Websnark

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at April 7, 2005 12:53 PM

I was pretty pissed when they did what they did to Hal. Hal Jordan was a "beloved character" to me -- to the extent that when I got married we used Hal Jordan and Wonder Woman figurines on our wedding cake. Which, you know, makes me a sad, sad man... but there you are.

On the other hand, I actually *liked* what they did with the Legion, and got bored when they started trying to *undo* what they did with the Legion -- I assume you meant the Legion of Super Heroes, pardon me if I'm wrong. I liked the darker, grittier tone a lot. It wasn't revolutionary, but it was an interesting story, right up until they found their younger clones... or were THEY the clones... yeah, right up until that point.

So I guess that puts me in the first camp for one, and the second camp for the other.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at April 7, 2005 1:02 PM

I wasn't a huge fan of the "grittier" Legion that Giffen did (and can go at length on why), but it wasn't a dealbreaker.

It's when they wiped out the continuity and started over that I gave it a bye.

So we're in agreement, more or less. And my point is, they're not going to get people like me back by rebooting their reboot. They're just going to lose the people who were digging the Legion.

If they're going to "start over" to make it possible for new fans to jump in... they really need to be targeting kids, not adults. Otherwise, they need to be trying to keep their current fans. And "big shakeups" won't do that.

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at April 7, 2005 1:07 PM

Yeah, I agree with your article -- was just giving an example of DC pissing off both sets of fans in one person. :)

That, and Hellblazer really isn't what it used to be... but that's another topic entirely.

Comment from: JoeFF85 posted at April 7, 2005 1:10 PM

This is why as a 'kid' (at just under 20, and really in the lower end of the age range at the comic shop) who only recently started actually buying comics, I liked Marvel's Ultimate line. I was able to get in on the ground floor. I was already a fan of most fo Marvel's stuff, but there was too much backstory and continuity for me to really feel comfortable buying the 616 universe titles.

DC shouldn't have done another reset, they could have done something along the lines of the Ultimate Marvel idea... like Eric said, make 'em cheap and put them in supermarkets for kids (unlike Ultimate... expensive rassin' frassin'... this is why I buy the trade paperbacks...) and you'll get readership, and the kids will be in on the ground floor, and will be able to stick with it.

Comment from: Tangent posted at April 7, 2005 1:52 PM

Heh. Back in the 90s, Marvel Had Me and Lost Me... and now in the 00s DC Had Me and Lost Me. *grin* About the only comics I buy now are the Ultimates and occasional tradepaperbacks of Ultimate Spiderman (I still haven't forgiven them for the cheap death of Gwen Stacy, those bastards... why not have her *live* for a change?).

In fact, the only comicbooks outside of Ultimates that I regularly read are indies, and both of those are coming to an end - A Distant Soil and Girl Genius (though GG is emerging as a web-comic and going to do yearly compilations, which rocks *grin*).

Rob

Comment from: jp is just a guy posted at April 7, 2005 2:09 PM

Out of curiosity, who is the DC good-guy-who-is-now-a-bad-guy? It's been maybe a year and a half since I've been keeping with the majors, and I feel hell of out of the loop...

Comment from: Alexander Danner posted at April 7, 2005 2:26 PM

Aside from some of the standalone batman GNs, I've never read much of DC's superhero books. I did read Countdown to Infinite Crisis, mainly just because they comped me on it. But the thing is -- I was really enjoying it. I always enjoy comics about the second-stringers to the flagship heroes. Hell, my all-time favorite Marvel character is Multiple Man (loved the Madrox min-series Peter David just did). So, I'm reading Countdown, and here's The Blue Beetle -- competent, but not incredibly so. Smart, but lacking confidence. He doen't take himself too seriously, and neither does anyone else. He's got a lot to prove, but there's no certainly that he can pull it off. Exactly the sort of hero I like to read about. So I'm digging it. This is a dude I'd be happy to keep reading about. If he's going to be a major player in this storyline, then I just might have to start picking up some more of these b...oh. Well, shit. Nevermind.

Comment from: The Gneech posted at April 7, 2005 2:33 PM

Growth is easy!

_Sustained_ growth -- that's the bugger!

I'm fighting that problem now, myself, and I don't have D.C.'s resources!

-The Gneech

Comment from: Joshua posted at April 7, 2005 2:38 PM

They're doing who to the what now?

I liked the rebooted Legion (and disliked the Giffen Legion), up until they sent half the team into the past so they could do all those red-sky crossovers for the last time they really screwed around with Hal.

So I'm one of those old fogies who they're not getting back.

Unfortunately, they can't do cheap, unless they go digest-sized four-color like the Archies, or black-and-white like the manga. Last time I looked into this, which was a couple of years ago, just dropping the paper quality and color wouldn't save that much as long as you stuck to the current format--the incremental cost just isn't that high.

Comment from: larksilver posted at April 7, 2005 2:47 PM

Ugh. DC is blowing up the world again, eh? Bleh.

