What is your view of headcanon?

[superduperman]

Are you for it? Against it? Do you use it? If so, what for? When is it okay and when do you think it is not?

[stargazer01]

I find head canon very useful and fun when we don't have all the answers. Sometimes there is some room to fill in with our imagination.

[Clark_Kent]

I think if it works for you, go for it. Just don't expect everyone else to accept it in discussions.

[Jon Clark]

The problem with headcanon is that the writers at DC keep ignoring it.

[DochaDocha]

One the one hand, if it makes you enjoy fiction more, then might as well make a headcanon.

On the other hand, part of me feels like it's a bit of stubborn foolishness to see what's written/presented before you and choosing to ignore it and believing what you want. It's almost the fan equivalent of covering your ears and saying "LA LA LA LA LA, I can't hear you, LA LA LA LA."

[stargazer01]

One the one hand, if it makes you enjoy fiction more, then might as well make a headcanon.

On the other hand, part of me feels like it's a bit of stubborn foolishness to see what's written/presented before you and choosing to ignore it and believing what you want. It's almost the fan equivalent of covering your ears and saying "LA LA LA LA LA, I can't hear you, LA LA LA LA."

But sometimes what's written and/or presented isn't black or white. Sometimes there is room for a more indepth interpretation. Sometimes what said contradicts body language.

I don't try to change the facts presented at me, but sometimes those facts are more flexible than it seems.

[qwertyuiop1998]

fine,if just use it for fun.but don't take it too seriously.remembering these just comics,a fictional entertainments.and remember is writers decide plot.but also remember those writers just another readers in some degrees.sometimes our readers is have more knowledge than writers in comics,so you can say that writers has authority to ignoring headcanon,and readers also have authority to criticism writers when writers contradicts headcanon(of course,headcanon never could be regard as officailly canon,but if many individuals think headcanon is more acceptable than writer's plot,then mostly is because writer himself story went wrong......)

[Miles To Go]

Headcanon can be healthy for you. Taking every little printed thing as gospel can upset you terribly if you really disagree with it or if it angers you. If you feel your headcanon can produce a better story/result, you can even put it to paper and conjure up a few fanfics set within that universe you've conjured up and receive feedback (hopefully). DC going in a darker direction lately has had me figuring things out (I've even had to resort lately to pretending Ollie and Dinah have gone underground after Heroes In Crisis and replaced themselves with clones developed by Jo'nzz and Waller just to avoid the heartbreak coming up in GA#50), frankly I find it easier with DC because there's very little I disagree with than, say, Marvel or Archie lately.

It's also especially easy to do with Superman because he had such a good run with Lo and Jon in the Jurgens/Tomasi era, and stories like Metal and series like YJ establish the super family exist in other universes, that you can just excuse everything going on in the books currently as just another alternate reality Manahattan is messing with and continue to think the super family of Rebirth is going about their business rather happily.

[Kuwagaton]

I find that head canon is an exercise in reduction. Limiting the actual product and the grand context by banking on the subjective quality of your own creative skills, which have a considerable advantage in fluidity and ability to tweak a template to your ideal, but no permanence or ability to broadcast. It's a house made of air built on sand.

Not that I find canon worthy of emphasis in the official sense. The big complaint I see with reboots is how they "throw out" history but... it all still exists. Nothing that is still tangible can truly be undone. There are bum products out there and some stuff I wish never happened or that I didn't own, but those are just lessons learned.

[Soubhagya]

I don't do much of this head canon. Part of this is because the pieces don't fit. A simpler origin has its own appeal. Something like Man of Steel by Byrne.

At the same time the idea of Legion is just so attractive. But you can't fit them in Man of Steel. I love the T shirt and jeans Superman. But i am unable to fit it with Kents who are alive. There's a beauty to Jonathan Kent's dying. But there's beauty in both of them being alive too.

Since, i don't have a very particular preference, i find my efforts to make a headcanon futile.


But i do this for future stories. Comics are meant to be published perpetually. So, i am not going to get an ending. But ending is so important to a story. Ending makes a story complete and satisfying. There i use headcanon.

I always go with a combination of DC One Million and All Star. Funnily, they don't fit perfectly either. DC One Million is the more dominant one among the two. DC One Million. With bits and pieces of All Star. Heck, i want that Tom King short story from #1000 to count. That's even further in the future.


