"Final Crisis".Another Reboot?

[Johnny Nevada]

I think even some of the Sideshow Bob episodes don't follow one another.

I remember seeing one recently in which Bob is sentenced to death.  I don't recall if they ever explain why he wasn't executed. 

Simpsons makes fun of the fact that continuity is forgotten.  An episode where the children are trapped by snow in the school demonstrates this.  Ned mentions Homer's "Mr. Plow" business from a previous Christmas show.  Homer acts like he never heard of him owning a snow plow.  Ned points out that Homer even has his "Mr. Plow" jacket on, with the writing on the back. 

I think the Simpsons remembers what they want to and forgets that they don't.

Both of the episodes above (Bob in electric chair/kids snowed in) apparently were 2000s produced episodes, thus my previous remarks on the latter episodes' tone (and me ignoring any of the ones made after I stopped watching around 2000...not unlike some of the pre-Crisis Superman fans here's attitudes toward post-Crisis ;-p )).

[SteamTeck]

Continuity is a disease,we not need continuity,but good stories.

We need both . Non obsessive continuity creates very special stories and invests us in the characters. At the very least characters need to remember they met before and what happened and relationships be consistent and characterizations need to be pretty stable. We do not need today's self indulgent kind I certainly agree.

[TELLE]

The Simpsons has an ironic meta or post-modern attitude to continuity.  Superhero/adventure comics used to have a pre-ironic attitude to it and then evolved, with the readership, into what exists today: continuity overkill and obsession that nevertheless is ritually erased every decade or so. 

I find myself vacillating between a yearning for late-Silver Age/early Bronze Age levels of continuity and the sort that was prevalent during the early Silver Age, which, to paraphrase MacKenzie King, was "continuity if necessary, but not necessarily continuity."  That is, ignore continuity if it gets in the way of a good story.

I also think it would be neat if the age/time problems didn't necessitate constant reboots: it would be fun to read the serial adventures of someone who was immortal: Superman, Tarzan, Doc Savage, Hercules, The Shadow, etc.  I also like the melodramatic "aging" comics like Gasoline Alley, Love and Rockets, and ..what else?  I'm not a huge fan of Lynn Johnston.  Did Tom Strong age?

Was the Doc Savage pastiche character from Planetary immortal, or just the victim of some sort of time-stasis field? I can't remember. (See, I do read the occasional modern superhero comic!  )

[davidelliott]

  I'm not a huge fan of Lynn Johnston. 

Yikes!  "For Better Or For Worse" is one of my faves!  Lynn is stopping the aging process I think by year's end.... but I have enjoyed seeing the Pattersons age.  I was out of touch with the strip for years, but started reading it again through www.fbofw.com and was surprised to see Mike as a dad, Liz teaching and April in High School.

[TELLE]

It's hard to knock one of the most popular cartoonists in the world, and a Canadian icon, but once I stopped being the same age as the children in the strip, I totally lost interest and before that I though it generally inferior to Family Circus.  I never read the daily strip enough to follow the continuities, especially the more maudlin dead dog stories.  My exposure was mostly limited to the colour weekend episodes, which were generally less continuity oriented. 

Her decision to end the strip is probably good for her (mental) health but the idea of continuing it as a "greatest hits" is selfish and misguided.

I have been following the online furor fans have raised over Liz's romance with Anthony.

[davidelliott]

She's not stopping the strip, just the aging aspect (characters will be frozen in their current ages), from what I understand...

What's the on-line furor about the Liz and Anthony romance?  I'm ecstatic that they are finally back together!

[nightwing]

FBOFW has always been just mildly interesting to me.  The comparison to "Family Circus" is interesting; I wouldn't have thought of it, but actually both strips rate at best a small smile from me on a really good day for the cartoonist, or a really weak day for my standards.  Aside from the fact that "Circus" preserves the family in stasis in some undetermined era (looks like the early 70s, but in a divorced-from-reality, Brady Bunch sort of way), while FBOFW lets them age, both strips are, in their own way, way too preachy and precious to be much fun.  Plus, Johnston's art style is pretty crude. (It still edges out "Circus" in the end, because that one's also creepy.)

One really weird stip is "Funky Winkerbean," which started out funny and kept its characters in High School for years, then overnight aged them all into adults and became "serious."  I have to confess I'm on pins and needles with the current Lisa storyline, but I can't remember the last time this strip was funny, or even determine if it wants to be.  batiuk's work, like Johnston's, is pretty weird because it's essentially a soap opera with cartoony art, like Rex Morgan if it were drawn by Johnny Hart.  I guess that's why they put me off; they're neither fish nor fowl.

It's interesting looking back at some early strips that let characters age for a while, then stopped, like Dick Tracy and Blondie.  In retrospect, they were more vital and worthwhile before they got "frozen," but once they became "franchises" that outlived their creators, something had to be done.  That's why I'm surprised to hear Johnston's freezing her strip, which always seemed so autobiographical or at least very personal.  I don't see it surviving her death, so why not let it keep aging with her til the end?  Plus once you take away the assorted dramas of growing up and older, what's left but gags, which as I said are not her strong suit?

Don't know what the furor is over Liz and Anthony, but isn't he the guy who dumped her when she wanted to get married and now has a kid by someone else?  Probably Johnston did too good a job making him a rat first time around and now the readers aren't willing to give him another chance.  Plus I preferred that Native American guy she was dating...reminded me a little of Wyatt Wingfoot. :-)

[MatterEaterLad]

"Blondie" is sort of a classic idea of aging in spurts ("Winnie Winkle" was like that as well).

Dagwood is a playboy who loses his inheritance after Blondie finally agrees to marry him.

Evolution into a working stiff with a young wife.

Kids.

Everyone stays young except the kids that grow up to start dating, etc.

And then there's not much else that can happen unless you decide to phase out the main characters the strip is named after.