Pre-Crisis Primer: Apocryphal Continuity

Justice League America #200
Part 2

“Apocryphal Continuity”

Felix Faust fingers the Justice League.

Warning, this is going to be minutia and continuity based. I figured it'd be interesting to give some insight in how I think of continuity and some of the criteria that went into how I arraigned the stories that make up this blog.

Justice League #200 was a fun issue. The story featured lots of colorful heroes up against lots of other garish villains, had classic hero-on-hero action in fights and team-ups, and had a stable of classic and up-and-coming artists help out in telling the tale.

The continuity of this issue, and of many old Justice League issues, tends to get tricky when held up against the new histories presented during the forthcoming Post-Crisis. Continuity issues aren't really a story issue because, as I explained in the previous post, the story elements regarding the JLA being brought together through an Appelaxian alien invasion was retold in Post-Crisis continuity almost exactly how it happened in the flashbacks in Justice League #200. The continuity problems arise with character appearances, notably Superman and Wonder Woman. Not exactly minor characters.

As may have been evident already at this early stage in the game, I've not reviewed any issues of Superman or Wonder Woman yet during the 'Pre-Crisis Primer.' In the shift to Post-Crisis, Superman and Wonder Woman both had their histories rewritten more than many other characters. These changes were for the better; though, I lament the loss of some of the sillier aspects of both characters such as multi-colored kryptonite and Krypto the Superdog from the Superman titles or The Invisible Plane and kung-fu super-spy skills from Wonder Woman. Eventually each of these aspects was re-introduced, but it would be many years after the beginning of Post-Crisis before this will happen.

Aside from the changes I mentioned above, the changes that concern the Justice League title is the Post-Crisis assertion that Superman and Wonder Woman were never members of the Justice League.

Wait? How does that work?

Pre-Crisis Superman pretty much did whatever he wanted on a lark.

With Superman it's not so bad. In taking Pre-Crisis Justice League stories and reconciling them with Post-Crisis Superman history, it's possible to have the assumed notion that Superman is not present as a member but just because he's Superman and, with the cosmic shit the JLA deal with on a daily basis, Superman would help out. He always helps out. Pretty believable and a decent enough reason as to why Superman shows up in the Justice League even though he's not a member.

Wonder Woman is a little more complicated. Not to give away too much of the Crisis, but Wonder Woman's Post-Crisis history was drastically re-writtensdo that Wonder Woman did not appear in public or on Earth until after the Crisis event. How could Wonder woman be a founding member of the Justice League when she wouldn't appear until almost eight in-continuity years later? She can't, so the in-continuity replacement was that Black Canary was now a founding member of the JLA and essentially took Wonder Woman's place. Since Wonder Woman is such a major character, this is a much messier assumption than the Superman solution.

She would last 20-odd issues. It was a good try.

The questions I asked myself when putting these Pre-Crisis stories together were: “What has continuity importance to future Post-Crisis stories?” and “What Pre-Crisis stories do not directly invalidate later Post-Crisis stories to a major degree?” The second question was a little tricky because technically I invalidate it by including the entirety of the 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' story, much of the beginning of which invalidates Post-Crisis continuity. Even the multiple Earths plot line from the Justice League of America 195-197 review directly invalidate Post-Crisis continuity because according to Post-Crisis, multiple Earths never existed. Without any experience with the concept of the multiple Earths, then the shift from Pre- to Post-Crisis is less drastic and more of 'much-ado about nothing.'

In the end, I decided to ignore the Post-Crisis assumptions regarding Superman and Wonder Woman and also to include the issues I did have that specifically address the multiple Earth issue. But in order to lessen a lot of the specific Superman and Wonder Woman continuity issues, not to read from their solo titles, just appearances from Justice League America. So what does this mean: it means when 'Crisis' finally happens, it will change aspects of stories that have already been read in this run and will impact the history of characters we've already met, but not to such a degree that stories being read in the 'Pre-Crisis Primer' are not completely invalidated aside from some character appearances.

Putting this whole run of 6000+ comics together was fun for me precisely because of continuity questions like this: what gets included in the 'story' or not? What matters and what contributes to a story and character and history that make sense?

I'm a continuity geek and I'm damn terminal.