Continuity or not?

[CentralPower]

he quality of those stories wasn't there though. There is a reason everyone did continuity when Stan and Jack innovated it and that's because it elevated the work as an artform and an entertaining experience. it's also partially why the MCU has been so successful

I partly agree. Silver Age comic were largely terrible. But, continuity across decades worth of multiple titles was not the solution (even if it may have coincided). DC''s "Elseworlds" comics were some of the best things they produced during the 90s up to about a decade ago. Those were deliberately written to not "fit" with anything.

[Lee Stone]

The characters literally don’t work when you do that, it breaks them. DC characters by contrast were not constructed that way, at least not originally. It’s why they can go on forever and ever and get legacied or rebooted with greater ease. Characters like the X-Men or the Fantastic Four though are entirely different and should have an ending point eventually.

I agree.
And we saw it working in Levitz's Legion, where characters would die, get married, retire, etc., while new members would be feathered in to replace them.
Legion, technically, could have went on indefinitely like that.

I also see a possible solution by having characters retire or die off, but have new stories told that are set in their 'primetime'.
For instance, an X-Men title that follows the Levitz style, with characters coming and going through their own narratives, and a separate title, Classic X-Men, that features stories set in various points in the past to give the older characters more adventures.
If you think about it, each comic that comes out pretty much only covers a day or week. So after a year of comics, we've only seen about two or three months of their lives. There's plenty of room to squeeze in new stories.

[Ru5152]

As an avid back issue hunter from waaaay back, it didn't matter to me if I picked up X-Men #207, or Hulk #108 as my first issue of the title, if it looked cool in the store I was in. It made me want to know more,the back history, and I was going to do my best to keep on with whatever book going forward, hence the hunt was on. There are comic stores in Milwaukee still open today because of the amount of $$ I used to spend, haha, but it used to be fun.

[Charles Knight]

My main thing is if a writer is going to change something or bring something back then they need to have some kind of explanation. You see this with lazy writers who will have a character that was dead just suddenly show up with no explanation because the writer was to lazy to take 5 minutes and look up that characters status. Change as much as you want but have a reason for it and and explanation.

Unless I missed something - the factor that Starlord isn't a deeply unpleasant astronaut from the near future anymore doesn't seem to bother anyone? (although I notice his most recent series writes elements of his original origins back in but not the fact that he's from the future).


(Actually thinking about it - Starlord has three incompatible origins - each time the change is done with no in-universe reason for the change - there is his original origin (astronaut from the future, deeply unpleasant), when he's reintroduced in 2004 (which sort has elements of the first one but ignores that he's from the future and other stuff) and his current one (which is largely different from two previous ones but folds in bits of the film). He's also been deaged over the last 11 years - if I remember correctly, he's a lot older when we first see in 2004 as a half-cyborg washed-up hero.

[My Two Cents]

Is the problem with continuity or the weight of stories happening in so short a time period (physically)?
It was easy to follow Amazing Spider-Man and most of the Marvel Universe for decades.
But over the past decade the number of books Peter has appeared in each month has grown significantly
and so has the whole Marvel Universe that to follow just Peter would be a major chore, but too
also include many other Marvel characters and teams beyond most budgets and time and sanity.
Even when one choses to just follow the core books like Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men,
the changes that happen around those books and to those characters in other titles find there
way back to the core few books a reader was reading (add the constant crossover and events that force
a reader into buying extra books to keep up with what is happening to the character or team.

[Byakko]

I can't wrap my brain around how storytelling without continuity would even work. At least, on anything above the level of Dr. Seuss or something.

NEXTWAVE originally was going to be in-continuity, and then they decided it was too OOC to be in-continuity so it became a weird spin-off. But then Marvel came back and said let's have some elements be in-continuity again. Honestly I have no idea how much actually is in-continuity beyond how Machine-Man ended up for a time.

So in NEXTWAVE's case...I guess being out-of-continuity was in its favour? Because they could go all out and stupid ridiculous. But then their reinterpretations of certain characters got so popular, it crossed back into continuity anyway.

Also one legit cause against continuity is that everyone in-universe and on a meta-level have to accept that time as whole is 'frozen', so anything involving physical growth or child characters etc. tends to become really difficult to manage and liberal uses of 'fuzzy logic' come in. Very select few comics even acknowledges a real timeline/generations passing, like Astro City.

