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  1. #16
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    In the comics the sliding timeline is roughly 15 yrs. However, as a couple of posters have pointed out, certain characters ages have not remained constant and have aged or de-aged based on editorial whims.

  2. #17
    see beauty in all things. charliehustle415's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    Actually I am not so sure this is true. The Illusion Of Change mantra is slowly dying. The best writers are not really interested in writing books that effectively go nowhere. We have been witnessing some quite large change to major characters for a few years now. While it is still a game of seeing what takes and what doesn't I don't think the editors can make the Illusion of Change work for them forever.

    From my perspective the whole idea was a dead end from the moment it became more than just something Stan Lee said while doing pretty much the opposite, and instead became a guiding principle in the editorial offices. For around 2-3 decades from the late eighties to maybe ten years ago, this philosophy held sway. We are in a period of change in the industry right now, where the whole idea is being tested to see exactly how much change the market actually wants.
    True, but only a select number of writers seem to be doing real change; especially after fan backlash. I mean Spencer was doing something real interesting with Captain America, Slott with Spidey, Aaron with Thor, Bendis with Iron Man, Waid with the Avengers and now they're all gone and reset save for one: Aaron's Thor (which I believe will reset the second he is off the book).

    Not to completely derail but I think when it comes to change that lasts a little bit longer DC has done a better job, take a look at Snyder and King's Batman, Tomasi's Superman, they both really changed the mythos.

  3. #18
    Kinky Lil' Canine Snoop Dogg's Avatar
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    Lots of changes stick in comics but they get overshadowed by the obviously unstable changes made to tell a certain number of stories like legacy characters on flagship titles.
    I don't blind date I make the direct market vibrate

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    Actually I am not so sure this is true. The Illusion Of Change mantra is slowly dying. The best writers are not really interested in writing books that effectively go nowhere. We have been witnessing some quite large change to major characters for a few years now. While it is still a game of seeing what takes and what doesn't I don't think the editors can make the Illusion of Change work for them forever.

    From my perspective the whole idea was a dead end from the moment it became more than just something Stan Lee said while doing pretty much the opposite, and instead became a guiding principle in the editorial offices. For around 2-3 decades from the late eighties to maybe ten years ago, this philosophy held sway. We are in a period of change in the industry right now, where the whole idea is being tested to see exactly how much change the market actually wants.
    True, there are writers who will change a characters' world drastically. The change may last for a few months or a few years. Sometimes, a few decades, even! But eventually some other writer comes along, or there's an editorial mandate, and the status quo is restored.

    Spider-Man is perhaps the most glaring example. The marriage was undone. Civil War was undone. Superior Spider-Man was undone. Parker Industries was undone.

    Also, no matter how drastically the roaster of the Avengers changes, eventually you will get back to some version of the 'iconic' team which includes Tony, Steve and Thor. Thanks to the movies, Hulk and to a lesser extent Black Widow and Hawkeye have been similarly 'immortalized'.

    And I get it. Unlike the movie franchise, which can only go on for so long with the same actors and characters, the comics need to go on in perpetuity. These characters are brands after all, and the comics are the wellspring for them. One day, the MCU will inevitably reboot as well and we'll get a new take on Tony Stark. The difference is that that Tony will likely be part of a brand new narrative from the RDJ version. Whereas the comic-book Iron Man of 2019 is supposed to be the same one who debuted in 1963.

    In real-life, we get Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland. In the comics, Peter Parker's marriage is broken up by Mephisto or he's replaced by a younger clone or he keeps getting broke!

    Different mediums, different ways to turn back the clock...

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by charliehustle415 View Post
    Not to completely derail but I think when it comes to change that lasts a little bit longer DC has done a better job, take a look at Snyder and King's Batman, Tomasi's Superman, they both really changed the mythos.
    In DC's case, thanks to the constant infinite universes thing, having some changes stick and last isn't an issue as with Marvel. The Superman in comics right now for instance is absolutely not continuous to the character written and drawn by Siegel and Shuster, nor is Batman continuous to Finger, Robinson, Kane and others.