The comic book industry seems to be woefully out of step with what its readers want, and even more out of step with what a new reader would want. It's sad, really. All of the potential for new ideas and creativity... and the best they can do is blow up the universe and reset the old titles again.

It just doesn't sound like a good business plan to me... which of course, doesn't mean they won't make a profit off of it, at least in the short term.

Not that they're listening to ME. If the comic book industry was listening to me, they'd do some major promoting/marketing changes to increase their attractiveness to people who aren't already reading.

I, being a former Comic Shop Chick, would be perfectly comfortable taking my 3-year-old into Bedrock City Comics here in Houston, because I know the guys, and know that anything I'm going to find objectionable (or that might even frighten him - hello, monster toys?) are going to be up high, out of his reach. The staff there (even if they sometimes LOOK a little freakish) are friendly and generally good folk, because the owner is a good businessman and actually WANT people in his shop.

But some comic book stores... sheesh. I'm afraid to go in them by myself, lest the grunge in there rise up and leave my family mom-less.

It's bad enough that the big companies in print comics have some creative issues; add to that the presentation problems in most areas, and it's no wonder more and more creators are taking their product to the web. So much of the Good Stuff goes unseen/unread/unpurchased because the audience who would be most receptive to it aren't comfortable frequenting the places to buy the darn things.. IF their local comic book stores even carry them.

Back before I started getting my sequential art/serial story fixes online, most of my comics were preordered just for me from the Previews several months in advance, and never stocked in the store. How sad!

Comment from: Shaenon posted at April 7, 2005 3:06 PM

Dammit, what can I do to stop my husband from buying these wretchedly self-important "event" comics? He bought the entirety of "Identity Crisis," hating it all the way. Now he's buying "Countdown to Infinite Crises" (Funniest. Title. Ever.) because he wants to "give it a chance." He even made a point of avoiding online spoilers so he could be surprised by the big plot twists (i.e., Blue Beetle gets killed and some second-banana ex-villain turns out to be EEEEVIL). He bought the first issue the day it hit the stands, and hated it. And last night, after months of bitching about how stupid and joyless the first four issues of "Green Lantern: Rebirth" were, he came home with a copy of...of course...Issue Five.

I'm getting our cartoonist friends together and staging an intervention.

Listen, people! No matter how much you complain about these comics, if you keep buying them, THEY'LL KEEP PRINTING THEM. Duh.

Oh, and read Kyle Baker's "Plastic Man."

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at April 7, 2005 3:09 PM

Is it the Piper? I'll laugh myself silly if it's the Piper.

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at April 7, 2005 3:23 PM

jp: I think Eric's referring to Max Lord, who claims to have been deliberately making heroes into buffoons whenever possible for years, to limit their effectiveness. And who claims to be in favor of baseline humans running things, despite (admittedly) being a metahuman and (not mentioned in Countdown) being a full-body cyborg these days (brain is in the body of Lord Havok, a robotic double of a Dr. Doom pastiche).

Comment from: everythingevil posted at April 7, 2005 3:59 PM

The 90s also marked the experimentation of a few Marvel icons as well, promenently wolverine and spiderman. They tried to change Wolverine into more of a feral critter than the tough guy but quickly reversed his condition when all the fans were heard. Spiderman was a bigger, larger splotch of Marvel history. The whole spider-clone thing just gives me headaches. Although unlike DC, Marvel didn't push the reset button but instead tried to resolve these mistakes through ther stories yielding truly good stories, like the "Revelations" stryline of Spider-Man.

Comment from: jpcardier posted at April 7, 2005 5:51 PM

Some comments:

Hmm, another jp. First time for everything, I suppose. Unless you are an evil clone from the future brought back into the past.... No wait, that was a dream, and involved monkeys throwing cashews. Never mind.

"(i.e., Blue Beetle gets killed..."

WHAT? Wait a minute now. I admit I haven't been buying issues since my last comic shop died two years ago, but Blue Beetle? This is the guy that got me into DC originally (in a toe dipping way). I *loved* Beetle. Especially in the Justice League. I loved the fact that he overate, his self doubt and general good humor. God, those Giffen/De Mattias JLA/JLI days were great comics. Light humor, action and good characterization.

So needless to state, this upsets me greatly. Killing off a good character to be "dark". This ain't dark. Dark is when Superman turns out to be a sleeper agent for Krypton. Where it turns out that Batman has sexual relationships with sidekicks. Where Wonder Woman is acutally a Maenad, and consumes her friends in a frenzy brought on Dionysus' song.

But that is the start of this essay (Hal Jordan). Apparently we've had dark. Where is the light? Light humor, Light touch, etc.

It seems that the two majors in the comic industry has never completely recovered from Dark Knight and Watchmen. They constantly think that good stories require darker themes. This is false. Good stories require quality. In fact, I would argue that it is harder to do a good light hearted story than a darkly themed one.

"When in doubt, rack up the body count" seems to be a refrain sounding loud and clear. Do not mistake me, I love dark themes. But don't graft them awkwardly onto existing mythos.

