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Continuity is the selling point

I have just finished reading Rob Salkowitz's Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, which was published in 2012 and takes a look at the comic industry (and related "geek culture") from a business press point of view. It's an interesting read that i recommend to people thinking about the comic industry and where it might go, but i don't really want to review the book per se. In addition to being a business "futurist", Salkowitz also happens to be a comics fan, and even a super-hero comic fan specifically, which is why he chose this particular topic for this book (Salkowitz's previous books have titles like Generation Blend: Managing Across the Technology Age Gap).

And thanks to his comics enthusiasm, Salkowitz is generally sympathetic to comics fans, even to the ones he categorizes as "aging fanboys". That said, as he describes various trends in the industry - the influx of a new generation of geek girls thanks to things like Twilight, the influx of mass acceptance and interest due to the successful movies, the attempts at expanding beyond the superhero genre by Japanese creators and alt.comics writers, the attempts at expanded outreach through digital comics, - it's the aging fanboys mired in their crusty continuity and, in a sort of symbiotic relationship, with the direct market retailers that represent one of the biggest challenges for a successful future for the comics industry. An interesting point that he makes is that when we say "mainstream" comics, we really mean the super-hero comics that are the opposite of mainstream in any larger sense, whereas most smaller publishers deal in genres that are much more mainstream to the general populace.

By the end of the book he describes four possible outcomes:

1) an "Expanding Multiverse" where digital comics helps the industry reach mass appeal. This is the most utopian, allowing all genres and publishers to thrive.

2) An "Endless Summer" where the Hollywood hits keep coming and the spectacle at Comic-Con keeps getting bigger and bigger, albeit by crowding out the indie publishers.

3) A "Ghost World" (a reference to the indie Daniel Clowes comic) where the Hollywood hits stop coming and Warner and Disney pull the plug on their comic publishing outfits but the vacuum is filled by indies.

And 4) An "Infinite Crisis" where again the Hollywood hits stop but the aging fanboys and retailers have their way and both indie and digital fail to expand in a significant way, leaving the industry basically an ever shrinking niche market for super-hero fans.

Ok, so that turned out to be, if not a review of the book, at least a summary. Again, i think Salkowitz takes a fair approach to the topic. "Fanboy super-hero continuity nerds are preventing the comics industry from growing" is hardly a new insight but he makes the point well (hostile reaction to the Twilight fans, hostile reaction to the influx of movies and video games at Comic-Con, hostile reaction to... etc.) while also making the counterbalancing point that fanboy super-hero continuity nerds in a sense are the comic industry.

But all of that is just background to what i really wanted to talk about, which is this section on continuity itself. I think Salkowitz sets up an interesting point but fails to actually make the point. Perhaps it's a point that only i, as a fanboy super-hero continuity nerd, can see. But here goes. He starts off by talking about how television shows including Smallville, Lost, Fringe, and Heroes had crossover appeal to comics fans, and says the connection was "much deeper" than subject matter. Specifically, it was:

...serialized storytelling with a core cast of characters who develop yet remain fundamentally unchanged. Each individual episode or issue must stand alone to provide a point of entry for newcomers, but form a part of a larger story line to keep people coming back week after week.

So basically, it's the continuity. Continuing directly:

Most prime-time TV programs weren't always like this. From the 1950s to the 1980s, very few shows had any kind of continuity story lines from episode to episode. Even heavily plotted dramas, police shows, or science fiction series like Star Trek (the original series), which may have had recurring characters or occasional cliffhangers, rarely referred to prior events or offered any coherent sense of their characters' histories or motivations.

The revolution that transformed episodic storytelling first took place in the pages of Marvel Comics in the 1960s, when Stan Lee and his collaborators (principally Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) wove long story arcs over dozens of issues and multiple titles, each of which also provided a satisfying individual reading experience and usually wrapped up the primary plot points in a single issue. In case anyone wonders why Stan Lee, the kindly old charmer with his name on every licensing deal, is so famous and well regarded today, that's why. The bold artwork and wild flights of imagination and fantasy of the Marvel Silver Age gripped readers, but this sense of integrity to the entire comics universe (provided partly by Lee's consistent writing and editorial voice) kept them coming back for more and buying anything with a Marvel logo on the cover. Before he became a brand unto himself, Stan Lee was one of the most important brand innovators of the twentieth century.

Chris Claremont, who wrote the wildly successful X-Men books for Marvel starting in the late 1970s, elevated the continuity aspects of comics storytelling to rarefied heights under the universe-building stewardship of then-Marvel editor in chief Jim Shooter. X-Men was not just about good guys and bad guys, or mutants trying to fit into a world that was prejudiced against them; it was an ongoing soap opera with handfuls of overlapping subplots and long-simmering conflicts bubbling under the surface at any given moment. Like a soap opera, it sometimes got so tangled in its own mythology that casual readers couldn't make heads or tails of any given issue, but hard-core fans kept demanding more story, more X-titles, and greater complexities.

Emphasis mine, of course.

By the way, after reading that nice description of Stan Lee's contributions, i'm reminded that Tom Brevoort today trotted out again the idea that Stan Lee used to make continuity mistakes all the time. He doesn't give any examples but when pressed in the past he's cited things like calling Bruce Banner "Bob Banner" or calling Cyclops "Warren" or whatever. Those aren't continuity mistakes. And having been all through the Silver Age comics for my project, i can't think of any other continuity errors that Stan Lee made. It's sort of besides the point - errors can happen! - but it's been a regular claim of Brevoort's that continually annoys me, and i also wanted to link to that post because it's relevant to the larger point here.

