Results matching “wikipedia”

One of the most cogent folks I know, particularly in discussions of publishing and the internet, is Adam Tinworth. I've known Adam through a number of settings, but the one most germane to the discussion is as a business journalist. He's a very, very good one. He's also a fine hand with a fencing iron, I'm given to understand, and as someone who once upon a time stumbled through his share of sabre matches I can respect that, but it's not really a factor in the discussion at hand.

Well, Adam recently blogged about content and paywalls -- touching on the current issues with his usual skill and wisdom. Certainly, the topics he addresses in terms of journalism will resonate with anyone following the somewhat tragic conflict between newspaper cartoonists and web cartoonists. It's a good read.

However, it's not Adam's post, but a comment someone made to him about it that really gets to the heart of the matter. He posted a followup that included that comment, and I've never seen the core disconnect highlighted so well. With Adam's permission, I reproduce it here:

The model you have of your consumer's behaviour is wrong, they aren't using the internet as a way of reading a newspaper, they are using the internet, some of which consists of newspaper content, its a different thing. It was bad enough having to explain this in 1999, I find it a bit surprising it still needs saying in 2009.

That's it. That's the whole shooting match in a nutshell. That's why newspapers that are coming up with new paywall schemes will lose. That's why the internet will win. In the end, the process is inexorable, because the battle is not over content. It is over convenience.

Look at the Encyclopedia Britannica versus Wikipedia. I have had harsh words for Wikipedia in the past, and I stand by them, but I'll also be honest: I use Wikipedia every day. The Britannica, on the other hand, was the encyclopedia of record for much much longer than not only I've been alive but my father's been alive. When the Britannica went CD-ROM, I bought it, and bought a copy for my sister's children. It thrilled me that for a tiny amount of money I had access to this seminal resource.

I wouldn't dream of shelling that money out today, even though I (mostly) trust the Britannica's content above Wikipedia's. The Britannica isn't convenient. I can't just link to it when I'm making references to it. I can't just search it casually from any machine without having to fumble with passwords. It takes effort.

Wikipedia is just there. It is always at hand. It is always easy to reach. And it's far more comprehensive on the kinds of minutia and trivia I really need an encyclopedia for than the Britannica could ever be. Is it a trusted source? No, not really. But it's a great launching point for an investigation if I need a trusted source, and for quick "at-hand" information it's simply unparalleled.

And as a result, several orders of magnitude more people check Wikipedia every hour than check the Britannica website every day. It's not that it's better. It's that it's convenient, when all you want to do is look something up quickly and then get back to the websurfing you were already doing.

I don't know very many people who read a newspaper cover to cover, whether online or on paper. But a lot of people read articles that are germane to them right at that moment. Articles get linked on twitter or Livejournal. Google gathers these things together and points people at them when they're interested. And news sources that accept that they're a brief stopover on one's daily web journey get far more traffic than news sources that make a person jump through hoops to get the news. Bring money into the equation, and suddenly that readership drops by another order of magnitude or two. Robert Murdoch and those like him may assert the value of their goods, and equally assert that content must be paid for, but the only thing they can possibly do is make their content irrelevant to the broader world that's coming.

Let me repeat that.

The only thing paywalls or other direct monetization can do for newspapers or any other topical content is make it irrelevant to the world of the internet age.

Let us say that Murdoch succeeds at making his newspapers secure against Google aggregation and other such things. What happens in that scenario? What does basic capitalism tell us happens in a situation like that? Simply put, someone else develops a product that fills the niche no longer being filled. Some other journalistic organization will step up, develop a model around online advertising or some other thing we haven't even heard of yet, and happily reap the benefits. And let us be crystal clear: that organization might have demonstrably inferior news coverage, and it will not matter. Just like Wikipedia and the Britannica, the convenient Internet stop will trump the more prestigious but less convenient news source.

Let me repeat that.

An inferior news source that is easy to reach and consume on the internet will trump superior news sources that are even slightly harder to reach. Every time.

This is true whether we're talking about the Wall Street Journal or Hi and Lois comic strips -- people are going to gravitate to those things that fit the activities they're already doing. If two newspaper articles -- or comic strips -- are equally available to the online reading public, then the relative merits of one versus the other will determine ultimate popularity. If one article -- or comic -- is freely accessible and the other one requires cumbersome registration or, worse yet, a paid subscription, then the freely accessible one will have monumentally more readers than the other, regardless of their relative quality.

People don't go to the Internet to read The New York Times (with rare exceptions). People go to the Internet, see a reference to a breaking news story, and hit The New York Times for the straight story about it. If the Times isn't available to be read, they won't pay a subscription to read it -- they'll go to the Washington Post, or the Chicago Tribune, or the Miami Herald, or wherever is most convenient. And they will go to news.google.com to get the pointer in question. All that putting a given paper behind a paywall will accomplish is a rerouting of that traffic to the free content available.

Until the day Publishers understand this basic principle, said so well above and expanded upon so clumsily by me, we will continue to have ridiculous wars between print and Internet journalists, cartoonists and all the rest. Those institutions that can innovate, monetize and produce will do okay in the emerging era. Those who can't will become smaller, niche organizations that ultimately will disappear or be consumed by their more successful brethren. If you don't believe me, ask the folks at the Britannica, which has been sold, split apart, rebranded, and retooled any number of times in an increasingly desperate attempt to remain in profit.

Or, if that's not enough, ask the folks at Microsoft Encarta. If, that is, you can get anyone to answer the phone -- which is unlikely, since they closed down entirely in October of this year -- all except the Japanese version, which closes on the last day of December this year.

I know this, for the record, because I read it on Wikipedia.

Let me open with the non-Spoilery part of this here essay -- and I do indeed plan to spoil heavily in this here first post in a billion years. I really, really liked the new Star Trek movie.

Let me elaborate with an anecdote on one of the few times I've seen a movie more than once in a theater, and just about the only time I've seen a movie in a theater twice in a short amount of time.

It was early 1987, and I was a young tyro at Boston University. I was still new to post-high school life and a bit drunk with the power of a T Pass. I got a stipend from the United States Government as part of an early -- and unfortunate -- flirtation with the United States Navy. And I had a piece of plastic that let me ride the Boston T wherever and whenever I wanted.

And so in January of 1987, I took a ride on the T on an unseasonably warm day to the Government Center stop, just to tool around and see the sights. And I noticed that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was still playing in a theater. I hadn't yet seen this movie, because... well, I have no idea why I hadn't seen it yet. My friends had, and they liked it. Still, I didn't have much to do and hey, the theater was almost empty -- it was the middle of the day and Trek had been out for weeks at that point. So I went. Why not.

Two hours later, I marched out of the theater on an absolute high. I was charged -- no, I was supercharged. The last thing I wanted to do was go back to my room. So I turned around, and walked right back in, and proceeded to watch the film for a second time.

I'd never done that before. I haven't done that specific thing since. I've seen movies more than once in the theater since then -- but that was always because I had seen it with one group of friends and then a different group of friends wanted to see it too. It was group activity, in other words, not "oh my God I need to see that movie again." And certainly in recent years I've felt no need to be a repeat film watcher. The DVD will be out soon enough, after all. And there's always way more to watch.

On Thursday at 7 pm, Wednesday, a mutual friend and I all went to see Star Trek, at the first possible showing.

On Sunday, Wednesday and I saw it again. I couldn't imagine waiting for the DVD release -- I had to see this movie again.

So, taking it for what it's worth, I liked the movie.

We're about to move into the main part of this essay, so I'm going to bring back the ancient art of the Cut For Spoilers. Don't continue unless you're okay with them

Seriously, I'm going to reveal everything and its brother about this film.

Up to and including stuff that was misleading in the trailer.

Okay, not a lot of that, but a bit.

Okay, a bit involving hot chicks and underwear.

Right. Last chance.

(RSS readers -- click the link to the main entry on the site, or just click here to continue.

The Webcartoonist: Ryan North

Current Webcomics: Dinosaur Comics, Whispered Apologies

You May Remember Him From Such Webcomics Related Technologies As: Project Wonderful, Oh No Robot, RSSpect, God knows what else....

Enthusiasm: Why Do I Read This Webcomic Again

How Frequently Read: Regularly Checked

Some of these are a little weird to write. For example, this one.

