Home > Krypto-revisionism

Steven Grant explained the origin of the term on a message posted to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.comics.dc.universe on February 14, 1998:

"I was over at Mark's for lunch one day during my Los Angeles years, and we were discussing the then-rampant trend for writers to come onto a book and in some story twist suddenly declare part or all of the previous continuity invalidated. (The 'everything you know about _____________ is wrong' syndrome.) Specifically we were discussing the John Byrne reboot of Superman. He referred to it as 'revisionism,' as in historical revisionism, the reinterpretation of past invents from other than canonical points of view, and I named it 'Krypto-revisionism,' as a pun on the concept crypto-revisionism .

Mark Evanier elaborates upon the concept by stating that in his own "personal DC Universe," Krypto the Super-dog is still alive. He just isn't being written into stories any more -- he's off in space having adventures without Superboy.

This concept is especially crucial in order to enjoy a fictitious universe with numerous authors. For example fans of the Star Trek shared universe may choose to reject any episode that does not fit in with their view of said universe. This is not to say that the viewer denies the episode's existence, but rather mentally sets aside any facts stated in the episode. A prime example is the Star Trek animated series, which many viewers chose to ignore (and in fact is not considered to be canon); another ignored chapter is .

Another example of this would be the Highlander movie franchise. Many people chose to ignore the second movie because it turned everything laid out in the first movie on its ear, more or less just to make a quick buck. The makers of the third Highlander movie practiced their own form of Krypto-revisionism and continued the franchise in the vein of the first movie, choosing to disregard the whole plot of Highlander 2.

In the pre reboot Robotech universe, many fans choose to ignore the Robotech novel The End of the Circle by Jack McKinney. This novel was to serve as a final ending for the Robotech Saga. Many were unsatisfied with what they conceived as McKinney's hastily-conceived closure to the saga, shallow plot, and overcrowded cast cramming together all three generations of Robotech Defenders in one final adventure. Thus, writers of later comic book stories set after the departure of the Invid at the end of the series chose to keep the fate of Admiral Rick Hunter and the Robotech Expeditionary Force an unsolved mystery.

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