The Glade 4.0

I will preface this by stating that I know next to nothing about comic books and the universes they depict.

Maybe it came to mind with the recent release of the Fantastic Four where one of them is to die.

How is there any continuity in what you read or even "know" about your chosen or favorite superhero or villain? It seems to me that any hero/villain can defeat any other hero/villain at any time given the needs of the plotline. Also, the fact that death is almost never final. There is always some way around it, no one stays truly dead.

Is this part of the enjoyment of the genre? Seeing new ways heroes/villains defeat each other or come back from the dead when they are killed off?

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

In short, yes.

However, it should be noted that, for the most part, characters do have some implicit limitations/tiered power levels that the writers tend to honor.

It's fairly well accepted, and predominantly demonstrated that Wolverine is screwed when facing Magneto, because his adamantium skeleton has been deemed magnetic, and thus under the purview of Magneto's undisputed realm of mastery. Quite simply, I can't recall anywhere where Wolverine's muscles have proven stronger than Magneto's control over his skeleton, leaving Wolverine as Magneto's plaything.

There are, of course, exceptions that mostly fall into two categories: power creep, where a character's abilities and strength in those abilities get inflated over time by writers seeking to "one-up" previous stories; and aberrations that generally become infamous in the comic fandom community for how outrageous they are in ignoring conventional wisdom about how a matchup should go. As the perennial example of the latter, reference Dr. Doom's defeat at the hands of Squirrel Girl, whose only power is her psychic command over normal, natural squirrels.

As for death.. it's mostly treated as one of the conceits of the genre. Somebody famous, whose name I don't remember, once said of science fiction that you count on the reader to allow you a certain number (I think the quote says the speaker generally considers 3 to be the magic number) of conceits, that is, unrealistic rules for the setting, before rejecting further fantastical elements.

For standard superheroic comic books, those conceits are, I would say: 1) the heroes and villains can have superhuman powers; 2) the heroes and villains' powers, or perhaps the destinies they've carved out for themselves in the greater course of the world, allow them enormous latitude to "cheat death;" and 3) the public at large is generally ambivalent or even supportive of masked vigilanteism.

So, yeah. It's something that most readers/fans will just file away as part of comic-dom. Sometimes, writers will be much more self-aware of how silly it can be, and will touch or break the fourth wall to point it out self deprecatingly. This is usually a stylistic thing, though, and most often occurs with comic relief characters whose normal behaviors and actions do this on other subjects, too.

It should also be noted that there are usually a few editorial edicts about sacred cows when it comes to death. At least, there are on the Marvel side; I'm not versed enough in DC to say whether they have similar taboos. I don't think even the most bold and radical Marvel writers have ever brought Uncle Ben back, for instance, and the twice (?) that bringing Gwen Stacy back was even teased caused a pretty big uproar, and hasn't been approached for two or three decades, now.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Now you understand why I stopped reading them years ago. The Suspension Bridge of Disbelief can only go so far before it breaks and tumbles into the Shark Jump Canyon.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Above is another way of looking at the question.

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Hopwin:

Funny you say that because as I was typing out my post, that is exactly what came to mind.

I got hooked on a soap opera a bunch of years ago by a stupid plotline. I absolutely HAD to watch it every day to see what was going to happen next. I don't know what came over me, but I did realize that it bordered on the ridiculous how everyone was somehow at one point married to everyone else, sometimes two or three times over. What they did to stretch the plotlines was nuts and I eventually came to my senses and never bothered to turn one one again.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

That pretty much sums up my experience with Nip/Tuck. Once you cross a certain threshold of ridiculousness it is hard to keep the same audience.

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Thanks, BTW, Kaffis for a well thought out and informative post on exactly what I was having a hard time "getting" when it came to the comic book world.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Forget the comic books. Get yourself a copy of all the major Bruce Timm-created DC Animated Universe series (Batman Animated Series, Superman Animated Series, Justice League Animated Series, and Batman Beyond), which share a continuity, and make it the whole of your DC comic book knowledge. They're well written, great fun to watch, and they END. Better yet, as FarSky will verify, they are far more interesting than the comic books they are based on!

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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Verification FarSky provides verification. /nodnod

I prefer the Japanese comic method. Keep a series in print weekly for over a decade if you need to, tell your story, then it's done. No multiple universes or crossovers.

What you need to realize is that comic books are the equivelant to daytime soap operas. And when you have "magic" (i.e. super powers, super science, alien tech, etc.) anything can happen to forward a plot or put together a compelling story.

Continuity exists only within the context of the individual comic at the time.

edit: Doh, Hop beat me to it.

Personally, I am willing to set aside disbelief and incredulity so long as the story and characters are compelling. Nip/Tuck failed in that respect as the storylines crossed from interesting to just stupid and shocking for the sake of being controversial. It became less about telling a story and more about trying to one up itself.

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Absolutely. If the characters are entertaining and the stories (no matter how contrived) are engaging, then it's all good. But I'm also pretty good at suspension of disbelief when I need to be.

I kind of view comics like a Jerry Bruckheimer film. I go in knowing what to expect. I put my brain on autopilot and enjoy the spectacle for what it is.

Meh. Bruckheimer gets a bad rep because he is willing to produce just about anything. (And everything.) He's done a lot of stuff I loved, and much of it rather cerebral. Without a Trace was one of the better cop shows on TV until its cancellation. Not to mention a huge pile of movies that have about the same signal-to-noise ratio as Hollywood in general. He produces so much, some of it is bound to be crap, some of it is bound to be awesome, and most of it is bound to be mediocre.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I don't disagree. It's actually part of why I think the Bruckheimer is a good analogy. The one consistent that you get with Bruckheimer is good visuals and production value. Similarly the majority of comics have a good visual feel and dynamic. The writing can sometimes be awesome, sometimes mediocre. Just like there are some real gems from a plot/character development standpoint in his movies, the same can be said for comics.

Comic books serve the same purpose Shakespeare served in his day.

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Can you expound on that? I don't necessarily disagree, I'm just curious for your rational behind it.

I've written books on that particular subject, Aizle. The short argument is ...

Comic books are mass targeted entertainment that serve as a cultural weather vane of sorts. Historical analogies include late 19th Century Serials (Dickens, Conan Doyle), 18th Century Romances, 17th Century Travelogues, 16th Century and pretty much all prior Drama, the various Oral Traditions that extend through the Dark Ages, and almost all oratory literature -- ie pretty much all poetry prior to the mid 20th Century. They're accessible to and targeted at the masses. The specific stories told matter a lot less than the general purpose and effect of the vehicle.

The thing that hangs people up is the "geekiness" of comic books. That, however, is a relatively new convention that shows up with the Marvel Mutant Tunnel Massacre and Secret Crisis in the DC Universe. You need a way to disseminate cultural values and catalogue the various social mores of a society while transmitting them to future generations. Comic books and pulp do this pretty well. They're pretty much the evolution of penny papers or story night around the camp fire. The sophistication afforded Shakespeare and Marlowe or Wordsworth and Beckett pretty much ignores the fact that they were entertainment.

Future generation will see comic books, comparatively speaking, as vastly more sophisticated than the droves and droves and droves of Jersey Shore episodes and reality television we leave behind.

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That's pretty much what I thought you were driving at. It always amuses me how many people forget that about the "classics". It's true in other mediums as well. Classical music comes to mind.

I actually had a prof in college attempt to claim that Pop music was inferior to Classical because it was created to make money.

Who are they going to kill off and does it really matter if Franklin is still alive?

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Raell Kromwell