[Spidercide]

I partly agree. Silver Age comic were largely terrible. But, continuity across decades worth of multiple titles was not the solution (even if it may have coincided). DC''s "Elseworlds" comics were some of the best things they produced during the 90s up to about a decade ago. Those were deliberately written to not "fit" with anything.

It’s part of the solution.

Look, there are a few things to clarify here

a) Every individual character and series ahs their own continuity. Wolverine’s stories can ignore a Wolverine guest appearance in Fantastic Four unless at some point in a wolverine storyline that appearance was directly acknowledged or referenced. Similarly it Wolverine doesn’t have to respect everything in Fantastic Four unless a story involved an FF character. It’s not like EVERY Marvel title must jive with every other one. Just jiving as best as possible with it’s own corner because why should Wolverine stories take not of a 60s FF comic if it’s about Wolverine right?
b) Marvel managed continuity like that for decades. Problems arose but they managed it okay at the end of the day. Today with the resources available that is easier than ever
c) Sure Elseworlds and what ifs are good as stand alone stories. But the ongoing stories are even better because there is richer character development.

Give you an example. You can look at Harry Osborn’s character from the 60s until the early 1990s and see a flawed, multifaceted complex character emerge with moments and stories which pay off things established decades ago. When he chooses to not take up his father’s arsenal in ASm #261 its powerful because of that history. When he chooses to do that in Spec #189 it’s powerful and tragic because he’s become his father and is repeating the cycle with his son. Then you get to Spec #200 and he dies saving his best friend and it’s again poignant because that’s a relationship that felt real because of the time we as readers spent with it watching it gradually grow across decades.


That’s how and why continuity is important and can be good. The problem today is not that there is too much but that in the early 2000s under Jemas’ regime they decided it was bad and openly scorned it creating more problems rather than if they respected and worked with it. they said it was a noose but really it was more like it provided oundaries and parameters for the creators to work within. Fences which defined the characters allowing for deeper stories rather than meandering sprawling stories where anything could happen thus meaning nothing actually mattered.

Unless I missed something - the factor that Starlord isn't a deeply unpleasant astronaut from the near future anymore doesn't seem to bother anyone? (although I notice his most recent series writes elements of his original origins back in but not the fact that he's from the future).


(Actually thinking about it - Starlord has three incompatible origins - each time the change is done with no in-universe reason for the change - there is his original origin (astronaut from the future, deeply unpleasant), when he's reintroduced in 2004 (which sort has elements of the first one but ignores that he's from the future and other stuff) and his current one (which is largely different from two previous ones but folds in bits of the film). He's also been deaged over the last 11 years - if I remember correctly, he's a lot older when we first see in 2004 as a half-cyborg washed-up hero.

Trust me it bothers plenty of people.

I love movie Star Lord but when they tired making comic star lord like him it created problems and was a deep betrayal. also he's just not as interesting

Is the problem with continuity or the weight of stories happening in so short a time period (physically)?
It was easy to follow Amazing Spider-Man and most of the Marvel Universe for decades.
But over the past decade the number of books Peter has appeared in each month has grown significantly
and so has the whole Marvel Universe that to follow just Peter would be a major chore, but too
also include many other Marvel characters and teams beyond most budgets and time and sanity.
Even when one choses to just follow the core books like Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men,
the changes that happen around those books and to those characters in other titles find there
way back to the core few books a reader was reading (add the constant crossover and events that force
a reader into buying extra books to keep up with what is happening to the character or team.

The 90s is to blame for that when you got 4 spider-man titles per month.

Really though for Spider-Man it works on a multi-tier system. really only the regular monthly titles he stars in as a solo hero matter. everything else matters less to varying degrees. you don't NEED to read Avengers starring Spider-Man to follow the character

[HaveAtThee]

I appreciate continuity and crave it because continuous stories allow for character growth. However superhero comics are dealing with LP's that are meant to survive forever, so you can't just evolve the characters, age them and eventually have them die/retire/etc. It's a difficult balancing act because I'd love to see a situation where the iconic characters are allowed to age and evolve. But then again, do they simply pass their mantles on to new bearers? Many people don't like it when that happens because, (imo) correctly, they feel that it's Peter Parker that makes Spider-Man and Bruce Banner's scientific blunder and internal conflict that IS the Hulk and so on. So do they simply get written out of existence with proper continuity based somewhat loosely on real time? Logically yes these characters would age and eventually get killed, retire or die or whatever. Would legions of fans be ready and willing for that to happen and new characters to then take their place? Unfortunately Marvel decided in the late 60's and early 70's that that was never going to happen and then the sliding timescale was put into effect, so we'll never really know how that would have played out.

