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Michael Casselman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 January 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1217
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| Posted: 31 July 2018 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | 1
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By the time I was 9 or 10 (and only reading comics since I was 7 in '77), I not only understood the DC Multiverse, but was also able to compartmentalize the fact that some stories just didn't fit AND DIDN'T NEED TO. Ignore the aberrant 'Earth B' Bob Haney/Murray Boltinoff continuity miscues and simply move forth, no need to strip-mine obscure one-off Earth 1 Wildcat appearances, or Bruce Wayne's brother or Superboy finding Jor-El and Lara floating in stasis or whatever.
Earth 2 comprised of two titles and maybe an annual JLA/JSA teamup. The rest of the DC line (except licensed titles) was firmly set on Earth 1, to the best of my recollection. Earths S, X and 3 appeared infrequently. Even Captain Carrot was gone before Crisis. The 'problem' with multiple earths simply did not exist to the degree it was made out to be.
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Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 July 2017
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| Posted: 31 July 2018 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | 2
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Did you skip over the "start the next month with new #1s" part?
***
No I didn't. But if that's the plan why bother to go through the whole history of the DC Multiverse as it was. If you want to start all over, then really do it! Start all over! Don't bother with the history-of-that-which-was-but-no-longer-counts series! Just start clean!
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Brian Hague
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 November 2006
Posts: 8515
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| Posted: 31 July 2018 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | 3
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Excellent points, Eric & Michael! It's true that A.) no one could seem to agree on what story to tell after the Crisis went down and B.) there were never that many parallel Earths to begin with, and most did not contain "de-uniquing" doppelgangers.
Crisis was an example of fanboy entitlement run amok. Since parallel Earths were a joke among the cognoscenti, it was somehow believed that DC could redeem itself in the eyes of the jaded Marvelites if they renounced their wicked ways and established a "true" continuity, like Marvel's.
It was an exercise in public self-hatred and DC has been embarrassed by it ever since. What to do about it? Well, if they can just get out there and humiliate themselves again... and again... and again... well, eventually the public just HAS to forgive them, right? Right...?
DC needs to stop the self-flagellation and get over it.
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Olav Bakken
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 15 June 2014
Posts: 241
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| Posted: 31 July 2018 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | 4
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"But if that's the plan why bother to go through the whole history of the DC Multiverse as it was. If you want to start all over, then really do it! Start all over! Don't bother with the history-of-that-which-was-but-no-longer-counts series! Just start clean!"
If I should guess; probably because that would have happened without much fanfare. By restarting everything, there would be lots of potential new readers. As mentioned, the theory was that there were probably potential buyers out there who didn't pick up any titles because they found the DC comics "too confusing". But now they had the chance to jump on the train from issue one. To do that, they needed to know what was going on.
When Superman was killed by Doomsday, newspapers all over the world wrote about it. Then some time later DC brought him back to life, and sold a lot of comics during the events before and after.
Bringing all the superheroes and villains together in a single storyline was itself something new and big, attracting attention from many. Killing some major characters as well, which would have zero consequences considering they would start all over again after the final issue anyway, made it even harder to ignore.
And there would be collectors who were buying the mini-series, and collectors who would buy the first number one issues after that. If they had simply cancelled the old titles without further notice, it would mean fewer buyers. At least that's the reasons I can imagine.
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2291
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 12:19am | IP Logged | 5
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Anybody know what the deal was with INFINITE CRISIS and its aftermath? It really seemed that Geoff Johns (who aggravates sometimes, but other times his love for the classic stories shines through) was doing his best to fix the DC Universe, undoing the worst of CRISIS and reestablishing the classic Earth-2, but then immediately we got MULTIVERSITY, the Earth-One hardcovers, and a "new" Earth-2 series that rebooted the likes of Jay Garrick and Alan Scott. It seemed like a big switcharoo that, instead of simplifying things and giving longtime fans what they had been waiting for, we got more confusion and "No, we mean it this time--THIS is our universe now!"
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 6:31am | IP Logged | 6
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"The Flas of Two Worlds", which I was fortunate enough to read "clean", when it was first published, was one of the greatest comic book stories my young self had every seen. It introduced me to the concept of parallel universes, for one thing. And the rich history of DC.Sadly, there were those even at the time who began asking questions that should never have been asked. Questions that created a cascade if problems. • If Jay Garrick existed in this other universe, did the rest of the JSA live there, too? * If they did, would we ever see Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman? • And since those three had uninterrupted runs on their books, how would we mark the point at which the Golden Age characters careers ended, and the Silver Age characters began. Jay's "retirement" was tied to the last issue of his comic, in 1949. But the others had no such dates. * And if we DO see Superman and Batman, will they have aged as Jay did? • CAN Superman age? Can Wonder Woman? And if so, would this reflect the "future" of the Earth 1 characters? sigh
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4496
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 10:34am | IP Logged | 7
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The first Earth 1 - 2 story I saw would've been a reprint of the first or very early JLA meeting the JSA story. It was great obviously, that's why it had become such a regular occurrence. Perhaps they should have had a Showcase #4 moment in the mid-'80s and started on Earth 3 or 0 or whatever and not gone Crisis?
