If you have to tell stories about how the Cap appearing in the 50s wasn't Steve Rogers and then went insane, you are jumping through hoops to create an illusion of seamless continuity. If you have to write stories to explain away things that appear in other stories (which happened all the time) your continuity isn't seamless or perfect, it's a kit-bashed illusion and a house of cards that won't survive actual scrutiny and will collapse in on it's own weight. If Reed and Ben were WWII vets how are they still operating in the 80s as youngish men? If you slide Tony Stark's origin from Vietnam to another era, your continuity is an illusion. The only way it could have been one seamless story is if the characters grew and aged with the passage of time and the next generation took over, but fans wouldn't accept that (it was tried by both companies and essentially rejected and is what people are complaining about now too). Fans was seamless one story that characters never actually grow and change in, which are basically two mutually exclusive concepts. If you move a lot of the Silver and Bronze Age stories forward in time to fit current stories taking place, simple things like the existencee of cell phones would make all of those stories illogical because plot points would be destroyed if they existed when the story took place.

You can try to kitbash it all together and say some stories count and others don't, but the simple fact you have to do that speaks to the fact it is not and never was one simple seamless story with perfect continuity. If it was perfect, it would require no adjustments, no kit-bashing, no retcon stories explaining things, etc. The fact it has those things and needs those thins to work simply points to the fact it is all an illusion with smoke and mirrors and not an inherent part of the stories themselves.

-M

I don't think we're going to agree on this. It matters to me, that's all I care about.
And I have a life, thanks.

Probably due to my uncle and WPIX, DC was pretty well ingrained into me by the time I was 6, to the point that Marvel never "felt" right to me, apart from "being there" when Byrne's X-Men and Miller's DD happened. I've since developed a appreciation (almost love) for the Marvel that existed as it was being created, but don't care for too much after Ditko and Kirby left.

As far as continuity--I love the early work to try to make stories that were created independently fit together (like PJF and the Wold-Newton Universe) but it's a lot more fun to to see a writer try to "explain" something than "fix" it.

I think the over-emphasis of continuity and the advent of the event comic combined with the rise of the direct market and loss of newsstands was the toxic cocktail that killed comics as a mass form of entertainment and left it a shell of its former self and a niche hobby industry that cannot sell a fraction of the units it used to. Desperation led to the need to market them as investments in the 90s to try to pump up failing sales and interest and that only led to more destruction of comics in the mass culture even when things like Maus and Watchmen were raising the profile of comics to a different audience, those who came looking for comics had to go to specialized outlets and had no road map of where to start. Standalone stories and comics that weren't monthly continuity-driven super-hero comics still managed to find a wider audience but larger audiences still had no interest in the monthly continuity/event driven stuff-that was hardcore die hard fan fodder only. Comics are more popular than ever now, super-heroes have emerged in the mass pop culture in a way not seen since the heydey of Superman and Captain Marvel in the 40s, but the mass audience still has no interest in the monthly continuity/event driven stuff that is the bulk of the direct market big-2 output, not even in digital or collected form. Those books only sell to diehards and speculators cruising for variants and first appearances. You can put a fresh coat of paint on it and call it a jumping on point, but at its core that type of storytelling doesn't interest that mass audience anymore (and I don't think it ever really did, the more it got emphasized, the more casual readers left comics until only the die-hards remained).

A small independent publsiher with a die hard reader base can survive, but that is not the business model that either Marvel or DC operates under any more. Both are divisions of massive entertainment companies. Their characters have recaptured a mass audience in other medium, but their publishing product has not. Rebirth is all the buzz and sales darling at the moment, but so was the new52 for the first 8-12 months before the bottom fell out, so there is a wait and see period before you can declare Rebirth a success and not just another passing fad publishing initiative-and even the increased sales under Rebirth are a pale shadow of what comics were selling as a mass form of entertainment, it's more likely it has recaptured some of the lapsed diehard base rather than found new audiences in the mass culture. Both Marvel and DC publishing have been given a lot of leeway with less than spectacular sales because of the success of the characters in other medium, but eventually someone is going to take a hard look at why the books aren't selling and what isn't working, and I think that will signal to end to the event/continuity driven monthly shared universe comic and something new will emerge form the ashes. Entertainment, mass culture, technology, the pace of life, hell the world has changed since those types of comics were in their heydey, but comics haven't changed or kept up and they will eventually have to.

I don't dislike continuity per se (I think it either needs a singular creative vision or single hand guiding it, or a strong editorial hand with creators simply being plug and play for it to work, and the latter doesn't necessarily lead to good stories in my estimation), but it should be the result of good storytelling, not the focus, not the intent, not the reason for the storytelling. The overemphasis of it has made a lot of fans happy in the short term, but done a lot of damage to the industry as whole in the long term.

We've seen both Marvel and DC take different approaches to trying to keep/maintain/preserve/market continuity-Marvel we've never rebooted, it all counts-DC we fix things with big events every so often but it's all important-and neither has kept the house of cards form collapsing in on itself in the long run. It's just not a sustainable model over the long term with diverse hands playing in the sandbox.

-M

I have read and collected many more Marvel books than DC, and as a result am I a lot more familiar with Marvel continuity and mythology than DC. But Superman will always be my favorite superhero character. I have a decent collection of Superman books, but a lot of those were acquired as an adult. As a kid, my primary interaction with Superman was via reruns of the George Reeves TV series, the Donner films, Superfriends cartoons, the Superboy live action series, and Lois and Clark series. My experience with Batman was similar. And to me, those two characters represent the broad archetypes that almost all superheroes fall under: the moral paragon (or aspiring to be) and the dark/conflicted avenger. So it's hard for me to look at any other superhero as not in some way channeling Batman or Superman. So for purely legacy and historical reasons, I give DC a lot of credit.

On the other hand, when looking at things like present-day management, business, and editorial decisions, to me Marvel is clearly the better run company. When it comes to silliness like reboots, renumbering/relaunches, event-driven books, broken continuity, variant covers, character deaths and other gimmicks, Marvel is not much better than DC -- but I do think they are marginally better. But taking into account the totality of how they run their business, including film and licensing, DC gives the impression that upper corporate level management really has no idea what they are doing. Not that everything Marvel does is great either, but at least to me, I get the impression that there is a much stronger sense of leadership and a clearer vision than over at DC.

The differences between DC & Marvel to me as a kid:

DC had fictional cities that had some "personality" to them. DC also had teen sidekicks/heroes which I LOVED. I had confidence that their heroes would do the right thing.

Marvel was more soap opera. Relationships & the secret ID was just as important as their time spent in costume. Their heroes had human failings like me.

So neither publisher could meet my "needs" in what I wanted to read about. I found I needed to read both to satisfy me. And I still love both companies for different reasons although I think they have become more similar over the years.