Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I have a feeling that many have no problem appreciating and critiquing the concept of the multiverse...there is some good talk of it over at Batman through the Ages...

My question is more to generate some discussion -- was the IDEA of the "Crisis" a good one?  Not that is was subsequently handled well, but was it a novel idea?

It happened WAY past my comic reading days, but the idea of it and its scope still impress me...

I like the post-Crisis Universe, but I think that DC could mantain its Multiverse. It wasn't so complex... And I likd to see different versions of the superheroes (see for example the Earth-2... He killed enemies and married Lois... This made him very different compared to the Earth-1 version).

Was the idea of Crisis a good one?

Well, let's take it from the POV of the "official" reason given; that readers could not keep up with all the twists and turns and complicated baggage of multiple Earths.  This is patently false.  First, I not only kept up with it as a kid, I loved the concept...it was one of the main draws for me that DC had over Marvel.  I loved tracking down all the details of this Earth versus that one, just as I'd later enjoy figuring out the huge roster of the Legion or who was who in Marvel's ever-burgeoning world of mutants.

In point of fact, it was a non-issue. Only a handful of books even hit on the "Multiverse" theme with anything like frequency: the Flash, Justice League of America and Brave and the Bold.  For all the other DC books, the multiple Earths were only an occasional plot device, if at all.  It's not like you had multiple Hawkmen, Batmen, etc running into each other every month.

But then that whole notion of "we're making it simpler for the reader" has long since been exposed as a fraud.  The real reason for the Crisis was because Marvel was kicking the stuffing out of DC on a regular basis, and DC editorial's solution was to "make us more like Marvel."  Was THAT a good idea?  Again I say no...one Marvel is enough, and DC will never beat them at their own game.

Now, was the Crisis story, as told, a good idea?  Again, not really.  What I've heard of Marv's original concept might have been intriguing...destroy the Multiverse in the last issue and then reboot every monthly in the DC line the following month.  This would have given the DCU a fresh start, but it would also have been a Hurculean feat of editing prowess and in the end DC didn't have the skill or guts to do it.  Instead, some characters were rebooted months later (Superman), some years later (Wonder Woman and Batman, sort of) and some not at all (Green Lantern).  This created a hopeless mess of a "continuity" that's been far more confusing and chaotic than anything that came before 1986.

So was Crisis a good idea from a storytelling point of view?  No, it took away more story possibilities than it created, and that's never a good move.  Was it a good idea from a marketing/editorial standpoint?  Maybe in principle, but the execution was a misfire.  

I have to say at the time my reaction was "wait and see." I was quite prepared for the "crossover to end all crossovers" and I was interested to see where they'd go with it.  But in hindsight, now that we can see how it all panned out, it was a disaster.  The idea itself may have had merit, but not enough thought went into pulling it off.[/i]

Even though DC insisted that the Multiverse died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, we've seen clear evidence otherwise:

1.  The Time Trapper created an Earth and Krypton "Pocket Universe" in order to produce a Superboy for the Legion of Super-Heroes.

2.  Earth-2, home of the Crime Syndicate of AmeriKa in the Qwaad Antimatter Universe.

3.  Ocassional interactions with Earth-616 in the Marvel Comics Universe.  Usually these crossovers were never part of mainstream continuity, but the recent JLAvengers definitely left its mark.

4.  A couple years ago Superman was seen intercepting "a dead Earth from another dimension" and removing it from a potential collision with Earth by VIBRATING it until it disappeared!

5.  In the last Supergirl arc, "Many Happy Returns", Supergirl Linda Danvers replaced Kara Zor-El in a variant Earth-1 (or possibly THE Earth-1 until her prescence caused a timeline diversion from the recorded history).

6.  In the ongoing Rann-Thanagar War, Rann was shifted to an otherwise empty universe.  Perhaps this universe was once swept clean by an antimatter wave?

And then we have alternate timelines (current, past and/or future) which were seen very recently in both Teen Titans and Superman/Batman.  Hypertime, the Post-Crisis equivalent to the old Multiverse (where everything that could happen exists, INCLUDING old Pre-Crisis continuity) figured prominently in The Kingdom and Zero Hour.  The catch is that one cannot remain in an alternate Hypertimeline without unravelling Reality, so you can't take up permanent residence in another timeline like how Black Canary emigrated from Earth-2 to Earth-1.

I'd really like to argue points here, just to get a debate going but I can't... 8)

1. I completely agree that the so called rationale was probably faked, it WASN'T hard to keep track of the multiverse and it gave a richness, re-introduced history without always having to write it new (i.e, many Golden Age stories) and it was a damned clever use of sci fi when it was first introduced (a time when sci fi and concepts of time and parallel mirror universes and dimensions were taking hold)

2. It seems inescapable that DC was trying for an epic and to become more like Marvel...

But it seems almost too tempting to want to try for a grand coalescence of all time and space going back to the creation of the the original universe, what an opportunity for writers and fans who followed the multiverse...I could imagine myself being excited by it because you would have to test your knowledge and memory of the multiverses to understand how they might be destroyed...

Which may defeat DC's so-called rationale for doing it, or at least imply that they weren't honest about why they were doing it...

