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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 22, 2022 16:13:54 GMT -5
I just think it's cool that the word "multiverse" is now an accepted term in all kinds of sciences. Not sure who at DC coined it or borrowed it -- maybe in COIE? -- but it's apparently an easy way to descripe the possibility of universe upon universe. Just as it was back when I first read about it in 1964. I was 10. I was under the impression that Michael Moorcock had introduced it to the SF/fantasy world, but maybe he was just the first I heard about. (Man, I miss reading Moorcock for the first time. It felt so cool and avant-gardiste!) I figured the word must have been a scientific term that wasn't in popular use and was stumbled upon or picked up by some DC person -- Wolfman, Levitz? -- and given a huge boost in public knowledge. But there must have been some readers of Moorcock on the DC staff, too, so he certainly could have been the source. Apologies: I only know Moorcock from those Elric stories way back when in the first Conan series and "Behold the Man," in Marvel's "Unknown Worlds of Science-Fiction" magazine. That story added quite a bit of fuel to the fires of skepticism that were blazing in my young heart!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Feb 22, 2022 16:41:00 GMT -5
I just think it's cool that the word "multiverse" is now an accepted term in all kinds of sciences. Not sure who at DC coined it or borrowed it -- maybe in COIE? -- but it's apparently an easy way to descripe the possibility of universe upon universe. Just as it was back when I first read about it in 1964. I was 10. I was under the impression that Michael Moorcock had introduced it to the SF/fantasy world, but maybe he was just the first I heard about. (Man, I miss reading Moorcock for the first time. It felt so cool and avant-gardiste!) It definitely appears that Moorcock coined the term in The Sundered World. Fredric Brown had previously used the idea of parallel universes in What Mad Universe in 1949 a bit more explicitly than Fletcher Pratt and Sprague de Camp did in the earlier Harold Shea stories.
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Post by profh0011 on Feb 22, 2022 16:56:19 GMT -5
I think Crisis did the exact opposite of what it was purported to do, making a bigger mess of continuity than ever before. 100 % !!!
Crazy enough, decades later, on THE FLASH, the whole of season 2 dealt with "Earth-2" (and a hero from "Earth-3").
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Post by Prince Hal on Feb 22, 2022 18:31:43 GMT -5
I think Crisis did the exact opposite of what it was purported to do, making a bigger mess of continuity than ever before. 100 % !!!
Crazy enough, decades later, on THE FLASH, the whole of season 2 dealt with "Earth-2" (and a hero from "Earth-3"). So-o-o-o-o-o confusing. As confusing as that episode with the Bizarro Jerry, Kramer and George.
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Post by profh0011 on Feb 22, 2022 21:54:51 GMT -5
So-o-o-o-o-o confusing. As confusing as that episode with the Bizarro Jerry, Kramer and George. I figured out midway thru season 1 that the entire TV series was an "alternate timeline", created when the villain went back in time to kill Barry as a child... but wound up killing his mother instead... then, lost his powers and got STUCK there.
I was speculating, that, perhaps, the "original" timeline, was the one in the DC Comics!
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Post by tonebone on Feb 23, 2022 10:04:42 GMT -5
Alan Moore in Tom Strong had great fun with the multiversal concept. I think it's a horrid shame h never got to write a JLA/JSA crossover. I think Cody has it right: the original DC Multiverse was what I loved about the line, and the JSA and the Marvel Family were what kept me coming back even to occasionally mediocre stories. They didn't need a restructuring at a conceptual level; they only needed restricting at an editorial level. Tom Strong was just a fantastic series overall and totally agree with you on how well he treated the multiverse concept. It brought back so much fun to me that had been gone for so long. As an aside, I thought Moore was totally on fire during this time, much as I loved his earlier breakout period with Watchmen and all that, titles like Tom Strong, Top 10, etc. are some of my favorites he ever did. Of course, Marvel also has Moore to thank for the idea that there is a "Marvel Multiverse". He coined the phrase "Earth 616" in Captain Britain in the UK series, and just threw out there the idea that there were multiple parallel realities. Moore was, of course, a huge fan of DC Silver Age comics, and was probably a fan of the multiple earths, there. This may have been covered already in this thread, and if so, I apologize. I am obviously only on the post quoted above, and have yet to comb through the rest.