I wonder if Marvel and DC would ever try doing that kind of continuous storytelling with their classic characters as an experiment for, say, five years. It would just be fascinating in a vacuum to see how it would be received.

[HaveAtThee]

As an avid back issue hunter from waaaay back, it didn't matter to me if I picked up X-Men #207, or Hulk #108 as my first issue of the title, if it looked cool in the store I was in. It made me want to know more,the back history, and I was going to do my best to keep on with whatever book going forward, hence the hunt was on. There are comic stores in Milwaukee still open today because of the amount of $$ I used to spend, haha, but it used to be fun.

Yea I agree completely this is how I became an avid comic fan as a kid way back when 20-25 years ago. My parents picked me up some comics of characters I thought looked cool regardless of which issue, and then I wanted to know how exactly the character evolved to that place, so then came the back-issue hunting. Good times.

[CentralPower]

I also see a possible solution by having characters retire or die off, but have new stories told that are set in their 'primetime'.
For instance, an X-Men title that follows the Levitz style, with characters coming and going through their own narratives, and a separate title, Classic X-Men, that features stories set in various points in the past to give the older characters more adventures.

There is some precedent for this, with "Year One" type stories. (Marvel does them, even if they do not use the "Year One" branding.)

But, realistically, the closest we are likely to get to characters having an end point is to read runs of comics independent of each other. (Michelinie's "Iron Man", "Claremont's "X-Men" or the Simonsons' "X-Factor" all got "wrap-up" series or one-shots at various points after those runs had ended. They do not fit with current runs, but who cares?)

Unless I missed something - the factor that Starlord isn't a deeply unpleasant astronaut from the near future anymore doesn't seem to bother anyone? (although I notice his most recent series writes elements of his original origins back in but not the fact that he's from the future).

I think that the first origin assumed that Peter "Starlord" Quill began his astronauting career in the distant future of the 1990s.

Joking aside, Marvel fiddled around with this. There is a sourcebook entry that assumed that the Starlord from the intial Abnett-written relaunch of the Guardians (when they were Kree kill squad, and Starlord totally looked like something out of Games Workshop's 40K) was the original Starlord, but not native to 616 Marvel. (How he ended up in Marvel was never really clear.) He went on to die along with Nova and Thanos. Later appearances were supposed to be the 616-native Starlord. (Then, Bendis ignored all that during his run on "Guardians of the Galaxy".)

I am just glad they got rid of the creepy "shipping" with Ship.

b) Marvel managed continuity like that for decades. Problems arose but they managed it okay at the end of the day. Today with the resources available that is easier than ever
c) Sure Elseworlds and what ifs are good as stand alone stories. But the ongoing stories are even better because there is richer character development.

Keeping things consistent across decades (especially if nothing can change too much) is nearly impossible. Add in the fact that popular characters will appear in multiple titles, and the fact that comics are sold primarily as runs (reprinted in compilations) that have to work on their own. Consistency is nearly impossible.

"Elseworlds", which have to be self-contained, need a high concept to carry them. I would be hard pressed to name a run of "Superman" that matches "Red Son". And, there is no need to follow up on "Red Son". Similarly, (and using another DC example", "Salvation Run" was originally drafted as an "Elseworld". It probably should have stayed that way. (The idea would have been allowed to play out more logically.)

That’s how and why continuity is important and can be good. The problem today is not that there is too much but that in the early 2000s under Jemas’ regime they decided it was bad and openly scorned it creating more problems rather than if they respected and worked with it. they said it was a noose but really it was more like it provided oundaries and parameters for the creators to work within. Fences which defined the characters allowing for deeper stories rather than meandering sprawling stories where anything could happen thus meaning nothing actually mattered.

Not defending Jemas. But, keeping everything consistent means that we still need to consider the Goblin Bastards in "Spider-Man". It is easier and simpler to just let current writers ignore them and move on.