Ryan North is brilliant. He really is. I've read at least one of his theses and it was amazing. He is probably one of the top two best friends Webcomics have ever had -- certainly, he has done as much or more to value add to other peoples' webcomics as anyone I can think of. He's been the major force (though not the solo force, always) behind two innovations that quite honestly make webcomics in general better: Ohnorobot.com, which is an embeddable search engine for webcomics which creators can either use themselves to make dialogue searchable, or something they can let their fanbase take point on in getting dialogue in place; and Project Wonderful, which absolutely takes website advertising and makes it simple for both webmasters and advertisers. You'll notice I use Project Wonderful myself -- it has garnered me significantly more coin than Google ads ever did (by a significant factor), and while my ad rates aren't anywhere near the top tier, Project Wonderful is way better than being slapped in the face by fish. Right up until gasoline prices went pear-shaped, Project Wonderful could generally fund of the full tanks of gas I needed to get to Ottawa to see the woman I'm going to marry in a couple of weeks.

Okay, that's fun to type, even if it has nothing to do with Ryan North.

North's brilliance was further brought forth -- and initially spread among our community -- through the award winning Dinosaur Comics, once called Daily Dinosaur Comics. For those who aren't familiar, Dinosaur Comics has taken a moderately simple and rough looking clip art comic strip featuring a few dinosaurs, one of whom stomps on buildings and people, and made it downright sublime through static art comics. A static art comic, as the name implies, is a comic strip where the art doesn't ever change. It's the same clip art every day, and only the words change. This was done a few times before North -- most (in)famously by director David Lynch in his comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World, which ran in various newspapers from 1983 to 1992. (North tipped his pen to Lynch in a strip that encapsulated the entire run of The Angriest Dog in the World into Dinosaur Comics). And Dinosaur Comics, through its fresh, inventive (and most of all funny) writing burned through our consciousness like a wildfire, devastating the infrastructure and calling out the National Guard. FOR FUN!

It's also worth noting that North didn't just embrace static art comics -- he also raised the bar on them. Lynch did nine years of static art strips, but he didn't dive into multiple characters, continuity, or for the most part even relevance. Most of the off-panel comments were near non-sequitors. Very few if any had anything to do with the dog in question. Folks who've jumped into static art since then have either varied what static panel they use from day to day (more properly making them the broader realm of constrained comics), or don't have multiple characters -- aping Lynch more than North. I know from what I speak -- for a while I did my own static art strip in conscious emulation of North. It was the Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark, and it was about a possessed statue who bitched about Ethan Allen and his wife, made breast jokes about Peggy Shippen, had adroit commentary on the politics of his time and ours, and had a total man-crush on Ice Cube. But as my strip was, by definition, a monologue, I was free to expound however I wished. (And it's worth noting, said strip didn't last nearly as long).

But Ryan North has multiple characters. He has interaction, and a supporting cast, and he has continuity from one strip to the next. North isn't just doing a static art comic strip -- he's doing a static art comic strip, with an expanding (and increasingly off-panel) cast of divinities and disturbing mammals. He has T-Rex, Utahraptor, and all the rest interacting and expounding, trying to mostly match the recurrent art. And he's done vastly better with it than anyone could have expected. It's got a strong readership of devoted fans. It gets referenced. (For a couple of years, David Willis referenced it in the Shortpacked April Fools Day strips, which I can't link to because of catastrophic failures of their electrical infrastructure. Man, they're not having a good weekend.) North's significance and influence is clear and broad.

And, if you look at the last few Daily Dinosaur comics, they continue to be wacky fun. T-Rex continues to be somewhat innocent with the selfishness of innocence. Utahraptor is a good friend though sometimes he has to be the wiser counsel. Dromiceiomius is still... um... occasionally speaking in the third panel. God talks every so often. It's fun!

Fun!

Fun.

Yeah.

Okay, here's the dirty truth. The big problem with static comics? Are they're static. And Ryan North has pushed his comic in incredible directions given that. But... North has written 1,234 (hey! 1-2-3-4!) comics as of this writing. Honestly, they're not blowing my mind any more. They seem... really... the same. Day in, and day out. It's not that there hasn't been evolution -- there has. But there's just so far that North can go in any direction, because tomorrow Utahraptor and Dromiceiomius are still showing up in a few panels and T-Rex is still stomping on that building, and there's no way to focus on another character for a while. It's got to be T-Rex. He's in all the panels!

Look, I like Dinosaur Comics. I really do. Heck, I did a Reader Art strip for it once. North is funny and smart, and may be conquering North America. Heck, he already got it named after him -- like in a merger! But... it's....

I've seen it. Not just the art, but the strip. The patter. The rhythm. All too often the joke.

It's... well, getting kinda dull.

This reminds me a little bit of my comments on Perry Bible Fellowship -- it's much the same reaction, really. It's not that North has lost some of his skills. It's that we've done this often enough that the impact has become dilute.

I have this on "Why Do I Read This Webcomic Again" not because I dislike it, mind. I do like it. It's just... when I ask myself that question, I don't really have an answer. Why do I read Dinosaur Comics? If I end up having to ponder it and not really coming up with an answer, it's pretty much got to go in this category.

At the same time, I don't really plan on stopping reading it, so it might better belong in the Hoi Polloi instead. I dunno.

Right. Let's do the metrics before I become a mass of wish crossed to wash.

Strengths

North is consistent. The writing tends to be solid, the characters are well defined and well distinguished, the updates happen with the regularity one would hope they do, and the layout of the web page is clear.

I mentioned how far North has pushed the boundaries of Static Art. That's not nothing, to use a Sorkinesque construction. He really has done amazing things with the static art form. He tries his best to change up the formula and disrupt our expectations. The fact that he's gone so far with the number of posted strips is a testament to that.

The breadth of topic that the strip addresses and expounds upon are amazing, as are his carefully considered positions.

In other words, North is, in fact, a good writer.

Weaknesses

As said before, we're pushing 1,300 strips and he's running out of wiggle room. All too often, we can often predict where things are going to go. With no real room to move other cast members forward, there's no way to give T-Rex a rest for a while without compromising the basic device being used. I mean, even Hagar the Horrible doesn't have Hagar in every strip doing most of the talking. That's not an enviable position for anyone.

On the Whole

Ryan North is a mad scientist who has mostly used his powers for good. He is clever and wise and very creative, and I like his comic strip very much. But... it may be time to consider something radical... like a new page of clip art -- maybe something that can be alternated or switched between. Otherwise, fatigue is going to slowly weed out readers.

Of course, by then he'll have built a new content distribution system, found a way to project force beams from CRTs, compiled a natural language parser for search engines that doesn't suck and found a way to make hydrogen cell cars affordable. He's like that.

Sorry this took a bit, I got sidetracked with about half a rememberance which then had stuff I need to look out. Also work and eBay auctions, which are going great. More stuff up soon, for people who want to buy! With luck, the next one of these tomorrow... which might be an interesting one to do.

There's freezing rain outside, covering the landscape with little hard pellets. The weekend was spent in Ottawa, where the weather wasn't so hot most of the time but the company was good. Our valentine's day, to make up for a day of gifts exchanged and well wishes and expressions of love made four hundred or so miles away from each other with a national border between us. She is well, thank you for asking, and I'm fine as well, though I'm tired today.

Yesterday, I sat down to write my next State of, which should appear later today and was scheduled to appear yesterday, having been back (though I had scheduled that day off as well -- I'm old now, and an Ottawa trip usually takes me a day or so in recovery before I'm back in the saddle), but before I could do that I followed up on some e-mail, and that's how I learned that Ernest Gary Gygax had passed away at the age of sixty nine. On Gamemaster's Day, no less.

Well, all apologies to Brad Guigar and Evil Inc,, but at that moment I didn't really feel like writing about his webcomic. I didn't feel like writing anything. I was stunned. Honestly stunned. I couldn't get my brain around the idea. Gary Gygax was dead?

Gary Gygax was dead?

For those who came in late, Gary Gygax was one of the seminal figures in adventure gaming and fantasy role playing games. He was arguably the seminal figure. The patriarch. The single most important man to a hobby which has led to literally billions of dollars of revenue in international business over the course of decades. He was one of the core bridge figures carrying old style wargaming rules into new style tabletop roleplaying. He was the founder of Gencon, the man who took The Strategic Review, a magazine devoted to wargaming with some minor RPG roots, and made it Dragon, which for years was the single unifying connector between roleplayers. He created Gencon out of a yearly gathering of wargamers ("Gencon 0," in the history, was a 1966 gathering of about 12 to 20 (reports vary) wargamers that Gygax put together in Lake Geneva in Gygax's own home. (For reference, Gen Con Indy 2007, the fortieth anniversary of the Con, had twenty seven thousand attendees last year. They're now in the midst of a huge scandal and just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, but I digress.) Gygax was the most visible public figure, the prominent personality, the ambassador and advocate for an entire hobby which became an industry in many forms.