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Post by tonebone on Feb 23, 2022 10:17:36 GMT -5
Re: Crisis, I think it is one of the biggest missed opportunities in comics history, and one of the most damaging things DC ever did. The negative repercussions of it are still felt today. That being said, I don't think DC could possibly have anticipated just what they were blowing. At the time, when comic books were a "march forward, never look back" kind of medium, Crisis made sense for streamlining the DC universe. Back continuity was not a priority, the priority was making sure the books of today were accessible and made sense. The problem? Crisis happened at the exact same time as Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. The moment when DC editorial reconfigured their publishing strategy to appeal to the old mindset of readers was also the moment where a new mindset was being birthed: the trade paperback. Unforseeable at the time, today's consumer culture is a binge culture. As television has shifted from live broadcasts to occasional reruns to syndication packages to DVD boxsets and finally to online streaming, the mentality of consumers has shifted to the point where they don't just want to start in the middle, they want to start at the beginning. This mentality translates to comics in the form of manga's continued success in Western markets, because well ahead of American comics, manga has been designed to be read and reread, and the default mode for reading manga is to start at the beginning and read through dozens or even hundreds of volumes. American superhero comics struggle long and hard to reconcile with this. Standalone and creator-owned works do well (certainly a contributing factor for The Walking Dead's regular chart placement). The best they can settle for is long runs by a creator, which hopefully tell their own story within the larger context of the character's journey. But to that end, Simonson's Thor and Bendis' Daredevil are just seasons in an endless TV series. There are always going to be readers who have a pathological need to start at the beginning: Batman's first night out, Spider-Man being bitten by the spider, etc. On this front, historically Marvel stands above by virtue of the fact that there has been no major Crisis event. Sure they have dabbled and come close, but if you wanted to you could start at Amazing Fantasy #15 and read all the way up to modern day and get something like a coherent story, because Amazing Fantasy #15 is still canon. DC, on the other hand, is screwed. And what screwed the pooch is Crisis. Crisis's biggest flaw is it made the reboot a story, which means the old canon and the new canon are one and the same, which creates an absolute hellstorm of contradiction that is impossible to reconcile. What should have happened, an opportunity that is sorely missed now more than ever, is a full reboot. Complete. Square one. When you already have books like Man of Steel and Year One going, why not? As Batman is what I'm most intimately familiar with, I'll use him as an example. Year One is by far the most common answer someone will get when they say they want to start reading Batman comics "from the beginning." That's great, because Year One is a great story. The problem is, then what? There is no "Year Two" (no that one doesn't count) that picks up immediately after the first. The story that immediately followed Year One in the series is Jason Todd's origin, which bypasses a massive amount of Batman's history. What remains is a smattering of disparate miniseries, graphic novels and collections from a wide range of creators and time periods. The Legends of the Dark Knight was the perfect opportunity to rectify this, and it seemed to be leaning that way initially, but ultimately that ended up being just another Bat-book. The amount of Batman's story, of significant events that are still referenced to this day, that are only available in pre-Crisis issues is astounding, one major example being Dick Grayson's entire tenure as Robin. Think about that. If you're new to Batman comics and you want to read about the classic Dynamic Duo you need to dig back 50 years. The smartest approach to continuity in recent years has come from Grant Morrison. In his eyes, every version of Batman happened and it's been one life. That unified approach was touched on by Darwyn Cooke in The New Frontier, which had the Earth 1 and Earth 2 heroes exist in the same world, with Barry and Hal being successors to Jay and Alan and having Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman be former members of the JSA who go on to co-found the JLA. Brilliant, elegant, perfect. So much opportunity missed if only they could have foreseen. I couldn't help but notice this post was your 616th! Coincidence? I think not.
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Post by tonebone on Feb 23, 2022 10:19:02 GMT -5
We shall soon reach the singularity... where every issue is a new #1 ! Nooooo! If they do, that’s comiXology screwed, then. Also, RIP Comixology. It's a conspiracy.
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Post by profh0011 on Feb 23, 2022 11:31:50 GMT -5
Crisis's biggest flaw is it made the reboot a story, which means the old canon and the new canon are one and the same, which creates an absolute hellstorm of contradiction that is impossible to reconcile. What should have happened, an opportunity that is sorely missed now more than ever, is a full reboot. Complete. Square one. When you already have books like Man of Steel and Year One going, why not? As Batman is what I'm most intimately familiar with, I'll use him as an example. Year One is by far the most common answer someone will get when they say they want to start reading Batman comics "from the beginning." That's great, because Year One is a great story. The problem is, then what? There is no "Year Two" (no that one doesn't count) that picks up immediately after the first. The story that immediately followed Year One in the series is Jason Todd's origin, which bypasses a massive amount of Batman's history. What remains is a smattering of disparate miniseries, graphic novels and collections from a wide range of creators and time periods. The Legends of the Dark Knight was the perfect opportunity to rectify this, and it seemed to be leaning that way initially, but ultimately that ended up being just another Bat-book. The amount of Batman's story, of significant events that are still referenced to this day, that are only available in pre-Crisis issues is astounding, one major example being Dick Grayson's entire tenure as Robin. Think about that. If you're new to Batman comics and you want to read about the classic Dynamic Duo you need to dig back 50 years. The smartest approach to continuity in recent years has come from Grant Morrison. In his eyes, every version of Batman happened and it's been one life. That unified approach was touched on by Darwyn Cooke in The New Frontier, which had the Earth 1 and Earth 2 heroes exist in the same world, with Barry and Hal being successors to Jay and Alan and having Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman be former members of the JSA who go on to co-found the JLA. Brilliant, elegant, perfect. So much opportunity missed if only they could have foreseen. OH YEAH.