It's ironic that DC thought it needed to eliminate its multiverse, for it to be more like Marvel.  Marvel had its own multiverse all along.  A multiverse setting is better for a company like DC or Marvel.  Several reasons for that:

   1.)  Licensed characters;  if they are on their own earth(s) they can still crossover with the publisher's characters.  If the license is not renewed that earth is simply not used again.  


   2.)  Revamps/retcons/reboots;  just say that the new version of the character is his/her counterpart on a newly discovered earth.  The new version can still interact with the character in the other titles.  You don't need to alter everyone's past to do it that way.


   3.)  Acquired characters;  just imagine that DC kept its multiverse, & continued buying out other comics lines.  Here are a few universes they could have added to their multiverse;  Valiant/Acclaim,  Malibu's ultraverse, First Comics, Hero Alliance, Power Factor, & many others.

Unless there was a feeling that wasn't going to work as a business model anymore...it was a dawn of blockbuster effects movies, music videos and cable TV, video games, etc.  and it may have led DC to think that an epic followed by a re-boot and then carefully marketed special editions was the way to go....

I still have to think the challenge of combing everything would have been hard to resist, and the potential for dealing with a huge subject, poignant lines, and tragic and shocking deaths..

Which is what they were doing:

Earth-4 - Charlton Comics
Earth-S - Fawcett Comics
Earth-X - Quality Comics

Also a DC Multiverse (if done right) could include the universes of the different movies/tv series/cartoons based on DC characters.  They could have a story where the different versions of Superman (for example) meet.  Those versions including; golden age, silver age, current, fleischer cartoons, Kirl Allyn movie serial, radio program, George Brewer/Bessolo/Reeves series, superfriends,  other cartoons from 60s & 70s,  cartoon from 1988,  Christopher Reeve movies, Superboy tv series,  Lois & Clark,  the animated series/justice league/justice league unlimitted.  

     Crisis was a great story, but destroying the DC Multiverse was one of the dumbest ideas in history.

Well, I think it was great...

I just read the other day that a number of people were surveyed after a screening of the Peter Jackson King Kong trailer, and some huge percentage had no memory of the movie and thought that dinosaurs in a King Kong movie was too much like Jurassic Park...

So I wonder how younger generations with short memories and lots of choices would react to so much competition for the shrinking comic book dollar...

And of course, jacking up the price for limited editions is not a great way to solve that problem either...

Sometimes I wonder if something better just could have been constructed after the Crisis...

Crisis on Infinite Earths happened when I was 2 or 3 years old. Nevertheless, I've read it and come to understand the effects it had, especially on Superman. Earth-4 did not exist before the series...it was the first to designate an earth for Charlton comics, right before destroying them all.

I don't really mind having all the heroes on one earth. I really dislike having half of them destroyed in the process. Why is it that the original and current Green Lanterns can co-exist, but the original and current versions of Superman cannot? Why did Argo City, Midvale, most of Smallville, Htrae, and Kandor have to go?

I'm following the current "Crisis 2" to see what happens. But unless Clark Kent is Superboy again I won't consider the comics to be legitimate. I don't even like a lot of superhero comics...I mostly like Vertigo, Swamp Thing, etc. But don't mess with Superman!...there are more than enough pre-Crisis Superman comics to occupy my time for the rest of my life...

On the earth at the same time just doesn't quite cut it for me...it misses things that are forever gone...in some ways they almost shouldn't co-exist...

A Hawkman with Egyptian origins...

A Flash that my mom remembered...

Creepy omnipotent characters like the Spectre...

Johnny Thunder...

Jeez, a lot more interesting than Superman's "power rating"versus the Hulk...

But that's just me...

Of course, a reboot of the entire line would have been the best answer after Crisis.  It would not have taken any coordination:  maintain most of your series and introduce a few flashback stories or miniseries to get both new and older generations up to speed with the "new" universe.  I'm sure there was quite a bit of pressure (which Warner/DC should learn to ignore) from long-term fans and the collector market/industry (people like Steve Geppi, etc).  In fact, I can see some higher up at Warner/DC eventually doing just that, erasing current continuity by editorial fiat, all for the good of company health.

That being said, the concepts and continuity pre-Crisis were perfectly healthy, lacking only imagination, artistry, and editorial/corporate commitment in some cases.

And the Crisis now seems more useless than ever, as previous posters have noted the continued presence of the multiverse (after all, how can an editor erase a basic principle of quantum physics?).  In addition, creators in more influential/popular media like tv/animated cartoons/movies are free to pick and choose the concepts they like from previous ages of DC, like the use of characters and alternate earths in the Justice League/Bruce Timm series of cartoons.

In sum, the Crisis was wrong-headed, despite some affecting scenes (writing-wise) and generally great art (if you like George Perez, and I used to like him more).

Disclaimer: I have never read the "Crisis" and I never intend to. Seems too much like watching an execution.

The suggestion that the multiverse was "too confusing" doesn't wash with me. The first comic I ever read (at age 7) was a JLA/JSA crossover. The concept of two Earths and (semi-) duplicate heroes was what hooked me on comics.

I think some kind of "consolidation" could have been useful. For example, merging Earth-X and Earth-S so that the old Quality and Fawcett heroes could form one team. But Earth-One, Earth-Two, and Earth-Three should have been kept.

