Van should have added, “if you choose to accept it”...
In any case, I did accept: I read the article (but didn’t bother to read the same-page replies).
The question of “real change” vs. “illusion of change”, by its wording, suggests a qualitative distinction, but is it really qualitative or just
quantitative? Certainly
some amount of change must be present from issue to issue, lest one end up buying reprint after reprint of exactly the same story. The other extreme in change would be an anthology series (less popular today than in days past), in which the reader generally does not expect to find the same characters or situations from issue to issue. (There are some exceptions: e.g., I would consider
Marvel Spotlight and
Marvel Premiere anthologies, yet sometimes they
did continue a character’s exploits for several issues—but the general series concept was that such features would run for limited periods, and then something unrelated would take over.) But although lacking continuity of story or character, even anthologies tend to set up a
continuity of expectations, generally in style or genre. And so in that sense, even in an anthology, change goes only so far.
Why is that? A reader generally wants to spend his time and/or money on something that he has reason to believe he would enjoy.
(Probably why most people are skipping this lengthy post. 
) Fans of superheroes are not necessarily fans of romance. Fans of swords and sorcery are not necessarily fans of westerns. Fans of horror are not necessarily fans of funny animals. And so even an anthology, whose very premise is rooted in variety, seeks one or more
constants to define it for its audience. And the audience generally appreciates such constants, secure in the knowledge that no matter what the latest issue will bring, at least it will bring
something bearing the characteristics that audience prefers to seek out. (Of course, the issue might end up being lousy, but you can be only so secure!
)
The personalities that Greg Hatcher (the cited article’s author) identifies as “real change” people are not immune to such expectations. I think that, just like “illusion of change” people, they
do want some comforting continuity of expectations—but maybe they’re comfortable with a
little less of that continuity than the “illusion” people.
Hatcher’s centerpiece example is the Spider-Man mythos. Oddly, I think his notion of an early “real change” to Spider-Man is, in fact, a good argument that “real change” is simply
more change (i.e., quantitative, not qualitative)—or a
deeper illusion of change. Yes, the death of Gwen Stacy added depth to the mythos—but realistically, what happened, from the storytelling point of view? One of the defining features of Spider-Man was his alter ego Peter Parker’s difficult love life, which was replete with losses. Gwen was Peter’s first romantic interest to die—but not the first to exit his life, one way or another. In that sense, Gwen’s death was
more of the same. The result is that, for plotting purposes, Peter had suffered yet another heartbreak, and he was now free to fret, to rekindle other romances, or to enter new ones...just like he always had.
(Please remember I am talking about fictional characters. If any of you have ever lost a loved one to death 
, I by no means am undertaking to trivialize your own real-world loss by analyzing the story dynamics of a fictive one.) Compare Joe Quesada’s recent discussions of the storytelling mistake (as he characterizes it) of marrying Peter to Mary Jane. As Joe Q tells it (and I tend to believe he’s right on this), any worthwhile story that could be told about a married Peter could be told of an unmarried Peter (whether romantically involved or not), but the reverse is not true. If so, the change effected by Peter’s marriage is that it
reduces storytelling options
without adding any. If that’s a real change, I’d rather have the illusion—and we might have had the same change over a decade earlier, if Gwen
hadn’t been killed, and if Peter had married
her!
In any case, I did accept: I read the article (but didn’t bother to read the same-page replies).
, I by no means am undertaking to trivialize your own real-world loss by analyzing the story dynamics of a fictive one.) Compare Joe Quesada’s recent discussions of the storytelling mistake (as he characterizes it) of marrying Peter to Mary Jane. As Joe Q tells it (and I tend to believe he’s right on this), any worthwhile story that could be told about a married Peter could be told of an unmarried Peter (whether romantically involved or not), but the reverse is not true. If so, the change effected by Peter’s marriage is that it reduces storytelling options without adding any. If that’s a real change, I’d rather have the illusion—and we might have had the same change over a decade earlier, if Gwen hadn’t been killed, and if Peter had married her!