Is It Better to Not Be Connected?

 Recently I finally got around to reading Tom King's Superman series, Up in the Sky.  The 12-issue series was originally published as part of these "Walmart Giants" where they reprinted a bunch of old comics but also included a little new material and then sold them exclusively at Walmart.  And maybe just for fun they had the writers of Batman and Superman swap series so that King, who was writing Batman at the time, did a Superman series and Brian Michael Bendis, who'd recently taken over Superman, wrote a Batman series.  Inevitably they reprinted the new material on its own.

I enjoyed King's series like I enjoyed most of his work to date that I've read.  Like his other work, King is able to really humanize an iconic comic book character and even make the Man of Steel seem vulnerable.  The story revolves around a little girl who's kidnapped from Earth and taken into space, so Superman leaves Earth to find her.  Over the 12 issues he goes to a variety of planets and faces a variety of challenges.  On one planet he fights a mercenary in a boxing match to obtain information; the mercenary has Superman-like invulnerability and stamina so it's a pretty equal fight.  Another time he's injured and picked up by a ship where the alien doctor gives his life to save Superman's.  At another point he crashes on a planet and is split into Kryptonian and human halves that eventually have to reunite.  There was a "controversial" issue where he's at an alien call center to try to contact Lois and keeps imagining horrible ways she could be dying while he's out in space.  Idiots thought she was actually dying or something stupid and DC had to actually pause the series for a little bit.  Eventually he goes to New Genesis to make a devil's bargain with Darkseid and finds the girl and saves the day.

What I got to thinking is that most of King's work for DC isn't really connected to much else in the DC universe.  Even his run on Batman didn't really connect to other stuff going on in the DC Universe.  The two "Night of the Monster Men" crossover issues early on were written by someone else.  It wasn't like with previous writers where they had story arcs running through every Batman title or even every DC title.  King's Batman run was for the most part its own self-contained universe where the stuff going on in Detective Comics, Batgirl, Nightwing, or Justice League didn't really affect it.  This was also the case for Up in the Sky, Mr. Miracle, Omega Men, and I'm pretty sure also for Strange Adventures, Rorschach, and the upcoming Human Target.

Is that a bad thing?  I don't think it really is.  And then it got me thinking that a lot of the really good stories in comics were not really connected.  Iconic stories like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Arkham Asylum, All-Star Superman, or Superman: Red Son were not part of the main DC Universe.  I'm not sure about some others like The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween, or Hush; they might have started off as not really in the continuity and then became part of the continuity later on.

I'm less familiar with Marvel but there are also good non-continuity stories like Spider-Man: Life Story or Marvels.  And then of course you have thousands of small publisher or independent graphic novels.

Anyway, the point is that I think when something doesn't have to be in continuity it's able to tell its own story.  In most cases that means smaller, more meaningful stories rather than big events.  In superhero comics, big events almost inevitably will end up as slugfests that might be entertaining but don't have much meaning.  Authors like Tom King, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, or Neil Gaiman are much better when they're able to create on their own terms rather than having to incorporate the work of lesser authors.

Think of it this way:  would you get a better story from Stephen King by himself or Stephen King if he had to incorporate chapters from EL James, Stephanie Meyer, and Eric Filler?  [Or whatever other hacks you want to throw in there.]  Collaboration can be fun but groups tend to water down ideas to reach consensus.

And when comic book authors aren't dealing with continuity and whatnot they also don't have as much pressure from the editors and publisher to do something big and flashy to drive sales.  There's the room then to work ideas on a smaller, quieter level.

That's not to disrespect Golden Age writers like Stan Lee, Jerry Siegel & Joe Schuster, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, and so on.  They created the continuity in the first place.  But back then comics were mostly aimed at children and the storytelling tends to reflect that.  Writers from the 70s and on were allowed to be more grown up and explore more adult themes.

Or maybe I'm just talking out my own ass--it wouldn't be the first time.