If you have a movie series based on books, or a TV series based on books or comics, the TV series, generally, is separate and has its own beginning.
Normally, you don't start with viewers being aware that some previous continuity was ALTERED in order to jump-start the new one. (THE FLASH tv series actually did this, but the "reveal" was a slow one, doled out one tiny piece at a time over a season-long "mystery" storyline.)
I think the bigest problem with the Post-Crisis / "New DCU" was, some things changed, others didn't, and when you had a "new origin" like MAN OF STEEL or BATMAN YEAR ONE, instead of continuing from there, they JUMPED FORWARD 10 years, and then either left people with NO idea what "really" happened now in the new continuity, or, they slowly filled in the back-story.
Someone in KLORDNY once laid out a time line for the "new" Batman stories-- most of which were in LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT-- and it was surprising how coherent and consistent they were. Other than being presented TOTALLY OUT OF SEQUENCE. Imagine if that had been a single, coherent, chronological narrative instead. It's no wonder that within a couple years, the only new BAT-book I was still interested in was LEGENDS... funny enough, the one Archie Goodwin was editor on, instead of Denny "drag 'em thru the mud" O'Neil.
Oh, and regarding Robin... it gets me how many younger fans (spurred on to some degree by certain editors and their overbearing attitudes) dislike the whole IDEA of Robin, ignoring just how popular he was for decades. I've read that the BATMAN series increased in popularity immmensely, after Robin's introduction.
But in the Post-Crisis / "new DCU", more and more as it went, they tried harder and harder to limit his existence.
I'm also one of the few who generally thinks Robin becoming "Nightwing" (a name borrowed from the Weisinger Superman era) was a bad idea. And that initial Nightwing costume designed by George Perez was just... UGLY. The WB cartoons got it right. They gave Dick Grayson TIM DRAKE's Robin costume.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Feb 23, 2022 12:26:16 GMT -5
But DC also feels more natural because (and this is a description that may rarely been used for it) their multiverse is so much simpler. Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-3, Earth-S, Earth-X, it's easier to identify and track who's where. Earth-616? These are the Avengers of Earth-36842? What? No, far too complicated and frankly I don't care to learn any of the designations. What I loved most about the old DCM was that it specifically reflected comics history … going back to the 40s comics from DC, Fawcett, and Quality (Earth-3 was an anomaly but it was also narrowly themed). I was under the impression that Michael Moorcock had introduced it to the SF/fantasy world, but maybe he was just the first I heard about. (Man, I miss reading Moorcock for the first time. It felt so cool and avant-gardiste!) It definitely appears that Moorcock coined the term in The Sundered World. Fredric Brown had previously used the idea of parallel universes in What Mad Universe in 1949 a bit more explicitly than Fletcher Pratt and Sprague de Camp did in the earlier Harold Shea stories.
L Ron Hubbard, Slaves of Sleep, 1948 (not claiming he's the originator, but he's an earlier example).
Tom Strong was just a fantastic series overall and totally agree with you on how well he treated the multiverse concept. It brought back so much fun to me that had been gone for so long. As an aside, I thought Moore was totally on fire during this time, much as I loved his earlier breakout period with Watchmen and all that, titles like Tom Strong, Top 10, etc. are some of my favorites he ever did. Of course, Marvel also has Moore to thank for the idea that there is a "Marvel Multiverse". He coined the phrase "Earth 616" in Captain Britain in the UK series, and just threw out there the idea that there were multiple parallel realities. Moore was, of course, a huge fan of DC Silver Age comics, and was probably a fan of the multiple earths, there. This may have been covered already in this thread, and if so, I apologize. I am obviously only on the post quoted above, and have yet to comb through the rest.
Moore came up with the 616 number, but previous writer Dave Thorpe had already placed Captain Britain on the alternate Earth of Captain UK. Prior to that, Roy Thomas had given us Other-Earth (in Avengers) and Earth-A (in Fantastic Four).
