Continuity
An important feature of the superhero comic is continuity. The storyline, action and structure of the series must follow some type of pattern and realistic plotline. According to Reynolds12 there are three areas for which continuity must remain intact.
The first is serial continuity. As a story progresses from book to book and series to series, there must remain a sense of continuity in storyline to previous issues. In other words, an action that happens in issue 4 must be adhered to and acknowledged in issue 18. You cannot treat the issues as independent stories, but rather a series of continuous action that builds upon itself. Perhaps this is what keeps comic book readers coming back. The idea of something concrete and continuous helps the reader feel as though the story is realistic and follows true-life sequence. The same must be said of movie series. More and more as the movies are coming out with part two and part three, the storyline must build upon itself and not be unrealistic in the series of events that occur from one movie to the next.
Hierarchical continuity is important when comics deal with a large number of characters, both heroes and villains. There is a pecking order of strength and ability within the supers and that order must be adhered to throughout the series, even the cross-over series in which two unlikely heroes or villains meet. It is the basic math problem in which character A defeats character B, character B defeats character C, therefore if character A and C were to meet, logically character A would prevail.
Structural continuity is the concept that the developing story should be realistic within a normal course of events. Family structure, once introduced must not change, just as human family trees and structures do not change. When names and relationships are introduced, they cannot be changed in a subsequent issue for this would not follow the natural order of things. In addition, the concept of aging of characters must be realized and followed, if in fact it is introduced. To follow the structural continuity in Batman, once he retired and aged to approximately fifty, the writers must acknowledge this structure, and therefore brought him back as The Dark Knight in which much of his storyline revolved around his age and his fatigue for having been out of the picture for so long. Writers then decided they wanted to tell the story of Batman between his time of Batman and Dark Knight. This transition story came to be the animated feature film Batman Gotham Knight. If a comic writer decides to kill a super then the only way he or she can come back is to market the story as a flashback or a transition story.
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