THE DIFFICULTY OF WHAT'S FASCINATING

I subjected most of my essays on crossovers to a spot-reading and came to a conclusion: I don't think I've spent enough time on why people can and do become fascinated-- if not to the extent that I do-- with the way different characters and concepts intertwine.

Looking back on my OUROBOROS DREAMS essay THE LOGIC AND APPEAL OF CROSSOVERS,

 I provided this observation:

... the overlapping of distinct storylines would seem to intensify the degree of mental effort an audience-member must exert in order to participate in the crossover's intersecting universes.  For instance, when Rider Haggard takes a character who exists in a moderately realistic universe, i.e., Allan Quatermain, and causes him to encounter a character whose nature is overtly supernatural, Haggard must find some way to treat both characters with integrity, even though the ground rules of their universes are in conflict.

And then, slightly afterward:

 It's something of a given in literary criticism to state that audiences, literary or sub-literary, maintain interest in fictional characters by identifying with them.  This commonplace observation is not so much wrong as overly simple. As I am what has been called a "myth-critic," I assert that the process of identification comes about as a reader (or viewer) realizes what kind of role the character plays in the story, and what that fictional role means to the reader. This does not mean "identification" in the simple-minded sense of "I want to be like this person," for identification can take place with any number of villains (the Joker, Freddy Krueger), monsters (Godzilla) or even mysterious locales (the subterranean domain of Jules Verne's "Center of the Earth.")  It is more properly an appreciation of what I will call the "mana" appropriate to the character or concept's role in the story. 

This essay was written in April 2014, a good five years before I refined my analysis on the two primary types of reader-identification, in INVESTMENT VS. FASCINATION. These two categories described in more precise terms the dichotomous ways in which readers "identified" with fictional figures. The way of investment was one of sympathy toward one or more figures, loosely sharing their joys or sorrows. The way of fascination was one of seeking to understand the ways of one or more figures who were more antipathetic in nature. The latter type of figures, which would include all of the examples given in the second citation above, might be fairly called by the Sartrean term of "the other," though this phrase only holds value in a comparative sense. What I called "mana" in the 2014 essay I would probably now reference as "the totality of correlations and/or contemplations that make this or that character resonant," drawing somewhat on Frye's idea of myth as "a treasure-trove of literary tropes."

The appeal of crossovers would also seem to line up more with the process of fascination than with investment. With investment one takes the "short view," identifying with the struggles of Spider-Man or Stephen Daedalus or whoever. But as soon as one brings together characters who are part of a larger design-- even if it's just Batman fighting The Flash's enemy The Weather Wizard-- then one is taking something of the "long view" that allows the reader to understand what makes a Joker or a Godzilla tick, for all that one doesn't really especially sympathize with them. 

So much for the reader's response to crossovers. But how do professional writers use pre-established concepts to craft stories? The writers implicitly want the readers to be fascinated-- that's what puts food on the table-- but all writers don't approach crossover-materials the same way.

Every original character or concept provides a template for later creators to either follow closely or to depart from as needed. Readers of serial concepts often perceive how much or how little a given author can accurately reproduce the desired aspects of a particular favored feature. In some cases, even a creator of such a concept may change his creative stance for personal or exigent reasons. BATMAN co-creator Bill Finger collaborated on some of the early stories, with all their delirious Gothic imagery, but he probably ended up authoring far more of the gimmicky "Candyland Batman" stories. 

My loose categories of the template deviations have been thus far the "weak deviation," "the strong deviation," and "the total deviation."

 "Total deviation" applies to figures who may copy some visual or designative aspect of a character, but who actually have no substantial connection with the template. So far I've included in this category characters who impersonate famous figures (or are constructed for that purpose), parodies, and doppelgangers who strongly reference famous figures.

"The weak deviation" is the one where, in theory, the storyteller shares the devoted reader's fascination with the involved continuity of a character, or of the continuities of an ensemble of characters, and does his best to keep everything "on-model," to borrow the animation phrase.

"The strong deviation," however, is the one in which the narrative's creator feels a great deal of freedom to riff on the original template-- and that's where the fans of a given franchise usually come out with knives drawn. I've produced my share of jeremiads on this subject, such as my ruminations on the dramatic shortcomings of Kevin Feige. Nevertheless, I part company with those critics and podcasters who automatically dislike every alternative take on a given template. I admit that it's more common for an alternative take to be bad than to be good, but it does happen. One high-profile version is the Grant Morrison version of DOOM PATROL, which I examined somewhat in the 2011 essay CHIEF CONCERNS. 

From one standpoint, a crossover-production with a great deal of fidelity to established continuity, like the Busiek-Perez JUSTICE LEAGUE/AVENGERS, ought to sustain the readers' fascination with all those involved story-threads. Morrison's strategy with DOOM PATROL-- which had nominal crossover-aspects in certain issues-- was to maintain some minor continuity-aspects while seeking to fascinate readers with Morrison's erudite reading of culture and aesthetics. Morrison's take was successful enough that a number of later creators attempted to follow his lead rather than emulating the older incarnations (though I imagine John Byrne's tenure, which I did not read, was the exception).

Interestingly, on occasion Morrison shows some of the same "political correctness" for which I've faulted Kevin Feige. However, Morrison does have other interests beyond superficial politics. Thus even a scene like the one above-- in which two Silver Age super-villains confess "the love that dare not speak its name"-- has an appealing absurdity. So Morrison, unlike Feige, that makes me, for one, curious about the "new DOOM PATROL universe" Morrison creates, "strong deviation" though it may be, because it's not simply preaching at me.