|
Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2022 10:40:52 GMT -5
Late night insomnia musings here, but getting back to the topic of Crisis as a standalone story versus an event, again I originally had the intention of this being more around the ramifications to DC continuity going forward. To me, Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen were much bigger events in terms of standalone stories. Crisis was for comic book fans--and by fans, I mean folks who were bothered by "things that didn;t fit continuity." Dark Knight and Watchmen were self-contained and were stories, not "universe maintenance". You didn't need an knowledge of Batman beyond what you'd get from a couple of stories from pretty much any era--including the TV show--to "get it." (The only exception were the references to "Jason.") Really well said!!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2022 10:53:56 GMT -5
I voted "bad", but wouldn't say that the Crisis series was Plan 9 from Outer Space bad(...) This line will stick with me forever. If you can bring Ed Wood into a Crisis on Infinite Earths conversation, you somehow win.
|
|
|
Post by tarkintino on Mar 24, 2022 13:25:43 GMT -5
If any DC content fell in the deservedly low direction of any Ed Wood film, it would be an ocean-liner's worth of late Golden / early Silver Age superhero stories.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2022 14:12:01 GMT -5
If any DC content fell in the deservedly low direction of any Ed Wood film, it would be an ocean-liner's worth of late Golden / early Silver Age superhero stories. The period I love for DC is about 1957-1965, give or take a little. What an explosion of titles and characters...Superman family stuff was awesome, we got the Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, etc. Batman was awesome. Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Sea Devils...I collect/read from a lot of eras but this stuff is pure gold to me. LOVE the silliness, it's such clean fun and light-hearted escapism and so much charm. The art has this great aesthetic, both in a pop art sense, but also some of that cover art was amazing (I can't get enough Russ Heath Sea Devils cover art for instance). As a kid, I was reading the Bronze Age stuff off the newsstands (about 77-85, and then...BOO CRISIS!) and have a lot of sentiment for that as well, but can't get enough of the older Silver Age material. If you read mature, you'll get demure. If you read for fun, you're never done (and no, I have no idea what that means).
|
|
|
Post by tarkintino on Mar 24, 2022 14:57:50 GMT -5
If any DC content fell in the deservedly low direction of any Ed Wood film, it would be an ocean-liner's worth of late Golden / early Silver Age superhero stories. The period I love for DC is about 1957-1965, give or take a little. What an explosion of titles and characters...Superman family stuff was awesome, we got the Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, etc. Batman was awesome. Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Sea Devils...I collect/read from a lot of eras but this stuff is pure gold to me. LOVE the silliness, it's such clean fun and light-hearted escapism and so much charm. The art has this great aesthetic, both in a pop art sense, but also some of that cover art was amazing (I can't get enough Russ Heath Sea Devils cover art for instance). As a kid, I was reading the Bronze Age stuff off the newsstands (about 77-85, and then...BOO CRISIS!) and have a lot of sentiment for that as well, but can't get enough of the older Silver Age material. If you read mature, you'll get demure. If you read for fun, you're never done (and no, I have no idea what that means). Titles such as Sea Devils, the Adam Strange run from Mystery in Space and The Doom Patrol were the non-main DC superhero titles that worked within their own "section" / had their own voice not expected to be a part of every other Silver Age title in the way Superman or Batman were. Yes, the Doom Patrol and Adam Strange were (eventually) more integrated with the superheroes, but the disasters were with the main superhero titles and the endless stories and growing roster of characters with experiences / histories that simply did not have even a referential connection to other titles. DC was digging their own grave, with Marvel--despite their own retcon/reboot issues--supplying the shovels. With a few truly great superhero titles or characters as the 60s were winding down ( The Doom Patrol, Batman, Detective, Brave and Bold, Deadman in Strange Adventures, occasionally the Teen Titans) / going into the 70s (the Green Lantern revolution, the Spectre run in Adventure,, etc.), they were outnumbered, and could not be the bolt to hold a universe together. COIE would be DC's salvation. Without it (and still doing things that were causing their gargantuan problems), I wonder if the company would have survived in any recognizable way. Oh, and Heath's covers for Sea Devils were a standout industry-wide at the time. ...and CELEBRATE CRISIS NOW AND FOREVER!