Comment from: T Campbell posted at April 7, 2005 5:53 PM

Shaenon, my best advice would be to get him into a group that shares these kinds of comics around. I didn't really care about most of IDENTITY CRISIS (I cop to sorta liking the last few), but I mooched off my friends to "find out what happens."

Comment from: T Campbell posted at April 7, 2005 5:56 PM

The most ludicrous thing about this is not that the Blue Beetle and Maxwell Lord represented a REACTION AGAINST the "grim and gritty" storytelling style of the 1980s, and now are being used in what seems to be a whomping dollop of nostalgia for same.

The most ludicrous thing about it is not even that we spend 80 pages dwelling on every aspect of the Blue Beetle as he tours every aspect of the DC universe and then blow him away. (That, I can sort of get behind. It's depressing, sure, but it carries a genuine emotional punch... and starts things off on a deeply personal level before raising the stakes, as a good tense epic should.)

The most ludicrous thing about this is not that it's an "event" comic. It's not the best, but it's far from the worst such comic to hit the stands-- except in matters of continuity.

The most ludicrous thing about this is not that Blue Beetle's continuity has more holes in it than Afghanistan, and trying to build a coherent 80-page story around that self-contradictory continuity is doomed right from the start. The guy's personality is all over the map, and don't try telling me it's because he's "grown," not when two SIMULTANEOUS PUBLICATIONS are presenting him with different costumes, levels of optimism and relationships with Booster Gold. Hey, where'd that heart condition go?

The most ludicrous thing about this is not that Maxwell Lord claims he was purposely "keeping the League ineffectual" when so many other publications, INCLUDING ONE PUBLISHED THAT VERY SAME MONTH, showed Max repeatedly trying to up the "power quotient" of his super-groups. This is the equivalent of Pee-Wee Herman explaining away his career suicide with a petulant "I meant to do that."

The most ludicrous thing about this is not that Max still has his powers and is not a cyborg, because, honestly, who can keep track-- EXCEPT EVERYBODY WHO PRODUCED AND/OR READ THE MINISERIES HE'S APPEARING IN, ON SALE NOW.

No, the most ludicrous thing about it all...

...is that I care so damn much about all these things they're getting wrong.

There are more important things in life, you know? And yet... and yet even STILL...

Comment from: cartoonlad posted at April 7, 2005 6:13 PM

Exactly, most recent jp. My thought on the killing off of Blue Beetle is it had to have been an editorial decision. Nobody seemed to be able to write for the character except Giffen. "Take this character that people recognize, have him discover a world-wide conspiracy, and kill him off in the last page," seems to have been the instructions. "We'll have a few issues over the coming months where the real heroes mention his passing." So they took a character that hasn't been characterized well ever since Giffen/De Mattais left the JL books, made him a very interesting person and then...

The last pages weren't even logically consistant with the actions from earlier in the book. He's got a gun to his head. "Join us or die," he's told. The hero that was depicted in that book -- and that book alone -- would have taken that opportunity to live, waiting for a chance to thwart the evil schemes of someone that's supposed to be Maxwell Lord.

It's a shame, too. It looks like Giffen/De Mattias were about to work in a Blue Bettle/Power Girl romance in the current "I can't believe it's not the Justice League!" storyline.

Comment from: Balur posted at April 7, 2005 7:16 PM

I was both a Post book Legion fan, expecially of LOST and beyond, as well as a Kyle Rayner fan.

Both titles have been cancled in recent weeks. I also canceled Green Arrow, becuase of what they did with the blonde chick. As well as outsiders for just sucking.

Also thinking about dropping wonder woman, becuase it hasn't held me in awhile.

Only other comics I have right now are the Superman 3, which have sucked royally but I'm having a hard time giving them up. Make them sequential again, please. As well as JSA and Hawkman.

I'm still bitter over the cancelation of Supergirl :)

Comment from: Phil Kahn posted at April 7, 2005 8:19 PM

I've grown slightly numb the rebootals in the DC universe, seeing as how I was always primarily a Marvel Fan (Primarily X-Titles).

I remember Feral Wolverine. I remember Ben Reily. I remember Onslaught. I remember Heroes Reborn. I remember Heroes Reborn the Return. I remember the mid-90's bullshit Marvel would try and pull, could have possibly lead to their Chapter 11.

I am oh so very much digging the Ultimate lines (Mark Millar rocks my socks). I haven't read U4 yet, but I'll give it a try eventually. The Ultimate lines prove to us that sometimes starting over can work, as long as it's not in the primary continuity.

I'm actually quite tired right now and can't think too good. But I will say that while entertaining, Identity Chrisis was utterly pointless.

My comic inbox? Ulty Spidey, Runaways, Astonishing X-Men, PvP, Nightcrawler, Army of Darkness, Ulty Iron Man, Wolverine, and various TPBs I'm catching up on.

Comment from: Kristofer Straub posted at April 7, 2005 8:35 PM

Is it possible to go "First and Ten" when the original concept was serious too? Or is this more like "Baywatch Nights" Syndrome, where the show began serious (as serious as Baywatch, anyway), but when ratings suffered, they turned it into serious-revolving-around-paranormal-nonsense?

