Years ago, DC Comics used to publish occasional "imaginary stories" (truth be told, I only ever remember "imaginary stories" appearing in Superman and Batman titles). I really enjoyed such tales. Being a person who can immerse myself in a fictional world, I enjoyed following the "real" adventures which took place in most issues, but now and again it was nice to read an "imaginary story".

The great thing about an "imaginary story" was that it could do things which I guess just couldn't be done in the regular issues. So you could have an issue where Batman and Batwoman got married and because it was an "imaginary story" it had no effect on the regular adventures. In an "imaginary story" Batman could marry Batwoman, but we'd return to the "real" adventures the following month. This didn't make "imaginary stories" any less exciting or emotional, I guess it just gave the writers creative control and allowed them to tell such tales.

Now, I am struggling as I type this topic. I can't seem to get my point across or find the right words to use. What I am most struggling with is the word "real". Of course, deep down I know that characters in a comic are fictional and not real, but in a certain sense they are "real". When Peter Parker felt disappointment in an early Spider-Man adventure, I kind of shared his pain; when Bruce Banner failed to control the transformation into the Hulk, I shared his pain; when Batman or Robin saw someone die, I shared their pain. Most of their adventures were "real" to me. Like I said, I am a person who can immerse myself in a fictional world.

And it's not just comics that I can immerse myself in. I could watch JURASSIC PARK and suspend my disbelief. Of course, I know the film is fictional, but for two hours I could immerse myself in the danger and be in awe of the amazing dinosaurs in that film. Or, if I watched one of the ROCKY movies, I knew Sylvester Stallone didn't really win boxing matches in those films, but when I watched the movies, I immersed myself in them so they did become "real" in a certain sense. To me, anything from movies and TV shows to comics and books are "real" if you allow yourself to enter the fictional world and immerse yourself in it.

So I guess I'm trying to make a point about the distinction between "real" adventures in a comic and "imaginary stories". Both types of stories are enjoyable and fun. However, they are two different types of adventures. And what concerns me most about some modern comics is how "imaginary stories" no longer appear. Instead, we see characters changed beyond recognition at times or doing things that don't make sense. The very stories that would have been "imaginary stories" in, say, the 50s or 60s are now part of the regular books and I don't think that is a good thing.

The good thing about "imaginary stories" is that they can maintain the status quo as far as the regular title is concerned. For example, I don't feel it's a good idea to age characters, so years ago, the place to age a comic character would have been in an "imaginary story". However, it seems that some people would prefer to see that in the regular books. There's other examples - an "imaginary story" was the place years ago to marry a character or kill a character off or resurrect a character or turn a character into a villain. Such tales were interesting, but didn't affect the character's world. Nowadays, without an "imaginary story" to tell such tales, such events happen in the regular books and I know from reading comments here and from my own views, that a lot of people aren't happy about that.

I hope I've made an effort at explaining things as best as I can. If I have one weakness in life, it's that I don't feel I can always articulate myself in writing. There have been a lot of things done over the last dozen or so years that I don't feel should have been done to characters and some of those things would have transpired in an ""imaginary story" years ago where they wouldn't have changed the character and his world. Instead, it seems that some of the time, those things are allowed to take place within the "real" adventures, meaning you don't always get consistent characters and things happen which I don't think should.

As has been discussed here before, I prefer the illusion of change to change. I always felt that Mr. Byrne was a creator who respected the characters, who they were and what they stood for, etc. I feel Mr. Byrne told many wonderful stories and didn't mess with the characters or change them beyond recognition. I guess my final point is that it's a shame that we don't have the "imaginary story" featuring in comics today because if such tales happened, it might be better for the various titles that are published. And instead of a "written for the trade" six-issue storyline about a character changing and becoming virtually unrecognizable (in his own title), we'd probably get one fun "imaginary" story where such an event can happen before returning to the "real" adventures the next month

Love the Imaginary Story. Loved Elseworlds. I have a bunch of those stories in my collection. I think you'll note that as recently as two years ago, DC was trying to justify the existence of those "imaginary" stories by giving them their "own" Earth. So Watchmen get an Earth. Gotham by Gaslight gets an Earth. Ect.

It's the desire of the boys inside the men who love these characters that, if affected by the Imaginary Story at all, if moved or thrilled, they "must" ligitimize the story's existence. It can't "just" be a story that "might" have happened.

In another medium, noted SF author Phillip Jose Farmer came up with the "Wold Newton Theory" in which a meteor lands in a remote English countryside in the late 1800s, exposing five or six passing travelers to its radiation. From those five's children came Tarzan, Doc Savage, Sherlock Holmes, Captain Nemo, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and on and on (there are direct lineages which branch off into others, but mainly I recall Lord Greystoke is one of the "original" pulp heroes).

