7 Reasons You Should Give Up Superhero Comics In 2017

7. Continuity Doesn’t Matter Anymore

A lot of writers hate continuity because it makes their jobs harder. These guys read comics when they were younger and then fell off as they grew up and started their careers. This is why so many of them, as their first order of business, retcon to make everything more similar to how they remember.

It’s also why rebooting is so popular. When the New 52 relaunched, Geoff Johns had Batman and Superman fight each other for the first time - again - in the second issue of Justice League. Having them battle in the pre-Flashpoint stories would’ve been boring; it would’ve been the millionth time we’ve seen that, but because it was a brand new continuity, that meant it would be “fresh” again!

During the Silver and Bronze Age, continuity was a lot tighter. If the Avengers were in space for that month’s issue and the X-Men visited Avengers Mansion in their own book, they’d find it empty; an editorial box would explain the Avengers’ whereabouts. Something like “They’re in space! Find out why in Avengers #128 - on sale now!”

These days, Captain Marvel can have adventures in the multiverse in The Ultimates, her own adventures in her solo title, and involvement in major events like Civil War II all at the same time. People say Batman has no superpowers, but he can clearly transcend space and time with all the different books he manages to appear in at once. For obvious reasons, maintaining that level of order over so many titles is a lot of hard work, so it’s easy to see why current editors have adopted a “who cares?” approach.

And it’s not just keeping track of past events that’s problematic. Some of these characters have died and come back multiple times at this point. When you truncate over fifty years of stories into a timeline of about ten years, you end up with a biography so packed with plots it stretches plausibility.

How can watching Batman fight the Joker for the eightieth time really be that exciting? Sure, if they’re made out of Legos, but on the comic page? At a certain point, the “Why doesn’t Batman kill the Joker already?” question becomes too loud to ignore. You’ve thrown the Joker in Arkham Asylum like five hundred times, Batman - I think the system is broken.