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A new universe

When I was younger, I had a collection of Marvel comics and other comics, but I haven't really bought any more for a decade now. So I am not quite aware of the recent developments in the Marvel universe, which characters have come back to life and which have died and who is whose friend now. I would assume that the popular movie adaptations have had an effect on this. The local libraries have comic book sections from which I have borrowed a bunch of excellent graphic novels that I hadn't read before, such as Astro City, Top Ten and Starman. There are so many superhero comics in existence that I have to wonder where the names of the new characters come from. The namespace is already so occupied that I guess that you would just have to read through a dictionary and pick a word that is not already in use, and somehow turn that word into a superpower. ("Top Ten" seems to use this technique to a great effect.)

If I had to select one blog post anywhere that is my all-time favourite, I guess that I would pick the long essay "Crisis on Infantile Earths - or - If it's Tuesday, it must be Ragnarok!" by John Holbo. This post also links to shorter but equally excellent essay "Powers and the Comic Book Human" by Timothy Burke, which, along with the graphic novels listed above, inspired me to think a bit about the ways the writers of superhero comics try to combine their fantasy universe with the real world.

Occasionally in some minor observations of "what would really happen if" this works well. For example, I had to chuckle when I once browsed a new issue of Spider-Man where Kraven was working as a host of a Crocodile Hunter -style reality show. But in general, trying to pretend that Marvel characters operate in our reality doesn't work at all, and the attempts to do so quickly collapse to their inherent absurdity. For example, the collection of "The Punisher" comics by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, better known for their "Preacher" series, that I read had the Punisher operating in our reality, which naturally included the terrorist threat and the president George W. Bush. Now, maybe it's just me, but I find it rather difficult to believe that Al Qaeda could do anything or even exist or that Osama could keep hiding in a world that includes, for example, the Avengers or the Fantastic Four with all the inventions made by Reed Richards, especially that yellow-plate time travel machine. (Were I a betting man, I would bet that this particular machine already been retconned out of the comics.) Or do the terrorists have super powers too? Is there perhaps a Jihadman whose powers include flying around with a flying carpet?

In the Marvel universe, basically anybody at least a high school knowledge of science can work in his garage and build some kind of flying device, magic energy ray or an intelligent robot. Teleportation devices are a perfectly routine mode of transportation, and long before Internet became an everyday tool, the heroes used vast supercomputer networks with real-time holographic videoscreens. High-technology alien cultures exist in stars and lost continents and underground and countless parallel universes, and these cultures are in constant interaction, both accidental and intentional, with humans, especially those living in Manhattan. (99% of all junk coming from space always seemed to end up in that area.) Despite this, normal people live their lives exactly the same way as we do, and would be astonished to encounter a space alien. (I have never been able to decipher whether the normal people in Marvel Universe know that space aliens exist.) I find this rather implausible. Any supervillain could become an instant Google-level multibillionaire by licensing the technology of his intelligent robots to be manufactured as a consumer product. Much more productive than using them to, say, rob a bank. Just demonstrate the working prototype of such a robot and the venture capitalists will trample over each other to get to finance you.

A while ago, I also read the first six collections of "Ultimate X-Men". In fact, I would have to say the sixth collection, "Return of the King", was one of the best comic books that I have read for a really long time. The "Ultimate" universe is an attempt to restart the characters afresh in slightly updated versions so that they haven't already teamed up and fought with each other dozens of times in all possible variations and combinations. In the beginning of the Ultimate X-Men series, I was a bit bemused by those mighty mountains and waterfalls in Finland where the bad guys had their headquarters, but hey, the aesthetic and style are what really matters. And just the idea of detaining mutant terrorists in Camp X-Factor located in Gitmo is itself so totally good and bad at the same time in so many levels that I bow down in front of whoever came up with it and call him Master.

At the end of the sixth collection that I was reading there was George W. Bush and his cabinet, giving their silent support to X-Men. What is going to happen in ten years or so, when the characters live in year 2015 but haven't aged ten years? Perhaps the same that happened to the Punisher and Flash Thompson of the original Marvel universe, where both men ended up being cynical Vietnam veterans. (All right, Flash probably isn't a traumatized vet any more, since he is supposed to be the same age as Peter Parker.) Or in the classic "The Days of Future Past" storyline of X-Men, when Kitty Pryde telepathically travelled to the far future of the year 2001.

How could this inherent design flaw be corrected? Obviously, it is not possible to have a comic book series operating in strict real time, because not much stuff could happen to a character in a year in just 12 short issues, and the few important events of his or her life would basically fill these issues. Perhaps a better way to proceed would be to take a cue from Astro City and Starman, two comics that based on what I read, got this thing right. Each issue and story would be explicitly anchored to a specific time when it takes place. There would be a grand timeline of the universe that the individual issues would gradually reveal (somewhat like in Sandman or Watchmen), so that the individual issues and storylines would be set in various times, filling in the details and referring to and fore- and backshadowing the events of other stories.

In such a universe, Hyperman will have a beginning, middle and end, so that perhaps he was born in 1967, got his powers in 1990, married Swizzlegirl in 1994, and irrevocably and finally died in an epic battle against Oculus and Dark Gunther in 2003. The writers can create stories set in some suitable point of time in the past, so that the characters would be of appropriate age and have the general style of thinking, dressing, talking and overall culture of that era. (One of the most disturbing problems for me personally in Marvel Universe was its massive inconsistency in style and technology levels: I think that John Romita Jr. was the only artist whose 80's comics still look like as if they actually depicted the 80's.) Then just leave enough gaps to the grand timeline so that there is always room for more events and minor characters, and have somebody check and edit the continuity of the stories that other writers submit, and you would be all set.

I don't know. Perhaps I'm starting to sound too much like Comic Book Guy here.

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