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I
am displeased.
\
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Why,
you ask?
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Imaginary
(Formally
of Suburbia) writes:
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From:
imaginary@disturbia.con
To: mrnile@e-merl.com
Sent: 10/3/2003 8:23 PM
Subject: Missed Me?
Your attempts at subverting this reality to your own designs
can no longer be tolerated. Suburbia will be avenged.
The Revolution begins now.
- Imaginary
( aged  1/2
)
P.S. Oh, so it's time machines now? That's certainly never
been done in a comic before. Well done, genius! |
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You
know, I generally find the elasticity of certain physical rules
within fiction to be a good thing.
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But
I really wish the characters I go to the trouble of killing
would have the decency to stay written out.
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(As
if I need another arch-nemesis cluttering up the place.)
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Still,
I must begrudgingly concede that Imaginary's postscript does raise
a point worth addressing.
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Time
machines, as you might have noticed, aren't such an uncommon occurrence
in comics.
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Indeed,
they turn up inside
all sorts of fictional realities.
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Comics,
prose, film - they all have their tales of time travel and paradox.
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And
each tale has its own little set of rules about how time travel
works.
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But,
more importantly, the time machines presented in these fictions
all share one common limitation:
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They're
each too much a part of the story within which they're created.
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These
machines only ever allow a character to change the course of the
history presented within the narrative.
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What
they don't do - what they can't possibly do - is retroactively change
the course of the narrative itself.
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But.
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What
if they could?
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What
if someone found a way to physically change the course of a story
that's already been told?
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I'll
let you in on a little secret.
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Someone
did.
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Guess
who?
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