Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
("... the ER looks like the inside
of a charnel house; the patient is flatlining; and the priest is slouched against
the far wall, mumbling something about 'Extreme Unction'...
... but: never mind. Let's
call it a 'miracle,' anyway.")
On Watching a Train Wreck. In Slow
Motion.
(PART THREE)
For all of -- oh, say -- two, maybe three days, there: I actually managed to fool myself (and at my age, too) that at least one of The Big Two comics publishers in this country had finally seen the light.
From the December 4 issue of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.
Page Thirty-Three.
Third column.
First paragraph.
" 'No Man's Land' [the year-long, multi-title story arc currently taking place in DC's various "Bat"-titles] is but the prelude for a millennium- timed comics makeover. 'We will relaunch the entire DC line in 2000,' says Denny O'Neil, Batman's majordomo."
Upon first reading that breathless little journalistic squib -- tucked almost casually between great, honking slabs of more specifically "Bat"- oriented ephemera -- my initial, gut reaction was: "Yes! Yes -- !"
What better way (I thought) to finally reclaim the mainstream adventure comic from the frenzied, grasping clutches of the hard core fannish MeMeME brigade, and their niggling, exclusionary insistence upon storytelling sacrifices made daily to The Great Horned Demon God, "Kontinuity"?
Simply remove said foul idol from the four-color temple in the first place (my thoughts proceeded, apace), and -- as easily as that -- you've shifted the balance of power back to the writers once again! The writers, and (more importantly) the long-lost, long- neglected "newbie" and casual readers; the very ones on whose steady patronage this industry's life-blood has always been predicated! Sheer, bloody brilliance!
I had forgotten, you see.
I had forgotten precisely whom it is who (ultimately)
is running this increasingly marginal storytelling "railroad" in the
first place.
Well: said news tidbit was (obviously) the hottest online
topic in town for the next 48-to-72 hours, on every comics-related message board
and chat room worthy of the designation. I dropped in and took soundings
from (literally) dozens of these, in turn.
In each of these territories, in turn: there were scattered gas pockets of intelligent, to-the-point response regarding said matter. "Whatever it takes to ensure the survival of this genre; this medium." "We've already lost several generations worth of kids who can't find easy access into the stories. This, at least, gives them a fighting chance to do so." "I'd give damned near anything to see more kids in my comics shop, and fewer sour, dissatisfied thirty-year-olds. A brand new, from-the-beginning DC Universe would virtually guarantee that for me." "Hell, yes! Bring it on!"
... or -- as Joe Linehan so artfully reminds us, in his Tales From the Front: "DC and Marvel watch what works for each other, and Marvel has had tremendous success with their reboots."
... and: "In the old days of less continuity- conscious fans, it used to be customary for DC to reboot characters every six years or so. We've gone almost 15 without a retooling since CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS."
... and, yet again: "The millennium is approaching, and there is probably no better time to just toss out the old and bring in the new."
In other words: some folks -- to their everlasting credit; both as readers, and as thoughtful, concerned observers, re: the medium's ongoing, slow motion fiscal meltdown -- Got It.
By no stretch of the imagination -- however elasticized -- were said individuals ecstatic over the prospect of whichever comics they were presently reading and enjoying dropping off the canonical radar screen...
... but: they all did seem to realize -- to a man -- that a hale, hearty and economically viable comics industry (under whatever storytelling circumstance) is a notion infinitely preferable to that of No Comics Industry At All. Which is the situational gun barrel we're presently staring down now, obviously.
However: such sane and sober responses as these -- as gratifying as it most assuredly was to number them, and count said number a significant majority of those who posted and opined -- were, sadly, not the ones which most stand out, in unhappy memory.
The most shrill and agonized postings, re: the EW announcement -- the ones most snide; churlish; and hectoring, in tone and tenor -- were the ones which (boiled down to their locutional essence) might best be summed up as a horrified, goggle-eyed screeching of:
"... but... but: what about the continuuuiiityyyyyyyyyyyy --?!?"
[SIDE NOTE THE FIRST: To any/all of you out there, reading these words, who get all huffy and irritable and whatnot, whenever Cheeks Talks About "Continuity" Again. For every one furious, fulminating e-mail I receive from you folks, demanding that I "get over it," or what-have-you...
[... I get eight or ten missives from the pro-story bunch, in turn, saying: "Hossannah! Hossannah! Let me walk with you, O Lord!"
