Superman Through the Ages! Forum

OK,

Yes, Alex and Superboy-Prime are villains and have been going back and forth from their "prison" all along.

Thankfully, Earth-2 Superman and Lois have no clue about them, and are therefore NOT VILLAINS, thank Rao. Though, I wonder how Mr. Old School will react when he finds out.

Speaking of old School Speed Force is no more! and Julian rejoices ;)

The Sliver Age Flash returns at long last, remember he was never really dead, just trapped.

oh and ....

the Multi-verse returns or at least Earth-2.

Tomorrow we should have a lot more details.

Barry returns just in time for the release of his dvd TV set!
Wonder what Iris's been doing?

If you love gore, then you will love this issue :?

Superboy-Prime meets up with and fights the Iron Age Superboy, and defeats him but the Iron Age Superboy just starts laughing. It seems that he called for some serious back-up, the Teen Titians, JLA, and the Doom Patrol. They all gang up on SB-Prime and look like they are going to defeat him, when SB-Prime snaps and and starts to kill heroes left and right, in a gross and graphic fashion, which would be cool in a horror comic, but just seems grossly out of place seeing Superboy-Prime doing it and to these heroes. Of course, the most shocking death is reserved for the female character where she gets her head knocked off with a backhand which is also known as a "pimp slap". The characters who die are minor characters of course, except for the female, which fans seem to really like of course.

The Multiverse is NOT back, only Earth-2 and all of the former Earth-2 people are zapped to it at the end of the issue.

Ugh - good thing I dont BUY them - just read about em here.

When this was buzzing, I asked my DC mole wazzup - a return to greatness?
He sighed, "No - even darker."

Guess panels inked all black is the next step. :evil:

Klar, I'd much rather see all-black panels than Superboy-Prime killing people.

What an incredible insult.  To turn this character, who was inspired by the Bronze Age Superman; who was the culmination of everything good about the DCU and about the Bronze Age; and who was a very personal creation of Elliot S! Maggin's, into a murderer is absolutely beyond the pale.

I was all excited to buy this issue, but now I'll be dropping the series instead.

That leaves All-Star Superman.  If I can continue to justify giving any money at all to DC.  And that's a big If.

:s:

Thank god I didn't even start buying this series... it's the same old DC excrement only worse.

Funny, the most upsetting part of all of this for me is not a death but a return.  Poor old Barry Allen may not have survived the first Crisis, but time has shown he was the lucky one...he missed the last 20 years!  I'd rather see him stay a stiff than be returned to a DCU like the one we have now.

As for A*S*S, I doubt I'll keep getting it.  So much time has passed since issue 1, I've lost interest. And anyway for what it costs, Morrison would have to come out and power-wash my house to make it worth it.

I get a feeling that Geoff Johns, who wrote this series never ever read the original Superboy-Prime stories and never read a single issue with Earth-2 Superman.

The reason for these threads is so that you don't have to buy the issues if you don't want to and still know what is going on. I haven't even held a single issue in my hands.

I am sure that once this is over, that Rao will delete this crisis forum and that will be the end of that.

Nothing good ever comes out of crisis, unless it's the pre-crisis, crisis stories from the Justice League comic.

CRISIS COUNSELING SESSION 4

Another period of waiting has ended, and Infinite Crisis #4 hits today, with major developments in the future of Bludhaven, Superboy (both Prime and DCU), revelations about Alex Luthor's plans, as well as perhaps, the fruition of his mission.

Perhaps.

DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio has stopped by again to take questions about Crisis, 52, One Year Later and more. As a word of warning to those for whom this is new...no, Dan's not going to give away story points, though he probably will tease incessantly...and yeah, he was probably smiling when he did it.

All right - enough intro. Let's get this baby rolling.
roll it here http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=c6c907d7cedf73eb9f493d06f4fff6e3&threadid=56070

(Norbert voice from "The Angry Beavers") No...no...no...no...no...no...no...

Geez, pretty stiff price we have to pay just to get Central City and Keystone City back on seperate Earths.

As for "former Earth-2 people" zapped to the "new" Earth-2, wonder if this includes the creation of various Earth-2 duplicates of various mortals (the general population of 6 billion people who aren't superpowered) as well, to populate said world. Though hearing of the above Superboy-Prime-slaughterfest isn't exactly encouraging me to find out via paying for the thing, unfortunately... :-\

Now that I've actually bought and read the issue, it seems to me that things aren't necessarily as clear-cut as Beppo makes them out to be.  There were some parts I didn't like - the crazed Superboy-Prime spouting a twisted version of Maggin philisophy, for instance; or the E-2 Superman being a Lion in Winter - but it was pretty well written, the various characterizations were pretty accurate (Booster and Skeets especially), and seeing the return of E-2 was a blast.

:s:

Bringing back Earth-2 will CONFUSE many readers. Bad Idea..

Superboy Killing?? Unacceptabe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :mad:

Wally west Dying and Barry allen returning BULL$%^^%^%

Anyone who's read the past 20 yeatrs know Wally evolved from a bunkering Barry-worshipping unsure of himself into THE VERY BEST FLASH there ever was (unlike Post-crisis superman, after the Return of Barry allen storyline he had aways been a hero, confidence was NEVER waving and still has that funny side of him)

Unlike Barry Alen who has extremely NO PERSONALITY (say what you want about Plot>>>> Characters.. I even agree on that, but Wally West has BOTH.. Barry only has Plot.. so not a totalpackage and less marketable)

ALL of the former Earth-2 people?  We know the heroes from Earth-2 found their histories altered at the end of the first Crisis so they now, supposedly, lived on the same world as the Earth-1 crowd all along...but who else, if anyone, made the move?  Can we assume that average, non-costumed mortals from Earth-2 also found their way onto Earth-1?  Or were they all killed except for the heroes?  If some of them made it, which ones?  The population of "DCU Earth" (or whatever it's been since '86) is not double that of Earth-1 or Earth-2, it's the same as one of those worlds.  That is to say, we didn't go from two Earths with 4 billion humans each to one Earth with 8 billion.  So billions of people must have died.  Were they all on Earth-2 or was it an even ratio of Earth-1 victims and Earth-2 victims?

Logically, if a new Earth-2 is created in issue 4 of this new Crisis, did half the Earth's population, or 2 billion people, go to live on it?  Or was a new Earth-2 created, complete with 4 billion new souls, and then the JSA was cherry-picked off DCU Earth and plopped down on the new Earth-2?

Sorry, you can tell I didn't read this issue.  Are they saying Earth-2 was there all along, just hidden somewhere? Or did they create a new Earth-2?

Also, the JSA is, I gather, more than halfway made up of new members these days.  And the new Dr Midnite, Mr Terrific, etc would logically be people born on DCU Earth.  While it would make sense for Jay and Alan and Carter to go back to Earth-2, where they were born, why would the new members of the JSA be sent there when the only thing tying them to Earth-2 is the name they call themselves while in costume?  I mean, I can say I'm the latest Hourman, but that doesn't mean I belong on Earth-2.

I don't know. Rao can help you, since he has the issue.

Hope so.

Just saw Robby Reed's review over on Dial B for Blog, including a scan of the infamous Superboy-Prime carnage scene:

http://dialbforblog.com/

Suffice to say, I'm not about to spend money on a book with scenes like this, even if it ushers in a second Silver Age with books drawn by the ghosts of Curt Swan and Gil Kane.  This stuff is pornography for sicko fanboys, pure and simple.  A gore-gasm to be relished by 30-year-old dwellers of parents' basements everywhere.

everything I posted was true, as you can see, I just didn't got into a lot of details for obvious reasons.

Yeurgh... poor Krypto. ("Hey, kids---animal abuse!" :-\ )

Couldn't they have just blown up the cosmic treadmill with some Spectre- and Dr. Fate-backed magical blast while droping it into a temporally-unstable black hole while every super-speedster was vibrating at top speed to bring back Earth-2 or something? Would have to beat what I saw in the panels (and not require Superboy-Prime to go berserk)...

a page-by-page guide to issue number four:
http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=f69dc153b3f538e61b450d8183aa1b0b&threadid=56341

A lot to comment here about, fellows.

First, Barry Allen is not back.  No, he's not dead, but he's trapped in the Speed Force.

Second, my friend Julian must be very happy because the Speed Force is gone.  This is probably a good move, since the Speed Force is like some of the pseudo science used in various Trek shows, a catch all to solve various problems.  In fact, it was used to solve the problem of getting rid of Superboy Prime.

Third, disgusting that Superboy Prime is revealed as a maniac.  How could he have hidden this from Kal-L and Lois all this time?