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2022 15:10:28 GMT -5
The period I love for DC is about 1957-1965, give or take a little. What an explosion of titles and characters...Superman family stuff was awesome, we got the Legion of Super-Heroes, Supergirl, etc. Batman was awesome. Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Sea Devils...I collect/read from a lot of eras but this stuff is pure gold to me. LOVE the silliness, it's such clean fun and light-hearted escapism and so much charm. The art has this great aesthetic, both in a pop art sense, but also some of that cover art was amazing (I can't get enough Russ Heath Sea Devils cover art for instance). As a kid, I was reading the Bronze Age stuff off the newsstands (about 77-85, and then...BOO CRISIS!) and have a lot of sentiment for that as well, but can't get enough of the older Silver Age material. If you read mature, you'll get demure. If you read for fun, you're never done (and no, I have no idea what that means). Titles such as Sea Devils, the Adam Strange run from Mystery in Space and The Doom Patrol were the non-main DC superhero titles that worked within their own "section" / had their own voice not expected to be a part of every other Silver Age title in the way Superman or Batman were. Yes, the Doom Patrol and Adam Strange were (eventually) more integrated with the superheroes, but the disasters were with the main superhero titles and the endless stories and growing roster of characters with experiences / histories that simply did not have even a referential connection to other titles. DC was digging their own grave, with Marvel--despite their own retcon/reboot issues--supplying the shovels. Oh, and Heath's covers for Sea Devils were a standout industry-wide at the time. ...and CELEBRATE CRISIS NOW AND FOREVER! Hah hah, I love that spirit!! Cheers on that!!
|
|
|
Post by Duragizer on Mar 24, 2022 23:38:57 GMT -5
But as also often discussed in the past, that brought me back around to how Crisis really was not nearly as disruptive to Batman's continuity (Earth-2 Helena aside) as it was to the Superman family. Superman was just a gut punch to me, most immediately because of the death of Kara but then an attempt to reboot with a quasi Golden Age approach. Depowered, no Superboy, no Supergirl, etc. And the Legion became this sort of anomaly, clever as the "pocket universe" idea was to keep it alive. Personally, I always liked the more powerful version of Superman because it allowed for more interesting "non-combat" activities like time travel, deep space travel, etc. And even on the creative side, Byrne was all the rage at the time of course, but the loss of Curt Swan never felt right. He simply "was" the Superman artist, I would have loved him on at least one title until he retired. Heh. In my case, if it wasn't for the reboot, I wouldn't be a Superman fan today. Or at the very least, would've outgrown the character long ago. The one major misstep taken was allowing Byrne to spearhead it rather than Wolfman/Ordway. I agree Swan should've been kept on after the reboot in a greater capacity than he was.
|
|
|
Post by berkley on Mar 25, 2022 2:03:26 GMT -5
I haven't voted yet since I've never read it and don't have any feel for the how the nature of the DCU changed before and after Crisis, so I can't say I think it's bad or good from that perspective. I do plan to read it sometime relatively soon, though, mainly because it's one of George Perez's major projects and after all these years, that factor has finally come to out-weigh my relative lack of interest in DC characters. I have all the issues now but for one that seems to be over-priced for some reason, but I think I might go ahead and read what I have anyway, since it seems the over-pricing of certain back-issues is only escalating.
|
|
|
Post by adamwarlock2099 on Mar 25, 2022 8:05:47 GMT -5
If I've ever read a pre-Crisis DC comic it was probably a random Batman/Detective Comics issue whose cover caught my eye. So I have no horse in the race when it comes to the actual changes, or lack of promised changes that happened because of COIE. However like others have posted, I do dislike it for the trend it set for constant repeating reboots. I also didn't read it until the late 90's, so I also didn't have the context of DC's continuity at the time it was released.
As far as the story itself; I've read it at least 3 times, and yet I couldn't tell you much about it. It seems it never really made sense to me reading it, and seemed that it was over-written (is that even a word?) and could have been condensed down to 4 issues and told the same story. Art was good though. Mr Perez was knocking it out of the ballpark then. So I guess I will vote bad at 45, just because it hasn't managed to impress me. Coupled with the starting of the trend of reboots.
|
|
shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,709
|
Post by shaxper on Mar 25, 2022 8:26:27 GMT -5
So we're 22 votes in at this point, and there's no real age trend emerging (which may have been obvious to others, but again sort of shifted my assumptions a little). I think your assumptions are valid and would have played out differently elsewhere. One of the beautiful things about this community is that, unlike other places on the internet, we actually listen to one another. Thus, my tastes and perceptions of comics have absolutely been shaped by members not in my own demographic. It's why I only find demographic surveys useful here when they are asking about past experience. If you asked what folks thought of Crisis at the time, you might get something closer to what you were expecting I just want to say that I'm thoroughly enjoying the conversation, as well as your super-enthusiastic replies to everyone...even folks disagreeing with you. I'm thoroughly appreciative of the fun and good spirit you are adding to our community. Thank you.
|
|
|
Post by MDG on Mar 25, 2022 8:42:57 GMT -5
Thinking on it more, I think part of the reason I'm negative of Crisis is that it seemed a failure of imagination. When Schwartz and Fox wanted to explain why there were two different Flashes, and why one knew of the the other through comic books, they came up with Earth 2. In the 70s, there were a couple similar stories, like Englehart's "first" JLA adventure with Rex and Robot Man. It made things fit without destroying or directly contradicting what others had created. Kind've like "Yes, and..." in improv. And that's why those explanations were fun.