Well, even if you had read it (I didn't until 2000), I guess that a lot of people could agree that it may have been memorable but the universe built on the bodies and elimination of a lot of intellectually interesting characters was a wash out...

Cheers...

The most interesting part, in my opinion.

Another reason i prefer the Pre-Crisis DC Multiverse to the current DCU is crossovers.  Inter-dimensional crossovers are more interesting (to me anyway) than same-earth meetings.  In a multiverse setting you can have as many heroes as you want, & have any of them meet any (or all) of the others.  Granted you can also do that on just one earth, but  here things end up super overcrowded real fast.  Besides that old Marvel cliche of "heroes fighting each other when they meet, because each thinks the other is (or could be) a super-villain",  would be at least a little more credible if the heroes involved are from separate earths.

I agree with that...

One thing I leave out, and many would probably disagree with me about is that the Bronze Age left me a little cold...

I had a stack of my older brother's DC comics from the entire 60s and started buying my own in the late 60s and 70s...and some of the changes struck me hard, Superboy's youthful Kent parents, I never liked Morgan Edge or the Global Broadcast Network, the Sand saga, the Super sons...they were definitely different...there is a huge difference in tone between the two "Super Teacher from Krypton" stories (the second one I only have read here)...stupid characters like Snapper Carr in the JLA I could just ignore, but the creeping "realism" was turning me off...

The Crisis taken alone seems to be a super hero story again...

But that's just me...

llozymandius writes:



Well, yes, it was more interesting.  Usually in the JLA/JSA crossovers at least a year had passed, and in the case of some characters even longer, since we'd seen the Earth-2 crew.  That gave us a chance to catch up on them.  And since they weren't in a monthly book, there was the freedom to do really interesting and permanent things with them, without worrying about how it would affect another book in the line.  A big problem with cross-overs today is making them work within every character's continuity...it rarely succeeds.

And as you say, mixing universes feels much more like an "event."  Having two heroes from different towns bump into each other is no big whoop.

Matter Eater Lad writes:



Yes, the Crisis is THE superhero story, in the sense of most characters involved in one big, 12-issue slugfest.  But what do you do with it?  You can tack it on to the Bronze Age as "THE END" and end your collection there.  But you can't really use it as a starting point for the new DCU.

And it does not stand on it's own.  In order to understand, or care, about what the heck's going on, you have to have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of pre-Crisis history. In fact, it's kind of ironic, given that it was meant to make things easier for the reader, that this story requires more knowledge and understanding of tangled DC history than any other tale ever published.  Certainly it is much less accessible than any JLA/JSA crossover I ever read.

So you have to know a lot of history to even understand the series But at the same time, you have to have a willingness to watch that history come to a violent end.  So I have to wonder; who is buying all these hardback, paperback and soon "Ultimate" collections of the story?  Modern fans?  They don't have any emotions invested in the characters, so why bother?  Old-timers like me?  Why would I want to watch it all happen again?

For my money, Crisis is a story that had tremendous interest at the time...but because it was an event, not because it was a good story.  Here in 2005, it's an irrelevant oddity that doesn't fit anywhere and can't stand on its own.  It's kind of like "Who Shot JR"...it seemed important at the time, but who gives a rip now?

That's the irony that makes me think the DC explanation is bunk and that they knew it...but, what a blast to plan and write the story at the time...

The only thing I'm not sure of is if it was impossible to construct a new DC mythos...it had been done before, the Silver Age itself was a new direction after a more or less 10 year hiatus of Golden Age cancelled titles...and it was different than the Golden Age, more emphasis on detail and sci fi, less on mysticism...

The problem is that Silver Sorcerous and Blue Jay had left their Earth and lived on the main Earth for years with no problems totally invalidating this idea. Furthermore the Black Zero saga where one Superboy went on a collection spree of both his counterparts and Doomsday again invalidating the idea.

Supergirl is a real problem as it is not clear just what her reality really is. The LSH books had it a reality the Time Trapper saved from before Crisis (which made no sense) while the Superman books had it an alternate timeline the Trapper shaped to his choosing by reaching back 1 million years. But we later find out that the Trapper had wiped out everything else making him insanly powerful (Guardians Darkside and all the rest gone) which didn't make much sense either.

Except as noted by this site itself the Silver Age did not spring full formed when the Barry Allen Flash came out in 1955. You had the Flux Age from 1948-1958 where the three surviving heroe books (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman) slowly setting the stage for what would become the Silver Age. It was much like the Modern Horror comic revival in the late 1960's set the stage for the Bronze Age where the stories started getting more of an 'edge' to them.  After Crisis and Secret Wars we entered into the Iron Age of comics and while there have been a few diamonds (Destiny's Hand, End of an Era, Dominus Saga) the stories have on the large part not held up that well.

Tying this conversation back into Superman, one of the severe weaknesses of Crisis is that no matter how things could have been designed on "Earth-Zero," it meant that Superman was no longer going to be the FIRST superhero ever. Previous to crisis, on both Earth-1 and Earth-2, Superman was the first superhero to emerge on either world.

