Was the whole earth-one and earth two situation a pointless mistake?

[Iceburgeruk]

Surely the whole multiple earths but and zero hour and the crises were all rather unneccesary and pointless.

It would have been far easier to just have that fans just disreguard the 40s references and just consider it to have always been the same superman and the same batman.

Some say that isn`t good enough but all of the marvel titles started in the 60s but the main titles haven`t rebooted they just simply disreguard the unnecesary bits that date the early stories and rememmber the bits that weren`t tied down to the era.

I just get the sinking feeling that dc might do the same thing again in a decade or two and disreguard the comics we are enjoying right now.

[yenaled]

I disagree. I enjoy DC's take on legacy and the movement of time much more over Marvel's "twenty year old universe".

[TheCorpulent1]

I agree with both of you, to be honest. I do like DC's legacy idea a lot more than Marvel's far more static universe. I did like Crisis on Infinite Earths as an attempt to streamline various contradictory continuities. I didn't like Zero Hour, and I thought that IC was equal parts fun and stupid but 100% needless when all was said and done.

One point I'd contend is having to disregard comics. We don't have to disregard the vast majority of the comics DC's published between CoIE and IC. Why would we have to disregard all of the current stuff for a possible future Crisis, Take 3?

[mwm1331]

I actually look forward to having crises every 20 years or so. It really allows them to recreate the characters and the universe, for each new generation

[Iceburgeruk]

Originally Posted by mwm1331

I actually look forward to having crises every 20 years or so. It really allows them to recreate the characters and the universe, for each new generation

Yeah but every time they do they demand you don`t count whole decades of character development. Think of all the effort the early writers put in just for some upstart editor to say it isn`t sensible enough anymore.

Besides restarts aren`t actually neccesary. Its a lazy writer`s excuse like the whole making peter parker single again thing, the writer isn`t talented enough to write a married super hero and so take the easy route out by making the hero free and single again. Restarting gives the impression of going back to the roots of the character but many times you are simply playing it safe with storylines and villains that you know have worked.

I`d prefer to see the continuity carry on without restarting so that by the time i reach old age i might see batman and superman handing their legacies over to their sons or daughters. The stories have to grow and continue otherwise they will risk losing the actual spirit and center of the characters and become stagnant, souless and repetitive.

[mwm1331]

Originally Posted by Iceburgeruk

Yeah but every time they do they demand you don`t count whole decades of character development. Think of all the effort the early writers put in just for some upstart editor to say it isn`t sensible enough anymore.

Or they just y'know, use it as a staarting point.

Besides restarts aren`t actually neccesary. Its a lazy writer`s excuse like the whole making peter parker single again thing, the writer isn`t talented enough to write a married super hero and so take the easy route out by making the hero free and single again. Restarting gives the impression of going back to the roots of the character but many times you are simply playing it safe with storylines and villains that you know have worked.

When?
I mean as far as I am concened its this obsession with "continuity" which is screwing up comics in the first place. So what if a new story contradicts something that happened 30 years ago?

I`d prefer to see the continuity carry on without restarting so that by the time i reach old age i might see batman and superman handing their legacies over to their sons or daughters. The stories have to grow and continue otherwise they will risk losing the actual spirit and center of the characters and become stagnant, souless and repetitive.

Or y'know you can just hit reset and get rid of the crap.
Condiering sins past, the clone saga, totemic spiderman, and many of the other "develoments" I have a feeling that marvel fans will be beging for a crisis before too long.

[Iceburgeruk]

Originally Posted by mwm1331

Or they just y'know, use it as a staarting point.

That the theory but the entire ultimate marvel line suffers primarily because they only do what was proven popular. Ok cobalt man, plantman and and grasshopper were never winners but they were baby steps which took the series to the success they are at now. Ultimate writers (with the exception perhaps of the work done in ultimates) simply run down the list and do ultimate versions of the main villains and plot lines. Sales dropping...lets do ultimate galactus. That did well...lets do ultimate apocalypse for x-men. It doesn`t require them to actually think as much they just look it up on wikipedia and then tweek it a bit to make it 'cool.' For creativity to flourish you have to take risks and try new things. Doing everything over and over will get people bored. I mean look at the constant dying and rebirths of the phoenix iot was a unique idea the first time but most x-fans are really bored with it now that is has been redone a dozen times.

