Of course, the comics kinda suck on plot.

They also blow on existing canon. Like not just how many doors the Impala has, but when it was acquired into the Winchester canon. (It's in the first five minutes of the pilot, hello!)

The moral of this story is: there is no such thing as extracanonical canon. You are better off presuming that contemporaneous-release "official" canon items are actually just commercial fanfic. Written by twelve-year-olds who don't do their research.

The comics are, IIRC, going to be reworked. They did give good Missouri, though.

But, yeah. What Nutty said.

(The weird part of that story, for me, is the idea that Dean would never have heard one word about the Harvelles. I mean, in 1988, he's nine, which is getting up there in the "snoop on what your parents are doing" range. And by 1993, he's fourteen, which is definitely in the snooping range, and only two years removed from his self-proclaimed first solo kill -- which, unless the learning curve is wicked steep, means he should have been John's assistant already. There's a story in there somewhere, but someone other than me should write it.)

Clearly, the solution here is that John sometimes left on solo hunts during the school year when he thought Dean was old enough to be trusted for that. Say, 1990/91 or so, when he's 11 or 12, and has learned his lesson from Something Wicked, which is still a recent enough memory to prevent snooping. And I'm not the one writing it, but I'd read and leave glowing feedback to the person who does.

I like that idea. Of course, reading the recent HP fics and imagining that Dean was just 21 (right?) when HPDH happens and Sam is a junior in high school and Buffy so is Buffy. . . well, things should be x-overed. . . lots.

Picture Dean at 21 - did John leave him home? Or did they leave Sam alone while they hunted? How early did they start leaving Sam alone? Did John realize that Sam was the big target at that point?

Or did they leave Sam alone while they hunted? How early did they start leaving Sam alone?

In the pilot, wasn't that the reason John and Sam had the huge fight after which they didn't speak? Because Sam wanted to turn his back on the "family business" and go off to college? I interpreted it that Sam didn't get left alone, had to go help on the hunts, and that was the source of contention. If they were leaving Sam behind on the hunts, then it shouldn't have mattered to John if Sam went to Stanford.

But, Sam actually managed to do things like take part in his high school play - how could he do that if they were going off on long hunts at the drop of a hat? And if he's doing extra-curricular stuff - his weekends are shot too.

True. Okay, now my head hurts.

I'd guess that the boys (when younger) typically accompanied their father on the shorter, simpler hunts. Salt'n'burn jobs and the like. In "Something Wicked" it seems like they were mostly left to themselves while John did most of the work on a longer, more dangeroushunt. So maybe their integration into the hunting life took place gradually, with Dean becoming more involved earlier.

If the boys did get longer stretches of time in the same place - say, long enough to get through an entire semester - it would have given Sam more of a taste of a normal life and made for more resentment when he kept being taken away from that. I also wonder how much of their moving around was for the sake of a hunt and how much was because John had acquired his own versions of Agent Henrickson over the years.

You just described the prequel spinoff that I might love as much as the original.

From waaay back, my thanks to lurker and tiggy for filling in the missing seconds on the audio from the panel discussion. I guess since I hear my teenagers insulting each other in that manner on a regular basis, it didn't click as a particularly notable one-liner. In any event, I'm starting to pay more attention to the dialogue (which is something that is easier to do on the third viewing when you are not as startled by the monsters or heartslammed by the angst) and man, this is a quotable show!

I often wonder if they started staying in places for longer once Sam was in high school and demanding more stability.

Dean graduated at 18 (and I'll cut anyone who says he didn't finish school), so Sam would be 14 and just about to be a freshman. Dean would be able to go off with John on longer hunts, probably leaving Sam to fend for himself for days or weeks at a time.

That's my take on it.