To Be Or Not To Be...Canon?

I’m a sucker for continuity.


When I watched the Super Friends, Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends cartoons, I matched faces to names. I knew who Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Iceman, The Flash and all the rest were on sight. I could tell you their powers and abilities. But the shows were done-in-ones, or -twos. The plot would be resolved, the episode would end, and next week it would start all over again.



Then I read Marvel’s Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #4. I learned that these two-dimensional drawings of heroes, villains and aliens can…by the slightest stretch of the imagination…be considered living, breathing characters. Characters with lives. Characters that have things happen to them. Characters that deal with these events over time.



I started reading proper comics during Marvel’s Secret War. Characters were returning to Earth after something happened to them far away and some were limping, some were replaced, some had new threads. I had to know what happened. As I kept reading, references were made to other issues, other titles, other events. Again…I had to know.

I was hooked.

A universe unfolded in front of me. Connections were made, synapses firing wildly.

Not long after this, I discovered the same thing was happening elsewhere…

The Star Wars Trilogy that I loved so much had novels that took place before, after, even during the movies…

Star Trek came out with a new series taking place in the 24th century…

Superman, Wonder Woman and The Flash are caught in a Crisis…

I was overwhelmed. System overload. My response was to limit myself to only one universe. Not just for financial reasons, but for sanity’s sake.


I stuck with Marvel, and became a Zombie twenty years before the title came out.

By the nineties, I couldn’t afford to feed my habit anymore, and crashed along with the market.

I resigned myself to the original Trilogy because Parts I, II and III sucked and reading stories about Han and Leia’s kids hurt my head.

I have little money and limited shelf space. I’m in my late thirties now. I can not afford to get hooked into anything new…



Oh. Shit.

So now I have a dilemma. Here’s a new Whoniverse to explore, episodes and novels, which interconnect in a beautiful array of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey goodness.

Do I stick with the shows? Or expand the Whoniverse to include the books?

Are the books considered…canon?

And don’t tell me to go to the library. I don’t roll like that. I buy for keeps, people. The DVD’s are already in my sights.

I don’t know what to do.

I'm a sucker for continuity...