    IN Marvel's case, they are obsessed with 616 being directly continuous to Lee/Kirby/Ditko and others in The '60s. Or rather maintaining that illusion of direct continuity at any rate. The major problem is that the Lee/Kirby/Ditko era was so dynamic and changed so much within that it's hard to choose a single default state.

    Quote Originally Posted by bat39 View Post
    Tony may go through all kinds of changes, cycle through a bunch of different armors and status quos, and then cycle back to a more 'classic' status quo, but ultimately, he has to continue to be more or less in the same place he was in 1963, with some superficial updates of course. Even his beginnings need to be constantly retconned, fudged or ignored thanks to the sliding timescale.
    Tony Stark like Daredevil, Hulk, Punisher, Dr. Strange, Thor, and I guess Captain America post-Thaw is fairly easy to keep in a sliding timescale in the comics because they're all adults and fully formed types right at the start. Whereas Spider-Man for instance is the teenager who became superhero in high school, went to college, graduated, then got married and so you have very different states and periods. He's a teen hero who became an adult hero. He's also a character who doesn't have a Batcave, Fortress, a regular police contact and sidekick which prevents any static anchor to his stories. Whereas Tony is always going to have Stark Industries or Avengers Mansion, he's always going to have Jarvis or Rhodey. Daredevil likewise will always have Foggy Nelson and his law practice, Strange will always have Wong and the Sanctum Sanctorum.

    The MCU Tony Stark is a fairly different character from the one in the comics. It's pretty obvious if you compare to the comics that have come out since the movies...since the Tony in the later Marvel Universe becomes a faithful dude loyal to one girlfriend, Pepper who becomes his Mary Jane or Sue Storm which he never had in the comics. But the 616 comics have not retained that one bit. Their Tony Stark is more or less still stuck to the character in the first half of Iron Man 1 without any of the character development he went through after that.

    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    Actually I am not so sure this is true. The Illusion Of Change mantra is slowly dying. The best writers are not really interested in writing books that effectively go nowhere.
    It's the editors who have the say on that. Not writers.

    From my perspective the whole idea was a dead end from the moment it became more than just something Stan Lee said while doing pretty much the opposite, and instead became a guiding principle in the editorial offices.
    The funny thing is that Stan Lee meant something quite different from what was later followed under later writers.

    "There's that famous meeting that happened before the quitting time when Stan said, "I don't want progress; I want the illusion of progress now. We don't want people dying and coming out of the strips [a reference to the death of Gwen Stacy], we don't want new girlfriends, we want to try to keep it the same."
    --(http://zak-site.com/Great-American-N..._universe.html)

    The illusion of change became this constant cycle of sudden status-quo shifts that are later reversed, lazily retconned, and no status-quo changes stick and lasted, and an endless string of love interests. But Lee was saying that they maintain what was done and don't yank fans around, and work with what was done and so on.

    For around 2-3 decades from the late eighties to maybe ten years ago, this philosophy held sway. We are in a period of change in the industry right now, where the whole idea is being tested to see exactly how much change the market actually wants.
    The "illusion of change" was practiced in Marv Wolfman's tenure but not by Jim Shooter at all. Tom Defalco also maintained that after him. But it returned with the vengeance under Bob Harras, and Joe Quesada.

  6. #21
    Ultimate Member JKtheMac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    The funny thing is that Stan Lee meant something quite different from what was later followed under later writers.

    "There's that famous meeting that happened before the quitting time when Stan said, "I don't want progress; I want the illusion of progress now. We don't want people dying and coming out of the strips [a reference to the death of Gwen Stacy], we don't want new girlfriends, we want to try to keep it the same."
    --(http://zak-site.com/Great-American-N..._universe.html)

    The illusion of change became this constant cycle of sudden status-quo shifts that are later reversed, lazily retconned, and no status-quo changes stick and lasted, and an endless string of love interests. But Lee was saying that they maintain what was done and don't yank fans around, and work with what was done and so on.