Not that i care or would need it explained, but how did they ever reconcile that they showed the '60s Flash reading a '40s Flash comic book in that first Showcase run?
Sometimes though you just accept there is a Duckburg in state named Calisota, and that Archie never graduates from Riverdale High, or that Ebony in the old Spirits is some kind of physically deformed handicapped kid and just read on and hopefully enjoy.
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 01 August 2018 at 10:35am
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Nathan Greno
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Joined: 20 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 9154
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | 8
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My first encounter with the concept of DC parallel universes happened in JLA #195 (1981). I remember being more intrigued than confused. I found the whole thing fun. CRISIS was epic and mind blowing to read -- but I was sad to see the whole parallel concept go.
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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | 9
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Rebecca, not that you care or need it explained, but that very first Earth-2 story, "Flash of Two Worlds" posited that since Earths-1 and 2 were so similar, writers and artists from the Golden Age of Comics on Earth-1 were able to "tune in" to events taking place on Earth-2 on a subconscious level and wrote their stories based on dreams they'd had.
As for your idea of simply starting over, ala' Showcase #4, following the Crisis, I felt the same way. Of course, the howls of fandom assembled would be ringing still today if so-and-so's comic had been cancelled in mid-story and Wally West & Barry Allen were kicked to the curb in favor of some new character no one had ever heard of... Arlene Murchison, say for instance, who had gained the power to merge with the light rays around her, thus moving at untold speeds, and who now called herself... The Flash!
If Hal and the GL Corps all went away overnight and the Green Lantern was now a railway conductor from 1876 who met a ghost in a collapsed railway tunnel that led him to find a magic lantern which held the imprisoned spirits of every passenger who died when the roof fell in on them... Thirty-five men and women whose lives and expertise could inform the new hero as he set out to avenge their deaths by bringing in the crooked rail baron who paid to have the tunnel blown up...
Fans would have been screaming for the Guardians to come back and fix all of it; make it all neverwas and preserve their favorite version of such-and-such a character. Kill everyone else, sure, but THEIR favorite would have to be saved!
No one would have put up with any of it. It would have been as if DC stopped publishing their entire line and decided to set all of their comics in the Tangent Universe instead.
I was hoping something like that would happen, but no, we only got a very tepid, very compromised version of what we had before, only with twice the heroes running into each other on the same Earth, one in which practically everyone was reduced to "legacy hero" status, and no one's history matched what it had been or what it would be three months from now... or three months after that...
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4496
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | 10
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Wow Brian, 'amazing' the lengths they'd go to to answer a question like that about the Flash Comics of the '40s being read by Barry Allen in the late '50s/'60s!
I had the earliest Flash mostly through a British reprint magazine titled simply The Super Heroes Monthly, but sadly it didn't get up to the Flash Of Two Worlds or I missed out on that issue. Later I think I had it in an 80pg. Giant or Flash Annual #1 I was lucky enough to run across. The British magazine also ran Joe Kubert Hawkman, but I don't remember the golden age Hawkman showing up in any Hawkman stories outside of JLA-JSA events though. All the silver age rebirths had more of a science fiction aspect to them, wonder if the '80s had they done a whole new thing would still just have gone the dark/extreme Miller/Moore route anyway?
Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 01 August 2018 at 2:50pm
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Michael Casselman
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Joined: 14 January 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1217
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | 11
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Given the gap between the last adventures of the Golden Age Flash, GL, Atom, etc and their Silver Age counterparts, AND the 'typical audience turnover rate' back in those days, I don't think there's any way of equivocating a Showcase-type reboot in the mid-80's and the organic method in which it was accomplished 30 years earlier. Just like the New 52, you had better-selling titles that kept going along relatively untouched, and others that started from scratch, with a mish-mash of 'what still counts/how did that happen in the new timeline?' mentality amongst the fans of the whole line. And when you try to mix and match like that, all you get are Donna Troys, Hawkmen and Powergirls. To say nothing of Legions...
DC had already come close to adapting more of a tighter continuity and in many titles layered subplotting that would have come to a screeching and abrupt halt. With done-in-one stories being the norm in the 40's and 50's (sometimes multiple done-in-ones in each issue), it's almost like comparing an episodic, formula TV show from the 60's or 70's to today's programming that relies on season-long story arcs.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 01 August 2018 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | 12
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When the "Silver Age" began, superheroes were virtually gone from the marketplace. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were almost entirely alone in a field of cowboys, detectives, funny animals, spacemen, zombies, vampires...Well,you know. And that's a lot different from trying to "reboot" in a field glutted with superheroes. In the middle of the 1950s, with a different set of readers from those who were reading in 1949, Barry Allen could be presented as something >NEW<. Now? Not so much.
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