"Synergy" used to be my favourite word in the English language. But then the management consultants got hold of it and turned it into a flashy way of saying "co-operation" as if it was somehow a new concept which they'd just come up with. So I don't like synergy any more. (My new favourite word is "syzygy", but somehow it just isn't the same.)

Synergy, for a mainstream comics publisher, means trying to keep all of your core titles more or less in line with the spin-offs, cartoons, movies and such forth. Your characters are a brand, and they're the most valuable asset you have. So obviously you want everything to work together to make as much money as possible. Of course you do.

This is less of an issue for indie publishers, of course. For them, synergy means making sure that you have another print run of GHOST WORLD or FROM HELL ready to coincide with the movie. The comic is a finished work by the time the film comes around. But the ongoing monthly superhero comics face more difficult problems.

The SPIDER-MAN movie is far more significant than the comics. When the current regime took over at Marvel, this is one of the areas that they said they wanted to address. They had a point. When the first X-MEN movie came out, instead of doing an entry-level "back to basics" story, the comics were in the middle of a hopelessly convoluted story about alien pirates, featuring a completely different cast from the movie. When the SPIDER-MAN cartoon was doing well, Marvel attempted to go back to basics in the comics, but did so in the most wrongheaded manner imaginable with the notorious clone storyline - thereby changing the lead character's name, appearance, secret identity and entire supporting cast.

These were clearly mistakes. Not least because both of these were rather bad stories. If they'd been pulled due to pressure from the marketing people, the world would not have been a noticeably poorer place.

But these things cut both ways. Buried in a recent rambling essay, Kevin Smith had this to say about his upcoming Spider-Man stories:

"Try writing a story involving married characters when you're not even allowed to say they're married anymore - because they're not married in the movie, and they can't get divorced because Peter Parker - the charmingly human and fallible character that he's historically been, would never get divorced. It was much easier to write comics for Marvel when there were no Marvel movies being made...

"If you don't like it, refuse to see the next SPIDER-MAN movie when it comes out... Then you can have your comics back, unspoiled. But make sure you convince the other 50 million folks who went to see SPIDER-MAN to ignore it too... At the end of the day, the best selling book in the marketplace does, what? 100,000? Maybe 200,000 copies...? Hate to say it but you - and me - are in the severe minority, kids. We don't dictate jackshit when the rest of the world thinks of Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man."

In fact, the SPIDER-MAN comics do regularly acknowledge that the character has an estranged wife. Nonetheless, Smith talks as though he's been given a virtually impossible remit - to bring the comics, where Spider-Man is a de facto divorcee in his late twenties, more or less into line with the movie, where he's eighteen and not even engaged. And to do it without actually violating established history, preferably by just not talking about it. There are aspects of a character's history that you can't sensibly stop talking about, and the fact that he's married to a major supporting cast member is pretty high up the list.

It's an impossible task. That's why ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, a book which actually is more or less in line with the movie, had to be established as a completely separate continuity. And even if it can be done, it's such a constrictive remit that it can hardly be conducive to good stories.

The comics are there to generate intellectual property to be exploited in other media. Spider-Man isn't the only Marvel character whose writers are likely to encounter tensions with the movie versions. Grant Morrison has brought the X-Men somewhat into line by introducing the full-scale school seen in the movie, but he's also turned his X-Men into global public figures and removed Xavier's wheelchair. (Again.) When the HULK movie comes out, Bruce Jones' relatively sedate and continuity-light monthly comic probably won't have too many problems. But Mark Millar's version of the character in ULTIMATES might raise a few eyebrows.

It's important to recognise that, although continuity is certainly a part of the problem, it's only a part. The desire is to have comics on the stands that fit with the version of the character being projected by the movies. Continuity can be swept aside easily enough as long as publishers are prepared to bite the bullet and make a clean break, rather than fudge it (which is what got DC into such a hopeless mess post-Crisis). But even once history is wiped clean, the comics still face pressure to comply with the template set by the film.

This is not a case of the tail wagging the dog. Describing the SPIDER-MAN movie as a spin-off is technically accurate but misleading. In terms of audience size and penetration of the mainstream culture, it's far more significant than the comics. If that's the version of the character that normal people understand, then that's what dictates SPIDER-MAN-the-brand. In spirit, the comics are a spin-off of the films, hoping to get some sort of reflected benefit in increased sales. The films are not being made to appeal to the comics readership, they have a primary audience of their own.

Over at DC, they seem to have an interesting philosophy on this subject. Kevin Smith's overhaul of GREEN ARROW turned the previously second-division character into DC's best selling monthly. Yet if you believe everything you read, DC doesn't want to pursue more relaunches like that. It prefers to play it safe and stick to the core concepts.

Although at first glance this might seem short-sighted, in a sense it's eminently logical. DC, and its owners, sees the wider picture. The comics division is there to generate intellectual property that can be exploited in other media. The real money isn't in the comics audience, and the most valuable products to them are the ones that make money elsewhere. A Vertigo miniseries selling 5,000 copies but with potential as a movie would be far more valuable to them than GREEN ARROW, which sold relatively well by comics standards, but doesn't have the ring of a mainstream hit.

The central ideas drive the value of the character, and they always return. As the film audiences prove, mainstream adult audiences do have an appetite for superhero stories - in small doses. And what they're expecting to see is relatively static characters who have their crime-fighting routine and stick to it no matter what. As a general rule, they're not really interested in seeing superhero characters develop, save within the limited context of origin stories. They go to the cinema once, or once every couple of years in the case of a franchise like the Batman movies, to see the single core idea for that character. And then they go home happy.

Forty years of accrued character development is all very well for the long-term monthly comics audience, but it has next to zero marketing value to a wider audience, so it doesn't do much to increase the value of the brand. Look at the superhero characters who have been around for decades - what's penetrated to the mainstream, and made them enduring, is the strong central concept. Deviations from the concept and inversions of the idea - replacement Captain Americas, powerless Wonder Women, paralysed Batmen - are all very interesting in their way, but it's the central ideas that drive the value of the character. That's why they always return, as long as the central idea was good to start with.

What changes over time is not the character so much as the style in which the character is portrayed, so as to provide an up-to-date rendition of the same idea. 1940s movie serial Batman is still the same person as the 1990s animated character. And why should this be a bad thing? Robin Hood, James Bond, Dracula and Sherlock Holmes didn't have to develop in order to keep going indefinitely. They're just good ideas for characters who can be plugged into the style of the day, and that's why they endure.

The demands of monthly serialisation have pressed superhero comics in this direction of soap opera-style character development. And some characters, created especially to appear in stories of that sort, work best that way. But however much accumulated history may appeal to the comic book audiences, the real strength of the flagship characters lies in their remaining immobile.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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