with, that when it comes to reading comics you need to be selective. I alluded to this point before, and it still holds true: the stories that you or I read that matter to us in some form or fashion do not stop mattering just because A or B happens. Whether it be the DC comics I used to enjoy or any version of any Fantastic Four story ever, if I bought it and enjoyed it, that doesn’t disappear just because one thing is different or another thing doesn’t match up with some arbitrary idea of how things “should be read.”

But, because continuity is such a big part of comics whether we like it or not (that “how does continuity work?” question gets asked at least once a convention), it’s not something that can just be ignored. Not while it remains such a huge portion of comics. It can be pushed away and forgotten, but it still manages to come up and smack you in the back of the head before running away and laughing like a maniac. That seems to be its major role in comics these days.

Dave Sim once said (and I wish I could link to a quote but it elludes me, so if I mangle this please e-mail Chad Bowers your hate mail since he relayed the quote to me) that there’s no way you could read every issue of Spider-Man in order without assuming he’s positively insane due to the shifting writers and amount of time he has existed, and he’s right. Spider-Man written by Stan Lee is not the same character as Spider-Man written by J. Michael Straczysnki, who is not the same character as Spider-Man written by Dan Slott. Honestly, how the rotating Spider-Man team of “Brand New Day” worked so well is a complete mystery to me. After all, the guy has been around for over seven hundred issues of his main series, let alone any number of additional books (“Tangled Web,” “Sensational,” “Web of…”, etc); if Peter Parker isn’t someone suffering from multiple personality disorder – all “Superior” jokes aside – we might have to redefine the illness a bit.

Which brings me to my ultimate point, in that we should all just do this:

And forget about it all.

(For those who don’t get the reference, this is Superboy punching the walls of continuity in DC during the “Infinite Crisis Special,” thus allowing various things to be erased or redone, like Jason Todd’s death, which is why he’s alive today in the DCnU as the Red Hood and oh my god none of this matters why am I explaining it?)

Because, when it comes down to it, there is no official guiding hand that is keeping track of everything in a way that serves continuity’s existance in the first place. Maybe there are spreadsheets or whiteboards with timelines, graphs and Excel sheets done to match Event A with Event B, but it all gets jumbled up in the end. Have you ever tried to set up a home stereo with surround sound? You know how there are all these different ports for you to plug cables into, and no matter how closely you follow the directions it still probably isn’t going to work the first time you do it because you plugged something into the wrong hole? That’s continuity.

And, really, we just don’t need it. Comics don’t actually need it. This isn’t “A Song of Ice and Fire,” where you need to learn about the history of Westeros before you can actually understand why Jamie Lannister became the Kingslayer, or something along those torrid lines. Believe it or not, you can pick up “Batman/Superman” by Greg Pak and Jae Lee without knowing that the two met during “Justice League” and still have a good time, and you can read “Fantastic Four” – any version – without knowing when Doom did this or Franklin and Val did that. That’s sort of the beauty of comics, in a way; due to the compartmentalized versions of storytelling, where all these different creative teams get a chance to tell their own crazy adventure of high-flying heroism, you can read whatever you like whenever you like and no amount of knowledge of who likes what sandwich need ever enter into the equation.

The Solution

So what if we just abandoned the history of it all? And what if, instead of viewing the story of any character – lets go with Wolverine – as a large ongoing saga, we just looked at them to what they’d eventually become: collections.

Right now, you can go to the story and buy the Jason Aaron Wolverine Omnibus volume 1. It’s available right now, and it’s full of GREAT Wolverine stories. Some of my absolute favorites, honest. And you know what? If you’d never read a Wolverine story before in your life and were looking for somewhere to begin, I’d point that out to you in a shop, because that’s a book that’ll give you your money’s worth. And even though I collected these books in single issues, when looking back at them now there’s no question on my behalf as to what I’m looking at: Jason Aaron’s run. And with Paul Cornell and Alan Davis’ “Wolverine” #1 out this week, there’s no question in my mind as to what that will become: Paul Cornell and Alan Davis’ run.

