Blogging Countdown: 1
28-May-07
Hey Ryan,
Welcome to the chat, and here’s to some fun conversation about Countdown, which is at the present moment what you’ve called DC Comics’ “spine of continuity”: a central, 52-week comics event and core narrative from which the corporation’s serial superhero comics will synchronize themselves for the duration. Countdown is carrying on the “Love Boat” format of its predecessor 52, with multiple independent storylines unfolding in the same periodical, but in the case of Countdown these multiple storylines do seem to point to one core conflict: as we learned in 52, the DC multiverse has been once again reconfigured; what we understand as “continuity” has been once again revised; this is going to cause some interesting troubles for all fictitious parties involved.
Our conversation about Countdown will inevitably spend some time talking about what it means to have a “multiverse,” what continuity is, and why it is. With that in mind, I’m going to start with a digression, beg your forgiveness, and promise that we’ll talk about the actual comic book very soon. Before we talk about Countdown, though, I want to talk for a bit about this continuity thing that is its central topic. I’d argue that “continuity” is often to comics fans what pornography was to SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart: they know it when they see it, but sometimes the intrinsic definition is tough to come by. I’ll offer two definitions: one appealing to the conventional wisdom, and one appealing to my contrary nature.
1.) Continuity is narrative consistency. You’ve talked in the past about readerly expectations of continuity as consistency, and I think there’s a lot of truth to that: we’re all reading a story that unfolds regularly, and we expect it to make some sense, and for the actions that happen within that story to have consequence. Continuity emerges from the desire of readers that this narrative work honestly as narrative, that cause generates effect and a follows b in a way that doesn’t too badly insult one’s suspension of disbelief. But I’m going to present yang to your yin and argue for
2.) Continuity (forgive me, I’m a recovering academic) is a contingent social contract enforcing a retroactive continuous narrative on a structure that is essentially discontinuous. Superman is somewhere between 28 and 32 years old, and will always be so. Oh, and Superman is 75 years old and fought the Nazis. The consistency we can rightly expect with conventional serial fiction becomes a problem when your main characters must maintain a level of stasis across generations in order to sell blockbuster movies, roller coasters, and grocery staples.
Marvel solves that problem by fudging it, by quietly resetting the clock at regular intervals and being fairly vague about when Professor X and Magneto actually met. DC, on the other hand, actively manages continuity: the Nazi-fighting Superman lived on another planet, and died last year. As of fairly recently, the current Superman is kind of an extension of that handsome kid on Smallvile… ish… and is between 28 and 32. Like the 108 minutes in Lost, the clock of plausibility for this current understanding of how Superman makes sense is now ticking.
Full disclosure: I believe DC a.) fully realizes the implications of definition #2; b.) has evolved this management to a point where the pleasure of watching continuity being actively managed through fiction is a primary — if not the primary — reason to follow the DC Universe; c.) understands Countdown as just a part of an ongoing process of selling the foregrounded and mythologized management of DC continuity, for fun and profit, indefinitely.
I’ll leave it at that and throw it your way. Does this sound at all plausible? Is continuity an achievable consistency, a postmodern groundlessness, or something in-between? And, regardless, why the heck is DC selling continuity management to its readership as a year-long event, and why do we buy it?
Best, Jason