From: albert@chain.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Rick Jones)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: Help:  The DC Earth Scandal.
Date: 12 Aug 92 22:30:22 GMT
Organization: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Tx


	Okay, here's how it was before the Crisis:

Earth-2: The original home of the Justice Society of America and 
Infinity, Inc.  The first "big" super-hero was Superman, who landed
in Smallville, USA (found by John and Mary Kent).  The comics published
in the 40's by DC comics took place here.  On this Earth, Batman 
and Superman both got married (not to each other, silly) and grew
older.  Batman was killed by a thug late in life.

Earth-1: The original home of the Justice League of America.  Again,
Superman was the first major hero, but he had a career as Superboy
as well.  The Flash (Barry Allen) discovered Earth-2 doing a demo of
his powers to Central City kids.  The JLA and JSA frequently crossed
to each other's Earths to have adventures, usually involving some danger
to their respective home planets.  This represents most of DC comics 
from the 60's (when Gardner Fox revitalized Flash, Hawkman, the Atom,
and Green Lantern with their silver age counterparts.)
	This multiple Earth thing expanded to include some other Earths.

Earth-3: Home of the Crime Syndicate, evil counterparts of Superman, Batman,
Flash, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern.  The only super-hero on that world
was Lex Luthor.

Earth-S: Home to the Marvel Family.  (the Shazam Crew)

Earth-X: Home of the Freedom Fighters.  The Nazi's won WWII and the FF fight
them in the modern era.

Earth-4: Home of the original Charlton Heroes (Blue Beetle, Captain Atom,
Thunderbolt, plus others)

Earth-Prime: Originally conceived of as our Earth, however super-heroes 
visited there occasionally, and it turned out there was a Krypton there 
as well, and it exploded, with baby Kal-El again being the only survivor.

	Anyway, DC decided that the whole parallel Earth thing was too
complicated, so they had a mini-series called "Crisis on Infinate Earths"
that was going to smush all of the parallel Earths into one.  Well, 
a lot of things happened during it, and history was re-made from the
begining, so that all these heroes lived on the same Earth.  Now, you
can probably see right now there's going to be a contradiction here,
as on Earth-2 Superman landed in the 1940's and on Earth-1 he landed
in the 60's.  So, they took big chunks out of all the histories to that
some characters "never existed."  Ferinstance, the Earth-2 Huntress 
was the daughter of the Earth-2 Batman, so she was retconned out of 
existance.  (see the FAQ for an explanation of retcon)
	Now, DC also took this as an opportunity to start over on existing
characters.  John Byrne took Superman and sliced out a lot of "silly"
pieces of his history.  Krypto the super-dog, never existed.  In fact,
there was no Supergirl, Super-Cat, Super-Monkey, and so on.  Lex Luthor
was also revamped to fit with this new Superman.  Later, George Perez
totally yanked Wonder Woman out of DC continuity, and had her arrive in
"Man's World" in the late 1980's (with the first issue of the current
Wonder Woman comic), and gave her a more mythologically correct background
(no invisible plane, ferinstance).
	Anyway, this retconning of the primary DC characters caused 
problems with many other DC characters.  Superman "never was" Superboy,
so what does that do to all the issues of Legion of Super-Heroes where
he was a member.  If Wonder Woman just arrived in Man's World, how do
you explain Wonder Girl of the Teen Titans, who's been around for ~6
years before Wonder Woman.  And so on.  
	This led to all sorts of patches on continuity, so that a lot
of old stories happened differently than printed in the comics we had.
Unfortunately, DC is STILL letting writers play with their character's
histories, so that the Hawkman who got a re-write had all sorts of 
patches applied to fix his now contradictory history.  And the Legion of
Super-Heroes is considered by many old fans to be totally unrecognizable.
	Any more questions?
-- 
Rick Jones				Systems Support Center
albert@bcm.tmc.edu			Baylor College of Medicine
Voice: 713-798-7352			standard disclaimers apply
"Hard to say, Ma'am. I think my cerebellum just fused." - Calvin