DC Universe and Continuity Rumbles
Two recent happenings in DC Comics — Superman: Birthright and a new Doom Patrol series — mark a flare-up in “continuity.”
In brief: the DC Universe, and comics universes in general, are large-scale, interconnected, branded fiction systems that undergo an ongoing process of community definition, signified by the term continuity, in order to manage their endemic internal tensions. This promises to be an interesting moment in this process.
(And, if you’re wondering where games fit in… this process can, I think, help us think about how emergent narrative (or content, or persistent output from the textual machine — pick your preferred term) works in persistent state worlds. More on that later.)
I finished a draft of my dissertation chapter on this a few weeks ago, and I’ll be presenting a paper at next month’s PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio on this as well:
Wed. April 7, 12:30-2:00 PM
San Antonio Marriott RiverCenter Hotel
Conference Rm. 12082 Comic Arts and Comics III:
The Comics Industry and Comics UniversesComics Universes as Fiction Networks
Jason Craft, University of Texas Austin