[So: spare yourselves the aggreived effort
from here on in. Spoilsports.] 
[SIDE NOTE THE SECOND: occasionally, I am amused --
in a black, mirthless sort of way, I mean -- by a posting, or an e-mail missive,
to the effect of: "You 'anti-continuity' types just don't 'get' it, do
you? You're always claiming that we're 'anti-kids,' or 'anti-story,' or
what-have-you. Why... the way you 'anti-continuity' lot talk, you'd
think we were all but obsessed with the stuff! That an anal-retentive
desire to play Sixty-Year Jigsaw with our comics is of greater import and gratification
to us than simply reading and enjoying A Tale Well-Told! Where do you
guys get all of this stuff, anyway?"
[Well: while I'm by no means willing to assume the mantle or the responsibilities inherent to the position of Grand Exalted Anti-Continuity Poobah; I'm simply the one with the biggest cyber- "mouth," and a site on which I enjoy regularly flapping same...
[... it's like this, fellahs: when your constant; predictable; knee-jerk response to either one of The Big Two (i.e., DC and Marvel) publicly contemplating straying so much as a single auctorial inch from the meticulously charted "True Fans Only Beyond This Point" fictive game preserve that you've painstakingly staked out, over the past several decades...
[... and when your rote, by-the-numbers spitting and snarling over any deviations -- no matter how trivial in nature; or jejune in actual consequence -- from your particular storytelling "pole star" of choice not reassuringly labeled as a " 'What If...?' story, or an "Elseworlds saga" (which are the reassuring fanboy equivalents of: "Okay. I don't absolutely have to 'fit' this one in between concurrent issues of THE POTATO SALAD SQUADRON, then. *Pheeww* -- !") renders each individual comic book as inviolable and "inerrant" as any backwoods evangelist's reading of the Holy Bible...
[... and: when your very first reaction to an announcement such as the EW one is a plaintive, desperate wail of: "Oh! Oh! Little Baby Continuity has gone and tumbled down the well! Oh! Oh! Somebody save her!", as opposed to: "Okay. Keeping this medium alive is the important thing, here. I/We have had a thoroughly enjoyable twenty years or so of hem-stitching this massive, increasingly ungainly storytelling 'quilt' together. Now it's time to let a new generation of kids have their fun. It is supposed to be their medium, after all"...
[... well, then, fellahs: I'll give it to ya straight and plain.
[That's "where we get all of that stuff, anyway."]
... or -- as comics veteran John Byrne so sagely phrased it:
"Very few (if any) of the people we see on these boards demanding 'realistically aging' characters were there in 1938, 1939, 1940, etc, when so many of these characters appeared. Heck, very few were even there in the early '60's (as readers, anyway) when the Marvel Age began. When they demand that the characters 'age realistically' they almost always mean 'since I started reading.'
"Realism, then, but only the 'correct' realism."
... and:
"And here we neatly sum up what I see as the inherent selfishness in the demands of these people that the characters 'grow and change.' Apparently they were introduced to characters they thought were pretty neat at the time -- but they do not want others to have the same pleasure. That would interfere with their own 'enjoyment' of the comics!"
... and:
"Important, too, to remember that [DC Comics'] CRISIS [ON INFINITE EARTHS]
was made 'necessary' by just this 'realistic' mentality."
I really; truly; honestly don't know how to render it in terms simpler
or more readily comprehensible to you, without resorting to finger puppets.
In any event, however: it's all rather a moot issue, at this juncture.
DC Comics, Inc. publicly recanted on the EW passage in question, seventy-two hours later.
"Denny O'Neil was misquoted," the official epistle read, in its entirety. "DC Comics, Inc. regrets any confusion this error may have caused its readers."
("... what pitiful few yet remain," I might have added.)
So: you see...?
That evil, nastybad nightmare scenario of a comics industry actually managing to, y'know, grow a pair; bite the rhetorical bullet; and stride manfully away from the piteous, heart- wrenching cries of Little Baby Continuity in that gosh-darned well of hers...?
Why: it was only a bad dream, after all.
The genre is still every bit as marginalized; anorexic; and For True Believers Only as it was the day before.
Everybody Wang Chung Tonight.
Okay. So:
Slowly; methodically... the separate skeins are beginning to knit themselves together, then.
Let's all turn to Page Four in our hymnals, my children... and follow this
particularly knotty and gnarled conversational thread to its inevitable conclusion.
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE ONE
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE TWO
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE FOUR
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE FIVE
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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