Do not ever and a time-travel story by having the protagonists prevent the problem they had been fighting the whole time from having occurred in the first place.
The Deus-Ex-Machina Weaponry Rule:
If a character’s main activity uses weapons (Batman family, Green Arrow, Hawkeye), he (or she) must be constrained to a few weapons he consistently carries as a standard, or there must be a plausible reason he would have equipped himself with something non-standard beforehand.
Agreed if you add The Daredevil Exception. Daredevil, (and only a few ther characters I can think of)* can survive fistfights with people who should, in theory, be able to kill him with a single swat, 'cause it for some strange reason produces classic stories (Daredevil vs SubMariner in Daredevil #7 and Daredevil vs The Hulk in Daredevil 163(?) )
*Adam Strange for one 'cause he wouldn’t get into the fistfight in the first place
OR age normally at a reduced rate. Either one. But the half-assed Marvel answer of partial reboots (Tony was in Korea…no…Viet Nam…no…“South East Asia”…no…Some unnamed country…no…up against HYDRA agents in some unnameed country…in the Falkand Islands…no…um…in Gulf War 1?) is just right out. Either reboot or don’t.
A) The It’s A Funnybook People rule (aka "dumb technobabble is still bad science). Consistancy? Crucial. It’s been a plot point that Cyclops’s eyebeams aren’t hot. This matters. Spending valuable story space on the crackpot theory that Cyclops’s eyebeams are portals to a parallel, non-Einsteinian universe where the photons have mass and bunnies are made of broccolli really doesn’t advance the story.
B) Only slightly less important is the “You Can’t Use A Character If You Only Want The Name” rule. Zatanna is a nice young woman who loves her father, dresses in fishnet stockings and a tux and does spells by saying words (but not sentences) backwards. If you want to write a story about an angry (maybe) lesbian who has a major man-hate thing going on and fights against male oppression by holding a big hard stick with a knob on the end, be my guest…but she’s not Zatanna.
Ditto for taking a character expressly designed by Steve Ditko to explore a deeply held belief (The Question, Ayn Rand style Objectivism) and using him as a mouthpiece for your own personal philosophy.
B[sub]1[/sup]) The Don’t Forget What Makes 'em Special codcil to the above rule. Adam Strange has been used correctly maybe twice in the last 20 years*. What makes him special is A) He thinks. He rarely just goes in blasting wildly and B) The time limit. Take either of those things away and you’re left with a fairly bland space-hero. The Fantastic Four is a family of adventurers. Stories that emphasise the “Family” aspect are almost always better than ones that don’t. The Metal Men don’t solve the problem until they’re broken and rebuilt at least once.
*Waid’s story in JLA 20 or so and in NEW FRONTIERS
C) The other “Franklin Richards” rule. Any writer who either replaces a kid character with a growed-up future version (or fast-ages the kid) gets beaten with stacks of bad early '90s Marvels. Myspel the name of the grown-up future versions, you get beaten with back issues of STREET POET RAY
D) No “God Inflation”. Pick one “Most POWERFUL BEING” for your universe. Stick with it. The God-Inflation thing (Odin is so powerful as to be beyond imagining…but Galactus is tougher. Look! Eternity! He’s the entire freaking UNIVERSE–can’t get tougher than him–unless you introduce the Living Tribunal… But the Beyonder can beat him up. And Shapers Of Universes can beat the Beyonder up.
E) “Thanos’s Law” If you have to make characters stoopid to resolve the storyline, you’ve made them too powerful. “Look! I have the Cosmic Cube and I’m all-powerful! I’m GOD! So, I’ll just throw it away rather than tuck it into a pocket somewhere.” Kyle Rayner in his early issues had a similar problem-No yellow weakness, so the writer had to have him lose th’ ring every few issues.
F) The “No Cockteasing” rule. During the Dooley (as editor) years of GL, every two years or so, there would be a “LOOK! HAL (or the GL Corps) is BACK!!!” and then at the end, it woudn’t happen.
G) The “No Pissing On Beloved Memories” rule. Wanna bring back Ace, The Bathound? Fine! Be my guest! But you may NOT bring him back simply so you can have him raped and tortured by The Joker.
H) The “Everything You Know Is NOT Wrong” rule. Unless you can prove that your retcon that shows that everything previously known about an established character is at least as good (and works as well) as Alan Moore’s “The Anatomy Lesson” in SWAMP THING, you’re not allowed to do it. Violaters will be beaten with stacks of The Clone Saga.
