Comics and continuity

I got into comics shortly after DC turned its universe upside-down for the first time, which is to say, right after its multiverse became a universe in the epic storyline CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

The rationale for CRISIS was so simple. "Fifty years of unplanned, uncoordinated continuity has left a giant mess! It's time to clean house and set up a history new fans can understand!"

The execution was not nearly as simple or as straightforward as the rationale was. Inevitably, the attempt to iron out fifty years of in-comic history didn't fully succeed, and in the last quarter-century DC has tried several times to clean up the clean-up. I wasn't a collector long enough to have seen, or even heard of, most of those attempts, but my impression is that none of them was a resounding success, either as sales boosters or continuity fixes.

Now DC will try again in September. The official information is available in a 1 June posting on DC's blog The Source, from DC co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio. Of more interest, though, are a couple of takes from comics watchers. Snell's opinion is summed up in his post's title, "DC Punts".

Has there ever been a more thorough admission of failure? "People don't like the comics we're publishing, they're not at all relevant, so we're going to start over." As if the comics that were allegedly lifeless and and [sic] irrelevant and not being told for today's audience were somehow being published by elves or fairies, and not by the exact same people making this announcement. The new product will be much better than the old product!! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

[emphases in the original]

Scott Tipton's Comics 101 blog sounds a similarly skeptical note. In addition to making the same point about the turnaround being masterminded and executed by the same people who apparently are doing a substandard job today, Tipton also notes that DC's switch to simultaneous digital and dead-tree publication practically invites specialty comics retailers to downplay DC's comics in favor of publishers who give those stores a competitive edge by delaying digital releases. Finally, Tipton wonders whether DC may have visited the continuity-reboot well too often:

Watching DC once again take a hammer to their history in pursuit of short-term gains, I'm reminded of an analogy Mark Grunewald once made. Mark said that at Marvel, continuity was like a tree, and every so often they would prune it back, to keep it looking good, but the trunk remained strong and healthy, and the roots remained deep. Whereas at DC Comics, continuity was like a skyscraper, and every 20 years or so they knock it down and rebuild it from the ground up, even though there were plenty of folks living in the building who liked it just fine.

You have to wonder how many times people will be willing to move back in.

I was too old to be much interested in superhero comics by the time I started collecting, though I did collect a number of them out of curiosity and a desire to keep tabs on the DC universe. There were a few interesting experiments in the mainstream books: the highly entertaining run of Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire on JUSTICE LEAGUE that mixed broad humor with the superheroics; O'Neil's and Cowan's erudite version of THE QUESTION; the controversial run of Giffen, Tom Bierbaum and Mary Bierbaum on THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES; and the extremely bizarre, yet somehow compelling, Grant Morrison revamp of THE DOOM PATROL.

These experimental takes on the superhero appealed to older readers. They also proved either to be aberrations from their series' tonal norm (JUSTICE LEAGUE) or flops (or both), and had little effect on the tone and style of mainstream comic books. My experience is that comics aimed at adults and superhero comics don't overlap. The exceptions, like Alan Moore's terrific WATCHMEN, are just that, exceptions. The superhero comic's main audience is, and always will be, juvenile.

Since superhero comics are aimed at a young audience, of how much concern should continuity actually be to a publisher? If your audience ages out of comic collecting every decade or so, how hard should a publisher try to keep several decades' worth of storylines consistent? To borrow Tipton's metaphor, isn't it okay to blow up the skyscraper every so often, since most of your tenants keep moving out? (And yes, I question his assertion that "plenty of folks living in the building ... like it just fine.")

I doubt DC's upcoming reboot will be any more successful at resolving continuity contradictions than its previous ones. However, I understand the impulse to try.