As you know, I'm not a native English speaker and I don't have many opportunities to practice. If you ever see any grammatical errors in my posts, please don't hesitate to point them out!

That's my point / concern; until COIE, much of DC was not a "universe", but was as random as comedy strips from the 40s--things just "happened" with no structure or continuity, and the creatives just piled tons of earth on that seldom-creative, barely coherent grave.

About post-COIE, Wolfman & Perez created the perfect structure and guidebook for DC going forward with the History of the D.C. Universe miniseries, but--as we all know--it was followed in sporadic fashion at no fault of the COIE creators.

Wolfman and Perez brought long, desperately-needed sense and clarity to DC's creations, but it appeared DC always had some inherent need to follow great, landmark work with acts of creative bankruptcy, such as a strong, early Golden Age start, followed by the childish antics seen in too many late Golden Age superhero books. In other words, if something is great, do not build on it, but ram it into a grave and pile the dirt on.

I don't have problems with stuff like that being "in continuity". In the end, readers were supposed to stick around for 5 years and then leave the title (in the old days). So repetition and various questions are not that important and a strong editor could just prevent the "problematic" stuff from ever reappearing. Of course, now in the age of 50 year old comic book readers and internet stuff like that would never go away. But in 1987?!

But characterizations have always varied. With many different authors this is not avoidable. We see how different Batman was in early post-crisis days. In the 70s, Bob Haney's take on Batman was very different from let's say Frank Robbin's. Moench/Conway's pre-crisis Batman very different from Barr's.

I really think the history of approaches to continuity goes a little like this:


1930s and 1940s: Even yesterday didn't count. Nor does the second story at the back of this book. Just enjoy a little more time with your character, and maybe we'll bring the villain back and reference this story again if you like them enough.

1950s: Some things count. Recurring villains and allies really excite the reader, so past adventures get referenced from time to time.

1960s: Depends entirely on who's editing.

1970s: Okay, everything before the 1970s kind of happened, but let's reference it all as little as possible. Comics have grown up, and those earlier stories are embarrassing.

1980s: EVERYTHING happened unless you reboot the universe.

1990s and 2000s: Okay, this happened, but this didn't, and this was out of continuity until it was brought back in by this event, but that event also removed this other thing from continuity. Confused? Just wait two months for the next soft reboot.

2010s and 2020s: Even if it was out of continuity, we're going to bring it back for nostalgia's sake.



We're dealing with 80+ years of continuity for characters who are supposed to be in their twenties. There is no way to make it work without regular hard reboots, but we're also selling to older fans who remember and miss those pre-reboot stories, so those stories have to eventually reenter the fold anyway.

There just isn't a right way to do this. Comic book characters and universes were not written to last forever.

Well there is no continuity in the Disney universe unless you're talking Carl Barks and Don Rosa. I can't tell you how many times Donald and the triplets met the Loch Ness monster for the first time by this point. I think we're more relaxed about Disney comics, though, because (unfortunately) they are taken less seriously. I've heard that's begun to change in Europe over the past few decades, but not in the US.

Fascinating to know! I love Disney comics, but I've only ever experienced those that have been translated into English, so it all seems like a continuity jumble to me. My favorite Disney creator is Casty, but the vast majority of his work has never been translated into English.