That sounds like a reasonable outlook on things.

Posted by Aziroth on 2008-09-22 11:19:07
what's the purpose ?
It's understanbable that a few readers perceive some changes as betrayals, which surely reveals that they must take comics a little too seriously.The value of a story reveals herself self when you read it until the end, and there she stands subject for a various number of interpretations.
I can admit that the Mantis from the new Guardians of Gualaxy is not the character she used to be, and be sad about that. It reminds me that I could be a Marvel writer and that I'm not ( there I have to congrats Fred Van Lente who is one of the most interesting authors because he , to my opinion, knows to use secondary characters of the MU ), if it's a choice from the writer to caricaturise this or this character in a different behavior we used to see him / her ? Fine, but is it especially necessary ? Sometimes , it just remmain anecdotic, sometimes it takes the whole part of the story : when Warren Ellis made Bulleyes stabbing Jack'Flagg, or Venom eating an arm of the Steel Spider ( who just have to work with Donald Pierce now ), it is completely legitimated, Ellis made the characters react, according with their background; in doing this, Ellis is settig -up why Thunderbolts is different from others Marvel Books.
It actually summons the problem of the gratuity of a particular thing, Ellis showed a particular aspect of violence who can be misunderstood, but nothing comparable with a certain 'Heroes for hire' cover,- just two differents products-, who wasn't especially pertinent but very sexually connoted.
In fact, what are the limits, that you, authors and editors are you giving to yourself ?
When do you have the feeling to frankly disrespect the readership ?
Sometimes ?
Not so often ?
Twice a week ?



Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-22 11:26:11
I used to try to make everything fit...
There's just too many now to do that. If we started counting the number of Christmas stories alone as reflecting the end of a year,
all the characters would have to be in their 70's.

Despite the increase in quality and price, I still think the only way to enjoy comics is as light, disposable entertainment. Taking them too seriously leads to depression and other neuroses and who wants to be Mark Millar?

Posted by izzatrix on 2008-09-22 12:17:12
What I find interesting about this is what fan will or won't accept as part of comics. Mutants, time-travel, radioactivity not just giving people cancer, etc but extra-continuity stuff, well that's something else. The time line is already elastic, so why can it not do a couple loop-t-loops also?

I Believoort!

Posted by kyle-latino on 2008-09-22 13:22:00
Marvel's Main Value
Most super-hero comics taken individually don't have a lot of literary value. What makes Marvel comics interesting to readers over the age of, say, 11, is that they all fit together inside of one shared universe. That is a fairly large and unique undertaking that was begun by Stan Lee and continued through to the modern day, with various degrees of success. So yes, if individual comics fail to fit within the established rules for Marvel continuity, they are essentially worthless. They may have some passing junk food entertainment value, barely enough to justify the $4 for 10 minutes of reading, but they don't have any lasting worth, and they are often damaging to the legitimate Marvel art form, which is why many fans anguish over errors and poorly thought out retcons.

Posted by fnord12 on 2008-09-22 13:55:48
It's the same reason why people continue to read a longtime Marvel book when it isn't any good, why they get upset by retcons, and why books outside the main continuity usually sell less. From the time of Stan Lee onward, Marvel has always sold its books on the basis of the ongoing soap opera, ie; what happens next, unlike other comics which have sold on the basis of how entertaining or compelling the particular story is.

So of course the events that "actually" happened in that soap opera are going to be of primary interest to the Marvel reader. This is also why you guys are so sensitive about spoilers; if people are able to find out "what happens next" online, there's less reason for them to buy Marvel comics.

Posted by CylverSaber on 2008-09-22 14:00:06
Yup you and George Lucas feel the same way
THIS IS ABSURD. There are some characters that come and go, that pop in and out of the mainstream. Their importance to the fictional universe as a whole is minimal and it is acceptable to take liberties with their background and history to serve the greater purpose of the truly important characters.

Did it get too difficult? Was the work of the past 45 years not reason enough to get a little more creative to sew together the new stories with the old?

I tell you what:

Tom Sawyer never had to whitewash a fence.

Pip decided to stay home and fish.

Billy Pilgram never became an optometrist.

Micheal Corleone reenlisted in the army.

Frodo stayed in the shire.

Its just easier this way, why maintain continuity? There are so many stories one can come up with if we just ignore the characters past.

Editors come and go.

Characters live on.

Stop foolin' wit it.

Make mine dang it.

Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-22 14:44:28
Rationale
The higher ups can keep coming up with some rationale to justify this travesty, but the simple matter is that you got lazy.

A lawyer or judge has to be an impartial participant in the legal systems. They must do their best not to obfuscate the law with their own rationale to create their personal laws based on their beliefs.

Knock it off and wrap up this debauchery.



Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-22 14:49:23
Continuity is good to have, but is hardly essential to tell a good story. I present the recent group of Marvel Knights books (such as Silver Surfer:Requiem) , most of which have been very good, as evidence. I feel that the characters are strong enough to stand on their own.

Also, as has been pointed out, there are too many titles being released for continuity to work as well as fans often seem to want it to. Stan & Co had enough trouble keeping up with it when you could still count Marvel's titles on your fingers. After all, No Prizes were created for a reason.

Posted by marksmart on 2008-09-22 15:06:48
what was the book in question?
what was the book in question that is being debated?
Also Tom can you please please tell me if MODOKS 11 happens before or after new avengers they seem to ignore each other hell after M11 some characters had no reason to join the hoods gang and stuff. Ill buy Bendis a freaking tpb copy if I could get the answer.

I agree with user: fnord12 one issue of one random comic is never going to be watchmen or catcher in the rye but its the fact that it is a shared universe makes it mega awsome, so I to like continuity which I dont think is a bad thing your own Peter David thinks its important he even died up loose ends in FNSM from the 90's

Posted by tobys on 2008-09-22 16:46:56
My thoughts...
Sounds pretty good to me.

As long as Marvel puts a serious effort into making the stories 'fit' as much as possible then I am happy. I know it won't work all the time, but it's not too much to ask that it be made to work nine out of ten times.

Posted by DRock1 on 2008-09-22 18:29:46
YOU JUST GAVE US THE REASON WE HATE OMD/BND
To quote you:

It’s not enough for a piece of work to entertain us momentarily—we need for them to matter beyond the moment to feel our time and money well-spent. This is definitely a point of view that Marvel has fostered at different points during its publishing history, and the idea that all of the assorted Marvel stories form a larger tapestry is an appealing one.


YOU JUST INVALIDATED THE LAST 20 YEARS OF OUR COLLECTING. YOU THREW AWAY A HERO. YOU MADE HIM DEAL WITH THE DEVIL. YOU TOTALLY SCREWED EVERYTHING WE PUT OUR TIME AND MONEY IN.

YOU HIT RIGHT ON THE HEAD WHY WE HATE THIS STEAMING PILE OF CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE HATE OMD/BND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WE'RE NOT BUYING THIS CRAP BECAUSE YOU RUINED IT!

Posted by HiddenVorlon on 2008-09-22 21:43:15
continuity
is the main draw for Marvel comics for me. Cheesy as that may sound...it's a soap opera for males (for the most part, some females dig them as well).

I have zero desire to read something in "muddle continuity land" - I'll definitely read in continuity stuff with characters I like/follow, and I might even enjoy reading clear "what if" stories about them...but limited series & strange junk that is just shoved in sideways has no pull for me, because in the greater sense of the characters it "means nothing". Sure, the writing might be good, and it might be a quirky/entertaining story in it's own right - but I have all kinds of other reading materials for that - for me continuity IS the draw.

A nice test that might be an interesting clue as to how much of a draw it really is is placing a simple brand on non-continuity books - just a little "What if" or "elseworlds" type label. That way no one will ever have to wonder if they are in continuity or not, and we can see how the lure of continuity does or does not affect a title's sales.

If it is a factor, and you lure someone in on the false hope of continuity then you are shelling a shoddy/defective/misleading product like a stereotypical used car salesman. All IMHO of course.

Posted by onefinemess on 2008-09-22 22:50:02
deontologia
If we were edito-simulating, I would propose again a 'Marvel Ages' title, as you did for the Sentry. It doesn't have to be retro-pulp each issues, but the idea is to continue the 'hidden years' concept, this time applicated to the whole MU characters.
A way to turn over continuity without sh.tting over her head :
no need to justify why we are seeing the Champions or the Defenders again, that's hidden years, and the purpose is the fun of an untold story-arc, and it can also be - not the main purpose of the book BUT -a tool to suture all the continuity's micros wraps-up that upset everybody.
Everything except creating a brand new vilain or hero in the hidden years stories to bring him back in the ongoing the month after....

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-23 01:06:36
...mmh
why not after all , if it's a good story....

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-23 01:09:19
Brand loyalty and my inner 12-year-old
This is an issue I've thought a great deal about as a Marvel Zombie from waaaay back. There are times when I think Marvel discounts the loyalty of its readers... and lose some of our money as result.

Here's a very personal anecdote for you:

As a newish Marvel reader I was hooked on UNCANNY X-MEN circa #200. Rogue instantly became my favorite character. I couldn't get enough of the tortured bad girl turned X-Man. In one issue, there was a footnote referencing me to her first appearance: the classic Avengers Annual #10. On my next trip to the comic shop (which was an hour away) I shelled out $10 hard-earned 1987 baby-sitting bucks for that issue. In it, I discovered a new muse... the sassy, embittered Thor-slapping diva called Carol Danvers.