I would wager you probably don’t disagree, and neither does Marvel. Rick Remender and Garth Ennis both have Punisher Omnibi. Brian K Vaughan and Adrian Alphona’s “Runaways” are in a few nice hardcovers. Brian Bendis has numerous omnibi to his name, from “New Avengers” to “Alias” to “Daredevil,” and all you really need to know about them is that Bendis wrote it. (The artists matter too, but in company-owned comics, let’s be frank and honest: they value the writer over the artist these days. It’s sad, but it’s inescapable when you want to look at who stayed with what book the longest.)

DC has no qualms about it, either. You can pick up omnibi of Geoff Johns’ “Teen Titans,” “Hawkman” and “the Flash.” You can get Jack Kirby’s “Fourth World,” “Kamandi” and “The Demon.” Wolfman/Perez’s “New Teen Titans.” All of these books are available to you now, in hardcover or softcover. Whichever you like.

Right now, you can go to any comic shop anywhere in the world and you will most likely find a book that is specific to the creative team’s work on the characters, with emphasis to who wrote or illustrated the book over what character is involved and how it works into their story. You will not find, anywhere, any kind of clue as to what Wolverine, Superman, Spider-Man or Batman story happens in what order to that character’s life; only who was writing/illustrating the book and in what order the corresponding volumes of that creative team are.

So in a world where the phrases “waiting/writing for trade” exist, why should we bother to pretend that that’s not the reality? Sure, playing up this false belief in continuity is fun for fans to play along with at home, but it’s essentially just a gimmick. That’s not actually real to how comics are actually being made at Marvel or DC, where you’re reading a book because of who is working on it. And really, if that was taken as the main impetus, everything would be so much cleaner. Imagine looking at solicits and seeing that Kelly Sue DeConnick has a new book about your favorite character coming out, and knowing in your heart of hearts that this would just be a fresh, new take on the character to the same extent that Amazing Spider-Man by Marc Webb had nothing to do with Spider-Man by Sam Raimi? And you could read that run – no more, no less – to get the full story of that character and everything that mattered to that character, as if you had sat down to watch a movie, or perhaps a trilogy?

Imagine if the ideals of the New 52 were at the helm of every book relaunch, and that this reinvention and open-armed mentality to new readers was the only thing with which comics were told? And the story could lead to the future, as opposed to being held back by some arbitrary knowledge of throwaway material from the past? Everything would be so much simpler.

And you know how I know it works? Because it’s the best unifying element of every single creator-owned book being published right now. I italicized that all for emphasis because I really want to make that clear: the reason why people in the past few years – more so than in any other period of comic’s actual history – are so gaga for Image, Dark Horse, IDW and more? It’s because those books “get it.”

Look at a book like “Prophet.” When you talk to people reading the current iteration over at Image Comics, absolutely none of them will call fault on the title for not being like the original Liefeld-iteration of the book. For all intents and purposes, they’re two completely different series: one is about a homeless man turned into a weapon of war by a time-traveling scientist and the other is a sprawling sci-fi epic in which a series of clones get wrapped up in a colossal battle against a space-based empire. The books couldn’t be more different, due to the habits of the creative teams — but it’s still “Prophet.” And you can read Liefeld’s “Prophet” and you can read today’s “Prophet,” as different as they are, as two distinct variations on a singular entity. And hey, guess what! It totally works!

(There’s even a little nod to continuity and how it all “lines up” in the modern “Prophet,” but that’s more of a throwaway easter egg than it is something with distinct relevance towards the inter-connectivity of the two books.)

Because you see, continuity can be a thing that works for the story, as long as it’s just within the story. Books like “Y: The Last Man” or “Morning Glories?” Yes, continuity there is a pretty good thing; I wouldn’t recommend picking up the second volume of either of those without knowledge on the first, but then again why would you? If you go to a book store and ask them for one of those, or “Preacher” or “Sandman,” you’ll be presented with a series marked Volume 1 and Volume 2 in a clear and easy to grasp fashion, not unlike how you’d see Season 1 or Season 2 of a TV show. Top it all off with the fact that by reading every volume you get a satisfying story from beginning to end (based on your own personal taste, of course) and I think you have a proven methodology for how comics can successfully operate. So why not combine the two?

