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Last week I went and saw the new Incredible Hulk movie with some friends.  During the movie, one of them leans over and asks me “Is this the sequel to the other one?”, meaning the first Hulk Movie. Without missing a beat I responded, “It’s an indirect sequel.” I thought the exchange was over, but when I looked back my friend’s facial expression was a confused look of “WTF”?  As it turns out, he had no idea that such a thing existed.  But, what’s wrong with an indirect sequel? It makes perfect sense to me. Then again, I read comics where amazing things happen to regular people. Has reading comics affected my ability to make sense?

Let us take a look at Superman. He has a secret identity, Clark Kent. A big aspect of this secret identity is the eyeglasses. That is it. Taking a minute and thinking about it seriously, I come to the realization that eyeglasses are really not a good method for being discrete. Neither is a change of hair, nor a change of clothes. Reading Superman I knowingly accept the fact that this is a good disguise and that no one can tell he is Superman. This lack of sense doesn’t just apply for people, let us think about technology.

Reed Richards has developed flying cars, lasers, and super computers. If these are technologies that he has patented why aren’t they around in the general public? I mean the amount of power necessary to fire a laser weapon more than once has got to be enough to power a laptop for a week with recharging. When I read these stories I accept that the technology exists but that it only exists for Reed Richards and no one else can use it.

The idea that eyeglasses can hide an identity and that laser weapon batteries are not available to everyone are far fetched ideas when place in the context of reality. But the stories don’t exist in this reality; they exist in books where there are heroes who fly and do other things like discover alternate dimensions. In respect to those realities it makes senses, with respect to our reality it is silly. When I respond to a friend about a movie being an indirect sequel likes it is common place, I think I deserve the WTF face.

Indirect sequels, secret identities, and lasers are common place in comic stories, relative to the kinds of different story-telling mechanisms used to creatively write and re-write epic realities around characters.  These ideas make sense to me and others because we’ve read comic stories and have learned the rules about those stories, we know the terms.  For someone who doesn’t know the rules of comic realities, it can appear that some idiosyncrasies don’t make sense. This isn’t a negative thing, or a problem.  It’s just a misunderstanding based on culture, knowledge and common readership. It’s up to people like me to share this knowledge with others even if the response is initially “WTF?”