Check out other definitons by just clicking on the "Comic Book Dictionary" category in the sidebar.

Which was disappointing to me, because I'm new to this blog and haven't read the "paternalistic continuity" post and wanted to. (Oh, sure, I could search for it myself...)

Sorry about that.

I mean pretty much any obligation - editorial, fan's insistence on old villains showing up, or writers feeling that if they're on the book for a long enough time, they really ought to use one of the "classic" villains.

Mike Carey might very well enjoy writing Mr. Sinister, but it was not his decision to write Mr. Sinister. He was told to.

Which is not to say that obligatory continuity doesn't exist. If you're writing Luke Cage, you're eventually going to write Iron Fist into the mix. But those instances are rare.

And to return to a point another poster made, Jim Shooter's horrible reputation wasn't based on bad business decisions or practices; even his detractors agree that his ideas were very sound. His problem was that he didn't have good people skills, particularly when dealing with some of the personality types that gravitate to the comics industry ("iconoclastic" is, I think, a good term to use) and particularly when he was trying to get Marvel's business practices back on track after a fairly fast-and-loose downward period. (Remember, Shooter came on board before the X-Men turned Marvel into the steamrolling juggernaut of the comics industry.) He was forced to act as the heavy a lot of the time, and he was unfortunately so good at it that he wound up being forced out the door. (This is, by the way, just the impression I've gotten from various accounts of Shooter's tenure as EIC; others with more knowledge can feel free to elaborate/contradict as needed.)

Later in the film, they hire Bane to take care of Batwoman and we get yet another Bane / Batman showdown. My roommate turned me and said "Do guys just get a boner for Bane or something? Why does he keep turning up." Sadly, when it comes to DCAU, if Batman needs to fight a physical powerhouse, the only options he has are Bane... or Killer Croc. And at least Bane isn't an absolute retard.

So I guess my beef in this regard isn't so much with obligatory continuity, but just obligatory appearances. Sure, it's sometimes a pain to read Batman books and think "Just how many crime bosses ARE there in Gotham??" but having people show up just because you're too lazy to think of a new guy is pretty lame as well.

Anyway, a couple guys occur to me as examples of how you can fall off the "Obligatory Continuity List:" Toyman and Doctor Light (well, Doctor Light was never actually *on* the list, probably, but illustrates the point.)

Basically, if a villain does something so heinous and so unforgivable (and isn't essentially *defined* by his wickedness, like, say, the Joker), he becomes more or less useless for the future.

After their most notable recent stories, you pretty much can't use the Toyman or Light without bringing up some pretty damn grim subjects - child murder and rape. Unless you really want to wallow in those subjects (and *not* addressing them would stick out uncomfortably, too), what can you possibly do with them? Not much. (Side issue, though, is that DC has had, I believe, at least two "new" Toyman characters since then, so perhaps it's still obligatory to have *a* Toyman pop up periodically?)

Interestingly, DC seems to have become aware of this wrt the Toyman. In the "Ten Most Wanted" feature of the new Action Annual, there's a suggestion that Winslow Schott might very well be innocent of that particular crime. If and when that happens, I suspect Mr. Schott goes back on the list....

Hope I'm using the proper HTML quote tag here.

Anyway, what I think you're describing is not really obligatory continuity but something else, a phenomenon that I think Brian should include in the comic book dictionary, unless he already has...the "Defining Moment"
or "Miller Moment" phenomenon. As I understand it, before Shooter allowed Frank Miller to write Daredevil as well as draw it, the common aspiration of comic writers was to get an A-list character. Shooter thought it was dumb to break characters into A-list and B-list because you pretty much doomed a book to low sales and lower regard once you consciously classified it as inferior. (I wish someone would remind DC and Marvel of Shooter's philosophy today, especially at DC where we're constantly reminded of characters A-list and B-list status IN-STORY, pretty much dooming scores of characters to low sales and inability to carry a solo title)

Anyway, Miller shows why Shooter's philosophy makes sense, he gets on Daredevil and knocks it out of the park. (Claremont and Byrne also are an example of how tis philosophy works when they take X-Men to stratospheric heights) If Miller tried it with Spider-Man, an A-list title, he wouldn't have been able to get away with as much because the character is too important to be tinkered with much, and he'd have had less impact because there were already so many definitive, memorable runs and stories.

After people realized how you can take a less-respected character and make a name for yourself on it by writing that character's definitive "Miller Moment," we've been plagued with people trying to do "Miller Moments" with the same characters over and over again. ICeman has reached his "full potential" over and over again under different writers. How many times have we been subjected to the Nightwing story where he "FINALLY" comes out from under Batman's shadow? Because everyone wants to do the defining "Miller Moment" for these characters, they tend to brush aside and ignore the character's previous "Miller Moment" in order to write their own.

Which is what happens with Batman and Spidey villains all the time.

And since then he's turned up in Millar's Marvel Knights Spidey run and was recently seen in the final issues of Fabian Nicieza's Thunderbolts run.

Correct about being corrected; JMS used him in a dandy little three-parter wherein Ock got hired by a research company for his technology, then the evil CEO turned the tables on him and tried to kill Ock and stole the tentacle technology to make himself an awesome for-the-00's Ock armor suit, and Ock of course broke out of the deathtrap and went after the guy, and Spidey was stuck in the middle trying to keep people from getting killed. This was post-Aunt May finding out too, so we got the nice "May finally figures out Ock isn't really very nice" scene afterwards.

It was a pretty damn good story. JMS's run on ASM prior to the horrible Goblin Kidz storyline was really very good, and even his stuff after that was readable.

Ditto with the Leader in the Hulk series--I know that he has been brought back since Peter David killed him off, but he was once practically earning overtime as a frequent Hulk villain, and now much less so. (Ditto with the Abomination, AFAIR.)

I've got nothing at all to back that up, mind you.