Oh, yeah. He also cocreated Dungeons and Dragons. You might have heard of it.

Dungeons and Dragons grew out of homebrew rules that both Gygax and Dave Arneson put together in the early seventies. Gygax's homebrew system centered on his City of Greyhawk. Arneson's system centered on his legendary Blackmoor setting. The original Dungeons and Dragons three book set was, for all intents and purposes, a synthesis of these two systems refined for ease of play, and Greyhawk and Blackmoor were the first two supplements. They put together a small company (Tactical Studies Rules) to support some cottage industry support for their role playing game and their various wargames, and printed a thousand copies of the original Dungeons and Dragons (named, they later claimed, from an offhanded quip from Gygax's wife).

Those thousand copies sold out in less than nine months. In the early 1970s. With no budget for things like advertising.

Over the next several years, Gygax took center stage. Arneson's role diminished (and later there would be legal wrangling followed by at least an official reconciliation), but if the creation of Dungeons and Dragons had been a joint affair, the explosion of Dungeons and Dragons and role playing games in general was a product of Gygax's industry, vision, and sometimes pigheaded stubbornness. Revisions to the rules came out. New supplements emerged (including one of my most prized possessions -- a copy of Gods, Demigods and Heroes, meant for the original game and found in a hobby shop for cover price during my initial 'buy in' to the game, alongside a book on traps, a 'solo adventure,' and The City State of the Invincible Overlord produced by Judges Guild). And a new plan emerged -- a major revision, known as Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which would codify and evolve the rules into a true open ended campaign experience.

Leading up to the release of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons hardbacks, Gygax and company released the original ("blue dragon booklet") Basic Dungeons and Dragons set boxed set in 1977.

Which is where I entered the story.

I had first heard about Dungeons and Dragons through the best advertising medium the hobby had in 1977 -- the evening news. My first exposure to the game was listening to shrill, mostly ignorant parents and psychologists who'd never read the game talking about its dangers. Stories of people crawling into steam tunnels and losing all sense of reality when they went there were in their infancy back then, but they were still present before they could be codified and given a voice in the sad 1979 story of James Dallas Egbert III (a story which later turned out to have no connection to his roleplaying hobby). The danger, they told us, was real.

And I? Was enthralled. The very idea of that game thrilled me. A game where you could be a wizard or warrior, so real and evocative some people went nuts? Sign me up!

To this day, when I hear alarmist talk about gaming of any sort, I consider it advertising and figure the game in question is worth a look. Jack Thompson has probably sold as many or more copies of Grand Theft Auto as anything Rockstar's paid for, but I digress.

I got my blue dragon booklet, inside a lovely full color box. My edition had chits inside that you cut out and put into a bag to represent "1-20" or the like, though I also bought a set of the original dice that sometimes came in the box itself. Those dice were prized possessions until 1985, when my dice bag was lost at school. In part, they were so prized because they were such terrible dice. The plastic was cheap and they were uninked, You actually took a black crayon and rubbed it on the numbers to 'fill them in,' and because the plastic was so bad within a few years they were worn absolutely smooth. My twenty sided was a slightly irregular marble at the end. But by then I had lots of dice from the good people at Gamescience or Zocchi. Gemstone dice. Purple plastic dice. Tons and tons and tons of six siders. Dice of all kinds.

And I also had the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons books.

Those came out over time. First we got the Monster Manual, a compendium of beasts and creatures that included such horrors as the Mind Flayer, the Rust Monster, and the Beholder -- a monster so core to fantasy today that people forget it was created by and is owned by the good people at Dungeons and Dragons.

It also had the pictures of the Succubus, the Dryad, the Erinyes and the Type V Demon. For a huge number of D&D players, the "D" chapter of that book was the most popular by far. But give us a break, lots of us were just entering puberty and we didn't have Suicidegirls.com at the time.

This was followed by the Player's Handbook, a glorious compendium of character classes and reams and reams of spells. Fighters and Magic Users and Clerics Thieves abounded, alongside Paladins and Druids and Illusionists and Assassins. Half-orcs stood angrily alongside half-elves, halflings shrilly demanded that you pretend they weren't in any way repackaged (and legally trademarked) hobbits, and "Armor Class" and "Speed Factor" were determined for things like Ranseurs and the deadly but slow Bec de Corbin (+2 against Plate Mail and Shield, Plate Mail, splint or Banded Mail and Shield, Splint and Banded Mail, or Chainmail and Shield -- Chainmail, at AC 5, was not included in the bonus, 1d8 damage vs. small to man sized, 1d6 against large size, six feet required to wield, speed factor 9, 6 gold pieces in cost, approximately 100 gold pieces in weight. It would be years before anyone involved in the game would bother to include a description of just what a bec de corbin was, other than six feet long and as heavy as a bag of gold, and we didn't have Wikipedia in those days. For the record, it's a hammer and spike mounted on a pole, designed to tear armor off and rip shields out of your hand. It's related to the lucerne hammer and sometimes identified as a 'warhammer,' though that can be anything from a kind of pole arm to a hammer shaped mace. Popularly, we think of a warhammer as the sort of thing Thor carried, which doesn't describe a bec de corbin at all. And if this seems out of place in the Gygax remembrance, you're wrong. He ate this stuff up with a spoon.)

After that we got, in relatively short order, the Dungeon Master's Guide, the end of the trifecta, later joined by Deities and Demigods (the update to my beloved Gods, Demigods and Heroes and still a great supplement years later -- especially if you're cool like me and have a copy from before the folks at Chaosium realized there were unlicensed sections on the Cthulhu and Elric mythos which necessitated a rerelease without those chapters. And by cool, I mean "a dork in his 40's.") This was the foundation. Later, there would be tons more books -- Unearthed Arcana, the Wilderness Survival Guide, the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, the Manual of the Planes, and so many more, along with adventures adventures adventures. My group ran through B1 and B2. They did the Giants and the Drow. They knew the Village of Hommlet and later learned the pain that was The Temple of Elemental Evil. I had the World of Greyhawk Gazetteer, back in the days where world maps were naturally Hex Maps, even as dungeon maps were out of necessity on graph paper.

God, so many memories.

We're not discussing an idle thing here. Not for me. This is a huge part of my early life. These books -- First Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons were a foundational part of my social network. And if that sounds dorky to you, and I sound like a loser to you, then fuck you. I had better times with these people than you've had with anyone you know, God damn it.

Gods, what people.... it started at once with my friends at school. George Carpenter, Tim Freeman, Richard Grindle, Chad King.... then I started to get involved with a group over at the college. Don Cody, Cody Stober, Rick Littlefield. Anyway, Herbie Oxten and his girlfriend/later wife Lucy. And then it merged with my high school group -- Rich Grindle, still (and I still miss him), Andrew Paradis, J.P. Marin from the high school, Gary 'Chip' Hanson, Kevin Pelletier, Eric Clements, Michelle Kane and others from the college. I was usually the Dungeon Master, running them through Arthe, my home campaign. Arthe came with me to college (as did Andrew), and there added Andy Alexander, Robin Whelton, Ernestine Lillya (later Gardner), Matt DeForrest, the late Charlie Barlow, Abbe Dalton, this guy named Mike I can't remember the last name of right now... all blending into real life, with my big friend Frank Orzechowicz, Karen Godfrey, Kevin back from before, John Bankert, Rebecca Tants, Lee "Auntie Nin" Radigan, Christie Russell (now Bell)....

So many names. I've no doubt forgotten some. Time will do that to you.

And you don't quite understand what this has to do with Gary Gygax.

The short answer is "everything." Because Gary Gygax created the framework that led to all of that. And understand, those are all folks I specifically played first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons with. Those thirty names, including some of my oldest friends, my dearest friends, a former girlfriend, people I shared apartments with, people I shared experiences with, people I shared my life with found format and purchase specifically from the words that Gary Gygax had written and popularized with his books. And that doesn't even get into all the other Role Playing Games, which derived from and grew out of the seed of Dungeons and Dragons and flourished throughout the world. At the very beginning there was Tunnels and Trolls (George Carpenter's favorite) and Traveller. Later came Villains and Vigilantes which led inexorably to Champions in my life. Trips to the hobby store in Presque Isle for more D&D swag also gave us Car Wars, which in turn gave us GURPS. And then there were all the others -- Aftermath, GhostBusters (surprisingly good), Paranoia, Marvel Super Heroes, D.C. Heroes, Star Frontiers, Timemaster, Star Ace, Gamma World -- motherfucking Gamma World -- Top Secret, Espionage, the James Bond game (I remember a great run of James Bond with Andrew Paradis and his brothers....)

