Witless Dictionary #27--Year-Skip Paradox

It's amazing that I go from not doing these things for months to doing two in the same month. This is, for the uninitiated, a continuing effort to provide a working language we can all use when talking about comics and is in no way a way to spout off snarkily about comic trends that annoy me, and anyone who says different is a damn liar.

Year-Skip Paradox--Term referring to the inevitable screw-up that happens when comic creators decide to skip ahead in fictional time so they can jump right into a new status quo without all the tedious writing it through and letting the audience see it for ourselves.

Inevitably, major status quo changes are hidden in these year-skips, much as one might sweep dust bunnies under the couch. The problem is, these plot movements are typically major things that the readers then clamour to have explained, only the creators had no intention of ever explaining it--they just wanted to get to things going their way.

So typically what ends up happening is some mind-manglingly convoluted plot is then cobbled together to explain what happened during the year-skip (it may not necessarily be a year, but for the sake of our hypothetical construct) This is considered a fail state, because it negates the stated intent of skipping ahead in story time in the first place, as all the time they could have spent on new stories in the new status quo is now spent filling all the gaps and they could have avoided the whole mess just by not skipping ahead to begin with.

Alternately, then new status quo is dumped in a panic and there is much frantic scrambling about and the writers busily keep all their metaphorical plates spinning and hope everyone forgets that they every skipped ahead in time at all. This is also a fail state.

Examples include the skip-ahead after Age of Apocalypse (Hey, Sunspot's back! Only wasn't he evil just before the . . .no, shut up) DC's One Year Later post Infinite Crisis (seriously, rebooting everything was preferable to that nonsense) The skip-ahead that they did when Claremont came back to the X-Books at the turn of the century (Cable and Gambit are leading the X-Men and stuff! We don't know why, either!) and of course, the "Suddenly, One Year Later!" thing from the justifiably forgotten move BRAIN 17.

Witless Dictionary #26--Mystery Collapse Disorder

Continuing my extremely irregular feature here at the prattle, it's time once again to crack the books on the Witless Dictionary: an ongoing attempt to come up with words we don't have, but should.

And yes, I know that's exactly the same thing as "sniglets." Only mine are far dorkier and, as such, of far less interest.

Mystery Collapse Disorder--Term given to define the precise moment when a character for whom an aura of mystery has been carefully cultivated ultimately collapses into irrelevance under the weight of accumulated mysteries layered one on top of the other until any intrinsic qualities the character has are utterly buried under layers of "secrets," "clues," "shocking revelations," and other kinds of bafflegab.

Or, to be blunt, the point at which the viewer/reader can no longer keep track of what the hell the deal is with the character, and doesn't really care that much.

Noted sufferers include Wolverine, Cable, Gambit, and Professor River Song.

Witless Dictionary #25--The Hank Pym Doctorate

Continuing my slightly condescending and apparently never ending series of entries wherein we try to find definitions for things that don't have a term, but should!

Hank Pym Doctorate--Term given to scientists or doctors who start as specialists in one field (as scientists tend to be) and soon graduate to becoming experts in everything. Give a general practitioner enough time and he'll go from putting a cast on someone's foot to designing a robotic exoskeleton for Steven J. Cannell.

Named for the original originator, who rose from a humble biochemist huffing shrinking gas for kicks to building robots, which he added genocidal urges for as that extra touch of workmanship that set his robots apart, I guess.

Witless Dictionary #24--The Fraction Point

Continuing our seemingly never-ending attempt to add to the lexicon of comics criticism!

Fraction Point--The point in which a reader is finally so appalled by a creator's work wherein, if they came late to that creator's oeuvre and missed whatever they made their name on in the first place, that they will not, under any circumstances check it out ever because they cannot conceive that the person in question was ever any good, nor do they want to speculate as to why he or she sucks so bad now.

Or if he wrote Invincible Iron Man #29, new record holder for Worst Comic Book I Have Ever Read Ever.

Can also apply to the nexus of annoyance with a creator's public persona (see Ellis, Warren) or they just say really stupid things that beggar understanding and for the sake of the integrity of one's sanity all contact with said imbecile must be broken and walled off lest they make you crazy/stupid as well.

