Problem with Sliding Time and the Status Quo in Comics

*Originally published on 12/11/09



Comics are a serial medium. As such, the stories span decades in real time. Because a new issue is released every month, obviously there has to be some flexibility. Unlike television shows, one year in real time can't equal a year in comic time. Sure, they did that with 52 but that was the exception. More often than not comics work on a "sliding time" scale. For example, it's only been a few years since the Crisis on Infinite Earths while the event is almost thirty years old.

I understand the need for some flexibility with the timeline, however a consistent conversion rate would be nice. It doesn't help when some characters age and grow older while everyone else stays the same. Dick Grayson grew up into a young adult and yet Bruce is about the same age, how does that work exactly? A little consistency is all I'm asking for. How about every five real years equals one comic year? Maybe more time would be needed, but a straight formula would be helpful. As it is, comics are kind of frozen where they are and it's very hard to have characters grow and evolve when you have them stuck in the same state all the time.

The status quo is a double edged sword. Major events always promise to shake up the status quo so that nothing will ever be the same, and yet inevitably everything goes back to the way it was. It's a comforting thought sometimes, when some inept writer is absolutely ruining the character and everything he or she stands for, you can roll your eyes and just wait it out until it's all retconned and erased from canon.

This becomes a problem however when even good ideas that could explore a new area get pushed aside. Take for instance, Two-Face. After Infinite Crisis, he had managed to subdue his darker half, he got surgery to restore his appearance and acted as Gotham's vigilante while the Dark Knight was off finding himself. That was a kind of cool idea. I wanted to see that. Sadly, the first story arc that took place after the one year jump had Harvey's dark half return. Harvey poured acid on his own face and all was as it was.

During Paul Dini's run on Detective Comics, Ed Nygma aka The Riddler reformed and became a sort of sleazy private eye for hire. It was an interesting twist and it put his great intellect to good use. While he was working alongside Batman, the Dark Knight was still vexed and suspicious of Nygma. Rather than let Dini take the character in the direction he had planned, the arc was aborted and Nygma is once again a scheming over the top evil villain.

The other big serial medium is soap operas. Like comics, they've been going on for decades and yet there things change. I find it kind of hard to imagine being a viewer from the beginning and sticking with it to the point where none of the original characters are there anymore.

Due to the iconography of many of the characters, nothing will change. Bruce Wayne will always be Batman, Steve Rogers will always be Captain America (though in both cases the sidekick did a pretty good job of stepping up and filling in the role).

Even with legacy characters, the status quo seems to be restored on a regular basis. Many who were upset with the way Hal Jordan went out just thought to themselves that he would come back eventually and he did. While Wally West acted as the Flash for quite some time, Barry Allen recently returned.

DC compounds the problem by having all of these reality warping events. I know why they do it, they need an excuse to hit the reset button and keep the characters where they are, but after decades, all of these events pile up and it makes it very hard for new readers to pick up. While Marvel restores the status quo just as much, they tend to keep the timeline intact.

With some characters it gets to the point where readers are lost by the time they get through the origin story. I'm not joking, a vast majority of Donna Troy's existence is trying to explain who she is and where she came from. Hawkman also hasn't fared very well as his many origin stories conflict with each other leading to a mess.

I think comics need to let go of the status quo (hey that rhymed!). Take the soap opera approach and just move forward. If you want to tell new stories with old characters you could always release peripheral series like JLA Classified or Legends of the Dark Knight to keep the icons fresh in readers minds. As those series are usually only loosely tied to mainstream continuity, it will give writers a bit more flexibility as far as what they want to do with the story.

One of the running jokes is that nobody stays dead in comics with the exception of the Waynes, Jason Todd (who came back, Bucky (who came back, and Uncle Ben (who came back...sort of). When characters die, nobody cares. OK, when Captain America died it drew a lot of press but we all knew that it wasn't going to stick. When Superman died, we knew it wasn't going to stick and whenever Jean Grey dies we know it won't stick. Oddly enough, when Jean comes back to life we know that that won't stick either so she's an interesting case. Death occurs, and is undone, so frequently in comics that when someone dies we just shrug and wonder how long it will be before we see them again.

Some comic fans have brought forth the idea of ditching the "mainstream" continuity entirely for just telling self contained stories. I can see the appeal of that, but I rather like the idea of a main universe. I like when events kind of build on each other and things actually have an impact. With trades becoming fairly easy to find, and inexpensive for the most part, it makes it a lot easier to play catch up.

If you're going to have a continuous timeline, take advantage of it and move things forward.