I wonder if Marvel and DC would ever try doing that kind of continuous storytelling with their classic characters as an experiment for, say, five years. It would just be fascinating in a vacuum to see how it would be received.

Both tried it to varying degrees in the 70s and 80s. But, then editorial became timid, and the changed character became a new sort of "stasis quo". (Consider the Flash. For some people, Wally West is "the Flash they had as a kid". For others, it is Barry Allen.) War Machine is the last "old" Marvel character that I can think of to have permanent changes and advancing. And, even he has had a few resets and some clean-up.

[Spidercide]

I appreciate continuity and crave it because continuous stories allow for character growth. However superhero comics are dealing with LP's that are meant to survive forever, so you can't just evolve the characters, age them and eventually have them die/retire/etc. It's a difficult balancing act because I'd love to see a situation where the iconic characters are allowed to age and evolve. But then again, do they simply pass their mantles on to new bearers? Many people don't like it when that happens because, (imo) correctly, they feel that it's Peter Parker that makes Spider-Man and Bruce Banner's scientific blunder and internal conflict that IS the Hulk and so on. So do they simply get written out of existence with proper continuity based somewhat loosely on real time? Logically yes these characters would age and eventually get killed, retire or die or whatever. Would legions of fans be ready and willing for that to happen and new characters to then take their place? Unfortunately Marvel decided in the late 60's and early 70's that that was never going to happen and then the sliding timescale was put into effect, so we'll never really know how that would have played out.

I wonder if Marvel and DC would ever try doing that kind of continuous storytelling with their classic characters as an experiment for, say, five years. It would just be fascinating in a vacuum to see how it would be received.

But that’s what I’ve been saying.


The situation for Marvel characetrs specifically is that the characters can’t last forever in any kind of creatively healthy state. They were not built to last forever. Maybe the creators wanted that for them (I doubt it for Kirby because he wanted to kill off all Asardians and replace them) but if that’s the case then they should’ve written them differently.


If they established character development and continuity from the start then the characters cannot then transition into a perennial never changing storytelling model. It’s not just a betrayal of the readers and characetrs but it literally doesn’t work. It is like jamming a square into a triangle shaped whole. It doesn’t work.


Spider-Man was meant to grow, change and age. He doesn’t work when you forever stick him at one stage of his life forever. We know this not only from runs in more recent times, examples when we’ve tried to regress to immense backlash and financial failure but also from late 60s an 70s stories where the ‘illusion of change’ was attempted to be permanently applied and quality dropped. In fact that’s a story across most of marvel in the 1970s. But financial and critical success came when the trains got moving again under Shooter’s regime (which wanted to end the Mu notably, a bad decision but not completely off model).



Essentially the Marvel (but not necesarilly DC) characters never work when they are treated purely as brands rather than as vibrant characters.


So yes absolutely allow them to evolve and age.


But do it SLOWLY. There is no reason the characters need to experience 1 year for every 4 years real time rather than for every 10 years? Like Spider-man was 15 when he got his powers and in 2007 he was 30. That’s on average him aging 1 year for every 3 years. If that rate of aging had continued you’d have had 30 years of Spider-Man stories where he could age and progress with her stories emerging from the natural obstacles life throws at you as you age and grow before you had to entertain the idea of writing a middle aged Spider-Man or retiring him. And it could be even longer. It cold be 40 years before you have to do that. Or 50 r 100.




There is no reason why you cannot across decades establish an heir to the character come retirement. You could even keep the old character around as a supporting character. Like I dunno Thor could forever ascend to be ruler of Asgard and Kevin masterson becomes the new permanent Thor or something. Peter Parker could retire and become a full tiem scientist who helps Miles Morales out with his problems and mentors him like old Bruce Wayne did to Terry McGuinness.


There is no reason Marvel cannot just discontinue a character as they don’t make their money mainly through publishing and don’t need to keep publishing stories about a character to retain the rights to them or anything. Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings and countless manga and anime series continue to make money long after they’ve told their grand finale, whether it’s through reprints or merchandise sales.


There is no reason why you cannlt take a character to their natural conclusion and only THEN reboot it. And I don’t mean erase the old version in favour of a new version, I mean do what Ultimate did and just start telling stories about an AU version who’s at an entirely different point in their life and career. The Godzilla films have done this for decades to much success. Hell we do it all the time with remakes and reboots of old film franchises. The Burton Batman movies ended and we didn’t erase them but just started telling stories about a different version of Batman. Why can’t Spider-Man’s last story be told someday in the far future when he’s aged to like 40 and then


There is no reason why you can’t have the stories reach their natural conclusion and then (or before then) create an out of continuity imprint allowing for the traditional status quo for the character to be depicted endlessly or else have it be a platform for any creator to walk into and tell any kind of story they want within reason. When that is your only option to read about the character because the original version has been retired then your going to pick it up.



With legacies, YES Peter Parker is Spider-Man and Bruce IS Hulk. But Miles and Amadeus can be their own thing. The reason people mostly hate the way marvel has typically done legacy characters is because they almost always institute them at the EXPENSE of the original characters or when the original characters have more stories to be told or else make them compete for attention alongside the originals rather than smoothly transitioning between one and the other. If Peter hadn’t been murdered so Miles could replace him that would’ve gone down better with fans (but wouldn’t have been as powerful a story).


But if Miles after operating for years as a Spider-Man hero became the one and only Spider-Man when peter Parker got naturally too old for it and got one last great heroic finale where he gets a happy ending and we’d seen decades worth of great stories out of him how many people would revolt against that really?



I mean people didn’t want to lose Cap but they accepted Bucky. They didn’t want to lose Peter but they didn’t dislike Ben Reilly merely how he got there. People like Rhodey as Iron Man. People LIKED Dick Grayson as Batman quite a bit the first time and a LOT the second time. Similarly they like Batman Beyond. And by God this happens in Wrestling all the time with people being okay with it.



Having a character groomed to inherit the mantle over a long period of time who makes sense as a successor and then smoothly handing the reigns over when we reach the end of the line WOULD work.



As for what Marvel decided again, Jim Shooter said fuck the illusion of change in the late 1970s and 1980s and went on to chair Marvel’s greatest financial period since the 1960s and greatest critical period of all time. It’s all about the attitudes of those in charge so when the current crop leave the next crop of folks in charge could have a very different idea of how the universe should work and go back to what Stan and Jack and Jim were doing.


We don’t need things to run in real time just progress forward is all. And we’ve seen that happen at both Marvel (60s an 80s) and DC (post crisis 80s and 90s) to great success.

[The Sword is Drawn]

It is impossible to have any kind of lasting impact without continuity. It is literally the strongest and most unique facet of serial storytelling.

Removing that would take away any sense of consequence. Because in the grander scheme of things the story never happened. Without continuity there is no past history. There is no future.

It all becomes a momentarily entertaining but ultimately throwaway product.

[Wiccan615]

There are inconsistencies resulting from anacrhonisms or changing writing standardsand then there are inconsistencies that result from incompetence.


Gerry Conway treating Gwen’s death more realistically than Uncle Ben’s is an inconsistency but an acceptable one as times had changed.


Spider-Man using a cell phone in a 2016 story when they didn’t exist in 1962 is also acceptable.


Spider-Man and Mary Jane acting like their history with Iron Man in Civil War Ii didn’t happen is incompetent and unacceptable.


People always bring up the 1950s Cap when discussing continuity but that belies the important fact that Marvel’s continuity didn’t exist until Fantastic Four #1.


It’s canon STARTS there and then anything before then doesn’t count unless stories published thereafter opted to incorporate them.


Essentially 1960s Captain America might as well have been a rebooted or alternate universe version of the one created in the Golden age, and in fact effectively is that. The same phenomena is apparent with the Earth 1 and Earth 2 Supermans or even in truth the actual original golden age Superman who despite what DC claimed was very different to the guy they were called the Earth 2 guy back in the 1970s.


Essentially anything pre-1961 is exceptional to how continuity has and should operate within the Marvel universe and shouldn’t really be counted in discussions about it all that much.




Marvel can change things but not on a whim and not without a justifiable reason. They are writing the latest chapters in these ongoing sagas not things that simply are to be taken unto themselves alone. None of these characters and their personalities, abilities, etc would be here without them building upon the past so the past absolutely matters and should be respected just as the final chapater of a book should respect and jive as much as possible with the chapters that preceeded it.


This isn’t just a personal preference thing, it’s objectively bad writing to not do that. And whilst some people might not remember an Avengers story from years ago, others do and many other people can easily find something out. Marvel’s job is to simultaneously entertain AND produce a quality piece of fiction. To do that you don’t have free for all to just change things at a whim. Not unless you have a bloody good reason for it.






