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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #7 20 Feb 03 |
Continuity: No-Prizes,
Retcons, and the Mental Acrobatics of Continuity Repair |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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In the Golden Age of the 1930s and 1940s,
comics were mostly episodic tales in which characters barely changed. A costume might occasionally change, an
origin story might be amended, a power might be granted, or a vehicle or
sidekick added, but all such changes merely established a new episodic status
quo. Villains changed looks,
equipment, or M.O.s often without notice.
Characters rarely interacted with one another, despite being owned by
the same company. Even All-Star
Comics, which had DC’s characters its less popular titles team up to form
the Justice Society, initially did not feature the characters together and
then -- when it did -- split the characters up for separate chapters,
typically illustrated by the artists that illustrated the characters’ stories
in their own titles. |
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In the 1960s, the cult of continuity took off. At DC, this reached its apex in the notion
of multiple earths. At Marvel, the
notion of a shared universe was deeply inscribed. |
The 1950s brought increasing reference to past
adventures, but it was really in the 1960s that the cult of continuity took
off. Characters increasingly
interacted with one another, increasingly exploring the idea that they
inhabited a shared “universe.” At DC,
this reached its apex in the notion of multiple earths, which placed a
version of DC’s Golden Age characters on an alternate earth. This brilliant move, at least ideally,
allowed the older version of characters to continue to live, even continuing
-- or beginning -- to change on occasion. This formalization of increasingly numerous parallel universes
also allowed characters from purchased companies to be placed in their own
universes, explaining their historical absence from DC’s own universe. The notion of continuity became central to
Marvel Comics’s famous return to super-heroes and its revitalization in the
1960s. Eschewing DC’s multiple
earths, Marvel’s new super-hero line established continuity with its 1940s
incarnation (when Marvel was called Timely), primarily through the resurrection
of Captain America in The Avengers #4. Moreover, the notion of a shared universe was deeply inscribed
in the Marvel line. The fact that
most of Marvel’s characters inhabited New York City both complicated this --
making one wonder what Spider-Man was doing when Galactus invaded the city --
and facilitated this -- allowing characters to run into each other with some
frequency (engendering many melodramatic hero-on-hero battles). |
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Readers wrote in to point out continuity errors -- and then
explain them away. |
Marvel also created the notion of the
no-prize in its letter columns.
Readers wrote in to point out continuity errors -- like those in film
except complicated by having years of histories of intersecting characters
with established dress codes -- and then explain them away. The notion, supposedly comic, was that
Marvel made no mistakes: any such
gaffs were secretly communicative of meaning, and it was left to the readership
to figure it out -- to turn mistake into unstated meaning. Successful attempts at doing so were
awarded with a no-prize -- supposedly nothing at all, save mention in a
letter column. |
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In the 1970s, continuity became even more formalized as stories
routinely stretched over multiple issues, with increasing amounts of subplots. |
In the 1970s, continuity became even more
formalized as stories routinely stretched over multiple issues, with
increasing amounts of subplots. What
became known as the Levitz Method (because it was formalized by Paul Levitz,
writer and subsequent administrator at DC Comics) became prominent in this
time: an issue would have an A-plot
(or the main plot), a few pages of B-plot (or the subplot), and perhaps even
a C-plot (a sub-subplot, given perhaps a page or half-page). The same device would become prominent in
television, with each episode having an A-plot and a B-plot, typically a more
masculine, action-oriented plot and a more feminine, romantic-oriented
plot: thus, the police both
investigated a murder and experienced troubles in their relationships. The idea was to appeal to everybody,
widening the show’s audience. In
comics, the Levitz Method worked thusly:
a hero would battle his nemesis (the A-plot) while a few pages would
be devoted to a mounting alien invasion (the B-plot) and a half-page or so
would be devoted to setting up a future plot, say someone’s strange
behavior. Whenever the A-plot ended,
whether after one issue or five, the last page would feature the B-plot
raised to the fore; beginning next issue, the B-plot would become the A-plot,
the C-plot would become the B-plot, and a new C-plot would (ideally) be
introduced. Thus the nemesis is
defeated, and the aliens actually attack; while dealing with the alien
invasion, it becomes clear that the strange behavior seen for issues is
actually the result of mind control run by a new villain -- at the same time,
our hero’s love interest begins investigating his secret identity. As the alien invasion is defeated, the
mind-controlling villain takes center stage and the love interest becomes the
B-plot, with a few more pages, while a new C-plot is introduced. Following the defeat of the
mind-controlling villain, the love interest confronts our hero about his
identity, leading into the next issue, in which the C-plot again becomes the B-plot
and a new C-plot is added. Et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. The idea --
while certainly naïve -- was to replicate real life, with multiple concerns
running at the same time. Admittedly,
this is only the ideal description of this pattern: often a C-plot or even a B-plot would be dropped for an issue
or so, and sometimes a C-plot would not be used at all, or a new C-plot would
not be immediately introduced, or all plots would coalesce in a writer’s
final stories before he left the series.