I) The “Denny O’Neill” Rule–um…dood? Characters don’t have to either share your politics OR be evil and/or stupid and/or conflicted. Also, some characters are not allowed to participate in real-world current events. Captain America and Superman (to name two) are NOT ALLOWEd to spout a writer’s politics. (Superman’s anti-Bush speech a year or so back comes right to mind. There are some characters who should be making those speeches. Superman and Cap aren’t them.)
J) “Relevant isn’t”–Since relevant’ means either “Characters whining about whatever the writer doesn’t like and was hot in the news 8 months ago” OR “Last year’s hot fad”, it’s just not allowed.
Chronos–the problem with your rule is that it “Ghettoizes” characters. Beast, for example, will never be allowed to be an Avenger again since he’s relegated to the X-Book ghetto.
If you create a suck-ass story line that goes on forever and has a bad punchline (Spider Clone Saga, I’m looking you and your “I wasn’t dead, I was in Europe” crap), you, the creator, should be written into the story as a hapless citizen who gets barbecued by the bad guy.
Origin recaps would be limited to once per title per year and only in one line (“Bruce Wayne became Batman after seeing his parents gunned down by a wackjob” is more than enough. NO flashbacks!) . If you don’t know the origin of Batman or Superman by now, put the book down!
This, without question, is the winner of the thread thus far. Both for the name of the rule and the spirit behind it.
The Sue Dibny Memorial Who Do You Think You Are Rule: Until such time as a writer has written more than two total years of stories (24 issues) featuring a pre-existing character, they shall be prevented from killing off said character in one of their books.
The First Law of Green Lanterns: If you’re going to make a character insanely powerful let them use that power. A character of average or higher intelligence who has the ability to do ANYTHING shouldn’t be stumped by their opponant dressing in a banana costume. The concept of ‘indirect’ does not take a genius.
:: applauds :: And with an addition; the “Don’t Break Other People’s Toys” rule or, “Even if you can’t figure out a way to use Turner D. Century or The Man With Ten Eyes” perhaps more talented writers can. You can’t kill 'em justfor fun. If they’re so lame that no-one cares if you kill them, then don’t. (Besides, what story purpose does it solve? Scourge killing Turner D. Century doesn’t make Scourge look particularly tough–if he were, he’d have gone after Loki or something. And it wasn’t like there was great sentimental attachment to the character, so why kill him or any other “useless”?)
The Don’t Get A Haircut Unless You’re Kryptonian rule: Yes, Kyle Raynor’s green lantern costume was a bit dopey, but it was DIFFERENT. And it was creative, which is kind of the point of being a Green Lantern. Now, with the new outfit and haircut, he just looks like any old guy in a costume.
But I really, really, REALLY liked the electric-blue Superman of a few years back, and I wish I could find more collected stories with him than the copy of Rock Of Ages that I’ve got… which is part of the problem. He stayed transformed for what, three months? And then he’s back to being the same old boyscout. The only trace of his electric-blue days is his shorter hair (and a brief switch back in one panel of the recent JLA/Avengers).
So I guess my rule boils down to: I like costumes that look different.
The I Used To Be With It, But Then They Changed What It Is Rule: Nobody thinks you’re cool for killing Hypno-Hustler. Yes, he seems ridiculous now. So does Vibe. So do the elventy bajillion Early 90’s Covert Paramilitary Strike Teams Where Everybody Used Guns Didn’t Wear Costumes and Said *@%&#! A Lot. People would be mocking them if anyone could remember any of their names or any of their books had lasted more than seven issues. Stop it.
Not my intention. What I mean is that, if there were ever a Beast title (as in, him solo, not part of a team), then the Beast MoC (presumably whatever writer created the character) would be the one writing it. If the Avengers writer wants Beast to be an Avenger, then he’s allowed to, but he has to get approval from Beast’s writer. The goal of all of this, of course, being to help prevent all of the inconsistencies and toy-breaking inherent to multi-author writing. The downside, of course, is that it would make it very difficult to assemble a team like the Avengers or the JLA out of pre-existing characters, since you’d need to get the approval of perhaps a dozen different writers (an X-men type team wouldn’t have this problem, since most of the characters would presumably start off under the same writer anyway).
The Constant Level of Suspension of Disbelief Rule:
Fictional universes can have various levels of fantasy/ implausibility: from “what would really happen in our universe if people with paranormal abilities appeared” to “total absurdiverse”. But pick ONE level and stick to it. Don’t have a ten-issue arc about a character struggling to escape being blackmailed into becoming an assassin for the CIA; and then have that character team up with a talking duck to save the world from killer clowns from another dimension.
