From: esti@quads.uchicago.edu (Paul A. Estin)
Subject: Re: Help:  The DC Earth Scandal.
Reply-To: esti@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: U. Michigan Cognitive Psychology
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1992 17:46:42 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.111837.58079@cc.usu.edu> sl859@cc.usu.edu writes:
>	I know that some of you out there claim that the DC earth crisis
>is easy to understand, and all, but for me who has only two or three DC
>comics in his collection, and the only one who attempted to explain the
>crisis stuff to me was a friend a few years back...  AAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!
>... Needless to say I have no idea how it works.  So is there someone out
>there capable of explaining this crisis multi-earth thing to me from the
>ground up, because right now it sounds like a bunch of hog-wash!  Perhaps
>this is a FAQ.  But I have never experienced the DC comic concept (or at
>least had a clue as to how it functioned!)
>						wReam...
>P.S.  This is Captain CoreDump signing off!

Closest thing I have on hand to answering your questions...

excerpted from
WELCOME TO REC.ARTS.COMICS (parts 0-2 of 5)
written by lots of different people
edited by Paul A. Estin

[Yeah, I know, it didn't appear this past month; I'm currently
reediting.  Please excuse the delay, y'all, but I've been having the
worst summer of my life.]

2.	Frequently-Asked Questions

* What was the Crisis on Infinite Earths?
	The _Crisis on Infinite Earths_ was a 12-issue series
published by DC in 1985-6.  The "Crisis" effectively revamped the
entire DC Universe by merging several universes (containing the
various DC characters) into a single universe (whose history is still
somewhat unclear in parts).  The Crisis was used as an opportunity to
change DC history retroactively (see "retcon" in the list of
definitions), including the remaking of several popular (and some
not-so-popular) DC characters.  Thus people refer to the "post-Crisis"
Superman, Wonder Woman, etc., as distinct from the "pre-Crisis"
versions who existed on "Earth 1" or "Earth 2".
	The confusion *really* begins because the revamping and
"retconning" didn't all take place in the Crisis limited series
itself, nor in the comics immediately after then.  If DC had simply
started all their series over from scratch, that might have kept
things pretty straightforward.  Instead, they declared the Pre-Crisis
history to be implicitly intact, until and unless they could
explicitly create the new, post-Crisis versions of characters and
histories.
	Thus, new changes are still being made in titles today, more
than half a decade later.  So, for example, the "old" Hawkman appeared
in the "new" Justice League.  But then Timothy Truman began writing
_Hawkworld_, which retconned Hawkman's character; among other changes,
Hawkman "now" arrived on Earth much later.  *So*, the Hawkman who
appeared in the new Justice League comic (call him the Silver Age
Hawkman, or the pre-Crisis Hawkman) "now" (in real world time) "no
longer exists, and never has" (within current DC continuity).
	Confused yet?  Suffice it to say, the way DC handled the
Crisis and its aftermath confuses *lots* of readers and provides a
perennial topic of discussion on r.a.c.

-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Feel free to send additions, corrections, suggestions, comments to:

Paul Andrew Estin
esti@midway.uchicago.edu  or  paul.estin@um.cc.umich.edu
Office: 330 Packard Rd.  Ann Arbor, MI 48104

and remember:
"There are no net.gods, just some people with bigger mouths than others."
	- Dan'l DanehyOakes, net.roach
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc