Comics trope for any long-running serialized story with an intact continuity. An event mentioned in dialog or captions has an asterisk next to it, and down near the panel border is a little message, saying something like, "See Volume 4, Issue 3 - Ed." Sometimes, in
shared universe titles, it may be an issue of a completely different comic series.
Some comics fans, especially young ones, may wonder who this Ed, the enormously helpful man at the comics company, must be. Of course, most of the older fans figure out that this is in fact "the editor". This little footnote also entices the reader to seek out the back issue that includes the story in question. Or, if they don't have the issue, it's an incentive to go out and buy it.
Back in the
Silver Age, many of these footnotes in Marvel Comics would be credited to a "(Adjective that begins with 'S') Stan". This was, of course, a reference to Stan Lee.
Use of these notes has been dissuaded by companies today (and they are allegedly all but banned at Marvel to "hide" the
Continuity Snarls), but they are starting to make a comeback.
Can also be used for a joke in an article (Like this one?- Ed.)
Not to be confused with a Message from Fred, the
Evil Twin of
Lampshade Hanging, or the (slightly) more literary
Note From Ed.
Examples:
- Subverted in the first issue of Wisdom, in which the clues all refer to comics that have never existed.
- The Infocom computer game Leather Goddesses Of Phobos came with a "Lane Mastodon" comic that did the same.
- Parodied on this page
of The Adventures Of Doctor Mc Ninja.
- One Narbonic strip had these in every panel. The first panel of the next strip had one which Helen interrupted with a minor fourth wall breakage.
- One set of House Of Leaves' footnotes is of this sort.
- This photoshopped page◊ (originally from Civil War) starts off with a very good example of how editorial footnotes used to be used, and then goes on to parody Marvel's current-day reluctance to use them as fictional versions of Mark Millar and Joe Quesada enter in their own editorial boxes to try and throw Stan Lee's old-school notations out. It's pretty funny. Click that link already.
- DC Comics blundered themselves into a minor flackstorm of criticism regarding editorial footnotes. When asked why Countdown, which was absolutely dense with references to events from other comics to the point where it was pretty much unreadable on its own (okay, it was pretty much unreadable, period), had no editorial footnote boxes, DC responded that "that's what the Internet is for". The Internet was not amused. DC started putting the boxes in.
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Tom Siddell made this subtle piece of satire◊ as a response to the fans who were confused by the Flash Back on the original version of page 437.
- Some of the old Doctor Who Novelizations have footnotes explaining Call Backs and Continuity Nods.
- Used very sparsely in Hellboy, generally to point you towards a cool event that was just mentioned. They are not attributed to an editor.
- Parodied in this Dinosaur Comics strip.