Having Superman not be the first superhero ever, and merely having him be a follower in a heroic tradition established by others decades before, is rather an insult to Superman's role in the history of comics, where he WAS the first. Superman isn't just another superhero; he was the point of origin for the entire concept. Superman as "just another superhero" compromises his uniqueness, even if he is the first after a brief pause in superheroic activity.

Responding to the original point:
Taking aside for a moment the eventual outcome, the concept ITSELF of altering the DC Universe into a Marvel-style universe seems like a pretty sound idea. Why WAS Marvel selling more books than DC was? It isn't because of talent; both companies had brilliant, talented people writing and drawing their funnybooks, and some, like Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, and Jack Kirby, got their start at one company and then switched to another.

At least the reason *I* preferred Marvel to DC comics as a kid is because there was a degree of cohesiveness about the Marvel Universe the DC Universe lacked, which made the Marvel Universe feel more REAL. And I don't just mean team-ups. DC had Team-Ups up the wazoo; for pity's sake, even the Viking Prince teamed up with Sgt. Rock in an issue of Brave and the Bold.

What I mean by cohesiveness is this: most heroes, except the purple-pants tearing Hulk, get their costumes of "unstable molecules" from Reed Richards. When Spider-Man was revealed as a coward, there were panels of other superheroes discusing their thoughts on this revalation. Captain America didn't participate in some Avengers comics because in his own book he was being forced to cooperate with the Red Skull (and the other Avengers that same issue wondered if Cap had turned traitor). This only improved under the writers that took over. Englehart's tying the Blue Area of the Moon was created by the Kree, for example.

This degree of interconnectivity is visible at DC but is extremely rare, and only begins to appear after the Marvel model shows up. Almost never do we see Superman in the Silver Age mentioning the Justice League that he is a part of in his own book. Elliot S! Maggin did his best to establish a connection between Superman and the Guardians of the Universe, for example, but that was well into the Bronze Age. Most of this work was done by writers at Marvel; witness all the unification of concepts that Roy Thomas did with the Golden Age characters like the JSA, All-Star Squadron, and so forth.

One "exception" is the Batman/Superman team; Superman had a "Batman Room" in the Fortress of Solitude, and Batman sometimes showed up in Superman's comics to help keep his secret identity in front of Lois or Lana. But this was very much an example of lack of world-building cohesion too: Batman didn't return the favor. Maybe the Batman writers felt that having Batman have a partner that was as smart as he was with infinite more range and utility would make Batsy look bad in the comparison.

The approach that was taken, to give DC more a Marvel-style approach, was a very good idea. What I *don't* see is, why is this, and the multiple earths concept, mutually exclusive? Can somebody explain this?

Maybe those are good points -- but the two worlds concept did tie two TIMES together, the JLA necessarily did as well...Hawkman and the Atom interacted on adventures, but having not read Marvel in the 60s, I don't know how cohesive they were...when did Marvel become so cohesive...right after Spiderman, the Uncany X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, or did that take some time as well?

Quite right, MatterEaterLad; a case might be made in the fact that DC had more of a Marvel-style cosmos in the Silver Age than today. The device of dimensional travel brought the Golden Age together with the Silver Age very nicely, and nothing has been created since that has had the elegance and refusal to invalidate stories that this explanation provided.

When did the interactivity in Marvel comics begin? Right from the outset of Marvel comics. Marvel had something DC in the Silver Age never had, which was Stan Lee doing the scripting chores on just about every single title. Stan had a good-natured hucksterism that urged him to give a mention to the Hulk at least by the fifth issue of FF, when the Torch, reading his comic, says, "I'll be doggoned if this guy don't remind me of the Thing!" We can see it right from the outset in Fantastic Four, when by at least the third issue, during the battle with Korrgo, we see Mr. Fantastic use Ant-Man's shrinking gas to allow a planet of aliens to escape in a single evacuation ship.

DC did not view writing their comics as an act of world-building, and so details were not as concrete as say, Marvel. Witness the various different versions of Atlantis (Lori Lemaris's, Aquaman's, and others), the different vistas of the future (the one with the Superman of 2965, Tommy Tomorrow's future, Kamandi's future, and the future of the Legion of Superheroes) or the multiple explanations for the dominant life form on Mars, for example. If Crisis was viewed by the writers during and after as an opportunity to say "okay, THIS is what Atlantis is like," or "this is what the future is like," the DC Universe would have been stronger and more engrossing because of it.

All good points, though the attempts to reckon the two civilizations of Atlantis are interesting in a desparate sort of way... :D

Sometimes I think Marvel benefitted from its ascendency from very little, and yes, guided by one man...

DC was cobbling together a longer continuous history along with new titles for new demographics (like when Congo Bill became Congorilla, or inventing Superbaby at all -- WHO was that supposed to reach, comic reading mother's of toddlers?)...the Flash of Two World's remains devestatingly clever to me!

The problems with crossovers even bothered me in its more limited DC iteration...how could the Flash balance the threat of Starro the Conqueror threatening the JLA with the Weather Wizard running amock in Central City?  What was the Joker up to when Batman ventured into Kandor with Superman?

Welcome to the boards!

Thanks! I'm a longtime lurker.

As for the Flash Starro/Weather Wizard problem...gosh, I don't know. Well, I guess it is that Starro doesn't attack everyday, that may be it.

