Re: In Defense Of Continuity

"Pat ONeill" responded to me:

JR>The first ex-fan creators I know of are E. Nelson Bridwell (late 50s),
Roy
JR>Thomas (mid 60s) and Jim Shooter (mid 60s), all of whom were extremely
JR>careful about continuity.

> And Bridwell and Thomas, especially, were extremely guilty of the most
> egregious kind of "story written for purposes of exploiting/explaining
> continuity".
>
> Shooter, thankfully, learned from early experience with Mort Weisinger
that
> every story in every issue had to stand on its own.

You seem to have changed the subject.  I was responding yto your claim that:

> The late Silver Age ('69-74 or so) decline in comics circulation coincides
with
> DC's decision to do more "Marvel-type" continuity among titles and
Marvel's
> decision to expand its  more-than-one issue plot devices from just
subplots to
> main plots.
>
> Both of these events coincide with the influx of former fans into the
creative
> ranks.

Have you backed off of this claim now?

I showed that the influx of the ex-fan creator was much earlier, and in fact
led to some of the highest levels of popularity at DC (Shooter's Legion,
Bridwell's Superman mythos) and Marvel (all the early Thomas).

You're right that all three writers wrote stories that exploited continuity.
They were also excellent stories.

Jay Rudin