bevismusson:

too fucking right

(via bevismusson)

Hi all!  More details later, but as you may imagine, now that Marvel’s EIC has switched from Axel Alonso to C.B. Cebulski, new stuff will be in Earth-C rather than Earth-AA (still haven’t figured out where the current Infinity stuff will go, as it seems really rooted in the last batch of storylines).  Since there’s a deliberate shift at Marvel to “classic” versions of characters (Steve, Tony, Bruce are back as Cap, Iron Man, Hulk; Fantastic Four are returning; etc.), this seems a good spot anyway.

Ditto DC, with Rebirth (Earth-R, unless after the Rebirth process at the end of Doomsday Clock or whatever we get some new Earth; not sure how to deal with this cleanly.  I’m vexed by the way DC is slowly rolling all of this out, with whole series really being rooted in the end of the New 52 and then promptly just largely written out of continuity (I’m looking at you, Superwoman series; you deserved better than that (it couldn’t have happened as written at all with the whole merging of Superman timelines thing by Mxyzptlk, and the whole timeline still hasn’t finished rebooting yet)), and with its own apparent heading toward classic character versions.

More when I can!

Caveat: Remember, this is my own headcanon, not anything official by anyone else.  Use or ignore as you see fit.  :)

So, now that we have an idea of when the Silver Age DC era starts, where should it end?  I would largely end each title’s run at the moment that the Bronze Age starts, particularly at the point that social relevance and a sort of house style change takes effect.  This has actually been pretty clear in many cases–various titles have a deliberate shift in story and tone, for example Green Lantern/Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, and Superman.  More details on the Silver Age ending cutoff point will come when I get to the Bronze Age essays, but for now, here is the material which I will use to make a proposed “timeline.”

Basic Raw Material

Action #158 (July 1951) - #355 (Oct 1967)

Adventure #209 (Feb 1955) - #368 (May 1968)

Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #1-46 (all, 1952-1959)

All-American Men of War #2 - #117 (all, 1952 - 1966)

All Star Western #58 (1951) - #119 (July 1961)

Aquaman #1 (Feb 1962) - #39 (June 1968)

Atom #1 (July 1962) - #38 (Sept 1968)

Batman #92 (June 1955) - #203 (August 1968)

Blackhawk #108 (first DC issue, Jan 1957) - #243 (Nov 1968)

Captain Storm #1 (June 1964) - #18 (Apr 1967)

Challengers of the Unknown #1 (May 1958) - #67 (May 1969)

Detective Comics #205 (March 1954) - #387 (May 1969)

Doom Patrol #1 (Mar 1964) - #121 (Oct 1968)

Flash #105 (Mar 1959) - #178 (April 1968)

GI Combat #24 (first Comics Code-approved issue, May 1955) - #130 (July 1968)

Green Lantern #1 (Aug 1960) - #75 (March 1970)

Hawkman #1 (May 1964) - #27 (Sept 1968)

House of Mystery #36 (March 1955, first Code issue) - #173 (March 1968)

House of Secrets #1 (Nov 1956) - #80 (Sept 1966)

Inferior Five #1 (April 1967) - #6 (Feb 1968)

Justice League of America #1 (Nov 1960) - #65 (Sept 1968)

Metal Men #1 (May 1963) - #32 (June 1968)

Metamorpho #1 (Aug 1965) - #17 (April 1968)

My Greatest Adventure #1 (Jan 1955) - #85 (Feb 1964)

Mystery in Space #53 (Adam Strange stories begin, Jun 1959) - #110 (Sept 1966)

Our Army at War #81 (Sgt. Rock stories begin, April 1959) - #183 (Aug 1967)

Our Fighting Forces #45 (Gunner and Sarge stories begin, May 1959) - #98 (Feb 1966)

Rip Hunter Time Master #1 (April 1961) - #29 (Dec 1965)

Sea Devils #1 (Oct 1961) - #35 (Jun 1967)

Secret Origins #1 (Oct 1961, reprints)

Showcase #1 (April 1956) - #72 (Feb 1968)

Star Spangled War Stories #84 (Mme. Marie starts, Aug 1959) - #137 (March 1968)

Strange Adventure #114 (Star Hawkins starts, March 1960) - #204 (Sept 1967)

Superboy #8 (May 1950) - #169 (Oct 1970)

Superman #76 (June 1952) - #218 (July 1969)

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #1 (Apr 1958) - #104 (Sept 1970)

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 (Oct 1954) - #132 (Sept 1970)

Teen Titans #1 (Feb 1966) - #19 (Feb 1969)

Tomahawk #28 (Nov 1954) - #115 (April 1968)

Unexpected #1 (Mar 1956) - #105 (March 1968)

Western Comics #43 (Pow-Wow Smith starts, Feb 1954) - #85 (Feb 1961)

Wonder Woman #98 (May 1958) - #177 (Aug 1968)

World’s Finest #71 (July 1954) - #197 (Oct 1970)

So, with this, we have some pretty clear material to put in the “takes place in past” category–the historical-era stories (Western, US Revolutionary War, WWII, adventures of Superboy, etc.).  While it takes place in the distant future, I would put the Legion stories in with the Superboy stories, or at least I would put the Legion stories in with the adventures of the characters appearing in them, so the ones with Supergirl would go in with her stories, the ones with Superman as an adult with Superman, etc.  This also applies to stories featuring characters traveling in time, such as Flash, Green Lantern, etc.

