The Dangers of Multiple Writers on One Story

 I have almost finished the main story of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and after that we’ll get to expansions. I’m not sure what we’ll do after that. Will we try Stray Gods? Or back to another Assassin’s Creed? Or will I replay another game? Who knows.

I considered doing this about my thoughts having read Heir to the Empire, but there are so many times I can say, “It’s stupid that they didn’t plan the Sequel Trilogy,” and you’re probably tired of that.

Anyhow! I made a questionable choice in which comic book I read. The result is this Note.

The Dangers of Multiple Writers on One Story

I wanted to find J. Michael Stracynski’s run on Thor again, because I remembered having problems with it, but I remembered liking it, so I thought I’d re-read! Except the  library has volume three, but not one and two, which was frustrating. I thought I’d try to find something else he wrote, and maybe I’d like it, so what I ended up with was his Spider-Man comic, set during the “Civil War” event.

This was maybe not a clever choice.

[Side note: I saw that the library also has Amazons Attack!, which I know is bad, but I’m tempted to think, “It’ll be so bad it’s good!” but it probably won’t be.]

This comic, Spider-Man: Civil War, aside from leading to the horrible “One More Day” storyline, shows a problem with the entire “Civil War” storyline, and one that you keep seeing in plenty of other pieces of media that are out today–the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the first example that comes to mind, but it’s not that they’re the only ones with this problem. They’re just the most obvious given they inherited this problem from comics and they’re often in the public eye.

The issue, of course, is that when you get different writers with different viewpoints writing on the same storyline, talking about the same events, you run into problems if not everyone’s on the same page. The idea was presumably to have different opinions expressed on the issues of this comic event (should superheroes be registered or not), but because no one sat down and worked out what the details of the Superhero Registration Act even are, and some of the writers apparently didn’t talk to each about basic events. In this comic, Spider-Man defects from the pro-registration side after he sees Tony Stark’s secret prison of human rights violations–put a pin in that, we’ll get to it–when in the main story by Mark Millar, he changes sides after the cyborg clone of Thor that Tony Stark and Reed Richards built kills one of the anti-registration heroes, Goliath.

I think more than Plot details, the problem is that there are different opinions shown on the characters. It is quite clear that Straczynski does not like Tony Stark! Not only does the pro-registration side do some questionable crap, they do downright obvious supervillain stuff, starting with Tony bullying Peter into siding with him, unmasking on the news, and joining his task force where he’ll be chasing and fighting other superheroes, despite Peter making it clear he’s growing more uncomfortable with it. He’s holding a secret prison, and tells Peter that since it’s not on American soil, American laws about human rights don’t apply. 

I don’t feel comfortable saying ‘fascist’, given how much that word is thrown around these days, but it’s definitely ‘authoritarian.’ 

In the hands of another writer, what was meant to be a morally ambiguous conflict turns one side into a fight against a deceitful, authoritarian villain.

Bringing different viewpoints to a project can be good! It can be great! But when you have a thing like this, there are certain things you can and cannot allow to creep through. There needs to be an editorial hand to say, “Hey! These are the rules! Stick to them.” Those rules can apply to backstory, worldbuilding, and characterization. That way, you don’t get the mess of “Civil War”, where you get wildly different characterizations and worldbuilding depending on which author you pick up.

This is how you get problems like wildly different versions of the Sokovia Accords in the MCU, or completely different assertions of how the Jedi acted and the Force works in different media of Star Wars, or completely different histories of the Assassins in Assassin’s Creed. There should be consistency on these points; they should be settled. Sometimes you can’t get the same writer to do every piece of media on a story, and that’s fine! But make sure the ground rules are followed.

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