I always thought that DC was the responsible parent in the mainstream comics family. Marvel is way more likely to mess with characters, kill them off, and do that awful stuff that plagued the mid-'90s comic world. I liked Kyle Rayner, but I can understand why Hal Jordan fans thought it was BS. (Marvel took my favorite character, Iron Man, turned him into a mad killer, then replaced him with his teenage self from the past. Guh.)

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 7, 2005 8:52 PM

First and Ten syndrome seems to be when you go from silliness to angst. So I've got to ask, where's the silliness? Where are the lighthearted DC stories - the classics that are being spoiled in this change of direction. Batman hasn't been light in years. And of the classic stories I can think of in DC... Killing Joke, Arkham Asylum, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Dark Knight Returns, Crisis, Kingdom Come... these are the things that spring to mind when I think of truly great DC stories.

So I have to ask, how is it First and Ten? They've been doing "serious" stories for decades, and the books that are perrenial trade sellers have been the serious ones.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at April 7, 2005 9:11 PM

Max Lord, Blue Beetle, JLI and "Former Known As Justice League" were the very acme of silly, lighthearted superhero action.

They have now been driven into mindless, pointless angst.

This is the very epitome of what "First and Ten" is. They shot for the powerful moment of inversion. What they got was pointless melodramatic wallowing.

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 7, 2005 9:44 PM

The JLI was never a huge seller - there's a reason they had to reboot that JLA roster to Issue #1 and put Grant Morrison on it with a JLA superteam. Then they brought it back for a little miniseries throwback for the old fans. But this hasn't been a main current of the DC universe in years, and, frankly, wasn't powerhouse when it was there. I just don't buy that DC as a whole has gone First and Ten here.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at April 7, 2005 9:48 PM

Er?

JLI was huge for a while. That's why it got a spinoff and the Justice League Antarctica special. IIRC, for a while it was the top selling thing at DC.

Which isn't to say I'm right and you're wrong, mind. Just that I stand by my thesis. ;)

Comment from: jesdynf posted at April 7, 2005 10:04 PM

Well. I started working at a comic shop a couple years ago, and before that knew little you couldn't learn from Batman: The Animated Series and the X-Men cartoon.

That said, I've been following everything that comes out... /everything/... and GL Rebirth is awful for one simple reason, that I hadn't seen addressed.

Jordan goes nuts and tries to conquer the universe; is later turned into the spirit of vengeance and/or redemption. Fine. Pretty cool. Even getting close to badass. He was a hero, he was an ideal, and then he /fell/, and kept trying after that.

Except now it wasn't that at all, because evil-icky-poo Parallax actually corrupted him, and the Spectre actually knew about it but didn't let on 'cause it wanted to kick Parallax's butt, and -- hmph. The whole idea screams "retcon" in the most transparent fashion...

For goodness sake. The Guardians' big anti-Parallax plan was to /forget about him/? I can see Batman now, every time he hears someone reciting the oath, muttering under his breath.

"No evil shall escape my sight!" " Except Parallax. "

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 7, 2005 10:07 PM

Yeah, but at that point you're going pretty damn far back. I mean, it's not like the transition from successful JLI to Identity Crisis was immediate. There was the better part of a decade in between. And JLI was one corner of DC. I'm not sure First and Ten is what you want. I think you just want "They're shitting all over characters and stories I really liked."

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at April 7, 2005 10:10 PM

Snowspinner: The JL titles (Justice League of America, JLI, JL Task Force) were selling pretty well. They were cancelled because the new Higher Ups didn't like the concept of the franchise being diluted, and wanted to go back to the Big Guns. So they hired a Hot Writer to restart the Big Guns League and told the other three creative teams to wrap it up or have it wrapped up for them.

This happens a LOT in comics. A book may be selling fairly well, but some editorial power shift brings in someone who doesn't like it, and it dies.

Comment from: T Campbell posted at April 7, 2005 10:40 PM

...Not quite. JLI sold well for about five years, then progressively less well for another five after Helfer, Giffen and DeMatteis left. By the time Grant got to it, it was definitely "change or die" time.

Beetle and Lord had had plenty of dark moments before, even during the Giffen days. But this is different. This is trying to recontextualize even their merriest moments as dark or pathetic underneath.

I do think that's sort of First and Ten.

The unspoken message is "you were foolish to laugh, fool reader."

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 7, 2005 11:10 PM

I think "you were foolish to laugh, fool reader" would have worked better as a message if most of the readership of Countdown or Identity Crisis knew who Blue Beetle or Sue Dibny were. But the fan reaction to Dibny's death was more "Sue Who?" than outrage. The outrage segment was significant and vocal, but far from a majority.

Which is, I think, what really happened here. They needed some death to get the dramatic ball rolling. They didn't want to pull another "Kill Hal Jordan." So they killed some people most of their readers wouldn't miss.

And most of them didn't.