Crisis seemed to be an admission "We're not creative enough to explain things. We're going to blow it up and start over."
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2022 9:18:58 GMT -5
So we're 22 votes in at this point, and there's no real age trend emerging (which may have been obvious to others, but again sort of shifted my assumptions a little). I think your assumptions are valid and would have played out differently elsewhere. One of the beautiful things about this community is that, unlike other places on the internet, we actually listen to one another. Thus, my tastes and perceptions of comics have absolutely been shaped by members not in my own demographic. It's why I only find demographic surveys useful here when they are asking about past experience. If you asked what folks thought of Crisis at the time, you might get something closer to what you were expecting I just want to say that I'm thoroughly enjoying the conversation, as well as your super-enthusiastic replies to everyone...even folks disagreeing with you. I'm thoroughly appreciative of the fun and good spirit you are adding to our community. Thank you. Shax, thank you both for your insights on the assumptions around the survey and the community here, as well as your kind words on contributing. I'm a newer member here, but I can actually see how those tastes and perceptions could be sculpted, even just in this thread I've found a lot of points raised by folks that have given me more to think about. I'm glad this has been a fun discussion, I sometimes worry a topic like this might be a bit of a tired retread, but again, it really is a great community here and I've enjoyed the exchange of perspectives!
|
|
|
Post by Marv-El on Mar 25, 2022 11:36:29 GMT -5
I think we can all agree that the best thing about CoIE is Perez. If this is trainwreck, it's a great looking trainwreck, right?
I'm 49. CoIE was a good intro into DC for me back then. I'd read occasional issues of DC, some Superman, Batman, their team-up titles, JLA, Green Lantern. Mainly it was NTT and Flash though and I was just getting into the LSH around this time as well. So I was familiar with the multiverse and could follow along with it fairly easily. So it really didn't bother me if they decided to blow it all up though. But seeing the breadth of intros and appearances of various characters in CoIE really helped expand my knowledge of their comics. Since I was relatively new to them, the various reboots that followed seemed good to me overall, especially Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash.
That's the good part. However, I voted bad and there's two reasons why.
First, the death of Barry Allen. Now, he tends to get overlooked since Supergirl died in #7. I had only read sporadic stories of Supergirl, mainly in the Superman Family title. While I liked Linda, her death really didn't strike a nerve for me other than the impact it had on Superman. Barry's death on the other hand, yeah, that struck a nerve.
Flash was one of the very few DC titles that I had begun following prior to CoIE. I had begun around the beginning of the Trial of Flash arc. Reading that, I was catching up on back issues, specifically the issue where Barry killed Reverse-Flash. In fact, my initial focus on hunting down back issues of Flash was appearances of Reverse-Flash. For my money's worth, Cary Bates is an extremely underrated writer and his Trial of Flash arc was a first in putting a hero on trial for murder. I was hooked and even though the title ended, Barry had a happy ending.
Until CoIE #8. His death hit harder for me. While that lead to Wally taking over the mantle and fulfilling the legacy, which was great, it still stung. What's worse, with all the frivolous Crisises that followed, an underlying motif resulted that in each one, a Flash had to die! (I think Geoff Johns enacted that, thank you so very much). Simply aggravating to lose my favorite character every time DC felt like they had to start things over AGAIN.
My second reason is that the idea of the multiverse holding a specific spot or reason for certain characters makes sense. Specifically, Shazam, Captain Marvel, needs to be on Earth-S. His style of stories and characterization work better in such a situation. Instead, DC blows it up and they been struggling to integrate him EVER SINCE. It just seems easier to incorporate such characters (or their needs) into a separate universe/world than trying to fit a circle into a square spot of the DCU.
So I don't hate CoIE overall just a few specific aspects of it.
|
|
|
Post by mikelmidnight on Mar 25, 2022 11:37:08 GMT -5
And even on the creative side, Byrne was all the rage at the time of course, but the loss of Curt Swan never felt right. He simply "was" the Superman artist, I would have loved him on at least one title until he retired. Heh. In my case, if it wasn't for the reboot, I wouldn't be a Superman fan today. Or at the very least, would've outgrown the character long ago. The one major misstep taken was allowing Byrne to spearhead it rather than Wolfman/Ordway. I agree Swan should've been kept on after the reboot in a greater capacity than he was.
Ironically, prior to the Crisis and seeing his work on the Fantastic Four, John Byrne was literally who I wanted to see on Supeman! But … the existing Superman, not a reboot. As with others, I mainly liked the Man of Steel series (except for the Batman issue), but was less interested in him going forward.
DC received other proposals for the Superman reboot at the time, including one from Steve Gerber and one from Alan Moore. None of these have ever been made public.
|
|
|
Post by badwolf on Mar 25, 2022 11:52:52 GMT -5
I actually didn't like that Barry died either. Even though I was not a big DC reader, he was still the Flash to me. It was a good way to go, though.
|
|