Hmm, there’s an interesting debate going on here. Should, or should not, current comic writers “just have to live with” or “have to deal with” the follies of past writers? Or rather, to what extent should they have to?
You either do a complete reboot, or you stick with current continuity. Rebooting should be rare, say LHS rare (once in 40 some years).
The Retcon death rule:
Characters may not be retcon resurrected (Jean Grey comes to mind here), but they may be brought back if and only if it was part of the storyline that killed them (The Thing from the Authoritative Action storyline).
2a. The Ferro Lad corollary:
Characters who die making a noble sacrifice may never be resurrected (Again, Jean Grey deserves a mention).
2b. The Uncle Ben corollary:
Characters who die as a part of a character’s origin story must remain dead, and writers are prohibited from hinting that they may be coming back.
The 2 1/2 book rule: A character may be the featured character in only 2 monthly titles. Batman should be featured in Batman and Detective; Spider-Man in Amazing and Spectacular. Characters may also be part of a team and appear in that book. Characters may additionally be members of a team book.
3a: The two books should have distinct functions. If they don’t, what’s the point? In the 80’s, Batman focused on Batman solo, while Detective had Batman and Robin stories. When *Spectacular Spider-Man * first came out, it focused on primarily lighter action stories, with the weightier personal life developments happening in ASM.
3b: One book should be the core book, which fans can read by itself without worrying that they’re missing important developments, with the second being an add on for those who want more stories. Currently ASM and Spectacular function roughly this way.
3c. The Wolverine corollary:
Wolverine gets to be on one X-team.
The Crossgen* rule:
No fan should ever have to buy a second title to follow a storyline begun in another on-going title. You don’t tell the first three parts of a story in Fantastic Four, and then tell fans at the end of part 3 that they have to buy Iron Man to read the end of it.
*Called the Crossgen rule because this was one of the basic rules established for their shared universe. It’s a good rule that they completely ignored, tying every single frickin title into the Big Story so that no matter what title you were reading, you also had to be reading The First in order to understand what was going on. Entire issues departed from the ongoing storylines just to tie into the Big Story, and several titles were destined to end in the middle of a major on-going storyline just so their characters could go off and fight in a big crossover event. Imagine shutting down the individual books for the JLA’ers to free them up for JLA and you get the idea.
4a. The crossover corollary:
Company-wide crossovers should be rare, and they should be set up so that on-going continuity of the individual titles is not interrupted. Marvel’s first Secret Wars did this right; DC’s yearly crossover events of the late 80’s and early 90’s were usually good only for mucking up on-going storylines in the individual books and/or wasting one issue on the tie-in.
4b. The joined books corollary:
Regular storylines should run through a single title. A story should be created by a writer in conjunction with an artist, not by a committee. Having books in permanent crossover (the 4 superman books in the 80’s-90’s; the two Legion Books following the reboot) should be illegal.
The Superboy/LSH time travel rule:
A. Time travel/viewing may never be used to solve problems in the present. It may only be used to travel over a long time span (Superboy and LHS; Booster Gold and the JLA; Flash and Abra Kadabra).
The Alan Moore / Mark Waid / Kurt Busiek exception:
The above rules do not apply to the above mentioned writers, who are welcome to ignore them in service a good story.
Clawing my way out of the bottom of the ever-growing pile of comic books that constitues War Games
I’d like to second that.
The Indescretionary Retcon Rule- No fair retconning something that happened in a storyline just because some schmuck thinks that it is out of character for the hero. Batman had a kid with Talia Head. Deal with it.
•Don’t replace a good looking costume with a crappy looking costume. Even if it’s a beautifully rendered and computer-colored crappy costume.
•You can bring a dead character back to life outside of the storyline where they died, but only if the “ressurection” plot is as cool or cooler and better written than the “death” story. (Or, if killing the character in the first place just pissed off the fans and/or screwed up the chemistry of the book beyond repair. Especially if the “death” story was phenomenally crappy, and didn’t sell well.)
And, what the hell, just for fun…
•It is OK to bring a dead character from an “origin” story back to life, but ONLY if they fight another ressurected origin character to the death in the same storyline. (Like having Uncle Ben fighting Thomas Wayne, or something.)