The question, for me, becomes what the dramatic ball is. Identity Crisis, for me, mostly was a worthwhile dramatic ball. I really enjoyed how the story got smaller and smaller. But part of why that's worked has been the fallout - the united villains, Dr. Light's brutal attack on the Teen Titans, Wonder Woman's confrontation with Superman, Batman's knowledge of his mindwipe, etc. The story worked for me because of how small a thing finally brought it all out.

I'm hopeful about Countdown too. There's some good talent - Willingham's Acts of Vengance sounds great, and Rucka has never written crap.

The cost, honestly, was some characters that many of the readers didn't even know, and fewer still cared about. The issue here is that some of you are among the few who did care. But I'm unconvinced that's a criticism of the story.

Comment from: miyaa posted at April 8, 2005 1:01 AM

DC and Marvel started to do these kind of "Infinite Crisis" thingy in the 70's, if I recall correctly.

What ever happened to just telling a good story with Marvel and DC? I've watched Soaps that had more coheirent plots than the stuff I've seen written in these comics. Gneech, you hit the nail on the head when you talked about sustaining growth. It's one thing to bring in readers, it's another thing altogether to keep them, and it's obvious they aren't doing it.

Take a look at Image and Dark Horse. What are they doing that the traditional Marvel and DC weren't doing? They were providing interesting characters who had a lot of depth. And in quite a few cases, parts of the plot didn't involve a lot of uses of their abilities either. They were even able to throw in a plot that involved the characters having to make a tough choice that the readers could relate to. In other words, for the most part, Image and Dark Horse's superheroes were apart of some really interesting plots.

Jpcardier makes a very interesting point on what he considers "dark." I would find it to be not so much dark as humorous if these things would start to happen to the DC heroes. In fact, I've probably already seen these kind of jokes in Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law episodes.

Just because you kill off a lot of sidekicks, people wearing red costumes, and other innocent bystanders, that doesn't make a story a dark story. If you put it in such a way that it seems that it's the only way to survive and that it doesn't matter what happens, you're just trying to survive (that is, make it where an action is irrelevant whether it is a good or evil act, or even an action that is important period), then I think a plot could be considered a dark plot, i.e. the Sin City comics.

Comment from: jp is just a guy posted at April 8, 2005 1:25 AM

Huh. I have no idea who Max Lord is. I don't know if that means I'm missing out or not.

It is kind of sad that Blue Beetle's dead. He seemed like such a nice fellow, maybe not so choosy about his animal representation, but pleasant enough in his own way.

I don't understand why the major companies always seem to feel the need to go dark. How come they never go to the other extreme? Like maybe Hal Jordan comes back, only instead of Green Lantern he's "Ice Cream Lantern" and he gives everybody a free double-scoop (Rocket Pops for the lactose intolerant). I'm just blue-skying here, but you get my drift.

Oh, jp-who-isn't-me: I am actually an evil clone of myself. I'm not sure how it happened, all I know is that I woke up one day with a fierce beard, a spangly vest, and the urge to do evil. These things happen, I suppose.

Comment from: gwalla posted at April 8, 2005 1:52 AM

DC could avoid these things if they'd just learn to stay away from multiple realities. But it's such an easy story concept that they keep going back.

"Hypertime" was a godawful mistake. After simplifying the DC Universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths (arguably necessary), then fixing up the continuity gaps with Zero Hour, they came out with The Kingdom, a miniseries that started out with a story, then suddenly took a left turn into an advertisement for the new concept of "hypertime".

Hypertime resurrected the old multiverse concept, but worse: whenever there were multiple possibilities, a new timeline would branch off for each. Think about that. Every decision in a story results in another reality where a different choice was made. If somebody dies in a story, there's a reality where they're still alive. And you can visit that reality. This removes ANY EMOTIONAL IMPACT from ANY ACTION in ANY STORY ANYWHERE. For example, take the original Crisis. Remember all the tragedy of characters dying? Guess what, it doesn't matter, because there's still a hypertimeline where the Crisis never happened and everything's still the way it was! None of the sacrifice mattered a bit because it only sort of half happened!

The ONLY thing DC did right with hypertime was the editorial decision that all of the non-Elseworlds titles would take place in the "main" hypertimeline, and trips to other hypertimelines would only be temporary, for the sake of specific stories, rather than the Pre-Crisis arrangement where some comics were based on one Earth and some on another.

So they finally figured this out, and have to do yet ANOTHER Crisis to clean up the mess they could have easily avoided by learning from their own mistakes.

Comment from: Christopher B. Wright posted at April 8, 2005 2:37 AM

Personally, I never had a problem with the Earth-1, Earth-2... Earth-899 concept. I thought Crisis was a great story and a great way to "restart" the DC universe in order to re-introduce it to a new audience, but the multiple earths concept was a great way to reconcile the silver age, golden age, and modern characters without having to jump through a billion continuity hoops.

Comment from: Trevor Barrie posted at April 8, 2005 2:37 AM

"DC could avoid these things if they'd just learn to stay away from multiple realities. But it's such an easy story concept that they keep going back."

I don't follow. If anything, it's DC's insistence on a single universe that's causing the problem under discussion. With multiple universes, there's no need to throw out the old concept if you want to reboot and do something different... the old and the new can coexist side by side. The single universe is what prevents them from having their cake and eating it too.