But the general pattern became increasingly popular, making each title
less episodic -- and more, well, soap operatic. |
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One can easily see a major downside to such a narrative
structure: following it took some
effort. |
One can easily see a major downside to such
a narrative structure: following it
took some effort, discouraging new readers who had to contend not with
jumping into the midst of a single story but into the midst of two or three. Indeed, continuity in general had the same
effect: a villain could not appear
without reference to his condition when he was last seen, if not a long
continuity of his life and confrontations with the hero. As these continuities of each character
became increasingly complex, involving a long trail of such abstract narrative
bends as clones and parallel worlds, often with each bend written by a
different writer and expressing different sensibilities, continuity became a
bit of a problem. |
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Post-Crisis continuity became problematic even at its very
inception. |
This was never more true than at DC, which
by the 1980s had forty-some years of ongoing stories, complete with
continuing parallel universes. One
character who was part of the main universe might have gone to another universe
for some time, serious events in his life occurred there, and finally
returned -- only for writers to have to explain to readers not only this
character’s history but who were the characters surrounding him -- many of
whom looked quite similar to other, more familiar characters -- during those
life-altering experiences on a parallel world. Moreover, numerous incompatible futures had been shown: mutated nuclear deserts were followed a
couple centuries later by utopian societies and the like. DC elected to reboot the machine, as it
were. The twelve-issue mini-series
entitled Crisis on Infinite Earths was to foreground these changes,
killing off characters and all multiple earths, concluding with time being
altered from the Big Bang itself, allowing for a single, unified
continuity. Of course, this
continuity became problematic even at its very inception: any character’s story was in doubt. While some characters (such as Superman or
Wonder Woman) were rebooted, their stories told anew, other characters (such
as Batman or Flash) were not. When
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World first appeared in what became known as post-Crisis
continuity, the planet Genesis (good sister planet to the evil Apokolips) was
destroyed, reflecting Kirby’s Hunger Dogs graphic novel -- which was
shortly thereafter designated as not having happened. Worse, the Legion of Super-Heroes, living
in the 30th Century, had not been affected by the Crisis event, yet had
frequently worked not only with characters in their pre-Crisis forms but with
characters, such as Superboy and Supergirl, who no longer existed -- or had
ever existed. To solve this, the
villain the Time Trapper was radically escalated in terms of his power: the post-Crisis past with which the Legion
had been interacting from its inception was now -- and had always been -- a
“pocket universe” created by the villain. Ironically, all the pre-Crisis
events that had been negated by the Crisis still had a kind of substance in
this “pocket universe,” which was put to the torch almost as soon as it was
revealed. Worse, many minor characters without their
own titles -- or long-lived ones -- did not get the kind of attention
necessary to create a consistent post-Crisis continuity. Hawkman, in particular, was a disaster. In the early 1990s, DC attempted to
rectify this problem with a second Crisis of less scope and
importance: named Zero Hour,
this five-part weekly mini-series featured another universe-ending and
universe-recreating cosmic event.
Improving on Crisis in at least one respect, Zero Hour
concluded with a fold-out timeline of the slightly revised continuity. The event was used to reboot the complex
continuity of the 30th Century, giving the Legion of Super-Heroes a chance to
start from the beginning as Superman and Wonder Woman had after Crisis. |
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The term “retcon” was coined, short for “retroactive continuity.” |
In the wake of Crisis, the term
“retcon” was coined, short for “retroactive continuity.” Strictly speaking, a retcon refers only to
the modification of past events -- Crisis being a prime example. Thus, History of the DC Universe --
a two-part mini-series that followed Crisis and attempted, in broad
strokes, to tell the history of the new single world produced by that
literally earth-shattering mini-series -- provided a guide to a “reconned”
universe. The term has expanded to
include less world-altering events, such a character who reappears complete
with a narration of his past that diverges from established history. Marvel, ironically given its championship
of continuity in the 1960s, has become the sloppiest of the two main
companies in terms of continuity.
Never having had the benefit of a reboot, and inevitably featuring a
string of parallel universes with less of an ordering principle governing
them than DC’s parallel earths, albeit less traveled and thus less confusing
in Marvel’s continuity, Marvel is in serious need of a revamp. Given the choice to ignore continuity or
bog new readers down in its overwhelming complexity, Marvel has chosen to
ignore continuity more often than DC did.
