Let's Kill Comics’ Love Affair With Continuity

By Eric San Juan

Continuity. The American Heritage Dictionary calls it, “The state or quality of being continuous,” or “An uninterrupted succession or flow; a coherent whole.”

In the world of superhero comic books, it means that and a great deal more.

In the vast, interconnected worlds that have been continuously published for decades, “continuity” is a big, big term with big, big consequences. It is the tie that binds, holding together stories and characters and events written and drawn by literally hundreds of individuals. It is a guidepost and a guidebook. It establishes the who, what, when, where, how and why of sprawling fictional worlds.

It is also a tremendous anchor too often weighing down the swift ships of storytelling.

Do we REALLY need another 52 issues of continuity porn?

When it comes to mainstream superhero books, I’m no great fan of a forced and strict adherence to continuity. The idea of an ongoing and intertwined history can be great fun. It can give readers a sense of connection and time and place. It can give these characters the illusion of having lived a life. This is all wonderful, appealing stuff. But all too often -- and especially of late -- it has can be an enormous burden weighing down the world of mainstream cape books.

Yet I know there are people who really, really enjoy this stuff. They love how the pieces fit together and seeing how stories from 30 years ago tie into stories from today. They love to figure out where one book fits in relation to another. They love to discuss why Soandso Man’s costume was slightly different when he made a cameo in Johnny Redbeard and the Bulletakers. And yeah, at times such discussions can be a real blast. I enjoy them. For some people, though, this stuff isn’t just fun, it’s important. You’ve got to get it right. They howl at seemingly minor things that contradict a story, page or panel from a decade or two prior. And if you’re going to make changes, damnit, it had better be seamlessly woven into the continuity.

But why is this? We can suspend our disbelief and follow the adventures of people who can turn into steel, lift mountains and cling to walls, yet we demand a rigid adherence to the minutia of the same escapist fare’s archives. Is there not a disconnect here?

A degree of internal consistency is welcome, and in fact necessary. After all, if we’re to believe, we need something to cling to. Some fantastic stories have been built upon foundations steeped in comic book lore. And make no mistake, one of the thrills of serial storytelling is the way in which years worth of stories string together one into another.

Try too hard to make sense of 40 or 50 years worth of stories, however, and you begin to stretch the whole rather thin. Worse still, rely too heavily on a densely interwoven continuity -- witness DC’s neverending stream of 52 this and Crisis that -- and you’ve got a muddled, lifeless, uninteresting mess that appeals only to the die-hard, superhero encyclopedia-reading, panel-cataloging obsessive. That’s what is happening at the home of Superman and Batman. DC has locked itself into place. Its ship is on course.

But who wants to go along for the ride? Seemingly fewer and fewer people each month.

OOOHHH, how they howled and howled and howled!

Sometimes the continuity builds into a muddy mess and someone decides it needs to change. The mess needs to be cleaned, things need to be streamlined, and the stories have to get back to basics. The thing about comic fans, though – and I am one – is that they are prone to howling. In some ways, writers and editors can’t win. Take the fiasco that was Marvel’s One More Day storyline in Spider-Man. The intentions were pure enough. Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada felt that Spider-Man needed to get back to the web-slinging, unmarried, secret identity guy he had been when he first swung into fame. Sounds reasonable, right? Agree or disagree, it’s not an outlandish desire.

Enter continuity. Quesada and company decided to revert Spidey back an iteration or two and to do so within the story, “in continuity.” What a debacle! Message boards lit up. Angry messages tore across the Internet. People fumed and yelled and shouted and are still bitching. Why? For many of them, for little more reason other than their precious continuity was tampered with. The end result might be good stories -- word of mouth on Brand New Day is quite good, as are sales -- but for some good stories aren’t good enough. It all has to fit together in a nice, neat little package. Adherence to continuity resulted in a clumsy “fix” that didn’t need to happen. Better to have just said, “Peter is single now” and moved on.

Yet even that would have resulted in yelping and howling. Marvel was in a no-win situation, wanting to change the direction of their flagship character but unable to do so without violating that dread god that is Continuity, and therefore angering its worshippers.

What happened to the notion of telling a good story first and worrying about how it fit in with the sprawling jigsaw puzzle that is superhero history later? We’re so obsessed with the idea of everything fitting, of everything having its place in this out of control tapestry, that we too often forget that the stories are the most important thing.

It’s time to ditch this slavish devotion to continuity. Throw it away and don’t look back. Good stories are good stories whether or not they tie into 18 other books or 30-year-old stories. Just tell some good stories and if the pieces don’t fit perfectly, the hell with it. Do it anyway. The comics will be better for it, and you’ll be a happier reader.

That’s my story, and (based on the last page of issue #72 of 1965’s "Tales of Meat," third panel) I’m sticking to it.

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