Comic Book Canon

One thing that most people don’t know about comic books and their characters is that not every comic book goes along with the character’s true story. Sometimes a writer likes to change a character’s history around to create what they think is a better story. And if someone new to comics this could be quite confusing. So hopefully this article should help anyone out with any confusion about comic book canon.

First, let’s define what canon means. Canon is what the publisher of the comic considers the characters true story. For example in 2011 DC comics took all of its pre existing comics and revamped them. This project was called the new 52 in which 52 new comic series with the same classic characters such as Batman and Superman. Just their origins and stories where tweaked just a little. This means that past comics were all considered NOT canon.

Now let’s talk about non canon comics.  Non-canon Comics are usually reimaginings of a character’s past which alters their story in a very dramatic way. Or it is a story that was once considered canon but was scrapped because they wanted to revamp the characters story.A perfect example of a whole reimagining of a story is The Red Son storyline. The Red Son story is basically a what if story. Its about what would happen if superman landed on a farm in russia instead of a small farm in kansas. Now as you can see this changes the superman story drastically. Even though its a cool concept it’s not canon sense there was already a storyline that was considered canon. It is just a cool story for superman fans to read while they wait for the next comic in the superman series.

Now a excellent example of a storyline that was once considered canon but was put aside for a new story is the Ultimate Marvel series. The ultimate marvel series is a series that was considered canon with in the marvel universe. But was later scraped to make room for a new story line. Much like I mentioned before with DC Comics and the new 52.

One of the main reasons publishers change the canon of any character is to basically revive the into the modern world. Also changing the canon makes the story of classic superheroes  accessible for the next generation of comic readers. So next time you pick up a comic book (If you do at all) Just remember that it may or not be canon.