From: khale@camilla.Eng.Sun.COM (Abhijit Khale)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: Re: Crisis on Infinite Earths, 6 years later
Date: 25 Jul 1992 01:47:50 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mt. View, Ca.
NNTP-Posting-Host: camilla

In article <1992Jul23.182721.1853@midway.uchicago.edu> mss2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>
>	Basically, the Crisis was a creative way for DC to allow
>itself to reconcile various contradictions which had grown up around
>its multiverse.  But by refusing to discipline itself (setting a time
>limit for arbitrary changes, working out a consistent timeline and
>revised origins for "disconnected" characters before starting the
>whole shebang, and possibly leaving some reasonable outs for alternate
>histories given that they need them for things like time travel
>stories and Superboy's pocket universe) DC basically put itself in a
>difficult situation.

The problem here is the definition of "arbitrary". If Neil Gaiman
were to say tomorrow " I want to redo the Demon. I dont think the
humorous style of Alan Grant is good. I want to retcon the whole
series away", and DC agreed,  would you say it was an arbitrary change ?
Or would you call it "creative freedom" ? Would you say the same if
the person who wanted to make the change was Grant Morrison ? Or 
Peter Milligan ? Would your opinion change if the person involved
was Keith Giffen ? or John Byrne ? or George Perez ? or Matt Wagner ?

> Really, the old multiple universe structure
>wasn't _that_ hard to understand, especially given the fact that 90%
>of the stories took place solely on Earth-1.  One wonders if things
>are really simpler with the change waves and the random interpolation
>of revised characters and the pocket universes and characters spending
>years with impossible origins (it was four or five years before they
>fixed Wonder Girl, for example, and even longer before they "fixed"
>Mon-El.)  Not to mention characters who have been so distanced from
>their origins that former companions hardly know them (Wonder Girl and
>Wonder Woman, Superman and _everyone_ [LSH, JLA, JSA, Lar Gand,
>Batman, etc.], Power Girl and the JSA).  

Thats a good point, and its a bit of a sore note with me that good
buddies Supes and bats arent pally any more. On the other hand, 
the new relationship makes much more sense, and for most new comic
readers ( not oldtimers like us), the new DC Universe is not too
hard to grasp. Its only people who remember how things were in
old times that have a hard time adjusting, and quite frankly, we're
in the minority. 

>How long before they have to
>give Nightwing a new origin because he's older than Batman?  (Even
>now, one gets the impression that Dick Grayson must have started as
>Robin when he was ten and Bruce Wayne was fifteen for their relative
>ages to work out]).  The original JLA is getting very close to
>becoming yet another "previous generation" to Superman and Batman
>(like the JSA), but DC still insists that Superman was the first hero
>of the modern age.

That's true, but I think its symptomatiac of a more general
problem. i.e. allowing heroes to age. As a recent Inside DC pointed out,
DC has allowed some heroes to age : Oliver Queen, the Legion etc.

But DC is reluctant to allow Superman or Batman, their two prime
legends to age and one cant blame them, given the non-comic 
reading public's familiarity with these.  I agree that its a problem if
Green Arrow ages or Nightwing ages and Batman doesnt. 

This was a problem prior to the Crisis as well : even worse, since we
seemingly had an eternally youthful Superboy in Legion. 

>  (Yet another ill-effect of the Crisis: on Earth-1
>and Earth-2 both, Superman was the _first_-- here, he's very much a
>successor to the WWII generation at least.)

Debatable about Earth-1. Could be Flash or Jonn actually. 

>	In the old system, they could have just shifted Earths,
>written a new Superman, Batman, Hawkman, LSH, etc. to suit themselves,
>and still done revivals when they felt like it a la _All Star
>Squadron_.  

I'm sure DC must have considered that : it would be akin to the start of
the Silver Age. It would have been easier than Crisis. But IMHO,
Crisis was a more innovative idea. 

But what to do about DCs then best selling comics, Teen Titans ? Would
there be a new bunch with the same powers in the New Universe ? 
What about LSH ? What about Swamp Thing ? There are other problems
as well, which other people have pointed out. 

>Now, every time they want to do that sort of thing they
>have to rewrite history (as done with Young All-Stars, the JLA origin,
>LSH flashbacks, etc.-- I _liked_ several of these, but I am having to
>get adept at doublethink) and they _can't_ do some of the neat things
>they could do with parallel Earths (What about an occasional
>appearance by a Superman who married Lois Lane?  What if Batman died?
>What if Supergirl were a bit more assertive and a bit less in her
>cousin's shadow?)  They could _do_ that sort of thing, and see the
>reactions of the "mainline" characters to the fates of their
>counterparts.  

But quite frankly, this kind of story was the exception. Most stories
would neglect possibilities like this. Even in the JLA/JSA teamups,
you'd think that Helena Wayne would show more reaction to an alive
Bruce Wayne from Earth-1. Yes, she referred to him as "Uncle", but
that was about it. In most cases, writers prefered to avoid these
type of stories, with a few exceptions .. 

>(I'm told, though I haven't read it, of a story in
>which the Earth-1 Batman teamed up with the Earth-2 Batwoman-- each of
>whose counterparts had died recently.  I don't know if it _was_ done
>well, but it's certainly a potentially powerful tale.)

Yes, its an excellent tale, B & B 181 or so, written by Alan Brennert,
whos also done other excellent Batman stuff like "To Kill a Legend", "The
autobiography of Bruce Wayne". Brennert wrote stories about parallel
worlds, but he was/is hardly a regular DC writer. 

Nor are such stories really precluded now: see the Elseworlds series. 