Salkowitz then goes on to talk about how this continuity innovation influenced television, saying that "Well-executed shows in this style that have no connection to comics whatsoever are now discovering that they are attracting comics fans, who tend to be vocal advocates for stuff they like." Breaking Bad is cited as an example.

So the above quotes alone tells me that mainstream viewers can "handle" continuity and that it is even a selling point. I grant you that no television show has ever approached the "multiple titles" aspect to the degree that Marvel (and DC) comics have. But that doesn't say one way or another if that would be successful.

But my point here isn't to argue for more continuity on television. It's really about defending the need for it in comics, basically that far from being the thing that prevents the comic industry from growing, it's the glue that prevents it from crumbling. So let me continue. A little earlier in the book Salkowitz describes friends of his that are indie creators that produce a comic called Supernatural Law (aka Wolff and Byrd - Counselors of the Macabre). And he puts that comic in a category along with Bone, Finder, and Strangers in Paradise, that in the 1990s was dubbed the "new mainstream". This movement...

...attempted to stake out a space between the standard superheroics of DC, Marvel, and Image Comics and the artsy fringe of "alternative" comics... The concepts were varied, accessible, and usually well done. Typically involving some combination of fantasy, mystery, science fiction, adventure, and humor, the titles reflected the kind of genre mix you'd find in the mass-market paperback books or network television. The stories were rich without the crust of "continuity" and whiff of juvenilia that hovers over superhero comics...

However, Salkowitz goes on to say that in the early 2000s the "new mainstream" fell apart, partially due to production costs and Diamond dropping low selling indies from their catalog, but:

At the same time, the natural audience for "new mainstream" titles found its entertainment desires satisfied by dense new episodic genre shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, and Supernatural, which tap into the same kind of sensibilities and appeal as comics.

Salkowitz doesn't tie it all together, but i will. Readers abandoned the "new mainstream" titles that eschewed continuity when those genres became available in other formats and at the same time those formats were adding continuity. Meanwhile, the continuity-laden super-hero comics are the ones that survived. And it makes a kind of sense. If (true) mainstream genres are available in other formats (television, paperback books) why would people need to seek out this non-mainstream format for them? Even the super-hero genre, once notoriously difficult to transfer to the screen, is now gaining traction in movies and on television. If that happens; if, say, the "Defenders" line of Netflix shows kicks off an era of super-heroes on television, is Marvel prepared to pack in their publishing line?

I've always said i don't think it's super-heroes specifically that makes Marvel interesting. If i just wanted great super-hero stories, there are a lot of options out there. And if Science Fiction or Swords & Sorcery or anything else had been the genre fad when the Lee/Kirby era started, would things not have picked up in the same way? It's the shared universe that kept people engaged. When Tom Brevoort (in the link above) says the job and the goal is "not to maintain the continuity, it's to tell excellent and engaging stories that excite and involve the readers", i disagree. Sure, we want "excellent and engaging stories", but we can get that from a lot of places. The unique thing Marvel has to offer is its continuity. And multi-title continuity with a history that reaches back 50+ years is the one unique thing that comics can offer long after everything else is available in other formats. So how did it become the industry's boogyman?

By fnord12 | September 19, 2014, 4:23 PM | Comics


Comments

The only Stan Lee continuity error that comes to mind is Strucker's appearance as a solo villain in Captain America after he'd been killed off in Strange Tales. There's no explanation, and Cap acts like this is the first he's heard of Strucker since WWII.

Even this is small potatoes compared to Marvel's continuity carelessness today.

reading Tom Brevoort quotes makes me want to bite people's faces off.

Thanks for this very cogent analysis--I wasn't especially interested in buying this book before, but I am now. I know Stan comes in for a lot of criticism, but his "writing and editorial voice" should not be overlooked or dismissed.

I enthusiastically support your conclusions here. Thanks for taking the time to engage with the book in such a thoughtful way.

"So how did it become the industry's boogyman?"

I don't think that's an entirely correct view of, say, Marvel's current stance. Even a current Marvel book utilizes tons of continuity with past events affecting the present even over time and across books.

I mean, it can't be that there's only the two states - not continuity and rock tight, anal continuity. I'd say that current Marvel book is vastly closer to the mentioned Buffy-esque ideal or even some mid-80's Englehart continuity porn than, say, a mid 60's issue of Archie (no continuity). An only slighly casual reader might not even spot the difference.

"The unique thing Marvel has to offer is its continuity."

I'd somewhat disagree. I think the real unique thing Marvel offers is its insanely detailed and expansive fictional setting. Of course it depends what you mean with continuity, but I don't think adherence to series of events (even if I really like it when that happens) is all that commercially important.

You can look at sales trends of the past 15-20 years or so (it's hard to go back further because the market was so different). A book set outside the regular Marvel Universe: loses at leat half of the readers off the bat. A book set IN the Marvel Universe that disregards old continuity on a regular basis: will probably sell as well as any other book.

I have mixed feelings about continuity.

On the one hand, I think the accretion of continuity is great for creating the kinds of ruptures (or "mistakes") that lead to creative writers developing interesting stories to make sense of them.

On the other hand, I think the pedantic adherence to continuity as some monolithic entity can be straitjacket on comics, when the best stories don't always have to keep things in mind. Ultimately, it is the readers who make a personal continuity that makes sense of them, through productive erasure.

For example, for me the Spider-Man Symbiote died in Web of Spider-Man #1, there never was a Venom or Carnage.