Stories set in past

Tomahawk #28 (Nov 1954) - #115 (April 1968) (US Revolutionary War era)

All Star Western #58 (1951) - #119 (July 1961) (Old West)

Western Comics #43 (Pow-Wow Smith starts, Feb 1954) - #85 (Feb 1961)

All-American Men of War #2 - #117 (all, 1952 - 1966) (Many, but not all, WWII)

GI Combat #24 (first Comics Code-approved issue, May 1955) - #130 (July 1968) (WWII)

Our Army at War #81 (Sgt. Rock stories begin, April 1959) - #183 (Aug 1967)

Our Fighting Forces #45 (Gunner and Sarge stories begin, May 1959) - #98 (Feb 1966)

Star Spangled War Stories #84 (Mme. Marie starts, Aug 1959) - #137 (March 1968) (WWII)

Captain Storm #1 (June 1964) - #18 (Apr 1967) (WWII)

Superboy #8 (May 1950) - #169 (Oct 1970) (set vaguely in the past, but not in a way which would allow Superman to be involved in WWII)

Adventure #209 (Feb 1955) - #368 (May 1968) (Superboy/LSH stories)

Showcase #1 (April 1956) - #72 (Feb 1968) (some individual stories could go in with their respective eras, whether past or future, such as Sgt. Rock (#45) (WWII), GI Joe (#53-54) (WWII) Enemy Ace (#57-58) (WWI), and the Top Gun Western reprint issue, #72)

Secret Origins #1 (Oct 1961, reprints various hero origins, and is thus set in the very recent “past”)

The stories set in the “present” (publishing era) would go in the present.  Within each category of the present-day stories, at least in the case of multi-part stories (of which there weren’t as many back then), I would organize them by date of first part of story, so storylines beginning in, say, June 1961 would all go together, then July 1961, August 1961, etc.  There’s no way I’m going to make a comprehensive list of every individual story and issue spliced together, but here is a list of the various series organized by when their Silver Age starts.

Stories set in the present, starting in…

1951

Action #158 (July 1951) - #355 (Oct 1967)

1952

Superman #76 (June 1952) - #218 (July 1969)

Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog #1-46 (all, 1952-1959)

1954

Detective Comics #205 (March 1954) - #387 (May 1969)

World’s Finest #71 (July 1954) - #197 (Oct 1970)

Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #1 (Oct 1954) - #132 (Sept 1970)

1955

My Greatest Adventure #1 (Jan 1955) - #85 (Feb 1964)

House of Mystery #36 (March 1955, first Code issue) - #173 (March 1968)

Batman #92 (June 1955) - #203 (August 1968)

1956

Unexpected #1 (Mar 1956) - #105 (March 1968)

Showcase #1 (April 1956) - #72 (Feb 1968) (some individual stories could go in with their respective eras, whether past or future)

House of Secrets #1 (Nov 1956) - #80 (Sept 1966)

1957

Blackhawk #108 (first DC issue, Jan 1957) - #243 (Nov 1968)

1958

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #1 (Apr 1958) - #104 (Sept 1970)

Challengers of the Unknown #1 (May 1958) - #67 (May 1969)

Wonder Woman #98 (May 1958) - #177 (Aug 1968)

1959

Flash #105 (Mar 1959) - #178 (April 1968)

Mystery in Space #53 (Adam Strange stories begin, Jun 1959) - #110 (Sept 1966) (Space Ranger stories could go in 22nd century)

1960

Green Lantern #1 (Aug 1960) - #75 (March 1970)

Justice League of America #1 (Nov 1960) - #65 (Sept 1968)

1961

Rip Hunter Time Master #1 (April 1961) - #29 (Dec 1965)

Sea Devils #1 (Oct 1961) - #35 (Jun 1967)

1962

Aquaman #1 (Feb 1962) - #39 (June 1968)

Atom #1 (July 1962) - #38 (Sept 1968)

1963

Metal Men #1 (May 1963) - #32 (June 1968)

1964

Doom Patrol #1 (Mar 1964) - #121 (Oct 1968)

Hawkman #1 (May 1964) - #27 (Sept 1968)

1965

Metamorpho #1 (Aug 1965) - #17 (April 1968)

1966

Teen Titans #1 (Feb 1966) - #19 (Feb 1969)

1967

Inferior Five #1 (April 1967) - #6 (Feb 1968)

As for the near future, we have an array of imaginary futures to choose from for the futures of Superman, Batman, etc.  There are others which I consider most satisfying for other eras (more on those when I get to those eras), but for the Silver Age, I don’t yet have this nailed down for myself.  There are many stories, for instance, in which Superman finally marries Lois Lane.  As well, the Superman-Red and Superman-Blue story fits with the feeling of the era, and it kind of ends with the happy ending of everything a quasi-utopia (if you don’t think too hard about things like mind-control, er, anti-crime rays blanketing the Earth, that is).  The Death of Superman story is actually one of the best ones, but, well, it’s set before Supergirl reveals herself to the world, and it is a bit of a downer as Superman’s last hurrah.

