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Last week, DC Comics put out Batman 644, the conclusion of the War Crimes storyline. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
(For those of you lucky to have no idea what I'm talking about... Bill Willingham wrote an issue wherein Leslie Thompson - a doctor who was steadily characterized as a pacifist for decades - was suddenly revealed to have murdered one of Batman's sidekicks. Other people have already written about the nearly impossible stupidity levels on the storytelling, stoyteller, and meta levels, so I'll just take that as read.)
My first reaction after reading it was fairly predictable: a goodly helping of Oh, bitch, you didn't, and Well, that certainly didn't happen. My second reaction was to open Photoshop and, well, *retcon* it.
It was very therapeutic. But also very strange because, in my brain, the Leslie-Bruce confrontation I threw together gets waaay more canon points than what Willingham put out, which gets none. Despite, you know, actually being canon.
I was thinking a little bit about that, because I still don't understand the Harry Potter fans who got upset after The Half Blood Prince came out and announced that it was a diverting read, thank you, but totally unacceptable as canon and everyone ought to continue as if it was never published. And I'm sure I'd love you guys if I knew you better, really, and I'm glad you're happy in your little AU bubbles... but that doesn't make you less delusional. The characters are JK Rowling's, and she can do with them as she pleases.*
And I think that, right there, is the problem. For something like the DCU, which is complicated and has very little immutable history and has creative minds in charge who grew up as fans themselves... who exactly owns the characters? (No, I'm not talking copyright here.) Bob Kane "invented" Batman in 1939 - but hundreds of writers, artists and editors have worked with character since. Some of them have left more of a lasting impression on the characters than others, but I challenge anyone to point to one person - or two, or three - who are totally and solely responsible for his development up to now. Or who will be totally and solely responsible from this moment on.
It's impossible, even ignoring the movies and the cartoons and the influential out-of-continuity stories and that there's a lot more feedback between the fans and creators of comics than in most other mediums. So whose characters are they? Who has the right to fuck the DCU around?
Well, it sure as hell isn't Willingham.
And I think many things people have been shouting that I agree with - that Willingham doesn't understand or respect the characters he's writing, nor the people who he's ostensibly writing them for - stem from his inability to grasp that. These characters are not his. They did not spring into existence when he started writing them, and they do not merely exist to forward the stories he would like to tell. (If anything, it's the other way - any stories he involves them in should forward the characters.) Every writer in the Batverse comes in with his or her own interpretation of the characters, but this should be built from stuff that came before.
Leslie is not "a doctor" and Bruce is not "a rich guy who dresses up like a bat and fights for justice" and Tim Drake is not "a boy who got involved in the justice fighting for a bit" and Steph
Now personally, I like Fables, also penned by him. It's not the greatest thing going, but it's usually one of the better books I spend money on. And I'm not going to boycott that title, just because its writer is an insulting idiot who incites homicidal rage in myself and many people I like and respect. But Fables is Willingham's world, and if he decides that the major baddy is going to turn out to be Snow White, that's just fine. He'd better at least try to make me believe it, but even if he fails, it's ultimately his prerogative.
I know I'm picking on Willingham here (but wow, does he deserve it). My point wasn't actually meant to be that this guy in particular sucks, but that the DCU (and Marvelverse, I'd assume) of comics is just one big exercise in fanon, for which the original canon has long since been lost. Writers are playing with someone's interpretations of what one fan speculated about the artwork in that AU an editor suggested as a response to a story the first writer scripted.
More often than not, it works reasonably well. It's fun. And occasionally the entire fandom will get together and have a Crisis-themed ficathon, but you know it'll all blow over sooner or later and everyone will get back to their Batman/Gotham WIP and their Supergirl crack-fic and their arguments re: Lex Luthor's motivations. Because that's the way fandom is.
It's just that every once in a while some n00b starts posting the equivalent of gorilla ass-rape mpreg stories all over the place - and means them to be serious and angsty and epic - and you have to ignore them until they go away. Or, you know, mock them mercilessly. Whichever.
*IMO, as someone fairly totally outside the fandom. It may be that book and tv series and movie fandoms feel the same for other people as the DCU one does for me, but the argument that there's more of a definite *line* between canon and fanon still stands (until someone knocks it down).
