canon is a strange concept
Jan. 21st, 2006 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethComics canon is a strange sort of thing.
someone can say "She's usually depicted as a short-tempered, blood-thirsty bitch, and she's not."
and theres a bunch of different ways that comment can actually be sensible.
like for characters that have their own title but get mangled out of it. or have a bad writer on theirs but make sense in teams. or pre/post reboot of some sort. or...
see? defining canon in comics is strange.
I'm back in Highlander right now and remembering how discussions only make sense if you make clear how much or what is available you're using as canon right then. I mean, just trying to explain which Highlander was married...!
My Highlander canon must leave out everything including and after The Bad Thing happened to Richie, except for the episode Indiscretions. Otherwise I have to really hate Mac and think he should be locked up in a mental hospital. Which is no fun at all.
And obviously the films before the series aren't canon. Except for the bits that got referenced in canon, like Kurgan getting killed. So, less obvious. Er...
Comics canon? Wouldn't know how to describe it. DCU, I've read all the JL after Crisis, and nothing before it, so, post-Crisis is canon. Except for Blue Beetle, where some bits from the previous company are interesting and useful.
See, those two words are key.
Interesting and useful.
If you can pull together a story from all the interesting and useful parts, yaaays.
If it contradicts the boring bits... current DC editorial staff decided that didn't matter. Many readers went grrrr. So boring and useless must be taken account of. Except that means reading it first. Or possibly reading the website of people who didn't find it boring or useless.
I'm just going to go away again without conclusions. Is too messy.
someone can say "She's usually depicted as a short-tempered, blood-thirsty bitch, and she's not."
and theres a bunch of different ways that comment can actually be sensible.
like for characters that have their own title but get mangled out of it. or have a bad writer on theirs but make sense in teams. or pre/post reboot of some sort. or...
see? defining canon in comics is strange.
I'm back in Highlander right now and remembering how discussions only make sense if you make clear how much or what is available you're using as canon right then. I mean, just trying to explain which Highlander was married...!
My Highlander canon must leave out everything including and after The Bad Thing happened to Richie, except for the episode Indiscretions. Otherwise I have to really hate Mac and think he should be locked up in a mental hospital. Which is no fun at all.
And obviously the films before the series aren't canon. Except for the bits that got referenced in canon, like Kurgan getting killed. So, less obvious. Er...
Comics canon? Wouldn't know how to describe it. DCU, I've read all the JL after Crisis, and nothing before it, so, post-Crisis is canon. Except for Blue Beetle, where some bits from the previous company are interesting and useful.
See, those two words are key.
Interesting and useful.
If you can pull together a story from all the interesting and useful parts, yaaays.
If it contradicts the boring bits... current DC editorial staff decided that didn't matter. Many readers went grrrr. So boring and useless must be taken account of. Except that means reading it first. Or possibly reading the website of people who didn't find it boring or useless.
I'm just going to go away again without conclusions. Is too messy.