And none of it -- none of it -- would have existed if Gary Gygax hadn't cocreated Dungeons and Dragons and then pushed, republished, spearheaded, cheerleaded, advocated and otherwise turned a niche product into an industry. None of it.

You know what else wouldn't exist now? World of Warcraft. In fact, the entire computer RPG, MMORPG, Action RPG and a Hell of a lot of Platforming games wouldn't have existed without Gary Gygax -- certainly not in the form they do now. Any time you level a character, it's because of Gary Gygax. Hell, Knights of the Old Republic used actual mechanics derived from his writing.

So, take out Gygax, and take out Final Fantasy at the same time. Take out Dragon Warrior. Take out Adventure and Zork and that Atari game with the bats. Take out WarHammer and City of Heroes and absolutely core and seminal elements of essentially all modern video gaming. Without Gary Gygax, that whole industry would look radically different today, if it existed at all.

You want to know what else disappears? All three Lord of the Rings movies from the 90's and the turn of the century.

Oh, you don't believe me? Look, right when Dungeons and Dragons was coming out -- and before it became well known or popular -- there were adaptations of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit was a Ruby/Spears Rankin/Bass cartoon for children most known now for the cloying song "The Greatest Adventure" (which is a bad rap -- The Hobbit wasn't bad for what it was -- a 70's childrens cartoon special meant for the family hour). The Lord of the Rings was a Ralph Bakshi trip and a half that was a commercial failure at the box office, leading to the story being finished by Ruby/Spears Rankin/Bass once more. The Lord of the Rings was a failure in the mainstream.

And Fantasy? Fantasy was a subsection of Science Fiction. A small subsection of Science Fiction. Most of the great fantasists were also Science Fiction writers, or were so crossover that it made no never mind (Michael Moorcock was at heart a true Fantasist, but somehow you could buy his work as New Wave SF too, for example.) Even The Dragonriders of Pern was a science fiction novel at heart (seriously. They're colonists on an alien world who lost their culture thanks to DEATH SPORES FROM ANOTHER WORLD).

But going into the late 70's and early 80's, even as Star Wars was redefining Science Fiction and making it truly mainstream, the old guard of Science Fiction fans, none too happy with the new people coming into the lodge, were reconnecting over tables and rolling dice, and playing Dungeons and Dragons. And seeking out source material and exciting fantasy all at the same time, I would add. Sales started going up. Fritz Leiber's books began selling better. By the middle of the decade, fantasy was booming. By the 90's, it was outselling Science Fiction significantly. And a whole generation of fantasy fans were being born.

Flash forward to the turn of the century. Most "Science Fiction" sections in bookstores are primarily Fantasy, along with a whole rack of licensed tie in books that sometimes is as big as the entire section. And alongside the (fantasy/horror) Buffy books, Star Trek and Star Wars books and the like are the books based on Role Playing Games.

The biggest chunk of that section? Dungeons and Dragons.

And those huge fantasy fans remade the marketplace. Fantasy movies started doing better. Ultimately, The Lord of the Rings was done again, this time (mostly) live action and epic, and it made more money than Ecuador.

I submit that without both Dungeons and Dragons and Gary Gygax's push into the mainstream, Tolkien would have diehard adherents, and maybe -- maybe -- the Mind's Eye Theater and BBC radio productions, but that any adaptation for the screen would have been a minor affair, possibly running in the U.S. on PBS, watched by few. And the one or two racks of Science Fiction/Fantasy books in the bookstores would have been mostly Science Fiction, hard to soft depending on the author.

And Gygax did push things into the mainstream. In 1982, just about the biggest movie out there (in fact, one of the biggest movies of all time) was E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. And in the first scene where we meet Elliot, his older brother -- his older cool brother -- was playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. (Later, when being taunted by a fellow schoolkid, Elliot's shouted return insult was "zero charisma!" High dudgeon indeed. The year before that, the Golden Globe nominated Taps, starring Timothy Hutton, Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and George C. Scott told the story of the siege of a military academy that the students had seized. In an earlier scene, one kid shouted up the stairwell to another, asking if they were playing Dungeons and Dragons that night. This wasn't product placement -- this was verisimilitude. Dungeons and Dragons and roleplaying were simply a part of life at most high schools at that point.

If you're wondering why Gary Gygax, ahead of so many other people, was known to the populace and so well known by gamers, you have to remember what bound us together. In those days, only a few people had the internet or any means of rapid community building or communication. On the other hand, the burgeoning RPG community had a lifeline -- one that connected them, gave them insight into the hobby, announcements and reviews of new games and products, and in short created an actual community of gamers.

That lifeline was named Dragon Magazine, and its most prominent resident was E. Gary Gygax.

Yes, Dragon was published by TSR, which had been Tactical Studies Rules and which published Dungeons and Dragons. But at the time, while there were other publications out there, none had the scope of Dragon and Dragon worked hard (in the early days at least) to give other role playing games and related hobby games their due. It had grown out of The Strategic Review, which had been a system agnostic wargaming magazine, and that practice continued for some time. Traveller articles appeared in Dragon, as did Runequest articles and many, many other game articles. In a world where gamers were separated by distance and only got glimpses of the world of games in between the Avalon Hill wargame sets and the balsa wood at hobby stores, Dragon Magazine put roleplaying front and center.

And, where most articles about games, regardless of the game, focused on mechanics or setting or characters or what have you? Gary Gygax was a personality. His column -- From the Sorcerer's Scroll -- was somewhere between Stan's Soapbox, a house organ advertising tool, a philosophy of gaming column, a chance to goob about things Gygax was doing or excited about, and a gossip column about the gaming industry. Gygax's personality drove the impressions people got about gaming, about TSR, about Dungeons and Dragons -- in short, about the hobby as a whole. There were tons of dynamic and stubborn voices in RPGs back then, as there are now, but Rick Loomis, Steve Jackson, Kevin Siembieda and all the rest, as opinionated and passionate as they were, lacked the sheer market exposure that Gary Gygax got.

This was Gygax's blessing. This was also Gygax's curse. Gary Gygax, both in print and (according to second and third hand accounts) in person was creative, passionate, generous, friendly, engaging and charismatic. However, he was also egotistical, opinionated, arrogant, clearly had way more regard for his ability as a writer and developer than he should, and oft times he was an asshole.

We're not supposed to talk about these things right now. The man just died, and people are feeling horrible. I know. I'm one of them. But pretending Gary Gygax was a saint doesn't do Gary Gygax's memory any good, and Gary Gygax was sometimes his own worst enemy.

One of the early manifestations of this arrogance was his attitude towards "optional" or "unofficial" rules for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Gygax loathed them. This was not how the game was supposed to be played. Understand, this is what Dragon Magazine specialized in -- it was its bread and butter. For every installation of Bazaar of the Bizarre including new magic items, there was also an article on variant ways to play the game, and that just wasn't right. In fact, throughout the First Edition years, Dragon was enjoined from publishing character classes. The character classes were expertly balanced and perfectly developed to mesh together, and any new classes would just be a monkey wrench in the works. So for over a decade, whenever a new profession was described in Dragon, it was listed as a new Non-Player Character Class. Anti-Paladins, Dualists, and all the rest? NPCs.

And Gygax meant it. Hell, have a look at this, from the preface to the first edition Player's Handbook:

This latter part of the ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS project I approached with no small amount of trepidation. After all, the game's major appeal is to those persons with unusually active imagination and superior, active intellect - a very demanding audience indeed. Furthermore, a great majority of readers master their own dungeons and are necessarily creative - the most critical audience of all! Authoring these works means that, in a way, I have set myself up as final arbiter of fantasy role playing in the minds of the majority of D&D adventurers. Well, so be it, I rationalized. Who better than the individual responsible for it all as creator of the "Fantasy Supplement" in CHAINMAIL, the progenitor of D&D; and as the first proponent of fantasy gaming and a principal in TSR, the company one thinks of when fantasy games are mentioned, the credit and blame rests ultimately here. Some last authority must be established for a very good reason.

