Jerusalem

When I get a copy of Jerusalem, Alan Moore's second prose novel, should I discuss it:

on Comics Appreciation because it is of interest to readers of comic books written by Alan Moore;

on Personal and Literary Reflections because it is a work of literature;

on Religion and Philosophy because it addresses philosophical issues;

at least partly on Poul Anderson Appreciation because it will be possible to compare Moore's analyses of time, history and society with Andersons'?

Meanwhile, the cover at least (see image) deserves to be contemplated on Comics Appreciation.

The Name And The Man

We can know a name and see the man without necessarily connecting them. A couple of days ago, I referred to John Diggle (fictional) and Andy Diggle (fictional/real) here. This morning, as I drove my granddaughter to a medical appointment, Andy Diggle (real) walked down the street opposite the surgery. In this case, I did happen to make the connection.

A guy called Pat Reid:

escaped from Colditz Castle during World War II;
wrote The Colditz Story and The Latter Days At Colditz;
was played by John Mills in the film of The Colditz Story.

When the film was shown at our school in the 1960s, someone said that Reid had been at our school. Calculating when he would have been in a particular academic year at the school, I checked the photograph, hanging in a corridor, for that year and found the name "P. Reid" listed. Decades later, it was an easy matter to google "Pat Reid" and confirm that he had indeed been at the school (as, briefly, had James Joyce). Most of us watching John Mills' performance had not known that.

Heroes Arrive IV

To the six Green Arrow continuities listed here, we should add Mike Grell's The Longbow Hunters and his subsequent monthly series. That on-going series continued the high quality writing and art of the introductory Prestige Format miniseries.

The Longbow Hunters is a mid-life crisis that summarizes the post-Crisis origin story. Thus, the sequence of comic book continuities is:

Golden Age
Silver Age
The Longbow Hunters
GAY1

GAY1 was a later continuity: 52, I think. The Dark Knight Returns was a post-Crisis possible future that has not come to pass. Thus, it would have followed The Longbow Hunters. Either late in Grell's run or soon after (I think soon after), GA had to die or lose an arm and preferred the former. Losing an arm would have taken him in the direction of DKR. He was succeeded by a son in implausible stories that I stopped reading but he was then brought back by some impossible return from the hereafter.

During Grell's run, most of the stories could have been set on Earth Prime where superheroes exist only in comic books. A child draws Superman who could however be a fictional character. Hal Jordan visits but without his Green Lantern costume or power ring. That series should have continued.

Heroes Arrive III

In Arrow, not only is there a character called John Diggle but also he has a murdered brother called Andy, named after the writer of the Green Arrow Year One miniseries, thus another metafictional reference to an earlier continuity. In this and the previous two posts, we have referred to six continuities each featuring a different version of Oliver Queen:

Golden Age;
Silver Age;
The Dark Knight Returns;
GAY1;
Smallville;
Arrow.

Of these:

the four comic strip Olivers fought crime;
the DKR Ollie also fought the US by sinking a sub and helping Wayne against Kent;
the first screen version fights Luthorcorp;
the second fights the corrupt controllers of Starling City.

Continuities go somewhere.

Heroes Arrive II

The Smallville Clark Kent meets his version of Oliver Queen in Season 6. The success of this Oliver led to Arrow even though they are different continuities. The Smallville Oliver founds the Justice League although the Golden Age Green Arrow was in the Seven Soldiers of Victory and the Silver Age Green Arrow was not a founding member of the Justice League but an early recruit to it. I think that the third cinema Batman is destined to found the cinematic Justice League. He will tell Amanda Waller, "You back off - we are forming a team!"

There are metafictional relationships between continuities and sometimes they coexist in a multiverse. The Superman film theme music is heard when Christopher Reeve plays Virgil Swann in Smallville. We are explicitly reminded that Reeve played Superman in an earlier screen adaptation of Siegel's and Shuster's original comic strip. I started reading Superman, Batman and Green Arrow in the 1950s, less than twenty years after their creations.

How many continuities have I referenced here? Not the full list.

Heroes Arrive

In Smallville, Season 1, Episode 1, Kal-El arrives in Smallville.

In Arrow, Season 1, Episode 1, Oliver Queen returns to Starling City.

In Batman: Year One by Frank Miller, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City.

Kal-El has survived the destruction of his home planet and has yet to be prepared for his destiny on Earth.

Queen has survived on an island for five years and has prepared himself to fight crime.

Wayne has survived the murder of his parents when he was five and has trained himself to fight crime.

These are different continuities although the Wayne of the Batman: Year One continuity meets his versions of Kent and Ollie in The Dark Knight Returns. These are two good versions of Superman and Green Arrow and one good version of the Batman.

Sandman And Smallville

The Sandman was a monthly comic book written by Neil Gaiman and collected as ten graphic novels.

Smallville was a ten season TV series, collected on dvd's.

Very different products. However, both feature DC Comics characters and both trace their origins back to the Golden Age of comics.

I compare The Sandman with some works of prose sf here.