Ten years and thousands of bucks in comics later, I started a fansite to Ms. Marvel around the time that Tom Brevoort and these two talented yahoos called Busiek and Perez (God I miss 'em!) decided to dust my favorite female off and revitalize her. As a result, I picked up IRON MAN, AVENGERS and a slew of other titles she was appearing in. All to try and capture her entire story, her history as a character I loved.

True Marvel fans keeping buying, even through questionable storylines, bad art, dire happenings and mega-crossovers that spawn countless titles... all because they are invested in the "bigger picture" and don't want to miss something important that might happen to a character or team they've come to care about.

So yeah, titles that fall outside this... that didn't really happen because they clearly don't respect the continuity I spent that precious $10 I earned when I was twelve babysitting those rugrats across the street... makes a difference to me as an adult buyer.

So I pick up WOLVERINE: FIRST CLASS because (so far) it fits in and respects my 13-year-old Marvel obsession. And I ignore X-MEN: FIRST CLASS because it doesn't even try to. Simple as that.

Moral of the story: Respect my inner 12-year-old and you'll garner more of my 36-year-old's salary. (And be glad I was never a Spider-Man loyalist!)

Plus... footnotes earn you money and loyal readers. Bring 'em back. Especially with all those collections on the shelf. :)

Posted by Binaryan on 2008-09-23 02:15:13
what is interesting me the most is what you call 'a canonical' project...

'But the fact of the matter is that this was never quite as seamless as it was supposed to be. There were always stories that needed to be jammed in sideways, or whose events had to be revised somewhat, in order to make them fit. And after 45 years of continuous publishing, it’s simply not possible for every single element to join seamlessly.'

I mean, with the Sentry or the Blue Adam, two characters who had been forgotten 'both'...I'd like to know if you're feeling tired on these ones...there must be a reason... maybe a brand new forgotten mythologia...

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-23 02:59:27
let me know when the MArvwel Universe comes b
Binaryan wrote: "Respect my inner 12-year-old and you'll garner more of my 36-year-old's salary." Amen.

Posted by tolworthy on 2008-09-23 18:38:51
Give my inner 12 year old TOO much respect and we'll end up with more Maximum Carnage and less current day Captain America and Ironman.
Not a good plan.

Posted by IanZL on 2008-09-23 21:17:05
'Comic Book Guy: Ah, but that was all part of a dream, and thus never happened!
Bart: Well, none of those stories really happened...'
[Pause]
Comic Book Guy: ...Get out!'
-Simpsons

Posted by Levrawk on 2008-09-28 17:52:31
Why bother with a shared universe at all?
The answer, Mr. Brevoort, is that it matters because none of Marvel's stories are very good on their own (and increasingly, many of them are not very good even when strung together, but I digress). They are not high literature, they are incomplete stories, 30 pages of hand illustrated action snapshots, captions, and word bubbles that fade to insignificance without anchoring to a larger, consistent world. Even in literature continuity is prized: you can't have a good story without it. These are the stories people want to read because they make sense, because they're grounded in past events, a history, albeit fictional, just like our real world is. They have concreteness. They have a sense of reality. Remove that and all you have are snippets of a story, ultimately meaningless and forgetful because they have neither past nor future. Just think, sir, on the story potentials that were missed because back in the early 2000s, Busiek's "Kang Conquers the World" plot in Avengers was ignored by every other title. If Marvel was so set on maintaining the status quo, why bother to do a world altering story (like, say, Civil War and Spider-Man revealing his secret identity...)? And yes, the fact that, for all intents and purposes the whole thing didn't happen really did cheapen the story. It was a six-month-long exercise in comic futility, where the fans thought this was the start of something big with repercussions throughout Marvel's shared universe. Such fans were, in a way, defrauded.

This is not to say that there should never be retcons or that the staff should never do something new. Far from it. But what it means is that retcons and present character changes should be done thoughtfully, not based on gut reactions of "I never liked this character" or through hamfisted "plots" like the OMD/BND stuff (forget all the crying about Peter/MJ breaking up, this made Mephisto into a nearly omnipotent character that can rewrite history on whim. This is a cheap Diabolus ex Machina that invalidates his character and all of his previous machinations as well, since why didn't he bother to use that power before?) It means that you shouldn't change iconic, major characters because you feel like it. It means if your editing and writing staff has no attention span wants to tell these one-off, no connection to anything else stories, then publish them as an 'Elseworlds' one-shot. Nobody can complain then that they shelled out $4 for 32 pages of sequential art that lacks the sequential. Nobody will get upset that a non-616 story is presented as having taken place in the 616 universe. If you're not big on continuity, if you don't like the requirements of a shared universe, then that's your affair. But then don't pretend that the characters are the same characters, or that you have a consistent shared universe at all. And don't expect the fans to ascribe the Millar/Bendis/Quesada rewriting-the-universe crap any legitimacy.

Posted by Illuminarch on 2008-10-01 10:13:50