A. Heathen

Nice one!

I'll have one of them Bristol copies.

Tsk!

You kids and your minor "continuity" details :-P

You'll be counting peoples' arms next.

Almost time to shut this particular part of the forum down, at least for a little while, yeah ?

No John.

If you close this place, they will wander over to the important parts of the forum.

Can't you just hand the Mod role over to Tom ?

(Then you'd only have to moderate his posts.)

;-)

It's actually a 360 degree movie of the Angel Islington VUE cinema ;-)

That reminds me, I must put my EXCLUSIVE photographs online.

Then I put it to you that what you meant to say was not "does it matter?" (a question not rhetorical enough on an internet forum) but "I personally would prefer for the main book to be written in this less continuity heavy fashion".

I fully agree with you about preferring this kind of story.

However, a story being crammed with references to the ongoing story is not the same as it being part of that ongoing story. Which is what we were debating.

You may need a while for it to upload properly, but it's a quicktime 360 degree rendition of Constanteen Hell A

I dunno, Tom, does it really matter what you think of Constanteen ?

colon, hyphen, Phosphorus.

But, here's a more considered answer: If we are going to berate a film and comment on a series based on what has gone before, don't you think a bit of banter along these lines is perfectly agreeable (or disagreeable in James' case) ?

The fact is that the Hellblazer series does fit together like one single 1000 piece jigsaw - as opposed to one of the Vatican jumbled up with one showing a scene from The Matrix. Me and James are just playing with the Hellblazer jigsaw.

Taking it in the context of comics "continuity", James's definition is the common one, but Hellblazer is fairly unique among long-running series, in that it has not been rebooted, retroactively changed (much) or revamped (yet). And more importantly the issues are published in approximate "real-time". But in the movie concept of continuity, sequences can be shot out of sequence and still remain in continuity (and even shown out of sequence - obv.ref. Memento, Ju-On).

AHE could sit in several places during the Hellblazer Timeline, but given character development, it comes down to whether you think Chas's behaviours are best explained as "mid-life crisis" or "crisis of demonic possession".

And I'm going for the latter.

No they book a load for the Expo guests knowing that they won't wait until the last moment.

Out of continuity meaning out of sequence.

Or he'll pick on her strengths and manipulate her into fucking over the other two.

The most obvious reason it does not come before Out of Season is that Renee's attitude to John does not suggest that she might be in any way indebted to him, which she plainly would be after All His Engines.

The catalyst of the Nergalisation of Chas on his behaviour towards Renee would be in keeping with his later infidelity. At least that would be more in keeping with the way Chas behaves.

A marker pen would be just as effective.

Or perhaps a razorblade dipped in ink.

It is CLEARLY set after the most recent issue.

"if Penn and Teller cut that woman in half and then repair her to a whole,

I WILL BE PROPER ANNOYED!"

You daft buggers.

It really sucks. It's been a fantastic month or two, really - we've been playing some blinding football, doing nicely in Europe and the FA Cup, and Shearer is well set to overtake Jackie Milburn's scoring record (which is a big thing up here), and this has just put a stinking damper on the whole thing. Bowyer is going to have to go, I suspect - he just doesn't have any credibility with fans anymore. This kind of shit has happened too often, and I have absolutely no time for it. In any other line of work he'd have been fired long ago - why should he be treated differently just because he's a highly-paid sports star? In my book that puts him in a position where he should be under more of an obligation to act responsibly, especially in public. The man's a thug, and if he can't control himself he has no place on a football team.

Kieron Dyer did nothing wrong, and his red card should be rescinded immediately.

The referee should have been the centre of attention for refusing Newcastle two blatant penalties and one very suspect one.

I know Mr J.Mac won't like me saying so, but the sight of the Kop in full Scarf mode singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" to the Juventus fans just now was goosepimple stuff.

(And if they continue playing as they started and beat Juventus that makes Birmingham City better than Juventus by traditional football fan science.)

In other news, Chelsea's run comes to an end on Saturday.

Ya gotta love the folks you run across at a show.

You bring exclusive unpublished artist proofs for the fans at less than internet prices and someone inevitably will always want to see how much he/she can score off it on Ebay.

·sigh·

 

Anyway, that is the cover for issue 210 which you will likely see a bad solicitation jpeg for very soon. So to avoid that and in the interest of you seeing what it should really look like, here it is.

Oh BLOODY HELL.

I want me one of them.

And no way am I going to line the pockets of the freak that's selling it on eBay.

I think we should do some negotiating via email !

And I need to clarify that other thing that is a secret etc, burning a hole in my internet connection at the moment. (Je suis un TEASE!)

I would like to think that any metaphor should be fair game, especially one that demonstrates the metaphisers lack of perspective so well.

You don't really seem to have understood either of my points above.

Which is indicated by this first quote:

But, DC does not have a 40 or 60 year history, except for collectors. Remember, "Crisis" wiped all character histories pre-Crisis from existence. The campy Batman of the 60s and early 70s is gone (for example), replaced by Frank Miller's "Year One" version. The DC Blue Beetle is the DeMatteis/Giffen version.

