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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 12:23am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I'm not at all opposed to the idea of the multiverse. No one here, so far, is. Some people really don't like NUMBERING the Earths and universes.

With DC it's a tradition so it doesn't bother me that they have numbers. While there was a good case for "squishing" Earths One and Two together and eliminating doppelgangers, getting rid of the rest of the multiverse was a mistake (one later reversed circa 2007).

 With Marvel it's different. There's the "normal" Earth, the Earth that the Squadron Supreme are from, and...I can't remember any others being of any importance until we got alternate-future charcters taking over UNCANNY X-MEN (Rachel) and NEW MUTANTS (Cable). 

The idea that every alternate Earth that ever appeared in WHAT IF? needs its own number is just stupid. What's the point? Even the Ulimate Universe didn't need its own number. Just call it the Ultimate Universe.


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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 12:24am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

For a one-off story, sure they could live on the same Earth, but if the events of the story were referenced in the monthlies, I would have been upset and thought it stupid.

***

That was absolutely never going to happen anyway. It was an "imaginary story." 
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Greg McPhee
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 1:56am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

I'm curious whether the people here who dislike the idea of Earth-616, etc. also disliked or liked the TV show SLIDERS or H. Beam Piper's Otherwhen/Paratime novels.  Do you hate the idea of the Multiverse in fiction in general or just for comics?

=======================================================

The concept of SLIDERS was good and it played well in Seasons 1 and 2, but after Tracy Torme left as showrunner it went downhill, and forgot what had been established. 

It had a lot more potential that was eventually ruined by poor writing and concepts in the later Seasons.




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John Byrne
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 3:40am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

It's not the idea of parallel universes that is the problem. It's the way it becomes an obsession with some fans, and the way some of those fans can get into a position where the whole thing needs to be "fixed".

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS was a big, failed "fix" for a problem that didn't exist!

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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 6:31am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Agreed, mostly. It was WRITERS who couldn't remember who was supposed to exist on which Earth. Hence minor characters like Air Wave and the Guardian appeared on Earth-One and had careers prior to Superboy and Wonder Woman, who were supposed to be the first superheroes on Earth-One. That was an "oops." 

And the Roy Thomas "I'm really my own daughter" origin for Black Canary (II) was so stupid that it at least needed an immediate replacement. It almost justified CRISIS all on its own. Which doesn't mean that CRISIS wasn't a bad story, because oh man, it was baaaaad. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 6:45am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

CRISIS was an EVENT, and that was a problem.

As many here know, I was offered CRISIS back around 1982/3, when Dick Giordano asked me if I would like to handle what was then called THE HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE. The plan at that time was to do 12 issues that would use 11 to bring together all of DC's jumbled history, sort it out, and then blow it all up in the last issue. The next month "everything will start over with #1."

Dick and I were having dinner, at a con, with Frank Miller and Lynn Varley. As soon as Dick made his offer, Frank said "Don't do it!! They'll crucify you!" I assured him there was no chance I'd do it. I told Dick I did not have the comprehensive knowledge of DC to be able to do such a project.* I also said I though simply IGNORING what were considered "problems" was a much better idea. Simply DON'T MENTION the more obsure parallel Earths. Don't mention EARTH 2, for that matter.

But the idea had formed that the multiple universes were a PROBLEM. "New readers" would be "confused". This was fanboy snobbery, all to apparent in many of the people working at DC by then. THEY knew every jot and tittle, but woe the poor newbie, who was considered too stupid to figure it out on his own.

________________________________

* If I seemed to have a comprehensive knowledge, I said, it was because I had the phone numbers of Roger Stern and Peter Sanderson.

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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 6:47am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Why sort it out only to blow it up? Makes no sense. Why do THE HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE if only to erase it at the end?

What was Giordano smoking? 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 7:57am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Did you skip over the "start the next month with new #1s" part?
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Thank you for refusing to be part of killing my beloved Supergirl Mr. Byrne! I cared nothing about them collapsing their various 'earths' but the big event needing sacrifices to make it important left a bad feeling for me as a reader for decades.

Somewhere they stopped putting telling a great story for the largest number of readers secondary to either fulfilling their own fannish dreams of glory, or pandering to fans for sales or importance. It sounds like perhaps Mr. Giordano was trying to get rid of something that lent itself to that, all the fictional history and various earths, but the road to a bigger mess was paved by possibly the best intentions? :^(

Heck, maybe it all began with the death of one of Triplicate Girl's selves or Ferro Lad being designed to die (that Shooter again) way back in The Legion Of Super-Heroes? Makers of comic books checking the prices of their comics as back issues in price guides is kind of like actors reading their paycheck as making them equal to Olivier.

I remember someone telling me about trying to book Walt Simonson as a convention guest just when Thor #337 was red hot and how over the phone he expressed being genuinely overwhelmed by the sudden spike in attention and scrutiny, and not wanting it to effect the quality of the comics. He declined the invitation for whatever reason. 'Collectors' were buying cases of up to a thousand of some of those Thors before long, but I can imagine the ratio of un-read copies to read ones might be a real expression of what Mr. Simonson was worried about.


Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 31 July 2018 at 12:15pm
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Robbie Parry
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 1:51pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

What puzzles me is about CRISIS is how they "dined out" on it for decades.

Titan did reprint a CRISIS story - FINAL CRISIS or INFINITE CRISIS, I think - around 2010. It was impenetrable. It was impenetrable to me, who had read comics for decades. God knows what a friend of mine, Jonathan, made of it (he dips in and out of comics every decade or so, it seems).

Someone mentioned Superboy-Prime punching a wall in the multiverse and it didn't interest or intrigue me. (If I have that wrong, please don't tell me why, I am not interested in the detail). ;-)

As I stated earlier in the thread, I just accepted that there would have been other earths - and that no way were the Super Friends or Spidey Super Stories taking place in the same reality as mainstream books. But I didn't need, want or desire designations for them.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

It used to be that someone would ask "Wouldn't it be crazy if we _____?"

Then someone else would say "Yeah! But then what?"

Seems like nowadays that second part is missing.

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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 31 July 2018 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

...and then blow it all up in the last issue. The next month "everything will start over with #1."

What puzzles me is about CRISIS is how they "dined out" on it for decades.
_______________

The problem with CRISIS (and with FLASHPOINT and NEW 52 and reboots in general) can be summed up as-- 

It was all a Lie!  And for a lie to be successful, everybody has to agree to it.  And, even from the beginning, some writers refused to participate in the lie, while others referenced it for years, sneaking in bits of the "truth."

No matter how "confusing" the DC Universe might have been (it wasn't really), at least it came about naturally.  Bob Haney might have started writing Wildcat and the Spectre on Earth One with no explanation, or inexplicably introduced the Super Sons, or it might have been unclear which Superman stories from the 50's occurred on which Earth, etc., at least these stories were presented "honestly" and, if there were problems, they could be fixed as needed.

But with the "Lie" of CRISIS--"This is how it happened--and we've all got to agree!"--it was inevitable that the artificially manufactured "history" of the DC Universe was bound to fall apart soon enough.
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