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Like, maybe this whole plotline is not as it seems? I'm not tracking things closely enough to know, but is it possible that Bruce and Leslie are putting on a show? That somehow, Leslie is lying, or both of them are lying for some purpose?
Anyway, on your overall point, I agree. Writing for one of the Big Two, you gotta know these are not your characters to mess with. You step carefully, you get editorial buy-in, and you acknowledge that you are just the latest in a long series of weavers on this tale. Others will unravel things you put in place later (John Byrne, I'm looking at you - get over yourself), and you should be considerate of the ways in which you are altering the tales told before you.
To me, being a collaborative writer with respect is very hard. You have to be willing to be daring (because at this point, how many interesting Bat-stories or Superman-stories remain?), but also know that your time will pass too, and you should leave the characters intact enough for others to pick up where you left off.
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Oh, I have very little doubt that DC will eventually get around to retconning this themselves... but I also have very little doubt that Willingham didn't mean it to be what it *seems* like. If it had been another author - say Gabyrich (who did the other, actually-worth-reading half of War Crimes) - I would perhaps be willing to see what he was up to, but Willingham has consistently screwed up every Bat-title he's been on. Other highlights of 644 include Batman threatening to beat a couple police officers into the hospital because he's in a bad mood.
You have to be willing to be daring (because at this point, how many interesting Bat-stories or Superman-stories remain?), but also know that your time will pass too, and you should leave the characters intact enough for others to pick up where you left off.
*nods*
But as much I love stories with consequences and character development... there's something to be said for being able to ignore the continuity that just doesn't *work*.
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Well, it sure as hell isn't Willingham.
But, irony of ironies, it is.
DC Editorial at the highest levels greenlighted it. (Then again, right now it's about 4 guys who are dictating the current direction of the DCU and everybody gets to march to the beat of their drum, like it or not.)
DC Editorial told the writers what they wanted done (write Leslie out of the books), the writers made pitches, and they chose Bill's pitch on how to do that.
The copyright holders gave their permission. This is what THEY wanted done. This is what THEY approved of.
Can I make it any clearer?
---
And as for Willingham's temper? Well, he certainly has one, doesn't he? (As if no pro's ever flown off the handle on the internet before ....)
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Oh, I'm certainly not arguing his right to have an Anne Rice moment, if he likes. But you know if he were a fan writer, this'd be all over fandom_wank. (Actually, it is anyway. (http://www.journalfen.net/community/fandom_wank/788528.html))
The copyright holders gave their permission.
Well, obviously, or else there'd be a legal case to be amused by. My point had pretty much nothing to do with legal ownership and more to do with fandom *perceived* ownership. If you don't know what I mean, well, that's a thousand words of meta I'm not interested in writing right now, but I'm sure you can find essays on the topic if you care to look.
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Wait, what?
. . .
Wait, what?
Please tell me that's just hypothetical. That you're not serious.
I -- what.
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Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to spoil anyone....
Nah, kidding. It was totally meant as a random example of things Willingham is allowed to do to his own characters, but not to *ours*.
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On the one hand, I'm a lot mellower just in general than I used to be about fandom issues. On the other hand, though, there is a difference. With the exceptions of things like the latest run of MANHUNTER and FIRESTORM, the entire universe *is* made up of fanon. Fan-fiction written about fan-fiction written about fan-fiction and so on and so forth for generations. It's right and proper that we mix and match -- and *not* just because many of us do it better -- or even 'better' -- than the people who are paid good money to do so.
It's right and proper because that's the actual nature of the *beast*. It's a patchwork, a Frankenstein monster, a coral structure, a... *thingy*. Anyway.
There have been, actually, some shows -- or seasons of shows -- which deserve the same sort of treatment (in both positive -- lots of post S2 due South comes to mind -- and fuck-you-canon -- SG-1 fandom -- ways), but I can't help but notice that most of these shows went through major creative shake-ups before the fans started playing toss the canon around.
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Exactly. This is what anyone who plays in the DCU *has* to do... at least if they want to tell halfway legible stories and/or stay sane (which actually might explain something about many comics fans, but). A lot of the published stories are either total crap or don't work with each other, and it'd be a mistake to try to make them. It's the *characters* and the *myths* that count.