Witless Dictionary #23--Iromedy

"Iromedy"--Comedy formed from a critical mass of irony caused by the joining of two different things converging at nearly the same. The result is hilarity, and when it comes when I can point and laugh at Warren Ellis, delicious hilarity.

Here is an example:

Alan Moore Sez:

" . . .but could they not get one of the ‘top-flight industry creators’ to come up with an idea of their own? Why are DC Comics trying to exploit a comic book that I wrote 25 years ago if they have got anything? Sure they ought to have had an equivalent idea since? I could ask about why Marvel Comics are churning out or planning to bring out my ancient MARVELMAN stories, which are even older, if they had a viable idea of their own in the quarter-century since I wrote those works."

As people are wont to do with Moore at this point in time, he is generally written off as a crank.

Then Warren Ellis comes up with the following two weeks later:

"In the new comic out this week, the X-Men are investigating the emergence of warpies again, this time in Africa. And not only do they come across a Jim Jaspers, in some way related to Sir James Jaspers that created the Jaspers Reality Warp. And then the return of something else. Something very familiar but something new. Something called The Furies."

. . .yeah, so check and fucking mate, Alan Moore.

Witless Dictionary #22--The Domino's Pizza Fallacy

No, I hadn't forgotten this feature--I just hadn't come up with any new comics neologisms for awhile.

For those of you who didn't read these previously (I think the last one might have been back when I had two readers instead of five) The Witless Dictionary is an effort to provide a working lexicon for comics. In other words, like the eternal Sniglets, they're meant to be words we don't have, but should.

The Domino's Pizza Fallacy--Term of art used to describe the inevitable announcing of a "bold new direction" (or "new direction" or "New take"--pick any utterly tired phrase you like) that basically says, in so many words, "we're sorry for the years of crap stories we did before, we'll do better now as soon as we do this BIG EVENT so we can put a big exclamation point on the whole business."

The problem with this is twofold--either you're telling people who already read the book that they're idiots for reading shit stories for so long, or you're tacitly admitting that you've been half-assing it up to this point, but no further--honest!

So named because Domino's Pizza has been running an ad campaign over here recently wherein they are trying to get people to eat their pizza . . .by basically saying for the last 25 years they've been making really crap pizza. Needless to say this comes off more than a little pathetic and is not really the kind of ad strategy one would expect a large chain of restaurants with a lot of money on the line and an enduring brand identity to protect to adopt.

Fortunately, no one ever went broke wagering on executive stupidity, did they?

Witless Dictionary #21--Siena Blazeout

We close out June with another look into the pages of the Witless Dictionary--a recurring feature here at the Prattle which attempts to find a term for those things that don't have one, but really should:

Siena Blazeout--Term which describes a character who debuts with a theoretically awesome power (for example--let's say they can blow up the world or something like that.) which, if used, would drastically alter the status quo of the book, which is, of course, never going to change that permanently.

Meaning you have an allegedly badass character whose actually something of a glass cannon.

This fact gets played up more in subsequent appearances, as they continue to fail to do the one thing that would make them badass. Eventually their "blow up the world" power gets permutated into "generic plot-conventient energy power" or . . .

Or they just keep getting brought back after all their heat is gone.

Though this could apply equally to Apocalypse or Mikhail Rasputin, this one's named after the original originator, of course.

Witless Dictionary #20--Hive-Mind Fallacy

Once again I bring to you another continuing installment of . . .you know what? Yes, while sometimes these are attempts to define the not easily definable idiosyncracies of comics fandom, sometimes it's just a way for me to articulate certain behaviour patterns that I'm bored with, tired of, and pissed at.

Try to guess which one this is, kids!

Hive-Mind Fallacy--Term given to a certain passive-aggressive twitch common among comics fans. It goes a little something like this:

"Comics fans, you disappoint me, Captain Britain and M-13 was absolutely brilliant and you ASSHOLES didn't buy it and now they're canceling it for . . .I don't know, another Wolverine book maybe, and it's All Your Fault. Well done, Team Comics. Well done."

