From: mickey@pecan.cns.udel.edu (Mickey)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: Quasar and the New Universe
Date: 16 Dec 92 23:46:47 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware, Newark

In article <BzDIJH.Kr0@news.udel.edu> krupski@ravel.udel.edu (James John Krupski) writes:
>
>Oh Mick, I could rant on this for hours.  But I'll spare you and just mention
>a couple of things.  

Oh an attack!  Men, man the battlestations! Prepare your Universal
Delineators!  Go buy 20 copies of comics that no one cares about, namely
the old New Universe line...

>
>1) I don't mind leakage in ONE direction.  The Brand and one lousy antibody
>may make Quasar still more interesting.  That's okay by me.

I am in agreement.  I personally am on the title for the current arc at
least for the mere reason that I'm decidedly curious how they'll handle
the Star Brand.  I wasn't even much of a fan of the New Universe at all.
In fact, I hated it.  However, this sounds like it has potential...

>
>2) The New Universe was intended to be "the world outside your window".  Then
>they introduce a few, a very few, science fiction concepts carefully, just the
>ones they want.  The idea was to simulate how real people would react to
>superhero situations.  The people of the DC Universe have seen superhero action
>since WW II, and for the Marvel Universe, since 1963, approximately.  (No
>flames here for inaccuracies please -- I'm making a general point that the 
>general populaces are jaded to otherworldly things.)  Any intrusion of weird
>people from the Marvel Universe is bound to destroy this mood.  (Just one
>appearance from Quasar won't make any difference since no one believed
>where he was from anyway.)  I'm afraid I'm not expressing this very well, so
>just skip to my next reason...

Yea, but we all know this failed miserably.  So in order to try to make
things more interesting and get readers back, they kicked in paranormal
people everywhere going nuts and the Pitt stuff, etc.  So, while it may
have started as "the universe outside your window," Marvel quickly realized
people read comics *instead* of looking outside their windows.  (Marvel
Executives: *OH*!  Boy, what the hell were we thinking?)

>
>3)  Every comic that existed in the real world exists in the New Universe.
>If Quasar had bothered, he could have found out many, many secrets and 
>secret identities, just from reading some comics.  They say this right out
>loud in Quasar #31; the Watcher, for example, is only a comic book character 
>there.  (The reason that no one had ever heard of Quasar in the New Universe
>is that there, Marvel Comics went out of business right after the Pitt.
>(Bwah ha haaaaaaaaa  |-1 )  But I hope you can see the how impossibly
>ludicrous any further NU-MU crossovers would be.

Hmm...that's an odd point.  Quasar was around *long* before he got his
own series, having been Security Chief at Project Pegasus and a SHIELD
Super-Agent before that.  True, he wasn't a very major player...

>
>	Of course I am in favor of good stories.  But do you really think
>that meeting the X-Men is going to improve D.P.7?  I don't.


I, for one, don't believe that's going to happen anytime soon and now
that Quasar has the Star Brand, we're not going to see any more of the
New Universe.

Of course, I've been wrong before (especially when I endorse something
that makes sense....)


Mick



-- 
Mickey McCarter, amateur actor & reporter     mickey@chopin.udel.edu  __
"I'll make your business my business."		Forever reading      / |
"You wouldn't want my business, the pay's            The Fantastic  /__|_ 
too small." -  Phil Marlowe, _The Big Sleep_                           |