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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | 1  

Alan Moore might have said that all comic book stories were
"imaginary," but as a kid, I enjoyed imaginary tales and what ifs
because they explored extreme scenarios (deaths of characters,
happily ever afters) while preserving the "true" stories and characters.

Wolverine incinerated by a Sentinel would take place in an alternate
future that is "wrong" and will be averted by the end of the story. Lex
Luthor can kill Lois Lane and expose Superman's identity before his
brainwashed son kills his daughter in a clearly "imaginary tale." And
Bruce Wayne can marry a reformed Selina Kyle, pass the cape and
cowl to Dick Grayson and enjoy his retirement in an imaginary story
written by Alfred.

It occurs to me that in the past 25 years, comics have taken Moore's
comment to heart and we're seeing "what ifs" and "imaginary stories" in
the "real" books. Robin dies... for real. Peter Parker gets married. Dick
Grayson becomes Batman. Clark Kent marries Lois Lane and so on.

When I heard about Steve Rogers losing the super soldier serum,
becoming an old man, and The Falcon replacing him as Captain
America, I could only think, "No, this is a What If?" The What if would
explore the alternate to what really happened in the actual series where
against all odds Steve Rogers prevailed.

And that was the difference. It's one thing to put the heroes through hell
but they should ultimately win, intact for the the next adventure. Robin
doesn't die. Batgirl isn't paralyzed. Cyclops shouldn't go bad and kill
Prof. X.

But too many fans want to read the "what ifs?" and "imaginary stories"
these days and the industry eagerly provide them.

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Petter Myhr Ness
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | 2  

I miss the imaginary stories. Or rather, I miss a time when making those stories was possible. Today, drastically changing the status quo of a character seems to be the norm - and it goes on for months (or years) instead just using one or two issues to explore something different in a (usually) fun way.

After all, we live in a time when someone felt it necessary to assign Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS to a particular universe, just so that everybody could be sure that the story actually happened.

I wonder if that "Aren't they all?" line by Moore was the beginning of the downfall.
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Bill Mimbu
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | 3  

I enjoyed the whole Spider-Girl / MC2 Universe series, because it seemed to capture the fun of the old Marvel Comics that I used to enjoy reading, as opposed to the "Marvel Earth-616 continuity" books that were on the stands at the time.
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 4:45pm | IP Logged | 4  

Alan Moore said all stories were imaginary. All of them. Homer. Jane Austen. David Lynch. All of them. Yes, that includes comic book stories, but there was no slam against those in particular. Quite the reverse. It was a sly reminder that those stories which we label "imaginary" (a terrible pejorative amongst the "better," more knowledgeable comic book fans) are no more or less real than any other story we've ever read or been told.

What we're seeing today has no bearing on the imaginary stories of old except that both recognize that readers want and enjoy a sense of consequence in the stories they read. They want to see the impossible occur. The unthinkable. They want the reading experience to count. They want to come away knowing that they're ahead of the guy who hasn't read this month's issue. Why are they ahead? Because stuff happened which advanced the story. Things are different now for the characters than they were last month. Next month they'll be different again, so we have to buy that book as well.

This is why Imaginary Stories back in the day got such a bad rap. Sure, Superman died, but not really, fannish fans would contend. From last month to this one nothing changed. They just wasted our time with a bunch'a maybes and might-have-beens. Such tales didn't matter in the long run, especially once we had editors and writers in the lettercols bashing these "cheap tricks" of olden days and promising on the cover that this one wasn't a hoax, wasn't a dream, wasn't an imaginary story...

Marvel took every chance to trumpet their exciting, cutting-edge approach in which character developments mattered and you weren't stuck reading the same old guy-in-the-newspaper-office or billionaire-in-the-cave every month. Stuff happened! Did you see what happened with Crystal and Johnny this month? Check out Iron Man! New girlfriend! You know, I think that Spider-Man villain might really be dead this time!

What's occurred in the upper ranks of the companies today is a tacit recognition of the fact that 1.) Readers want such developments as marriages, deaths, births, graduations, and such and 2.) It doesn't matter anymore if we give them exactly that. 

Since the 80's style-reboot was introduced, everything that came before can be erased with a wave of the hand. Before changes, big and small, came along gradually and in a more organic fashion. Over time, enough changes would build up that the story itself was fundamentally different than it had been, but there was no "line in the sand" drawn. Origin stories would be written every few years that incorporated these organic changes, but they existed to catch readers up on the new developments, not to banish the old stuff to the cornfield. 

In the 80's we got the first "everything that ever happened NEVER happened" big erasures, and the way was cleared to do one of these whenever the mood struck. Do one each time a new creator comes on the book, or some storyline becomes too convoluted. How many "true" origins of the Beyonder have there been now? I count at least three. Deadman's history past a certain point was erased. The Grant Morrison Doom Patrol was too wonky, so the whole kit and kaboodle got tossed. Strange as it was, there used to be a clearly drawn line connecting each DP series to the one before. But now? Why not start fresh? Why not make today Wonder Woman's first day in America? You know what we need? An entirely new take on Doctor Fate!

Hey, it's not like anything written before by some other writer matters a damn. What matters is what I'M bringing to the table! These days, we no longer have to find some new direction that somehow branches off from a previous one. We just declare the last book null and void and go from zero. This time it will count! We promise!

Back in the days of Imaginary Stories and What Ifs there was a status quo for the writers to play with. Yes, it changed over time, but there was no "reset" button to hit over and over again. Today, nothing is nailed down. Every development may as well have an expiration date stamped on it. Nothing matters very much, certainly not the hoopla surrounding any new development. Earth's Green Lantern is still Muslim, right?

