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Author Topic: The new Multiverse?  (Read 11338 times)
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nightwing
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« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2004, 01:41:09 AM »

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Also, remember the wierd nature of the Crisis, where it would hit a universe's entire existence--not just at some point in its timeline. So the universe ended up never having existed at all. This is why the Legion are involved in the event, because the Crisis hits in their time at the same "time" it hits the 20th C. Earth. All of the universe and every moment of the universe is destroyed by the "Crisis."


That's what I said...a pathetic mess of a story.

Again, this is a case of the higher-ups deciding, "we want to start over from Square One." Fine, so do it by starting every title over with issue #1 in the same month.  But don't drag out a year-long storyline that makes no sense even by it's own rules and then render the whole thing pointless (and impossible) as of issue 12.

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So the Superman stories after Crisis are still in a continuity which would eventually be destroyed and therefore (from a post-C DCU perspective) never have existed.


But then it's final destruction happens "off-panel," doesn't it?  So the "house that Mort built," arguably the most important continuity in a period where the superhero concept itself nearly died out, doesn't even get a goodbye?  Yes, "Whatever Happened" wrapped up the loose ends, but we're left to assume (as you are) that soon after that tale, the white-out came and claimed everyone.

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Imagine a bunch of paved roads all headed in the same direction and all coming from the same direction, and all parallel to each other. This is the Fox multiverse. Now imagine some crazy guy with a steamroller who paves a path that zigs and zags and dispsey doodles across the medians between these roads. This is the Waid multiverse.


In other words, order and logic versus chaos and contradiction.  By golly, that is a pretty good summation of the two.
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Spaceman Spiff
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« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2004, 04:51:59 AM »

Quote from: "nightwing"
More importantly we must not forget the ultimate paradox of the "Crisis"...because it happened, it can never have happened. (!) The final thing Crisis ret-conned away was itself, because no story involving multiple earths can possibly have taken place.


First, let me say that I've never read Crisis on Infinite Earths. There, I've admitted my ignorance, so no one need point it out. Wink I have read about the Crisis on various websites. This free information has convinced me that I don't want to waste money on a story I wouldn't enjoy.

Nightwing has articulated a thought that has nagged at me. I've just never been clever enough or eloquent enough to put it into words. There is no post-Crisis explanation of the Crisis itself. Yet there are post-Crisis revisions of many pre-Crisis stories. Much like the historians in Orwell's 1984, the DC writers and editor can make history agree with the present.

I'm a fan of the pre-Crisis era. The Crisis doesn't appeal to me because it destroys those places (Earth-One and Earth-Two) and people (Barry Allen and Kara Zor-El) that I was familiar with and liked. The post-Crisis universe doesn't appeal to me because I don't see the point of having pre-Crisis stories re-explained to fit the post-Crisis "reality".

It seems rather silly to me that the Crisis itself is so popular among post-Crisis readers, considering that it is a story of an ending rather than a beginning. Its purpose is to end the pre-Crisis multiverse, something that it ultimately fails to do! After the Crisis, many series continued for months in a pointless limbo.  For the Crisis to have succeeded, all series should have ended concurrent with the last issue of the Crisis. The next month, new series would begin to populate the new universe. No references to prior stories at all. Clean slate and new chalk. DC didn't have the guts to do it right.

Imagine that Superman, the Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. all appeared brand-new, without trying to back them into 50 years of revised pre-Crisis history. Forget all the old characters and start over. No JSA during the Second World War. No JLA during the 1960s and 1970s. Just new heroes starting out fresh. That would have been preferable to all the idiotic attempts to revise the past.

Quote from: "nightwing"
In other words, just because we aren't allowed to see it anymore doesn't mean the Multiverse doesn't still exist. We just got stuck on "Earth-Crap" for 20 years.


I'm with Nightwing. Gardner Fox was tuned-in to Earth-One and Earth-Two. The brains at DC today are tuned-in to Earth-Crap. I'll just read my old comics, thank you very much.
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Super Monkey
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« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2004, 06:20:30 AM »

Some links for you all :

the Unofficial Hypertime Website
http://www.geocities.com/hypertime2000/index2.html

Time and Hypertime
    The Linear Men
    The Crisis
    Zero Hour
    The Amalgam
    The Kingdom
    Have Hyperjacket, Will Travel
    Cosmic Treadmills


http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/hypertime.html

Crisis on Infinite Earths Links:

this site covers :
    Crisis on Infinite Earths
    Kingdom Come
    Treasuries of Peace, War, Hope, and Truth
    The New Frontier


http://continuitypages.com/crisis.htm
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« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2004, 06:52:41 AM »

Quote from: "Nape"
Mr. Majestic says he is from another Earth in the Multiverse.  Is the multiverse back?


