How much retcon is too much
By
American_Knight,
Posted on: 2011-05-20 22:00 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
Speaking of which, I'm beginning to wonder if DC is planning to do a massive retcon with its mainstream universe titles starting in September. With Flashpont ending in August, and the final issue of Flashpoint being the only DC comic for the last week of August, and most of those mainstream universe titles finishing up their latest arcs by then, DC may at least be doing a big renumbering.
It would be a suspiciously good time to do a reset on the DC Universe.
Retcons are a big feature of comics, Foxpaw, because comics were never intended to have much continuity - they were aimed at teenage boys, with the expectation that they'd only read comcis for a few years before moving on to something else, which meant that the writers could reuse storylines and situations several times, as well as ignoring what early writers had done with characters, because it was assumed that the current readers would be new to comics, and wouldn't know about the earlier stories or events.
The major continuity problems started when teenagers began to continue with comics when they were adults - fans began to appear who'd been reading comics for a couple of decades, instead of the assumed couple of years, so the wirters were forced to come up with all kinds of wacky ideas to explain how the casual throw-away stories and series were actually all linked together - which caused a massive amount of retcons, which are still continuing today.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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A herd is virtually an individual entity.
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Originally Posted by starphoenix
the more people involved in voting, the less power one individual can have.
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Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
On retcons: It really depends on the nature of the retcon rather than the... amount. A major change might turn out to be great. And a minor change might be horrible.
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
Why don't they just not retcon?
I'm less worried about a retcon than a "reset"
Why?
Batman and the Bat family. I love the current stories, but what happens with a reset?
Jason, Tim, Damian, Stephenie, Cassandra, Wendy, Renee Montoya, Sasha Bordeaux, Misfit, Shiva, Black Alice, Black Canary, Huntress, and so many others all suddenly disappear or change so much they aren't those characters any more... It then takes those characters which have changed and tosses them back 20 years into their past with Barbara and Dick Grayson... and lets not talk about all the villains and sub-characters such as Jean-Paul Valley, Harold, Ace, Bane, Arkham, Harley, and sooooooo many others.
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- Because people like to cling to popular characters, and a lot of characters would be getting really really old without occasional retcons.|
Originally Posted by Foxpaw
Why don't they just not retcon?
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- Because different writers have different visions of what characters should be like.
- Because many writers are lazy and don't bother to research the continuity properly, and often just don't care.
- Because a writer did a major screwup, or encounters a major screwup by a previous writer, and does a retcon to fix things.
- Etc.
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That's why psychologists talk about mobs basically taking over people's minds. However, I don't think herds are individuals anymore than corporations are.|
Originally Posted by Tenzhi
A herd is virtually an individual entity.
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| It felt like Lucas wasn't satisfied with his portrayal in the movies and decided to rewrite the character. |
My pet peeve is people who refuse to acknowledge it when I tell them my character has unlimited power. If I rp attack them they are of course disintegrated beyond the ability of any hospital or magic to restore. Yet despite this they refuse to delete their characters and still keep playing them as if nothing happened. ~Mandu, 07-16-2010
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Actually, the stories were generally aimed at folks younger than the teenage boy set. At least as far as the spandex clad dominated books went. During the '50s and '60s, the market was just as dominated by non superhero books as by anything else. The problem here is that virtually no one working in the medium took it seriously. Over at Marvel, Stan Lee was probably crapping out nearly ten to twenty stories a month, while artists were busy churning out as much art as possible, because if you didnt work, you didnt get paid. SO no one really paid much attention to the continuity. Plus, they completely reinvented almost every hero you can think of (and invented a whole new slew of them) in the 1960s. |
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Retcons are a big feature of comics, Foxpaw, because comics were never intended to have much continuity - they were aimed at teenage boys, with the expectation that they'd only read comcis for a few years before moving on to something else, which meant that the writers could reuse storylines and situations several times, as well as ignoring what early writers had done with characters, because it was assumed that the current readers would be new to comics, and wouldn't know about the earlier stories or events.
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| The major continuity problems started when teenagers began to continue with comics when they were adults - fans began to appear who'd been reading comics for a couple of decades, instead of the assumed couple of years, so the wirters were forced to come up with all kinds of wacky ideas to explain how the casual throw-away stories and series were actually all linked together - which caused a massive amount of retcons, which are still continuing today. |
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Originally Posted by Foxpaw
Why don't they just not retcon?
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I just find retcons in comics to be the result of laziness. Clark and Lois have been partners for too many decades and yet they haven't aged, got married, or had children. Clark I can understand since Superman is supposedly near immortal, but Lois is just a regular human so she should age. Progress is not existent in most comic books. I can't think of a single comic that has to retire characters every 20 years since they go from a hero character to a mentor character with a new hero character that picks up the mantle.
The first step in being sane is to admit that you are insane.
starphoenix... Lois and Clark have been married since the mid 90s... and looking around the real world at women of the same age that lois would be I don't see a problem...especially when you take into account she lives in world with even better technology and knowledge of good health.
Another to consider with DC is that in my opinion it's stupid to "retcon" purposefully or "reset" at the moment. As I pointed out in my previous post... characters have just got too much history to go and do that to. You lose too many fan favorite characters too... However if their concern is that people don't know who the character is any more, well, it's simple... you can satisfy the old and new fans by doing a really really simple thing that was set up when everything was retconed to the way it is now...
You have:
Earth-2 where the 1930s-1980s continuity exists and continues on.
Earth-0 where the 1980s-present continuity exists and continues on.
Earth-1 where the 2010-present continuity exists and continues on.
With Earth-1 the story "begins" in 2010.
With Earth-2 the story "begins" in 1933.
Earth-1 is more or less an ultimates line and I can see how people don't like that or how they can like that...however the trick is in the fact that Earth-0's beginning currently hasn't been written. People like Earth-0 as it is, but we don't know anything about it for certain from direct viewing pre-1980s...that means that DC could put a line out called something like "The Beginning of the New Age" and have it focus on the first decade of Earth-0 where we would get stories and such of early Batman, Superman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and such from Year 0 through Year 10. You could have just 1 series or multiple series and have it work and everyone would be happy... save for a few.
When a past event is overwritten by a current event as if it had never happened. Not in the sense of time travel, but in the narrative sense. What you read and what you thought was canon now isn't.
That's the basic idea of it.
Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"