Continuity: The Most Powerful Word in Comics

For those who don’t read comics, “Continuity” refers to the shared reality in which various characters from a particular publisher share a combined world and history. Basically it means that if one issue of a title says a particular hero or villain died, then other characters in that same continuity will acknowledge that fact in their own titles. It’s basically how things stay organized in the world of comics.

Now while continuity is considered rather rigid and sacred among fans and readers, the publishers who create such continuity seem to have no such respect. In my long career as a comic book fan I have seen numerous changes to continuity on both a company wide and individual character basis. Everything I thought I knew about a character’s history was completely wiped out in a single issue.

The worst offender of the continuity revamp is DC Comics. DC has completely revamped their continuity four times in the last thirty years. The first instance was in 1986 with the mega-crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths. In this storyline, DC went about streamlining its multiple separate continuities into one coherent universe. Prior to this storyline, DC boasted multiple different versions of their characters that each inhabited their own world.

There was a Superman who was an old man and married to Lois Lane having fought crime since his debut in 1938, a Superman who was the modern version of the character, and a Superboy. A world defended by the Justice League and a world defended by the Justice Society. There were also separate worlds inhabited by the Charleston Characters (Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, etc) and Fawcett Comics characters (Captain Marvel), two companies that DC comics had acquired over the years. Plus many, many, other worlds. It was a bit confusing for your average reader.

And so under the direction of Marv Wolfman (writer) and George Perez (artist), DC set about streamlining its many different worlds so that all its characters populated one unified world. After a 12 issue mini-series killing off many of the duplicate characters, DC comics was left with one unified earth.  This storyline marked the beginning of DC comic event comics, which would become a staple of the industry, leading to company wide crossovers becoming a regular event in the comic book industry.

Although Crisis was supposed to fix the problem of continuities in DC comics, there were still some lingering issues. There needed to be an establishment that this new earth was the only earth and all those old multiple earths never existed. And so, eight years after Crisis, DC Comics had Zero Hour. This storyline involved the wiping out of the DC Comics timeline. Essentially it wiped out the previous timeline entirely. None of the stories that occurred pre-Crisis ever happened. There was one earth and there had always been one earth.

In effect Zero Hour was a massive case of retconning. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “retconning” is the term for when a new storyline affects the established history of a character or characters. Essentially, some new bit of information will be revealed about a character and that will retroactively (the “ret” in “retcon”) change everything we knew about the character.

While DC is notorious for massive continuity changes, it is their professional competitor Marvel that is most guilty of excessive retconning. Marvel has committed retconning on nearly all of its major characters. Just a few notorious retcons are the revelation that Captain America’s sidekick Bucky survived his death in World War II; Wolverine has bone claws; Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and Mary Jane Watson’s marriage never happened (thanks to a deal with the devil); Ghost Rider is not a demon, but an angel; etc. Rather than feeling the need to completely rewrite the entire history of their universe, they simply tweak the characters as they see necessary.

Or, they will establish an entirely new continuity where they can make whatever changes to characters they want without affecting the already established order of things. And that is why Marvel came up with the Ultimate Universe. In the wake of the popularity of the Spider-Man and X-Men films, Marvel decided to start a new line of comics that was not burdened with the decades of history those characters already had. This gave a chance for new readers to experience the X-Men and Spider-Man without the need to read hundred of comics. These were completely new versions of the characters that had no allegiance to their previous incarnations.

Another reason why the Ultimate universe is so important is because much of what is happening in those stories is being used as inspiration for the Avengers film(s). It gives a chance to modernize characters who have been around since the sixties for the most part. And it also allows creators to play around with new and interesting concepts. For instance, in the Ultimate Universe, Peter Parker is dead and a new kid is Spider-Man and he happens to be an African American. So we have both this new and interesting take on the character of Spider-Man, without robbing fans of the classic Spider-Man so many know and love.

Don't ask.

Perhaps in the end, Continuity really only matters to the reader. If the stories still entertain then what does it matter if events deviate from established cannon? Should an adherence to history be more important than entertaining the fans? I find myself torn on this issue. On the one hand, I read comics to be entertained. But at the same time I take pride in my extensive knowledge I have on the comics I read. When the publisher decides to deviate from continuity they are in essence telling me that I wasted time learning about that which has come before.