Is the idea of "canon" outdated?

[Expletive Deleted]

Calling them "lower-level details" is just being dismissive of other fans.

It's not intended that way, and I apologize if I've offended you. I meant "lower-level" in reference to scale, not value. Let me substitute "universe-level" and "character-level."

What do you call a "lower-level detail" for instance? Because I don't think anyone in this thread has actually asked for every minor detail to be referenced. Characerization isn't a "lower-level detail", blatant plot holes aren't "lower-level details", character motivations aren't "lower-level details".

My point, as I think you're illustrating, is that the cutoff between continuity we care about and continuity we don't varies from person to person.

[Viteh]

It's not intended that way, and I apologize if I've offended you. I meant "lower-level" in reference to scale, not value. Let me substitute "universe-level" and "character-level."

My point, as I think you're illustrating, is that the cutoff between continuity we care about and continuity we don't varies from person to person.

Fair enough, that's a better distintion. You didn't offend me, but thanks you for the apology.

I agree that it varies from person to person, that's essentially what headcanon is. Although even at a "universe-level" marvel messes up their continuity. Age of Ultron as an event comes to mind.

As a company, Marvel shouldn't use continuity as a selling point if at the same time it's telling their fans not to care about it.

[Expletive Deleted]

Fair enough, that's a better distintion. You didn't offend me, but thank you for the apology.

Cool.

As a company, Marvel shouldn't use continuity as a selling point if at the same time it's telling their fans not to care about it.

As I've been saying, my problem with that statement is that you're still talking about continuity as if it's all or nothing. I don't see the conflict if Marvel uses the universe stuff as a selling point while being more laissez-faire than fans might wish when it comes to the character stuff.

[harpier]

The idea that a lack of continuity is "freedom" for writers is childish and patronizing to the reader, and just plain idiotic in general. You're dealing with licensed characters, the writers shouldn't be given total free reign to shape their destinies as they see fit, only for the next creator to come in and go in a completely new direction. The character then loses his/her identity (somewhat) and merely becomes a shiny prop for whatever story a particular writer wants to do at the time. It isn't a coincidence that a majority of the most revered stories and arcs in Marvel history were published between the 60's and the 80's, when there was a strong sense of continuity and evolution of the universe. Sure, it slowed considerably in the 80's and 90's compared to the 60's, but past stories were still referenced and thus the hunt for back issues was all the more pleasing. That's not to say that writers didn't infuse their own ideas into the characters, however the basic elements of the characters remained consistent from their inception under Stan, Jack, Ditko, Romita and others. Besides, what made Marvel so revolutionary for years is the idea of a continuous, shared universe with intricate details and maybe the occasional crossover.

Adhering to canon or continuity does not have to be tyrannical, but just examining some of the major stories in the past year there are so many plot holes in these writers' concepts it's not even funny, and guys like Tom Brevoort have to conjure up ridiculous explanations for these errors in logic. In my opinion, a stronger sense of continuity (or canon) makes it more seamless for the reader to understand why things happen in separate titles involving the same character.

While I don't share your sensibilities in either the integrity of characters across several series or the same pleasure in assembling knowledge of continuity, canon and backstory from other series or back issues, it is still popular among many readers and a powerful force in the comics market. But, I think your seeming hostility to creative freedom in major titles ignores the risk of alienating major creative talent, who increasingly can find alternative creative outlets and financial opportunities in creator-owned series. While Marvel (and DC) properties are massively valuable, their value within the comics industry (as opposed to movie and television) is still heavily influenced by the quality of the creative teams. As writers and artists gain their own marketing value—from readers more like me—repeatedly hamstringing their ideas, many of which could easily be excellent and unique within a title, because of "world" continuity or canon consistency is not necessarily a wise idea.

As other commenters have suggested, I'm a relatively new reader, and I'm NOT AT ALL interested in mandated continuity or required canon research to understand what's happening, especially since story tones and creative sensibilities vary greatly across series and eras. Just because I like Waid's Daredevil it doesn't mean I would like Bendis', Smith's, Miller's or Lee's. It's not a widely held opinion, but I don't mind licensed characters having a plethora of fictional biographies (across, not within, stories) without necessary explanation. Multiple origin stories, different experiences, different deaths. All different possibilities for what is essentially an idea, which can be used by different creative teams to suit their stories. Like mythology.

I can, however, appreciate what I would call allusions rather than "canon". No one in my own reading uses it better than Neil Gaiman. His details in Sandman absolutely reward a more comprehensive knowledge of characters' and the publisher's comics history, but does not demand that readers know these things to follow the story.

