Sometimes I shouldn't use words

I was nervous about opening this final part to the Goddard arc, finding it hard work not to click on the incoming Whedonesque reviews. The issue 3 cliffhanger was obviously aiming for a “Drew/Joss you bastard” response but came closer to “Drew/Joss you idiot.” Would part four restore the dynamic duo’s bastard-fu?

( Don’t die, don’t fall, don’t take prisoners )

Seems the UK got the first S8 issue of the year a day early. This puzzles me but not enough to care.

(  In which spoilers are love. Love, love, love )

I watched a couple of FNL vids recently and it made me think how region/nation specific sporting associations are. Like food, there are foods that are just what’s for dinner and there are foods that remind you where you come from. Marmite and candy shrimps, soggy chips and soft fruit. In the summer mother bought us cherries in brown paper bags.

Most sports bring up less pleasant associations, I have a deeply conflicted relationship with football (soccer) being something of a widow to the game and yet strangely drawn to it. Rugby is good in 10 minute bursts, like watching herds of wildebeast, while cricket is a strange religious rite that goes nowhere and lasts days. Still I think I could watch a movie about any of those and it would mean something whereas American Football has no more resonance than a videogame. It’s a theoretical point really, what sporting movies are there that aren’t Bend it like Beckham or about baseball? Although baseball movies are curiously watchable. Maybe from playing rounders at school, or perhaps because most of them seem to be metaphors for something else. The Natural that was about King Arthur wasn’t it? Or Lancelot and Morgan Le Fay and Robert Redford was shiny back in the day.

( Why Dawn is the greatest - comic spoilers )

Big comics Thursday, as well as Buffy 8.6 I picked up another two parts of Brian Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man.

( Spoilers for Y. And Heroes. Sort of. )

( Rather more detailed spoilers for Buffy 8.6 )

( The Long Way Home: Part IV  )

(  The Buffy of it all  )

So are the comics canon? Joss, more than other show runners perhaps, is the auteur type. The one thing that units the seven seasons of Buffy is his editorial control over the final product. His influences, the writers, actors, budget and network censorship levels were continually changing but the final word on the published story was always his. It would seem reasonable in this instance to think of a Joss-led and sanctioned continuation of the story as just that, a new season rather than a new series, the comics as part of the same continuous canon rather than a separate new canon of their own, but people don’t. The reasons given for not doing so are multifarious but generally come down to pointing out one or other component of the first seven seasons that won’t be present for the eighth. I don’t think it’s that simple though.

When I was younger and more evil one of my favourite pub wind-ups was to try and convince people that Manchester United didn’t exist. The club was founded in 1878. Since then it’s changed managers, players, coaches, ground, owners, even the name. In 1958 over half the team got wiped out in the Munich air-crash and it had to be re-built from scratch and Bobby Charlton. There’s absolutely nothing left of the original team in the current one. Not a single molecule. Despite that I always, always lost those arguments.

I think stories are like football teams, the fannish mind has an innate capacity to perceive unity, to believe in the existence of one big canonical whole however much the individual components change. As long as there’s something to connect each step in the process to the next, fans can happily ignore all kinds of incremental changes, of cast, of writing staff, of genre. On AtS the only member of the original cast to survive by the end was the titular character, on Dr Who such changeshave become integral to the entire concept. None of the S1 BtVS writers apart from Joss were still on board by S7, on both The West Wing and Due South the show runner ran but the show went on. As to changes of format Buffy wouldn’t be Buffy if it weren’t regularly playing with different forms. Episodes from The Zeppo to Intervention have the characters acting in exaggeratedly dumb or over the top fashion for comic effect but fans still recognize their favourites and incorporate their actions into the overall narrative. If form is so important is the musical less canonical than the other episodes?

I think differentiating canon from non-canon isn’t a strictly scientific process, I suspect it has more to do with the Mulderesque factor of wanting to believe than being objectively able to. The biggest single obstacle to the comics being accepted isn’t anything to do with comicness versus TVness or Jossness versus SMGness, it’s simply that it’s now nearly three years since the canon was declared closed and the willingness to suspend disbelief and engage the fannish capacity for seeing continuity no matter what is no longer unconditional. Joss may declare them canon and clearly has as good an understanding of the meaning of the term as the next fanboy made good but he’s also basing his acceptance on a good deal more evidence than the rest of us. He’s seen the next however many installments, he knows where the story’s headed and where it’s going to end. We don’t.