Marvel’s solution was not to reboot certain titles but to create,
beginning in 2000, new titles set in a new universe, introducing characters
for the first time there. Called the
Ultimate universe, its characters were introduced amidst contemporary culture
rather than in the 1960s that defined so many of their characters’ original
versions and, to this day, their origins.
Marvel has carefully controlled this enormously popular universe’s
expansion, avoiding the chaos that often results in gross continuity
errors. Although rumors have
circulated that Marvel intends to phase out its original universe, Marvel
clearly has no such plans, as many titles in its main universe still sell
well. |
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Recent issues take place more or less in real time, but time becomes
increasingly compressed the further back one goes. |
One of the biggest inherent problems in
continuity is the advancement of time.
Characters simply do not age a year for every year of publication,
though Christmases and yearly events come more regularly. Moreover, contemporary events and
situations find reference. Many
titles refer to events from a year or so before as having occurred a year or
so before. This creates a strange
effect: recent issues take place more
or less in real time, but time becomes increasingly compressed the further
back one goes. As time passes,
once-recent issues increasingly become subject to this compression as
well. In other words, an implicit
retcon to the timeline of the narrative(s) occurs continuously. Moreover, interaction between titles
aggravates this problem: following a
crossover, one character’s storyline might consume months of time within the
narrative while another character’s might consume just days, though both have
had the same number of months of publication between them. When these characters participate in
another crossover, the time between the two crossovers might be months for
one character and his supporting cast but weeks for another set of characters. |
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The ten-year timespan was measured not by historical dates but
relative to the present moment: thus,
Superman’s emergence in 1995 occurred in 1985 and in 2000 occurred in 1990 --
which certainly feels ridiculous. |
The case of Zero Hour illustrates
this rather clearly. The admirable timeline
included in its concluding chapter measured the narrative time from the
emergence of Superman and other DC heroes to the present at ten years. Obviously, this meant that stories in
which computers were new occurred just a few years prior to stories in which
computers were commonplace. Certain
characters had experienced multiple occurrences of the same yearly holidays
and of their birthdays between events that were fixed as occurring one year
apart. Moreover, the ten-year
timespan was measured not by historical dates but relative to the present
moment: thus, Superman’s emergence in
1995 occurred in 1985 and in 2000 occurred in 1990 -- which certainly feels
ridiculous. Even in the year
following Zero Hour, different titles depicted the passing of time
differently: Wonder Woman, then
engaged in a battle for her very name, had one issue continue immediately
following the previous one for some time, whereas months passed for other
characters, such as Starman. |
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Since only a decade or less of narrative time has passed since
those 1960s stories (in which Captain America barely ages), and since World
War II is an historically fixed event, Captain America’s suspended animation
continues to grow. |
I hasten to point out that such problems
are not limited to DC, however:
Marvel has not even bothered to fix its continuity historically, and
by all indications its radical compression of narrative time is even more
severe than DC’s, despite its many references in its narratives to
then-contemporary events. Whereas
Captain America was frozen in ice in the ending days of World War II, he was
thawed in the 1960s. Since only a
decade or less of narrative time has passed since those 1960s stories (in
which Captain America barely ages), and since World War II is an historically
fixed event, Captain America’s suspended animation continues to grow. If Marvel does not ask us to imagine
Captain America frozen for fifty years instead of twenty, revived sometime in
the 1990s, it is not because Marvel is superior to DC but because Marvel,
while feigning at continuity, does take the severe steps that DC has taken
and that would necessarily challenge the company’s readers. None of these points is completely
unprecedented. We may be inclined to
dismiss comic book readers as foolish to tolerate such a situation, relying
upon the old notion that children read comics and that, consequently, comics
readership changes entirely ever few years as readers grow out of their
addiction to four-color fantasies of flying men in capes. Of course, none of this is true if it ever
was. The average comic book reader is
now in his twenties, and that figure climbs every year as comic books grow
increasingly a cultish, insular world dominated by special shops with an
aging readership and relatively few new readers. Even in the 1960s, however, the institution of the no-prize
demonstrates the savvy nature of comic book readers even at a time when
comics were decidedly juvenile. |
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The readership was invited to imagine creative solutions to continuity
gaffs, thus pulling the readers into the very construction of the
narrative universe itself. |
One of the most prominent aspects of the
Silver Age was its imagination -- the lack of self-censoring of outrageous
and often clever or crazy ideas that dominated 1960s comics. Even if the readers were largely children,
those children were invited to use their minds creatively, to imagine
shrunken cities or universes and bizarre transformations on a regular
basis. That same readership was
invited to imagine creative solutions to continuity gaffs, thus pulling
the readers into the very construction of the narrative universe itself. In a sense, this is not so different from
readers who spot continuity errors in movies or novels. But while the Internet Movie Datebase is
full of reader comments of prideful discoveries of continuity errors in
films, those contributors do not attempt to derive creative explanations as
to why a character’s clothes changed between shots or his burning cigarette
gets short, then long, then short again.
