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Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 5:45am | IP Logged | 1
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Mr Phelps, you make compelling points, my mind can always be changed. I concede about new tales being told. :)
Regarding OHOTMU and WHO'S WHO?, there were advantages, namely that the entries listed a person's first appearance. I spent a lot of time (unsuccessfully) searching for an issue of JIMMY OLSEN as WHO's WHO? listed Darkseid's first appearance. And some clarity was nice.
I felt WHO'S WHO? was less pedantic than OHOTMU. I could read WHO'S WHO? quickly compared to OHOTMU. OHOTMU really delved into science, sometimes distractingly, whereas WHO'S WHO? was simply a case of "The Riddler is a fair hand-to-hand combatant". Nuff said!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 6:03am | IP Logged | 2
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Here's what was wrong with OHOTMU and WHO'S WHO: they were conceived as a good idea, but that idea got warped.Roger Stern had suggested some kind of "guide" that listed all the significant events in a character's history, as well as details about their powers (if they had any). Very straightforward stuff, intended as a helpful reference for writers and artists. No need to burrow thru countless back issues. Then three things happened: • It was decided to do this as a published series • Mark Gruenwald was put in charge, and his fanboy mentality went into overdrive • Shooter insisted that all the powers be QUANTIFIED. That limits be established. Result, lots of unnecessary detail AND details that were made up on the spot, just for OHOTMU. (This was how the original entry on Cyclops gave a version of his power that CONTRADICTED what had been long established in the books. Ditto for Spider-Man. In fact, the definition of Spider-Man's powers completely eliminated any reason for him to have been bitten by a radioactive spider. He should have been called SPIDERISH-MAN.)* ___________________ * Oh, and OHOTMU informed us that altho Fin Fang Foom had been shown TALKING, this was actually TELEPATHY. Yes, of course. A 500 foot long TELEPATHIC dragon is so much more REALISTIC....
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Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 July 2017
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 7:29am | IP Logged | 3
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Rebirth - 2017-2018 (a blended version of Johns and Morrison from what I understand; haven't read it yet)
***
It's basically all back to Johns's SECRET ORIGIN (2009) at this point. The only thing kept from Morrison's revision is that Ma and Pa Kent both died in a car crash when Clark was at his senior prom. And my guess is that we'll soon find out that even that is a false memory caused by Dr. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named -- they "really" both died later, and separately.
When DC tried to shoe BIRTHRIGHT into being the official origin, it was never really clear whether or not they were serious about it or not. It still seemed like everything from late '86 onward was canonical -- except that now Luthor was younger and had known Clark, to some extent, in Smallville.
Then after 2006 it was clear neither BIRTHRIGHT nor MAN OF STEEL were canonical anymore, although elements of each still were.
Personally I like BIRTHRIGHT and a version of it would've made for a much better movie than what Zack Snyder directed in 2013. I just didn't want it as a "reboot."
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Adam Schulman
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 7:41am | IP Logged | 4
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That was Shooter's response to "untold tales." And, like many of Shooter's dictums it was arbitrary, and did not consider the special cases. Sometimes an "untold tale" can be a lot of fun.But as a series? In a limited sense, maybe (LOST GENERATION), but ongoing? *** There's no ongoing series forthcoming. Just another limited series entitled MAN OF STEEL. My guess: it's going to have something to do with "Black Zero." I hope it's the terrorist group that JB created for WORLD OF KRYPTON, but I doubt it.
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Eric Sofer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4789
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 8:38am | IP Logged | 5
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Dave P. - Looking at Crisis as a final hurrah to eliminating the multiverse is reasonable - but it begs the question "Why get rid of the multiverse?" Was it so obscure a concept? If my silver age memory works, the only ongoing multiversal concepts at the time of Crisis were the Justice Society of America and the Huntress feature - both of which were cancelled at that point - and Captain Marvel's Earth. Otherwise, it was the annual JLA-JSA crossover, which was always adequately explained.
Maybe DC felt that they needed an excuse to get the Charlton characters into the DCU? That's a bad reason for such a radical alteration to the status quo...
DC could have tried to restart everything from scratch... but sales were too good on New Teen Titans, Batman, and Green Lantern, I guess, to clear their decks. Or maybe they were just all too lazy to take one of those hideaway weekends to say, "We're starting from scratch. What about Hawkman? What about the Wonder Woman/Wonder Girl relationship? What about the JSA/JLA relationship? How about the Legion of Super-Heroes?" And of course, we'll never know what really happened... but it sure seems as if they just said, "Eh, we'll do the Crisis and fix it afterwards."
