Asides

Re: DC shutting down web pages

I’ve been out of town all weekend, and haven’t had a chance to catch up with the whole discussion, but I have *some* info on this. About a year ago, DC shut down a Superboy website (I forget the title, but I think it was fly.to/superboy ) that had lots of unpublished stuff and images and such. They didn’t actually shut it down so much as say “you can’t have anything on this list,” and he decided that there wouldn’t be anything left of his site but an article or two (like my Les Mis page now consists of one article and a FAQ), and pulled it down completely. Last I heard he’d opened a new site based on the developing relationship between Superboy and Wonder Girl, avoiding the stuff they were complaining about.

Around the same time at least one other site, a Secret (as in Young Justice) website, got a similar letter. Actually it was an identical letter; someone had sent it to her, apparently as a mean-spirited prank, so she took her site down until she discovered that it hadn’t actually been sent by DC, then put it up again.

There may have been one other site, which I think may have been Hawkman-related, around the same time, but I don’t recall the circumstances of that one at all.

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Another poster asks if my site will be okay

I think so. The only thing I’d be worried about would be the images. The articles certainly, and probably the bios, should fall under the research/reference/review category, though I’ll have to qualify this with IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer).

Re: You Don’t Know Jack! (Flash spoilers)

So who or what is this Jack reference about? Is this some other (no not again!)hypertime version of Wally?

Hope not… things are complicated enough as it is. However, perception is built into the Hypertime concept – i.e. you can find yourself remembering an alternate timeline that you didn’t live (this would explain things like finding your shoes next to the couch when you’re absolutely certain you left them under the bed – one of your hypertime duplicates did in an alternate timeline, but you remember it anyway). Since Wally’s crossed zillions of possible timelines, it’s easy for his memory to have picked up bits from another one, just as in the past his eyes have appeared blue (like Walter’s) in other series.

Somehow, I have this feeling that they won’t be willing to keep it that simple.

On rec.arts.comics.dc.universe

Triangles

As many people have said before, the presence of a triangle does not necessarily indicate interconnection (someone mentioned LSH/Legionnaires), and interconnection does not necessarily indicate serialization (see Superman in the early days of triangles).

As an example of nonserial interconnectedness, look at the DC One Million issues of Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Resurrection Man, and one of the Superman titles (I forget which one). Plots in these four issues are quite connected, and if you want you can follow from GL through MM, Supes, and Resurrection man. But the only comic that requires you to read anything else is GL – it ends on a cliffhanger. So he’s falling to Mars at the start of MM. You don’t need to see how he got there any more than you need to see how Captain Cold got to the Central City bank. So Resurrection Man heads off to Mars at the end of Supes – you only have to read it if you want to, otherwise, you can follow Superman into DC One Million #4, which tells you anything important that you would’ve missed in Resurrection Man. Or if you want to start with RM – you don’t need to know anything from the Superman issue to follow it. The only backstory needed is in the core DC1M books and maybe the JLA issue.

In the back of each issue is a list of all the DC1M issues, *in order* (with details on that week). It’s not on the cover, but it tells you what order to read the issues you picked up. If you like reading stories about green people, and you bought everything at the end of the month (and by some miracle managed to *get* the first week of DC1M that late), you now know to read Green Lantern before you read Martian Manhunter.

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Continuity

how important is continuity?

what if someone was to write a sequel to a famous book and in the process retconned a certain aspect of the original for the sake of the sequel?

In Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 (the book), the monolith is found orbiting Saturn. In the sequel 2010, it’s around Jupiter. By the fourth book, the original mission from 2001 is said to have taken place around 2030 or so.

In Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, Malcom dies at the end. He proved such a popular character in the movie that he showed up again in The Lost World (the book), alive and well.

Larry Niven completely changed the supposed background of the Ringworld in the second book of the series – instead of being built by on character’s humanoid race with cheap matter transmutation, it was actually built by Pak Protectors with a hell of a lot of resources (though this doesn’t really count – it was background, not story, and the person was lying.)

what if in Return of the Jedi (I know – it’s a movie, but bear with me) we learn that Vader wasn’t Luke’s father, he lost his hand in a farm accident while helping his uncle many years ago and all appearances of Han Solo were actually appearances of a bounty hunter named Deckerd?

This already happened. In Star Wars, it’s explained that Luke’s father was killed by Darth Vader. In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader tells Luke he *is* his father. Until Ben confirms it in Jedi, you can assume Vader’s lying – I mean, who are you gonna believe, Darth Vader or Ben Kenobi?

(Heck, while we’re at it in movies, there’s practially zero continuity from one James Bond film (or at least actor) to the next. I don’t see that hurting the series.)

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