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Topic: The DC Comics Layoff "Bloodbath" Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Mark Haslett
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 10:47am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Remember when readers everywhere dropped their hot coffee and ran like
lemmings to the comic shops because (rumor had it) all of DC's titles were
going to pick up this month's stories ONE YEAR LATER than they had been set
in last month's stories? Squeal!

What a thrill! A whole missing year in story-telling! I get goose-bumps just
imagining such a thing! :-|

Aside from wrecking JB's DEMON, what was the upside of this idiotic idea? I
stayed away so I can't comment on how "well" it was done in other books. It
struck me as a literal NON-event.

How much farther down that rabbit-hole would we come to "EVERYONE
WEARS PLAID month"?
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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 11:12am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I'll admit I liked the "One Year Later" stories for SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS. But JB should've been allowed to opt out of it so as to not ruin his plans for BLOOD OF THE DEMON. 

I liked 52 as well. (The weekly series. Not to be confused with The New 52, which was a bad idea from its conception.)

Assuming DC survives as a comics publisher, its reboot-itis needs to end. Permanently. Full stop. Never again. If the sliding timeline makes old stories impossible to remain canonical then just forget about them and never mention them again.

Marvel has some self-inflicted continuity problems -- exactly how old was Magneto, supposed Holocaust survivor, when he made his debut has a mutant terrorist? Did he find a way to slow his aging? Did he steal the Infinity Formula from Nick Fury without Nick noticing? Was there some time travel incident? -- but compared to DC continuity it's a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit together perfectly. 

I don't even mind CRISIS -- in theory. It could have had a different ending: there's still a multiverse but Earths 1 and 2 "merge" and, hence, no more doppelgangers. It would've been good for Black Canary (no more "I'm really my own daughter!" crap) and Wonder Woman (member of both the JSA and JLA and Donna Troy's mentor and so on). There was even a way to keep Superman as the first superhero (temporary time travel!), re-work Power Girl (she's a Daxamite, not a Kryptonian) and the Huntress (daughter of Batman's Uncle Phillip!).

All this would've taken is some planning. 
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Shawn Kane
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 1:05pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Magneto was turned into a baby by Mutant Alpha and then Erik the Red aged him to adulthood later.
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 4:27pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

35 years later, half their stories are still fixing (or "reverberating from") CRISIS.  Some of the artists are amazing, but the writers and editors mostly don't have a clue.

Meanwhile, I'm still buying TPB reprints and pre-CRISIS issues from the LCS dollar boxes, and I'm happy.
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Dave Phelps
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

 Shawn Kane wrote:
Magneto was turned into a baby by Mutant Alpha and then Erik the Red aged him to adulthood later.


Sure, later. But in that initial confrontation with the X-Men in 2010 (thanks to the sliding timescale), he would've been in his 80s at best. :-)




(Edited to fix quote oopsie.)

Edited by Dave Phelps on 12 August 2020 at 7:22pm
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William Costello
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Update from Mike Avila over at SYFY:  https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/dc-comics-dc-universe-layoffs- fallout

QUOTE: I spoke with two sources with insight into the company’s plans who say WarnerMedia, the corporate umbrella inside AT&T that oversees Warner Bros. and DC, isn't planning to get rid of comics. Comics aren’t going anywhere. It’s more about the type of comic books we should expect to see and their placement in the new corporate hierarchy.
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Michael Roberts
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

It’s more about the type of comic books we should expect to see and their placement in the new corporate hierarchy.

——

“More Batman.”
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Shawn Kane
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Posted: 12 August 2020 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

You're right, Dave. I didn't even consider the sliding timeline!
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John Byrne
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Posted: 13 August 2020 at 7:40am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

… in that initial confrontation with the X-Men in 2010 (thanks to the sliding timescale), he would've been in his 80s at best.

••

This is why it's not really a good idea to tie characters to specific historic periods or events. I've made that mistake a few times myself, so mea culpa there, nut unless there is some way to dodge the long term consequences, as with Captain America or Namor, best to stay clear of the history books and newspapers!

(And, most especially, DON'T DO IT RETROACTIVELY, which is what happened with Magneto. I don't think ANYBODY did the math on that one.)

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Jonathan A. Dowdell
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Posted: 13 August 2020 at 8:15am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

I'm sure it is creatively appealing to tie characters/stories to real events. 

I had a thought a few years ago that with the sliding time scale the World Trade Towers were gone years before the space flight of FF 1. Spider-Man never climbed up one of the towers. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 13 August 2020 at 8:19am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I'm sure it is creatively appealing to tie characters/stories to real events.

••

And it used to be possible, when the Old Guard were in charge, since they understood that real world events did not necessarily indicate benchmarks. Superman could meet multiple Presidents without so doing indicating a specific number of years had passed. These stories always take place NOW, whenever NOW might be. And if you happen to read the first Superman story, or the first Batman story, or the first FF story, you'll notice the captions all indicate they take place NOW, too!

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James Woodcock
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Posted: 13 August 2020 at 10:55am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

& let’s be honest, the tech that characters use, any character uses, is
still more advanced than we have now.

So the rocket the FF went up on? Still more advanced than rockets
today. So still a race to be the first one to use that sort of a rocket.

Real world events don’t need to be a hindrance for characters,
characters don’t need to age. Characters don’t need to refer to
everything that has ever happened in their history.

I met characters in the 1970’s, so some had 10 years of history, some
had nearly 40.
Did I know? Did I care? No to either question. I learned of their history
as I went along, but didn’t care, didn’t get bogged down. Once people
got older & allowed themselves to get bogged down, that’s when it all
went pear shaped.

I just wished someone had the guts to have said no.
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