nightwing
Defender of Kandor
Council of Wisdom
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Posts: 1627
Semper Vigilans
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« Reply #15 on: February 10, 2005, 03:34:24 AM » |
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Well, Crisis and ZH are alike in that sense; both may have been good ideas, and perhaps even necessary things, but they turned to crap somewhere in the execution. In the case of Crisis, it was a combination of Wolfman being allowed to serve as his own editor (never a good set-up) and not being able to properly end the story because of politics and disorganization. (Logically the last two issues should have introduced us to the new DC timeline and set up the new versions of Superman, Wonder Woman, et al. But when issue 12 rolled around, the editors on those books -- and the rest -- still hadn't decided yet what form those reboots would take!).
With Zero Hour I suspect it was much the same. No one could deny that even 7 years into the new "continuity," things were falling apart in a major way, and something had to be done to stop the bleeding. But no mini-series, even had it been done well, could have stopped the inevitable slide into chaos (maybe we should call it "discontinuity"). Because that would take strong editorial oversight and the enforcement of strict rules, neither of which seems possible in modern comics. These days artists and writers are the selling points on comics, not so much characters, and to get the big names you have to promise them the freedom to go nuts. Byrne was just an early example, but far from the last.
The real problem is that DC has "Marvelized" itself in the sense of cross-title continuity. Maintaining a continuity among the Superman titles, or various mutant titles, is one thing, but trying to maintain a cohesive universe across all published titles may well be impossible. And yet with all these cross-over events, that's what both companies have forced themselves to do. Starman's stories must interlock with Power Girl's stories, etc, and that's asking a lot. You can't on the one hand give a writer total freedom to play with characters and events, and on the other expect him to respect or even keep up with all the crazy stuff his colleagues are pulling on other books. Personally I'd be happy just for Superman stories to tie together logically, or Batman stories, and see no need for either to tie into each other much less every other title DC publishes.
Marvel was able to build a company-wide continuity because they started with three or four books and went on from there. When Crisis ended, DC had how many books in print? Tons anyway. Superman wasn't ready to reboot for almost a year afterwards, and Wonder Woman even later than that. Meanwhile Batman kept going like nothing happened, basically. With that as a foundation, you'll never have a DCU continuity that's worth spit. Expecting a four-issue mini-series like Zero Hour to fix all the problems and keep them fixed is about like the Coyote expecting that little umbrella to protect him from a falling boulder.
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