Continuity

Modern Mainstream comics have been creatively ensnared by a trap of their own making. Continuity. Now I'll fully admit, I'm a comic geek, I remember little details of many of my favorite comics. It's great that comic fans choose to enjoy their passions this way. I mean I can still tell you the ins and outs of the characters of 1980's X-men (I stopped regular reading in the 1990s). The problem is that the writers and readers began to take to continuity with religious zeal.
Now, there is nothing at all wrong with a group of creators taking pride in the consistency of their work. It's good that characters act consistently, and common places are the same. What works once should theoretically be consistent within a created world. But when a work of fiction is developed and continued in a open ended fashion by a number of writers and artists, there will be places where things will get a little weird. And in comics, boy will the fans let these people have it. Right now so called mainstream comics is allowing themselves to be policed by these fans, and I think that it stifles creativity. You see when a new writer comes on board a series that has been going on, twenty, forty, seventy years there is bound to be a moment when a writer will do something that had been done before or contradicts a story that the writer may have never even read or heard of. You can't seriously expect a writer to have read every single issue of a comic that has been around for forty years. But fans, who usually have more familiarity with a book than writers, seem to expect it. And comic editors try to please this fandom, giving impression that this line of thought is reasonable. I'm not saying a writer shouldn't do their homework, I'm just saying that the writer is writing the comic now, not then.
This sort of fan editor was actually encouraged by Marvel comics in the 1960s by the creation of the no prize. You see when Marvel noticed that fans cared deeply about their work, deeply to the point where the fans where willing to point out where the writers got it wrong. You see at this time Marvel was a small company, and telling the readers to blow, was not a good business practice, so editor Stan Lee came up with a playful way of handling it. If you where able to explain away a continuity error by using continuity you won a “No Prize” which was literally that, an empty envelope and you name in print. And a monster was born. Ever since both writers and readers have been trapped in a cycle of checking the continuity of the work to the point where continuity has become the point of whole story arcs.
Now the “big two”, have realized this inhibiting factor on the stories they sell, and have created many series and stories with their own continuity, like Marvel's Ultimate line. Or that exist alone from a major universe like DC's All star line. This is good for new or casual readers and it offers fresh takes for regular readers. But what the “big two” should be thinking, in my opinion, is “if these alternate takes are so successful with both types of readers, why should we be so tied to this canonical devotion to continuity.
Continuity, should be a tool for the superhero writer, not a crutch or a pair of handcuffs. A good example of how continuity can be used is the British television show “Doctor Who”. “Doctor Who” is a long running science fiction show. in it's course of almost fifty years, it has had a number of writers, producers and directions. But through it all the writers and producers kept the core principles up and often overlooked continuity errors. There have been a number of origins for various characters, including the main, so how does “Doctor Who” deal with this? By doing nothing at all. You see the writers decide to live in the now and use the back story only in the ways that aid the story they are currently telling. And you know what. The fans are on board with it. I think that is because too much adherence to that much continuity makes the reader live in the past. And no new story is ever going to live up to a beloved old one if it keeps reminding you about it. What the writers of “Doctor Who” concentrate on instead is that the characters and ideas, not the list of events, stay consistent.
I think that if we allow “mainstream” comics to go on similar track. The writers and artists who currently write the comics will be free to make good quality stories with a broader appeal. They'll be able to use the past without being beholden to it. And more securely and creativley carve their own path.