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Actually, Brian, Giffen’s point is the same as that of people who demand continuity, just approached from the other side. The fans who want the Marvel and DC universes to be one big serialized story often demand that everything fit into rigid patterns, and that every discrepancy be explained, at length.

And he’s very much right that the proper place of this kind of thinking is as a fun side exercise for the fans, and not the primary concern of the creators and editors. Stories ought to be about characters, not about other stories.

Whereas my feeling remains that studying the history of a fictional universe for a story set in that fictional universe is just as important as properly researching the history of the real universe for a story set in the real universe. If I was writing a story set in ancient Rome, and I used anachronistic terms like “jailbait” or “jury-rigged”, I’d get roasted for being sloppy, and rightly so. Why do you get a free pass when you’re writing Spider-Man?

Nobody put a gun to these people’s heads and said, “Set this JLA story in continuity.” Darwyn Cooke didn’t want to deal with JLA continuity, so he set ‘New Frontier’ in its own universe. I’ve heard very little fanboy bitching about it. Why? Because he said, very clearly, “This isn’t part of continuity.” As opposed to the approach that Marvel and DC are currently taking, which is, “This is absolutely part of continuity, unless we make a mistake, in which case shut up, you whining fanboy, it’s so pathetic of you to care about continuity like that.”

To be fair, Brian, Keith isn’t necessarily disagreeing with the sort of continuity you’re describing- he repeatedly refers to it as ‘consistency’, and encourages it. He just draws the line at the anal-retentive stuff.

One novel with a hell of a lot of writers across a whole plethora of titles and over decades. Two of the biggest stories in the world.. That’s why I read Marvel and DC comics. It’s the sort of thing I can’t get in almost any other medium.

If I want something else then I’ll read a comic not by Marvel or DC.

“It’s the sort of thing I can’t get in almost any other medium.”

I can think of at least two.

Brian,

To understand Keith’s rant, you have to keep in mind where we works and what the current environment is where he works. He works at DC, current home of the series Countdown to Final Crisis. 52 week book that has weekly tie-ins. DC is more continuity heavy than ever, which of course is leading to many discrepancies. It’s been like this for a while. As a result they have a lot of fans bitching about constant glaring discrepancies as they (understandably) can’t seem to coordinate 65 titles seamlessly. Some of the mistakes are minor, some of them are major and ridiculous, but regardless there is a lot of complaining about it.

Nightwing is in 3 different places at once in Outsiders and his solo book and in Infinite Crisis. Nightwing appears in 52 when he’s supposed to be overseas with Tim and Dick. Timelines for characters like Kyle Rayner and Karate Kid don’t match up between their Countdown appearances, solo book appearances and miniseries. Chronology is all wrong. Superman appears with powers in that magic book with Blue Devil during a period when he’s supposed to have no powers. No one seems to agree about whether Piper and Trickster helped kill Bart or not.

Newsarama has a weekly Q&A with the Countdown creators where they point out egregious mistakes, and the creators get pissed and indignant. But here’s the problem with Giffen, Carlin and the others that bitch about continuity obsessed fans….if you hate them, stop trying to appeal to them with continuity obsessed comics!!! You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You are trying to make every book tie-in and connect in a giant storyline to make people feel obligated to buy every title you put out or else they will miss out on a major development. They want you to follow everything, from Salvation Run to Countdown to JLA to the Tangent universe to old Kamandi trades to Death of the New Gods and Crime Bible in order to get the whole picture.

If continuity obsessed books are the selling point of your company, don’t turn around and get mad when you get continuity obsessed fans. Who else is going to put up with the wallet-raping going on at DC. You should be grateful for these nitpicking folks for keeping your company afloat, as I can’t imagine anyone else regularly buying a mainstream DC book these days.

As awful as Civil War was, I do respect that you could read just the Civil War mini alone and totally understand the book, OR you could just read the tie-in issues in your favorite comic and not be totally lost. But regardless, event comics as both companies have gone too far.

You are the ones who created the monster, so don’t get mad when it comes back and bites you in the ass.

