There’s a great thread over at the CBR forums where fans list the unresolved plots in Marvel comics that they wish we could get some closure to, including some that I completely agree with (Hi, Silent War! Hello, Xorn in general!). Loose ends and stories that never quite work out the way they were supposed to are just one of those things that happen with serialized fiction, especially serialized fiction handled by multiple creators, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not frustrating when a plot you’re enjoying suddenly ends up cut short and never mentioned again for whatever reason.

It’s obviously not just Marvel that suffers from this; twenty-odd years – and at least one universe-wide reboot – after the series was canceled, I still wish someone would pick up the “John Stewart is a Guardian now” plot from Green Lantern: Mosaic. Sticking with Green Lantern, I wonder what, if anything, was ever planned for Lord Malvolio from the Action Comics Weekly run. There were all manner of plots hinted at at the end of Flash: Rebirth that never got picked up, more recently (The Gorilla City cave paintings, Wally’s kids, etc.) and the various multiple threads abandoned as a result of the New 52 replacing the old DCU and pulling some characters out of continuity altogether.

Of course, at least the Marvel and DC characters get to survive, or have the chance of surviving – Think about all of the truncated stories from series or entire publishers that disappeared, never to be seen again (or, at least, not in that specific incarnation): Pity the poor fans of the !mpact line from the early 1990s – the various revivals really haven’t been the same – or Eclipse or First’s characters (Not forgetting, of course, the quasi-legendary Miracleman) or any of the many, many others throughout the years. The idea of the comics limbo as seen in Grant Morrison’s Animal Man all those years ago comes to mind, when imagining all the stories and characters left incomplete out there. If you could grab one to magically bring to completion, which would it be? And why?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2011 at 11:00 am and is filed under Comic Books, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.