Blogging Countdown: 3
Hey Ryan,
You’re right, this is a lot of work and we should probably consider replacing this at some point with the LOLSuperPets concept I kept trying to sell you. I’m guessing I’ll be ready by mid-July. But until then…
I want to start with this from your last post:
To some extent, this notion of managed continuity can be applied to comics, as it’s invariably the mistakes and oddities that most often draw reader attention to the process of the comic’s creation rather than simply accepting the narrative at face value.
Yes, yes, yes, and I would argue that this is not at all bad. You compare the “mistakes and oddities” to the transparency of television and film, and you’re right to note that the Superman mythos feels a lot more like sausage-making than Scorsese does. We see the process of editorial in superhero comics, we interact with it; we know who Dan Didio is, and many fans have an opinion of the job he is doing (me, all I know is that his name has a lovely cadence).
Comics are an open form, and that’s not necessarily because current management is falling down on the job… times were that having Stan and Jack appear in Fantastic Four was an added reason to buy the book. Matthew Pustz does a good job of explaining how the twin communities of comics producers and comics fans interacted over the years and ended up producing a medium that is as much about producer-consumer dialogue as anything else.
Whether it’s representing creators directly within a comics fiction, or just wacky “imaginary stories”, I’ll simply say that I don’t think comics continuity is any more broken than it’s ever been — if anything, fandom brings a more critical eye to a more carefully-managed continuity than it ever has before — and that comics gave up any interest in seamlessness or transparency a long time ago.
On the contrary, the fictional universes of superhero comics exist in a state of awareness with their own processes of production: they wear their mechanics on their sleeves. Other fictions have existed in a similar way: it’s called metafiction, and you can see it in Tristram Shandy, or If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, or Adaptation.
But it’s different in superhero comics: metafiction is something different and clever in novels, or film, or television. In the DC Universe, it’s standard operating procedure, the way things are. We expect comics to show their means of production and revision: to answer your question, yes, continuity is definitely part of the story.
In fact, in Countdown, it is the story: I’ll lay all my cards on the table (early) and let you know that, in comparison to the consistently frenetic and, in my opinion, deliciously well-executed 52, I think this story is pretty much a yawner so far. The pacing is drab, the characters say things like “What does it mean for the universe… when a GOD DIES?” without a whiff of Morrisonian self-consciousness… God.
But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop buying Countdown. It’s important, good, and desirable when comic books are well-executed and aesthetically pleasing, but for me that’s not necessarily a requirement, and deep down (take a hard look, it’s therapeutic) I suspect it may not always be for you either.
What’s important is that there is progress in history, that something is happening in this large-scale serial form, this “universe” or “multiverse,” that is new and consequent. In a form in which the main characters must stay the same over time — despite his variations across dimensions, “Superman” as a canonical figure will not age or die, and we both realize that — the drama, the rising action and progress of the comics universe, the cause and effect, is not so much character-based as world-based. I would argue that the main “character” of the fiction we are following is the fiction itself, its continually-evolving set of parameters and boundaries.
And that, in the end, is (I think) the best gambit for superhero comics as a form. Fandom worries a lot about new readers and easy accessibility to comics mythos, but the “new readership” for Batman is just fine: they’re watching Batman Begins. Take a look at Marvel’s investor relations page: count how many times comics are specifically referenced. It may be fewer than you think.
We are not reading the publications of comics companies: we are reading the publications of cross-media licensors who deploy their characters to blockbuster movies, TV shows, video games, and also comics. In this ecology, comics are in most cases a product for adult afficionados with enough disposable income to not blink at the $3.00 price of a color pamphlet: afficionados who have been with the form long enough, and care enough, to find the complex unfoldings of the fiction compelling.
The differentiator, the thing that the comics universe provides that the TV show, video game, DVD does not is the sense of being connected to something large, complex, and laden with history. Something through which fans can engage in this messy, communal negotiation of a fictional space, the negotiation that we call “continuity.” Given this, the fact that comics sales are eroding without actually plummeting actually seems fairly successful within a larger corporate strategy.
I’ll leave it at that for now… I missed some of your questions, but I figure we’ll get there soon, when we start actually talking about the comic! That’s going to happen next time, I promise. And here’s what will make it stick: I want to talk about everyone’s new favorite ambiguous postcolonial superbaddie, Black Adam. First word that pops into your head… go.