I would put stories set in the more distant future (apart from the Legion), like Star Hawkins and such, in the future.  The Silver Age wasn’t as specific about this as other eras were–in later eras, for example, we see deliberate ties between Omac and Kamandi and such, but in the Silver Age, there were an array of probably-compatible future stories that could go together but aren’t absolutely connected, so one could imagine that, for example, Star Hawkins and the Atomic Knights take place in the past before the Legion comes to be centuries later.

Stories set in the future

Mystery in Space #53 (Adam Strange stories begin, Jun 1959) - #110 (Sept 1966) (Space Ranger stories could go in 22nd century)

Showcase #1 (April 1956) - #72 (Feb 1968) (some individual stories could go in with their respective eras, whether past or future, such as Space Ranger in #15-16 (22nd century) and Tommy Tomorrow (#41-42, 44, 46-47) (2050, 21st century))

Strange Adventure #114 (Star Hawkins starts, March 1960) - #204 (Sept 1967) (Strange Adventure featured rotating stories set in the future–Star Hawkins, circa 2079; Space Museum, in the 25th century; and Atomic Knights, in the post-apocalyptic future of 1992 after the great war of 1986, so each story could go in its respective era–or even, depending on how detailed the Space Museum stories get as far as dates, with those spliced between them chronologically)

So a tentative future timeline could involve the Atomic Knights in 1992, Tommy Tomorrow in 2050, Star Hawkins in 2079, Space Ranger in the 2100s, the Space Museum in the 2400s, and eventually, the Legion in the 2900s.  Or possibly the Superman of 2965, which I haven’t really dealt with here (and we’ve never really seen anything to explain why he didn’t know the Legion, but back in the Silver Age, consistency about that sort of thing was not the main focus–his world doesn’t quite seem to have the same setup with the United Planets and the like).

This ends Part Two of my DC Silver Age scheme; hope you find it helpful and/or entertaining!

Caveat: Remember, this is my own headcanon, not anything official by anyone else.  Use or ignore as you see fit.  :)

The end of the Golden Age and the start of the Silver at DC is clear in some places and less so in others.  Obviously, the Silver Age versions of various characters, like the Barry Allen Flash and the Hal Jordan Green Lantern are Silver-Age-specific, as are others like the Martian Manhunter.  But Superboy premiered in the 1940s–More Fun Comics No. 101 (January–February 1945), to be exact.  This would seem like an insoluble conundrum, but remember: Earth-Two (on which Superman always worked for the Daily Star, was never Superboy, etc.) is not the same as the original Golden Age era.  I would suggest that the tone and feel of those original Golden Age stories is likely to be distinct from the later Silver Age era, in which Superboy often met characters who would also turn up again in the Superman book.  Looking over Adventure, Johnny Quick’s last appearance is #207 (December 1954).  The Legion of Super-Heroes first appears in #247, April 1958, so might there be a good cutoff point between those two issues of Adventure?  Krypto’s first appearance is in #210, March 1955, so this tightens up the gap.  I think that #209, February 1955, which also features the origin of Speedy in the Green Arrow story, is a good starting place for the Silver Age Adventure Comics issues; we see the Silver Age-style (green outfit with sunburst on chest) Jor-El in #217-218, Krypto revealed to the world in #220, and so on.  (As for Aquaman, who was also appearing in Adventure at this time, Silver Age elements (first, Topo, in 1956, and especially Aquaman’s revised origin in 1959–many people don’t know this, but in the Golden Age, Aquaman started out as a scientist’s son, rather than being part-Atlantean) started appearing shortly after this issue, so this works for him as well.) The cutoff point of the actual Superboy series seems less definitive.

As for Wonder Woman’s series, I am inclined to put the division line at #97/98 (the end of the H.G. Peter/beginning of Ross Andru art eras).  For Superman’s self-titled series, there’s no absolute breaking point, but I think that #76 (1952, in which Superman and Batman find out each other’s identities for the first time) is a nice spot, while Action, #158 (1951) retells his origin and specifically gives Jonathan and Martha Kent their names, as well as establishes his past as Superboy.  Those two issues are a tad early, but there isn’t as much of a solid demarcation here. As for Batman, Ace the Bat-Hound appears in Batman #92, June 1955, and various other Silver Age characters later, so certainly I’d put the cutoff point by then if not earlier, while Detective #205, March 1954, with the origin of the Batcave (one of those quirky Silver-Age-style stories with a predecessor of Batman from 200 years ago), might serve as a nice point for that series.