I suppose one would compare it like this: just because your Dad is in the hospital doesn't mean you get to miss your daughter's school play. An imperfect analogy, I suppose.

But you are right, and these questions OUGHT to be considered; what IS the Joker doing when Batman's in Kandor? A writer that takes the approach of treating the DC Universe like a real place, like the Marvel writers treated theirs, ought to provide an answer to this question. Thus, all writers needed to do was take this approach and perhaps a single event like Crisis would be unecissary.

Returning to Crisis, the reason I thought Crisis was a good idea in theory, was that the intention was to create a DC Universe where Superman talks about what is going on in JLA that month, where the Flash wonders if he should be fighting Weather Wizard when Starro is on the loose in JLA.

Notice I did NOT say Crisis was successful in this regards. First, because it invalidated stories, and the very DEFINITION of a cohesive universe is that the characters remember the past.  Now it's not even clear what the past is. Who IS Hawkman these days, for instance?

At Marvel, as you said, Stan Lee wrote nearly everything. And he cross-promoted a lot. Of course, since nearly every Marvel story had to have a "hero vs. hero" battle, crossovers were a fact of life. Also, most of the Marvel heroes operated in New York, whereas DC had Metropolis, Gotham, Central City, Coast City, Ivy Town, etc., etc., etc. Much easier for, say, the FF and Spider-Man to meet in midtown Manhattan than to explain why the Atom was in Central City.

At DC, there was a degree of cohesiveness within each editor's domain. For example, Flash and Green Lantern teamed up quite often since both were edited by Julius Schwartz. Also consider the Adam Strange/Hawkman crossovers. Later, when Schwartz took over Batman, we got to see the Weather Wizard fight Batman. And don't forget the Zatanna storyline that crossed through nearly every Schwartz title, ending in JLA.


Actually, there were some early JLA stories where a member was absent and the explanation was that he/she was "busy on a personal case." In later JLA stories, there were many times that members were said to be "away on a mission in space." I always wondered who summoned the JLAers, and why we didn't get to read about those missions. Of course, that was just an excuse to eliminate some heroes from a story. I also had to wonder where all the non-JLAers (Supergirl, the Teen Titans, etc.) were when the JLA was fighting some invading aliens or the like.

It seems to me that the single universe that DC got after the CoIE (Crisis of Idiotic Editors) has this problem in spades. If a group of aliens invades, you've got the JLA, JSA, Titans, Marvel Family, and Sugar & Spike involved, or you've got to explain why they aren't! But if you do involve everyone, you can stretch the story through 732 monthly issues and challenge the readers to get every one (and the special cover variants) so they don't miss a single important plot-point. Then you collect all the stories into a TPB within six months.

Please pardon the previous paragraph. I accidentally hit the Sarcasm-Lock key on my keyboard.

LOL...

I was going to bring up the point of Marvel heroes having to go mano a mano everytime they first meet (the time could have been used for better purposes and is kind of a waste of energy)...about as "real" as two accountants having to slug it out at a "national convention" for allowable deductible corporate losses  in Debuque, Iowa...

Actually, to me, a "crisis" as promoted in Silver Age DC was a sufficient call to arms, and it superceded the heroes personal obligations...and hell, I trusted the Flash to keep Central City going on his own...

Yeah, having all the Marvel heroes more or less in the same city did make the rationale for crossovers easier, but a shared universe is more than just crossovers.



You're so right - Julius Schwartz's contribution to forming the idea of a shared DC history is impressive and has gone mostly ignored by Marvel Zombies, who want to believe the idea of a shared universe began and ended with Stan Lee. I wouldn't say that Julie went as far as the Marvel writers did, but he took one very important step in that direction, which was not just that the characters COULD meet one another, but that they REMEMBERED their previous meetings. And thus, a sense of history was acquired.



I think everyone here can agree that the excesses of cynical, grotesque, and pointless maxi-series are offensive. They do not, however, invalidate the idea of the value of interrelated continuity any more than Mengele invalidated genetic science.

But you know, the continuity was there at DC as well...handled differently...

Think of people in the same line of work today...they meet a few times a year, or exchange papers in the scientific community...

A similar concept goes back to the Justice Society of America...and that really amalgamated some freaky characters, from comedy to magic...a bigger feat than Thor and the Hulk whacking each other in "continuity" (sorry, don't even know if they both were "Avengers" or whatever the other group was)...

I'm not arguing that the Marvel approach was "better" than the one that occurred as a result of the multi-editor system at DC. Both yielded some really great stuff.

And the JLA was a great, awesome concept - like the exchange of papers in the scientific community, as you say. But where it differs from a "tighter" approach to world-building is this: the events that took place in JLA were seldom mentioned in the individual titles of the respective members (especially if said member was in a title written by a different editor).

I am, however, arguing that the Marvel "tight" approach emphasizing interconnectivity to their shared universe made the Marvel Universe feel more like a real place. If the intention behind Crisis was to yield a DC Universe that adopted this approach, it would have had a beneficial impact because it would have ended the "bottle" approach to each story, and made the characters individuals in an active, real world. And thus, easier to care about and get emotionally involved with.

This makes the failure of Crisis all the more total, because it failed to deliver on this promise, and worse, invalidated the history of characters (and all a shared universe is, basically, is history - a history to use as a tool for characterization and to provide seeds for future stories).