Originally Posted by mwm1331

When?
I mean as far as I am concened its this obsession with "continuity" which is screwing up comics in the first place. So what if a new story contradicts something that happened 30 years ago?

Yeah but the outcome of crisis on infinite earths was that everything before 1960 was rendered obsolete by it having been the adventures of a b-grade superman. I agree continuity obsession is stupid. In my view so what if in five stories in the 50s superman is see through, it doesn`t mean that everything from the fifties is unusable and defunct. Just forget the silly stories and remember the ones which made sense to our current continuity. Unfortunatly the dc powers that be and a large amount of fans feel differently. They feel that a crisis every two decades is neccesary and that any decade that has even the slightest discrepancies within it must be rejected and never spoke of again. I think its sad as people put a lot of effort into the early decades of dc and for there stuff to be considered somehow second rate compared to the stuff now is kind of annoying.

Originally Posted by mwm1331

Or y'know you can just hit reset and get rid of the crap.
Condiering sins past, the clone saga, totemic spiderman, and many of the other "develoments" I have a feeling that marvel fans will be beging for a crisis before too long.

Yeah but why bother. like you said yourself just forget about it and move on. the clone saga didn`t cause the spiderman character to become unworkable so forget it and move on. If you restart then you are more likely to have to do the bad storylines again. I mean they did ultimate spidey and look where they are now ultimate clone saga.

[BrianWilly]

Well, people like continuity. People want to believe that the stories they like actually matter. People don't like thinking that something they read is just going to be rendered null in a couple of years or even months. Why would we care about these stories so much if they're just not going to matter to these characters down the line? I think continuity, or at least a semblance of continuity, is pivotal to telling these stories at all.

That being said...I don't think that I would have liked the multiverse too much if I read comics back then. But I definitely don't think it was a mistake, because it's due to that very "mistake" that the DCU is the way it is now. And I like the way that the DCU is now.

Quoting myself from another thread in regards to two separate continuities being around...

The way I look at it -- and I believe that this is the official DC policy on the Crisis retcons anyway, as they explained it back when Donna Troy was reborn -- is that both happened. Black Canary was on the original JLA instead of Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman was on the original JLA instead of Black Canary. Both of those events happening (which seems impossible, yes, but they happened anyway) is what makes up the current DCU.

It's like how Power Girl existed after the original Crisis, even though the original Crisis said "Earth-2 never existed." But Earth-2 had to have existed. The events of the Golden and Silver ages all happened, even if they didn't in the comic universe timelines, and that's how we have our current universe. The present is not made up of a fixed, single past. A lot of "pasts" happened in order to create the current present of the DCU. If just Wonder Woman had been in the original JLA instead of Black Canary, the present wouldn't be the way it is. If just Black Canary had been in the original JLA instead of Wonder Woman, the present wouldn't be the way it is. Both had to have happened.

Does that make sense? Pretend that you're Grant Morrison for a moment, then it will.

So buck up; Year One hasn't been negated.

[Lt. Figgnuts]

Originally Posted by Iceburgeruk

It would have been far easier to just have that fans just disreguard the 40s references and just consider it to have always been the same superman and the same batman.

Yes, but once they started rebooting characters like the Flash and Green Lantern in the fifties, the older fans started asking about what happened to the original Jay Garrick Flash, the Alan Scott Green Lantern, and that's where the Parallel Earths idea came from.

Maybe it was a ****ty idea, but it was a way to give the fans what they wanted and they can't really be blamed for that.

I've never read Crisis on Infinite Earths, so maybe it was pointless...but honestly the Multiple Earths idea always made sense to me.