Wednesday, May 18, 2022

A CROSSOVER MISCELLANY PT. 4

 I first laid out my criteria for the terms "distributive" and "non-distributive" in STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT. 5:

Now that I've put forth "charisma" as a term that better approximates the creator's organization of narrative elements, my other two terms apply to the process of whether the charisma is bestowed upon just one focal presence, or is distributed to more than one. The first would be "non-distributive," given that the charisma is not divided up, as with the Superman mythos, while the second, as seen in the Batman mythos, must be judged as "distributive" on the whole, since the Bat-mythos has a history of allotting narrative charisma to more than one presence in a sustained manner.

I later reversed my use of the terms "stature" and "charisma" in EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS OF AUTHORIAL WILL PT. 2, but the terms "distributive" and "non-distributive" are unaltered.

Since my arguments about the functions of stature and charisma in crossovers depends on the past history of the characters crossed over, I'll note that the distributive/non-distributive dichotomy may also apply to teamups of heroes and villains.

For instance, I said that BATMAN changed from non-distributive to  distributive as soon as the Crusader acquired Robin as a regular partner. Some characters who did not have their own features, such as the Barbara Gordon Batgirl, functioned only as guest-stars until such time as they acquired their own berths. Once Batgirl II had enjoyed her own backup strip for several years, I would tend to judge every appearance of Batgirl II in the BATMAN feature to be a "static crossover," because the character had acquired sufficient stature from being a centric character. 

Oddly, though, before getting that stature, one might argue that Batgirl-- a non-distributive character in her comic book berth-- debuted as a distributive type in the 1967-68 season of BATMAN. Every episode of that TV show's third season presented Batman, Robin and Batgirl as regular co-combatants, and thus they were as much a team in that season as Batman and Robin were in the previous two seasons.

More on these recondite matters later, perhaps.


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