Various other, less well-known titles have decent cutoff points as well; Tomahawk #28 (1954) introduces Lord Shilling, and later stories involve less standard action stories and more typically Silver Age offerings such as giant Indians (#46), tiny Indians (#54), dinosaurs (#58), apes (#61), more giant Indians (#64), sea monsters (#67), giant robot Indians (#70), caveman Indians (#71), more dinosaurs (#74), even more giant Indians (#75), alien Indians (!) (#79), Miss Liberty (#81), yet more dinosaurs (#82), giant apes (#86), etc., and we’re just up to 1963 at this point.  One gets the sense that if they just put out an issue with giant alien Indian dinosaur-apes in it, it would be The Ultimate Silver Age Tomahawk Issue. (Tomahawk is an interesting series to track the Golden, Silver and Bronze Age styles with, as I’ll touch on when I get to the Bronze Age period.)

While World’s Finest often had Superman and Batman appearing in individual stories, despite the covers showing them together, the series started having them in team-ups only with World’s Finest Comics #71 (July 1954), which makes a nice starting point.

This ends Part One of my DC Silver Age scheme; more to follow!

The way I basically handle arranging my Golden Age comics (which are virtually all reprints and archive editions), since there’s no real continuity to speak of in Golden Age comics, is happily jumble all of them together (regardless of company) in rough chronological order, i.e., if a Wonder Woman archive volume starts with comics from May 1943, and a Marvel Mystery Comics archive starts with comics from June 1943, they’ll be in that order.  While there were some early Superboy comics during this era, they weren’t quite the same as in the Silver Age, when they were used to set up (or be later prequels to) events and characters in Superman’s life, and there wasn’t much in the way of, say, Western characters time-travelling to the present to team up with anyone (which, again, happened later).  There was, still, some artistic growth/change and development during this period, so I think that having these in chronological order is a pleasing way to read them.  Your own mileage, of course, may vary.  :)

THE SYSTEM

In my previous post, I explained how I didn’t like trying to make all of my comics from Marvel or DC fit together, as the array of diverse approaches to not only continuity but characterization felt jarring to me as a reader, as well as the sense that various stories by various writers would often be retconned away or just plain ignored, and a general sense of reader dissatisfaction when trying to put them all together. With that in mind, let us proceed to the next step.

So: If I was to come up with a system that would allow for (1) a sense of satisfying closure, (2) a consistent sense of character “voice,” (3) various authors’ ideas to stand mainly on their own within (4) a “shared universe” framework whose (5) plot-beats and events aren’t always undermined by later retcons and events undoing major past events… how to proceed?

For some time I experimented with different approaches, such as by sorting things completely by writers – for example, all of James Robinson’s DC stories (not only Starman but Legends of the Dark Knight and the like) would make up a Robinsonverse, and all of Alan Moore’s DC stories would be a Mooreverse, etc. But what to do with crossovers or continuity-altering events? Or the sparse (five or less, I think) number of stories by Alan Brennert, which while (in my opinion) excellent, are hardly enough to make up a Brennertverse? And then I noticed that often – not always – the creative teams on various titles changed when the editorial tone across the lines did, which often (again, not always) would also coincide with a new spate of big events and retcons, and suddenly it hit me.

What I came up with was this: Divide the comics that DC and Marvel have published into different universes or continuities based primarily on publishing eras. Now, by “universes” or “continuities,” I don’t strictly mean things like DC’s Earth-One and Earth-Two, or Marvel’s Earth-616 and, say, Age of Apocalypse; a Silver-Age story involving an Earth-One/Earth-Two crossover, in my scheme, would be in a separate continuum from one written in, say, 1982, as would a similar pair of Marvel stories involving the Avengers fighting the Squadron Supreme. Stories set in a semi-apocalyptic future written in, say, 1974, would not have to be forced to fit the visions of the future written circa 1961 or the cyberpunk 1985. (Of course, there have usually been retcons of one or another kind dealing with this at both companies, but it leaves a hollow taste in my mouth to have read someone’s years-long future epic only to have it deleted by some one-shot event. One exception to this could be the Dystopic Future Which Must Be Averted, like Days of Future Past, but that deserves its own column, so stay tuned.)

What this means is, for example, the DC Silver Age stories (more or less bright and heroic, albeit a bit simplistic) are treated as being in a different universe/continuity altogether from the Bronze Age or Iron Age stories. Marvel’s stories from the mid-1970s (whether set in the past, like Invaders, the then-present, or the future, like Killraven) are on one “Earth,” while the 1990s stories (Untold Tales of Spider-Man and the “minus one” issues across the line from the past, the then-present, and stories set in the future (which here is a special case, more on that later)) are on another.

