Fantastic Four

by Wayne Markley

One of the things that made Marvel Comics in the beginning, well in the Silver Age, was the strong sense of continuity the books had. You would see Spider-Man chasing a villain in the background of a Daredevil book and that scene would then appear in that month’s Spider-Man. It made all the comics feel like they were set in a real world where the impact of one action would affect everything around them. And it made you want to read the other titles that Marvel was publishing to try and get the big picture. Continuity became a comic book passion. Alas, over the years this had faded into the grim dark past of comic book history.

DC was never as good at continuity as Marvel was outside of the single character book. For example what happened in Superman may affect Superman down the road, but it was rare you would see another character just appear in the background randomly. DC certainly had the team-ups with the Brave and the Bold and the Justice League and there were occasional guest-stars, but you never had the feel that you did with Marvel comics of the 60s where everything tied together. While DC had the Silver Age Flash meet Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash, it was because they were from parallel worlds. DC would eventually have 52 different worlds. Marvel would have Sgt Fury team up with Captain America in World War II. The same world, but different time periods. This was a big difference to a fan. Over time, Marvel followed DC’s course and created numerous dimensions where other characters (such as the Squadron Supreme) would show up. But it never got to be as complicated as DC’s multiple worlds. (To be fair, I am a big fan of DCs early Multiple Worlds books and there are at least five collections of them, mostly the JLA/JSA crossovers, all of which are worth reading.)

Crisis on Infinite Earths

DC finally came to the conclusion that all the multiple worlds were too complicated for the average fan and they did an excellent maxi-series called Crisis on Infinite Earths. Within this series, Barry Allen, the Flash, died as well as a number of other characters. This was a turning point in that DC was making an attempt to clean up their continuity and streamline it. And it worked very well from a story point of view. Unfortunately, DC could not leave well enough alone and they did a new 52 week series that brought back all of the various alternate dimensions. And then there was the Final Crisis which was supposed to wrap this up and make sense of all these multiple worlds. I would argue they failed and Final Crisis made everything worse in that the story is not clear.  But if you would like to judge for yourself, which I highly encourage, there’s a very nice hardcover collection of Final Crisis and 4 trade collections of 52 which I think are much better reading than Final Crisis. In the twenty plus years between Crisis on Infinite Earth and Final Crisis, DC did a lot of tweaking and playing around with the continuity. With Zero Hour to Identity Crisis to Infinite Crisis, they have tweaked and poked their continuity to the point of almost being unreadable.

With all of these tweaks, DC has attempted, not with a lot of success, to change the main characters around. With the death of Barry Allen, Wally West took over the role of the Flash. There were complaints from the fans but they eventually accepted Wally and his own book (Flash) had a good, long run. They killed Superman and broke Batman’s back, but these were more story driven gimmicks than real changes to continuity. They then decided to make Kyle Rayner Green Lantern instead of Hal Jordan. And the beloved Hal Jordon, who has been Green Lantern for over 30 years, became a bad guy called Parallax. And then Hal became the Spectre, and then Hal once again became Green Lantern. Why? It was an attempt to bring in new and younger readers. And to mess with continuity. It was not a pretty sight. The fans never accepted Kyle as Green Lantern, as Green Lantern was Hal Jordon. Hal was not a bad guy or the avenging spirit of God, (that was Jim Corrigan). Hal was the all-American good guy. After almost 10 years, DC gave in and Hal once again became Green Lantern. And recently, the only death in comics that has meant anything, Barry Allen, was brought back as the Flash. So what was the point of the last 20 years since Crisis of Infinite Earths?

Doomwar

Now, Marvel was great at this idea of a coherent universe in the 1960s when Stan Lee wrote almost all of the books. He was able to keep track of who was appearing where and which story they appeared in and when the Avengers were in the Utah desert and might come across the Hulk. Over the years they have expanded their worlds to include a ton of alien races that are always fighting, (see the excellent Annihilation collections for a feel of their space sagas) and a number of alternative worlds. And not let’s even go into the whole time travel mess that Marvel has set up. But they are still better at telling a complicated epic story, even with ones where I felt the end was weak after a great story, such as Civil War and Secret Invasion. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as in the current stories in the Hulk books where Dr. Doom is being held prisoner by Modok and the Leader. At the same time, (to the fan reading the books, not necessarily in the continuity of the books) Dr. Doom is fighting the Doom War with Black Panther and Fantastic Four. Both of these are very good stories, but they should have been told six months apart so the same character is not in two major storylines.

Perhaps the best publisher to establish continuity and keep in almost the whole time they were publishing was Valiant. They were lead editorially by Jim Shooter, who did an excellent job of learning from the early Marvel days of having characters crossover and interact. The Valiant books were a great read and they created a whole and unified universe with vibrant and exciting characters where the lead characters did not change their personality all the time. Unfortunately, Valiant fell victim to another issue in comic books and that is catering to the collectors market and speculators and their business model counted on that. And when Jim Shooter left Valiant, they soon lost the coherent vision and faded away.

I am not all doom and gloom. I think Marvel has slowly moved back to the more coherent world with Joe Quesada being in charge and overseeing the whole Marvel Universe. And people like Brian Bendis obviously have a love for the whole world of Marvel. DC has recently changed around their leadership and has appointed Geoff Johns as creative visionary, which he has been very good at, but I do not think he should still be writing monthly books and overseeing the DC Universe. Making the DCU a coherent place once again and the books fun to read will be a full time job.

As always, thanks for reading and any comment can be posted below or sent to MFBWAY@aol.com.