[Mark]

As a new reader though you are reading tales of characters that have been crafted over years, they have a history. It's not as if the writer made them up on his own and you're picking them up cold. You know of or have heard of the characters, that history is part of them. I'd argue that the major creative talent wouldn't be anywhere near as successful if they had to start from scratch.

[Joe Acro]

OMD, OMIT, and various interviews in the wake of those stories betray that notion. Regardless of how well things may "fit" at the moment, this is still a glorified alternate universe created by a deal with the devil and will remain so until OMD is undone

That doesn't affect the canon. It affects the state of the universe we read about, but doesn't change what Marvel published.

Nor does it affect the interconnectivity. The events you list have no bearing on how much other writers can reference current events in Spider-Man comics.

[harpier]

As a new reader though you are reading tales of characters that have been crafted over years, they have a history. It's not as if the writer made them up on his own and you're picking them up cold. You know of or have heard of the characters, that history is part of them. I'd argue that the major creative talent wouldn't be anywhere near as successful if they had to start from scratch.

First of all, only about 10% of the titles I follow feature licensed characters and all of those from the Big 2 I follow in collected formats. By far I do prefer creator owned series, even from writers who contribute consistently to prominent Big 2 titles, such as Jason Aaron, Rick Remender, Scott Snyder, and Matt Fraction. Part of this preference has to do with avoiding the pressures of crossovers and multi-title world building and the financial strain that purchasing those additional titles can create. I also find the multi-title plotting and release schedule can water down the quality of individual issues.

That said, I do not think that a character's biographical history (i.e., the collection of events or details that might contribute to canon or continuity) has any substantial bearing on the quality of character development in any single title, especially since such drastically different characterizations can be developed from the same collected history. I do not dispute that the literal history of a licensed character—i.e., the history of their creation and publication—gives them a kind of familiarity in popular culture that their license holders can find very bankable. So, it is unlikely a new character—licensed or creator owned—would be as financially "successful" as a famous one. Creatively, I don't think there's any hindrance at all.

I also don't believe that for most people strict fidelity to a character's "biography" (beyond the broadest identifying strokes) is important at all, particularly those who enjoy the same characters in different media. Nor are people—again, except for a faction, however large or small, of comic book readers—confused or angered by vastly different interpretations and histories of big characters. The array of Batman interpretations in film is dizzying if you try to fit them into the same box. People don't. Because they're different movies. Burton's Batman is Burton's Batman, and he has little to do with Nolan's Batman. And fortunately neither of them has anything to do with Schumacher's Batman. For me, there's no reason why this can't also be true of comics series. Each creator can choose from the available variety of stories and tones from the past or, if it's best for the story, innovate their own versions.

[gurkle]

As other commenters have suggested, I'm a relatively new reader, and I'm NOT AT ALL interested in mandated continuity or required canon research to understand what's happening, especially since story tones and creative sensibilities vary greatly across series and eras.

I think most people can agree that if the reader has to do research to understand what's going on, the writer is doing something wrong. But if anything, many of today's writers expect more research from the reader in the sense that they provide less detail about what's gone on before. The Marvel books of the '90s were famous (or infamous) for recapping everything, including every character's powers, just in case we were new.

Whereas Jonathan Hickman said this about his Avengers run, which is very hard to follow if you haven't followed from the beginning:

With the way you can download all the books now and everything is collected in trades, I'm not even sure I buy into the validity of the argument that every issue should be able to be read as if it was somebody's first issue. That, of course, may be a complete construct to prop up my inability to do that.

Also, while the impenetrable continuity of the old Marvel books is often called inaccessible, it's also true that the '80s and '90s X-Men, with really complicated continuity, was more popular that any comic has been since then, maybe any comic ever. People have talked about how they would come to an X-Men book and not fully understand everything that was going on, but find themselves hooked enough that they would buy other books to find out what was going on. It works very much like a soap opera: every episode is accessible enough that the new viewer doesn't have to watch a bunch of old episodes, but complicated enough to keep them coming back. Today's comics are more like a high-end TV series, where you're expected to watch from the beginning of the run to the end. That's not wrong, and it's arguably an adjustment to the new ease of finding back issues, but it does expect more research from us.

So I don't know if the change is really about accessibility per se. It's more about sophistication. The older comics were extremely exposition-heavy because the writers and editors believed that you had to:
a) Explain everything for the new reader;
b) Explain how everything fit in with past continuity, for the nerdy reader.
This means if you pick up a Marvel book from the '80s or '90s, a huge amount of the text is devoted to exposition. This is why Claremont et al have so many thought balloons and captions; take out the exposition and you lose a lot of the wordiness. In the '00s, writers like Bendis and Morrison came in who considered that kind of writing old-fashioned, and Quesada and Jemas brought in recap pages to take the place of a lot of that old exposition. Arguably part of the point of that change was to draw in readers who found the old style of writing too corny and wordy. But it's not necessarily that the old books were harder to follow; arguably they were too considerate of the new reader, to the point of negatively affecting the quality of the writing.