I wanna dispute this rule. There are some stories so bad or dumb or damaging to the characters (not necessarily the Batman/Talia one) that they have to be ignored. You can’t punish writers because of bad editing decisions 20 years earlier.
A few examples:
Batman has an insane, psycho-killer older brother who Thomas Wayne put into an institution somewhere. After fighting him for the second time (in different issues!), Batman says to Deadman “Y’know? Why don’t you just take over his body. You get a new body, I get a killer off the streets.” Of course, if Deadman gets a new body, it ruins the character and if Batman did have an older brother, you’d think, given the driving force that the loss of his family provides, he’d have tried to y’know…cure his brother…
Jor-El and Laura are ALIVE! But they’re dying of kryptonite poisoning and in sort-of suspended animation, in eternal agony. Superboy’s reaction? Eh. I’ll just leave 'em floating in space, rather than take them to the Legion where Braniac 5 can prob’ly whip up a cure in about 12 minutes.
A team-up between Batman and Plastic Man and Metamorpho where Plastic Man was played as a depressive character and Batman casually gives away his identity to anyone.
Invisible Girl wants the world destroyed! Yup. Given the choice of putting an out-of-control Franklin into temporary suspended animation until he can be cured OR having the world (maybe the universe?) destroyed by Franklin’s powers run amok, she leaves Reed and (maybe) sleeps with Sub-Mariner because Reed puts Franklin in supsended animation.
A story about the original Hawk and Dove who, for some inexplicable reason have aged in real time even though the rest of the DC universe has aged in comic-book time.
A recent issue of Avengers where an inexplicably psychotic Hawkeye attempts to murder helpless, captured prisoners. This would be the same Hawkeye is so against killing that he left his wife because she passively stood by and let her rapist die rather than trying to save him. (I’m slightly muddling the backstory–I don’t remember the details of the Mockingbird thing)
Or a recent issue of JLA where an inexplicably psychotic Green (Kyle!) Lantern starts kicking in doors of innocent citizens in the middle of the night to give them lectures about changing their fire-alarm batteries.
Or a recent issue of Superman where an inexplicably psycotic Superman destroys public property, attacks innocent bystanders, very nearly kills some crooks…because some kid he’d met once before died of cancer(?) and Superman knows no better way to deal with hurt and unhappiness than to rampage through Metropolis like The Hulk. **
I could go on, but let’s be real: it’s easier and less damaging to the story/character to just handwave 'em away.
I don’t want a writer to have to write a multi-part story to try to dismiss or deal with Bruce’s older brother. It’s ok to say it just didn’t happen (or, to use Pre-Crisis lingo-it happened on Earth-B*). Granted, this should be used judiciously, but it’s important.
Fenris
*For "B"ob Haney who wrote at least two of the stories listed (maybe the Superboy one too). He was a writer who didn’t care about continuity–even the page-to-page continuity type of continuity, let alone issue-to-issue–and didn’t much care about characterization either. Pre-Crisis, most of his stories were automatically assumed to be on “Earth-B” unless proven otherwise.
**Hmmm…I see a trend. What if we put this story, the Hawkeye one and everything else this writer touches on Earth-CA for “Chuck Austen”? The only difference between Austen and Haney is that Haney’s stories were, at least imaginative and entertaining.
Good rule, bad example :). Legion was partially rebooted like 12 times in 6 years (through no fault of the Legion writers)–Superboy was in. Superboy was from the Pocket Universe (but what about Supergirl?). The Pocket Universe never existed (but…then what about Superboy?). The Superboy was a historical legend like King Arthur version. The “Mon-El” was the figure who inspired the Legion (then where did he get the name?) The Mordru-Verse. The Glorith-verse. Post-Zero Hour verse. Etc.
Which leads to the “When We Say “Whole Hog”, We meanWHOLE Hog.” amendment:
If you’re gonna do a reboot, it’s A) company wide–reboots are decided at the EIC level and individual writers have no say in whether they want their character rebooted or not and B) does not start the universe 7 years in so no-one knows any of the backstory. This rule applies even if TEEN TITANS is your best-selling book and if you started at “Year One”, the Titans, at best, are on hiatus for three years of real-time to wait for the characters to actually show up.
And the “Teasing is Wrong, and So is Regurgitation” amendment–no fair f*cking with old time fans by pretending to restore something pre-reboot only to yank the rug out (Sneckie) and if you do a reboot, you are not allowed to retell old stories (except the origin). Period. If you’re rebooting, give us something NEW. If the old stuff was so good, don’t reboot.