This scheme allows for satisfying closure – because often (though not always) there have usually been some array of stories set in whatever future was imagined during the time those books were written. Character “voice” does not vary very much over a period of a few years, usually. Various writers’ runs on different titles can be kept within one framework, usually, and while there may be retcons during a particular period which undo stories written in the last few years (for example, the return of Jean Grey after the death of Phoenix), they are much fewer than between longer periods.

How does this generally get divided up? Here’s a basic list of the eras I’ve devised so far, with some exceptions that will come later (for instance, I have the Universe X material all on its own).

First, we have the Golden Age. This was more or less a period in which there just wasn’t a lot of focus on continuity, at least when compared with what came out later. I’m perfectly happy to lump all Golden Age comics (pretty much up through the mid-1950s) together. Sure, there was the Powerstone storyline in the Superman books, the Monster Society storyline in the Captain Marvel books, and references to past meetings between the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, but even compared with the Silver Age, things were almost continuity-free. There was a Superboy title, but characters or events in it would not be reflected or referenced in the Superman books, unlike later in the Silver Age (such as the Kryptonite Kid/Man, Master/Mr. Mxyzptlk, Bizarro, and so on – especially the Legion of Super-Heroes).

At DC, at this point, up until Crisis, I postulate three distinct ages: the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age. This is more or less a division we’re already familiar with, although some would put them all together, some would leave out the distinction between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and so on, but this is my scheme and it works for me; your own mileage may vary. This is for reading enjoyment purposes, remember, and different folks have different tastes.

In this setup, Silver includes the JLA, the invention of Earth-Two, and pretty much all of the jet-age elements from the mid-1950s up till at least near the end of the 1960s. Other than the Legion and occasional “imaginary stories” there’s not a lot of “future history” here.

Bronze is when things really start changing. DC’s books, especially those written by Denny O'Neil or drawn by Neal Adams, start exploring social consciousness, “relevant” themes, more fallible heroes and the like. I have also noticed that there is often a clear “before” and “after” moment in each title between Silver and Bronze Age, and once that line is crossed, then things never go back to the way they were before. There might be a sort of “camp” involved, but it’s a very different kind of camp, more of an over-the-top self-conscious attempt at being “socially relevant,” than the 1960s. While the exact line varies from book to book, the moment of change is generally between 1969 and 1971.

Iron I put almost precisely at the beginning of 1976 and continuing up until a couple of years before Crisis on Infinite Earths, depending on the series. The social-awareness focus calms down a bit, with a lot more focus on characterization, multi-issue plotlines, relationships between characters, and continuity history.

And then there’s Crisis on Infinite Earths itself. For a long time I thought of the Iron Age as concluding with Crisis, but there are problems with that that I’ll address later. Basically I put Crisis and those issues which lead into it, plus some others, in as a prelude to the first few years of the combined Earth, which one source (the Infinite Atlas) calls Earth-Sigma, or Earth-Σ, the Greek letter sigma meaning “sum.” However, I differ from that in that I only have Earth-Sigma lasting for a few years, up till about 1989/1990/1991 (depending on the series). Why? Because after that, there was an exodus of post-Crisis creators from those books, and things in DC’s bright new continuity started changing in other ways (most notably, Hawkman’s entire history). In here goes John Byrne’s Superman, George Perez’ Wonder Woman, everything up until Invasion, Roy Thomas’ Young All-Stars, Secret Origins, and Paul Levitz’ post-Crisis Legion.

Hence the next era I call Earth-Delta, or Earth-Δ, the Greek letter delta meaning “change.” In here goes Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, the “Five Years Later” Legion, and all the alterations in continuity which drove many fanboys (including me) nuts, all the way up to Zero Hour, including the confusing reboot of Hawkman and the restoration to life of Dian Belmont in Sandman Mystery Theatre.

Earth-0 goes all the way from Zero Hour up to The Kingdom and the introduction of Hypertime. It includes James Robinson’s Starman, probably a sizable amount of The Golden Age, various miniseries focusing on historical periods such as The Kents, the rebooted Legion, and DC One Million.

Earth-K (for Kingdom) is a rather quirky, experimental period from The Kingdom up till shortly before the current era. This was a period in which DC appeared to be trying to bring back various concepts, especially updated Silver Age ideas. We started seeing a Silver-Age-style Krypton, Krypto the Superdog, Kara Zor-El in “Many Happy Returns” in Peter David’s Supergirl, and some lighter (or even trippy) crossover events like JLApe and Sins of Youth.

Now, these last three could conceivably all fit together, with very little tweaking, to make one world; I wouldn’t include Earth-Sigma in it, though, as that seems to be a nice little world on its own, but one could conceivably include with some minor tweaking and explain any retcons away via Zero Hour.