Possibly worst of the results of the Crisis was that writers now had free rein to do whatever they wanted with the characters. "Hey, now Hal Jordan is an alcoholic who crashed a plane and killed someone. That's why he's in disfavor around Ferris Aircraft. Remember, after the Crisis, anything goes!" "Well, in my Justice League story, he's still the best test pilot in the world and he never crashed!:"
The Crisis and MoS invalidated a lot of the character traits, history, etc. and in some cases, that was fine. But it also enabled too much unmanaged chaos about the characters, history, etc., and everyone was free to make it up as THEY wanted. That, I think, irritated me the most.
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Eric Sofer
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4789
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 8:45am | IP Logged | 6
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One of the issues with Who's Who and OHOTMU was, as noted, the strict characterization and quantification of characters. And the fact that Who's Who was written both before and after Crisis #12 - so there was a sea change to the characters literally in the middle of it.
OHOTMU's flaws carried over into the Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game. Both Marvel's and DC's forays into super role playing games was kind of restricted by Champions, which had set up a pretty good system - and they couldn't use those ideas without actually licensing to whomever was publishing Champions, and that changed a lot and... ANYHOW, both of the publishers' role playing games based stats on a VERY fixed level system - and at least in Marvel's case, it seemed to take OHOTMU and literally assign those levels. They weren't numeric; they were qualifed by adjectives, e.g., Remarkable Strength, Amazing Resistance, Incredible Speed, etc. But those values were numeric, and unchangeable - so, as an example, the Thing could NEVER beat the Hulk, because their strengths were fixed, and there was no random modification to damage values.
Locking those values down did nothing good for anyone. Neither did locking down the history, preventing any "untold tales" to bring in changes or some new aspect.
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Charles Valderrama
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Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4831
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 9:09am | IP Logged | 7
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After reading JB's MAN OF STEEL, I wasn't interested in any other origin stories for SUPERMAN... I was fine with most of the changes JB made as it made the character more interesting. Lex and Clark as childhood friends in Smallville never worked great for me so I much prefer the Luthor JB introduced. I preferred the Kents being alive and Lana knowing about Clark's true identity.
BIRTHRIGHT and what's come after just brought us back to a convoluted backstory for Superman.
-C!
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 10:09am | IP Logged | 8
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There are a lot of fans turned pro -- putatively -- who LIKE the backstories to be as convoluted as possible. Note the amount of coincidence that has been troweled into origin stories where none existed before. It's an extension of that comic shop mentality I've mentioned before, where there are those who need to know more than anyone else. If only this power could be harnessed for good!
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Andrew Bitner
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 June 2004
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 11:01am | IP Logged | 9
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In 2002, I was applying for jobs in federal government. I dropped off my resume with NASA and the uniform reaction was, "You worked in comics in the '90s? Cool!!"
It wouldn't surprise me if some of the most detail-obsessed fans out there work in highly technical scientific or engineering fields, or even for outfits like FBI or CIA, where that mindset can be very useful.
Of course, that doesn't help us at all when we're arguing the finer points of, say, SUPERMAN Vol 1 #17 and why a 65 year old story shouldn't determine the outcome of a story written today...
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 11:23am | IP Logged | 10
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Eric Sofer wrote:
| Looking at Crisis as a final hurrah to eliminating the multiverse is reasonable - but it begs the question "Why get rid of the multiverse?" Was it so obscure a concept? |
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That one I can't answer. I have talked to people over the years who found it confusing, but I never have gotten a good answer to why and I personally never had a problem with it.
I'll admit the attempts to restore the Multiverse have bugged me, more because those attempts have made the Multiverse an end into itself rather than a means to allow for interaction between characters that weren't originally intended to interact. Possibly also because when they do that there's also a character giving a speech trying to convince the audience of how great it is.
QUOTE:
| If my silver age memory works, the only ongoing multiversal concepts at the time of Crisis were the Justice Society of America and the Huntress feature - both of which were cancelled at that point - and Captain Marvel's Earth. Otherwise, it was the annual JLA-JSA crossover, which was always adequately explained. |
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You're forgetting All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc.
