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Matt Linton
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 December 2005
Posts: 2022
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| Posted: 10 June 2006 at 7:10am | IP Logged | 1
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I started reading DC with Crisis and the Wally West Flash, so to me it was just a big epic story. The negative impact it had was that for years I had a fear of pre-Crisis/post-Crisis confusion, and so never went back and read any pre-Crisis comics. I've since gotten over it (and any obsession I had with continuity) but it took a long time.
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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9704
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| Posted: 10 June 2006 at 7:44am | IP Logged | 2
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I love the artwork, as busy and baroque as it is.
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Ian M. Palmer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 04 May 2004
Posts: 1342
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| Posted: 10 June 2006 at 11:13am | IP Logged | 3
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Me too. I wasn't a fan of Perez until I re-read Crisis recently, with all its complex page layouts and sometimes dozens of reaction shots per splash.
IMP.
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Chris Durnell
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 February 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 1235
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| Posted: 10 June 2006 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | 4
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Crisis was not necessary, but it's conceivable that there could have been a better execution afterwards.
However, if DC really wanted a Year One scenario, they could merely have created a new hyphenated Earth and simply forbid any writer from referring to the other Earths for a period of 3-5 years or so. That probably would have been a more elegant solution.
One of the things that could not have been known (although probably predicated by some) was that anything eliminated or changed by a reboot would not last long. Whether or not you agreed that Superman should have been the only survivor of Krypton (no Supergirl, no Bottle City of Kandor, etc), the desire of future authors to include those elements of the series is inevitable. The same with any other changes of any other characters.
Elements that certain creators and fans despise will be cherished by others. Best thing to do is simply ignore them if you don't like them.
It is for this reason that reboots or massive retcons will fail. Their purpose, whether for good or bad, is futile, so why waste the time?
Outside of business concerns (such as distribution), Crisis on Infinite Earths was one of the major blunders in the comics industry comparable to the resurrection of Jean Grey in Marvel. Not because of the stories themselves, but because of what happened afterwards because of them.
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Matt Linton
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 13 December 2005
Posts: 2022
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| Posted: 10 June 2006 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | 5
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"One of the tings they could not have known (although probably predicated by some) was that anything eliminated or changed by a reboot would not last long."
They really should have been able to figure that out just based on the Flash of Two Worlds story, which was essentially the "reason" for Crisis in the first place.
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Trevor Colligan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 14 October 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 547
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| Posted: 10 June 2006 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | 6
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Crisis on Infinite Earths` sole purpose was to boost sales. Instead of large revamps, DC could have easily have put John Byrne, George Perez, and Frank Miller on their respective titles and sales would have gone up.
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Jonathan Graver
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 30 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 195
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| Posted: 11 June 2006 at 2:45am | IP Logged | 7
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Which sort of happened, anyway (DKR wasn't mainstream, but it did draw
readers to the Batman titles)... I liked how Crisis showcased the DC
superhero roster, especially the ones acquired from Charlton and
Quality Comics.
On a side note, the Jerry Ordway inks in later issues were
fantastic.
Edited by Jonathan Graver on 11 June 2006 at 2:46am
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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9704
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| Posted: 11 June 2006 at 11:17am | IP Logged | 8
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Prior to Crisis, Marvel had something like 80% of the marketshare and DC
had a measly 10-15%. Following Crisis and thanks in part to the subsequent
assignments of JB on Superman, Frank Miller on DKR and Batman: Year One,
Alan Moore's Watchmen, and a lot of the revamps of DC's major characters,
DC's market share rose to as much as 40% by the end of the decade. There
were moments when DC and Marvel shared the #1 spot month-by-month.
Could these changes have been made without Crisis, and could DC have
gained that readership without Crisis? Possibly. But consider how many
Marvel zombies -- even on this very forum -- have said they never tried any
DC books until Crisis came along.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133279
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| Posted: 11 June 2006 at 11:23am | IP Logged | 9
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DC's rise in the 1980s was almost entirely "stunt" driven -- and I include MAN OF STEEL in this, as, in fact, one of the earliest "stunts". Their increase in market share (a phrase I have come to loathe, especially when it spews from the mouths oc so-called "fans") was driven far too much by speculators, looking for "hot" books that would be "worth something". Such people are basically idiots, but the Companies began to devote much of their effort to pandering to them, and therein lay the direct path to our ultimate crash.There is very little real evidence of "Marvel Zombies" being drawn to DC. In fact, Roger Stern used to delight in telling the story of when he was editor on AVENGERS, and someone wrote in to ask "whatever happened to George Perez?"
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John Mietus
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 9704
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| Posted: 11 June 2006 at 11:35am | IP Logged | 10
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Well, I'm not going to dispute you, JB -- inside knowledge trumps
second-hand anecdotal. But from my own first-hand experience, I know
in my LCS, before the '90s speculator boom, a lot of people who had only
read Marvel titles started reading a lot more DC books in the post-Crisis
'80s -- and it wasn't just the stunt books.
Of course, to this day at that shop Marvel titles still outsell DC titles by a
factor of about 4-3 (as opposed to the early '80s when they outsold DC
titles by about 3-1).
Of course, my LCS owner has stated that most sales these days are
motivated by stunts.
I'd be interested to hear from the JBF comics shop owners what the
numbers breakdowns are like in their stores -- Matt Hawes, Dave
Farabee, Robert Last, what say you gentlemen?
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Brad Brickley
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8287
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| Posted: 11 June 2006 at 11:37am | IP Logged | 11
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I think that M*%#@ has proved that you can kill a Marvel Zombie!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133279
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| Posted: 11 June 2006 at 11:41am | IP Logged | 12
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I often wonder how much thought was given to the ramifications that COIE would have on certain titles.*** It's fairly plain to see that little thought was put into the ramifactions of CRISIS front or back. Consider that one of the characters most impacted -- a character who is still staggering from the impact of CRISIS -- was Wonder Girl, who had been worked on an largely tidied up by the very people responsible for CRISIS. The problem lay in the simple fact that -- then as now -- no one at DC was prepared to really do what CRISIS was supposed to do: clean house. This morning, finishing my last page of ATOM 3, I was called upon by the plot to draw a poster of Power Girl. There is a character who underscores where CRISIS went wrong. In the post-CRISIS DCU there should not have been a Power Girl. She had no living counterpart on Earth 1. When the worlds "fused", she -- and a whole bunch of other characters -- should simply have disappeared. In fact, given the retroactive nature of CRISIS, she should never have existed. But, as I have said many times, I knew CRISIS was doomed when Dick Giordano said it was going to wipe away all the alternate realities "except the one with Captain Carrot". A book that sold maybe three copies a month, and DC was not prepared to sacrifice it to make their "house cleaning" work. Ah, well. Mea culpa, mea culpa...
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