As far as infinitely branching Hypertime... well, it wasn't clear from The Kingdom that this is how Hypertime works, but admittedly The Kingdom wasn't really long on details. But at any rate, the infinite branching is the way the Marvel Universe has always worked, and it doesn't seem to cause any lack of dramatic impact. Yeah, there's a universe where Gwen Stacy didn't die, and one where Odin's sacrifice to defeat Surtur failed, and one where Avengers Disassembled didn't suck... who cares? All I'm interested in is the universe in which the story I'm actually reading takes place. The existence (err, so to speak) of these other universes is completely irrelevant, until some author deliberately decides to make it a plot point.

Comment from: Shelby Reiches posted at April 8, 2005 3:32 AM

I'm part of the 90s generation (or would it be 80s? I was born in '86, but I never figured out how all that works). Computers, video games, electronic entertainment up the yin-yang, which I think includes webcomics. Well, I was never particularly big on comics, as much as I loved them.

I still remember the first comic I ever read was this issue of Spider-man my dad handed me that told of Spidey being shrunk down by an accident involving some other super-hero. He just kept shrinking and shrinking, until he was merely a giant in the microverse, but then he became so small he went into a microverse of the microverse, within which he encountered some guy with a device that had a number of colored labels on it with, I believe, the name of an emotion on each label.

The comic ended there, and I never found out what happened, but I reread it. Then I reread it again and again, even reading the Sandman comic in there after that and the other stuff I can't remember, but I believe existed.

Every once in a while I would get a comic, my father taking me down to some comic shop near where we lived in Wayzata, Minnesota (very clean place... Can't remember the name, though I believe it began with a D.). I would look around and try to decide on a comic to get, but the story arcs were so intimidating (19 issues long was one about a conflict between Spidey and Carnage!). I liked the relatively self-contained ones, or the final issues that resolved the conflicts altogether.

I was mainly a Marvel reader, particularly Spider-Man and X-Men (loved Wolverine, as I always become a fan of the guy you're supposed to become a fan of out of some kind of odd reflex). I remember playing that Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin Genesis game. I do have a few DC trade paperbacks, though. World Without a Superman and The Rebirth of Superman (or whatever that one's called).

As few comics as I got, I would reread them over and over, each issue again and again. I did catch some major plot points, such as the climax of the clone storyline in Spider-man. So I consider myself a comic lover. I know at least a basic background for a number of heroes.

I have some money, now.

There are comic shops within walking distance.

I don't buy the DC or Marvel comics.

I guess DC just irks me at this pointÛ I can't help but associate dark imagery with them, and I like something more light-hearted (always loved Spidey's mid-battle thoughts). Marvel... I dunno. The Ultimate series feel somehow cloistered and maybe like they're trying a bit too hard to appeal to my age group and missing the mark.

Ah well, just a random rant, I guess. I did buy the first four issues of this Blade of Kumori thing from whatever company it is that does the new GI Joe and Street Fighter stuff, the fifth issue of which I plan to buy when I can get to a comic shop this month. Other than that, I guess this whole thing was just pointless musing.

Comment from: Alun Clewe posted at April 8, 2005 4:12 AM

All right, I didn't grow up with comic books like many people here probably did, and what knowledge I do have about them is more recently gained, so maybe I don't have much business posting my opinion here, but...

Gwalla, I really couldn't disagree with you more.

I have a hard time seeing Crisis on Infinite Earth as anything other than a disaster, let alone "arguably necessary". The multiple earths business allowed all sorts of interesting story concepts; it allowed characters who couldn't really logically coexist in the same world to still carry their own stories, and for everything to work out fine. It wasn't broken; it didn't need fixing.

And Crisis just made everything more confusing, trying to shoehorn totally different and often contradictory concepts into a single world. Not only did DC throw away all the story potential of the multiple universes, not only did they effectively retcon the vast majority of their previous output into never having happened, but they ended up with a single universe that was totally inconsistent and just didn't make a whole lot of sense.

The return to the allowance for multiple universes, if perhaps not the precise way it's being done (I'm not familiar with that myself, and don't know whether your description of the branching universes is accurate--frankly, that sounds just like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which I've never been a fan of), is, IMO, definitely a good thing. There's no reason to restrict the entire company's output to stories taking place only on one world. If anything, I'd say they would have been better off having more different universes from the start...but I won't get into that right now.

If there's any lesson DC needs to learn from Crisis of Infinite Earths, IMO, it's to never, ever do anything like that again.

Comment from: Ray Radlein posted at April 8, 2005 5:00 AM

DC shouldn't have done another reset, they could have done something along the lines of the Ultimate Marvel idea... like Eric said, make 'em cheap and put them in supermarkets for kids (unlike Ultimate... expensive rassin' frassin'... this is why I buy the trade paperbacks...) and you'll get readership, and the kids will be in on the ground floor, and will be able to stick with it.