In defense of Stan Lee, at least during the Silver Age, superbrawls between heroes always happened for a plausible reason, or because of an appropriate misunderstanding or villainous coersion. Having Wolverine pop up in every darn title is very much a Modern Age conceit, the product of inferior writers.

Well, OK...can't really argue it...I read the DC comics in the 60s and felt that the universe was very "real"...I guess I would welcome other opinions of folks that thought it wasn't...

My point about the Justice Society was that it brought magicians, superheroes, crime busters who used nothing other than gas, and out and out comedy routines to the table, pretty amazing stuff that DC built on later -- even in the Crisis...

Amen, brother!

I hope my point didn't come across as slighting the JSA in any way. If I ever slight the Justice Society in a dream, you can slap me when I wake up.

And maybe even a race between Jay Garrick and Kal-L might have been fun in that context... 8)

It must be noted that the Pre Crisis DCU clearly had various alternate future timelines.  The Omac/Kamandi was one.  The LSH was another.  Barry-Flash's was another.  Hal-GL's seemed to be another one.

DC once stated in a lettercol or editorial page that the various methods of time travel brought time travellers to different alternate futures.

The below link shows canon acknowledgement of the alternate futures stemming from the same mainstream DCU present era.

http://superman.nu/tales3/costumecostume/?page=17

Said link clearly shows the Omac/Kamandi timeline being contrasted and in parallel with the Legion's future.

DC had many alternate timelines that were established as being alternate timelines; the Earth-1 Batman teamed up with Kamandi on one occasion in BRAVE AND THE BOLD, which clearly indicated the Kamandi future on display there was an alternate timeline.

Tying all this back into the opportunity Crisis had, and squandered:

Crisis was an opportunity, finally, to clarify and decide what was IN the DC Universe, and what was out; what was an alternate universe and what wasn't, in other words.

It was an opportunity to set once and for all as ironclad editorial policy that there are not going to be two or three mutually contradictory Atlantises, two or three mutually contradictory explanations for what it was that killed the Dinosaurs, two or three mutually contradictory explanations for the dominant life form and history of the planets Mars and Venus. In other words, to set everything in concrete, to put everything in stone, to make sure when the future or Atlantis is visited by Supergirl, it is the same future or Atlantis visited by the Flash or Aquaman. But if there was to be any destruction it would be achieved in the name of building something up that makes sense.

Here we can start to see where Crisis started to go wrong: the writer/artists (boy, there's an anxiety-inducing phrase there if there ever was one) like Keith Giffen, Mike Grell, and yes, my boyfriend little Johnny Byrne, mistook this act of negation, for the ENTIRETY of the role of building a new DC: negations were not used for the purpose of creating histories that made sense, but negations and invalidations of beloved stories were made just for sake of invalidation and negation. In other words, they didn't cross things out so we can have one cohesive explanation for the death of the dinosaurs; they crossed things out just for the hell of it.

I draw the distinction between alternate and/or parallel universes and future/alternate future timelines.

Alternate or parallel universes exist concurrently with the present-day mainstream DCU and cannot have any true continuity with it.

The various future timelines are all legitimate potential futures for the mainstream DCU and don't really represent alternate universes.  They possess the possibility of being the actual future as events develop.

It's possible to trim away all the parallel universes and still maintain alternate future timelines.  That's what Zero Hour was suggesting happened in the Crisis.

Alternate past timelines with a common present are a less used concept and I believe it was only touched upon once in all of fiction in The Kingdom re: Hypertime.

I see the reworking of Superman's origin as admiting the fact that while the first to be given the title 'Superhero" he was in fact not the first. There are pleanty of Superheroish characters that pre-date Superman: Popeye (1929), the Shadow (1931), Doc Savage the man of Bronze (1933), and The Phantom (1936) are the ones that have more or less survived. Others that you find by searching around a bit are The Spider (1933-44) who was a detective who dreased in a terrifing costume to scare the criminals out of their wits (sound familiar?) and the Advanger (1939) who had a very Batman like origin.

Well, the boundary between hero and superhero is fuzzy, I tend to agree with Julian that Superman should be among the first in a history, he was the first or almost the first alien with super powers far and beyond mortal folks and with a science fiction explanation...

Superman put it all together, but he wasn't the first superhero ever, or even the first at any one aspect of superhero-dom, even in the comics.  Lee Falk's Phantom and Mandrake were the first comic book characters to wear tights and have unnatural "super" powers, respectively.  (In fact, Action Comics #1, the first Superman comic, also introduced Zatara, a Mandrake ripoff, and Siegel + Shuster had their own ripoff named Dr. Occult).  Superman's specific powers (heck, the specific verbiage S+S "adopts" to describe his powers!) came from Philip Wylie's Gladiator novel.

Superman was the first superhero - at least in the form that we accept the character type as existing: secret identity with a degree of irony, emphasis on science fiction or fantastic elements as a matter of course, unreal powers that were so exaggerated they went into the realm of Tall Tales, a distinctive means of dress or costume, and a morality that is a vague humanitarianism that involves rescuing all peoples in danger. The characters of the Phantom and Mandrake and Doc Savage all possess one or several of those attributes, but they do not possess the total package that Superman did. They were not enough of a leap from the pulp and adventure elements that existed in the aether at that time into an all-new creation, to the extent that Superman was. They did not create the superhero genre (at least, in the form that it actually took).

