The OFFICIAL FINAL CRISIS THREAD

[cerealkiller182]

i think you guys are essentially saying the same thing in regards to the universe

 

[BrianWilly]

Not necessarily. I almost don't mind continuity discrepancies so much as I would mind relationship discrepancies. My line of thought goes more like "When was the last time Wally West spoke to his best friend Kyle Rayner?" instead of something like "Kyle Rayner's Countdown continuity doesn't match his GLC continuity!" You can get away with the latter to most degrees. But the former almost always hurts your characters and your stories, new and old.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yeah, it's definitely more jarring to have two characters who should know each other meet and be completely oblivious than it is to have two characters meet and have slight continuity discrepancies. You can usually explain the latter pretty easily with some thought, too.

 

[BrianWilly]

It's actually kinda funny, and by funny I mean sad...the characters in-universe say that the Titans are the glue that holds these people together, and when you think about it, that's really true. Several years back, they and even the Outsiders were the direct line that a lot of these connections could be traced through. And now look at the state of the Titans, and look at the state of the connections.

For the record, the last time Wally spoke to his best friend Kyle was in Identity Crisis.

...

Freaking Identity Crisis.

Don't get me started on the last time we ever saw Kyle talking to his other BFF Connor.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

"Last time ever." ****ing Winick.

 

[cerealkiller182]

Hate to nitpick especially because in general you guys are correct but Kyle has really been tied up in some pretty complex crap but Wally has made time to make friends with Nightwing plus the upcoming Titans

but in general you guys are definitely right. Batman and Robin barely work together anymore.

 

[Assassin]

corp, GAH and brian willy all on the same boat?

**** this i'm going back to comicbloc

 

[Aristotle]

BrianWilly brought up a good point a while ago about the pre-IC era: it wasn't so much an obsessive interconnection between comics and stories so much as it was an obsessive preservation and acknowledgment of character relationships. Characters were pretty consistent across titles and people showed up in places that made sense and stuff.

Right. What I think broke down was editorial oversight, and in hindsight, nothing else could have happened. DC set itself up for a failure that was absolutely guaranteed. The straw was the OYL jump. Aside from setting a dangerous and scary precedent for poorly thought out and unnecessary editorial story mandates, it created a nightmare for every editor at DC by shuffling literally EVERY creative team, bringing in a MASSIVE influx of new stories to be approved in EVERY title, and bringing onboard several writers who just weren't familiar enough with either the history of the DCU or its current events.

What did we expect would happen in a Flash book written by the guy who wrote that ****house TV series? Or a Wonder Woman book written by a guy who's worked on such abysmal TV shows as Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, and The OC, and whose only prior experience handling DC characters was a mediocre, subpar arc on JLA? Or a Batman book about a newly rehumanized Batman written by a guy who had only ever used Batman as an "******* hero to make the star of my book look nicer by comparison" plot device?

They made Aquaman into a ****ing sword-and-sorcery character, and ****ed Orin over so hard that it's going to take close to a year to find a way to bring him back right, apparently. THEY LET BRUCE JONES WRITE A COMIC BOOK. I don't even remember who they put on Hawkman after changing it to Hawkgirl, but the guy could not tell a story in under fifteen issues, and the art was ugly and uninspiring. I won't even go into what they did to Batgirl.

With all of the massively ill-advised changes-for-the-sake-of-changing story mandates that were handed down, all the abysmal writers and artists they added, and all of the mandatory shuffling and relaunching they did, how did they NOT expect editorial oversight to fail? How did they NOT expect continuity to collapse into a pit that they still haven't quite escaped from?

It's been two years this month since the OYL jump. Countdown is still basically an Elseworlds book because of all the continuity ****ups. Seriously, if you didn't read all the Countdown tie-ins, and none of the Countdown issues, you would not know that anybody had been in the ****ing thing. Firestorm's participation has been negligible, although it does answer what happened to him after he went looking for Darkseid. Kyle Rayner hasn't even commented on his time in the Challengers. The Silver Age Legion is doing a remarkable job of not giving a **** what happened to the members they left behind. Nobody seems to care what happened to Captain Atom. Even the New Gods, in many ways the stars of the ****ing event, don't seem to have noticed Countdown. They're too preoccupied with a story worth reading, Death of the New Gods, which I'm starting to suspect will have way more to do with Morrison's Final Crisis than Morrison originally let on, and certainly more to do with it than Countdown will.

Two years. We're STILL not out of the pit they collapsed into. I think we're finally on the verge of it, but JESUS TITTY****ING CHRIST, let's not try something that dumb again guys.