I think T. hit the nail on the head. The short version is this: if your plots are going to depend on continuity, then people will get upset when that continuity doesn’t work.
Phrased differently: if you’re going to treat these stories like a “mystery” where we have to collect clues, and the clues lie across all of continuity, people will get upset it the framework which we’re supposed to collect clues from doesn’t make sense. It’s like reading a massive “whodunnit”, only to find out that none of the information given is admissable in your guess as to whodunnit. It’s more than irritating; unless this some spectacular writing which is a joy to read in itself, it makes the whole endeavor pointless.

It’s more than irritating; unless this some spectacular writing which is a joy to read in itself, it makes the whole endeavor pointless.

And that is definitely not the case.

Anyway, Brian, the point is that the reason he’s focusing on that specific type of fan is because this column is really a defense of the company where he currently works. It’s the comic version of Chris Crocker, except it’s “Leave Didio ALLOOONE!!!”

There’s a fine line between missing (or ignoring) some minor thing, and just being sloppy.

I think most people who like their continuity don’t mind so much the minutia. They can suspend their disbelief enough to not worry much when Spider-Man is appearing in 6 monthly titles.

It’s when the editors are just being sloppy, lazy, or ignorant of a character’s history when they get little irate. And I don’t blame them. When a character was killed 3 years ago, and then someone else makes use of him like nothing ever happened, that’s just being sloppy.

Good God, we’re in the computer age. Why don’t the big two maintain a character database if the writers don’t even care enough to read their own company’s product? If a writer is going to write about a character, he/she should at least be familiar with the character.

The basic test, I think, is whether the discrepancy is likely to confuse readers or undermine the sense of a consistent universe. Will they mistake it for a plot point? Will they just be baffled? If so, it’s a storytelling problem.

On the other hand, there’s not much point getting worked up about a contradiction of some obscure story that only a handful of readers will remember, or some fiddly timeline error that takes half a page to prove, because the reader won’t notice. (There are several classic novels where the timeline doesn’t actually make sense if you sit down and work it out, but you’ll never notice unless you’re taking notes.)

What John Seavey said.

One of the reasons I read Marvel and DC super-hero comics is the sense of interconnectivity, the fact that collectively, they are all telling one large story. I turn elsewhere when I want to read something that explores the craft or takes the medium to new and different places.

And I’m not one of those continuity wanks who needs every Spider-Man or Wolverine appearance to fit into some kind of timeline. I’m able to suspend my disbelief and accept that multiple characters are going to appear in multiple stories at one time, and that’s fine. But don’t tell me “everything’s in continiuity, except the stuff that contradicts the other stuff, because we’re too lazy to keep it straight. Just shut up and buy our books.”

Like T said, they can’t have their cake and eat it too.

I want my cake and I want to eat it too. I think I’m more concerned about character development than anything else, to be honest, even with my History background (which is where a lot of this comes from for me). I don’t worry about timelines or about characters being in seven places at once.

I definitely don’t worry about Reed and Ben being in WWII. I can’t see why he can’t be. You just suspend your disbelief.

It’s generally the idea that the characters should grow and change, and they should be a little different at the end of each issue and over decades that should have an amazing cumulative effect. What happens in issue 137 may not be directly important to what’s going on now and you shouldn’t let it get in the way of some excellent story from a plot basis, but characterwise, it should INDIRECTLY affect everything, because it affected 138 which affected 139, which affected 140 and so on all the way until today. That’s my general feeling of continuity/consistancy.

Matt D wrote: “I want my cake and I want to eat it too. I think I’m more concerned about character development than anything else, to be honest, even with my History background (which is where a lot of this comes from for me). I don’t worry about timelines or about characters being in seven places at once.

I definitely don’t worry about Reed and Ben being in WWII. I can’t see why he can’t be. You just suspend your disbelief.

