Case (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomsecrets2013-02-24 03:21 pm
case) wrote in fandomsecrets2013-02-24 03:21 pm
[ SECRET POST #2245
⌈ Secret Post #2245 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 098 secrets from Secret Submission Post #321.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 2 3 4 - come on, troll with a little more subtlety ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
tl;dr but this may help if you're interested in the old continuity
Both approaches start off the same: pick a superhero to be your central focus. In my case, Batman, though Superman would work just as well. Both these characters serve as the backbone of the DCU, and much of what went on throughout 25 years of continuity involved them in some way. Personally, I'd recommend against Superman, because he doesn't really start to get interesting until the 2000s.
The first approach is to find a "recommended reading list" -- to go with my example, Batman has several torrents with collected material. This is almost exclusively going to be focused on that particular hero, and it's going to mostly ignore the ongoing monthly storyline in favor of big events and "best issues." It doesn't really care about canon, so you'll see stuff like The Dark Knight Returns. If you're just looking to get into a hero casually this is a good place to start, and it's how I operated for quite some time.
The second approach is to find a character chronology, and follow that. This is a more involved method, because it means you're effectively following the character through the rest of DC continuity and reading the character's monthlies no matter how bad they get (Doug Moench/Kelly Jones made reading the "Batman" monthly almost excruciating for a period of time in the mid to late 90s.) In other words, it's like being a faithful comics reader, but you're doing it at the pace you can read the comics rather than in the span of years, since the comics are already out and available to you. This has the added bonus of going through the major crossover events, everything from Legends to Blackest Night. I say "bonus" not because these events are good (many of them are not, early-90s shitshow Bloodlines being probably the worst) but because they serve as gateways into getting into other characters, like I probably never would've gotten into Justice League International (the best Justice League) if not for the somewhat interesting Legends event, and if not for JLI, I never would've become a fan of Guy Gardner, and if not for Guy Gardner I never would've gotten into Green Lantern and become a fan of Kyle Rayner.
* If you don't know, Green Lantern is a position rather than a single superhero, and the old continuity had 4 humans wearing the ring: Hal Jordan the White Wonder, Guy Gardner the Asshole Lantern, John Stewart the Black Architect, and Kyle Rayner the Funny Artist. For a while the Lanterns ceased to exist as an organization following the Emerald Twilight arc and Kyle was the sole Green Lantern for many, many years.
Re: tl;dr but this may help if you're interested in the old continuity
"Well, his children like to have sex with each other, so it's just a family that's fucked up in the head all around."
Reply "You're probably thinking of the Ultimate version."
Reply "I don't think that makes my point any less valid. :-)"
Reply "Sure it does. It's like saying what the movie version does affects who the 616 version is."
Reply "Well, the whole point of the Ultimate Universe (with the exception of Ultimate Spiderman) was to be as extreme and over-the-top as possible. Or at least it looks that way in retrospect. So it's not only a different continuity, but one that's intentionally doing fucked-up stuff like that."
Does that conversation mean that comics books have like...a main story line I can follow, with "AU Comic Storylines" or is each new storyline a "Reboot" and there isn't really a true story for each character?
How do people choose what is considered Essential Reading. Like, why is Plot 1 story for Batman valid but Plot 2 story isn't?
Re: tl;dr but this may help if you're interested in the old continuity
(Anonymous) 2013-02-24 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)Marvel has different universes. You don't need to read any Ultimate stuff to read Main Universe (616) stuff, and vice-versa. They're completely independent. And yes, you can read a character in 616 happily in order - some stuff is retconned but the stuff that isn't is all part of his or her history. If you'd like some help, there's this amazing site: http://cmro.travis-starnes.com/
But it's for those who want to start at the very beginning of a character or series. You can just pick lists of essential storylines around the web - they're usually focused on this century's stuff.
Re: tl;dr but this may help if you're interested in the old continuity
(Anonymous) 2013-02-24 11:53 pm (UTC)(link)Re: tl;dr but this may help if you're interested in the old continuity
DC is more straightforward. Post-Crisis DC continuity -- 1986-2011 -- follows a set series of events. Characters in books written in the 2000s still reference the Invasion event from the late 80s, for example. Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, all the others, all operate in the same continuity with each other, and often will work together (Justice League, for example.)
That being said, there are many, many books, usually one-shots or minis, that are considered non-canon. Some of these are explicitly and obviously AUs, marked by the "Elseworlds" symbol on the cover, such as a film noir Batman AU set in the 1940s. (While predating the Elseworlds concept, The Dark Knight Returns is also AU, but it's part of Frank Miller's All Star Batman and Robin continuity which is best ignored. The only part of Frank's canon that also applies to mainstream post-Crisis continuity is Batman: Year One.) Not everything will be marked as such, but will be obviously non-canon due to being an inter-company crossover (Green Lantern vs. Aliens, for example) or due to obvious conflicts from established canon.
Sometimes DC will fold a deliberately non-canon work into canon (Superman: Birthright was briefly canon despite the havoc it wreaked on some 20 years of established canon, only to be booted out of canon again three years later.) Perhaps most famously though is Batman: The Killing Joke, which, aside from telling a possible Joker origin, saw Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl) shot and crippled (and implied to have been raped) by the Joker. Alan Moore never intended for it to be canon, but the story proved popular enough that it was folded in anyway. Whether this is good or bad depends on whether you like Barbara more as Batgirl, or more as the superhero icon for disabled folk named Oracle.
Crisis on Infinite Earths, while serving as the beginning of the new continuity, brought to a close the stories of the old continuity. The Superman of the 60s and 70s is not the same Superman of the late 80s and 90s and 00s -- and, indeed, Alan Moore wrapped up Silver Age Supes' tale in a book titled Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?
With regards to your second question: It does seem arbitrary at times. I remember when The Dark Knight Returns was considered the pinnacle of Batman books (and at the time it was written, it was sort of meant to be the Batman equivalent of Whatever Happened.) But I picked it up a little while ago and flipped through it and my god it hasn't aged well. However -- comics fandom has been around a long time, and most of the "recommended reading" lists you find will generally have some sort of consensus on what's worth reading. The shorter lists will mostly consist of mini-series and oneshots; the longer lists will pick out "best single issues" (such as Batman #424, "The Diplomat's Son") or major arcs (No Man's Land for example.) I wrote up my own recommended reading list a while back for F!S, I should dig that up and update it and post it again.