So too with those who read novels, who do not feel compelled to
explain away such errors in Charles Dickens, who produced his often masterful
novels on a serialized basis similar to the production of comic books. Moreover, the deep institutionalization of
continuity in American comics, grounded in ongoing interlocking narratives
spread through dozens of monthly publications, has no parallel elsewhere. |
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It is as if every network’s soap operas occurred in the same
world, with characters meeting each other and events in one soap opera
affecting events in others. Viewers
would go mad. |
The problems of continuity are often
regarded as the consequences of this phenomenon of quickly-produced
interlocking narratives occurring in the same narrative universe and running,
in the case of both DC and Marvel, since the late 1930s. It is as if every network’s soap operas
occurred in the same world, with characters meeting each other and events in
one soap opera affecting events in others.
Viewers would go mad. While
the phenomenon of continuity is certainly an epiphenomenon of sequential production
of multiple continuing narratives occurring in a shared universe, even the
problems inherent in this phenomenon have a sort of genius to them. Indeed, one of the most attractive
elements of American comic books is the sheer length and complexity of their
worlds’ narratives, running untold thousands of pages for any continuing
character and running untold millions of pages for either the DC or the
Marvel universe. At twenty-two new
pages an issue, a single monthly title produces 264 pages of narrative per
year or 2640 pages per decade. Of
course, characters like the X-Men, Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman have many
titles, and a company might produce anywhere from a dozen titles to several
dozen set in the same world. Of
course, length of issues and frequency of publication varies and has varied
over the years. Part of the charm of
these shared universes is the sheer bulk of their narratives, and even the
fact that one cannot read them due to their fracture into so many different
titles in any single coherent fashion.
The very unfathomable and unwieldy nature of continuity, which would
never be produced by the design of a single author, can also be a strength. |
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Indeed, the system of comics continuity, at least for companies
with interlocking narratives, requires constant mental footwork. I would like to suggest that these are
highly complex mental acrobatics -- ratiocinations due great praise -- and
that comics continuity requires them on a regular basis. |
Indeed, the system of comics continuity,
at least for companies with interlocking narratives, requires constant mental
footwork. Juggling minor continuity
gaffs is really the least sophisticated of such endeavors. Reading such narratives requires mentally
juggling not only several interlocking and lengthy narrative lives, but
constantly altering those narrative lines as they recede from the
present. As one reads a story from
the 1960s, one reads a tale so thoroughly ‘60s in tone, even if hippies are
not running around, as to render impossible imagining it in a different context. Yet, one must also read the story from the
perspective of present continuity, in which that story might have occurred
just a decade prior. While one cannot
imagine the rhetoric and setting of the story replaced with that of the
1990s, one might extract the essentials of the story and imagine that kernel
of narrative as occurring in the 1990s along a given narrative line. Sometimes, this requires imagining that a
character in that story was not actually who he was, or that his actions were
taken by another character, or that the same character was actually dressed
differently or actually insane at the time.
I would like to suggest that these are highly complex mental
acrobatics -- ratiocinations due great praise -- and that comics continuity
requires them on a regular basis. The experience is not unlike watching
classic Star Trek episodes and imagining that the technology which
looks like cardboard boxes with ridiculously insignificant flashing lights is
actually more advanced that the technology shown on Enterprise, which
occurs earlier, or that the Klingons look like the Klingons seen on Star
Trek: The Next Generation and later shows. Such an experience is like the normal continuity gaff of a cup
of coffee moving between shots, only taken to a deeper level. In comics, however, the experience is more
comparable to all of the Star Trek shows running and occurring
simultaneously, with the Klingons and technology still looking different in
one of them, then starting before it did and continuing to run without
cancellation to the present day, the casts barely aging though years pass in
terms of story. Watching an old
episode of Star Trek, outside of being an historical curiosity, would
thus become a potentially mind-boggling experience. |
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Casual readers might enjoy particular stories without knowing of
this elaborate metastructure, yet scholars of varying levels of formality and
training increasingly engage in study of this metastructure, and that study
entails great mental faculties. |
The astounding complexity of continuity
within the DC and Marvel universes is surely not utterly deliberate. It is a product of the material
circumstances of production, of ongoing stories, of interlocking narratives, of
the collaboration and changes of writers implicit in such production. Yet it also requires, for an increasingly
adult and literary audience, phenomenal faculties in order to process. Casual readers might enjoy particular
stories without knowing of this elaborate metastructure, yet scholars of
varying levels of formality and training increasingly engage in study of this
metastructure, and that study entails great mental faculties. As a case in point, one might consider
Kurt Busiek’s writing of Marvels.