It’s generally the idea that the characters should grow and change, and they should be a little different at the end of each issue and over decades that should have an amazing cumulative effect. What happens in issue 137 may not be directly important to what’s going on now and you shouldn’t let it get in the way of some excellent story from a plot basis, but characterwise, it should INDIRECTLY affect everything, because it affected 138 which affected 139, which affected 140 and so on all the way until today. That’s my general feeling of continuity/consistancy.”

This is pretty much my feeling exactly. Sometimes I’ve felt like I was the only one that felt this way.

Something that always bothered me about continuity arguments is that some people act like only hopeless fanboys demand continuity. I think fans of pretty much any television show or movie franchise would balk at the idea of ignoring previously established continuity. Continuity between titles is more the province of fanboys than within a title, but if you look at a franchise like Star Trek, I think fans would be angry if a character died in TNG and was still alive in DS9 (as an example.)

These “shared universes” where talented writers have to work with the material of nerdy hacks can’t die soon enough.

Paying attention to continuity simply shows that someone out there was willing to go the extra mile that everything affects everything else. Anyone using an excuse “I care more about telling a good story than continuity” is either being lazy or just doesn’t give a rat’s ass. I like seeing the extra care in there.

I must say I genuinely don’t care that much for continuity. As long as the story is interesting. Heck, I’ve enjoyed Hawkworld, even though it totally wrecked Hawkman and JLA’s continuity.

My beef with One More Day isn’t about it “ruining” what came before (since I think there is no such thing as ruining past stories), it’s just that I have no interest in the “same old, same old, let’s turn the clock back to the 1970s” thing with Spider-Man.

Heh. I think it’s very ironic that most Internet fans would have loved Brand New Day (it’s the “let’s make comics fun” thingie they love so much, right?), if Quesada hadn’t messed with an even greater sacred cow of theirs: continuity.

Well, in the next column he can just say that he addressed that stuff. Without continuity, who’s going to know otherwise?

I think the difference between consistency and continuity is important. It’s consistent for the Fantastic Four to remember fighting Galactus…it’s continuity for the Avengers to have to remark about that giant guy in shorts trying to eat the planet the same month.

At least by his definition.

To me, the perfect example of the difference, and one of my favorite mainstream stories, was Robinson’s Starman. It had consistency, but tended to ignore continuity for the sake of a better story. It had characters completely contradicting the way they’d previously acted (The Shade, The Mist, Solomon Grundy and so on); had the JSA engaged in killing a villain; set up an affair between Black Canary and the GA Starman; created new origins for the 50’s Starman, the Ditko Starman….the list goes on. Much of this wasn’t continuity plugs…it was contradictory information.

But because it was internally consistent, start to finish, I didn’t care that it contradicted other books. I liked the fact that those 70-odd issues (if I remember right) told a good story.

It’s the same with the Marvel books I enjoy. Even if they don’t contradict current universe-wide events, I prefer the books that tend to ignore them (Iron Fist being the prime example). I just want books that look to themselves to be consistent, not to the rest of the universe.

Good lord, a thread where I agree with T. Campbell and Joe Rice? Well, I guess it’s proof of how freaking wrong-headed the DC approach to its titles is now.

It wants to sell continuity, but doesn’t want to put effort into figuring out what made the old stories tick or how to make them part of a new story in the sort of self-evident, consistent way D. Eric Carpenter outlined in Starman.

So what you get is a company selling bad continuity, where they want you to buy all the tie-ins, but if you read them all they don’t make even a bit of sense due to problems of internal consistency. Stories are hinging on McGuffins that appeared in obscure old comics for at most half-a-dozen pages, but the new story about the McGuffin is so wildly out of context that it’s simply unrecognizable if you actually know the old material.

This is crap. This is not just bad comics, it’s bad superhero comics, which is an especially low and lazy form of bad. It’s not even close to being fun to read or worth printing. It needs to stop. Don’t sell us continuity if you can’t be consistent with it; otherwise there’s nothing to buy. It’s just a story that makes no sense.

One of the TOOLS of “writing within continuity” certainly IS the ability to “contradict” what came before, as long as you are giving a good, rational explanation about it.