"Collectors" or people with a memory for the last time Character A was changed "irrepairably".

None of those characters are gone.

And none of the current con-tinuity versions are sacred.

As far as Morrison's vision, yes, he mourned the passing of the alternate Earths; but at the same time, he is the man who decries the "Dark Ages" of gritty, angst-ridden superhero comics which the 1990s Boom-ear ushered in. Morrison only mourns the alternate Earths because he grew up with them and he had fun with reading the exploits of all the different versions of the Flash, and he likes to play in those worlds.

Besides all that, the Crisis has been slipping for years now anyway. Morrison did a GN called "JLA:Earth Two", which shouldn't exist, but is part of current DCU continuity.

Yes. He is right. You're letting "con-tinuity" get in the way again.

Morrison's complaint is that only one version of the character remains in contemporary stories (two if you count the animated adventures versions - and you should). He happens to write either extreme quite well.

The problem with cross-overs is that

A.)they require a fan to purchase books he doesn't usually buy just to get a complete story, which positively screams crass commercialism.

B.)the stories are usually dreamt up by editors who decree the plots to writers. Editors are not writers for a reason, writers are writers for a reason. Leave creative vision alone. Yes, sometimes as with "DC:One Million" a creator actually dreams up a cross-over idea, but I'm still positive it was an editor who decided they would make it a company wide event.

C.)you end up getting many horribly written and boring stories in the cross-over as writers of books who have no interest in the cross-over event are forced to put aside their current plot ideas in order to conform. Yes, very good writers can do wonderful, interesting stories which work around (instead of trapped within) the cross-over idea; but facing facts, not every writer on a comic book is that talented.

A) I have never subscribed to the idea that you need every part of a story in a serial fiction, and most of the DCU crossovers where I have read all of the parts have been quite sensitive to that. It is the collector mentality that creates that environment and the companies capitalise on that.

B) While editing and writing is a different skill in the current industry, some of the very best editors of comics have been superb writers.

C) which is no different to non-crossover comics. The appeal of these usually lies with the central character and the writers/artists involved. Check "Children's Crusades" for a decent example of a non-intrusive crossover. And check the Invasion episode of Swamp Thing for a clever writer's application of editorial edict.

"Seven Soldiers" isn't a cross-over. It's a self-contained world which is divided into 7 distinct, self-contained mini-series. You can read "Frankenstein" and have no idea this has anything at all to do with "Zatanna", other than the fact that it's under a banner called "Seven Soldiers". The "Seven Soldiers" banner is confined to these 7 series, so you won't be buying an issue of "Superman" which read "Seven Soldiers" across the top.

Seven Soldiers is as much a crossover as any other crossover.

From the cameo appearances of Lucifer and Tim Hunter in recent Hellblazers to the DCU-spanning epics to the Marvel/DC Amalgams. The capitalist motivations that you are keen on pointing out are highlighted by the "checklists" that feature all the Seven Soldiers books. And, as they appear in the DCU at a time of impending "Crisis", do you want a bet that they won't connect ?

Stuff like bringing back dead good guys as evil bad guys is exactly what superhero comics are for!

Testify !

It always gives me cause to smile when my friends on other forums criticise Hellblazer for telling the same old Hellblazer stories, when they are prepared to get All Excited about the latest "twist" in the Marvel Universe.

With the theory that DC are pimping up their Universe so they can bring back the goofy old one with more impact, it makes perfect sense that Jason Todd would be a symbol of the Renaivessance (sic) of the DCU.

If they are just trying to make it scary-real-world-ier then this is ludicrous.

I've been marginally less bothered with the DCU than I have with the Marvel universe lately. That is to say, less interested in the mainstream DCU, since Monolith is in there somewhere.

But these crossover things always intrigued me at their beginning, somewhere in my Dad's loft I have a box filled with Armageddon, Millennium, Zero Hour and probably a couple of the others (too late for Crisis you see).

The only one I now have any time for (snigger) is Zero Hour.

But they are a genre that Comics loves.

So I picked up that Seven Soldiers one.

And the Countdown one.

Surprised me to learn that I preferred the latter.

It's quite funny to see complaints that characters are acting out of character.

When those characters have changed with the latest fashion of the day for over forty years (sixty in some cases). It's unsurprising that, at a time when the world has been more violet (erm, violent) people complain about deaths of favourite characters (or rapes of favourite sidekicks and supporting cast members).

And I see the fruits of Zero Hour on the horizon.

Yes, the happy cartoon world where Blue Beetle survives will return.

But so will the one where he died.

Meaning this is the latter stages of the Anti-Crisis - where we are returned to "alternate" versions of the stories that everyone loves and no-one agrees upon.

Perhaps they should call them DC "MAX" (named after Maxwell Lord) and DC "ADVENTURES" ?

Dunno why it took them so long to let Grant Morrison's vision take hold.

I hope you're going to put that second to last one to good use :-)

Lou, don't spoil it for everyone yet to read the thread.

Please edit your post to something vague and recognising of Tears' clever joke that fooled no-one.

Like the rest of us.

It was the fourth line for me.

Notably the words "beautiful" and "cerebral".