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UNIVERSE COMICS
Universe Comics are comic books, often superhero titles, where the characters inhabit the same universe as characters from other books. This is to distinguish them from superhero titles like Paul Chadwick's Concrete, Mike Allred's Madman, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbon's Watchmen and others where the heroes exist solely within their own title.
The best known Universe Comics are those of DC— which includes Superman, Batman, the Justice League, the Legion of Superheroes, and a plethora of others— and Marvel— home to Spiderman, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Captain America, the Punisher, et al.
Other comics universes include the Wildstorm Universe and ABC Comics (both owned by DC Comics), Marvel's Ultimate Universe, and the now defunct Valiant, Malibu and Crossgen Universes. Watchmen was originally based on characters from the Charleton Universe, which DC Comics bought— however, the Charleton characters were instead incorporated into the DC Universe, while Watchmen nominally changed the characters into original creations.
Publishers such as Dark Horse, Image Comics, Devil's Due, AAA Pop and Vertigo do publish superhero titles, but they are rarely— if ever— tied into a joint universe. Attempts by both Devil's Due and Image (the Firebreather/Invincible/Shadowhawk/Noble Causes crossover) met with failure, and no Universe Comics publisher which has started since the 1970's has lasted. Non-superhero publishers— such as Oni Press, IDW Publishing, Fantagraphics Books, Drawn & Quarterly Publishing and AiT/Planet Lar— generally avoid universe comics.
ADVANTAGES OF UNIVERSE COMICS
By creating a single universe which all of a company's characters inhabit, there is an increased sense of realism. While this may seem counter-intuitive— how can manysuperheroes be more realistic than one anomaly?— readers are more willing to accept an event or occurrence when they see its impact in multiple titles. Magical realist authors have emphasized that what makes the fantastic believable is the level of detail, which allows the reader to acclimate themselves to this new world. Thus, the fact that Lex Luther is an enemy of Superman but also a business rival of Bruce Wayne (aka, Batman) grounds each of the characters in a more firmly established world.
Another advantage of a universe is the way that interaction between characters can lead to team-ups, interpersonal conflicts and epic "events" which often draw a larger readership by attracting readers of separate titles together. Books such as World's Finest and Marvel Team-Ups thrived on the interaction between already-known heroes within a universe, while Marvel Presents and DC Showcase allowed lesser-known characters a chance to develop a following and remain relevant within the universe.
Within this context, death in a Universe can be a significant event— even for minor characters— because they had an established identity. Compared to deaths in other genres, which kill off unknowns for dramatic effect (see Star Trek's infamous red shirts for but one example), death in Universe Comics carry a certain gravatis. This is often, however, undermined by the willingness of Universe Comics publishers to resurrect characters. While Marvel Comics promoted a "Dead means Dead" policy under Bill Jemas in the early aughts, this policy fell to the wayside under Dan Buckley's leadership, and has never been taken very seriously by either publisher. (The exceptions remain minor characters, Barry Allen the Silver Age Flash, and the creator-owned Automatic Kafka. Wildstorm and ABC Comics have remained more consistent in their policy towards death.
Finally, the Universe system allows for publishers to develop a sense of reader-loyalty based on the DC/Marvel dichotomy. Promoted most fervently by Marvel Comics, and specifically by figures like Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas, this publisher-based loyalty creates a unique situation unseen in most other genres and mediums. Harlequin Romances and indie music seem to be the exceptions— and even with these cases, people who buy Warp Records or Secret Desire Romances rarely ignore other cds or books because they are from another company. In recent years, many have decried this universe loyalty— especially because writers, artists and editors often work for both sides— but there are still fans who hold onto this sort of loyalty.
DISADVANTAGES OF UNIVERSE COMICS
To start with the reverse, reader-loyalty tied to a specific universe has created a policy of entrenchment within the comics industry. This demonstrates itself in two forms. First, many readers are willing to buy comics starring their favorite characters, no matter how poor the quality of the writing or art. Subpar authors such as Chuck Austen were retained, in spite of significant protests against their work, because readers were still purchasing the books in question for fear of missing out on important developments in the universe. It is difficult to judge, from sales, the quality of an artist or author, because the sales numbers reflect the readers' interest in the title and universe, not in the quality of the work itself.