One of the
otherthings that is weird is that, One True Canon aside, sometimes you have to use different issues as your base, depending on *which* (eg) Tim story you want to tell. This is why I get confused when I try to fill out any poll on AUs. The whole of the DCU fandom is AUs. Hell, the whole of the *DCU* is AUs. Then on top of that we've got Elseworlds and Legion and, like, anything written by Loeb.And that's another reason why I shout that there's not all that much difference between the creators and the fans around here. Someone sitting down to tell a story, *their* story, doesn't often go off on a tangent and write that story's equivalent of What if Bruce was a Green Lantern? What if he was *Superman*? What if the Joker was the *good guy*?
It's fans who worry about stuff like that.
With the exceptions of things like the latest run of MANHUNTER and FIRESTORM,
*nods* That's why I was careful to talk about the *DCU* as opposed to comics in general, because otherwise I'd keep inserting, except for anything creator owned, or indy, or most of the Vertigo line, or.... And, yeah, books early enough in their run to have one or two writers fall into the same category. They haven't... diffused into the general domain yet, I guess. If thirty years from now Kate's still around as Manhunter, we might be having a different conversation (or at least different examples).
and *not* just because many of us do it better -- or even 'better' -- than the people who are paid good money to do so.
*laughs* It's so very true.
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I live in a much happier place now :)
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*goes for an innocent look, but doesn't quite make it*
I'm glad you liked it.
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Have you read Matt Hills? In Fan Cultures (2002), he tries to outline some of the qualities of fiction that he believes to be typical of texts which are likely to inspire fandom activity, or to achieve "cult status." One of the three things he identifies is auteurism, the identification of a single person who (whether accurately or not) fans can point to as responsible for the fictional world.
He also points out that sometimes, as in long-running television shows, the identity of the auteur can change over time, but that it seems somehow important to fans to have the sense that there is, so to speak, someone - some individual person - in charge.
I remember thinking when I first read that passage that it didn't really work too well as a description of comics, in which corporate-owned characters are farmed out to different artists over many years. My experience with people who do "fannish" stuff (write fanfic, play RPGs, etc.) based on comics canon is that they usually need to identify ahead of time which version of the characters and of the universe(s) they are choosing to accept as canon for purposes of the activity.
As for the upset Harry Potter fans - I'm not one of them myself, but I think that the "totally unacceptable as canon and everyone ought to continue as if it was never published" statement can make sense in some very specific situations. A small community of fanfic writers, for example, might all agree by consensus to continue to write stories "as if the last book never happened." Hey, whatever floats their boat. I do agree, however, that it would be very foolish for such a group to attempt to demand this as a universal response, rather than as a niche preference in a contained community, or to refuse to recognize that everyone else will consider their work AU.
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The further away from the auteur model you get, though, the more difficult I think it becomes to maintain the mental firewalls between "canon" and "fanon."
*nods* HP and the DCU are on two fairly extreme ends of that spectrum. JK Rowling has pretty close to *total* creative control (give or take an editor) and, as far as I can tell from skipping the outskirts of HP fandom, a story that is affected little by audience feedback. The DCU on the other hand… well, one of the reasons the canon/fanon line is so fuzzy might be the people involved.
Devin Grayson, a writer on the Bat-titles, wrote fanfic first, and publicly admits to slashing Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson in her head (although not in the text. But she does make it easy for *us*). Allan Heinberg, the writer for Young Avengers, iirc, mentioned in an interview that he’d be changing how he dealt with the characters in his title because of the way fans responded to the (fairly blatant) subtext. Mark Waid has his Legion characters reading and discussing reader mail in short “out of continuity” segments.
I could go on and on (but I won’t, ‘cause I want you to like me). But it’s fairly easy to see much of the DCU as closer to *fandom* than anything. Maybe as some kind of weird round robin, where half the writers are ignoring what the other half are doing at any given time. (A week or two after the Batman issue I lambasted above came out, another title was published wherein Dr. Leslie Thompkins was working in Gotham, oblivious to her fate in the other.)
Have you read Matt Hills? In Fan Cultures (2002), he tries to outline some of the qualities of fiction that he believes to be typical of texts which are likely to inspire fandom activity, or to achieve "cult status." One of the three things he identifies is auteurism, the identification of a single person who (whether accurately or not) fans can point to as responsible for the fictional world.
