How important is continuity to Superman comics?

[The Cheat]

Not very. Certainly way, way below telling a good story.

[phonogram12]

I think Secret Origin is a good example of forced continuity gone bad. Its really just shoehorning a bunch of stuff from previous stories in an effort to please the most amount of people. The irony is, its a pretty bland book thats pretty forgettable for most. Especially when compared to Birthright or Morrison AC, which are superior in most every way. Are we supposed to care more about SO just because its technically the current continuity?

Whenever there's mediocre or bad continuity, there's always headcannon

Exactly this. SO is a beautiful story to look at and literally includes nearly every aspect of Superman lore that appeals to me, but that's not enough to overcome the incredibly dull story. IMHO, BR contains nearly all the same pieces of Superman history AND is fun and engaging as all get out. And as a result, I'll take BR any day.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Whenever there's mediocre or bad continuity, there's always headcannon

That's what it all comes down to anyway. Whatever DC establishes, we're all going to ignore whatever we don't like and use what we imagine in our heads as Superman's past. And anything that doesn't fit? Time shenanigans

[Lightning Rider]

I wonder what the most popular streamlined origin/timeline would end up being. Could make a fun poll/quiz.

[Doctor Know]

...did you not stop to think that the reason we got 4 in one year was to take advantage of the movie the following year? That people would see the movie and want to buy an origin story?

Or, it's like I said. A bunch of people who didn't have better ideas, all decided to tell a variant of the same story. The writers wouldn't know which WW origin the movie was going to use. Which was mix of Marston and Perez. TPTB did hype Perez's arc with rereleases of the 2009 animated movie and reprints of the first arc/origin of his run featuring Ares. After the movie came out.


It's literally no different than the Star Trek problem. There are 13 Star Trek movies. 7 of which are about guys wanting revenge. Excluding Wrath of Khan (the original Trek revenge movie), you have 6 movies all borrowing from TWOK and trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle. It's worse than that actually. Because from First Contact (1996) - Beyond (2016), that's 20 years and 6 films in a row of variants of the same story.

Like another user posted, the creators need to dig deeper.

I wonder what the most popular streamlined origin/timeline would end up being. Could make a fun poll/quiz.

That would be interesting. Byrne isn't popular here. Neither is the New 52, but people loved the first 18 issues of Morrison's Action comics. If Johns' Secret Origin (2009) is the current origin, is it canon to Tomasi's Rebirth? I don't even know. I'd make a thread, but my threads tend to start fights. Ha!

[Vakanai]

I wonder what the most popular streamlined origin/timeline would end up being. Could make a fun poll/quiz.

Origin is easy - Morrison's jeans and shirt Superman challenging the status quo, but largely adapting Birthright's origin beats and plot minus making him a vegetarian and minus having Lex in Smallville, with Man and Superman's story replacing how he first meets Lex.

Or maybe that's just me projecting my own head canon...

Seriously, if you could take Morrison's take on Superman but without his confusing Morrisonian plotting and insert that guy into Birthright, while removing teen Lex from Smallville, and insert Man and Superman as Clark's first bit in Metroplois and meeting with Lex with the rockets plot, with the costume he adopts at the end being the jeans and shirt take, before going into Lex's Birthright faux invasion ploy, that'd basically be perfection for me.

Oh, and maybe find a way to include a few bits from American Alien, especially that drunk Clark on Bruce's yacht dealing with Deathstroke scene, I freaking love that scene.

Or, it's like I said. A bunch of people who didn't have better ideas, all decided to tell a variant of the same story. The writers wouldn't know which WW origin the movie was going to use. Which was mix of Marston and Perez. TPTB did hype Perez's arc with rereleases of the 2009 animated movie and reprints of the first arc/origin of his run featuring Ares. After the movie came out.

Yeah, no. Going years between origin takes, then suddenly having 4 origin stories all happen after the movie is announced and the year before the origin movie hits, that's not a coincidence, that's planning. Not only that, but while you might not like it, was damn good planning! It was a smart business move. Do a few origin books to market around the time the origin movie comes out. I'd have made that same call had I been in charge.

[marhawkman]

If I was to do one..... I'd do a slightly reworked version of the old Bridwell stuff. It was a society that had interesting wrinkles instead of being a bland planet of hats. That version had fantastical geology which is sorta the reason it exploded. but also fantastical history that would be amazing to explore in depth.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

If I was to do one..... I'd do a slightly reworked version of the old Bridwell stuff. It was a society that had interesting wrinkles instead of being a bland planet of hats. That version had fantastical geology which is sorta the reason it exploded. but also fantastical history that would be amazing to explore in depth.

