As many of you may know, Comic Book Guy’s name is by Jeff Albertson. This is in spite of the fact that the man who created the whole shebang, Matt Groening, always thought of him as Louis Lane. He didn’t just keep this to himself, but instead revealed it to Wizard Magazine, years before it was contradicted in an episode. This is most likely due to the idea that have a completely normal name is unexpected and funny, as well as the fact that this is what happens when you have a committee writing a show, rather than an individual. Any other example of a work of canon, or semi-canon fiction running contrary to the intent of the creator?
P.S. When I thought of this, I immediately thought of the fact that the comic book character, The Rawhide Kid, is retroactively gay, as revealed in the recent Mature line comic book series. However, when asked, I seem to recall, artist Bob Brown was quoted as not actually minding. I seem to recall him saying something along the lines of “Well, I didn’t intend it that way, but looking back at it, yeah, it definitely fits.” (I have no cite for this. Does anyone else?) Thus, does the fact the people who worked on it don’t mind negate the OP? I don’t know.
Gene Roddenberry supposedly wanted the crew on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” to all get along and live in enlightened bliss, but those who produced and wrote the show after his health began deteriorating found his outlook very constricting, and began gradually showing more dramatic tension among Picard & Co.
Of course, the Prime Directive on TOS was as often violated as scrupulously observed, too.
Comics are full of examples, sometimes in ways that the original author did, or probably would have objected to, sometimes in ways that they don’t.
As you brought up yourself in that infamous early thread of yours, Batman started as a gun-toting vigilante - something that was eventually dropped, and became against his moral code.
The current Superman bears pretty much zero resemblance to the character Seigel and Shuster created. Ditto with the majority of his supporting cast.
Blue Beetle being a joke in the hero community probably wasn’t part of Ditko’s intent.
Speaking of Ditko’s Charlton-turned-DC characters, his Question was a very different character than O’Niell’s or Azarello’s.
Maybe not quite what you are thinking of, but I recall J. Michael Straczynski, the guy who made Babylon 5, complained on occasion that his characters refused to do what he wanted them to do when he was writing episodes. IIRC, He described it as having all the characters running around in his head doing what they wanted to do while he scribbled things down, and him asserting his authority by occasionally killing one of them off.
Raguleader, your entry is nothing like what I am looking for. However, it is a great expansion of the topic, and thus, I would love to read other’s accounts of things writers meant to do, but could not make the characters do. Anyone have any more, in addition to the OP?
Also, William V., do you have any more info? I would like to hear more on his intent.
Tengu, any more examples? Also, thank you, all of you.
Don’t forget the identities of the Green Goblin and the Hobgoblin, both from Spider-Man. The first led to the breakup of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, and the second pissed off Jim Owsley/Christopher Priest and a bunch of other Marvel creators.
Speaking of Roddenberry, I was surprised to learn that he was often very ambivalent about the Star Trek motion pictures; evidently he thought that Wrath of Khan was full of plot holes (which I guess it is) and that it would’ve been laughed off the screen had it not been for Montalban’s powerful performance. I also seemed to remember he disliked the emphasis on action over exploration, but I may be making that up …
Lee wanted the Green Goblin to be Norman Osborn, for storytelling/suspense reasons. Ditko hated that, because (as a fan of Objectivism) he liked the idea that Gobby was some hitherfore-unknown person with no ties to Peter Parker. Lee overruled Ditko, and Ditko walked as a result.
Sorry if that was a spoiler, but given the first Spidey-movie, I think this isn’t a secret.
As for the Hobgoblin, IIRC that was a case of the writers writing themselves into a corner. Peter David managed to pull off a pretty good head-fake on that with the Spider-Man and Wolverine one-shot, however.
Roger Stern, his creator, intended Hobgoblin to be Roderick Kingsley, and Ned Leeds to be merely a red herring, but Stern left the book (and Marvel? I forget) before he could do the reveal, and then didn’t tell anyone his plans. The other writers had to make an educated guess, and based on the clues, they picked Ned Leeds.
