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James Woodcock
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 September 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 7785
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| Posted: 26 January 2014 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | 1
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Without doubt, CRISIS created far more problems than it 'solved'
Readers lost aspects that they were familiar with. Recent stories were re-done - and not as well (Who is Diana Troy for one). Comics spent ages basically addressing questions that were raised - well if this is this now, what about that?
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Roy Johnson
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Joined: 19 May 2013
Location: Canada
Posts: 1323
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| Posted: 26 January 2014 at 6:05pm | IP Logged | 2
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Crisis pretty much started the trend away from telling stories to entertain towards telling stories to "fix" continuity. Which would you rather read?
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Peter Martin
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Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15950
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| Posted: 27 January 2014 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | 3
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I pretty much never read anything DC pre-crisis, being a Marvel child. And I read a bit more post-crises, but that may just have me being led over by JB. I didn't really understand the Crisis storyline from what I heard about it (still not sure I do) but it did work in some ways in that some of that scary continuity wasn't there and I felt I could join from the beginning on some titles.
As others have said, there are other ways to offer this same result without a story that tells how history is wiped. I thought the reboot worked well for Wonder Woman, but even then, I somehow felt there was a certain something missing, a vacuum where some of the weight of that publishing history should be felt in some way. The mythological aspect George played up did help, but still felt something like a history of fighting Nazis was missing.
Ultimately I still don't know enough about DC to appreciate quite the extent of what Crisis did -- Batman didn't seem to change much after to what went before, as far as I can tell. Is this right?
You could say, in some ways it's been one crisis after another at DC ever since.
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4184
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| Posted: 27 January 2014 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | 4
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In and of itself, you'd be surprised at how little Crisis actually changed, big picture wise. All the multiple Earths got merged into one and the characters that required a multiple Earth set-up to make sense (basically Earth-2 Superman & Lois Lane, Earth-2 Wonder Woman & Steve Trevor, Earth-2 Robin and Huntress and the Earth-3 Crime Syndicate) got killed off or sent to Limbo. Oh, and the Flash revamp and Wonder Woman reboot got set-up.
(Heck, look at this gallery of covers the month Crisis #12 and you can see how few of them even "cared." Most titles did their red sky stories and moved on to whatever was going to happen next. DC March 1986 No linewide "aftermath" events for THIS DCU.)
What Crisis really did was draw a line in the sand so that when DC started retooling characters in the months to follow, TPTW felt like they could ignore what they saw fit to.
Batman got a bit of a "soft reboot" - new origins for Catwoman and the Jason Todd Robin, mainly. (And it was hardly the last to occur under Denny O'Neil's editorial tenure. There was also the "urban legend" bit that came later on.) Superman got a retroactive reboot. Wonder Woman got a "present day" reboot. Legion got a continuity patch for a few years, and then DC decided to reboot it (three times!). Martian Manhunter, Deadman and Aquaman got "selective ignoring" reboots. Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman got new directions that more or less fit with what came before. (A origin adjustment to Green Lantern and a "present day" reboot to Hawkman came later, which had fans up in arms for years to follow.) And so forth and so on.
Edited by Dave Phelps on 27 January 2014 at 7:26pm
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15950
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| Posted: 27 January 2014 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | 5
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Thanks for the answer. I fear I may always be a little confused by DC.
The funny thing is that just a few years after Crisis I got 'The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told' hardcover and just about all the old stories are completely accessible. And I enjoyed the Flash of Two Worlds story a.k.a. A can of worms opened!
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Jeff Fettes
Byrne Robotics R&D
Joined: 01 October 2003
Posts: 30
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| Posted: 27 January 2014 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | 6
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The Crisis reboots worked for me because they wiped away the barnacles for continuity that were dragging behind some of the characters. However, while doing so, the characters stayed the same. Outside of a few small items, it was easy to imagine that the pre-Crisis stories had still happened and reading the old stories still worked. Superman was still Superman, Wonder Woman was still Wonder Woman.