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Post by zaku on Feb 23, 2022 19:10:50 GMT -5
A little off-topic, but I think that Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) is the only DC-character whose adventures you can read continuously from issue (his storylines continued after each Crisis)
I can't think of any other DC characters so little altered by all the various reboots.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2022 19:15:29 GMT -5
A little off-topic, but I think that Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) is the only DC-character whose adventures you can read continuously from issue (his storylines continued after each Crisis) I can't think of any other DC characters so little altered by all the various reboots. didn't the Emerald Dawn minis essentially retcon most of GL's history and "invalidate" his continuity. I don't remember much of them besides Hal as a drunk driver serving time being implanted into his early history as a ring slinger and even that impression is probably off. -M
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Post by zaku on Feb 23, 2022 19:20:39 GMT -5
A little off-topic, but I think that Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) is the only DC-character whose adventures you can read continuously from issue (his storylines continued after each Crisis) I can't think of any other DC characters so little altered by all the various reboots. didn't the Emerald Dawn minis essentially retcon most of GL's history and "invalidate" his continuity. I don't remember much of them besides Hal as a drunk driver serving time being implanted into his early history as a ring slinger and even that impression is probably off. -M Yes, there were retcons and tinkering about his origins (but really, that sort of things happen even without a "Crisis"), but all his storylines picked up right where they left off before every Crisis. After the original COIE, Zero Hour and even the New 52. If someone, absurdly, had only read his comics, s/he would not have even realized that in theory there had been a huge cosmic reset.
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Post by chadwilliam on Feb 23, 2022 21:38:01 GMT -5
A little off-topic, but I think that Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) is the only DC-character whose adventures you can read continuously from issue (his storylines continued after each Crisis) I can't think of any other DC characters so little altered by all the various reboots. I get the sense that Barry Allen fared reasonably well after the Crisis (well, continuity wise at least, I mean, he did die) and Zero Hour. I know that these days he's been updated for the 90's with a grim and gritty 'Father murdered his mother' backstory, but I suspect that for a character who died in 1985, DC actually did a competent job at preserving most of his little corner of his world for the next 20 or so years.
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Post by profh0011 on Feb 23, 2022 22:23:58 GMT -5
There's so much of Hal Jordan's long history I never read, but, oddly enough, I did read the 2 years leading up to CRISIS and the several years after CRISIS, stopping only the very month before Emerald Twilight.
My impression was that Emerald Dawn added the drunk driving B.S. (I'm not sure it was ever mentioned again after Emerald Twilight II). Also, there seemed to be some minor things pushed to the side and forgotten. For example, there was a story in ACTION COMICS WEEKLY where Hal found out that the ring, on its own initiative, when it first found him, altered his mind so he would have NO FEAR. When he found out, he ordered the ring to remove this modification, and then found himself hanging on the edge of building in total panic because of an apparent fear of heights that he (as a TEST PILOT!) had somehow never experienced before. Peter David pulled this one, and I get the impression it was quietly forgotten in the "it now never happened" category.
There was a 2nd story in ACW involving a large, excessively-powerful alien named "Malvolio", who oddly enough, wore a variation on Alan Scott's GL costume. At the climax of the story, Malvolio DESTROYED Hal's GL ring! But then got KILLED. And Hal took his ring. But as soon as he left, Malvolio revealed he wasn't really dead... and he was LAUGHING, in anticipation of what was going to happen next.
Except, that next never happened. And there was some editorial edict that declared that Malvolio would NEVER appear again, or ever be mentioned by any writer from that point on. This was a major "WTF?" moment if I ever saw one, as the Malvolio story struck me as the ONLY Hal story in that entire year of ACW that had been worth reading. (Jim Owsley did that one. Kinda trying to redeem himself for having murdered Katma Tui in the first 8 pages of the ACM run.)
And then there was ONE MORE story in ACM, a feature-length one-shot, which did so much to violate Hal's continuity that, although never stated anywhere, HAD to be an alternate timeline story ("Imaginary Story", in Uncle Mortie terminology.)
When ACM ended, Emerald Dawn happened next, and one episode in, Jim Owsley decided he didn't want to work with returning editor Andy Helfer, so Keith Giffen took over the story while Gerard Jones came abord for dialogue. While this was going on, Gerard Jones discussed his desire to follow in the footsteps of Roger Stern & Tom Lyle when they created their new STARMAN, and put the horrendous mess that so many had made of Hal's life and career behind him, and create a NEW character to take over as GREEN LANTERN.
Helfer, who'd put so much effort into GL before the ill-advised ACW experiment derailed it all, preferred the idea of "bringing closure" to Hal's career, and convinced Jones to sign on for a long-term plan that would take at least 6 YEARS to unfold. He did. They brought Hal BACK FROM THE BRINK, and it looked like things were really shaping up.
Until Helfer left, his assistant Kevin Dooley took over, his ego went to his head, and HE wound up derailing Helfer & Jones' plans 4 YEARS IN.
I didn't read the book again until GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH when Geoff Johns got around to FIXING what Dooley went to such absurd lengths to break.
Finances forced me to stop buying comics some years back, so I'm kinda surprised to hear that Hal's career somehow made it thru "the new 52" apparently without a blip. How about that?
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