Timely or Timeless

Rogue from the X-Men encounters President Ronald Reagan!
(…who???)


Timeliness vs Timelessness

Some comics are very much "of the moment", while others are more timeless.

Connecting to the events of the moment can be a worthy endeavor. Webcomics are well suited to this kind of approach, too, with our ability to create and instantly distribute our pages. South Park manages to do animated shows very quickly, delivering commentary on current events with less turnaround than most shows, especially animated shows.

On the other end of the spectrum would be comics or series that make no mention of current events, and do not seem to exist at any specific point in time (or exist in a time outside of the contemporary, like a fantasy world or a futuristic scifi setting).

The parody films by Seltzer and Hamburg (or whatever their names are) are sort of famous for the lame pop-culture references/jokes that are just a little bit too old to be relevant.

On the other hand, when I've watched old Daily Show or Colbert Report episodes, they often hold up. The self importance and hypocrisy of the powerful and the insincerity of politicians is eternal. Plenty of political discussion or comedy shows DON'T hold up so well, because there's not a larger point of view behind them.

Then there's the problem of technology - things are moving so damn fast; the long-running tropes we always see in movies, shows and comics have got to change to relate to modern audiences.

It can be distracting to revisit old comics or series and catch old pop culture references or dated technology. They usually take me out of the story. Anything that was cool or meaningful about shallow references is now completely meaningless, and exposes the true holes in the thing.

Unless it's a GREAT story, that is. Chris Claremont's X-Men is always great, no matter how "dated" some parts of the stories are. Let alone Asimov, Mark Twain, and others.

A great story that doesn't use its place in time as a crutch is timely AND timeless.

Or maybe I just made that up. I like the sound of it, though…

I prefer stories that don't announce a year too prominently. It's just creating a built-in expiry date. Of course, this doesn't apply to period pieces, or far-future pieces (at least, it doesn't apply yet. I'm looking at you, old dystopian stories set in the 90's!

Of course, what really matters is the truth within the story, to whatever degree the story needs to work. Is there real humanity in there, regardless of the time period it was written?

Are your stories timely, timeless, or somewhere in between? Do you have a preference on this with the stuff you read or watch?


see you next time!

Banes

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