STARMAN had different behaviours for many characters, and “new” origins for others, but in ALL of these, Robinson gave actual REASONS/”hidden back-story” explanations for this.

Grundy behaved like a friend not because he was “out of character”, but because it was now revealed that his personality and memory changes with each new incarnation.
You MIGHT have him come back nearly the same as he was last time, OR you could get something entirely different from the character.

I thought that was a good handling of things.

Same went for most, if not all other handling of characters in that title.

Mist wasn’t different,. he just SHARED MORE of WHO HE IS to Jack (and, by extension; US).
He shows that he ACTED like an old-school villain in past stories for his own reasons, just as now he showed more of his inner self to Jack/us for his own reasons.

That is handling/changing continuity in a responsible manner.

MANY old comics that I read would have one old plot point left dangling and another new writer would pick it up and run with it in whatever direction they saw fit.

Then, the NEXT guy would do the same.

I always thought that was one of the fun and challenging parts of the job.

We had 3 generations (or more) of comic writers who were ready, willing and able to play that “build-a-story” game.
Some did so, almost effortlessly.

Now with the “new crop” of writers (many of which didn’t really READ comics in the past) are just writing their own “takes” om characters, not necessarily playing by the previous rules, and all in the name of “it’s a better STORY if I can ignore all that old, useless stuff”.

Well, frankly, that’s bull.

If you don’t want to write that way, write in some other genre.
Or write an “out-of-continuity” piece.

If you WANT or NEED to do away with some old plot point how about flexing some “writer’s muscles” and WRITE a reason for it.
Don’t hide it behind a curtain or say “that was then, this is now”.

WRITE the story and either address the old point (with your new twist, if need be) or if the old story point isn’t integral to the new story, write around it.

But, you can’t simply say; “Spider-Man was NEVER off of the planet Earth” for example, when he has been shown to be on other planets/in space before.
Or for a much more minor point: “Peter Parker is ‘TOO YOUNG’ to be married, when the better statement is he’s “not yet ready” to be married*.

*And, yes. I know that Dan Slott wrote THAT particularly bad bit of dialogue, and that HE above many of the ‘new’ writers is one of the lovers of continuity.
I did so on purpose, so that it doesn’t seem like I’m picking on anyone.

It should be a part of the JOB REQUIREMENT that if you want to write FOR COMICS - you should familiarize yourself with the character/title you’re writing.

You can’t just come in and ignore all older stuff.

No one is saying (well… I’m not) that every little piece of a characters history HAS to be addressed.
Heck, MOST of the little stuff can be ignored or written around (a writer can be vague about “the past” if they don’t want to dredge up all the minutia).
Who cares if Batman is fighting a guy who “died” last month. All that needs be said is; “I should have known better than to think that Villain-X was really gone for good. I don’t know how he survived, but it’s obvious that he did.”

If a BODY was found at the scene of the old death an easy way to address is would be clone/ doppleganger/ android duplicate/ time-displaced other-self/ innocent bystander.

Then, a simple one-balloon bit of exposition FROM the bad-guy on how he got away with it would be all you need.

“Hahaha. Bat-fool thinks that I was dead. Little did he know that the body he found was an experimental dupe that I keep inside a pocket of my own utility belt. It expands upon contact with oxygen and is nearly impossible to differentiate from real human tissue. If only the formula for making it wasn’t lost. That was my only one.”

Done.

You do NOT have to explain in tiny detail how Wolverine is in 4 different places “at once”.
IF you even WANT or NEED to address it at all, a simple “Good thing I can always get GATEWAY to teleport me anywhere I need to be.” would suffice.
If you want to add a little minor exposition (ooh. bad word) it could be added: “It sure is good to keep close with a mutant outback-aborigine with teleporting powers. As long as I keep him in brewskis he’ll send me anywhere I need. Sure is a lot easier than hotwirin’ the Blackbird.”

Or even EASIER:
“Good thing the X-Men have access to Shi’Ar teleportation tech. Sure beats hoofin’ it.”

See?
Fairly easy, and one or two word-balloons.

