Superhero comics are extremely incoherent. That is the fact. There are no two ways about it. You either live with that or ignore it or try to convince yourself it can be somehow fixed.
There is a reason for incoherence - let's call it elaborately unfortunate "too many cooks" and "anywhere the wind blows". All these magnificent continuity mistakes, laps of logic, aesthetic inconsistencies, downright narrative contrivances and astounding bouts of cognitive dissonance on every turn - it is pointless to try to make any straightforward sense of it. Traditional rules of narrative are not applied to superhero comics. They can work in the genre but it will make things less interesting - it will leave out one vital element of the genre.
Superhero comics are not just the stories, they are also documents of certain moments in time when certain decisions were made. Those decisions bleed into the stories. Every stupid thing has a history - someone thought it was a good idea that was beneficial for the business. In the long run it might have been proven otherwise but it is still there - ready to be reassessed.
Since i've skipped fanboy phase of appreciating comics - i never really perceived continuity clusterfuck as a tragedy. That's why Piskor's "Grand Design" did nothing to me. Even more - after years of reading those increasingly incomprehensible stories - its inconsistency and incoherence had grown on me and soon became its favourite part. I'm leaning towards Grant Morrison's idea that everything is canon no matter what.
It seems logical - those things were published thus they happened. It might be just bad or simply ridiculous - but it is just a work of fiction and you can turn in whatever direction you want. You can ignore it or you can acknowledge - you can do whatever you want. Nothing really matters in superhero comics except for what is next.
That is why I never really understood the need to directly address issues with continuity and attempts to fix it inside the narrative. I think reasons behind it are more monetary than aesthetic. Sure, elaborate continuity clean-up provides intriguing narrative opportunities. But it is also extremely lucrative from a business standpoint.
The following pages are from DC Comics crossover event "Zero Hour: Crisis in Time". It is sad sadness story about how great hero Green Lantern Hal Jordan had gone mad because of a tragedy caused by Superman Terminator Imposter (it's complicated) - his hometown and its citizens were obliterated. Out of sorrow he tried to fix things with his ring. But that is violation of Green Lantern's code of conduct - one can't use the ring for personal gains no matter what. After intense conversation with the higher-ups Jordan snapped and methodically destroyed entire Green Lantern Corps in order to gain enough power to fix things. It didn't worked out. So he united with Green Lantern Corps arch-nemesis and long-time battery Parallax and decided to erase entire universe and start over again. A lot of jumping, punching, screaming ensues. Fallen hero was defeated and gone for good until DC found a way to exploit Alan Moore's legacy even more than they already exploited.
"Zero Hour" is appaling. It is awful. It is stupid. It doesn't make much sense. There are seeds of good story inside - but it was botched on every turn. There was never an intention to tell a story. It was always about fixing continuity issues with an elaborate swipe.
But there are four pages that are perfect. They come near the end of the story. Jordan manages to pull his thing off and everything is seemingly gone. It is all blinding white now. There is nothing. It is obvious borrowing to John Byrne's "Alpha Flight" white issue but here it also serves as a glimpse at something that never happened. Jordan disappears in whiteness and after a while some abstract shapes turn up. That is something superhero comics never really tried. Sure there were some development in the 60's and 70's - Doctor Strange and Kirby's stuff comes to mind first but they never really went full-on abstract. But these four pages of a terrible forgettable comic actually go there for a moment.
And then things return to terrible. But for a moment it is really beautiful.
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