 

[Aristotle]

I almost don't mind continuity discrepancies so much as I would mind relationship discrepancies.

To me, that's all the same, although I realize they're different. But I think of them the same. Batgirl going insane and J'onn eschewing the other superheroes (remember when he was doing that?) pisses me off to about the same degree that I'm pissed off by two Legions, two Brothers Eye, and potentially THREE Deaths of the New Gods.

My line of thought goes more like "When was the last time Wally West spoke to his best friend Kyle Rayner?" instead of something like "Kyle Rayner's Countdown continuity doesn't match his GLC continuity!"

Perhaps those two questions can answer each other. Kyle hasn't talked to Wally much because he's spending all his time as either a Challenger or a Corpsman.

You can get away with the latter

You can, but it represents the same mindset, which is why I feel the same about both, I think. Both represent lazy writing and a lack of respect for the characters, the stories, the artistic form, and the readers.

 

[BrianWilly]

Wally is maybe not the best example, seeing as how he was stuck in another dimension for a year. Even taking that into account, though, it's just systematic of the problem where formerly strong relationships break down. I can't for the life of me remember a single instance of any of Wally's friends even thinking about him in a text box or something while he was away. It's just things like that, where characters seem to forget that they should know other characters.

The single most egregious example I can name off the top of my head was Rose Wilson's reaction to Bart Allen's death. They were incredibly close in life. They may have ended up together in the future. And then, at his funeral, she's just sitting around...nonchalantly playing with her cell phone. At first everyone was like "oh duh, she's in denial," but then...time passed...and then some more time passed...and nothing. If McKeever has any plans at all to follow up on any of this, he's sure playing it close to his chest. As in not showing any signs of doing so whatsoever.

A more subtle example would be Wonder Woman for some reason being one of the two people who were there to help pick out Black Canary's wedding dress. Wait but...why? They were never close friends. They like each other sure, but there's never been any solid history between them. Hell, I don't think they've ever even been in the same incarnation of the League before this most recent one. Dinah has a literal army of female friends that she'd go pick out dresses with before Diana. It just smacks of someone going "Okay so...two of DC's biggest heroines...silver age standbys...current JLA...they're totally bestest friends now! Make it work!" That sort of unnatural progression.

 

[cerealkiller182]

They made Aquaman into a ****ing sword-and-sorcery character, and ****ed Orin over so hard that it's going to take close to a year to find a way to bring him back right, apparently. T

i dont think the sword and sorcery thing was so bad but the messing up Orin was a BIG mistake. And the whole concept still doesnt really make sense to me.

 

[The Batman]

Right. What I think broke down was editorial oversight, and in hindsight, nothing else could have happened. DC set itself up for a failure that was absolutely guaranteed. The straw was the OYL jump. Aside from setting a dangerous and scary precedent for poorly thought out and unnecessary editorial story mandates, it created a nightmare for every editor at DC by shuffling literally EVERY creative team, bringing in a MASSIVE influx of new stories to be approved in EVERY title, and bringing onboard several writers who just weren't familiar enough with either the history of the DCU or its current events.

What did we expect would happen in a Flash book written by the guy who wrote that ****house TV series? Or a Wonder Woman book written by a guy who's worked on such abysmal TV shows as Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls, Grey's Anatomy, and The OC, and whose only prior experience handling DC characters was a mediocre, subpar arc on JLA? Or a Batman book about a newly rehumanized Batman written by a guy who had only ever used Batman as an "******* hero to make the star of my book look nicer by comparison" plot device?

They made Aquaman into a ****ing sword-and-sorcery character, and ****ed Orin over so hard that it's going to take close to a year to find a way to bring him back right, apparently. THEY LET BRUCE JONES WRITE A COMIC BOOK. I don't even remember who they put on Hawkman after changing it to Hawkgirl, but the guy could not tell a story in under fifteen issues, and the art was ugly and uninspiring. I won't even go into what they did to Batgirl.

With all of the massively ill-advised changes-for-the-sake-of-changing story mandates that were handed down, all the abysmal writers and artists they added, and all of the mandatory shuffling and relaunching they did, how did they NOT expect editorial oversight to fail? How did they NOT expect continuity to collapse into a pit that they still haven't quite escaped from?

It's been two years this month since the OYL jump. Countdown is still basically an Elseworlds book because of all the continuity ****ups. Seriously, if you didn't read all the Countdown tie-ins, and none of the Countdown issues, you would not know that anybody had been in the ****ing thing. Firestorm's participation has been negligible, although it does answer what happened to him after he went looking for Darkseid. Kyle Rayner hasn't even commented on his time in the Challengers. The Silver Age Legion is doing a remarkable job of not giving a **** what happened to the members they left behind. Nobody seems to care what happened to Captain Atom. Even the New Gods, in many ways the stars of the ****ing event, don't seem to have noticed Countdown. They're too preoccupied with a story worth reading, Death of the New Gods, which I'm starting to suspect will have way more to do with Morrison's Final Crisis than Morrison originally let on, and certainly more to do with it than Countdown will.