That this fallacy pivots on the idea that 1) everyone who reads comics thinks exactly the same (which would be true if we were all, say, Cybermen) 2) People will buy comics they may not necessarily like because It's Good For Comics (in the age of $4 for one comic this is the kind of profligacy that probably only makes sense if snorting rails of coke off a hooker's crack with a rolled up $50 bill is "making your money work for you") and 3) One ignores what Steven Grant articulated two weeks back, that Captain Britain has historically been rather naff.

To wit:

"Here's a character created as a marketing gimmick (by two Americans; Chris Claremont may have been born in England, but wasn't there long enough for much besides anglophilia to rub off) to give some local color to Marvel reprints in the U.K. It's hard to imagine hundreds of thousands of nationalist British comics fans (are there hundreds of thousands of British comics fans?) warming up to the character, who, among other things, has been saddled with a convoluted back story (like the vast majority of lower tier Marvel characters now) and (sorry, Alan) horrific costumes. (If you want an iconic Brit hero, Marvel, Union Jack has a far superior look.) He has never had a consistent or very interesting personality (for a long time he was generally stuck in the role of being the token male dullard in the company of what amounted to supremely capable warrior-goddesses, and being set alongside the likes of Pete Wisdom and Blade didn't help highlight his interesting side) and, like most characters in CB&MI13, he's been kicked from here to there across the Marvel Universe so much that pretty much all readers have come to think of him as filler."

So . . .yeah. Kids, say no to peer pressure. Especially if it involved Pete Wisdom. Because really, fuck that guy.

Witless Dictionary #19--Publication Inertia

Returning to our somewhat infrequent (Is anything on this blog regular enough to be frequent?) series highlighting the Prattle's continuing efforts to establish a critical lexicon for comics, we humbly submit the following term of art for your consideration.

Publication Inertia--Term to describe a moment in a title's existence when, for lack of anything even remotely like a direction is lacking and yet it continues to be published for faintly little reason that it sells enough above the cancellation line to justify itself.

Notable examples of this would be X-Factor from issue 24 to about 70, which were so inconsequential and so deadly dull that it seemed the only reason that there was a new issue of X-Factor on the stands was because a new issue of X-Factor was on the schedule that month--no more, no less.

Witless Dictionary #18--Continuity A La Carte

Continuing once again our . . .uh, continuing . . series of installments in a greater effort to create a lexicon for comics criticism (or, sometimes, to set up cheap shots without five paragraphs of buildup) the Witless Dictionary opens wide once again and provides us with a new definition:

Continuity A La Carte--Term which describes the action on the part of the reader wherein, rather than obsessively trying to juggle multiple decades of often contradictory continuity, readers simply pick and choose what seems consistent and makes sense to them and lets the rest kind of fall away to nothingness.

Adherents of this condition are characterised by extreme well-adjustment, lack of stress when companies announce Big Changes and how Things Will Never Be The Same Again, aversion to retcons, and . . .well, let's just say they probably pick up more trades than singles now.

Witless Dictionary #17--House Of Baked Beans

Y'know, usually I like to rotate the Witless Dictionary entries around a bit more than this, but sometimes inspiration just hits you and you have to strike while the iron's hot.

Today's entry comes straight from this fortnight's podcast from the fine folks at House To Astonish, in which Al Kennedy says the following about Watchmen, and why it's ultimately self-defeating to adapt the comic into the film. I will attempt too transcribe it, but it's best if you just go ahead and listen yourselves.

Anyways, here's the quote:

"Al, you can't build a house out of baked beans, and I would go away and build a house out of baked beans. and I would say 'look, I've done it!' and you'd go 'yeah, but it's be rubbish.' It's technically do-able but you wouldn't wanna live in it."

And so, with a little finessing we arrive at:

House Of Baked Beans--Any idea that is blown up to be daring and unprecedented and unexpected, but it's less because it's a brilliant idea that somehow no one thought of before and really more because no one else would be stupid enough to think it's a good idea. To paraphrase Chris Rock, I could drive a car with my feet, but that doesn't make it a good fucking idea.

