Alan:
I'm grateful that you have decided to stop talking about me -just acusing me of intelectual fascism this time, wer'e progressing here
- and started talking a little bit about continuity in a very thoughtful way, I gladly admit.
Now, I'm afraid that I still disagree with you in several issues:
> At best the ‘trivia’ chosen as historical absolutes are temporary signposts set in a landscape of shifting sand.
Wow, this is really profound and puts Shelley's "Ozymandias" to shame
Well, continuity definetly is not anything to be acknowledge by the readers, seasoned or not; it has been for close to 50 years the way superheroe stories -Marvel and otherwise- WORK. It's an integral part of the stories themselves, the very landscape in which they happen, something that only contributes to the betterment of the story, respecting continuity never hurts, even if there are particular times in which an element can be ignored or replaced for a better one.
It needs to be undestood by writers, to make the best of their stories, and definetly enforced with a firm grip by editors. And I think it's due time to start doing it with a definied, common criteria and don't leave the basic mechanism to any kind of particular -very often lazy or despective- interpretation. It's public record that the only editor in all the industry that cares and understands about continuity matters is Tom Brevoort. Each other particular editor and writer has his own -partial and incomplete- understanding about what continuity is about and, at the end of the day, is allways the readers -the seasoned ones- the one who suffer what -50 years after the narrative tool was invented- can only be labeled as unprofessional handling of their creative duties. Meaning that is part of the work of editors and writers to read comics and be aware of ALL the trajectory of the characters they are using. And as editors definetly aren't yet up to the task, I as a writer won't trust any of them to do that job for me. There have been, there are, and there will be continuity mistakes, but it's a matter of having or not the knowlenge and the will to work within the rules of the game and respect them or not. You just confessed in other post that you don't read comics anymore... Well, that's not a very good start...
This lack of agreement and understanding from most current writers and editors about all this workings just causes prejuice to the readers. Just as an example, we need to pay for 52 issues of COUNTDOWN crap just to see what side of their heads each "MONITOR" combs his hair and then Mr. Didio screws the schedule and artwork of yet another "Crisis" trying to fathoom what side of "the Bleed" Aparo's Spectre stories fall or whether Superman had "adventures when he was a boy" (TM) or not. It's hysterical to see Keith Giffen "tying all the versions of DC's Hell" together in Reign in Hell and at the very same time cursing about continuity in his column at comicbookresources.com. We have the virtual fox in charge of the henhouse here.
Thank God -thank Brevoort- things are a little different at Marvel, and we have a new HANDBOOK to keep things reasonably fixed. So in that "desert" there are several roads very well build, even if the head honcho thinks that he can erase Spider-Man's wedding and "everything else will remain the same". My @##.
>The whole Nathan Richards/ Rama Tut/ Scarlet Centurion/Kang saga (and lets not forget Apocalypse, et al) is a mass of contradictions and paradoxes that if taken to their logical conclusion undermine the entire Marvel Universe. I have no idea, or interest, what the current rational is because it could all be turned on its head tomorrow.
Well, well... You don't read comics and you don't care for the stablished status of one of the most conflictive -and important- characters in the MU. Nothing good can come out of that, you know?
I totally agree that Rama Tut story is a mess. A whole series was needed -Avengers Forever- to clear a little bit part of it. And still, great artwork apart, was not very satisfying (I.E.: Why would Immortus send the Space Phantom to destroy the Avengers (# 2) when he knew that he had to face them as Kang just some months down the road? He would have erased himself!). Now, the argument "That's a mess, so I don't bother to research it" is not going to make any story better, just keep the snowball rolling down and getting bigger. Tampering with such a delicate moments of the MU can just create "entropic ripples" all over the Omniverse. That very same thing that you drew so well, when House of M hit...
>Not Kang’s Sphinx, the real world Sphinx because the real world has always been a factor in the Marvel Universe.
Certeanly, Alan. Now, the MARVEL UNIVERSE has allways been a BIGGER FACTOR than the real world in the MARVEL UNIVERSE. You are not playing in our world, you're not playing in your own universe, not even in al alternate timeline. You can't start messing around with stories set by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Just imagine what a precedent you're setting for "less seasoned" writers...
JACK KIRBY wanted the Sphinx of the Marvel Universe to be a Time Ship from the future. Period. In fact, I just checked, and the story was published five years earlier than Daniken "Chariots of the Gods", sharing more or less the same motiv. Visionary. He wanted that in the same way that he wanted the statues of Easter Island to be aliens in other stories (and in the first Thor story too, to some extend). In the same way that he put the moai in the Blue Zone of the Moon. Should we negate the Kree visits just because astronomers can't find Uatu's dome in our world? Come on, weak argument there.
If you have the urge to put your theories -or the current egyptologists'- out there, do it out of the Marvel Universe. ((May I suggest you get together with Neal Adams? He has some interesting theories about geology, have heard. And with him, you can use diagonal panels as much as you like.