[gurkle]

That said, I do not think that a character's biographical history (i.e., the collection of events or details that might contribute to canon or continuity) has any substantial bearing on the quality of character development in any single title, especially since such drastically different characterizations can be developed from the same collected history.

I agree with this generally. As I've said, I never like when people insist that because Captain America is a jerk in one story, he's "canonically" a jerk. We should have enough distance from the characters to accept the writer's current characterization on its own terms. Every writer takes the same history and interprets it to create a different characterization, and even if two writers are using the same character at the same time, I don't think they owe it to each other to agree exactly on what his voice should be.

On the other hand, I think the collection of events and details, the history, is usually more interesting than anything new the writer can invent. I think it speaks in part to how much faith we have in individual writers. Currently, thanks to creator-owned series, writers are much more respected - even DC writers, yes - than in the '90s, when the editors tended to believe that we followed characters, not stories, and tried to smooth out the differences between writers (so you had every Superman title telling one continuing story, written by four writers, who had to play down the differences in how they wrote). The readers who follow Hickman or Fraction or Bendis may not want to see them tied down to other people's stories and other people's continuity.

But while there are some great creator-owned comics (not as many as the reviewers say, maybe, but certainly some great ones), I think it's ultimately true that in legacy comics, the character matters more than the writer - especially now that writers have almost no incentive to create new characters for the Big Two. Without the freedom to give the story a true beginning or ending, or even kill off characters permanently, writers of Big Two comics sometimes - I said sometimes - end up writing characters very superficially. Iron Man is a jerk, a drunk, and a "futurist," whatever that means. Captain America is the opposite of whatever Iron Man is.

The more details you incorporate from the character's history, the more they expand beyond whatever particular stereotype they may be if you look only at their most famous stories. This is part of what made Mark Waid's Daredevil such a breath of fresh air. He looked at the character's whole history - not just the Frank Miller version but the early wisecracking Daredevil and the Steve Gerber Daredevil - and tried to figure out how all these people could be the same guy, and in doing so he came up with a truly new take on the character. Writers who stick to the familiar stories and are afraid to reference anything else often don't succeed in making the characterization more accessible, just more superficial. Bendis gets this criticism a lot, but he's not alone.

I think writing for legacy characters (or even new characters in a legacy universe) and writing characters from scratch are different skills, and writers who try to approach these characters the way they approach their personal work often wind up writing less interesting stuff than the old hacks (I don't mean Waid, of course, I mean some of the other guys who wrote in the '80s and '90s and don't get work now). Because the point of research isn't to show off how much you know or confuse us with obscure references. It's really for the writer to find connections and ideas about the characters that aren't obvious.

[Mister Mets]

I think most people can agree that if the reader has to do research to understand what's going on, the writer is doing something wrong. But if anything, many of today's writers expect more research from the reader in the sense that they provide less detail about what's gone on before. The Marvel books of the '90s were famous (or infamous) for recapping everything, including every character's powers, just in case we were new.

Whereas Jonathan Hickman said this about his Avengers run, which is very hard to follow if you haven't followed from the beginning:



Also, while the impenetrable continuity of the old Marvel books is often called inaccessible, it's also true that the '80s and '90s X-Men, with really complicated continuity, was more popular that any comic has been since then, maybe any comic ever. People have talked about how they would come to an X-Men book and not fully understand everything that was going on, but find themselves hooked enough that they would buy other books to find out what was going on. It works very much like a soap opera: every episode is accessible enough that the new viewer doesn't have to watch a bunch of old episodes, but complicated enough to keep them coming back. Today's comics are more like a high-end TV series, where you're expected to watch from the beginning of the run to the end. That's not wrong, and it's arguably an adjustment to the new ease of finding back issues, but it does expect more research from us.

So I don't know if the change is really about accessibility per se. It's more about sophistication. The older comics were extremely exposition-heavy because the writers and editors believed that you had to:
a) Explain everything for the new reader;
b) Explain how everything fit in with past continuity, for the nerdy reader.
This means if you pick up a Marvel book from the '80s or '90s, a huge amount of the text is devoted to exposition. This is why Claremont et al have so many thought balloons and captions; take out the exposition and you lose a lot of the wordiness. In the '00s, writers like Bendis and Morrison came in who considered that kind of writing old-fashioned, and Quesada and Jemas brought in recap pages to take the place of a lot of that old exposition. Arguably part of the point of that change was to draw in readers who found the old style of writing too corny and wordy. But it's not necessarily that the old books were harder to follow; arguably they were too considerate of the new reader, to the point of negatively affecting the quality of the writing.