As for Wylie's GLADIATOR novel...why do people point to this as being the starting point for the Superman concept? There are no similarities between the two. Hugo Danner is a misanthrope that because of his strength, is unable to ever lead a normal life despite his many attempts, and he bounces from job to job and city to city until his strange gift isolates him and he has to do and go somewhere else. He is not heroic; his priorities are to survive. Oh, and Danner gets a lot - a lot - of sex, too, which in and of itself is not an important difference but shows a wildly different mentality to the protagonist that the novel worked with.

If anybody is the closest and tightest inspiration for Superman, it would be Doc Savage. Their first names are both Clark, both possess supreme strength and phenomenal skill at nearly every field of human endeavor and are completely non-beatable by most foes. Both have a Fortress of Solitude, both have a spunky, attractive young female cousin that fights crime beside them, both have a science-emphasis. Both have given some variation on the "Because of who I am I can never have a wife" speech. Most compelling of all, both have the jist of the superhero "protect and serve" mentality of coming to people in trouble despite the situation and a vow against killing.

Let me throw in my own two cents about the end of the multiverse.

Yes, DC wasn't upfront concerning their reasons for doing so.  Marvel was outselling them.  Marvel had placed their Golden Age characters all on the same earth as their modern day ones.  They didn't need any cumbersome excuse for getting the characters together if they wanted to do so, as did DC with the JSA.  A crossover wasn't possible unless it included some character who had the ability to travel between the parallel worlds, like Superman or the Flash or possibly Green Lantern.  It wasn't the fans who wanted it simpler, it was the DC editors and writers.

Yes, Marv's idea of rebooting everyone post crisis was probably better.  In fact, that's what DC is finally doing with their Infinite Crisis.  They will reboot 99.9% of the DC line, most books starting over with new #1 issues.  

In the end, DC lost more than they gained.  The end result of Crisis on Infinite Earth's was that a lot of characters had histories which no longer made any sense, a lot of stories had to be dumped from continuity, and a lot of problems were caused rather than solved.  I still recall DC's comments at the time:  They claimed they weren't destroying continuity, they were creating it.  Fact is, they destroyed what continuity they did have.  Zero Hour was supposed to explain all the post Crisis gaffs, but it too fell short.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was supposed to be the solution for all DC's continuity problems, but in the end it only created even more problems.  The fact that DC is still trying to sort them out today indicates how wrong they were with it.

Pre-Superman Heroes:

Buck Rogers
Tarzan
Doc Savage
The Shadow
Conan
Detective Dan
Dick Tracy
Popeye
Flash Gordon
Zorro
Doctor Occult
Slam Bradley


If you all want to know what really inspired Superman just read this interview with Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster where they tell all:

http://superman.nu/seventy/interview/?part=0

Since Julian brought it up, and he's probably not seen my posts on this matter elsewhere, more fundamental differences between Superman and Hugo Danner are their themes.

Danner really wasn't trying just to survive.  That came too easily for him.  Hugo wasn't misanthropic except at the very end when he was ultimately frustrated and despairing over a world that had no place for him.  He was a superman in his values -- note the girlfriend who left him because he was too good for her, the cops and banker who tried to beat him up because they refused to believe a man would use his super-strength just to help people, etc. -- not only his body, and ordinary humans were too flawed to accept him for this.  He was trying to fit into society.  Wylie's theme for Gladiator was our society has come to glorify the mediocre so that a man of truly gifted talents would actually be at a disadvantage over average men.  That was the theme of Gladiator.

Siegel took almost the exact same events of Gladiator and molded them into his Superman stories, at least the earliest ones.  What's so different?  His protagonist clearly celebrates the gifted individual and his ability to make a positive influence on the world.  Superman is a positive statement on the role of the superior individual and how he would fit into society.

Hugo Danner never found his place in the world.

Superman/Clark Kent certainly did -- twice over.

Wow -- didn't realize I'd stir up quite this much discussion.

My only point here was that calling him the "first superhero in comics" is something of a misnomer.  Superman was the first to put all of the pieces together (and integrate innovations from others over time -- Shazam!), and that's huge!  But a lot of what we think of as "Superman" showed up first elsewhere, in both the comic book and non-comic contexts.  

I was explicit in saying that Superman's powers first showed up in Gladiator's Hugo Danner character, not necessarily his other character aspects.  But I'm reading all these responses about how other aspects of Superman aren't like Hugo Danner.  Yes I know that, but that wasn't really my point...  it was just about the powers.  

Why make that point at all?  IMO, after decades of sustained success, Superman is revered and ubiquitous enough that he doesn't need to be "the first hero in the DC universe".  Every superhero since then owes a debt to Superman and everyone with any sense knows it without needing it codified.  He can be an iconic role model without being the first.  And, the fact that some of the other "firsts" are still kicking around makes the notion of casting Superman as "the first hero ever on the scene" seem kinda silly to me.  