    The "illusion of change" was practiced in Marv Wolfman's tenure but not by Jim Shooter at all. Tom Defalco also maintained that after him. But it returned with the vengeance under Bob Harras, and Joe Quesada.
    I think we actually see mostly eye to eye on this, especially on how the definition changed over time. Shooter is not so easy to pin down because he tended to keep things very status quo on books that were not selling well, fly by the seat of his pants on books he was involved in, and leave successful writers well alone to do whatever sold. His attitude to story did ultimately drive quite a few writers away. (Probably his attitude to business and deadlines as well.)

    Modern editorial will indeed ultimately have the say, but the modern editors seem very creativity focused and seem prepared to let solid pitches run with things and provoke change. The established writers at Marvel and many of their newer talent seem to write unafraid of change, presumably with their editors blessing.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by bat39 View Post
    Spider-Man is perhaps the most glaring example. The marriage was undone. Civil War was undone. Superior Spider-Man was undone. Parker Industries was undone.
    Marvel are super conservative with Spider-Man because he is worth so much money to the wider business. He isn't the norm, he is the most valuable superhero brand in the world.

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    Modern editorial will indeed ultimately have the say, but the modern editors seem very creativity focused and seem prepared to let solid pitches run with things and provoke change. The established writers at Marvel and many of their newer talent seem to write unafraid of change, presumably with their editors blessing.
    Shooter as EIC was quite keen about maintaining the wider Marvel Universe as a continuous shared narrative and having a sense of consistency across titles. So that meant that occasionally he would veto or check stories if they broke the overall stuff.

    Whereas in modern editorial you don't get a sense of that vision. Like for instance Wolverine and Spider-Man serving on multiple super-teams at once, with little reference and cross-connection or carry over. You get a bunch of self-contained stories and series across the titles but then an event story comes along and either it changes the status-quo of a single writer or force a bunch of tie-ins into a particular story or event and so on and so forth.

    Take Civil War. That was Mark Millar's event forcing a superhero conflict and factions that in the case of Iron Man and Reed Richards reverse their earlier opposition to Superhero Registration in Acts of Vengeance. No explanation is given to why they have changed, nor is any attempt to maintain that in tie-in stories by other writers, so JMS writes Cap like a hero saint in his stories and other writers take a Anti-Reg view while the main story is supposed to be Pro-Reg. That comes by editorial letting writers do what they want and not trying to keep everything together.

    Stuff like that is the case of editors not doing their job. And we still get delays and deadlines skipped for multiple titles.

  9. #24
    Ultimate Member JKtheMac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Shooter as EIC was quite keen about maintaining the wider Marvel Universe as a continuous shared narrative and having a sense of consistency across titles. So that meant that occasionally he would veto or check stories if they broke the overall stuff.

    Whereas in modern editorial you don't get a sense of that vision. Like for instance Wolverine and Spider-Man serving on multiple super-teams at once, with little reference and cross-connection or carry over. You get a bunch of self-contained stories and series across the titles but then an event story comes along and either it changes the status-quo of a single writer or force a bunch of tie-ins into a particular story or event and so on and so forth.

    Take Civil War. That was Mark Millar's event forcing a superhero conflict and factions that in the case of Iron Man and Reed Richards reverse their earlier opposition to Superhero Registration in Acts of Vengeance. No explanation is given to why they have changed, nor is any attempt to maintain that in tie-in stories by other writers, so JMS writes Cap like a hero saint in his stories and other writers take a Anti-Reg view while the main story is supposed to be Pro-Reg. That comes by editorial letting writers do what they want and not trying to keep everything together.

    Stuff like that is the case of editors not doing their job. And we still get delays and deadlines skipped for multiple titles.
    Well in all the time I have been around comics I have heard the same thing said about important characters being all over the place or not consistent and I have heard the same moaning about lack of line wide continuity. Fans just need to wake up to the fact that it has always been like that. Line wide continuity was always just a surface level thing. A background Spidy swinging by. A totally different portrayal of Wolverine walking into somebody else's book for an issue or two. Shooter wasn't necessarily any better or worse than anyone else.

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Snoop Dogg View Post
    Lots of changes stick in comics but they get overshadowed by the obviously unstable changes made to tell a certain number of stories like legacy characters on flagship titles.
    And even those changes probably get undone eventually .

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