Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort wrestles with the complexities of the passage of time in comics, and then proceeds to blow our fragile little minds with Captain America’s sliding timeline:
… Worse still is what the passing of time does to characters who are rooted into a specific event in history. Captain America, at least, has a built-in get-out-of-jail-free card, in that he was in suspended animation since World War II. But because of the sliding timescale (Cap himself is only in his thirties, and has only been Captain America for twelve years or so) this means that Cap was unfrozen when Bill Clinton was President — which can really mess with your mind if you think about it too much.
Steve Rogers was thawed during the Clinton administration? Maybe that’s why The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, tongue planted in cheek, contends Cap is “in fact an America-hating liberal.”
Okay, that’s not why. But it’s a good segue into his response to writer Ed Brubaker’s recent interview with Wired.com.
September 26th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Well that’s dumb: in a few years he’ll have been thawed out during Bush Jr’s presidency.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Continuity is an example of what is great and terrible about comics. No other medium has the same issue — perhaps only “I Love Lucy” came close, as its TV run spanned decades.
DC and Marvel have two different ways of embracing continuity. Consider what the original “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and the more recent “Amazing Spider Man” set out to do: reset continuity to make subsequent comics more relevant to the increasingly diverse comic book audience.
Hmmm…imagine Ayn Rand and Ed Brubaker writing parallel Captain America series. Talk about “red” and “blue” states!!
September 26th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I tackled this very issue after reading a spate of comics featuring U.S. presidents:
http://www.popgoestheicon.com/2008/06/shooting-from-hip-comic-books-and.html
It really makes it tough to appreciate these things when the continuity keeps getting stretched and bent this way …
September 26th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
I think the comic book world would be so much better off if Brevoort would just S**U.
September 26th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
I still wonder what will become of both Steve Rogers/Cap (assuming that Steve will indeed return from the dead) AND Magneto. I think Magneto’s a tougher call, since Steve at least has the “frozen in time angle” to work off of. I would think that, eventually, you’d almost have to kill both Steve (perhaps he won’t come back? Nah!) and Eric off for good. But then, what about the other Marvel mainstays that have known or fought with Cap and Magneto?
Marvel’s attempts to place their characters in the “real world” to some extent is a problem, for those who care about such things. I never felt like 9/11 should’ve actually happened in the 616, as touching as the tributes that resulted from it may have been, and I don’t think any of the real-life Presidents should ever be represented in the books either (as Bush was awhile back).
I liked what Stan & Co. did in the early 70’s, with the whole CREEP thing. It was strongly hinted that it was Nixon, but they never actually named the commander-in-thief as Nixon so far as I know (If I’m wrong about that, feel free to correct me).
Wait… There’s a simple solution to all of this! Best of all, Marvel wouldn’t “have to explain it.”
September 26th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I Love Lucy ran for “decades”? Really? I know it was popular, but I didn’t think it ran beyond the 50’s…
I just checked IMDB. They say I Love Lucy ran from 1951-57 (181 episodes in all). Lucille Ball had the unrelated The Lucy Show in the 60’s though.
A better example would probably be Gunsmoke, which ran an astounding 20 years (1955-75, according to IMDB), or better still… The Simpsons. The actual series began in 1989 and is still going strong, of course.
I love that The Simpsons really doesn’t give a rat’s ass about continuity, especially when it comes to the annual Halloween episodes, although there is a certain amount of it on the show. Sometimes they even poke fun at themselves (and geeks like us), pointing out when they’re breaking it.