This became a letter column fight back in the early days of Dragon, and led to at least one of Gygax's confidents (I can't list who, as I don't have the issue in front of me, and my at last purchased copy of the Dragon Archive won't arrive until later in the week, so my apologies for lack of attribution and paraphrasing) demanding that players stop bastardizing their games and play them the way Gary set down. And sure, when Gygax himself played, he used house rules, but he's unimaginably creative and no system -- not even his own -- could constrain him. And if you were so arrogant to believe yourself in his league, ask yourself how many RPGs, novels, cartoons and movie treatments you had written? Huh?

It got to the point that actual official rules additions and optional rules were so labeled -- and they meant, at their core, that Gary Gygax had signed off on them. Which actually reminds me of an anecdote.

There was a guy who we knew, over at the local college where I played (and generally ran) Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. His name, as I recall, was Louis. (Not the Louis, for those few from my past reading this, who I went to grade school with. He was never much into Dungeons and Dragons.) Louis was a blowhard and a munchkin of the worst order, and he had his notebook full of his favorite characters, full of the most game breaking statistics and magical items you can imagine.

And, I swear to God, he insisted he could play them in my campaign, and everything in them had to be exactly as they were written, because Gary Gygax had given them to him. He claimed to have played with Gygax in campaigns and at cons, and that Gygax had given him these sweet, unique items, and as a result his character had a stamp of authenticity that no human being could contravene. The Lich King had spoken. He also used to tell stories of how when a character died in Gygax's game, he'd take their character sheet and light it on fire before the traumatized person's eyes, so it was a big deal that he still had this character, because everyone died in Gary's games.

Needless to say, we didn't believe a word of it. But it's interesting. If anyone claimed that Ken St. Andre had given him perks in a Tunnels and Trolls character, or Steve Jackson had given him a really sweet Car Wars car build, illegal in the rules set, people would have stared at him like he was clinically insane.

But Gygax? Yeah, clearly Louis was lying (and a terrible gamer, to boot), but you paused and listened, first.) Because dude -- who knew? Maybe there was something to it. And Gygax certainly seemed to believe he had editorial control and supervisory capacity over our campaigns, even though in those days the people who bought settings were the exceptions. If you got a module, you fit it into your own world.

This culminated, if that's the word, in a series of "open letters" that Gygax published in Dragon, castigating his enemies, attacking others -- very, very unprofessional things and conduct. And absolutely the sort of thing that would be familiar today, in these days of personal and developer blogs. We expect to see some dirt fly on official internet sites, and we have unprecedented access to the movers and shakers in game development (video or tabletop). These are not mysterious figures to us, these are people we can have arguments with on forums and who we sort of expect to answer our e-mail when we send it. Steve Jackson to Joss Whedon to Kevin Smith, there is an egalitarian presumption that borders on the ridiculous in our electronic world.

But back then, only a very few got to have a conversation with Gary Gygax. A rant seemed wildly inappropriate.

In the mid 80's, Sixty Minutes did a story on Dungeons and Dragons. This was at the height of the wildly inaccurate (and later wholly debunked) claims of Satanic influence and rampant suicide associated with role playing games. The RPG fans of the United States had a certain fear when that report came out -- this could be trouble. Sixty Minutes was serious. It all depended on who they got to represent the other side of the story.

And then we saw who they got. They got Gary Gygax. And we collectively groaned, as we watched, because this wasn't the kind, visionary, creative, genius Gary Gygax. They got the arrogant one. On tape.

I remember Andrew Paradis and I having a serious discussing with his father after the report aired, addressing the concerns he had about the game, and making certain he understood that Andrew and I weren't about to kill ourselves, go run around steam tunnels, or swear fealty to Satan. And no, Gary Gygax didn't speak for all gamers.

Ultimately, Gygax and his partners had friction. Gygax had friction with a lot of people. There were behind the scenes issues, and then he very publicly left TSR and started writing his own games. Only the state of the art of RPGs had passed Gygax by, and Danjerous Journeys never caught on.

And when TSR released Second Edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Gygax's name was relegated to a legal notice acknowledging this was a derivative work published by the rightsholders and a note in the "Special Thanks To." And in the second edition Dungeon Masters Guide, Dave "Zeb" Cook wrote in the foreward:

Let's assume that since you're reading this, you are, or plan to be, a DUNGEON MASTER™, By now, you should be familiar with the rules in the Player's Handbook. You've probably already noticed things you like or things you would have done differently. If you have, congratulations. You've got the spirit every Dungeon Master needs. Curiosity and the desire to make changes, to do things differently because your idea is better than the other guy's-these are the most important things a Dungeon Master needs. As you go through this rule book, I encourage you to continue to make these choices.

Quite a bit different than Gygax's claim to be the final authority, isn't it? At the same time, notice that trademark next to Dungeon Master. The advent of the Post-Gygax Dungeons and Dragons heralded many changes, and a far more corporate environment and understanding of the legal marketplace was just one of them.

One thing we noticed, in fact, was that... there was a whole lot less variety, in ways. The game had been reoriented to really push the Lawful Good side of things. Demons and devils were gone (which seemed weird to me -- they weren't held up as objects of worship in the original -- they were sacks of Experience Points you wanted to kill and rob), only to be returned (after outcry) with new, innocuous names. The demonesses got clothes. Heck, the females got clothes. This was a game no one would blink twice about handing to their fourteen year old kid.

And then Vampire: The Masquerade came out and proceeded to eat Second Edition's lunch for a good long while -- at least among the hardcore. They had cool and chic and LARPing and darkness and better music and way more hot goth chicks into it.

And in the background, there was Gary Gygax. He still surfaced now and again. He returned, after a while, as a columnist for Dragon Magazine. He continued to release products. When Wizards of the Coast bought TSR and announced Third Edition, they very carefully got the old guard, including Dave Arneson, out to be a part of the announcement. But the rock star in the room was Gary Gygax, endorsing Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition and once more at the top of the heap, in residence at Gen Con -- the convention he had started in his own house -- and shaking the hands.

And Third Edition was good to Gygax. With the advent of the Open Gaming License and d20, Gygax could start releasing products for the system he had cocreated and shepherded once more. The old Castle Greyhawk became Castle Zagyg, and products were released for it. Gygax was the elder statesman of role playing at this point -- still passionate, but calmer. The friendly, generous Gary Gygax took center stage during this time -- a voice of reason, if of firm opinion. And always, the one that everyone knew was mainstream in a way Mark Rein•Hagen never would be.

This was the Gary Gygax I actually had contact with.

Oh yeah. When I was in the flush and joy of actually being a published game author, I spent a lot of time on different mailing lists. Mailing lists for the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Sciences, Freelancer mailing lists -- all kinds of stuff. And like everyone else who is first let in the door, I was feeling my oats and trying to make my mark. I'd been doing this since the 70's, after all, and these people couldn't intimidate me!

And then I got a response, with "Greetings!" at the very top. And "Gary" at the bottom.

I will admit to blowing my system shock roll.

I had a very informal correspondence with the man, mind. We did trade some private mail, though I suspect I was one of hundreds of informal correspondents that Gygax had over electronic mail. And the substance of those e-mails are not of interest here. What is of interest is this: Gary Gygax was unfailingly polite and supportive. His kindness was clear and apparent. And he had a way of making a punkass kid (regardless of his age) in the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire feel like a peer whose opinions were worthy of respect even if they were ill informed and wrong.

And here we are, years later, and Gary Gygax is dead. The arrogant, egotistical Gary Gygax is dead. The kind, supportive Gary Gygax is dead. The passionate, creative Gary Gygax is dead. Gary Gygax is dead.

And some folks I've seen don't get why so many people seem so torn up over it. A fellow whose opinion I usually respect even said, in effect, that he hadn't done anything of significance for 30 years, so what's the big deal?

I swear, I could have punched him.

For all his contradictions, for all his faults, for all his strengths and for all his weaknesses, this complicated, opinionated, genius man has had an impact on society as a whole that is literally immeasurable. I'm not misusing the word 'literally' there, either -- there is no way to measure how much influence Gary Gygax has had on the world. Certainly, the world of literature, of movies, of video games, of television (children's and adult) have all been profoundly affected by the things Gary Gygax did. Billions of dollars have changed hands based directly or indirectly on Gary Gygax's work. Take Gary Gygax out of the equation, and our entire culture becomes radically different. And Christ only knows what the internet culture would look like.

