A while back I asked what the term "canon" actually meant in practice. The conclusion was that to have "canon" purely defined by legal rights was an absurd notion on the face. This meant for example that Disney buying the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas did not automatically make their new trilogy "canon". Similarly when they say that the "legends" material is "non-canonical" this has no bearing on the actual canonicty.
There's been a recent event that calls for revisiting these notions. Bill Willingham, creator of the (excellent) Fables comics series has placed the comic series into the public domain. He also goes into more detail here about why he made this decision. Basically what had been happening is that DC had screwed over Willingham on several occassions. He was supposed to be consulted for new properties in the line, but DC often "forgot" to ask him until the works were finalized. Royalties were late and not what was agreed upon. They tried to force him to have all new Fables works created on a for hire contract basis, despite the fact that Willingham, not DC, owned the intellectual property rights. Thus Willingham took the stance of "if you're going to try to screw me out of what I own, and the only way that I can keep it for myself is to go through and expensive lawsuit, then I'm going to make sure that everyone can use the property. Then at least you won't be able to claim sole ownership." (Not his exact words.)
Of course DC did claim sole ownership anyway, including over all characters and storylines. This last bit is important because they definitely had rights in their contracts with Bill Willingham to the comic books (which weren't the sole creation of Willingham anyway, as there were also artists, editors, etc. involved.) But none of their contracts gave them ownernship of the characters, settings, etc. That is, they certainly could reprint any of Fables issues 1-150 and sue anyone who tried to print or distribute them without DC involved. But they couldn't create something new in that universe without getting Willingham involved (at least in theory.) What makes this more interesting is that most of the characters in the stories are based on public domain stories to begin with, things like Little Red Hiding Hood, Snow White and the Frog Prince. Thus the only thing that DC can claim ownership in the first place are the specific twists on the characters, such as the Big Bad Wolf becoming a reverse werewolf, being the son of the North Wind, and acting as sheriff and spymaster for a community. These are all things that were definitely due to Bill Willingham, so there is nothing left over for DC to claim ownership of.
Now it should be noted that there are many ways that DC still legitimately has the "rights" to Fables. They have Bill Willingham himself under an exclusivity contract. Thus Willingham can't publish Fables through Marvel, or Antarctic Press, or own his own. What's interesting about the situation is that literally anyone else could, just like how anyone can make a Sherlock Holmes comic, but these contracts still bind Willingham himself. DC still has the rights to some of the related properties they created, like the Wolf Among Us computer games (and presumably the spin-off comic books, though in both cases the most they could claim is new variations on existing characters, such as how Bigby acted in the 80s vs. Bigby in total.) Of course DC has alread claimed that they have more rights than these and said that they will sue people who try to make Fables comics. They may even win some of these lawsuits, since they have the lawyers for it. But this does not mean that DC actually has the core intellectual property rights to Fables. Thus for example if a fan made and sold a painting of Bigby Wolf and his family, then DC shouldn't be able to stop them (again, they'd still probably try.)
Now what makes things interesting here is that it seems clear that the work really is in the public domain, or at the very least that the ownership is highly disputed. This can be contrasted with situations like Disney's new Star Wars movies. No one disputes that Disney did legitimately buy the rights to Star Wars from George Lucas, and thus many people claim that this gives them power to determine what is "canonical" or not. This is still dumb, but at least you see how people come up with that idea. In this case DC's claims are very questionable at best. If they do keep someone from publishing something Fables related, it will just be through legal bullying. It would be like if a Hollywood studio made a popular new Sherlock Holmes movie, and then had the balls to sue anyone who made anything Sherlock Holmes related under the reasoning that since they have the rights to their specific Sherlock Holmes story, then therefore they have rights to everything Sherlock Holmes related despite never actually acquiring those rights. But with good enough lawyers they might get away with it.
That gets us to the first thing to consider. Suppose that some randos put together a cool new Fables comic, and DC managed to sue them into oblivion. Does that necessarily make the fan work "non-canonical"? Of course not, since that would just be an unwarranted legal coup. It'd be like claiming that since the Robert E. Howard estate prevented "Detective Conan" from being distributed under that name in the States, therefore any work which has only been released under that title is non-canoical for people living in the US. You might claim that the fan work is "non-canonical" for another reason (such as lacking the direct involvement of Bill Willingham) but it wouldn't be non-canonical because DC said it was not
Now let's flip that around. If DC has no control over what is not canonical, how do they have any control over what is canonical? For example, suppose that DC makes more Fables comics after Willingham's last colloboration with them (which they certainly are able to do.) Why would those comics be the "canonical" ones while the ones made by anyone else are just "fan fiction?" Everyone not Bill Willingham has the same access to the material, DC just has more prestige. It's like claiming that a movie about King Arthur is the "canon" Arthurian Romance while a short story written by a high schooler is just "fan fiction." While the high schooler certainly has less prestige than the major company, in reality they have equal amount of control over King Arthur.
Now ask yourself this: how would the situation would have been different if Willingham had not made his move? In theory Willingham still had the ownership of his charactes and settings, but in practice DC was acting as though they owned them. Furthermore, both DC and Willingham were aware that if it came to a legal battle, Willingham would probably lose. Not because he was not in the right, but because DC had far better legal resources. This does raise real questions about canon. For example, there are certain covers that Willingham was not asked for approval on, even though his contract stipulates that he should be. Those only got printed because DC knew they could get away with it. Are those covers then out of bounds for determining what is "canon." It's a minor point, but a real one. If we expand the hypothetical, suppose that DC had released an entire Fables comic book without input or apporval from Willingham. Would that be "canon"? There is nothing legally justifying that position, but you can bet a lot of nerds would insist that their new books are canon. I mean, you can even find an actual parallel in stuff like Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct which was written without any input from the original creators of Alan Moore and Gene Ha. I suppose that that sort of thing happens all the time in comic books, but I know in this particular instance Alan Moore is not happy about what they did (though I don't know if DC was legally able to do it, or if they just realized that Moore couldn't stop them.) Is that canon? Most people would say yes (until an inevitable "retcon") but it is very much just fanfiction no matter how you slice it.
