From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Crisis on Infinite Earths, 6 years later (was Re: JSA#1:BUY IT...)
Followup-To: rec.arts.comics.misc
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1992 18:27:21 GMT

In article <1992Jul23.164626.23580@noose.ecn.purdue.edu> goerz@author.ecn.purdue.edu (Thomas R Goerz) writes:

>Agreed, but Kara was JSA!!!  I believe she still remembers the Golden Age 
>Superman, too.  She did in her Secret Origins spot and mentioned being a copy
>of Superman last month in JLE!!!  Where does that leave the rest of the JSA ? 

	The current official line (along with the fact that Oceania is
and always has been at war with Eastasia) is that Kara came out of the
magic suspension (which disguised itself as a spaceship for tax
purposes) with a conviction that she was Superman's cousin-- BUT she
never bothered to discuss this with him (it's ambiguous which of her
pre-origin-story adventures actually happened, though they have said
she subbed for Supergirl in some stories).  The origin story then
happened in a modified way (without her recalling Earth-2 or Krypton-2
or Kal-L) and presumably instead she mused on whether she should
confront the Byrned Superman with the secret of her alleged origin when
Arion's ghost showed up to explain the mean trick he'd played on her.
(An interesting variation on the old Supergirl/Power Girl bit about
Superman keeping her existence secret from everyone else until she was
"ready".)

	While the multiple wave theory worked for a while, more recent
changes suggest that the Crisis did not result in a stable history at
all.  Instead, it resulted in a strange sort of universe in which
reality changes virtually at random depending on who's telling the
story-- sort of a deconstructionist's dream come true.  Thus, Hawkman
could be wiped and rewritten half a decade after the Crisis with no
explanation whatsoever, while the Legion universe, which had appeared
to have reached a metastable point in the late eighties with the
pocket universe patch, has been pushed completely off kilter, so that
its history touches the original one at arbitrarily defined points,
but also diverges significantly at others (ironically similar to the
relationship between the Earth-1 and Earth-2 counterparts of various
heroes before the Crisis).

	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.  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).  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.  (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.)

	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_.  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.  (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.)

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

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)