Speaking of Spidey, wasn’t Stan Lee a little upset with Gwen Stacy being killed off after he left the book? His problem was that they had already killed off her dad and they were being kind of harsh to the Stacy family. He had also just liked her character. I think he’s fine with it now, but who knows, maybe if he had his way we would have been spared the Clone Saga.
Actually, I found a quote of Stan’s:
So he does regret it, but he had editorial control so he could have nixed it at the time.
Other examples of characters either developed or retconned to places that their creators presumably didn’t intended - whether they’d have objected or not, I won’t comment:
The strained relationship between Batman and Dick Grayson (Robin I).
Roy Harper (Speedy I) being a recovering junky.
Ollie Queen (Green Arrow I) being an adulterer.
Wes Dodds (The Sandman - Golden Age) becoming a sand-based superhero (under Kirby, I believe), rather than a pulp-style mystery man with sleeping gas. His being tied in with the realm of dreams.
The current version of Wonder Woman is, like Superman, a completely different character than the one originally created. One with a lot less bondage.
At least from the soruces I have read, Roddenberry was vehemently opposed to the entirely of “Wrath of Khan” because he felt the entire movie was too violent and martial. He began to make bizarre demands and claims; for instance, he argued, forcefully, that Starfleet was not a military organization and wouldn’t act the way it did. As you can imagine, this was very confusing to everyone else, to claim that an organization comprised of battleships commanded by “Captains” and “Lieutenants” is not a military organization.
What’s bizarre about this is that Roddenberry himself compared “Star Trek” to military naval stories, like Horatio Hornblower, and then in 1982 was going around saying they were nothing of the kind. He claimed that there was no violence or war in the 23rd century - despite the original series being full of violence and war. His behaviour was bizarre, as if he was adamantly trying to pretend the past was not what it really was. Said producer Harve Bennett:
At one point Roddenberry complained about the scene where the bug thing crawls out of Chekhov’s ear and Kirk shoots it; Roddenberry argued - I honestly am not making this up - that Kirk would never have killed such a creature; he would have captured and studied it because it was a life form he’d never seen before.
Eventually the producers decided to ignore Roddenberry entirely, demoting him to “consultant” and ordering that his demands be ignored.
My recollection was that the clues were all pointing to Ned Needs with big blinking neon pointers, and the writers were desperately looking for something to disprove the readers without contradicting the clues already printed. Hence Spider-Man and Wolverine, which
killed Ned Needs, thus causing everyone to find some other suspect to be the Hobgoblin… only to have the Hobgoblin to be revealed as (the now-dead) Needs a few months later.
My understanding is that Ditko wanted to show that life was random, that Spider-Man’s arch-enemy just happend to be Some Random Guy whose path got crossed by Spider-Man, that their antagonism was something limited to their costumed identities.
Lee wanted the Green Goblin to be Norman Osborn, for the mother load of angst available in the whole “My best friend’s dad is my worst enemy!” angle.
One significant example of this is the MASH** TV show, which was more political and bent to the left than the book or the movie. The author of the original book was a conservative, and was displeased with this turnout. (Personally, I think the TV show worked much better than the original.)
Another sort-of change in canon came in Doonesbury. Jane Pauley pointed out to Garry Trudeau that it seemed to her that Mark Slackmeyer was gay. Trudeau never intended that Mark would be gay, but he said that he looked over Mark’s history and it was pretty obvious to him, so Mark finally came out of the closet after many years under Trudeau’s hand, under no duress to Trudeau himself.
I had actually heard that before. To be fair, I think Roddenberry also had a problem with the way the eel just flopped out of Chekhov’s ear without killing him, in contrast to the way they behaved with everybody else, in a blatant and unexplained effort to avoid killing a major character.
Thanks for the post; I like learning about that stuff.