Examples of this would be Dr. Doom wearing armour made out of his girlfriend's skin, Tony Stark being turned into a living Bluetooth device, Dr. Light becoming Goatee McRapeypants, Infinite Crisis, Superman 2000, All-Star Batman and Robin, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and the entirety of Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men.

Witless Dictionary #16--Origin Artifact

Continuing in our, uh, continuing efforts to both get back the hell on schedule already and provide a specialised lexicon that will allow us to better critique the state of comics and, incidentally create a lexicon so exclusionary and "inside baseball" that "ordinary" people will never in their lifetime understand.

Comics: Running from acceptance like Frankenstein's Monster runs from torch-wielding mobs.

Origin Artifact--Term given to any element of a character's original origin story which has long since outlived its usefulness to the storytelling engine but, because of the influence of creator-fans and fans who insist that EVERYTHING MUST FIT TOGETHER AND NEVER BE FORGOTTEN that is clumsily inserted into a character's current status with no adequate justification save "This was the way it always was."

For instance--it's not essential that Spider-Man be unmarried and a loser in order to tell good Spider-Man stories, nor does Iron Man need to have a damaged heart to artifically induce storyline drama, or the the X-Men be locked forever into Permanent Early Claremont to tell Good Stories, what is required is simply the will to tell Good Stories without wastng everyone's time running the clock back with some half-ass and half-baked excuse.

Chances this simple lesson will be lost on the creator-fan's making comics: 100%

Witless Dictionary #15--Permanent Crossover

Once again I bring you the latest installment in our seemingly never-ending series attempting to create a usable lexicon for the understanding and criticism of comics.

Kind of like TVTropes. But only done by one guy.

This time, the term that inspired this whole feature:

Permanent Crossover--Term used to describe . . .hell,every comic from DC since 2005 and every Marvel comic since 2006. To be clearer, it's the term that describes the state wherein comics lurch from one crossover to another, and the whole sorry business finally blends into a long slog wherein nothing really happens, stories never really move forward because nothing ends with any sense of finality, and the finish of every crossover is little more than a bait and switch for the next. Repeat until it all feels like you're listening to a record that skips on the same song all the time. Repeat until it all feels like you're listening to a record that skips on the same song all the time.

Witless Dictionary #14--Origin Occlusion

It's a double-shot of Witless Dictionary goodness tonight. Think of it as a way to make up for not posting these for awhile and that it hasn't one jot to do with the fact I might be suspicious regarding the number "13." That is totally not it at all.

Origin Occlusion--Term describing an awful tendency among 99.9% of all comics authors wherein they cannot stop themselves from taking a hero's perfectly serviceable origin and adding in a whole bunch of nonsense in the name of "making it more consistent with things that happened afterward," (rubbish, as its inevitably rolled back or further complicated in a way that makes even more things make less sense) "Updated to the present day," (If you hear this, there's every chance the lead character will be sporting an earring and a soul patch.) or "I wanted to expand the character's origin and put a new spin on it in the style of Alan Moore's "Anatomy Lesson" story." (This is the most dangerous of the three, as the person saying it is all too often not Alan Moore.)

Examples of this include--Wolverine fights Satan every time he dies, Wolverine is actually an evolved wolf-person, Wolverine met every single damn Marvel character in his Dark and Murky past and yet no one remembers him immediately , Wolverine has a son named after an 80's hair metal band, pretty much everything that occurs in Wolverine's past is an ideal example of Origin Occlusion.

Witless Dictionary #13--The Secret Origin Of . . .

Continuing after rather a long time off, our series in an effort to try to forge a vocabulary for comics criticism continues with yet another installment!

The Secret Origin Of--Term given to the most creatively bankrupt of stories--the story in which an iconic but ultimately insignificant element of a characters mythology is slowly and painstakingly explained for the sake of allowing a burnt-out writer to fill 22 pages that month.

Examples of this would be "The Secret Origin of the Dinosaur in the Batcave," "The secret origin of the Bat-signal," "The secret origin of Cerebro," and too many others too hideous to mention.

