Thoughts on COIE, IC, 52, & Countdown.

[Great Rao]

2) Having 52 different earths does not address alternate timelines, as hypertime did. For example, All-Star Superman and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow seem to both be alternate splits from the timeline of Earth-1 Superman. (The latter future Superman appeared in Superman/Batman issues, and therefore must exist some...when?) Likewise, there are the Earth-1 timeline splits of Kamandi's future vs. the Legion's future.

I'm pretty sure the Kamandi/LSH discrepancy was actually fixed in a Maggin story somewhere.  And I think it even had something to do with that future costume that the Apes were hanging on to.

A lot of people seem to have forgotten that "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" was an imaginary story.  Like the original "Death of Superman," "Superman Red/Superman Blue," and those crazy stories where Luthor was Kal-El's father, or Superboy was Kara's nephew, it never happened.  That was the whole point!  It doesn't need to be accommodated, explained, or incorporated.  If Jordan Elliot has started showing up in other comic books, it's a misunderstanding and the last holdover from the Hypertime fiasco and should be forgotten.

All-Star Superman isn't really a split from the Earth-1 Superman, it's a split from the modern Superman.  It's the modern Superman where Crisis never happened.  Pre-Crisis, Superman's continuity slowly evolved over time instead of being rebooted.  So this is a "what-if," an extrapolation on the idea that Superman's exisiting continuity had continued to evolve from what it was in 1986 to today, with no reboot ever tossed in.

[TELLE]

          Notice how Grant Morrison calls DC's new multiverse a megaverse?  Marvel also says it has a megaverse.  The levels of reality/existance to Marvel basically are: universe; multiverse, contains a nigh-infinite number of universes; megaverse, contains a nigh-infinite number of multiverses; omniverse, the totality of all reality/existance..  Could Grant be hinting at something here?  In Countdown #51 Dan Didio says "there is no stopping the constant evolution of the DC Universe.  And with COUNTDOWN we are entering into our next and possibly greatest phase of change.  Be warned.".  I hope this means we end up with an infinite DC Multiverse.  

I think it means Marvel and DC are planning a merger, with Morrison as EIC.

[Gangbuster]

A lot of people seem to have forgotten that "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" was an imaginary story.  Like the original "Death of Superman," "Superman Red/Superman Blue," and those crazy stories where Luthor was Kal-El's father, or Superboy was Kara's nephew, it never happened.  That was the whole point!  It doesn't need to be accommodated, explained, or incorporated.  If Jordan Elliot has started showing up in other comic books, it's a misunderstanding and the last holdover from the Hypertime fiasco and should be forgotten.

The Kingdom implied that the imaginary stories did actually happen, somewhere. It's too early to tell how much of that has been retconned, though. At any rate, almost all of the imaginary stories diverged from the then-current Superman in an alternate future.

All-Star Superman isn't really a split from the Earth-1 Superman, it's a split from the modern Superman.  It's the modern Superman where Crisis never happened.  Pre-Crisis, Superman's continuity slowly evolved over time instead of being rebooted.  So this is a "what-if," an extrapolation on the idea that Superman's exisiting continuity had continued to evolve from what it was in 1986 to today, with no reboot ever tossed in.

  I fail to see the distinction.

All-Star Superman is a divergent future of Earth-1 where Crisis never happened. I think that's the same thing that you said.

[llozymandias]

       Actually All-Star Superman is a new separate version with elements of several other versions.  Not Earth-1.  The Earth-1 version is far more powerful than the All-Star version.

[Gangbuster]

       Actually All-Star Superman is a new separate version with elements of several other versions.  Not Earth-1.  The Earth-1 version is far more powerful than the All-Star version.

Well, I was just going by what Grant Morrison said once: "We don’t go back to the beginning again, we start from where our Superman is RIGHT NOW and get straight into the action - almost as if he's had 20 years of alternative continuity going on behind the scenes of John Byrne's revision in 1985 - on a different Hypertime line, if you like. I'm trying to think of it as the re-emergence of the original, pre-Crisis Superman but with 20 years of history we haven't seen."

[llozymandias]

          Notice how Grant Morrison calls DC's new multiverse a megaverse?  Marvel also says it has a megaverse.  The levels of reality/existance to Marvel basically are: universe; multiverse, contains a nigh-infinite number of universes; megaverse, contains a nigh-infinite number of multiverses; omniverse, the totality of all reality/existance..  Could Grant be hinting at something here?  In Countdown #51 Dan Didio says "there is no stopping the constant evolution of the DC Universe.  And with COUNTDOWN we are entering into our next and possibly greatest phase of change.  Be warned.".  I hope this means we end up with an infinite DC Multiverse.  

I think it means Marvel and DC are planning a merger, with Morrison as EIC.

          TELLE, you did read my entire posting before responding to it.  Right?

[llozymandias]

       Actually All-Star Superman is a new separate version with elements of several other versions.  Not Earth-1.  The Earth-1 version is far more powerful than the All-Star version.

Well, I was just going by what Grant Morrison said once: "We don’t go back to the beginning again, we start from where our Superman is RIGHT NOW and get straight into the action - almost as if he's had 20 years of alternative continuity going on behind the scenes of John Byrne's revision in 1985 - on a different Hypertime line, if you like. I'm trying to think of it as the re-emergence of the original, pre-Crisis Superman but with 20 years of history we haven't seen."

     I remember also thinking that All-Star Superman was going to be the pre-crisis/earth-1/silver-age version.  Grant saying that Superman was going to get new powers & become terminally ill from flying into the sun told me otherwise.  I still enjoy reading Grant's version.  

[TELLE]

I think we can imagine many increases and decreases in Superman's power levels over the last/lost 20-odd years so the Superman/sun thing is still entirely in keeping with Morrison's initial premise.  Ditto Supes getting new powers (remember the rainbow fingers?  heat vision?  flying?  all "new powers" gained by the E-1 Superman over the years).