Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities The (hypothetical Book of Comicbook Continuity Mechanics.

If somebody ever wrote a book titled "Comicbook Continuity Mechanics" using all science fictional/mythical and other storytelling conceits which have been used in comic books since the beginning of the medium I'd certainly buy it. It's a fascinating and terribly convoluted subject and it gets more and more complex.

It would be probably a little less difficult to understand than Quantum Mechanics, but not by much!

A question that could be answered in such a book could be:
If original comic book continuity A diverges into Continuities B, C, and D, that contradict one another, would the new continuities be considered continuations of the original one, hence original themselves - thus contradicting the definition of the term "original" by their very existence - or is the linearity of the terms "continuity" and "original" nullified, suggesting the need of a new multidimensional or "holographic" term to supplant the original definition of "original" and "continuity" which would also include reboots of the original premise that created the original continuity?

How about posting your own questions and/or answers that could be included in such a book?

I would like to see a discussion on the "zipper effect". The past is the past is the past, correct? It happened already. However, there are alternate futures for any given point in time. The present is essentially the occurance that determines which of those alternative futures becomes reality -- therfore closing the others off, and creating a single lined past. So the present is kind of like a constantly moving zipper. This discussion should happen early in the book.

Such a book should have a list of what's in the Continuity Toolbox - i.e., the stock tricks that are used to resolve continuity problems. One of the standards is the multiverse; another is the diverging timeline. There's also the "it was all a dream", which always struck me as a quick and dirty solution.

A question I'd like to see dealt with is the passage of time in different dimensions. Generally, time has the same value everywhere. But somebody could go from Earth-23 to Earth-41, spend a year there and return home to find that 5 years have passed.