Modern writers have admited that unlike writers of the past their attitude to continuity s that it is reductive and should be treated ont he basis of whatever the writer desires. Older writers did not do that, at least not with as much opness or frequency as it was editorial policy to cut closer to continuity, hence jean Grey didn't just come back to life and Pryor got handwaved there was stuff explaining how all this made sense. teen tony was a mess that wasn't just ignored Busieck went in there and explained the mechanics of how things worked. Norman osborn's resurrection and even Disassembled eventually got whole stories dedicated to reconciling continuity that previous stories either fucked up or now needed clarification.

Plus is breaking the rules because other people did it really an acceptable model for a business or a creative philosophy? No not really.

Look some of this stuff you can debate to a point. But a lot of it is fairly clear cut a lot of the time when you break it down and try to look at it critically rather than leaning on whether you personally like or dislike it.

Case in point. Spider-Man torment and Maximum Carnage are stories I love. they are piss poorly written though and I can see that.

Meanwhile the Death of jean DeWolff is a great story I don't care about.






Yeah no.



a) OMD ignored Mephisto’s established abilities and personality to facilitate the story
b) It ignores the way time travel works in the marvel universe
c) It ignores virtually the whole Marvel universes’ established power sets in order to force Spider-Man to have Mephisto as his lone option
d) It roryally ignores Spider-man and Mary Jane’s entire histories and established personalities to again facilitate the direction fot he story. i.e. it breaks continuity
e) The story’s claims are that everything was the same but they weren’t married. This again breaks continuity because if they weren’t married multiple things inherently cannot be the same chiefly the thoughts, feelings and relationships certain characters would have had at any given time, which includes altering dialogue and the meaning of that dialogue.

Plus it’s a continuity reboot which is like quintessentially breaking continuity it’s just not doing it by externally ignoring the past but providing a reason why old continuity is erased. It still erases and therefore breaks it though, in this specific case making it convoluted and a complete time paradox.


In other words actually the words and phrases used apply entirely accurately to the OMD situation. Rewriting continuity is itself an act of poor continuity if you do it the way OMD did. This wasn’t a retcon ala Norman Osborn actually being alive.


NOTHING in OMD allowed it’s changes to fit and the changes were not revealing that the narrative was different from what we’d believed it to be it was an erasure of what was established and a supplanting of something new.


It’s the equivent of reading a picture book and learning later on there was a pop up feature on one of the pages you didn’t know about and just ripping out pages from the book and gluing new ones in. they are not the same.

Which modern writers are you referring to? Bendis? I don't think it's completely fair to blanket dismiss all modern writers because of a few. See, a lot of what you're saying (in regards to retcons) demonstrates what I initially said too, continuity is flexible. As long as you take the time to develop and explain whatever it is you change. Modern writers really don't just change a character without giving it some form of explanation, and changing characters whilst giving minimal explanation is not a modern phenomenon.

And TBH when I say old writers "broke those rules" before, it's more of a figure of speech, I really never had a problem with that. In fact, I don't think I'd love a lot of the characters I love now if it wasn't for the developments newer writers gave them later considering how barebones the silver age was. Also whenever we talk or "debate" about comics it usually will come to "I like this vs I don' like this" (because again; what works for one person may not for another and vice versa). It's difficult to look at such a subjective medium through an objective lens, because not everyone has the same idea of what makes a good or consistent story. Some don't even care that much about consistency. A lot of what you may see as inconsistent, many see as not breaking any historical conventions of the medium. Comics are an inconsistently consistent medium, it's what happens when you have 50+ years of continuity. Continuity changes will always be controversial but they've always existed, and I personally don't see a lot of the modern changes to be as "game changing" as the many that happened in the 70s-90s.

[Spidercide]

Which modern writers are you referring to? Bendis? I don't think it's completely fair to blanket dismiss all modern writers because of a few. See, a lot of what you're saying (in regards to retcons) demonstrates what I initially said too, continuity is flexible. As long as you take the time to develop and explain whatever it is you change. Modern writers really don't just change a character without giving it some form of explanation, and changing characters whilst giving minimal explanation is not a modern phenomenon.

