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Yes, we canon

Published on 5 November 2026 by Gee
(French version published on 10 October 2016)

I’ve always thought that in a work of art, you can choose whatever you want to remember… Well, today we’re going to talk a little bit about that, and specifically about a very particular concept: the canon.

Yes, we canon

With the proliferation of sequels, reboots, remakes, etc., one term has made a comeback:

The canon.

With his hand on his heart, the Geek sings: “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John, Brother John …” The Nerd joins in as a canon: “Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping?”

💡 In addition to a piece of music featuring a repeated and layered musical theme, the term “canon” refers, within a series of fictional works, to the storyline considered as official.

A large diagram showing many works of art. The canon encompasses the first work and other works; fan fiction is another category with its own set of works; all of this, along with many other works, is encompassed within the collective imagination.

Studios are increasingly inclined to milk their franchises to the point of nausea.

In addition to producing quite a bit of utter trash, this has another side effect: a general plotline that’s rarely coherent.

A very old villain, shakily leaning on a cane: “Hahaaa, Mr. Bond! After 40 years, we finally meet again! But how do you manage to remain as young as you were in the ’70s?” James Bond, smiling with his gun in hand: “My secret? Lots of alcohol and unprotected sex.”

▶️ Sometimes it feels like you’re looking at the source code of a software project that’s had forks, revisions, parallel branches, and a whole bunch of other tangents…

A developer at his computer: “Okay, I’d like to merge burton/batman into batman/master, but there are tons of conflicts! In his branch, it’s the Joker who killed Bruce’s parents! And the Joker has a name, an identity, and everything…” A coworker holding a coffee cup asks him, “Have you tried running git rebase? Wait, but with Nolan’s fork, that’s gonna make a huge mess… ” The worried emoji: “Let's hope Schumacher didn’t submit a merge request…”

So, defining what is canon and what isn’t helps bring some semblance of order to all this…

⚠️ It seems harmless enough, but there are people who are at each other’s throats over whether this or that story is part of the canon or not.

A Star Wars fan is arguing with George Lucas. The fan: “Han shot first! That’s how it was originally, and the edit makes no sense!” Lucas: “No, Greedo did! And that’s canon!” The fan: “The Special Edition isn’t canon!” Lucas: “I’m the creator, I get to decide, period!”

And this isn’t a recent phenomenon…

Two Jews, arms crossed, say: “Jesus, Son of God? Come on, that’s fan fiction, guys!” Two Christians reply: “Heretics! The New Testament is canon too!”

When Disney decided to make a sequel to Return of the Jedi, they simultaneously declared the works of the Expanded Universe (which had already described the events following Return of the Jedi) to be non-canon.

This allowed them to start fresh with an entirely new story…

…and to upset a whole bunch of fans in the process.

A fan, completely panicked: “But how am I supposed to enjoy my 150 Star Wars books if the legal owner of the license said they don’t tell the real-official-story-that’s-the-only-one-that-matters?! My world is falling apart.” Darth Maul, with his body attached to a mechanical structure shaped like spider legs: “Then again, there was some real nonsense in those stories, wasn’t there*?”

✷ And surprisingly, spider-Maul was made canon afterwards…

And that’s kind of the thing I don’t get about the concept of canon…

Since when do we need the approval of the rights holders to make a story our own and take from it whatever we like?

A pirate ship is depicted; we see a sailor’s thoughts: “The Pirate Bay approves of this question.”

▶️ As far as I'm concerned, “The Matrix” remains a single one-shot movie…

Neo looks at a spoon and says, “There is no spoon. And there is no Matrix Reloaded and no other boring visual mess like that.”

▶️ The Indiana Jones saga came to a brilliant conclusion with “The Last Crusade”.

The only “Indiana Jones 4” worthy of the name is “Fate of Atlantis”, one of my favorite video games…

Indiana Jones examines an amber fish hanging from a string: “Hmm, there’s some orichalcum around here, Sophia. Hand me your necklace.” Sophia Hapgood, his sidekick in the game: “Indy, let go of that fish right now…”

▶️ Star Wars is a trilogy consisting of “Star Wars”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”…

Luke looks at the ghosts at the end of Return of the Jedi—Obi-Wan, Yoda, and his father Anakin. The latter (as an old man) says: “It’s okay, Luke, we got rid of the whiny bastard.” In the background, we see the young Anakin from the prequels, buried up to his neck with a shovel next to him, grumbling: “Waaah! I don’t like saaaaand!”

(On that note, if you’re not familiar with them, check out the Despecialized Editions!)

▶️ And the Star Wars Expanded Universe, by the way, is just the stories we used to tell each other while playing Luke Skywalker and Han Solo in the schoolyard…

Two children are playing. One holds a stick and mimics a lightsaber: “Pheeeeww! Pheeeww!” The other runs around mimicking a spaceship: “Light-speed! Tseeeewww!”

💡 Anyway, the big production companies already hold all the rights to the works that make up our collective imagination… Don’t give them rights to your minds on top of that.

Because you know what?

The only canons that matter are the ones you decide!

Back to the first image. With his hand on his heart, the Geek sings: “Did you return? Did you return? Palpatine, Palpatine…” The Nerd joins in as a canon: “No you did not, no you did not…” Note: Comic licensed under CC BY SA (grisebouille.net), drawn on October 9, 2016, by Gee.

Published on 5 November 2026 by Gee
(French version published on 10 October 2016)
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Absurd fictional comic strips, with no other pretension than to be humorous. They are not sequential and can deal with a wide variety of subjects...

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