That's basically a description of the "...Adventures" universe right there. Lower cost, new (and well thought out) continuity, and aimed at kids (while being so well written that they were perfectly marketable to adults as well).

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 8, 2005 8:58 AM

In response to a couple of comments, let's note that hypertime has more or less never been used as a plot point in any actual comics.

As for Crisis, I don't think its major result was a simplified continuity. Rather, I think its major result was the creation of the comic book fan as a fully distinct market and a particular type of person. It was the first comic really marketed entirely towards fans. Its fallout was not a new DC universe, since the new DC universe was not all that different from the old. Its fallout wasthe Big Event story for fans.

Sometimes the results of that have been unbearable. (Knightfall for $200. Secret Wars II for $400) Other times they've been pretty damn cool. (No Man's Land. And... umm... OK, Marvel has never done a good Event.)

It's too early to tell what Infinite Crisis is going to be in quality. (But I don't think its success will hinge on whether or not it killed too many has-been characters who hadn't done anything important in a decade)

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at April 8, 2005 9:36 AM

In response to a couple of comments, let's note that hypertime has more or less never been used as a plot point in any actual comics.

Not so. Ignoring The Kingdom for a moment, there was a long run of the Flash that used (and for a time even featured) an alternate/hypertime world Flash while Wally was off being Speed or something.

It's been over a decade since my 10 comic a week habit, and I still know that. Someone help me.

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 8, 2005 1:33 PM

The Unofficial Hypertime Website (I bet you didn't expect THAT link!) suggests that there were two Hypertime stories after its introduction - the Mark Waid Flash story and a Superboy story. And Hourman, which got cancelled. Hypertime only explicitly came up in two of the Flash issues (It was only brought up at the very end of the arc), and the Superboy arc lasted 6 issues.

Giving us a total of 8 DC comics after The Kingdom dealing heavily with Hypertime.

(I still have a 10 comic a week habit. I also knew there was a Hypertime fansite. I need the help.)

Comment from: Balur posted at April 8, 2005 3:29 PM

I've read the superboy story, and part of the flash, not to mention i have the entire Hourman series. They all delt with hypertime in a good way. Basically something I think that has been left out is that if something from one hypertime stays in another hypertime for too long, those two hypertimes will begin to merge.

This keeps it from having hypertime characters show up on a regular basis. Hypertime is extreamly hard to enter, and you can't stay there. It minimizes the stories.

ALso to the person who said there is a hypertime where Crisis never happened, if I remeber my DC history correctly (and it's changed so many times I could be wrong), Crisis didn't change the universe from 1986AD onward. It affected things from the begining of existance. That means that there was one world and only one world before the hypertimes split off.

Comment from: Justinpie posted at April 8, 2005 4:06 PM

My dad liked the crazy 60s-70s stuff, then he got older and realized how dumb they were.

I really got into the whole Death of Superman/AzBat/Crazy Hal era of "Heroes With Attitude" when I was 16, but later realized how dumb it was.

I have a feeling some teenager is wetting himself about how revolutionary this concept is, until he turns 27 and realizes how dumb it turned out to be.

I feel very old.

Comment from: Snowspinner posted at April 8, 2005 5:12 PM

I dunno. At 22, I reread the crazy 60s-70s stuff, and it's a bunch of vibrant and completely crazy explorations of genre. They're batshit crazy bundles of brilliance. No end of crap in them too, but it's all exciting crap. They writers are clearly having no end of fun coming up with more and more weird shit. That's a distinct kind of good, and I don't think it's a dumb kind of good.

I reread Death of Superman or AzBat and think "Man. This sucks." I think I pretty much thought that when I was 14 too, because I sold all my comics. (I'm very proud of the fact that I stopped buying comics in the six months before the Clone Saga and Age of Apocalypse. I had foresight!) There was no manic energy, nor was there crafted story. There was "How can we get BIG SUPER MEGA-EVENT going." Writers were irrelevent.

I read Countdown and Identity Crisis, and it doesn't feel like Death of Superman or Azbat. It doesn't feel like supercrack throw ideas out either. If anything, it feels like Killing Joke and Dark Knight Returns to me - careful considerations of characters that may change them and break them, but are still based on the idea of telling stories. And I look at the writers they have, and I'm mostly respectful. Geoff Johns is good. Greg Rucka is good. Wilingham is very, very good. Winick, eh. Simeon, eh. Gibbons, not as good a writer as an artist. Meltzer was good, though.

I don't think this is a return to the 90s crap. It's different. Maybe not good - it's too early to tell. But it's a new set of mistakes, I think.

(If you want the return of the 90s, try Marvel. Avengers Disassembled was a masterpiece of 90s crap, and House of M is looking just as bad.)

