| Posted: 17 November 2007 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | 11
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True, Glenn, but I didn't mean us, I meant a new kid who may have known Superman from the cartoons or movies who isn't worried about all this stuff that we sometimes are.
When I was a kid, I didn't know about the multiple Earths, and when I started to read about them, I was intrigued by what appeared, at first, to be two teams of Super Friends. I first discovered an issue of JLA that had a vignette of Wonder Woman on the cover with her listed as a member of the Justice Society. I remember thinking, cool, a Justice Legaue and a Justice Society, I wonder who is on which team.
Then I discovered that these two teams were from two differet earths. Again, I thought that this was cool.
Later, I discovered that these earths didn't have just different heroes, like Dr. Fate and the Spectre, and different versions of our heroes, like Flash and Green Lantern, but that they have different copies of the same heroes, like Superman.
Wow, I thought, and that is where it all went wrong. Flash and Green Lantern were easy, but now that I knew there were, at least, 2 Supermans I wanted to now where each one appeared and try to make sense of it.
The problem with that was you can't. Superman is Superman. The hero in his comics, despite the changes and evolution of the character was always Superman. He wasn't designed to be two different guys.
AND HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN MADE INTO TWO GUYS.
PERIOD.
This was the problem Crisis tried to fix, but that was another problem. You can't fix it. Trying to fix it is what created the mess. You just needed to leave it alone.
You know when I finally realized this completely? When I was old enought to... last week or so, when I read the new issue of Justice Society and relaized how stupid it was (and has always been) to try to tell stories about different Supermans.
Superman simply is.
Kingdom Come worked as an Elseworlds (a What If?), but I see now, more than ever, that making it its own multiple earth is not cool, it simply adds to the problem.
The Justice Society works maybe two ways. As an alternate earth counterpart to the JLA with a different Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Atom, and everyone else, or even as a WWII team of those heroes. They should not be in the same place at the same time, and there should not be multiple versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman that exist outside maybe one self-contained story.
If there has to be a multiverse (unnecessary, but I am not against it) Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman should live on Earth-DC. The Justice Society on Earth 2, Captain Marvel on Earth-S, the Quality heroes on Earth X, the Charlton Heroes on their earth, and Spider-Man et. al. on Earth Marvel. Different heroes for different worlds. That way it doesn't get confusing, and people don't have to know when the Earth-1 stories started.
Now with that said, I think anyone could pick up a JB Superman comic and read a story about Superman without wondering which one it was.
Apparently, comic book collectors are the only ones who ask this question.
If it were done correctly, no one would.
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