QUOTE:
| Maybe DC felt that they needed an excuse to get the Charlton characters into the DCU? That's a bad reason for such a radical alteration to the status quo... |
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Their inclusion in Crisis struck me more as a case of "well, while we're here, we might as well" than an initiating factor. No reason they couldn't have just introduced them into the DCU they had.
QUOTE:
| DC could have tried to restart everything from scratch... but sales were too good on New Teen Titans, Batman, and Green Lantern, I guess, to clear their decks. Or maybe they were just all too lazy to take one of those hideaway weekends to say, "We're starting from scratch. What about Hawkman? What about the Wonder Woman/Wonder Girl relationship? What about the JSA/JLA relationship? How about the Legion of Super-Heroes?" And of course, we'll never know what really happened... but it sure seems as if they just said, "Eh, we'll do the Crisis and fix it afterwards." |
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They HAD a new direction for Hawkman already. No need for a reboot. It's just that that version ended and they decided to go back to the drawing board a few years later. They intentionally wrote out the JSA within a few months (Last Days of the JSA to cover the present and Roy Thomas being told to minimize their use in All-Star to cover the past) to avoid having any "redundant" characters.
Beyond, while I appreciate the "Cleanliness" of a line-wide line in the sand, it's hard to blame DC for not wanting to flush their entire line to rejigger a small percentage of it. And the approach they took (based on released dates) was "okay, first let's do Superman." Then that was moving and they moved to Batman and Wonder Woman. Then it was on to the Flash and the Justice League. Then Green Arrow. And so on. Every character got "their moment" and they recognized there was no reason to completely reboot, say, Firestorm, the Swamp Thing and Vigilante to facilitate a new direction for Superman.
Also, having seen later examples of DC going "all in at once" with new directions (One Year Later, New 52), I've definitely come to see the merits of letting DC treat each book/family as its own thing.
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Dave Phelps
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 11:23am | IP Logged | 11
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Adam Schulman wrote:
| Personally I like BIRTHRIGHT and a version of it would've made for a much better movie than what Zack Snyder directed in 2013. I just didn't want it as a "reboot." |
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About halfway through it (first time reading it), and I can't say I'm a fan. I prefer the farmboy made good approach to the god/alien among men approach, so the auras, the S as a repurposed Kryptonian symbol, etc. is a bit much.
That said, I'll give you the Zach Snyder thing. :-)
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Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 October 2013
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| Posted: 02 February 2018 at 11:40am | IP Logged | 12
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Eric Sofer said:
"Why get rid of the multiverse?" Was it so obscure a concept? and "Crisis...also enabled too much unmanaged chaos about the characters, history, etc." ____________________
Yes, "chaos" is the best word for the situation. It really reminds me of how lucky we (fans, comics, America, the World) were that one man, Stan Lee, had a good vision for the Marvel Comics reality and really had a strong hand in creating, then guiding, it for 10, 15, even 20 years. DC didn't have that (though Julius Schwartz made everything he touched better), but still, even without a single plan, you had a large number of editors, writers, and artists who worked for decades to create a reality that mostly worked. (Sure, Bob Haney threw a few curveballs in there, but nothing too damaging.) Then, CRISIS came and a new reality had to be created relatively overnight, and everyone (creators and fans) were expected to play along and keep track. 47 years of natural creation replaced by one year of artificial creation--looking back, how could anything but chaos ensue?
And was the idea of a multiverse too obscure? Ten years later, the TV show SLIDERS would introduce the concept to millions of viewers. And then FRINGE came in 2008, and millions more enjoyed that. (And there were others in between.) Perhaps if those shows had come earlier, CRISIS would have been deemed unnecessary. Or if H. Beam Piper's PARATIME books (or a number or other sci fi books and short stories) had become more popular and become a big part of the national pop culture. Since then, there have been plenty of parallel Earth movies too--not to mention STAR TREK's Mirror Universe (popular since the 60's) and the alternate timeline of the new movies. There's probably not any modern fan of pop culture fiction who's unfamiliar with the concept now.
I think DC fixed a problem that wouldn't have been an issue a few years later. "The operation was a success, but the patient died."
(Marvel doing their own version of CRISIS just a couple of years ago, with plenty of hindsight available to them, really has NO excuse!)
Edited by Eric Jansen on 02 February 2018 at 11:42am
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