To write his four stories of that seminal mini-series, Busiek,
considered an expert on comics continuity, scoured Marvel’s back issues in
order to retell stories from its history as experienced by the man on the
ground. In order to accomplish this,
Busiek had to create intersections between ongoing narratives occurring in a
shared universe. As his notes to that
series, published in the trade paperback collection, demonstrate, this meant
determining where an event in one title fell within the events of others. Inevitably, this yields interesting
results: the Avengers, for example,
were engaged in a long series of stories that continued into each other,
without breaks, when they guest-starred in Fantastic Four, yet the
members of the Avengers at the beginning and conclusion of that long series of
stories were different than during their appearance in Fantastic Four,
requiring that that appearance occurred during a particular issue. Finding such a possible gap itself entails
considerable mental acrobatics, but Busiek -- while he largely avoided the
issue of the aged historical setting of such stories (a difficult process
itself, even if less than the alternative) -- went a step further. Inevitably, these interlocking narratives
comment upon each other: there was a
historical context to the Avengers’ appearance; they had just finished
dealing with a particular threat that involved particular issues when they
encountered others in another title, inevitably producing thematic and
meaningful resonance. |
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Continuity has the effect of training readers’ interpretive
imagination on a thoroughly advanced level.
We must not ignore its remarkable ability to implicitly challenge
readers to identify complex narratological problems and derive creative
solutions. |
However unintended, the invitation to
address the continuity of corporate super-hero meta-narratives, seen in
everything from the no-prize to Zero Hour’s timeline (and its
successors as well as its immediate post-Crisis predecessor, History
of the DC Universe, if not Crisis and the institution of multiple
earths itself), has the effect of training readers’ interpretive imagination
on a thoroughly advanced level. This
is a sort of meta-version of the mystery narrative that invites readers to
attempt to solve the mystery over the course of the narrative. DC in particular incorporated puzzles into
their narratives, a more recent version of which might be the Marvel issue of
Transformers in which a name was scrawled in the vague spaces of the
issue’s artwork over and over again, challenging readers to examine the art
and find such references -- not unlike Hirschfeld’s similar routine
incorporation in his exaggerated, stylistic, and beautiful commercial
artwork. DC’s use in the 1960s of
splash pages -- first pages depicting some dramatic scenario the titular hero
would face during the course of the story, in fact produced prior to
that story -- may be seen in this context as a kind of puzzle. Indeed, the institution of continuity, as
demonstrated by the no-prize, might be seen as an astoundingly elaborate and
ultimately unknowable puzzle. We
might surrender the challenge of solving it, recognizing its accidental
nature, but we must not ignore its remarkable ability to implicitly challenge
readers to identify complex narratological problems and derive creative
solutions. |
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Readers ultimately are called to rewrite narratives even as they
read them, to participate in the creation of a massive universe of
ever-changing narrative lines shared not only between fictional characters
but with readers as well. |
With the passing of time, the notion of
interlocking the various narratives of titles with a single publisher has
become increasingly untenable so long as those narratives remain ongoing and
ever set in the present. On the other
hand, this phenomenon of sprawling continuity offers a challenging puzzle and
allows the reading of a single historical story not only on multiple levels
but as intrinsically producing multiple revised versions of itself. I dare write that few acclaimed academics
can claim such ability, and that such inclination and skill provides
excellent training not only for deriving brilliant literary arguments but for
identifying and solving nagging philosophical and even scientific
quandaries. Moreover, such reading,
as indicated by the institution of the no-prize, is invited by the stories
and their sprawling context themselves.
Readers ultimately are called to rewrite narratives even as they read
them, to participate in the creation of a massive universe of ever-changing
narrative lines shared not only between fictional characters but with readers
as well. Such is the process of
interpreting history itself, ever in the process of being rewritten to create
lines to the present; what is “he never loved me” but a convenient retcon? Though we as comic book readers are often
superficially aware of the strange notion of continuity, we are rarely aware
of the profound implications of this half-accidental institution. |
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Read more about Crisis on Infinite Earths on Sequart.com. |
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