Wonder Woman, out and loving it

As someone not interested in comic books or for the most part the films derived from them, I am curious about something. Have continuity and 'universe' always been elements fans of comic book superheroes considered? Or did Star Wars originate those concepts?

 

You know the scene in Revenge of the Nerds when Poindexter makes this guttural exclamation right after he gets a boner for the first time.
That's Fart circa 1980, randomly watching an episode of Wonder Woman.
There was a reason she carried that lasso of truth.

 

The DC comics made a distinction between Earth One and Two in the 1960s, to explain different storylines in older stories originally printed (roughly) before 1956-58, when many of their "classic" WWII era heroes were reinvented.

 

I believe that they're up to about Earth Four Hundred Ninety Three with all the new storyline inventions.

 

Queer. Always great to see that word.

Commence with the YouTubery.

 

I guess -- I didn't see it myself -- DC put out a continuity guide a couple years ago which listed almost a hundred universes, including several which were in effect for only one story.

 

Yeah, and Marvel has a similar thing going on with their "multi-verses." Every couple of decades, they tend to do a major reset.

 

I remember, way back in 1991, reading the first couple of issues of the new X-Men series. The storyline involved Magneto returning from the dead, probably for the 144th time, and there were as many footnotes about stories in the 1980s as there were word bubbles. So it's been a thing for a long time.
As others have pointed out, it's also quite the pain in the ass since writers were pumping out crazy stories in the 1950s and 60s without regard for future nerds who would point out that Batman couldn't be fighting the Joker in Gotham in November 1957, because he was teaming up with Superman to fight an alternate universe version of Bizarro on Jupiter in November 1957 in an issue of World's Finest that not even the people who wrote and drew it can remember.
It got so confusing that DC destroyed its universe in 1985 just to reboot the whole damn thing and start over ... only that led to problems because writers again went nuts with stories and retcons and crossovers involving alternate universes, so they did it again in 1994 ... and again a few years later ... and again a few years after that ... and again a few years after THAT ...
DC sucks.

 

Because their writers and editors are too stupid, undisciplined or incompetent to stick to ANY version of "canon."

 

Marvel isn't as bad as DC in this regard, but both have gotten worse in recent years.

 

Comic books haven't had any sort of internal consistency for decades. And before that the stories sucked ass anyway. If you were a big fan in the 1950s-70s, fine, you can be grandfathered in to complain about characters' histories changing, but otherwise you are dying on a hill that was already lost.

Three inescapable facts: Comics came of age at a time when straight white males and women appealing to straight white males were considered the only real option. Comic fans are extremely resistant to new characters. Even if you don't think that there are good social reasons for diversity, comic book companies need to reach out to audiences besides aging straight white males for reasons of pure business.

Retconning and redefining existing characters is a perfectly reasonable way of handling the confluence of those three problems.

Sure, some of it has sucked, but some percentage of all comic book stories suck. Some of them have also been awesome. Miles Morales was an incredible addition to the universe and helped solve one of the major writing problems in Spider-Man (Spider-Man being full of youthful naive energy is a key characterization, but watching Peter Parker futz around without ever growing up makes him annoying). FalconCap was meh. FemThor was pretty good but I've fallen out of touch.

I am not intimately familiar with Wonder Woman's story, but outside of some dumb trysts with Batman and the like, her character makes more sense as gay than straight.