And that’s even if you feel the need to address it.

My only other nit-pick about “sloppy” writing is that it’s obvious since the advent of the HANDBOOKS/WHO’sWHO type of character guides, that at least Marvel & DC have their characters histories on file (and now, on computer and/or the internet).

How long does it take, really, to read up on old stuff in those bios?
If you’re a WRITER, then by default you’re also a READER & RESEARCHER.

Use the tools to do the job well.
I’m not a slave to “tight timeline continuity”.
Most comic fans aren’t.
But, if Johnny Blaze acts like he’s never really dealt with Doctor Strange before**, then that’s just lazy.

**Actually has been a glaring error I’ve read several times over the years - just to offer up a factual case.

Sorry for the length or any seeming “rant” to this.
I’m calm and collected while writing this.
No rant. No bile.

~P~
P-TOR

“If I was writing a story set in ancient Rome, and I used anachronistic terms like “jailbait” or “jury-rigged”, I’d get roasted for being sloppy, and rightly so.”

Shakespeare referred to striking clocks in “Julius Caesar,” and his reputation seems to have held up all right.

Shakespeare referred to striking clocks in “Julius Caesar,” and his reputation seems to have held up all right.

There was no internet back then.

There was no internet back then.

I think Shakespeare mentioned the internet in Taming of the Shrew.

In Shakespeare’s day, it really was a series of tubes. You haven’t laughed ’till you’ve read Ye Walter Raleigh Factes Page, or John Dee’s “London Fire of 1606 Truth” theories.

It really comes down to what is being defined as “The Story”. If the story is simply a book’s current arc, then heavy continuity can be worked around for the sake of the story unless said continuity is at the heart of the story. For example, Identity Crisis made great use of the JLA history and should be held to a higher standard. On the other hand, if you’re merely dealing with the current Legion arc in action, you shouldn’t need encyclopedic knowlege Legion history so long as the story is internally consistent. It should, however, be consistent with “The Lightning Saga” on JLA and JSA since that’s where this version of the Legion was reintroduced.

However, if DC is defining “The Story” as everything from Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown, Final Crisis, and all their assorted tie-ins then there needs to be consistency across it all.

After all, they’re the ones selling the continuity. If they can’t or won’t put in the work, I wouldn’t mind titles going back to more solo adventures with only the occasional teamup.

I hate when a new writer comes on a title and completely disregards what was in the book when he picked it up. It seems callous, clumsy, and arrogant not to address what had gone before. I do improv, and in building scenes, we do what is simply referred to as “yesand.” This means, I accept the reality you have created, the contributions you have made, and I build onto and add to them. If you are going to write serialized fiction, you need to understand what serialized means.

Weirdly, the characters starring in the current Legion book aren’t the guys who were in the Lightning Saga. The “Levitz Legion” exists in a pocket of weird indefinable continuity at the moment, possibly attached to one of the other Earths.

(Man, there is really no better argument against the multiverse than DC’s output in 2007.)

I agree with Giffen completely- I don’t like reading Roy Thomas ’80s/ Geoff Johns ’00s stories in which old crap is explained, characters are revamped, and we find out *exactly when* Superman first encountered polka-dotted kryptonite (Action Comics 297, page 5,between panels 3 and 4). I don’t care. Tell a good story-if it contradicts a minor point of an old story, but it’s good, then I’ll enjoy it.

I agree with Giffen completely- I don’t like reading Roy Thomas ’80s/ Geoff Johns ’00s stories in which old crap is explained, characters are revamped, and we find out *exactly when* Superman first encountered polka-dotted kryptonite (Action Comics 297, page 5,between panels 3 and 4). I don’t care. Tell a good story-if it contradicts a minor point of an old story, but it’s good, then I’ll enjoy it.

So then why is Giffen working with the company that is currently living by that same Roy Thomas philosophy, except expanding it to every book and sprinkling in a little mutilation and rape for good measure? Their star writers right now are just a bunch of Thomas-like continuity wonks with a fetish for inappropriate sex and violence.