Beyond the problem of quality, entrenchment also leads to a policy of reader-loyalty to specific characters, making significant change within the universe difficult to impossible. When the DC Comics hero Hal Jordan, star of Green Lantern, was twisted by personal loss and a sense of misguided power into a villain, readers protested his death, creating fan-groups to write letters of complaint and boycott new books out of protest. Jordan's replacement Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, was treated as the "new guy" by creative teams and fans alike, even after ten years of stories and development. Jordan was eventually "reborn" and Rayner moved into a separate title, Ion, after which point nothing is yet known. Other famous characters who have been revived due to reader response include Colossus and Green Arrow. Characters of the X-Men comics have been resurrected with such frequency that their deaths have become a standing joke in some circles, including within the comics themselves. (Peter David's X- Factor involves a character blowing off the death of her father because, after all, all X-Men come back eventually.)
An equally significant, and perhaps unavoidable problem, is continuity. While all ongoing stories— be they tv shows, soap operas, book series or film sets— have a certain amount of overlap from previous stories, comics' continuity is often significantly larger, more convoluted and harder to keep track of. There are various reasons for this.
First off, even a daily soap opera is limited on the number of characters and plots it can introduce before becoming incomprehensible. However, within a universe set-up, multiple characters can all have individual stories developing in various books simultaneously. To use Batman as an example: Batman appears in his self-titled comic, Batman, as well as Detective Comics and Legends of the Dark Knight, two titles explicitly about him. He also plays a major role in the Justice League of America and its spin-off, JLA Classified while he shares the book Superman/Batman with its other titular hero. Yet, to continue the cameos, Batman also makes regular appearances in Robin, Batgirl, and Gotham Central, less regular appearances elsewhere. Add to this the Batman miniseri which are offered every month, and Batman stars in anywhere between 10 and 15 books a month, each written by a different author. Given that Batman's history dates back to the 1930's, there is a great deal of continuity to be followed. (It may be worth noting that a variety of other titles about Batman, including Gotham Knights and Shadow of the Bat have existed, and he has been member of other teams, including The Outsiders, over the years. These are also part of his continuity.)
The problem of continuity is not simply quantity— the number of books— but perception. Each creative team who deals with Batman has their own impression of him: why does he act a certain way, what would he do in a given situation, what is his relationship with a specific character? This can lead to contradictions, where he can be rational yet kind-hearted in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke, mystic to the point of shamanism in Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's Arkham Asylum and violently psychotic in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. How does a reader reconcile these various opinions of who Batman is? This situation applies to every character within a universe, because every character is reinvented by multiple creative teams. This is distinctly different than books like Hellboy and Too Much Coffee Man, who are written in one or two titles by a single author, keeping the continuity limited and focused.
Beyond individual questions, the entire Universe suffers from the weight of continuity. Creative teams cannot ignore past events for fear of upsetting long-time readers, while they also cannot depend on them too heavily for fear of alienating new readers. Marvel, in an attempt to combat this, created the Ultimate Universe so readers could start from scratch; the problem, however, is that the Ultimate Universe creates its own continuity over time. Rather innovatively, DC Comics used events such as Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour and the more recent Infinite Crisis to "reset" continuity. The goal was to wash away past events and create a clean slate. This has led to various complications, however, including the question of which backstories remained valid or "in continuity" and which backstories were forgotten or "out of continuity." This whole problem was parodied in Andi Watson's comic, Love Fights, but no solution has yet been reached as to how to fix the problem of continuity.
ECONOMIC ISSUES RELATED TO UNIVERSE COMICS
The limited success or often abject failure of most recent universes suggests that the economic model is too large and unwieldy to be successful on a large scale. CrossGen's owner was forced to declare bankruptcy despite beginning with millions of dollars investment. The viability of DC, Wildstorm and ABC Comics is tied to their ownership by AOL/Time- Warner, while Marvel Comics has faced bankruptcy as recently as the 1990's.
One could, however, make the argument that American comic companies face significant hurdles as a niche market, and that factors beyond being a "Universe" come into play in these difficulties. Most non-Universe publishers, for example, do not publish their entire line in full-color, which is a significant expense. (IDW Publishing remains one of the few exceptions.) There are also economic concerns such as merchandizing (films, toys, novelizations, etc), the Direct Market system, the loss of newstands, the growth of book sales through trade paperbacks and graphic novels, company organizational models, and a myriad of other concerns.
At their heart, universe comics have grown to become, in spite of their low readership and the stigmatization of graphic literature in America, a part of Americana.