Earth-Omega, or Earth-Ω, includes the prelude to Infinite Crisis, Infinite Crisis itself, 52, Final Crisis, and everything DC is doing now. The Greek letter omega works nicely, as it ties together the five and the two from 52 (5 + 2 = Ω), the omega symbolism in Final Crisis itself, and so on. I also include in here various stories that came out after Flashpoint but which don’t seem to fit into the New 52, like many stories in Adventures of Superman, Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman, and Legends of the Dark Knight, along with Bloodspell GN, etc. In here I also place Grant Morrison’s run on Batman which leads up to the death of Damian, because I feel it really works best as one big storyline, and nothing in it requires that it can’t be set here. I’m also quite happy to consider Convergence and Multiversity as part of this world, for the most part, as the writer of Convergence specifically said that the various worlds seen in it, despite some confusing imagery in the final issue, are still out there doing just fine, including the married Clark and Lois and their new baby, etc. I even am happy to put the “pre-Crisis Earth-2″ Convergence stories which lead up to Justice Society Infinity (which is part of one Earth in this world) as the backstory of the Justice Society Infinity we saw during this period. If more stuff comes out which fits here, I may put it in this world.

Earth-N is basically DC’s New 52 universe. I would bring DC’s last continuity to a close with, of course, everything before Flashpoint (apart from those things which specifically lead into it, mainly the recent Flash series and possibly Time Masters: Vanishing Point), and the new post-Flashpoint DCU as Earth-N.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, we have ages I pretty much tie to changes in editors.

Earth-L (for Stan Lee) includes all of Marvel up until around 1972. We have the explosion of the Marvel Age itself, and the whole “Marvel style.” ‘Nuff said (for now). The characters actually aged in real time back then, too.

Earth-T (for Roy Thomas) includes not only Roy’s tenure as editor but Archie Goodwin’s and such up until the time of Jim Shooter. Here we have more of a firm chronology stretching back to Kull and Conan, through the mid-1970s Sgt. Fury and the Invaders, the new X-Men up till around the time Phoenix saved the universe, and a future which arguably goes from Deathlok in the then-future of 1984 to Killraven in the 21st century and later the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Earth-S (for Jim Shooter) covers Jim’s reign from 1978 to 1987. It of course includes the Dark Phoenix Saga, Secret Wars I and II, and so on.

Earth-D (for Tom DeFalco) includes Tom’s reign and that of Bob Harras, etc., until Joe Quesada came in. It includes Untold Tales of Spider-Man, Marvel: The Lost Generation, X-Men: The Hidden Years, all of the 1990s, and interestingly (in my scheme) is still going on in the MC-2 titles, notably Spider-Girl.

I’ve divided up Joe Quesada’s regime (which otherwise would have been Earth-Q) into two: Earth-J (for Bill Jemas) and Earth-B (for Dan Buckley), splitting around mid-2004 with Avengers Disassembled. On one side of the split (Earth-J) are largely an array of creators who have mostly gone over to DC: Judd Winick, Gail Simone, Grant Morrison, Mark Waid (who has since returned), and Geoff Johns; on the other (Earth-B) is pretty much current mainstream 616 Marvel. When a story is set in the past, or is continuity-free, I often just put it in Earth-J; I feel that, for example, the X-Men First Class titles (including Uncanny FC and Wolverine FC) fit better thematically with Earth-J than with Earth-B. Earth-J is also where I put X-Men: The End and GeNext, plus a few other stories set in the future (the FF 40th Wedding Anniversary one-shot, Iron Man: The End, Silver Surfer: Requiem). Earth-B, of course, includes Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, etc. I would end Earth-B with Fear Itself, Spider-Island, Children’s Crusade, and Schism, which ends a rather dark period on a high note (Scarlet Witch redeemed, mutants being born again, the X-Men school for young mutants back, Steve Rogers alive and Captain America again, and so on). Since the “era of Earth-B” mainly seemed to have grim dystopias as their alternate futures, like Old Man Logan and the like, I think closing Earth-B with “And then Logan set the school up again” ends things nicely. Since Marvel had the rights to the Conan/Red Sonja material before, with actual crossover between them and the Marvel Universe, I quite happily put Dark Horse’s Conan and Dynamite’s Red Sonja in with Earth-J, and throw in Dynamite’s ERB books for good measure, because why not? (Who knows what Mars John Carter traveled to? Maybe it was an alternate Earth’s Mars or something.)

Earth-AA is what I would call the Axel Alonso era at Marvel, and is the current one as of this writing. The question of where precisely some stories (like Spider-Girl’s crossover with Spider-Verse) might go depends on how I feel they fit best together. Very neatly, some new retellings of the characters’ origins came out with Marvel’s “Season One” hardcovers, which can help set up the new batch of stories.