Fourth, it does look like Bart's going to be the Flash, at least until he can find Wally.

Fifth, was that Madam Rouge I saw with the Brotherhood?  Wasn't she dead way back during Wolfman's run on Titans?

Sixth, Bludhaven's destroyed.  Chemo-icaled bombed by the Brotherhood.  Why?  Seems only designed to get Nightwing back in Gotham eventually.

Seventh, I don't believe for a second that Earth 2 is staying.  They've made Kal-L a dupe, Alexander Luthor no better than any of the Lex's, and Superboy Prime a killer.  No doubt the revived Earth 2 will be as dark as DC Universe Earth has become.  They will also say that the two earths are so unstable they have to combine once again.  Alexander will be defeated or destroyed and Kal and Lois will be banished somewhere else after it's revealed they've been made pawns and dupes by Alexander and Prime.

End result is a darker, more depressing DC Universe.  

Sorry guys but this is the way I feel.

BLECCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCH :evil:

i recently picked up coie and there is a comment in it about the new earth being dark.. maybe it always was...

There is speculation that the writers are making IC excessively dark and violent in order to get it out of their systems before the new, brighter, more heroic DCU arrives. It will sharpen the contrast between the old DCU and the new one. I hope that's the case, but I'm not overly optimistic.

That's an interesting theory but I'm not sure I buy it.

Try this scenario:  they go all-out crazy with blood and guts as a "farewell" to that sort of content.  The series sells like hotcakes and gets everyone all excited (which seems to be happening).  So some bean-counter comes down from on high and says, "Whatever you're doing to sell all those books, keep it up...and do it in every book we publish!"

And voila...we enter a period that makes the Dark Age look like a Smurfs episode.

I did like that panel where it had all the speedsters that went into the Force emerge again to lend aid like Valkyries from Valhalla.

Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't pull a few guest-shots here and there. The one thing about the Speed Force that I actually LIKED was that it meant that dead Speedsters could reappear and be used dramatically in future stories, without the awkward necessity of "bringing them back to life." The ultimate have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation. Yet this aspect of the Speed Force was not utilized (until now) except in the "Jonny Quick's giant head in the clouds smiling down at everybody" way, with emphasis given to the more banal and mind-destroying aspects of the concept, personified by "costumes of solidified speed" and "I'll stop those bullets by removing the speed from them!"



I think I may have mentioned it, but I love my boy Geoff Johns. :D



I agree with nightwing that the scene where Superboy-Prime goes on a rampage was excessive; the art could have been toned down considerably and we could have gotten the same effect. Nightwing once complained that he is irritated by the aftereffects of death; ...you know, somehow, I don't think we're going to see any of these Titans again.

Although while the first instinct may be to shout "wow, they're written wildly out of character," there still is quite a lot of miniseries left to explain their actions and place them into context. The possibility of mind-wiping and brainwashing cannot be ignored.



This concept is aggrivating because Bart, when written by Waid, was an obnoxious snot. However, in recent times, Geoff Johns has characterized Bart and Superboy as achieving a great deal of maturity and leaving behind the short attention spans, tv-watching, and immature horn doggery that made them such annoying pains to read. Geoff Johns managed to do the impossible and get me to like these characters when he gave them maturity and had them age. If where he is going with the "Bart as Flash" subplot is placing young Kid Flash in a situation where he acquires dignity and maturity and adulthood, I'm all in favor of it.



Another choice I agree with. Bludhaven lacked Gotham's style and personality and art deco, and had all of its recent attitudes of nihilism and grime; it was an inferior redundancy that is now corrected, and serves to add the bonus of getting the Batman family together.

barf.

I bought the first two issues of IC....thanks to reviews like this, I have not wasted my money on the latest two.

Sigh....and I had such high hopes for the outcome....now I am wondering if it will even be worthwhile for me to buy Supergirl after this...DO I even care if Kara Zor-El exists in a darker DC?

Dylan

I once recommended that one of my students in school read a copy of one of my favorite Beverly Cleary books ---- Socks.  I remember telling her that she would laugh and cry and laugh again as she read the book.  She came up to me after reading the sad part of the book saying that she didn't want to finish it that she just couldn't see how the book would have a happy ending.  I asked her this simple question "how do you know that until you have finished the book?"  She finished the book and loved it so much she had her mother read it.