I always go with the Three Supermen theory. You have the Golden Age Superman. Kal-L. Then you have the silver and bronze age Superman whose story ends with Whatever Happened.. And the modern Superman. My Superman whose story ends with DC One Million.

Part of me wishes Grant Morrison's origin were made canon forever. In that way one can pretend that everytthing happened. And i don't need the three Superman theory to be satisfied.

[superduperman]

Part of what inspired this post was the realization that a lot of long time fans don't like the idea of Superman having a kid. Just as twenty years ago a lot of them didn't like the idea of him being married to Lois. This is one of the things that are unavoidable in the current comics. To some degree, they got what they wanted with New 52 and then had it taken away because the majority of fans simply preferred the marriage. This creates an interesting dilemma when you want one thing but the majority of fans want something else. Headcanon only goes so far when the thing you're trying to avoid is in every issue. So I was curious how some fans dealt with it. At what point do you walk away and hope the PTB "come to their senses" so to speak?

[Soubhagya]

Oh that kind of head canon. Lol.

I am not complaining now. I think my answer will come after 5-10 years.

[Jackalope89]

To an extent, its fine. But it can be, how to say, a royal pain when one group's headcanon diverges heavily from another's. Or radically conflicts with other people's.

[Yoda]

Part of what inspired this post was the realization that a lot of long time fans don't like the idea of Superman having a kid. Just as twenty years ago a lot of them didn't like the idea of him being married to Lois. This is one of the things that are unavoidable in the current comics. To some degree, they got what they wanted with New 52 and then had it taken away because the majority of fans simply preferred the marriage. This creates an interesting dilemma when you want one thing but the majority of fans want something else. Headcanon only goes so far when the thing you're trying to avoid is in every issue. So I was curious how some fans dealt with it. At what point do you walk away and hope the PTB "come to their senses" so to speak?

In that case, it's far healthier to recognize that the stories they are telling aren't for you and just stop reading what you don't like. With stuff like New Krypton and Grounded I was bored and the books were sitting there unread, so I stopped buying them with the idea to get back into it once JMS left. As things turned out I gave the New 52 the old college try, but I didn't enjoy the direction of Superman almost immediately and the interviews and editorial comments were making it clear I wouldn't enjoy the stories they were going to tell. There it wasn't an arc or a storyline that was the problem for me, it was the interpretation of the character and the entire direction they were taking it in. But even then I finished Morrison's run on Action. If I'm not enjoying a book at all why waste my time and money and give them a sale. So I moved onto other things - there are plenty of Superman back issues I haven't read yet. There's only so much you can rewrite in your head and I don't need to spend $3-$5 to do that.

And with digital comics the way they are now, I was able to dip back in when I heard good things - like for Unchained or Pak's Action Comics - and read books I enjoyed again.

[HeroVladimir93]

Part of what inspired this post was the realization that a lot of long time fans don't like the idea of Superman having a kid. Just as twenty years ago a lot of them didn't like the idea of him being married to Lois. This is one of the things that are unavoidable in the current comics. To some degree, they got what they wanted with New 52 and then had it taken away because the majority of fans simply preferred the marriage. This creates an interesting dilemma when you want one thing but the majority of fans want something else. Headcanon only goes so far when the thing you're trying to avoid is in every issue. So I was curious how some fans dealt with it. At what point do you walk away and hope the PTB "come to their senses" so to speak?

I understand that feeling. Some franchises I really love have done things I still fundamentally disagree with, such as the democratization of the Spider-Man name or the promotion of Bumblebee as the new protagonist of Transformers at the expense of Optimus Prime. Headcanon, in my opinion, is a fan's way of making sense of all the material within a specific media franchise, especially when that franchise is reaching market saturation.

I've tried to apply headcanon to Superman's New 52 years, because I used to like that era, but with the arrival of much better content in the form of Rebirth and the DC Extended Universe, I've come to the realization that I don't like the New 52 as much as I used to. I guess I deceived myself into liking the New 52 simply because Superman was a major player in that era. In my opinion, the PTB "came to their senses" when they moved away from the New 52 and instead of rebooting Superman's history, they moved it forward.

I enjoy the family dynamics in the current Superman books, both in the Rebirth era and in Brian Michael Bendis' stories, so I haven't rejected anything that important in those eras, but I reserve the right to dislike something that rubs me the wrong way. There is nothing wrong with disliking something, as long as you respect other people's preferences and opinions. We are all Superman fans here, we just see things differently. You can learn a lot of things from people that like something you dislike. That's the beauty of an opinion.