In addition to these, there have been other worlds, like the Marvel Adventures continuity (Earth-M, perhaps?), and several other “universes” which I treat as their own self-contained worlds rather than appending them to one or another of the other listed worlds – X-Men Forever, X-Factor Forever, the Earth X array of series, etc. More details on all – as well as possible anomalies and where they might fit for maximum reading enjoyment – shall be forthcoming as well, of course.

Some other worlds, too, are out there–I would put Dynamite’s licensed pulp series (but not the Red Sonja or Mars ones) as Earth-P, including such books as Zorro, Green Hornet, Doc Savage, Shadow, etc.

This system is not perfect in some absolute way – indeed, I think part of what makes this work is a willingness to accept that these are, after all, fictional stories, and to read them in the most satisfying way for oneself. And, again, this is my way of reading them which I recommend as an approach, but anyone else’s mileage may vary. I think very much, for example, that a story like Avengers Disassembled or Civil War just feels like a different universe than, say, Kurt Busiek’s run on Iron Man or Geoff Johns’ run on Avengers – that Mark Waid’s Reed Richards is some sort of different character than J. Michael Straczynski’s – but someone else may feel totally differently. There are also bits and bobs that don’t wholly fit, or necessarily have to fit, in any given “universe,” though in some cases they can be made to – and either way, that’s okay. One thing on which I half-agree – but half-utterly-disagree – with some of my fellow fans is how important non-contradictory continuity is. I think my system solves most of the potential problems, but those problems are ultimately concerned with one’s own idiosyncratic reading satisfaction. The sense I have from some people – that their whole inner world will be upended if two contradictory stories can’t be made to fit together, or that a story written by some present (or future) writer will make them unable to re-read and enjoy all the prior issues in their collection – is one I don’t think very healthy (and, indeed, I speak as someone who has felt that way at times). The system I have gets around that issue entirely, and – I believe – provides a satisfying sense of closure for the different takes on the characters’ myriad adventures.

Next: The detailed saga begins in earnest!

TO START AT THE VERY BEGINNING

(This is long. You may wish to make a cup of coffee, or bake a ham or something.)

Welcome to Continuity Corner, where I shall pontificate for your unbridled amusement on everyone’s favorite topic…

CONTINUITY.

Fear not; this needn’t be as annoying or painful as it might sound. I’m not going to try to show how everything fits together into one perfect whole, with no missing puzzle pieces. In fact, quite the opposite: Some of this is will show how I came to not only tolerate, but positively exult in the myriad and oft-contradictory approaches to comics continuity the Big Two (that is, DC and Marvel) have.

When I was but a wee little fan, I always found DC’s division into Earths One, Two, Three and others fascinating. Here was one world on which the characters aged and changed over the years – that version of Superman married his Lois Lane, that Batman had a daughter, and the All-Star Super Squad was standing up to battle evil-doers in their own right. There were stories that filled in gaps and things, but there wasn’t as big a focus on changes in continuity back then. Then I discovered Marvel – which more or less (or so I thought) had one consistent world, built up from the beginning, with very different ties to its Golden Age. Marvel even had a “No-Prize” to be given to readers for explaining how an apparent mistake really wasn’t a goof after all. Everything fit together, with no pieces out of place, like a mosaic built up over decades by different artisans; that was part of the fun.

And then DC decided they needed to make their world like that one too. They merged all their Earths into one, which would from now on have only one consistent continuity. For me, it was an ideal opportunity to get in on the ground floor of a whole new (yet familiar) reality – the minty-fresh, official, now-and-forevermore origins of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman; the JSA who preceded them; the one consistent future of Hex, Booster Gold, and the Legion – all of that was one harmonious whole, one great new novel with chapters from the past, present and future being added, all of which would fit perfectly together…

Except, of course, it didn’t. There were accidental goofs early on, and within a few years, deliberate shifts which the readers didn’t have explanations for, like Hawkman. So we had Zero Hour, and now we had another brand new continuity, which of course wouldn’t have the same problems as the last – until the next time they wanted to change things, that is.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, one could still assemble a complete timeline of absolutely everything, and make it all fit. Right?

Well, not exactly, as it turned out. For one thing, the Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four comics of the 1960s had been in World War II, along with Ben Grimm (who had even been depicted in some of Marvel’s war comics as a guest star). That wound up being quietly dropped, along with other historical and cultural references.

I also started realizing some things. When I was trying to put my entire Marvel collection in precise chronological order, I started discovering that things just didn’t fit together nearly as well as I thought. I once had the notion that somewhere in Marvel’s files, there was a timeline their writers had to abide by showing when which character was doing what, so no one contradicted anyone else (I was terribly naive in those days). When I discovered that in one multi-issue Fantastic Four storyline taking place during an afternoon, the narration refers to first the end of the summer, then the beginning of autumn, then to the first flowers of spring, it was at that point that I realized things weren’t going to be quite so simple. Time was really somewhat elastic between comic series.