Now how this relates to Infinite Crisis ----- I don't see how you can really judge this series on the basis of just four issues.  After issue seven and the other three Infinite Crisis Specials and Secret Files special I truly feel that is when we should judge IC.

As for the way Superboy Prime is being portrayed - well he appeared in less than what six issues back in 1985.  Plus what if Alex is controlling him using the Psycho Pirate?  I don't have a problem with how is being portrayed at this point as long as it is explained or explored in the last three issues.

As for Kal-l - I am betting in the end he is the real hero and saves the day just as he did during COIE.

I don't think it will matter, as long as she isn't part of the darker DC!

So far, she's been given her own space. Characters need that...Captain Marvel and Aquaman thrown in with other teams, without their own worlds to explore, hasn't worked out, for example. As long as she keeps her own space, she'll been fine. If she becomes affected by every single summer crossover, then she'll be a part of the darker DC and you'll have cause to worry...

Until then, play it safe and read All-Star Superman! :)

I see your point about the Cleary book, and I certainly don't mean any disrespect, but every time I hear this argument I have to wonder if the person making it isn't on the dole at DC.

"Don't judge Dark Knight Strikes Again til it's over," people said, "Frank's going to pull it all out at the end."  Flash forward a couple years and they're saying the same thing about All-Star Batman.  And so on.  Meanwhile we shell out 3, 4, 6 bucks an issue for stuff we don't even like based on the vague promise (blind hope) that, when it's all over, it will somehow prove worth it.  "Trust us, a few months from now, it'll all fall into place."  Right.  Frankly, DC used up that kind of trust a LONG time ago.

So, what if we get to the end and it's NOT a good story?  What if the final pay-off isn't worth the dreck it took to get there?  Then we're out about 60 bucks with nothing to show for it, and we get back on the merry go round to do it all over again with the next cruddy series.

To everyone who says, "keep spending your money and maybe the last part of the story will make up for the beginning," I say, don't buy anything until the series is over and then, once you know what happens and the verdict is in, *consider* buying the trade.

I hope better things are in store for DC, and it'll be nice if IC is the event that brings it on.  But given this company's track record, I'll believe it when I see it.  And given their penchant for collecting EVERYTHING, good or bad, I feel confident there will be an IC TPB available down the road if I really want it (though in this case I know I won't, since no comic with this kind of gore belongs in a house with two young children).

just to nitpick... kara's skirt was as short in 1985 as it was in 2005.

If only I was on DC's pay role!!!!!!

I repect both you and your opinion and I also was burned on the DK2 books by Miller (however my father in law loved DK2) and I dropped a lot of titles afterwards due to being ripped off by DC and Miller.  I might be burned once again by DC and from what I am seeing so far I am on the borderline --- yes I hate that Darkness has spread out over the DC Universe over the past few years but I truly believe that the way DC has built up this series over the last two years that perhaps DC is on the verge of a more appealing DC Universe but that is only my opinion.  If I feel I am being ripped off again well then I plan to drop even more titles and let my wallet vote for me again.

Let me help you out. :D

Hold the first issue up.  Look at the ugly art.  Determine that it is an ugly comic book, one in a series of cynical annual crossovers published by an artistically and editorially clueless company.  Do not read.  QED.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder - I don't think that the art is ugly at all --- now anime that to me is ugly art but to each this own.

A beautiful sentiment.

 :D

Well what i can say im enjoying this crisis greatly. But im not a precrisis fan. and one of the first numbers i red from Dc was the original Crisis.
So alex luthor, superboy prime and earth-2 superman for me they are only crisis characters and i like to see a new crisis with them.
Could be better of course. but i die to see what happen next.

Blasphemy!!!!!! :lol:

I have to admit, when I went to pic up the latest Supergirl, I went ahead and bought IC #4 and the lastest Rand/thangar War as well.

It was every bit as disgusting as I thought it would be and I am left wondering why I wasted the money.

What they did to Superboy Prime was wrong...by any stretch of the imagination.  And doing that most likely destroyed any hopes of having him be the new superboy (which is probably why they did it).   And there was absolutely no need for the gore.

However, if the purpose of the book was to point out the extreme darkness that has hijacked DCU over the past several years...then it did its job.

I still think making Alex and Sb-Prime the villians in this was a low blow to Pre-COIE fans....TPTB basically thumbing their noses at us.

Dylan