I'm not familiar with Bridwell's Krypton. Could you elaborate on this? Thanks

[marhawkman]

I'm not familiar with Bridwell's Krypton. Could you elaborate on this? Thanks

Bridwell wrote the old Krypton Chronicles, it's pre-crisis stuff, but he went into a lot of detail about the people of and geography of Krypton.

[DABellWrites]

All stories need a sense of continuity for it to work, even stories with "no continuity". The problem with DC is that they've changed so much. 2015 you had Convergence. 2016 you had Rebirth. 2017-2021 Superman Reborn, Scott Snyder's Dark Knights/Death Metal, Doomsday Clock, Future States and Infinite Frontier. That is a lot of changes in such a short timespan. DC needs to give their stories time to breathe. Stop with the "big changes are coming". I think right now, DC Comics should focus on individual characters, rather anything dealing with the universe or multiverse (unless it's for fun multiverse stories). Let characters crossover occasionally.

"Everything is canon" is a bad philosophy to follow for serialized storytelling like DC Comics. Sure, it's a short-term fix. In the long run, it's going to be a worse mess than what came before, which is saying something. In my opinion, writers should be able to come in and say: "I like this character from 1991, I want to use them." Or, "I think it's time to revamp Superboy's pre-Teen Titan continuity and work it for 2025". Even, "there's this story from 1978 I think could make a good storyline". Anyways, use the past to make new stories for the future, but don't make the reader think they need to read decades old stories to get context on it. That's how I view continuity. I hope y'all understand me. I suck at explaining on the fly.

I know I didn't answer the question, but we just can't ask this question without looking at the bigger issue. Its basically, DC Comics is at crossroads with their stories. I'm not saying I have the answer, just giving my view. I felt a lot of what's been said, I agree with.

[RobinGA]

Maybe the answer is that continuity matters barely at all to DC.

But fandom has a multitude of head canon in which we have our own continuity.
Something similar to the poll many of us took where we ended up with our
ideal Superman.

For the general public it probably doesn't matter that much. Only that there is a
Superman and Clark that they know a little about.

[Adekis]

fandom has a multitude of head canon in which we have our own continuity... we ended up with our
ideal Superman.

I think this is accurate. In actual fact, continuity has mattered less and less since like, 2001 for the character as written by DC. Superman has simply gotten really top-heavy with regard to incessant reboots and retcons to the point where actually declaring certain stories intracanonical or extracanonical is inherently difficult.

Doing that is also alienating to fans though, because in the absence of a strong sense of what counts and what doesn't, most fans have their own individual mental sense of the Ideal Superman, cobbled together out of 83 years and counting of oft-contradictory DC stories.

I don't inherently think it's bad, but then again, it's easy for me to say "Canon is a made up idea for suckers," because I came of age as a comic fan in a world where post-Crisis was on the wane and the more mercurial and flighty pre-Flashpoint world was in full swing, with a mindset I still think is DC's main approach to this day.

[marhawkman]

I think this is accurate. In actual fact, continuity has mattered less and less since like, 2001 for the character as written by DC. Superman has simply gotten really top-heavy with regard to incessant reboots and retcons to the point where actually declaring certain stories intracanonical or extracanonical is inherently difficult.

Doing that is also alienating to fans though, because in the absence of a strong sense of what counts and what doesn't, most fans have their own individual mental sense of the Ideal Superman, cobbled together out of 83 years and counting of oft-contradictory DC stories.

I don't inherently think it's bad, but then again, it's easy for me to say "Canon is a made up idea for suckers," because I came of age as a comic fan in a world where post-Crisis was on the wane and the more mercurial and flighty pre-Flashpoint world was in full swing, with a mindset I still think is DC's main approach to this day.

I think you hit the nail on the head there... it's not IF continuity matter, but... which continuity? the old one, the other even older one, or a new one we haven't published yet?

[AJpyro]

Why not make another "Who's who?" book?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Why not make another "Who's who?" book?

Who's Who was my jam back in the day.

I specifically remembering my first inkling that maybe the Post-Crisis continuity revamp had thrown the baby out with the bathwater when I read the final issue of the first Who's Who and saw dozens upon dozens of addendums for characters that no longer existed in the DC Universe.