There is a bit of a distinction with Hickman's approach.

Hickman still wants there to be jump-on points for his runs. He wants Avengers and New Avengers to make sense if you start at the beginning.

Canon refers more to fealty to earlier storylines as well as events in other titles.

Fair enough, that's a better distintion. You didn't offend me, but thanks you for the apology.

I agree that it varies from person to person, that's essentially what headcanon is. Although even at a "universe-level" marvel messes up their continuity. Age of Ultron as an event comes to mind.

As a company, Marvel shouldn't use continuity as a selling point if at the same time it's telling their fans not to care about it.

Has Marvel's RP been dishonest on this? They've been public about a willingness to gloss over it when necessary for well over a decade.

Low things like cap wolf or moon night having Armor don't matter.

Yeah. There is the argument that an overreliance on continuity means the best writers and artists are tied to the worst.

[hawkeyefan]

I hate to use a DC example to prove a point in a marvel thread....but I think it is the easiest.

My intro to Batman was in the Super Friends cartoons from the 70s and 80s. Then from the 60s Batman TV show in reruns. Then from DC comics pre-Crisis, then post Crisis. Then from Dark Knight Returns. Then from the Burton movies. Then from the animated series. Then from the Nolan movies. Then from the New 52. And finally from the Gotham TV show.

All of these stories feature the same characters. None of them are actually truly compatible with each other. Yet all of them exist in my mind and all make sense in and of themselves. All share certain canonical elements, used to varying degree. But every single one also benefitted from letting the creators involved have some leeway and not requiring them to adhere to the canon that existed prior to their take.

Do you know why all these different takes on the character exist? Because Batman's awesome, not because canon is awesome.

Canon and continuity are tools writers can use. They are not goals in and of themselves. I'd also say that this has always been the case and anyone who says otherwise is being pretty selective in what they are considering.

[harpier]

Writers who stick to the familiar stories and are afraid to reference anything else often don't succeed in making the characterization more accessible, just more superficial. Bendis gets this criticism a lot, but he's not alone.

I think writing for legacy characters (or even new characters in a legacy universe) and writing characters from scratch are different skills, and writers who try to approach these characters the way they approach their personal work often wind up writing less interesting stuff than the old hacks (I don't mean Waid, of course, I mean some of the other guys who wrote in the '80s and '90s and don't get work now). Because the point of research isn't to show off how much you know or confuse us with obscure references. It's really for the writer to find connections and ideas about the characters that aren't obvious.

Yours is a very sensible take on the whole idea. I didn't mean to suggest that writers attempt to recreate these characters from a vacuum, exclusively incorporating only the broadest character biography. After all, most of these writers love these characters—or some version of them, at least—and want to engage with their histories and worlds. I just don't think they need be beholden to the entire, comprehensive history as every former writer has constituted it. Not only can different writers find different voices for their characters, but they can emphasize and negotiate different versions of their histories. I made mention in a former post on a vastly different topic an analogy with the same basic premise: Odysseus/Ulysses. He's sometimes clever (mostly for the Greeks), sometimes cruel (for the Romans). He has a myriad of different tales, many of which conflict with one another. He's been re-used, re-purposed and re-imagined more times than any character I'm aware of. He's a rich mine for great authors, who may make of him and his scattered past what they will. It's not a problem that he's little like himself between The Iliad, The Odyssey, Sophocles' Ajax and Philoctetes, Euripides, The Aeneid, Ovid, Dante, Shakespeare, Tennyson and Joyce.

I hate to use a DC example to prove a point in a marvel thread....but I think it is the easiest.

My intro to Batman was in the Super Friends cartoons from the 70s and 80s. Then from the 60s Batman TV show in reruns. Then from DC comics pre-Crisis, then post Crisis. Then from Dark Knight Returns. Then from the Burton movies. Then from the animated series. Then from the Nolan movies. Then from the New 52. And finally from the Gotham TV show.

All of these stories feature the same characters. None of them are actually truly compatible with each other. Yet all of them exist in my mind and all make sense in and of themselves. All share certain canonical elements, used to varying degree. But every single one also benefitted from letting the creators involved have some leeway and not requiring them to adhere to the canon that existed prior to their take.

Do you know why all these different takes on the character exist? Because Batman's awesome, not because canon is awesome.