>	In short, they didn't get the advantages they were looking for
>(does anyone think DC continuity is _simpler_ now?), the benefits they
>got were debatable (since they depend on one's taste for the current
>Hawkman, Superman, LSH, etc.) and in any case could have been
>accomplished in a less destructive manner.

Hmm. I know this is debatable, but I think Superman and Hawkman are
better now. The early 80s Superman was boring. There were a few good
stories by Cary Bates, but the whole general trend was lack of direction,
no continuity. Superman was too powerful to have good action oriented
storylines written about him too. I think the new Superman is much
better, but I wouldnt argue this, since this is an entire new posting
in itself. Ditto for Hawkman. 

Legion was hurt by the Crisis, I agree, but quite frankly, it was
a choice between DCs most legendary character and a super team known
only to a few fans. Which would you pick ? 

>	If DC actually were moving towards stability, they might claim
>that they had made things simpler, but as long as they're willing to
>allow gratuitous retconning, they've made the universe harder, not
>easier, to understand.

I think of it as DC allowing its writers and artists creative
freedom, rather than gratuitious retconning. Things like Ragman
and Kid Eternity represent heavy retconning, but they also try to
present a more dynamic and contemporary character to arise. DC didnt
retcon things that were doing well, viz. Teen Titans (modulo the
changes required by other books like Wonder Woman). 

Allowing writers and artists creative freedom inevitably leads to
some retconning. Why wasnt hawkworld redesignated as "Hawkman,
Year One", as could have been done ? Because Ostrander wanted
to cover the new Katar/Shayera relation and because he wanted a
new Katar, who had just come to Earth. Why was Grant Morrison
allowed to bring some Doom Patrol members back from the dead ? 
Because he had ideas of some interesting stuff he could do with them.
Should the editor of HellBlazer have said that the excellent "Dangerous
Habits" storyline shouldnt have taken place, since Hell was ruled
by Remiel and Duma and not the Trinity any more ? Should the Shade
series have been stopped because of the appearance of Shade in
Suicide Squad earlier ? 

I agree that conitnuity should be preserved if possible :"Sandman" 
didnt do much retconning per se. However, thats not always possible.

>	Again, if they'd worked out the implications ahead of time,
>the Crisis could have worked.  Sure, maybe they didn't know everything
>that was going to happen, but they _knew_ they were depriving Power
>Girl of her origin, and they had a pretty good idea what they were
>doing to Wonder Girl and to all the Superman-related series.  They had
>this thing on the drawing board for literal years, but nonetheless
>they acted prematurely.   They should have had their major retcons
>ready and integrated, so that LSH wouldn't have had to flounder for
>years before the Pocket Universe patch (which, by its nature, belied
>the whole point of the Crisis-- if having one universe is the goal,
>what does it say when you're forced into creating another to prevent
>one of your perennially popular books from being undercut?

DC did try and redo its major properties like Superman and Wonder
Woman concurrently with the crisis. Why didnt they have everything
cut and dried then ? Because they're human and there's only so much
work that can be done at a time, so they choose to focus on the most
critical. Hawkman is a relatively minor DC property, so they didnt
get to it till later. Because they couldnt have predicted that Keith
Giffen would come by and say " I want to redo the Ragman", so they
left a number of characters unused or used them very mildly till their
revitalization. 

The Legion case is interesting. In many ways getting rid of Superboy
was a good move for the legion, since it allowed them to grow out
of his shadow. Even before his death, Superboy was used less and
less. I  would guess that Byrne wanted to get rid of Superboy
and he had been given creative freedom over Superman, so DC let
him do it. At that stage, Levitz could have done what T & M did
in issue 5 (and later retconned !!!), and got rid of Superboy from
Legion history, but he chose to try to patch it with the Pocket
Universe and preserve Legion history, which was an important
point for oldtime legion fans. 

>As it is, I wonder how long it takes for new readers to develop
>appropriate DC doublethink?  

See Above. I dont think its a major problem for most readers. 

> _Crisis on Infinite
>Earths_ itself was an excellent superhero smash-em-up, almost the acme
>of the genre, with hundreds of brightly colored heroes, bits of trivia
>for the old fans, a reasonably well-scripted and plotted story (with
>just the right kind of pseudoscientific threat) and nice art.

I would go further than that. An excellent story, wonderful
characterization, great tie-ins to previous stories (from
the Hand to Krona to the Controllers). Gorgeous Art, Perez at
his peak. 

> And at
>first, it seemed to be a great opportunity for DC.  But the fact is
>that the best things DC has produced didn't _need_ the Crisis, because
>they either were entirely out of continuity (_Watchmen_, _V for
>Vendetta_, _The Dark Knight Returns_) or took advantage of obscure
>continuity in a way which made even the silliest throwaways seem like
>bits of a great myth (_Swamp Thing_, _Sandman_, "Whatever Happened to
>the Man of Tomorrow") and hence could take advantage of and rise above
>any confusion in continuity.

True. No one would compare Crisis to Watchmen. On the other hand,
DCs bread and butter has always been the superhero books, and they
were indeed revitalized by the crisis in many cases. I agree that
the best quality work has come about because of the likes of
Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman and the rest of the Brit Pack, and
of course Frank Miller.


> Hence, at C+6 years, I'm inclined to
>declare the Crisis a failure-- an interesting one, but ultimately
>unnecessary and even detrimental.

"Crisis" has certainly given writers and artists who work for DC more
creative freedom, and thats almost certainly a plus. Financially,
DC was doing pretty badly then, and they've been OK since then.
Admittedly, the mutant steamroller has made the last year or so
bad for them, but in general, the Crisis has been positive for them.


Abhijit


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