But beyond that, a man who was a monumental part of my childhood, my past, and a huge number of my friendships is gone. I listed out that long list of friends above -- but understand that's a tiny fraction of my friends from roleplaying. And a large number of my other friends are ones I haven't gamed with but who are themselves gamers. Gary Gygax gave me a social group. He gave me peers.

And he regarded me as a peer, all too briefly.

And I'm going to miss him. Terribly.

But he'll continue to be a part of my life, of course. His influence doesn't vanish. Hell, he's still a huge part of Dungeons and Dragons -- beyond the mechanics and the structure, when you cast Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound, you're casting a spell that one of Gygax's characters came up with. Bigby, Tenser, Otiluke -- the names attached to the spells in the Player's Handbook are names of characters people (in particular, Gygax himself and his two sons, Ernie and Luke) played.

And when I'm watching reruns of Futurama, there's every chance I'll see the episode where Gygax announced to Fry that he was [diceroll] pleased to meet him, on an episode where Fry met the nerds responsible for protecting the Space/Time continuum -- the Vice President of the United States (as voiced by Al Gore himself), Professor Stephen Hawking ('voiced' by Hawking himself), Nichelle "Uhura" Nichols (voiced by herself)... and Gary Gygax. And no one ever questioned Gygax's inclusion in a list with a Star Trek icon, the most prominent theoretical physicist of our age, and the former Vice President of the United States.

I love Champions and GURPS alike, but Steve Perrin or Steve Jackson wouldn't have worked there. But Gary Gygax did.

Rest well, sir.

This is talking around a subject, rather than directly about it. I apologize for that. Let me spend a few moments discussing the nub of the matter before diving into the meat of the essay, which lives out on the periphery where a man and a dog might have a gun and a shack, but there's not much likelihood of there being a WalMart nearby.

I am given to understand that Marvel Comics -- in an eighteen month block of time which could charitably be described as "the stupidest thing ever," has managed to actually do the stupidest thing ever.

How stupid was it? Beloved internet icon and Babylon 5 Great Maker J. Michael Straczynski, the current writer of Spider-Man, was told to do this thing by Marvel Editorial. He was so against the idea that he decided to leave his name off the story. There was a long discussion with various folks at Marvel Editorial, culminating in the Editor in Chief's having a long discussion with him and convincing him not to remove his name from the stories.

Of course, Mr. Straczynski then proceeded to post about this event on usenet. Seriously, I'm not kidding. He decided not to take his name off the story, then loudly posted about the conflict and decision, thus magnifying the story beyond what leaving his name off in the first place would have done. Which is worse for Marvel, because it really screams out just how unhappy folks were about this, and is a little bad for Straczynski, since it makes him look like he didn't have the courage for doing the hard thing but wanted the credit for doing the hard thing. If you're going to be a part of a travesty, don't even bother trying to half-distance yourself from it.

The event, which I suppose needs a spoiler warning except anyone reading these words probably already knows it, is essentially Spider-Man and Mary Jane making a deal with the devil, in his Mephisto guise, to save the life of dying Aunt May, retconning their marriage out of existence so that it never happened. Oh, and Harry didn't die. And I guess they wanted Gwen never to die but the writers demanded otherwise.

As I said, the stupidest thing ever.

That's only tangentially what we're here to talk about.

We're here to talk about retconning;

Retconning comes from "retroactive continuity," meaning "taking the continuity of your storyline and retroactively changing part of it so things didn't happen the way they happened," and there are many ways to do it. Let's talk about them together, shall we?

First off, let's talk about what all these things have in common. All of these changes underscore some Alteration Of What The Fans Know. And the fans are the only relevant part of retconning -- casual or first time readers don't care. You could just start your series over completely wiping out everything that happened (see below) in issue one of your new series, and a completely new reader won't give a damn about it when he reads issue two. The only people who give a damn about the history of your story are the people who have already emotionally invested in your story. They're the ones who bring baggage with them. They're the ones who have followed the story for some time -- maybe even years or decades -- and they're the ones you have to convince when you go ahead and make changes to "what they thought they knew."

That phrase, by the by, which is a lie. Retconning doesn't change 'what they thought they knew.' Retconning intentionally takes what they knew and made it wrong. It is a contradiction of your fans' expectations and a complete alteration of the context your stories are told in.

It is a tool, in other words, but it is one that should be used very, very, very rarely, because it deliberately breaks the emotional investment your fans have in your core product: your story. You take a significant risk that your fans will not then reinvest every time you do it. Which means you'll lose some of your fans every time you do it.

It's also a tool to be used sparingly because the retcon will always feel like fiat, whereas the continuity it replaced was organic. It grew and built over the course of months or years or decades. The resulting patches will be weaker, and won't take the strain the original would.

And it is a tool to be used sparingly because once you start to retcon, you start wanting to do more. It's a rare writer or editor who does what he feels is a necessary retcon who won't then throw in a bunch of flourishes just because they thought it would be cool. And even if the retcon could have worked all right, the flourishes inevitably cause destruction and lay waste to all they touch.

The major problem is, the major comic book publishers don't treat retcons like rare tools to be used sparingly. Since the mid to late eighties, they use them like chainsaws, and they're reaping that which they've sown ever since.

So let's look at the different ways to retcon. Let's look at the advantages of them. And let's look at the potential pitfalls of each type:

Category One: Now Revealed! A Lost Tale of the Hero!

The most basic form of the retcon is also the least problematic. History isn't rewritten -- it just turns out there was more to the story than we saw the first time around. Back in the late sixties and early seventies (and even into the eighties) the Legion of Super-Heroes did this sort of thing a lot. We saw stories set during earlier Legion eras, often with a "now it can be told!!!" caveat, meant to add a certain richness to the Legion's history without really changing anything.

In fact, the most pervasive version of the "secret history of X" form of retconning would have to be the existence of Superboy himself. Superboy -- the original, once tagged as 'the adventures of Superman when he was a boy -- had a whole mess of adventures, up to and including a ton of adventures with the far-future Legion of Super-Heroes long before he ever went to Metropolis! And every time a new one was published, we had a tiny bit of retconning of Superman's history -- after all, in the 'present' day, Superman would have had all of those adventures. When we learned that Superman's 'first' meeting with some of his foes (including bafflement at their powers until he worked out the kinks of fighting them) wasn't really his first meeting, what since he fought the teenaged version of Lex Luthor back in the day, it made that original story a little weaker (man, did Superman forget the bit about the imp saying his name backwards? I thought he had super-memory!) but it could be ignored, for the most part.

The advantages of the lost tale are many: financially it makes sense because it means mining earlier versions of your intellectual property. There were folks who tired of the Legion who'd still buy something with the old Adventure era costumes, for example. Superboy's adventures meant using Pete Ross and Lana Lang -- something that always seemed troubling when they showed up in the modern day and interacted with Superman. The old X-Men are still darn lucrative no matter how many weirdass variations of the new X-Men we get. And so on and so forth.

The disadvantages, on the other hand, are minor but present. One was touched on up above -- if you take elements introduced in your series and reintroduce them in a lost tale of your hero's past, you weaken the original story. Further, a new writer on a given series might be tempted to write "lost" tales from before he took over so his own beloved and precious characters can be made a part of the history of the popular character. (A plethora of Batman supporting cast and villains turn up in Bruce Wayne's years of training, for example, which makes us think that they're all essentially stupid for forgetting that billionaire they met back in Tibet, but I digress.) Perhaps most subtle but definitely there is that sense that with all those pastward adventures, Our Hero never had time to actually grow up. This is most true of Superboy, who Kryptonian or not didn't have nearly enough time to do everything he did in the past, and he must have spent a good eight years in the future with the Legion (making him in his twenties before he graduated high school, and why didn't Lana ever notice that, hmmmm?) Granted, comic book time is always weird, but there are ways to push it.

Finally, the greatest danger comes from your biggest fans. They're the ones who will notice all the inconsistencies your "lost tale" introduces to the history they've been tracking, and they're the ones who'll happily tell everyone about them. Marvel used to hand out nonexistent "no-prizes" to folks like that, and back then there were only letter columns and APAs for the fans to make trouble in. In today's forum/website/LJ community/wikipedia world, inconsistencies introduced into history become way bigger than the stories they appear in.

Category Two: The Story You Thought You Knew!