Canon and continuity are tools writers can use. They are not goals in and of themselves. I'd also say that this has always been the case and anyone who says otherwise is being pretty selective in what they are considering.

Yes. Just yes.

[HaveAtThee]

While I don't share your sensibilities in either the integrity of characters across several series or the same pleasure in assembling knowledge of continuity, canon and backstory from other series or back issues, it is still popular among many readers and a powerful force in the comics market. But, I think your seeming hostility to creative freedom in major titles ignores the risk of alienating major creative talent, who increasingly can find alternative creative outlets and financial opportunities in creator-owned series. While Marvel (and DC) properties are massively valuable, their value within the comics industry (as opposed to movie and television) is still heavily influenced by the quality of the creative teams. As writers and artists gain their own marketing value—from readers more like me—repeatedly hamstringing their ideas, many of which could easily be excellent and unique within a title, because of "world" continuity or canon consistency is not necessarily a wise idea.

As other commenters have suggested, I'm a relatively new reader, and I'm NOT AT ALL interested in mandated continuity or required canon research to understand what's happening, especially since story tones and creative sensibilities vary greatly across series and eras. Just because I like Waid's Daredevil it doesn't mean I would like Bendis', Smith's, Miller's or Lee's. It's not a widely held opinion, but I don't mind licensed characters having a plethora of fictional biographies (across, not within, stories) without necessary explanation. Multiple origin stories, different experiences, different deaths. All different possibilities for what is essentially an idea, which can be used by different creative teams to suit their stories. Like mythology.

I can, however, appreciate what I would call allusions rather than "canon". No one in my own reading uses it better than Neil Gaiman. His details in Sandman absolutely reward a more comprehensive knowledge of characters' and the publisher's comics history, but does not demand that readers know these things to follow the story.

I am not opposed to creative freedom. I just am indifferent and cold to the way comic book superhero stories have been published recently. I don't think previously established canon or continuity hinders any writer at all. It's why there is editorial present behind them. Writers have to understand these characters are not their creation. Each writer has their own vision for said character, but there must be some established base considering the five decades of history preceding said writer's take. The talent under the watch of the Quesada/Alonso regime basically has adopted the "anything goes!" mantra for these characters. It's become more about a particular writer's plot than the character itself. However talented these guys are the characters themselves are the main attraction, hence their continued relevance. I feel the writers of the past understood this better than the current crop. While each writer had their own ideas and vision for the characters they were handling, the transition from team to team was more seamless and had a better balance of creative freedom within the "confines" of continuity.

[gurkle]

Here's another example that's not from Marvel: I once heard Larry David point out that his characterizations on Seinfeld can be inconsistent. I think he pointed out that in one episode, Kramer is so brave and strong he can single-handedly stop a robber while steering a runaway bus. And in another episode, he's approached by two guys with no weapons, and is so scared of them that he lets them steal the piece of furniture he's supposed to be guarding. As the producer of the show, David's point was that it didn't matter. Kramer acts the way he needs to for the scene to be funny, but he's still Kramer.

I think people often confuse consistency with the idea that a character should act the same every time. As hawkeyefan and harpier point out, there's lots of precedent for using the same basic character facts to make a very different (but still recognizable as the same) character.

[HaveAtThee]

I hate to use a DC example to prove a point in a marvel thread....but I think it is the easiest.

My intro to Batman was in the Super Friends cartoons from the 70s and 80s. Then from the 60s Batman TV show in reruns. Then from DC comics pre-Crisis, then post Crisis. Then from Dark Knight Returns. Then from the Burton movies. Then from the animated series. Then from the Nolan movies. Then from the New 52. And finally from the Gotham TV show.

All of these stories feature the same characters. None of them are actually truly compatible with each other. Yet all of them exist in my mind and all make sense in and of themselves. All share certain canonical elements, used to varying degree. But every single one also benefitted from letting the creators involved have some leeway and not requiring them to adhere to the canon that existed prior to their take.

Do you know why all these different takes on the character exist? Because Batman's awesome, not because canon is awesome.

Canon and continuity are tools writers can use. They are not goals in and of themselves. I'd also say that this has always been the case and anyone who says otherwise is being pretty selective in what they are considering.

I totally get what you're saying, but I think the comic book medium is unique in itself from film and television. Films especially have a clear, linear path from Point A to Point C, for example. Burton and Nolan were able to tell their stories about the character from a beginning to an end they envisioned. The comic counterparts have begun decades past and are still evolving (by a snail's pace at this point, but still).

Either way this is a fascinating discussion and I'm glad the topic is still going strong.