Now, this is an intellectual game for all manner of writers familiar with literature's great characters. They create vast family trees in which Dr. Fu Manchu is the grandfather of Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan, or Nemo is Professor Moriarty in disguise, and so on. It's a fun game. And as such, it is not in any way a "serious" literary study, but a wonderful bit of speculative assertion that can be "argued" as the writers attempt to trump one another.

Obviously, the superheroes are as legitimate characters as any in world literature, at least the great ones are. The difference between Wold Newton and what Marvel/DC has done is to remove the "fun" of the "chase", the speculative amusement of What Might Have Happened.

Partly, it's because the fanboy/pro is extremely self-conscious about "their" superheroes: they must take them "seriously" so everyone will take the superhero, and by proxy the fanboy/pro, seriously.

This means removing the speculation of a fictional world for the consequence of reality. If This Happens then This Cannot Happen. One hand does not lie, and one hand does not tell the truth. Both hands must tell the truth, else the superhero will be "trivialized."

But the truth really is: the superhero is a symbol of a moral/ethical stage of a child's development. Children "learn" how they're supposed to be, what they should strive to be, from the superhero. The superhero, mind you, who is also falliable, but does the right thing even if everyone around him believes him wrong. Thus is Spider-Man one of the greatest superheroes of all time. And if the fanboy/pros left Spider-Man to the matchless imaginations of the talents, working within that "confine" of "teaching" story structure, character, and the inherent ethics, then we would have the Spider-Man of the 1960s, in comics of the 2000s.

Alas.

I used to enjoy the Imaginary Stories when they popped up at odd intervals, and enjoyed the What If? comics when they came along and covered similar ground but on a regular, ongoing basis. 

The Imaginary Stories didn't "count", of course, and were never supposed to be integrated into the characters' histories.  They were just fun.  Too many readers wanted absolutely everything to "count", however, and the Imaginary Story concept got in the way of that.  In some ways, so did having fun.

Too bad about that.

Of course if it's important to you that you can list all the times Superman has been on the planet Qward, I suppose you don't want it pointed out to you that one of the incidences on your list occured in an Imaginary Story.  That would make you look stupid.

The all-consuming need for continuity to encompass everything destroyed the imaginary story. After a long while, it also took out the more imaginative "What If" stories. Marvel still publishes occasional "What If" specials, but they are usually in the nature of "That big battle we showed you over the course of the last eight months? Imagine if it had been an ever bigger bloodbath..."

Back in their heyday, Imaginary Stories strengthened the core values and premises of a series by underscoring that certain stories could not occur within those confines without eliminating the very elements that made to the books so popular and successful. Those stories would still be told, but we, the editors and creators, will acknowledge that they take place OUTSIDE the scope of the regular books. We, too, are curious what would happen if Lois married Superman. Let's find out one way in which that MIGHT occur, but remember, next month we will return to the stories that made you so curious to find out the answer to this important question in the first place... And so the mystery was simultaneously explored and preserved...

These days, there is no mystery. There is nothing left to explore. There is only What Is Happening Now.

Because that's the way everyone wanted it, right...?

And, even tho I would not have considered myself the brightest bulb in the box, as a kid, I had absolutely no trouble understanding what that term, "imaginary", meant. I felt no urge to ask "But aren't they all?"

Guess that was because I really loved superhero comics, and felt no need to poke holes in them.

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"Elseworlds" are an all too clear example of the kind of over-intellectualizing we have seen consume superhero comics since the balance shifted from Old Time Pros to Fans turned Pro helming the books.

Even GENERATIONS, which was clearly labeled as "Imaginary" right on the cover, still had to carry the Elseworlds bullet, or heads at DC would simply have exploded.

It's a destructive mentality -- tho from where I sit, there was a single good thing that came out of it. After CRISIS, the team-up of Batman and Captain America that I had wanted to do ever since SUPERMAN vs THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was deemed "impossible" since the Earth 2 Batman, who I would have needed for my tale, "no longer exists" and, of course, "Imaginary" stories were out of the question. Then came Elseworlds, and tho I cringed at the anal fanboy-ness of the concept, it at least made BATMAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA possible!

Tim, I'd say that if calling them "Elseworlds" was no more than a label, then it wouldn't make any difference at all.  But let's say that we have this book...

...featuring a criminal Clark Kent and a heroic Lex Luthor.  I bought this book when it was published, and it was a terrific imaginary story.  The art was great, and Clark's facial expressions really made you believe he was evil, even after years of reading adventures of him being heroic and noble.  A standout issue that "didn't count".

But let's call it an "Elseworlds" tale, and fanboys will probably decide it belongs in an offshoot of the Earth-3 Universe where suoerheroes are evil.  Now Earth-3 has Ultraman but not Superman, and it has a Lex Luthor who goes by the name Alexander, and...

And all of the "explainations" are in full swing, trying to reconcile what should be an imaginary story into the fabric of what is already known.  If that is what the "Elseworld" label brings then I'd say it's a problem because once again somebody reading these comics is insisting that if they read it, then it has to "count", or else they've wasted their time.  And that's just lunacy.