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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1240301" data-attributes="member: 151">Comics are held to a lower standard, by necessity.  Individual arcs or independent titles can enjoy that luxury, perhaps, but it's neither fair nor logical to try an hold a several hundred issue run of a title to the same standards as a novel.  Consider that even on the few titles that manage to keep the same writer for the length of their run (such as James Robinson on Starman or Neil Gaiman on Sandman), the format causes inherint problems.  The art is almost never consistent over the course of the series, and a variety of demands make themselves known, such as publisher issues.  I sincerely doubt Robinson originally envisioned being asked by an editor to include a crossover with a character who didn't exist when he started writing his series (namely the new star-spangled girl...Star, is it?).  Now look at X-men, a victim in many ways of its own success.  When Claremont got ahold of them in the mid-70s, they already were saddled with some ridiculous continuity and back-pedalling ("Prof X isn't dead, he's been hiding out, preparing for an alien invasion!  Thanks for letting us nearly get killed multiple times in your absence, sir!")  Now over the course of his run, he's got to incorporate large crossover events, ranging from Secret Wars to some of his creation, like the Mutant Massacre or Inferno.  Editorial decisions eviscerate his best contribution to comics, namely the Death of Jean Grey, and writers in unrelated titles get to write story elements that he has to adapt into his own title.  How can that be held to the same literary standard?  Never mind that several rules governed comics for decades, such as the idea that their core audience would outgrow the material and so they could thematically repeat themselves, even contradict themselves, as no one would notice.  A well-known DC stategy was to creat a cover ("Zowie!  How did Superman become a watermelon?"  Find out in Curse of the SuperMelon!) and then toss it to an artist, who had to make a story out of it and make a page count in a few weeks.  It was in the mid-60s that Marvel changed all that, and raised the bar.  Suddenly, a comic line appeared with intelligent writing and a consistent, persistent world.  Since Stan Lee was writing or editing everything, all 16 or so titles meshed together.  Spiderman dropped in on the Fantastic Four in Spiderman #2, and the FF commented on it in FF #10, which might have come out a couple weeks after Spidey's issue.  Nick Fury blows up an AIM base in Strange Tales #75, and the AIM agents show up trying to set up a base in the Avengers #26, where Fury contacts them to tell them about what happened in ST #75.  Add to that the fact that a company policy or editorial change can completely change the face of a title, and you have even more problems.  Look at the line up of X-factor, the New Mutants, the Avengers, the Justice League, Batman and other titles.  Hell, look at half of the ideas discussed in this thread.  How can you hold the Monarch travesty up to the light of day?  In three hurried pages, they killed off Hawk & Dove, one of the best comics at that time, and simultaneously killed off my good will towards their brand for years to follow.  Different comics can be held to different standards.  I would hold Midnight Nation to a different standard than Cerebus or X-Factor or Powers.  They have different constraints, and different standards.</blockquote>

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