The next level up of retconning is the first true retconning -- taking familiar stories and adding new twists to them. Where lost tales get shoehorned into the quiet moments between comic books from a few years ago, these revisions get added into the actual stories. Generally, these take relatively simple stories (even origin stories) and give them more depth, or set up some future plotline. The evolution of Superboy meeting Lex Luthor is an example. Their meeting as young teens was itself a retcon, of course -- of the lost tale variety. Superboy recognized the signs of genius in young Lex, and built him a state of the art laboratory to let the genius flourish. Lex helped him out here and there, and ultimately worked on developing... well, they called it a Kryptonite cure but it was clearly a vaccine. Whatever. It blew up, Superboy flew in and blew out the fire, Lex breathed fumes or some such and lost all his hair, and then blamed Superboy for it, and his hatred for the Boy/Man of Steel rained down from his bald pate forevermore.

All fine and dandy.

Well, then a retcon came in -- Lex didn't just develop a cure for Kryptonite, as it turned out. He actually created life itself in the laboratory, as part of the process of curing Kryptonite. And when Superboy flew in and blew out the fire and saved Lex, he of course didn't know that there was an artificially created living organism in there -- so he either didn't save it or actually killed it depending on the version of the story you're reading.

And suddenly, that makes way more sense. Lex Luthor isn't pissed off that he lost his beautiful shit-brown locks. He's had a life he created, Godlike, destroyed. His baldness just reinforces what he lost -- what Superboy took from him.

See, you thought you knew the story, but now you really know the story.

The advantages are clear -- simple stories that are at most sufficient to their need become more complex stories that really flesh out the situation. The classic stories take on a fresher, more relevant vibe. An anonymous gunman becomes Joe Chill (or a proto-Joker). Uncle Ben's killer turns out to be a penitent Sandman. Iron Man's origin is taken out of war-torn Vietnam/Cambodia and put someplace a little more timeless so that Tony Stark isn't pushing sixty. R. J. Brande turns out to be a thousand year old frozen in shape Durlan who hopes to reconcile with his son by creating a team of superheroes in the thirtieth century that somehow he just knows his son will hear about in the backward and xenophobic society he lives in and join up--

Okay, sometimes 'relevant vibe' is pushing it.

The disadvantage and potential pitfall is twofold. First off, there's the old canard -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Sometimes in taking a story and recasting it to make it more relevant to the current audience, you take something timeless and make it either significantly weaker or... well, make it easily dated. A lot of the 'relevant elements' you can add to a story are in fact flavors of the week, and adding them will look at best ridiculous five years down the line.

The second potential pitfall is that you'll take a good story and make it a bad one. Honestly, if something seems timeless, even if it seems hokey, then the chances you'll write it better than the original writer did isn't all that great. And if you can, for example, explain someone's origin story in ten words or less, this is a good thing. It means you don't need a lot of backstory to get someone up to speed. Making that three or four paragraphs just weakens the whole thing, because that's time it takes a reader to get familiar with the story before they can jump in.

Category Three: The Real Story You Thought You Knew!

Hot on the heels of the last retconning, we have this little gem. It's not that there's more to the story you read that other time -- that story was wrong! Oh sure, everyone knows that Dirk Morgna was a young genius engineer locked in a reactor by the jealous Doctor Regulus, but that's all wrong! What really happened was Dirk Morgna was the plant manager's son and he got promoted and then he screwed up and Doctor Regulus who was innocent and the real genius got blamed and fired and he snapped and locked Dirk in that reactor, but no one really knows it except Regulus and Dirk! Honest! That's how it really happened.

This is where we get into the heavy minefield territory, as you can see from my somewhat biased accounting of one of Sun Boy's retcons, because this is where we're getting into actual story surgery. We're outside of value-adding into stories and into actual full on changing of stories, and like any plastic surgery it can leave some nasty looking scars and ultimately prevent Joan Rivers from ever changing her facial expression again. Some of the worst examples of this retcon style were found in the Keith Giffen/Tom and Mary Bierbaum version of the Legion (they're the ones who decided that Sun Boy needed to have an angst-filled origin, in the same issue his lover shot him in the head, I would add, so it's not like it did anything for him), and a good number of these retcons were designed to fit pet theories the Bierbaums had in their APA-participating days. For example, they'd believed Element Lad was gay, only Paul Levitz had him get involved with a hot redhead female science police officer named Shvaughn Erin. So Shvaughn Erin, was made a male-to-female transsexual specifically because Sean Erin had loved Element Lad from afar and wanted to appeal to him so that Element Lad could really have been involved with a man who later reverted to being male but they stayed together... sort of. Similarly, looking back at one of the seminal Legion moments -- where Proty sacrificed his life and life-force to allow a resurrection of Lightning Lad -- the Bierbaums became enamored of the notion that Lightning Lad really was Proty in Lightning Lad's body, with all Proty's memories and personality, and that his best friends and lover who was telepathic never noticed it.

These, as you can guess, didn't go over very well, because they came across exactly as they sound -- as ham-handed attempts to shoehorn in pet theories and fanfiction into 'real' continuity. We get away from trying to add depth to or invigorate the story with this style of retcon, and get more into the areas of 'putting one's mark on the series mythology,' which rarely goes well.

As a side note, Frank Miller did this about as well as anyone ever has, when he reworked a lot of Daredevil's origin (not to mention all kinds of stuff with Elektra). He combined the "lost tale," "thought you knew" and "what you know is wrong" retcons into a story that took a fairly average superhero and made him downright epic. So it's not that it can't work.

It's just that it almost never does work.

The major pitfall goes back to the core pitfalls of retconning in general. This is the territory where you're seriously fucking with established history -- which is to say you're fucking with the specific affections of your fanbase. Frank Miller got away with it in Daredevil for two reasons: almost no one gave a shit about Daredevil before the reworking, and he rolled a natural twenty in the execution of it. In the case of the Bierbaums, Legion history was revered by a gigantic pack of fans, and they alienated way more than they pleased with the changes -- leading to a full on reset button later on (though there were other problems with that, which we'll get to in a few minutes). People don't want to find out that they're wrong about the continuity they've been following.

It gets worse, of course, because they have all these issues of the comic that show a very natural and organic growth of the story they love, often handled by a plethora of creators. The retcon, on the other hand, is very artificially grafted over the top of it, and as a result there's a lot of scar tissue around it. It is nigh impossible to bring the same level of nuance that the originals had, and so even retcons that do make sense and improve the story end up sounding way weaker as a result.

And it's possible to go so far with a retcon of this kind that you out and out alienate people -- you can do serious damage to your fanbase if you're not careful, especially when you're trying to recast your comic (originally written for kids and teenagers) for an adult fanbase. Identity Crisis is the most egregious recent example of this -- the retcons put into place weren't simply to make Doctor Light more malevolent than he'd been for a while, it was to take the silver age Justice League -- a group of true heroes in the heroic mold of the time -- and make them "edgy." This largely had the effect of pissing people off, because no one wants the JLA of their childhoods screwed with. Having some punk tell us that the heroes we grew up revering weren't all that heroic just makes us set our jaw.

Like I said before -- messing with the affections of the reader base. Sometimes you can get away with it. A lot of the time you can't.

Category Four: The Story You Thought You Knew Was Right, But Now There's Been A Change!

While the last category was indeed a full on surgical retcon, there was generally no in-continuity reason for the retcon. Now we're into story-changing with a degree of awareness on the part of (at least some of) our heroes, and the trouble is really starting now.

In this case, the retcon is a full on in-story change, retroactively applied, for better or (generally) for worse. Often mandated editorially, this is the point where large chunks of your history get torn out and new bits get grafted in in their place, and you have to 'edit on the fly' to make it all work.

I've been pulling from Legion history for a lot of this, because... well, because they're kind of the perfect example. Moving from the Levitz version of the classic Legion to the Giffen/Bierbaum version of the retconned Legion and then the Post-Zero Hour Rebooted Legion gave us a chance to see almost all of these retcons in practice, and in the long run they were almost all disastrous.

Anyway, the In-Story Change happened because, ta-da, of editorial mandate. You see, Superman's history had had a Restart and Reboot (see below), which meant that there was no period of time where Superman was Superboy. At least at that point. Levitz had done a simple Category Three retcon to fix the issue -- Superboy, it turned out, came from a pocket universe that the Time Trapper had created, and this was the place the Legion had been traveling to all these years. That universe went pear-shaped and Superboy sacrificed his life to save his fellow Legionnaires.

