Iron Age. Not over yet?

[Super Monkey]

I don't know much about Frank Quietly, so I looked him up with Google, and I found some Superman pics:

[dto]

Then you have the mainline. Or as I like to call it "Earth-D" for death.

Kuuga, that's slanderous!   Poor Earth-D, home of the multi-ethnic Justice Alliance of America was NOTHING like the present mainstream DCU.  :wink:  

The end of Earth-D was chronicled long after the Crisis in "Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths" (February 1999), written by Marv Wolfman.  Chronologically, this episode should be between "Crisis on Infinite Earths" #4 and #5.  A summary of this relatively hard-to-find issue is at http://www.io.com/~woodward/chroma/cr4_5.html

A good list of alternate Earths can be found at http://www.io.com/~woodward/chroma/atlas.html.  The current DCU is labeled "Earth-0", as in post Zero Hour.  I'm sure we can also associate the "Zero" with other attributes...   :wink:

[Kuuga]

Oh wow! Okay, my apologies then to Earth-D.

Yeah, I think Earth-0 is quite apt on many levels.  :wink:

[TELLE]

Not QUITE, Telle -- in fact the facts surrounding Sue Dibny's murder is still somewhat hazy.  It's very possible the REAL murderer is still at large and will play a role in a future major crossover.

The "fridge" reference was to Gail Simone's "Women in Refrigerators" site,

Thanks dto.  I'm familiar with that site but had no idea what the appliance reference was there for.  Glad to hear that DC has at least one woman writing a superhero book who is not with the program, so to speak.  Although I understand Gilbert Hernandez' run on the book wasn't too bad.

And that Earth Zero idea is just hilarious.  Talk about no clue.

[TELLE]

Just saw this article about Korean comics being popular in the US:

Commentators note that comics in Europe and the United States appear to lack "sensitivity," usually dealing with heroes like "Superman," "Batman" or "Spider-man."

That about sums things up here.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200502/03/200502032113233879900091009101.html

[Kuuga]

Are they saying they lack "sensitivity" *because* they deal with Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man or lack it in dealing with Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man?

[TELLE]

My reading of the article is simply that the American stories are more or less affect-less or emotionless when compared to the wide variety of Korean (and Japanese) comics for kids.  Not that I agree 100% as it seems that most U.S. superhero comics of the last 25 years are full of melodrama and teenage angst (as well as violence and severe morality).

In American cartoons, characters fight for justice, and the theme is mostly about bad guys eventually paying for their evil deeds, while European cartoons are more educational than sentimental, "The Adventures of Tin Tin" and "Smurfs" being examples.
This may explain why Korean comics have become more popular in the United States and Europe ¡ª the different genre appeals to the sentimentalism that teenagers feel. Korean romance stories have been tear-jerkers for American and European teenage girls, and the different styles in the action comics appeal to teenage boys' imaginations.

[Kuuga]

I see. I agree that there is a definate differnce in the way that Asian cultures often approach storytelling vs what we do in the west.  I think very often, western stuff is just really very dry out of fear of being cheesy or whatever.

So often I find the Asian style very refreshing.  It's much less about watching a sequence of events and more about feeling an experience.  That's why in many anime and tokusatsu (live action special effects shows) the physics the world setting works on are very loose or highly stylized.  Boiling it down to logic and so-called "realism" is not the point.