Oooh. I have not, but it looks shiny. I’ll have to check it out. I wonder if this is why so much is made of the *Jossverse*, rather than as the Buffy-verse or similar. Not that I’m denying the Joss Whedon genius, but you very rarely see mention of the *other* name in the Angel credits.
...Or maybe a single creator with a strong direction (of some fashion) in mind is just more likely to produce that kind of text? But I think that’s not the issue you’re talking about.
I remember thinking when I first read that passage that it didn't really work too well as a description of comics, in which corporate-owned characters are farmed out to different artists over many years. My experience with people who do "fannish" stuff (write fanfic, play RPGs, etc.) based on comics canon is that they usually need to identify ahead of time which version of the characters and of the universe(s) they are choosing to accept as canon for purposes of the activity.
*laughs* Yeah. This has less to do with agreeing with any particular writer… or auteur one agrees with most closely, as that every so often the universe gets completely rebooted. It’s important to know if you’re playing in the continuity where Batman has a rainbow costume for those special occasions and Superman makes a robot spank Lois Lane… or the more recent one, where all the DCU heroes ought to remember meeting the Looney Toons characters. Especially for an RPG, I would imagine.
A small community of fanfic writers, for example, might all agree by consensus to continue to write stories "as if the last book never happened.”
Of all the HP AU communities out there which frighten me, this is not one of them. I was mostly talking about the couple people I saw who were very, very upset just after reading it, and apparently fairly confused that not everyone agreed with them. It’s probably a lot like any fandom, really. After a while, we get to feel that the characters are somehow *ours*, and when the person in charge does something we don’t agree with, it’s hard not to take it personally.
And when that person in charge has no real auteurial claim, things get bloody.
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Yes, definitely! Which of course, was the main point of your original post. But I just went off digressing all over the details instead, because...errr, I dunno. Because I'm lame? Because all I had to say about your main premise was just a big fat "I agree, and what a cool observation!" Which would have been sort of boring. And I felt like talking.
[the auteur thing]
I wonder if this is why so much is made of the *Jossverse*, rather than as the Buffy-verse or similar.
I think it may well be. It often strikes me that it's characteristic of fandom to try to maintain the belief that the fictive universe is internally logical and coherent...no many how many indications there may be to the contrary. Fans like to come up with in-world explanations for things, no matter how obvious it may be that the real reason for them was an actor's contract dispute, or an authorial screw-up, or an editing error, or whatever. Fans are all about the retcon -- and hey, there's yet another way in which the DCU shows its true colours as fanon!
Anyway, I think it's much easier to maintain that
delusionbelief in a coherent fictive universe if you have an auteur you can point to as the source of the Almighty Overriding Vision (TM). Even in HP fandom, which really does have an auteur, the fans still tend to exaggerate the extent to which Rowling "has it all planned out," insisting that every tiny little detail of the canon must have great intentional significance, for example, even in the face of overwhelming evidence - indeed, even direct authorial admission - to the contrary.So yeah, I do think that the emphasis on Whedon's role in the "Jossverse" fandoms is probably symptomatic of a larger trend.
Of course, you DCU folks have transcended all of that. :-)
Of all the HP AU communities out there which frighten me, this is not one of them.
*laughs*
Oh, indeed. A "let's just quietly do our own little AU thing off in this corner here and leave other people to do their own things in peace" community? In the Harry Potter fandom?
My. Well. That would be a refreshing change, wouldn't it?
And when that person in charge has no real auteurial claim, things get bloody.
Well, yeah. Basically, you're looking at a situation in which it feels like there's this one fanfic author who has been inexplicably elevated to a position of power over all of the other fans, and whose actions while in this temporary postion of power are first to engage in egregious character rape, and then to defend his actions by posting what amounts to a really arrogant and oblivious "ha ha, I'm glad I upset you, you losers!" gloat on a public forum.
I mean, I don't even follow the DCU, and reading that exchange still made me feel a little bit frustrated and frothy. I can only imagine how I might have responded if it had involved characters with whom I had any form of emotional investment.
Ah, well. With luck, it will just get ret-conned out of existence completely eventually, and then it will just be like a baaaaad dreeeeam. A bit like that singing frog, actually. Which used to give me nightmares as a child, I'll have you know!