(sorry for the off-topic, jus't couldn't help it).))
This is reminding me about Tolkien essay "Beowulf, the monsters and the critics" where he had to defend Beowulf as a work of fantasy, literature, and where dragons are in their "natural enviroment". Beowulf wasn't written to record historical facts. Nor is the Fantastic Four. Nor is Thor. Kirby's Thor, as you sure know, has very little to do with the Aesir from norse myth. So why to send a "comic book Thor" to a "real Egypt"???????????????????'
>Why did Nathan make a time machine in the image of the Sphinx?
Not the purpose, that was explained… But why the precise human headed cat form?
If Nathan believed he ‘originated’ the design, from mere whimsy, that would suggest he was strangely unaware of one of the most famous icons in human history.
However, ignoring all of the ridiculous paradoxes, IF Nathan created the ‘design’ and introduced that image into the past (and potentially shaping history) WHY did he choose a form that fit with Egyptian beliefs/mythology?
The rationalization is really good -even if not hinted at all in the book, in my opinion- but this is where it shows that you're not very up to date with the character.
Nathaniel Richards is called thus cause he's a descendant of the character of the same name who is the father of Reed Richards (this was a tip of the hat to the hint about Rama-Tut being a future version of Dr. Doom, as they both were time travelers). The time machine that Rama Tut used was the one built by Reed's father. This was not only a time machine, but also took Nathaniel I to an alternate world. This alternate world's present was populated by western characters -the ones hinted by Kirby in the tv screen of the original story- together with "technovalkyries". It was a divergent timeline. Not sure from when it diverged, think the middle ages (just consulted the HANDBOOK -they're handy, you see?-, it diverged from 300 AD, men conquered the moon by the 9th century). This was all done by John Byrne.
So we can think that in that world there wasn't probably a Sphinx to start with. Mostly because, being a bit of a paradox, no Rama Tut has ever visited that past with his ship. And if there was a Sphinx, the alternate present clearly showed that there weren't many historical records, even less in the alternate future year 3000 where he was born.
So probably he just invented the Sphinx, with a taste for Kirby design (looks like a promethean giant), as the kind of thing that would impress the Egyptians, whatever his recollection of them would have been. After all, egyptian gods are humans with animal heads, not the contrary. Something is wrong in there. The human face of the Sphinx is easily explained as being Rama-Tut's own face. He has a big ego. End of THAT story.
You wanted Rama Tut to have based his Sphinx in a previous one? Fair. But your Sphinx is not even in his own TIMELINE!!!!!! He's not from the mainstream Marvel Universe. His Earth is designated 6311.
>WHY did he choose a form that fit with Egyptian beliefs/mythology?
Not to alienate his readers...? I mean, his worshippers...! I mean, his servants!!
>Accepting Nathan created a Sphinx in the image of something he knew had existed allows for the possibility that there could be two Sphinxes-- An original and Nathan’s copy!
Great! Rama Tut arrived in Egypt in the year 2950 B.C.Your story is set "Less than four thousand years ago....", 1.000 years later. So my question is: Where is Rama-Tut human headed Sphinx in Giza in your story? Nowhere to be seen. One would say that you are making up all this very nice explanation after the fact, which would explain your first response... Not that it matters.
>This is all hypothetical, not immediately relevant to the Thor story and I’m not seeking to overturn ‘anyone’s continuity. My point is that any attempt to establish exact continuity is nonsense.
Well, if certeanly the Sphinx isn't very central to Thor punching a griffing for 8 pages, you should have left the Sphinx out of your story, and just depict a griffin-headed monolith or whatever, without messing around with what is without doubt the hottest point in Marvel RECORDED history by far. Because it may be a mess, but it's a recorded mess. Waiting for somebody to put some order in it, not to raise more issues.
Something continuity shouldn't be is "the comics that I have read" nor "what I think to remember of them" nor "the ones that had good artwork are the ones that count".
>One final point, the reliability of Nathan Sphinx as a ‘continuity marker’ was already in doubt because of developments in the ‘real world’. Some modern Egyptologists theorise the Sphinx was carved anywhere between 5000-9000 BC—the pyramids were built much later, 2000+-3000+ BC. Yet, when Nathan travelled back to ancient Egypt the complete Pyramid complex at Giza is visible. (See FF 19 Continuity Connoisseurs)
Well, as you see, Rama-Tut is established as arriving just in time for that, the building of the Piramids. It took me 15 seconds to check the Handbook. Try it. Because, again, what we know now about the Sphinx, has nothing to do with the Sphinx in the Marvel Universe. That's the problem.
>I intended Thor: Truth of history to work on a number of levels—aside from being a humorous action packed romp.
Thank you for the explanation, I was already aware of all of them.