I think this is a we4ird bugaboo with some creators where they spend a ton of time complaining about continuity, then go about telling stories that demand you read all the books they read as a kid. I never cared about how a character could be in more than one place in a month because Stan lee used to say “Oh, this takes place before that”. But when you are telling a big story that has a ton of tie-ins, you had best have someone in editorial making sure that you aren’t saying that while Ratz-Man is fighting the Rodentmaster on Mongo, he’s also not lost in a cave in the Amazon because Story A crosses into Story B. That’s just lazy editorial work and will make the collected trade seem like a damn mess.

Also, a writer who says that we worry too much about continuity shouldn’t have done a story where Lighting Lad was really Proty from some obscure issue of Adventure Comics and always has been. That’s a love for continuity on a level Roy Thomas could be impressed by.

To be honest, which DC writers are currently completely gay for continuity? I can only really think of Geoff Johns and Brad Meltzer.

Greg Rucka just herds his cool characters from title to title, protecting them - Sasha Bordeaux, Renee Montoya, etc.

Judd Winick gays everything up a little bit and makes it super-edgy 2000. And has cloud lasers!

Grant Morrison just fucking blows your mind. He doesn’t draw on continuity so much as the shamanic totems of the silver age.

Kurt Busiek and Paul Dini are solid as usual - except - Countdown - Dave Gibbons is great. Bill Willingham is inventive and surprising.

But is anyone else writing comics at DC wielding much power over the titles they are working on? There are some good writers there, but they seem to just have to make do with a framework that is being held over them.

For one thing, I’ve said it for a while now; saying “Grant Morrison doesn’t draw on continuity” is basically saying, “I haven’t read enough Silver Age DC.” Grant Morrison makes more obscure continuity references than Geoff Johns does. In point of fact, he makes continuity references so obscure that everyone thinks they’re original.

For another, Busiek is also totally in love with continuity. This is the man who wrote ‘Avengers Forever’, a twelve-issue mini-series complete with footnotes. He never met a back issue he didn’t like.

Other than that, Mark Waid and Jeph Loeb both stand out as major continuity buffs; Waid’s knowledge of Silver Age comics is legendary, and Jeph Loeb is the man who brought back Krypto the Super-Dog (and Supergirl, but that’s a bit less embarrassing.) Waid, Johns, and Morrison were three of the four responsible for Infinite Crisis, 52, and bringing back the multiverse (and Morrison’s been whining about wanting to undo Crisis since his run on Animal Man.)

Giffen only drew 52 & Countdown, right? I don’t recall him writing any continuity-laden DC books lately, but I haven’t read much DC, so I could be wrong.

Didn’t Giff make this same anti-continuity rant back on his Wizard column? I’m pretty sure I’ve read this thing from him before, to the point that he’s really beating a dead horse.

It honestly seems like there are three things that you can say to him and have him hate you for life: 1) “Lobo was your greatest creation!” 2) “Please do more Ambush Bug.” 3) “I like how good you are at using continuity.”

,blockquote.For one thing, I’ve said it for a while now; saying “Grant Morrison doesn’t draw on continuity” is basically saying, “I haven’t read enough Silver Age DC.” Grant Morrison makes more obscure continuity references than Geoff Johns does. In point of fact, he makes continuity references so obscure that everyone thinks they’re original.

well… not really. he does mine a lot of Silver Age DC comics for material and references, but that’s not the same thing as appealing to continuity.

For my money, the best continuity writer was Mark Gruenwald over at Marvel. The immortal Quasar #14 “fixed” dozens of MU plotholes, AND worked really well as a story, AND was a cool-as-hell contept! And he did things like this every couple of months! If he was still writing Quasar, he could have fixed Spidey in a six-issue biweekyl series guest-starring every single bug-themed hero or villain dating back to the Timely years.

crap… besides messing up the blockquote, i forgot to add that i think it’s a bit unfair to assume that Giffen’s views about continuity are motivated solely the complaints about Countdown and the like.

fan reaction to the current climate at DC definitely casts his gripes in a certain light, but Giffen has been pretty consistent in expressing his disinterest and often utter comtempt for continuity fiends for more than 20 years now. hell, one of the key objectives of Ambush Bug was to mock and undermine continuity.