Perhaps more importantly, while Marvel did not have Crisis-like reality-altering events (unless they were undone at the end of the story, like Age of Apocalypse), it still had a lot of retroactive continuity events, or retcons. Sometimes writers or editors with different ideas for the characters would take over a series and almost gleefully throw out half the prior writer’s work in order to get characters to a different starting place, followed by others doing the same thing, sometimes retconning things right back. (Magneto is a good example of this, but by no means the only one.) It struck me as a tad unfair to different writers for their ideas to be thrown out the moment a new writer came on board, and there was a sense sometimes of a tug-of-war between what different writers wanted to do, or what the new editors wanted to do with the series, or even conflicts I was only dimly aware of which threw monkey wrenches into whole storylines (Rick Veitch’s Swamp Thing, the end of Armageddon 2001, etc.). And in a few cases there were other stories which seemed to exist just for the purposes of clearing up continuity conundrums – there was one Invaders annual, I believe, whose whole impetus was explaining why Captain America had the wrong-shaped shield in a time-traveling Avengers team-up from a few years before, but there was also Zero Hour.

But the feeling of the stories, not just the formal continuity shifts or retcons, also played a part. An Avengers story written in the 1960s didn’t at all feel like a 1990s story set in the same early period of the team at all – not just because of different clothing styles or the like, but the whole style of writing and characterization. And then I realized this was true with DC as well. Batman in the early 1960s, the early 1970s and the early 1980s were all on Earth-One, but read like practically different people altogether: Stories written in different periods still felt like stories from the era they were written in, rather than whenever they were set. Trying to read them all, whether DC or Marvel, in strict chronological order by when they take place, even apart from things like Crisis, just felt jarring. As DC filled out its multiply-reinvented cosmos with stories set in the past, it made this even more apparent – a 1986 story can now feel very dated, especially when it was followed up by another story taking place around the same time but written years later. They just didn’t flow. Later events, such as Hal Jordan becoming Parallax, often got stories “foreshadowing” those events as well, which of course was not reflected in the approach of other books set in the same period. So how to sort them all out best?

While this was all going on, I was also reading other literature, both for college and for pleasure. Figuring out what made a good read became more important to me. The sense of beginning, middle and satisfying closure, for characters and storylines, started becoming an issue.

And then I came up with a system which, at least for my own reading enjoyment, seemed to allow for not only that, but for a consistent sense of voice, for various authors’ ideas to stand mostly on their own, all while maintaining a satisfying “shared universe” framework that isn’t continually undermined by whatever happens down the road.

More on that next column.

*dusts everything*

*sits down in an armchair with a cup of coffee*

*smiles*

So, welcome, everyone!  I know I have been lax, but I am going to be posting again about comics continuity, and the headcanon which I find works best for me.  If you like it, please feel free to use it!

For those who don’t know, “headcanon” is basically a non-official canon used by fans of a given story “universe.”  If there was a novel or an episode or a movie in a series that you really feel didn’t fit, and you simply choose to ignore it, then you basically have your own headcanon in which that didn’t happen.

In comics, especially Marvel and DC, there have been periodic reboots, or just quietly never referring to certain events again (the former is mainly DC’s approach, and the latter is more Marvel’s approach).  So, for example, in original 1960s stories, we saw that Reed Richards and Ben Grimm were in WWII, and we even saw a story or two in Marvel’s WWII-setting comics in which a pre-Fantastic Four Ben Grimm showed up.  Later, this wasn’t so much retconned out as ignored and quietly forgotten.  Over at DC, of course, we had event like Crisis on Infinite Earths to change “official history.”  I happen to like a lot of different and contradictory stories at both companies, and a lot of different incompatible styles of stories as well, so figuring out how to make them all still “work” has been one of my goals.  What follows will be a reposting and restatement of how I do this myself, and this time I plan to actually follow through with the boundaries of each “world” in my headcanon.

Working on this in my own head and will post more later.  I plan to put at least some of this in with Earth-Omega rather than Earth-N.  Of course, now I’m wondering where to put the Multiversity and Convergence stuff in relation to each other, since both of them involve different times and dimensions.  Or even, for instance, where to put the Earth-pre-Flashpoint (what I actually call Earth-Omega in my own headcanon, because the 52 of the 52 series looks like an omega, and this world has Final Crisis in it) stories from Adventures of Superman, Legends of the Dark Knight, and Sensation Comics, and a few others (like Bloodspell) in reference to all of this.  Could Poison Ivy’s work feeding Gotham in Convergence be partly because of her encounter with Wonder Woman in Sensation #1 by Simone?  Could Damien’s being alive in Convergence be because it was before the rest of Batman, Inc.?  And so on.

Hi all!  I’m going to be focusing on comics-continuity-specific stuff here, and I hope to actually be posting again in the not too distant future.  As a quick intro, basically a lot of this is what some people call “headcanon”–in my case, the comics I treat as “canonical,” or rather, the system I came up with to allow them all to be.  Please see the very earliest posts for details on this.