Comment from: Matt Estes posted at April 9, 2005 2:34 AM

I just got a couple of recent issues of Wizard magazine from my library the other day, and I'm really confused about what's going on over at D.C. right now. There's some new "funny" JLA stories coming out (i.e. stories with Booster Gold and Blue Beetle), but since they feature characters who died recently, the stories are "out of continuity". There's All-Star Batman and Robin, which is suppose to be for people who haven't read a Batman comic in twenty years and want to jump right in, with no continuity, and Dick Grayson still a little kid wearing the Robin outfit. Then there's Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman, which features all of the pre-Crisis continuity that the Crisis was created to wipe out in the first place- they pick up right like the Crisis never happened, and even feature Scratchy the Super-Cat, or whatever the heck it's called. And THEN there's Alex Ross's JLA comic, which is "out of continuity" and basicly is a cool re-imagining of The Legion of Doom from Superfriends. AND THEN there's Hal Jordan coming back to life, just like Zero Hour never happened.

So my question is, what the crap is going on over at D.C.?? It sounds like whoever's running the joint basically just okays every cool sounding idea that's shown to him without coming up with any overall vision for the company. If readers still want a pre-crisis style Hal Jordan, then why the heck aren't they bringing him back in an All-Star book, instead of messing with current continuity? For that matter, if their creating a line specifically for out of continuity stories (it doesn't sound like the All-Star line has any particular one mission, since All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman and Robin don't sound like their striving to achive the same things) then why don't they stick all the other non-continuity stories I just mentioned in their? The mind boggles.

Comment from: gwalla posted at April 9, 2005 3:28 AM

Alun_Clewe: I think Crisis was probably necessary, to clean up a universe that had become impenetrable to anyone trying to jump in at the time. Having various titles set in different universes was confusing, especially since there were some duplicate characters in multiple universes (at one point Detective Comics had a "not an imaginary story! Batman DIES THIS ISSUE!"...because it was the Earth-2 Batman and not the one in the regular series), and some different characters with the same name (The Atom, Hawkman). Crisis itself handled thing terribly, however, and pretty much failed at what it was supposed to do.

Part of that was because it was written by the seat of the pants. At one point they refer to only 3 universes surviving, but 4 do, due to the fact that editorial still hadn't figured out what they wanted to do with the Charlton characters (the same reason Watchmen uses close equivalents to the Charlton characters rather than the originals--so some good came out of it at least). Also, they weren't willing to cut off the existing storylines in the various titles for the reboot, so they had to fudge things to allow for some continuity between pre-crisis and post-crisis, which caused all sorts of problems.

Comment from: kafziel posted at April 9, 2005 6:22 AM

Quick question: who was the guy "we saw beaten to death, set on fire, blown up, and carried offstage"? I'm not really up on the specifics of a bunch of DC backstory, and don't quite know who that is.

As for Countdown, and what it's leading into ... well, it has the potential to be really bad, but it could be good, too. I'd wait to see how it turns out; remember, Countdown is just an intro, setting things up. Dismissing Infinite Crisis at this point is, I think, the equivalent of judging a series entirely by its #0.5 preview in Wizard.

As for the whole Hal thing ... well, admittedly, I haven't read the really old-school Hal stuff. I've read pretty much all the GL stuff post-Crisis, though, and to be frank, Hal was kinda boring me. I thought the whole fall from grace and subsequent villainhood was a great cautionary tale, of what happens when even the best of intentions are taken too far, and one that was reprised almost as well with the whole Ion thing in later GL issues. The end of Final Night, I thought, was an extremely fitting end for Hal - he recognizes what he's let himself become, and tries to do one last thing right. The return as the Spectre ... I dunno. And I'd been really hoping that the whole "2 Green Lantern lines" thing was a red herring, and that Rebirth would end with Hal finally completely dead, and at peace for the first time in forever. His appearance in Countdown seems to belie this, unfortunately, but since they aren't shuffling Kyle to the wayside to make room for his predecessor, it might yet work out (I liked Kyle. He was accessable in a way I never really found Hal to be).

'course, Countdown went on sale the week of April 1st. So, there might be that.

Comment from: Alun Clewe posted at April 9, 2005 9:13 AM

Alun_Clewe: I think Crisis was probably necessary, to clean up a universe that had become impenetrable to anyone trying to jump in at the time.

I'm sorry, but that argument makes very little sense to me. It strikes me as considerably less confusing to have heroes in different titles inhabit different realities than to try to stick them all together in a single universe and hope to make it consistent and keep each title self-contained. In fact, it's a rather circular argument, since the confusion only comes in when you try to reconcile all the different backgrounds and stories and make them work together; much simpler, and much more accessible, to just have them happening in different realities to begin with, so you don't have to keep track of things between titles.

Of course, having the different titles occurring in different universes does have one arguable disadvantage: it means no crossovers. At least, no crossovers without venturing out of continuity or involving travel between "realities". But I don't think that's enough to justify the means. Trying to smush everything together into one "reality" is too big a price to pay just so any writer can on a whim have any character meet any other character whether those heroes have anything to do with each other or not, or have remotely compatible backstories.

Maybe that's the root of the problem: not having too many different realities, but having too many crossovers that muddled those realities and connected them in awkward ways. But, be that as it may, I stand by my original thesis: Multiple realities--good. Trying to force all the company's output to take place in a single universe--very, very bad.

Well, at least we're agreed that, whether or not its intentions were good, Crisis was handled badly. ;)

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