As for this issue of what Crisis failed to achieve, what IC might hope to achieve, etc., I really hope they're using a master database to map out characters, locations, events, relationships between characters over time, etc.  When a comic book script gets broken down into "characters and places used and when" and matched up in a database to see if it can make any sense, then I think things could work.  Marvel's effectively doing a reboot "in place" with the Ultimate series -- am kinda surprised that DC isn't taking the same path.

Actaully the vow against killing came later for both Superman and Batman. Superman started out like Sam Spade/Phillip Marlow with superpowers (See this steal bar? -twists it into a knot- this is your neck if you don't tell me what I want to know) but quickly mellowed into the 1940's Super-Roosevelt version that set the standard. But in the beginning Suerman was almost on the level of Supertough guy boardering on Superthug.

The Shadow knows these elements also describe him. :D

Most of the truly "super" elements of The Shadow came around the time of Superman.  There were several years beforehand where The Shadow was even more in the Batman mold, with no real "powers" or psychic villains or whatnot.  The Shadow started out life as the narrator of a detective radio  show, and was made into an actual character when they discovered that the narrator was the most popular part of the show.

Superman not only was the first super-hero to combine the elements of the classic super-hero.  He also was the first to have truly dramatic super-powers.

Those before him arguably were just heightened humans, or those with fringe talents that weren't much different from a circus mentalist or magician.

Superman was the first super-hero to be far and away indisputably a super-human with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

Re: Captain Kal's last post...

There are a million shades of grey, and building on or altering what was going on before, but I tend to think that's a valid distinction, or "break" in defining Superman's role...

Thanks, MatterEaterLad.

Just to emphasize this point, the kind of things the other 'mystery men' before Superman were doing were simulated/performed in stage productions and circuses for years.  While outside normal human abilities, they were commonplace and easy to visualize.

Superman's dramatic powers were far outside the experiences of anybody.  No one routinely did or simulated hefting a car overhead, or leaping over buildings, or outracing trains and later bullets (Action Comics #7 which wasn't long after his first appearance).

It's for that reason, amongst others, that the Man of Steel was the first true super-hero.  And he understandably created the comics industry as a profitable one instead of the paste-up reprint crap it was before him.

The first alien hero as well?

There's another notch in Superman's list of firsts: namely, that he was the first true phenomenon and breakout character in comic books, which up until that point consisted of 1) reprints of strips from newspapers, or 2) strips that were indistinguishable from the strips of newspapers. In comic books, until Superman leapt over his first building, it was the same evil oriental genius, the same salty sea-dog, and the same two-fisted detective over and over.

It wasn't just that Superman was different in formula, but he was so well received by America for that reason. It's no exaggeration to say comic books owe their existence at least in the form they have actually taken, to him. As I recall, in one memoir read from that particular period, THE COMIC BOOK HEROES, one contemporary person wrote of Superman like this:

"Until that point, heroes were always outmatched and overshadowed by the mad scientists and oriental geniuses that dwelled in their world. Thus, when Superman appeared, the response was not, 'how original,' but rather 'of course!' "

I've fast read the replies but if you read the JLA companion book you'll learn that it was Julius (Julie) Swhartz (sp?) idea.  An idea that he in fact took from some novels.  What he did with it is that he "DCied" it.  Making it proper to the contents and also it was a great idea to bring back the ga heroes.  Basically, this idea could be considered like the first reboot.  I liked it, it made sense (sense in DC terms).  I think that the idea of the second reboot in the 80s was terrible.  Haven't even read it but it's like all the Earths merged into one.  First, if this did happen, there wouldn't be a place on Earth where humans couldn't step on each other, and if the the parallel worlds merged without overpopulated it means that a number not yet even invented of people simply died or vanished - which is terrible...!

You're dealing with the original question of this thread, right?  8)

I agree that this is Superman's main claim to fame.  

Although there were years of highly successful comic-book style comics before Superman (it has also been discussed on another thread several months ago how this format precedes Famous Funnies et al by about 100 years), he really seems to have defined the American comic book as such.  Regardless, because of Tarzan, the Shadow, Fantomas, Hercules, Samson, etc., it is fair to say only that he was the first superhero of the comic books.

(Of course, he was first proposed as a newspaper strip).

On topic: I wonder what a universe that only had a Superman newspaper strip (ie, no "original" or "exclusive" comic book heroes) would look like?

Bur aside from Captain America, Red Skull and Namor how many of those Golden Age characters were active? In fact Marvel would years later have aguy named Scurge go knocking off their minor have no clue on how to use them characters.



Actaully there were many outs as the resent Crisis on Multiple Earths TPB volumes show. When somebody like the Fiddler can crass between earts by playing a tune and even try for an Earth nowbody at the time even knew about (Earth-3) that this excuse falls flat on its face. By 1973 the writers had a teleporter device that allowed JSA-JLA teams with ease.



Well the problem really was DC had no real detailed plan on what the Post-Crisis universe was going to be like and the resulted was a rube Goldberg nightmare. Furthermore Marvel has similarlly destroyed its continuty with 'shock' stories that make no sence (Harry Osborn and Gwen Stacy had kids? WTF?) and is in its second 'temporary' historical rewrite with House of M. Give the qualityof writers these day and their inability to research DC has no chance at cleaning up the mess it made.