So it’s hard to imagine how ultimately having Jason Aaron’s “Wolverine” run as it’s own separate,  distinct and unique series of stories when compared to every other run, both previous and forthcoming in the history of comics, would in any way be a bad thing.

But people see it as a detriment, which makes no sense to me. Most people can tell you off-hand who the Fantastic Four are because they’ve probably seen the movies, but even those who have read every issue of “Y”, “Saga” or “Ex Machina” probably need a bit more time to really explain what’s going on in those books and why you should read from the beginning, and it’s somehow treated as a negative aspect. That’s just how those books operate, as a self-involved story akin to any serialized drama you can watch on Sunday night. But isn’t The Walking Dead a show with some of the highest ratings in years, and isn’t “The Walking Dead” the only comic book that’s not from Marvel or DC that continuously breaks into the Top 10 Comics per month? Clearly they’re doing something right.

It is, however, in a nutshell exactly what I think comics really need across the board: emphasis on singular runs and creative teams, and a complete abandonment of everything else, every other insane bit of trivia, because none of it matters. Why not have the best of both worlds?

Finally, a Conclusion

It would seem that in comics, if we want to really survive and thrive in this big scary world, we need to come up with a new way in making product. No matter what anybody says, I firmly believe that continuity will ultimately be the end of comics as we know it, because it’s an archaic institution, an antiquated form of storytelling and a burden to everyone – readers, creatives, etc. Readers are abandoning ship, sales are down a large percent from how they used to be and the only time we really see spikes in sales is when some kind of gimmick is introduced, proving that what people are looking for is a reason to buy, not a reason to stick around. That’s really sort of scary, if you think about it; we’ve spent so many years putting an emphasis on the wrong part of mainstream comic books – the never-ending story/soap opera of it all – that just the pure and simple want/need of good storytelling becomes somewhat secondary to the production of comics in order to make it all fit together. That’s not the way we should consume our media, nor is it what we should want to be fed.

But then you look over to the left, at the creator-owned revolution that has been taking comics by storm for the past few years, and you see hope. You see books like “Chew” and “Morning Glories” and “Saga” and “The Massive” and “Locke and Key” and who knows what else, these books that exist within themselves where the main emphasis is on telling a good story in the sequential art medium, and you see this bright beacon of hope. It’s not all lost!

So if Marvel and DC could truly embrace this logic, and do it in a way that doesn’t seem like they’re afraid or about to hit a reset button if everything goes wrong, we could get exactly what the comic world needs. After all, it’d really be not too different than publishing a mini-series and then selling that as a trade or a hardcover. It’d just be on a larger scale. And maybe, if comics operated like that, it’d be easier to have a book with a singular creative team, as opposed to one where only the writer gets the main credit. I mean, I don’t want to be too wishful of a thinker here, but that’d certainly be a step in the right direction.

Lets put it this way: The Simpsons is in its 24th season and has been airing for over two decades. In that time, the Simpsons have gone on many different and varied adventures, continuously adding to its own mythology without being a slave to it (for example, last week’s episode revealed that Grampa Simpson was actually a famous villainous wrestler, Gorgeous Godfrey). The Simpsons has, in so many words, shown us that you can have familiar characters in a repetitive unchanging universe/environment in new and unconnected stories that can be digested in individual doses as opposed to their relation to the whole, and not suffer from the lack of continuity (because how did no one ever know about Grampa’s wrestling history in two decades worth of stories?).

Comics can do the same thing.

Regardless, a very large part of me wants to make t-shirts that have big bold letters reading “CONTINUITY IS THE DEVIL” and wear them to conventions. It’ll make me the crazy man on the soap box who has a cardboard sign about the world ending, but hey, we all have to start somewhere.