Something intersting too about Fables is that, as I mentioned above, most characters come from public domain sources. So if you are reading Little Red Riding Hood, do you have to imagine that the wolf survives, becomes a (relatively) good guy, and eventually lives in modern New York? You might argue that Little Red Riding Hood is just a folktale, so there's no definitive version in the first place. Okay, then let's consider the presence of characters like Mowgli from The Jungle Book or the Nome King from the Oz books. These are definitely not from folktales, though the works that spawned them are in the public domain. Let's suppose that the copyrights had never lapsed and that DC had acquired them. Would we then have to read The Jungle Book with the idea that it was actually taking place in a parallel reality, and that Mowgli would eventually come from that reality to our own while fleeing a conqueror, and become a trusted ally of the Big Bad Wolf? It still seems absurd, but if you tie canon to "can legally publish" or at least "can get away with publishing" I don't see how you avoid that conclusion.
These older stories seem fixed and timeless. It's too late to definitively say that something different had to happen to Mowgli or Dorothy Gale or the Big Bad Wolf or King Arthur. We can imagine them going on new adventures, but this is much like imagining that Nikola Tesla fought aliens. The act of imagination doesn't mean that Nikola Tesla really did that. We instead create a new version of Tesla for our stories, and the same happens for these classic characters. One issue with the modern interpretation of canon is precisely that it lacks this timeless quality. What "really happened" depends on momentary legal and financial decisions. One way to interepret the Fables situation that I have dealt with is this: Maybe Willingham (and thus DC by proxy) did have the ability to determine "canon" in the Fables universe, but the second that Willingham said the stories were public domain they ceased to have that ability. But this would mean that any stories that DC was working on were "canon" until suddenly they ceased to be with Willingham's announcement, or that conversely fan comics suddenly became canon despite not being canon for a long time.
In this case the action is irrevokable: Willingham can't take the work out of the public domain in the future. But in other cases the decision is not irrevokable. I mentioned the Terminator franchise in the previous essay, but it's worth digging into because of just how absurd it is. Things are fairly straightforward through Terminator: Rise of the Machines. While the movies have certainly varied in quality, it's fairly easy to say that all three movies are canonical and that non-movie works may not be canonical. Then we get The Sarah Connor Chronicles which ignores Rise of the Machines, seemingly making it non-canonical. So from 2003-2007 Rise of the Machines was canon, but now it's not. But immediately afterwards we get Terminator: Salvation which seems like it is in the future of Rise of the Machines, but where there isn't enough direct information to say this definitively, but which definitely doesn't folow The Sarah Connor Chronicles. So the show that booted Rise of the Machines out of existence is now non-canonical and Rise of the Machines is put into a "maybe, probably" canonical status. Then we get Genisys, which tried to resolve the situation by having so many in-universe timeline changes that it didn't really matter whether previous movies were canonical or not (except the first one.) Thus from 2009-2015 Rise of the Machines was in the "probably" canonical status, but now it is in the "who cares" status. Salvation has stayed canonical the whole way through, but is also in the "who cares" category now. Then in 2019 we get Dark Fate which makes clear that it is proceeding from only The Terminator and Judgment Day and that it is doing this without in universe timeline changes. Thus the works from Rise of the Machines onwards cease to be canon from 2019, despite some of them being canon immediately before that. However, Dark Fate was the third Terminator movie to bomb in a row. The reason we got Genisys rather than a sequel to Salvation and Dark Fate rather than a sequel to Genisys is because those movies bombed too. So the usual move is to do a hard or soft reboot after a bomb, meaning that it's almost certain that if we do have another Terminator movie it will make Dark Fate non-canonical. Furthermore, while Rise of the Machines isn't exactly loved, I think there is growing recognition that it was still better than the Terminators that followed, and in particular had better ideas than them (the problems were mainly in execution.) So it also is very possible that the next Terminator movie may declare that Rise of the Machines now is canon again. For those of you keeping score, this would mean:
It's absurd. It's especially dumb to think that you must watch the movie either saying to yourself "this is what really happened" or "this is just dumb fanfiction" depending on what year it is.
The way out of this is just to decouple the idea of "canon" from legal status, and to focus on what is necessarily true from a story to story perspective. For example, in the Terminator Franchise you will generally have to keep the events of The Terminator in mind, but beyond that it is highly dependent on what movie you are watching at the moment. Of course, this isn't too different from how you have to appraoch stuff like the Arthurian Romances. Are Excalibur and Caliburn the same sword? Did Arthur sleep with his half sister? Did Lancelot have an affair with Guinevere, and if so how did each party involved react? (In particular, was Arthur enraged over the betrayal/infidelity, or was he willing to forgive Lancelot personally but had to publicly oppose him to uphold his kingly authority and maintain order in the kingdom?) That's not even getting into stuff like the time period. (Is this all happening in the time of the Roman Empire, or in the high middle ages, or in some fantasy universe?) People have been able to navigate that for centuries without needing to see who legally has the ability to change the Arthur Cinematic Universe. It's only complicated if you make it complicated.
October 7, 2023