There are realy two different kinds of triggers in a shared universe. One is the "character our of character / character wouldn't do that / character shouldn't have been put in that situation" type problem I described. The other is a far more nebulous "where's character X and why aren't they dealing with this?" issue.

The best example would be if a major villain with twenty thousand armed hoods took Gotham City hostage and started killing 50 people an hour till his demands were met - and Booster Gold turns up and leads the resistance against him for eight days and finally brings him down. That could be a fine story but every Batman fan would be saying "but where's Bats?" After all they just know that Batman would be on that situation long before a week is up unless something major has happened that prevents it. In other words, to be credible the story has to acknowledge that readers have an expectation of Batman that can't be met for narrative pruposes and has to manage that expectation, either by taking Batman out early (and risking the first kind of situation described here instead) or by showing Bats having some absolutely sound reason for not being able to help.

If the problem is even closer to geographic home, such as in the HQ of a bunch of heroes, then there is an even greater expectation that the characters would (a) have some adequate security because they're not dummies, (b) be able to look after their own turf or at least be aware of dangers on it, and (c) appear in the story to make the readers happy. We've seen various characters break into the Baxter Building over the years while the FF have been "out of town" and its rarely been a very satisfying story. Byrne once wrote and drew a wordless short story that was an exception to this that showed the Trapster breaking in and getting his head handed to him by the building's automated systems themselves.

That's not to say don't use familiar settings like the Lair Mansion, but the danger of using sites which might reasonably be considered other characters' primary turf is that there's always that baggage to handle too. It's one reason why I think every character needs their own background and cast so there's always some space where others can interact with them that is far more under a poster-writer's control. Not everyone has it but almost all the characters I regularly write do - Herringcarp, Vinnie's apartment, Mumph's mansionhouse at Wendel's Hallow - and I've introduced plenty of others for other characters over the years, including EEE, ITC, Covenant House, the Laundry of Doom, St Jude's Orphanage, the Zero Street Mission and so on.




I think the probalmes there were more that Hatman wouldn't condone the killings or be happy with Liu Xi condoning them. There'll always be a point of contention between straight-arrow Jay and anyone acting like that. That's just good, proper characterisation leading to dramatic tension. Dancer had a similar problem with CSFB! recently when Dream murdered a bunch of people (who now never even existed) in the Moderator Saga - and it played out as some great interaction between them. And for every character who'd condem, criticise, or at least disagree with Liu Xi's actions there'll be another who'd have a different take - Mumph's view on a young lady defending her honour is very different, for example.




I have a couple of characters listed like that too.