Best,
Jason
Blogging Countdown: 1
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
Blogging Countdown: About
I’m trying something new… co-worker and fellow comics nut Ryan and I are getting a blogged critical conversation going. DC’s current event Countdown starts us out, and we’ll follow it as it unfolds over the year. But I imagine we’ll end up on many other topics as well (I’ve already started flying outwards).
I’ll publish my salvos here: they’ll get reprinted along with Ryan’s able responses at Comicfodder. Ryan’s a much more disciplined blogger than I and has been building a nice body of stuff there.
Grant Morrison 52 Goodness
Grant Morrison interview on Newsarama
I liked the idea that we could have so many different types of storytelling in there: there’s comedy in the Oolong Island stuff, there’s tragedy with Black Adam and the Question, there are space opera, horror, mystery, detective and cosmic strands to this extended narrative which is why some people can have a hard time explaining the ‘high concept’ or applying Hollywood storytelling jargon to 52. This was never intended to be a movie; it was a comic and proud of it. It is its own unique thing and will tend to defy convenient pigeonholing.
I have an unhealthy preoccupation
with my iGoogle theme. (It’s “tea house,” and it’s adorable.) It makes me think about affect and what the hidden affective dimensions of kawaii are — something the Wired blog entry above touches on.
Grant McCracken has done some very good scholarship associating affect and branding with imagined or projected or self-defined identities, and I buy most of it, but I don’t think I love iGoogle for that. I think it’s simpler … kawaii, particularly as wikipedia takes it, is coupled with harmony (wa). I think that’s very true, or at least really resonant to me.
Mike and I spent a couple of weeks looking at Knut at the end of each day, and we have more than a few friends who admit to having a Cute Overload nightcap before they go to bed at night. This is something we turn to for comfort.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s a placeholder for the comfort our folks would have gotten at church or synagogue. The placeholder for transcendence. The place we go when what we live is tough or disharmonious, and when our cultural apparatus for dealing with that is compromised.
More commentary on how Lost wanes because it is an ongoing serial aka is being propelled without ending in order to maximize its value in the market.
From the other side, commentary on how The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is great but stimulates the columnist’s dislike of endgames.
Marginally Useful Notes
I put Ubuntu Feisty on our less-new Inspiron 600m this past weekend, and got Beryl running on it a couple nights ago, and then tweaked Beryl last night until I liked it. Wireless setup was way easier with Feisty and this system than it was on the last Inspiron (which had a Broadcom card).
I’m still getting some weird with losing network configurations and connections when the machine wakes up from sleep, but all in all it was the kindest Linux install ever.Once I get MTASC going in Eclipse, I’ll start the practice experiment of seeing how far one can go with Flash development without hopping onto a Windows box and the IDE.
Last night we walked over to the largeness that is the new Mars. It is way more shiny than the old Mars and had lots of shiny people. It was all too much… we’ll try again in a few weeks once it gets some patina. We then walked past a very crowded Guero’s and wondered once again what the big deal is, although the band in the yard was very nice.
Finally we ended up at the Woodland, which was not crowded at all, but should always be, because it is delicious. O tempore, o mores! If there is justice, all those Guero’s people will realize their folly and go up the street.
And now I realize that this has become the kind of blog where I tell you what I had for dinner. I’m going to indulge myself every once in a while with posts that I can’t justify as forwarding some sort of imagined academic debate.
I’m hoping that opens things up, leads me to write a little more about technology, and a little more in general. Besides, I really want people to go to the Woodland.
Batman Home Movies
is amateurish in the way that old Batman theater serials used to be. In the way that the Adam West Batman used to be.
What does it mean when a consumer is able to produce something like this? Something about its off-handedness makes it seem more significant than the more professional fan films that have been produced: the sense that literally anyone can participate in Batman as a network, and publicize it widely, and can do so cheaply.
And I love the almost punk aesthetic of it: a Batman thoroughly entrenched on the West Coast, living in an apartment, detached from Gotham City as a concept, and subject to DC/Time Warner cease-and-desist at any moment.
Is this pastiche? Is this folk art? Is this piracy?