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« Kaiju Big Battel | Main | SuperMegaSpeed Reviews » Marvel Continuity - it's been there from the beginningI see these sort of comments a lot on the comic boards and blogs: Also, given that the really strict inter-book continuity didn't come until the Thomas/Engelhart/etc. era of the late '60s and early '70s, it's pretty disingenuous to claim it's a foundation of the Marvel Universe. Stan and Jack (and Steve) were pretty much making that stuff up as they went along, and would frequently change/ignore things on a whim. It's totally wrong. While the second wave of Marvel creators definitely kicked up the 'shared universe' thing a notch (almost going too far by having, for example, the X-Men fight a random group of second tier super-villains from other heroes' rogues galleries), the original Stan Lee written stuff was extremely tight. I've just read through all my Marvel comics from 1962 to 1967, which is pretty much the pure Stan Lee era (Roy Thomas starts creeping in during '66), in chronological order, and it was much more rewarding that i thought it would be. I didn't expect to really see the tight inter-book continuity until the Jim Shooter era but it really is right there in the beginning. Stan Lee was creating an actual universe from the very start. It is one of the two distinguishing features of the early Silver Age marvel books (the other being the increased realism / flawed hero concept). Other than building an overall brand loyalty (gotta follow all the Marvel books because you don't want to miss a part of the story), this wasn't directly a marketing thing. Referring back to older issues of other comics in your line or having Spider-Man villains appear in an Iron Man story may have sent readers back to the newstands looking for older issues but in the days before comic book shops they weren't likely to find any, and even if they were i don't believe Marvel would have seen any of that money, having already sold the issues to the newstand. Stan also did the more obvious "Spider-Man appears in an early issue of Daredevil in order to increase sales on a new book" stuff, but we're not talking about that here. Sorry for the tangent. The relevance is that while i like to defend continuity on its own merits, others, rightfully, bring up the fact that for the Marvel Universe specifically, it is one of the foundations and therefore to start dropping that concept is to basically remove one of the appeals of Marvel. (I don't read DC comics regularly but i'm somewhat aware of the crises that they have from time to time and i know that they started at something of a disadvantage in that they had been publishing stories of varying degrees of silliness since the Golden Age whereas Marvel got to come in and basically start things from scratch, under the direction of a single writer, in the 60s. I think it's possible that DC and other comic companies may in fact benefit from what the Comics Should Be Good guy is advocating here but i'll leave that to other, shorter, individuals to discuss). So i'm trying to show what type of continuity is under attack and also show that it has been there from the beginning. I don't know if i've succeeded because this post is turning out to be very long and full of asides and it's getting near quitting time. Here is an example of the what i consider to be tight continuity within the early MU:
There is so much interrelated, cross-comic stuff in the above example that i feel sorry for anyone who just reads a run of the FF or Avengers instead of reading it all together, because they're only getting a percentage of the over-all story that is being told. We are drawing on plot points and/or characterization from 5 books (Hulk, Avengers, FF, Tales to Astonish, X-Men) plus Namor's Golden Age stories. The reason that it works so well is because Stan Lee keeps track of where all his characters are, what their motivations are, and considers how their past experiences affect their current decisions. He gets some of the details wrong, like calling Bruce Banner Bob all through one of the FF issues, and this is what people point to when they say that Stan Lee played fast and loose and that early Silver Age continuity wasn't tight, but in terms of the stuff that matters, he is totally on the ball. The Avengers' guilt in driving the Hulk away, the Hulk's distrust of people, and Namor's skepticism in taking allies are pieces of characterization that develop across various books and over time. Some other, hopefully quicker, examples:
Does that fact that Marvel started off with a strong sense of continuity between books dictate that it must always have a strong continuity? Is it possible to keep up what Stan and others accomplished now that we have multiple writers, multiple editors and an ever increasing back-story? I would argue (again and again) that it is valuable and possible, but we can debate that. But stop saying that there was no sense of continuity in the early Marvel days. There was, and it was very strong. By fnord12 | August 3, 2007, 3:06 PM | Comics CommentsWhen I saw this on CSG, I knew you'd be interested. You have too many typos for me to accept your point. I think that if a comic went unsold, the newstand would return it. So, marvel would get a direct benefit from promoting 'back issues.' I still feel most of this comes from very clever marketing on Stan's part. (this doesn't negate your point in anyway). I thing a lot of the problem came when there were more than one person writing everything and tons more titles. So a sense of consistency is necessary between appearances which is easy to maintain when you are the only one who decides who's used when and where. It's easier in this way to tell which stories take place after which. But, when you have so many involved in the story telling and have stories taking place over one day, but six issues, it's harder to place them in order. But, they should be consistent as in your Captain Vegan example. By no means am I suggesting that Marvel needs to eliminate continuity/shared universe stuff, but maybe shift towards a Morrison-JLA model rather than the Shooter "every issue this week happens this week" model. I also think that this (m-JLA thing) is kind of what they're trying to do. Oh man, we can't get that Captain Vegan comic out here. I'm always looking for it. Although I don't really respect him since he ate that meatball sub. I'm totally rattled by your 'typo' comment. I found and fixed one typo: Avenger's instead of Avengers'. What else? I noticed a couple, but that would require me to re-read it. I was just making fun of how internet peoples tend to pick ups some minor co-incidental thing in iyour point, and harp on that, thus you're wrong. |