Grant Morrison just fucking blows your mind. He doesn’t draw on continuity so much as the shamanic totems of the silver age.

“Shamanic totems?” Man, the Kool-Aid is strong in this one!

fan reaction to the current climate at DC definitely casts his gripes in a certain light, but Giffen has been pretty consistent in expressing his disinterest and often utter comtempt for continuity fiends for more than 20 years now. hell, one of the key objectives of Ambush Bug was to mock and undermine continuity.

yet he works for a company that is taking obscure continuity obsession to new unprecedented levels. how can he act surprised at having continuity obsessed fans when his company is primarily catering to them. that’s like dropping blood and offal in the ocean all year round and acting surprised I have shark infested waters.

yet he works for a company that is taking obscure continuity obsession to new unprecedented levels. how can he act surprised at having continuity obsessed fans when his company is primarily catering to them. that’s like dropping blood and offal in the ocean all year round and acting surprised I have shark infested waters.

sure… but he was expressing these same views more than 20 years ago when DC didn’t have tight continuity at all.

even as DC has changed to become rabidly continuity-obsessed over the past two decades, his opinion has remained pretty much the same throughout that time.

so yes… you could contrast his perspective to the climate that his current employer and question him for working in such a climate, but his reasons for that really are not that important. maybe they offered him a great benefits package.

a more relevant approach would be to question him on the extent to which he personally has participated in that continuity feeding frenzy before he turned around to complain about it. THEN we can determine if he is trying to have his cake and eat it, too.

other than contributing breakdowns to 52 and Countdown, he hasn’t really partaken in that kind of storytelling, has he?

i won’t discount the possibility that he very well COULD be shaking his head at the (warranted) response to the continuity discrepancies in Countdown, but considering that the view he’s expressing here is the same view he’s ALWAYS expressed re: continuity, i don’t think it’s fair or accurate to link it definitively to some need to defend DiDio or DC in general.

or are you basically saying “well, if you hate continuity so much, then you should quit DC?”

For another, Busiek is also totally in love with continuity. This is the man who wrote ‘Avengers Forever’, a twelve-issue mini-series complete with footnotes. He never met a back issue he didn’t like.

True point. Avengers Forever is so continuity heavy that it’s completely unreadable to someone (like me) who’s not fully conversant with Avengers history.

heh heh … actually…
Giffen IS plotting and pencilling a NEW mini-series of AMBUSH BUG.

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=145003

~P~
P-TOR

As stated previously by others, it is not being forgetful about eeny-meeny-weeny details in the zillion previous adventures a character might have had, but for consistencym, I like that the fundamental traits of a character are more or well stablished…

I mean, if in one issue, the title lead is a short, white-haired woman with a great sense of law and honour, I am a bit surprised if in the following issue I find her as a tall, dark-haired man selling reefers to children.

What-ifs, Elseworlds or out-of-continuity items are nice letouts if one doesn’t want to check previous stuff, but observing basic items of continuity shouldn’t be a bad thing in itself.

Examples: I think that Brubaker is quite respectful of continuity, yet that doesn’t keep him from writing exvellent stories… I mean, if he doesn’t want to mention the fact that DD once flew in a space rocket, he just forgets it happened, but otherwise sticks to the basic notions about the character (who he is, what he does, what he did, which are his friends and enemies, etc…).

or are you basically saying “well, if you hate continuity so much, then you should quit DC?”