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Vinny Valenti
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Joined: 17 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8117
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| Posted: 27 January 2014 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | 7
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It looked to my DC-civilian eyes that Crisis was NOT meant to provide a
vehicle to "reboot" the characters, only to eliminate the "Infinite Earths"
concept. in fact, it basically DIDN'T provide the means for rebooting - at the
end of Crisis, basically the Earth One heroes survived, just with the Golden
Age Earth Two heroes integrated into Earth One as well. Things would have
made much more sense had things stayed that way....but between the end of
Crisis and MOS#1 someone decided to use Crisis to (only selectively) reboot
the characters afterwards, even though Crisis doesn't help explain that.
Dave Phelps wrote:
Batman got a bit of a "soft reboot" - new origins for
Catwoman and Jason Todd Robin, mainly. |
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And here's a good example of the problem with this - how does the merging
of the Earths turn Catwoman retroactively into a prostitute? How does it turn
Jason Todd retroactively into a thug? Especially since the non-thug Earth One
Robin was still appearing Post-Crisis in LEGENDS and the first handful of
Post-Crisis BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS issues. Same goes for
Catwoman in the pages of DETECTIVE COMICS as well. Their pre-reboot
versions still appeared Post-Crisis - therefore CRISIS couldn't have done that
to them, even if there was some sore of feasable way it could have.
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Stephen Robinson
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 27 January 2014 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | 8
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I regret that the "fix" was soon in for Robin (as a general concept -- not just Jason Todd as a character) in the late '80s. I thought Jason Todd's revised origin was an effective updating. In many ways, it was a "modern" spin on Dick Grayson's "traveling circus" origin. And I like that Batman was able to actively "save" a potential criminal before he wound up having to some day put him behind bars.
Then he just became a sociopath -- so obviously unbalanced that Batman appeared unbalanced in ever putting him in costume. Sad.
I liked the version of Todd from the DCAU BATMAN cartoon who was Tim Drake in name only.
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Jack Michaels
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Joined: 05 June 2013
Posts: 422
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| Posted: 28 January 2014 at 5:54am | IP Logged | 9
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QUOTE:
| And here's a good example of the problem with this - how does the merging of the Earths turn... |
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I see this same sort of logic being applied to the Star Trek reboot and I think it's kind of wrong-headed.
A reboot is a bit of a break from the past, because the powers that be believe it to be broken (whether this is true or not is another debate), so they're not looking to preserve something they think doesn't work anymore. The reboot allows them to slip free of the past and make a bunch of bold new moves which they hope will bring in new fans to keep their franchise viable.
It's fiction, it doesn't have to adhere to logic. They can have their cake, eat it, then send it back in time to their murdered grandfather. The deciding factor is always audience approval. If they get the butts in the seats, then they'll congratulate themselves on cutting the Gordian Knot. If not, they'll swear up and down that it's not their fault and hope enough people believe them so they can continue working.
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Greg Woronchak
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Joined: 04 September 2007
Location: Canada
Posts: 1631
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| Posted: 28 January 2014 at 8:11am | IP Logged | 10
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Stick around, kids, and maybe someday we'll fill you in on what REALLY went down!
I think Mark Waid (and later Grant Morrison) had a storyline 'clarifying' the Flash 'death'. Plus, Johns dug up (literally) the Anti-Monitor in Green Lantern.
Worse than a confusing point of continuity is constantly referring to it!
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Vinny Valenti
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Joined: 17 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 8117
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| Posted: 04 February 2014 at 10:39am | IP Logged | 11
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For some reason, the comics industry (DC much more than anyone else) seems to feel the need to concoct stories to bridge the gap between pre- and post- reboots of characters (and those stories almost always fail to completely do so). Meanwhile in the movie industry...they simply tell a new story and expect the audiences to just accept and follow it (only exception being STAR TREK). Why can't comics just begin anew?
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Dave Phelps
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4184
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| Posted: 04 February 2014 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | 12
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The shared universe. If characters were all in their own worlds, then reboots would be no big deal.
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Topic Closed)