We no longer need to say, "this story wouldn't fit" or, "Everyone in this one behaves differently so we're setting it outside our normal line of comics." With a whisper from Wanda or a bend in time from Apocalypse, any event, no matter how extreme can happen "for real" rather than off on some no-account Elseworld somewhere. 

How much is DC kicking themselves for publishing "Red Son" as a stand-alone Imaginary Tale when it could have, hell, should have been the crossover event of that year? Sure, we kind of brought it back as a parallel Earth later, but even that's a bit wet. Commie Batman should have had his own eight-issue series, minimum! Commie Diana, well, maybe three issues... We'll see. Thing is, we had a great story there and we blew it on a one-shot. Well, no one's making that mistake again...

Everything can fit now because nothing matters anymore! Even if we don't "No More Mutants" everything away, we can just pretend Reed and Tony didn't kill Bill if we just don't mention it. It was a big development, killing a guy who'd been around since the 70's, but how it happened, why it happened, well that's not as important! Hey, look over here! Johnny's dead! No, really! Eaten! Okay, he's back now... but we had you going, right? Hey! Look! Peter Parker's dead now! Ultimate Peter, but still... 

And that'll last as long as it needs to. The 80's reboot taught us to erase, erase, erase. The fans will come back thinking the new stuff written on the board will be there for the long run. It won't, but hey, at least we're not insulting your intelligence with "imaginary" garbage anymore, right?

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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | 5  

Alan Moore said (in the pages of Superman): “This is an IMAGINARY STORY...aren't they all?” ending it with a little wink from Clark Kent.

To say he isn't specifically referring to DC's tradition of telling some stories out of continuity seems like sophistry. He was obviously referring the DC meaning of the term, not some grander and less argumentative notion.

I think it is telling that Moore's quip came right at the moment that Man of Steel syndrome was born. His apparent disdain for the "Imaginary Story" certainly fits in with all the troubles you list as having cropped up since those days.
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | 6  

Why would the DC comics tradition of Imaginary Stories rule out a larger context for Moore's comment? I believe those who subscribe to this narrow interpretation are working very hard to take offense at what is, at base, a charming but basic observation.

Edited by Brian Hague on 26 July 2014 at 5:21pm
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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | 7  

I think my concern is that if you view them all as imaginary, then your
approach to the characters become a series of what ifs. This is what
leads to Superman and Robin dying, Green Lantern going insane.
These are event type imaginary stories that would've never occurred in
the past.
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 8:56pm | IP Logged | 8  

Brian: Why would the DC comics tradition of Imaginary Stories rule out a larger context for Moore's comment?

**

Rule it out? In a court of law, you're right. In the real world? On the front page of a Superman-DC "IMAGINARY STORY"? Let's just say I didn't have to work extra AT ALL to think he meant DC Comics Imaginary Stories. And I was 15.
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William T. Byrd
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Posted: 26 July 2014 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | 9  

When I first started buying comics, I LOVED What Ifs, partly because the story it was being based on would be summarized during the first part and that helped me learn about Marvel history, and also because I would get a feel for what the particular characters in that book were like even if the story would be changed. Some of my favorite stories to this day are the What If's where the heroes had aged (especially Daredevil's last showdown with the Kingpin), the FF had never gained their powers, Captain America wasn't revived until today, and Conan had been stranded in the 20th century.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 27 July 2014 at 6:02am | IP Logged | 10  

Alan Moore said all stories were imaginary. All of them. Homer. Jane Austen. David Lynch. All of them. Yes, that includes comic book stories, but there was no slam against those in particular. Quite the reverse. It was a sly reminder that those stories which we label "imaginary" (a terrible pejorative amongst the "better," more knowledgeable comic book fans) are no more or less real than any other story we've ever read or been told.

••

In the context in which it appeared, Moore's comment was not "sly." Had he said it in an interview, or on a con panel, it might have slipped by a "sly," just barely. But as a caption in a comic book, it's in the same category as THE INCREDIBLES mocking capes, or the "yellow Spandex" line in the first X-Men movie. It plays to the ennui-engorged fanboys who should have stopped reading comics LONG ago.

The first Imaginary Story I read was in SUPERMAN 149. To this day, it is one of the few comicbook stories I can identify by issue number. This one:

I was 11 years old, and I understood instantly, almost empathically, what an "Imaginary Story" was. Not a single cell of my brain thought But aren't they all? In fact, it reinforced something I really wanted to believe, in my heart of hearts: that the other stories were REAL. Empirically, I knew they couldn't be, but that "Imaginary Novel" was like DC whispering Yes, they are in my ear. Not like, as so often today, writers and editors (and "fans") tearing down the characters and stories, making them ever smaller, stripping away the GRANDEUR.

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Carmen Bernardo
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Posted: 27 July 2014 at 8:06am | IP Logged | 11  

   That constant tearing down and transforming of the characters that I grew up enjoying as a kid is a large part of what drove me away from the Big Two in the first place. Ever since the first "Whatever you know about this character is wrong!" story that ran in those post-JB issues of the X-Men was published years ago, that enjoyment of the superhero genre took a hit. Eventually, the continuous big event wore me out, and I went elsewhere.

   From what I've seen happening in the pages of Captain America's comics these past few years alone, I'm not even sure who the character is supposed to be. As a result, I really don't care to find out.
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Jason Schulman
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Posted: 27 July 2014 at 10:48am | IP Logged | 12  

I think JB's reaction to Moore's comment goes way overboard. All Moore was saying is "yes, the Superman continuity is changing, and the Weisinger-era/Schwartz-era stories are no longer canonical, but that doesn't mean that they're any less valuable than the new stories coming up, or that you can't go back and read them and enjoy them again."

I mean c'mon. Moore loves the Silver Age Superman stories. That much is obvious. Why would he diss them?
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