And TBH when I say old writers "broke those rules" before, it's more of a figure of speech, I really never had a problem with that. In fact, I don't think I'd love a lot of the characters I love now if it wasn't for the developments newer writers gave them later considering how barebones the silver age was. Also whenever we talk or "debate" about comics it usually will come to "I like this vs I don' like this" (because again; what works for one person may not for another and vice versa). It's difficult to look at such a subjective medium through an objective lens, because not everyone has the same idea of what makes a good or consistent story. Some don't even care that much about consistency. A lot of what you may see as inconsistent, many see as not breaking any historical conventions of the medium. Comics are an inconsistently consistent medium, it's what happens when you have 50+ years of continuity. Continuity changes will always be controversial but they've always existed, and I personally don't see a lot of the modern changes to be as "game changing" as the many that happened in the 70s-90s.

I’m not dismissing ALL modern writiers. But the majority write like that. It’s not ‘a few’ who write like this. It’s most of them and then a few don’t.


Gerry Conway has said this. Jordan D. White has expressed this. I forget if it was Jemas or Alonso who said this back in the early 2000s but they said something to that effect too. JMS when writing Spider-Man clearly didn’t care but with some exceptions never did anything too egregious before Sins past. He also said everyone should only care about Amazing.



Continuity can be flexible but not fluid. If you are retconning things they need to work within boundaries of what’s been established unless it’s egregiously additive or reductive.



Dude modern writers change characters on a whim with no explanation all the time. The Vision series contradicts shittons about the vision’s established character. Bendis ignored vast swathes of Scarlet Witch’s character to facilitate Disassembled. Slott utterly ignored everything about Silver Sable and 99% of everything regarding Peter Parker and Doc Ock to do whatever he wanted. Joe Kelly gave no shits about explaining why black Cat was nothing like Black Cat anymore.



And on the rare occasions where writers decide they are going to explainwhy a character has changed the explanations don’t make sense. E.g. everything revolving around Black Cat since Superior.




It might have happened before whatever you regard as the modern age but not half as widespread as it is now. Because please tell me the last time someone sat down and did a story akin to Busieck’s Avengers tuff to explain something, apart from Children’s Crusade, where the explanation made sense.



I respect you personally don’t mind the rules being broken. That doesn’t make it okay though.



And there is a difference between developing a character or enacting a sensible retcon and what we have now. Now they write whatever they want however they want because they want it to be that way. There is little thought put into the creative health or considerations of the charcetr. Hence everything involved in Civil War I where the characters were written OOC and retconned to justify the story.



I’m sorry but no. You can try and be objkective about things. Storytelling is as much a craft as it is an art. It goes back to when the Ancient Greeks essentially invented how to tell a story in a strucutured way. They were the ones who instituted that a deus ex machine is a bad thing.



So you can in fact qualify what is a good and a consistent story if you look at the subject matter closely enough. Most readers though don’t do that or can’t do that because they don’t know how to analyse literature or other stories.



Like I said I ENJOY Spider-Man Torment and Revenge of the Sith but I could write whole essays on why they are not good stories but Death of Jean DeWolff and the Empire Strikes Back (which I enjoy far less) are. You can break down the components of those stories and look at what makes them tick and why parts of them work and other parts don’t and why the over all package is effective or not. LIKING it or DISLIKING it isn’t really relevant.


The same applies to continuity changes. It depends upon how well the change fits in addition o how additive or reductive it is. Sins Past doesn’t fit at all and is also incredibly reductive to the characetrs and series over all. In contrast Magneto’s origin story which was also a retcon fits very nicely and enriches the character to an immense degree because it adds layers to him, makes him more multifaceted, etc.



Again, changing continuity is okay depending on how it’s done. Saying the New Mutants are graduating from the Xavier school or having Magneto become a villain again is one thing. A One More Day style continuity change another and unacceptable.

[Ru5152]

Yea I agree completely this is how I became an avid comic fan as a kid way back when 20-25 years ago. My parents picked me up some comics of characters I thought looked cool regardless of which issue, and then I wanted to know how exactly the character evolved to that place, so then came the back-issue hunting. Good times.

Still remember the thrill of acquiring Thor #337 as a 1st print, X-Men #138, and the first few issues of the Incredible Hulk that McFarlane did. Just to name a few. The original Grant/Zeck Punisher mini series......damn I'm old....need a few 'member berries....