Witless Dictionary #12--Johns Bendising

Continuing on because it's the only way to keep warm on a 19-degree February night, we continue to strive, seek, find, and never to yield some terms crisp and accurate to better capture the shapes and forms that make up comics criticism.

Is that enough of an intro?

I think it is.

Johns Bendising--Term used to describe a mindset among editors in chief of major comics companies that if one writer's style is popular with readers, then that writer must either write every new book that is launched or every other writer on the roster must write in the style of that writer.

Here is where I'd put in a link to a short, punchy explanation of what I was talking about, but given that this trend has been going since 2004 and Marvel and DC . . .lord, we'd be here all night.

Witless Dictionary #11--Legacy Disenfranchisement

Once again, bringing you another installment in our continuing series of attempts to create terms for things specific to comics that don't yet exist, but should. Oh, and for those who asked, this is totally not me being snarky via professorial and/or literary aspirations.

Honest.

Legacy Disenfranchisement--Term given to a specific tendency when fans become creators to roll back continuity and/or character development to where they remembered it was 20-30 years ago, thereby alienating the fans who grew up reading about said character after that point.

The justification usually given for Legacy Disenfranchisement is that running the clock back will make the character more accessible to a younger generation, which is perfectly valid if you assume that child development has not changed one whit since 1975 or so.

Or, to boil this down to a one-sentence definition: "Thanks for keeping my seat warm, Wally West!"

(Special thanks to the good people at House to Astonish for inspiring this Witless Dictionary)

Witless Dictionary #10--Third Alternative

Continuing again with a special double-shot of Witless Dictionary fun for the week and another term of art inspired by the Prattle's bestest friend, the superlative Diana Kingston-Gabai:

Third Alternative--Term (in relation to comics) used to describe anything that comes along in opposition to the Big Two companies who upends the stagnant binary structure and injects some life into things again.

The best example of this in recent memory would be the rise of Image Comics in the early 90's. While it may not have led to anything we would recognise as "good comics" (whatever that means now) the energy and vitality Image brought to the medium ended up, in general refreshing the entire genre of superhero comics.

I don't argue it was all for the good, mind you, but the rise of Image forced the Big Two to try things they might not have done otherwise and it allowed some new blood a chance to make their mark in superhero comics.

It wasn't all for the good, but it was necessary, it can be argued.

Witless Dictionary #9--Sod-Off Character

Continuing our . . .uh, continuing efforts to create a wider glossary for comics criticism. This week, the Witless Dictionary does something a little different--the two definitions for this week were inspired or directly requested by the illustrious Diana Kingston-Gabai, who exemplifies the phrase "blogger of note" in ways I can't even begin to approach.

Sod-Off Character--The opposite of a breakout character (or, if you must, "the Fonzie"), the sod-off character is a character whose exhausted both his responsibilities for his immediate storyline and any potential for further storylines, but who s nevertheless shoved in the reader's face despite being annoying, uninteresting, and, as previously stated above, having no real reason to be there and as you read along you just want the character to go the hell away already.

Or, if you'd like a more succinct definition, The Sentry.

Witless Dictionary #8--Marenghi Bubble

Part 8 of a never-ending series designed to create a functioning vocabulary for my unique brand of comics criticism. Or, to be more blunt about it, I'm just making this stuff up as I go along.

Marenghi Bubble--Filter on perception that usually results from having a reliable coterie of apologists around them that prevents any valid constructive criticism (or, indeed, criticism of any kind) from penetrating. Those in within a Marenghi Bubble will often justify dubious creative choices by citing high sales or an editorial mandate to shake things up or . . .geez, anything, really. This meme will be buttressed by his followers, who will continue to paint the person inside the bubble as a visionary and slag off anyone who doesn't get it.

Or, alternatively, those poor fools who walk around the Emperor with a big sheet so we can't see he bloody well has no clothes on.

Named for fictional construct Garth Marenghi, who, while meant as a parody, sadly has plenty of company in the real world who aren't.