First of all Mr. Majestic is from WILDSTORM a former studio of IMAGE comics.

and the Multiverse has always been there.. marvel also has it (Read Exiles, and the "Ultimate" universe, and of course the regular 616 Marvel universe)

The difference is that back on Pre-crisis the multiverse was well defined and extrapolatory that it made continuity shaffle..

A Multiverse can be good as long as it is disposable.
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Otenami Haiken to iko ka
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« Reply #12 on: February 02, 2004, 06:54:35 AM »

Quote from: "TriSaber"
the Golden Age (or Earth-2) Superman still exists in that "otherdimensional paradise" he entered at the end of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and finally found a way back to the mainstrean DC Universe, but refused to stay ... although I can't say I blame him.



when did this happen?
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Otenami Haiken to iko ka
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« Reply #13 on: February 02, 2004, 07:10:21 AM »

Well...

Crisis maybe pointless as a retconning tool..

But it's still better than all the "Crisis wannabees"

Like Marvel Superheroes: Secret Wars..

and.. Infinity Gauntlet.
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Otenami Haiken to iko ka
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« Reply #14 on: February 02, 2004, 08:18:43 AM »

Here's an interesting question...If the destruction of each universe was happening at every point in time, then why was it perceived in every era as happening over a period of time with a big white wave?  It should occur all at once wiping out all existence in every era simultaneously.

But I don't really care.  The story made more than enough sense for me to enjoy it.  And enjoy it I did-sketchy metaphysics and all.
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nightwing
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« Reply #15 on: February 02, 2004, 01:05:32 PM »

You know, I can respect DC's concern about putting off readers with too complex a Multiverse.  I can understand the desire to put that all away and streamline things.  The problem with Crisis is that it's the product of two ugly trends in comics: (1) the insistence that everything must somehow fit into "continuity", even if that thing is the end of continuity, and (2) the need to turn every change in editorial direction into a sales-generating "event."

Frankly, I'm for the old school of revisionism; if you don't like a character or concept, just stop using them!  Consider the Batman titles, overrun in the late 50s-early 60s by add-ons like Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, Ace the Bat-Hound, etc.  Then it was decided to scrap all that and return Batman to his roots.  So did we get a multi-issue bloodbath where all those characters were killed?  No way.  Did we get a re-boot of Batman himself, starting over again with a new origin story?  Good lord, NO.  Kathy, Betty, Mite and Ace simply stopped appearing in the books.  One month they're all over the place, the next they are gone, gone, gone.  And readers got the message just fine.

Same thing when Schwartz took over Superman from Weisinger.  Kandor, Krypto, the Phantom Zone etc too much clutter?  Then stop writing stories about them.  Problem solved.

But guess what?  Someday when you need Kathy Kane again (for a story about the League of Assassins, as it happened), she's still there.  And when you want to go back to the Phantom Zone (for a cool mini-series), well you've got that, too.  

See, the beauty of having a rich and complex multiverse is that you can pick and choose from all sorts of great story elements whenever you want.  And if you don't want those things, you are under no obligation to use them.  If DC thought the Multiverse was too complex, why not just declare a moratorium on multiple-Earth stories for a while, and re-introduce the concept again slowly if and when the situation required it?  No need to kill all those people (except to pander to the bloodlust of modern readers)...simply shuffle them off to the sidelines and save them for a rainy day.  How hard could it be?  The Multiple Earth stuff really only came up a couple times a year in JLA and the Flash, and much less often in other titles.  Other than cancelling "All-Star Squadron," it wouldn't have hurt most books at all just to say, "hey guys, you can't do multiple Earth stories again until we say it's okay."

My big gripe is that Crisis wiped away decades worth of great ideas and characters and replaced them with nothing anywhere near as interesting.  And over time, as writers realized maybe they *liked* some of those ideas, they brought them back anyway.  The JSA is back in action, Kandor and the Phantom Zone are back, and so on.  Only they've had to be "reinvented," often with poor results.
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