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The established facts and patterns of the shared world is an emergent phenomena we call continuity. You can’t read mainstream superhero comics for long before butting heading with its omnipresent spectre. Nowadays, DC seems to go in for a sort of gonzo-continuity, a subjective mashup of whatever bits and pieces from comics, film, or tv adaptations happens to suite the story at the time of writing. It doesn’t suit everybody and DC is certainly aware of the different levels of canonicity.
So, it was as a DC fan that I read Wired’s interview with Leland Chee with more than a touch of envy.
To Star Wars fans, Chee is the Keeper of the Holocron, arguably the leading expert on everything that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. His official title is continuity database administrator for the Lucas Licensing arm of Lucasfilm—which means Chee keeps meticulous track of not just the six live-action movies but also cartoons, TV specials, scores of videogames and reference books, and hundreds of novels and comics.
To Lucasfilm continuity is something that ties together all the incarnations of their characters – every appearance, every cartoon, book, and action figures explicitly follows the adventures of a single universe. It’s a resource that they actively exploit. New novels aren’t just some forgettable digression they’re explicitly part of the same total narrative – you have to read them as they’ll affect the future of your favourite characters.
DC could really learn something from this – narrative continuity across media drives sales. The audiences for comic books are dwindling, but interest in these characters remains. To make that work they would have to wrench control of their Universe away from a small group of comics editors and executives and hand it over the the licensing department and somebody like Chee. They’d still be in strategic control, but would have to honour developments from the novels division or the computer games licenses. Alternative DC editorial is going to have to turn into a pure licensing department, but one that produces comic books in its spare time.
I’m glad that DC appears to have opened up to the idea of “buffet style” continuity. I think way too much has happened for everything to “count”. What about the already published contradictory stories? At one point does it become impossible to compress Superman’s publishing history into a career approximate to a man of his age? Stick to the essentials (“doomed planet, desperate scientists, last hope, kindly couple”), preserve the best stories and ideas, and take whatever you need to write a good story.
One of my old arguments is that a single, solid, managed continuity actually makes it easier to understand stories. People don’t have to remember which permutation of Superman’s career they’re reading when there is only one clearly defined canon. Such a thing also makes it easier for new or casual readers to dip in and out without the shape of the world completely changing between each visit.
An example: The DC Online game which, as they’ve hinted, may well be tied into the comic book continuity. The development work on the game – city models, character designs – is certainly going to feed back into the comics. It could potentially have many times more users than there are readers of DC comics (for comparison City of Heroes has had over 32 million characters created) . Those people are going to want to buy merchandise (figures, guides, maps, statues, mouse mats, etc) based on the game designs and not necessarily on what’s current in the comics. And a single canon across both comics and the game will allow for the easy transformation of games players into comics readers.
A single well-handled and managed canon can create new opportunities to move product and by tying different platforms together it will create a greater brand loyalty. I certainly don’t think that a single canon inherently produces better stories than under buffet- or gonzo-continuity, but I do think it makes better commercial sense on DC’s part.