User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170322025232/@comment-4028641-20170716092338

So I just spent ten hours writing the longest post of my life. I explained the plot of the whole story, linking segments and reprints, EVERYTHING! But sadly when I clicked 'publish', it just didn't work. Well, back to the drawing board.

Here's a nice little gallery of images that I had gathered to explain the plot of the comic in full.

Now my unpublished post (which easily hit 500 words) was meant to describe as many aspects of the story as possible, going down the plot from front to finish. Because I do not have this version anymore, I wanted to simply transcribe a few important notes.

First of all, I came to question my original conclusion that the "linking segments" were all called Connections isn't exactly correct. in fact, issue 2's set of linking comics have the title Mind Meet!, while all the other issues refrain from naming their comics. If anything, it would appear that all of this series is meant to be seen as one narrative.

It's important to note a moment in issue 2 of the series where Tuck's commentary on that story is seen during the reprint, see right image. When considering if we should separate the linking strips from the rest of this publication, the real question becomes if we even can. Under what surreal authority can we call one panel out of a page valid, but nothing else? Again, imagine trying only cover the Trial scenes in Trial of a Time Lord. Having to write about what the Sixth Doctor says about what he's being shown without being able to tell the readers what he has been shown, or trying to only discuss a frozen image on the trial monitor without discussing the video directly before that moment.

If one is against acknowledging that this comic illustrates things like She-Hulk, the Thing, and Iron Man (albeit a 2020 incarnation named Arno Stark) exist within the DWU, you have to keep in mind that even if we were only to write about the linking segments of this comic, we would still have to have pages on all of those things, given that they all appear in the transitions from the new scenes to the reprints. Or is the expectation that any of the above pieces of imagery are invalid, while everything around them are valid?

Thirdly, I should note that one of these comics serves no connection to any of the linking segments at all -- instead, the comic serves as (essentially) a back-up comic. In fact, despite it being split over two issues, the comic pretends as if no one saw either section. That story would be The Deadliest Game.

Because I feel as if it's a relevant quote, I thought I might bring up a point that CzechOut made in another thread, that being Thread:217351 -- dedicated to two Dalek annual stories which had no DWU connection.

CzechOut wrote: However, they are a part of the fictional "Dalek Chronicles", so the conceit of the annual is that those two stories were of interest to the Daleks. In the same sense, all of the stories printed within The Incomplete Death's Head are part of a fictional "Death's Head Database", so the conceit of the mini-series is that these stories are all of personal interest to Dogbolter's assistant Hob -- who is stationed within the DWU Time Vortex on a DWU planet, saving recordings of events from within his own universe in an attempt to find Death's Head. It's important that most of these stories are presented from within the DWU, at a screen on a DWU planet in the DWU vortex.

[As a quick disclaimer, I know for a fact that me using this as a parallel is not a representation of Czech's take on this particular situation. I speak for no one. However, CzechOut is an amazing authority on comics throughout the last 55 years, and we'd all be very grateful if he chose to take part in this debate.]