Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Retconning a Story I'm Writing

I've got a few Doc Stalwart side projects I'm working on... if you are on Patreon, you already know what I'm talking about... so you can sign up to get in on the conversation. But, in this process, I was thinking about the history of Doc and his story. In many ways, I'm looking at the story starting at issue 251 as establishing 'new' canon. One example of this is the character of Simian Prime. Simian Prime first appeared as a Doc Stalwart villain in the golden age comics, and his origin was always tied to Doc in the silver age comics... but starting with 251, he is ret-conned to have been an enemy of Hartland, 25 years earlier. I know that this seems like a mistake, but it's actually not. The current writer of Doc Stalwart (me, but not me, of course), has decided to revisit 'classic' Doc elements are re-imagine them. It is a soft reset of Doc's world; effectively, the John Byrne's "Man of Steel" of Doc's Superman history. One of the writer's goals from 251 forward is to create a definitive storyline that works out all of the contractions in Doc's publishing history.  Comics have a proud history of making narrative messes and then working hard to clean them up; if I wasn't doing the same, I wouldn't be creating an 'authentic' homage.

2 comments:

  1. I love this approach. Creating an homage of the industry in addition to homages to classic characters is fun and charming!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks. I like the 'lived in' feel that it is creating.

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