Close. My point is, you get the fans you deserve. If you are working on continuity heavy titles, you get continuity obsessed fans. I’m sure if you look at Kurt Busiek’s fanbase on Avengers, it was a lot more continuity obsessed than, say, Bendis’s fanbase on Daredevil. Busiek set the stage early that his book was going to be continuity porn. Bendis set the stage early that he would create random characterizations or ignore continuity as he pleased. Despite early complaints, I’m sure a year into Busiek’s run there were very little continuity haters left in his fanbase. And I’m sure a year into Bendis’s run, there were few people who were anal about continuity left in HIS readership. Their styles of writing drove off a certain type of fan and retained the kind that liked their certain approach to continuity. Same with Mark Millar for example, anyone who is a big fan of his is safe to say is not continuity obsessed. My point to Giffen is that if you are having a problem with a certain type of fan, YOU are doing something wrong to attract them. 100% of fans are not continuity wonks, you are just failing to attract the kind that are not anal about continuity. Sure he’s only contributed to Countdown and 52, but that’s enough, both of those require heavy continuity coordination and obscure details, as shown in Brian’s recent piece about WIllingham and Salvation Run.

It’s like working for Hustler and complaining that your readership are horndogs. You should expect it with the territory.

I’ve gotta say, Giffen is a total hypocrite when it comes to continuity. He seems to think other writers shouldn’t dwell on it, but put him on virtually any DC or Marvel title and he’s going to start dwelling on as much continuity as you let him. He was especially bad for it in his early DC work, so I wonder if there’s a certain tone of embarrassment lingering in these columns.

Same with Mark Millar for example, anyone who is a big fan of his is safe to say is not continuity obsessed.

Yeah, but Millar also lacks character consistency, and sometimes internal story logic.

For one thing, I’ve said it for a while now; saying “Grant Morrison doesn’t draw on continuity” is basically saying, “I haven’t read enough Silver Age DC.” Grant Morrison makes more obscure continuity references than Geoff Johns does. In point of fact, he makes continuity references so obscure that everyone thinks they’re original.

No, it’s not basically saying that, although that is very cute. I’ve read lots of silver age DC. As it was pointed out, drawing on the material isn’t the same thing as enslaving yourself to it. It’s loving it but not marrying it.

“Shamanic totems?” Man, the Kool-Aid is strong in this one!

It was a joke. (Like everything else I said in the post - context is everything.)

Close. My point is, you get the fans you deserve. If you are working on continuity heavy titles, you get continuity obsessed fans.

i dunno… perhaps i’m being presumptuous, but it seems to me that in his column, Giffen is speaking primarily from a writer’s point of view, and the kind of continuity we’re talking about is essentially a writer’s concept… not the key concern of a breakdown penciller. Keith Giffen didn’t write 52 or Countdown.

for the most part, he’s not written any of that kind of continuitycore stuff lately, so how is he having his cake and eating it, too?

you keep emphasizing the fact that he works for DC Comics and then making the leap to imply that because that particular company seems to be the new old 42nd St. of hardcore continuity porn, then anybody who works there is a tacit accomplice if not an active endorser of that kind of storytelling. and i don’t think that is true at all. in fact, we’re pretty aware that most of the writers think it’s a pain in the ass and are trying their best to do their work in spite of the editorial mandates.

i can say personally that i have not read a single issue of Countdown, nor do i intend to. in fact, i’m quite pleased to say that i don’t even have the foggiest shadow of a clue as to what Countdown is even actually about. (it… it’s got something to do with Superboy Prime or something, right?) and yet i regularly read several DC titles and i haven’t found my enjoyment of them significantly hampered by my blissful ignorance of Countdown. so obviously, not everybody at DC is wanking continuity.

if this column were written by Geoff Johns or Jimmy Palmiotti or Paul Dini, then i’d say you might be on to something. but as it stands, it’s Keith Giffen saying the same thing he’s being saying for years — if you took out the mentions of Johns and Greg Rucka and told me this piece was written in 1985, i would totally believe you.

he expresses his personal opinion and makes nary a mention of Countdown or any of DC’s endless, continuity-greasing crossover events, let alone trying to defend them (in fact, if you look carefully, he kinda indicts them: “You know, the kind of fill in the blanks, masturbatory nonsense that sometimes passes for storytelling nowadays”). so trying to read this as a Chris Crocker-esque Didio apologia really strikes me as quite a stretch.