Well, it was decided by editorial that this was insufficient. Superboy (and Supergirl) were too prominent and confusion could result. (Remember, kids. The reason for everything that followed was to avoid confusion. I swear I'm not making this up.) The decision was made to introduce a major retcon -- Superboy, the inspiration for the Legion itself, would be replaced by Mon-El -- now rechristened Valor -- in the history of the Legion. A major in-story event then took place where the revised history was written in and made 'real,' and everything we the readers knew had changed.

Only... remember way up above, when I said the urge to retcon more than is needed becomes overpowering in these situations? Yeah. Giffen and the Bierbaums went to town. Superboy became Valor, as we said. Then Supergirl became Laurel Gand, a Daxamite cousin/descendent/something of Valor. Then they replaced major villain the Time Trapper retroactively with Glorioth, a flunky and functionary of a single story -- and a very different character than the Time Trapper. Then they changed who the first Legionnaire to die was, and why he died. (This was Kid Quantum, who they wanted to do other things with). They added "Kent Shakespeare," the first 'Impulse,' to the Legion's history.

Then, things got worse, because see the Superman editorial team? They had used the pocket universe in Superman's history, including a point where he killed the pocket universe Phantom Zone criminals, an act that led to years of somewhat bad stories that culminated in Superman taking his solemn oath against killing. (I guess because the era where a hero would take an oath against killing as a matter of course was seen as hokey. See above RE timelessness vs. Flavor of the Week).

So, Editorial mandated that there had to be a pocket universe, which meant there had to be a Superboy who came from it. Supergirl (the Matrix version) also came from it, though she had nothing to do with the Legion. So, the Legion did travel back and Superboy joined 'briefly' to set up... um... yeah.

Then Dev-Em had his history retconned twice and then he blew up the moon. Because time had to... Superman could have stopped it but he couldn't be allowed to because... look, at this stage they were clearly huffing paint, okay?

Anyway. As it turns out, this amazing new take on the Legion didn't make people happy. Sales suffered. There were complaints. The Bierbaums insisted a lot of the fan mail was positive, which is interesting given how... sporadic letter columns became. And then they decided to try something to bring back the fans -- they actually created "Batch SW6" which was a whole recreation of the Adventure Era Legion. The idea was to give the fans back a recognizable Legion, while having the heroes we'd been following all these years continue to have their grown up adventures.

(The first thing they did after reestablishing the Adventure Era Legion, meant to fire our imaginations and return us to the days of heroism we pined for? They changed all their codenames and costumes. Interestingly, this was not a successful move.)

Category Four retcons seem to go this way. People just get annoyed at them, and it's nigh impossible -- no matter how good your storytelling might be -- to convince people they like the taste of your sandwich.

The Spider-Man retcon we mentioned at the start is a Category Four. History has been changed. And, like all these situations, they claim the changes are minimal, and that he had all the same adventures as he had before. Why, he's just not married! And he lives with Aunt May! And Harry Osborne is still alive. And he lost his organic webshooters. Oh, and he never revealed his identity to the world, which means the entire Spider-Man arc in Civil War was just dicking with us! And apparently this means Mary Jane conceived a child out of wedlock with Peter. And there are new characters!

But... it's back to the good old days where Peter has girl trouble and is single, and that'll be better, right?

Right?

Moving On.

Category Five: Meet the New Hero, Not The Same As The Old Hero Because That Never Happened

Finally, we have the major event. The big one. The big block of cheese in the White House lobby. The retcon that completely starts everything over. This retcon is often called a "reboot," because that's what it does. It starts from the very beginning, wiping clean all continuity so new readers can jump right in. Everything's up in the air because nothing's happened yet.

John Byrne loves these things. And the most famous Category Five was Superman, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. They let Alan Moore write an "imaginary" story that tied up the Silver Age Superman, and then they started over, completely from scratch. Gone was the Legion of Super-Heroes, Superboy, Lex Luthor in Smallville and most of Superman's power. When he met the Toyman, it was for the first time. Lois's hair color changed. Jimmy became even stupider. And Lex Luthor stopped being a scientist and started being Donald Trump without hair.

It could have worked... had they had the balls to do the same thing to every other comic book in their stable. Unfortunately, they didn't. And that meant stress fractures began forming around the Man of Steel from the beginning. The Legion debacle above was just one of them -- also sacrificed was Superman's history in the Justice League. Which meant the whole "Superman was the first superhero" concept had to be junked too -- now there had been tons of heroes, stretching back to World War II. Add a complete reboot/Category Five of Wonder Woman into the mix, and... well, among other things, it became difficult to reconcile Batman's history (which was largely unchanged at first) with anyone else's.

The clusterfuck that was the Giffen/Bierbaum Category Four retcon led them to wipe the slate clean on that with a Category Five retcon. That in turn caused other problems so we've had another complete reboot of the series. Of course, we've had another Crisis come and go screwing with timelines and dimensions and Christ knows what else anyway. Honestly, the idea that there is any continuity between the current version of DC comics and previous ones is silly. If you're a current fan, let the past go and enjoy the ride. Here and there, there's some good stuff.

The major problem with reboots besides the above is it's a complete break with the past. Which means it's the ultimate break with the fan's investment. Take me -- I was a big-ass Legion fan. I held on through all the monumental pain that was the Giffen/Bierbaum era because... well, I loved the Legion. Even all the retcons wasn't enough to break me the rest of the way.

Tossing out the continuity and starting over? Was enough. I never got into the 'new' Legion. I can't cotton to the new new Legion. I was drawn into the current flirtation with variations of the original Legion that ran through JLA and JSA and now Superman, but they're clearly not really the Legion I knew.

Does that make them bad? No, not really. But I have no reason to reinvest in them. And every time we have retcons of any category some readers will be lost along the way -- and the Category Five shakes loose the largest numbers, because it's a full on starting over.

Interestingly, there is an entirely successful Category Five retcon on record. I'm serious. It absolutely worked, even though it was essentially unplanned and uncontrolled. That retcon is today called the Silver Age of Comics. They started over all the comics and continuities -- largely just ignoring the old stories and later giving them their own universe. And the essential proof of concept happened again in the nineties, when Batman: The Animated Series gave birth to the DC Animated Universe -- which held to a completely separate tight continuity over the course of a decade. In many ways, the DCAU has been the most successful superhero continuity artistically since it first appeared, and financially there's almost no contest. Certainly the DCAU brought in more direct cash to Warner Brothers than the DC Comics line has for quite some time.

One thing that highlights the problems that indiscriminate retconning breeds is complexity. A simple retcon turns into a series of more elaborate retcons to patch over broken pieces. Superman's reboot was at core simple -- it was an entirely new thing. But then all the other DC comics began showing problems and so they had to apply fixes and patches and retcon other things that bred new fissures and patches and retcons, until... well, until they had to take four odd years of "monumental events" to lead up to what sounds like one more complete reboot. And maybe this time it'll take.

Marvel's no better off -- Lost Tales and stories, especially around cash-cow X-Men have made it increasingly hard to know what's going on. And now they've introduced a monumental Category Four retcon into their flagship title, leading to problems the likes of which we won't know for five or six years, long after they've reverted back to the marriage because they're sick of this shit.

And they will. Just like Captain America will come back. Just like Supergirl came back all those times, and Earth-2 came back, and Power Girl's history came back, and a version of the original Legion came back. Because when you fuck with your fanbase's affections, you fuck with your livelihood, and eventually you pay a price for it. Check out the Retcon-fest that has been Green Lantern since Crisis on Infinite Earths, and notice that as of this point, pretty much all the dead Lanterns have come back to life, Hal Jordan never really went crackerdog and even Sinestro's doing just fine these days. Hey look -- Hal and Ollie and Kyle and Guy and John and Ice and everyone? They're all fine! Really! And they're having epic adventures! Please! Come back!

Please come back!

Please?

When Jesus makes Mary Jane and Peter married again (seriously. They're teasing Jesus as their cosmic parachute for this storyline), there will be great hopes that everything will be made all better. Only what will happen is people who invested in the post-infernal annulment will be pissed off by the restoration, and no one will be very happy, and eventually everyone will agree to stop talking about it. Sort of like the Clone War. And within a few years, Civil War. Which was all the fault of invading Skrulls anyway. No really. You thought you knew the real Civil War Story, but you were wrong.

The question is, what will the numbers be for a top selling book at that point?

And on DC's side... just what kind of Legion will be the new one then?