Two years. We're STILL not out of the pit they collapsed into. I think we're finally on the verge of it, but JESUS TITTY****ING CHRIST, let's not try something that dumb again guys.

up until OYL, I thought DC had the momentum to at least be the top comic company 4 months out of the year instead of never....

 

[BrianWilly]

Perhaps those two questions can answer each other. Kyle hasn't talked to Wally much because he's spending all his time as either a Challenger or a Corpsman.

That was always the case, though. Any hero is always busy and is always involved in one drawn-out event or the other. Relationships form because of that, not in spite of it.

Maybe Kyle encounters a Wally on another world where they never became friends, or maybe Wally is shown wanting to hang out with his old buddies instead of having to worry about his kids. Even showing the effects of not being with a friend is sometimes just as effective as showing the effects of being with a friend. All it takes is a single panel, even a single line of dialogue. Something to show consistent, cohesive relationships between two characters in different books.

It was always subtle. It was never something huge. This whole connectivity thing between characters was never this thing you could, for example, hype at a convention or anything. But that's part of what made it so cool. And because it's something so subtle, all it takes is subtle mistakes to have it break apart. Of all the examples I listed above, I can guarantee that absolutely no one who hasn't been reading these books for at least three or four years would have picked up on any of it. Which is why it's so frustrating, it's almost like a continuity mistake that only you can see.

 

[cerealkiller182]

When Kyle came to Earth as Parallax would have been a good time for Wally and Kyle to get some face time but was Wally still stuck in the speed force?

 

[Aristotle]

It's actually kinda funny, and by funny I mean sad...the characters in-universe say that the Titans are the glue that holds these people together, and when you think about it, that's really true. Several years back, they and even the Outsiders were the direct line that a lot of these connections could be traced through. And now look at the state of the Titans, and look at the state of the connections.

I haven't had as much of a problem with Teen Titans as everyone else has. Aside from the fact that they're currently facing an team of evil Titans for basically the third time in a row, the book's been better than a lot of others DC is doing. But yes, in terms of character relationships, the book is not doing as well as it should, and I think you can indeed see that reflected around the DCU. But as I've said so many times in the past month or so, it's all gonna turn around when Final Crisis comes.

For the record, the last time Wally spoke to his best friend Kyle was in Identity Crisis.

My God. You're right. I've been reading almost everything that took place in the DCU since then, I think you're ****ing right. Geez. Man, it really is the littlest things.

 

[Aristotle]

corp, GAH and brian willy all on the same boat?

Not to mention me. Corp and I are in agreement maybe 40% of the time, GAH and I never agree (but who does agree with GAH all that much?), and I can still remember when BW and I were *****ing each other out HARD over a couple of his reviews.

 

[BrianWilly]

When Kyle came to Earth as Parallax would have been a good time for Wally and Kyle to get some face time but was Wally still stuck in the speed force?

If I recall correctly, he was back by then and fought Superman-Prime for a bit. See. I don't know if I would want to take up room in a significant event like that for something could conceivably happen elsewhere -- after all, it's a writers' prerogative how he uses up his limited panels -- but I certainly wouldn't have minded if it happened.

 

[Aristotle]

I can't for the life of me remember a single instance of any of Wally's friends even thinking about him in a text box or something while he was away.

That's what happens when you put guys like Meltzer, Heinberg, and that Flash dude on books in a shared universe. For the record, I think they mentioned him in JLA #1, but they gave more recognition to not knowing where Billy Batson was than to not knowing where Wally was.

The single most egregious example I can name off the top of my head was Rose Wilson's reaction to Bart Allen's death. They were incredibly close in life. They may have ended up together in the future.

Really? I'm a huge DC buff and for some reason I'm drawing a blank on that. When were they close? I remember that they end up together in the first Titans Tomorrow arc, but I didn't remember that they were ever close in mainline continuity.

 

[Aristotle]

up until OYL, I thought DC had the momentum to at least be the top comic company 4 months out of the year instead of never....

They'll come back. Final Crisis. Gonna turn it all around. God, I sound like Lenny and George from Of Mice And Men.

"Tell me about the rabbits and the tight continuity and the consistent characterization again, George!"

 

[cerealkiller182]

If I recall correctly, he was back by then and fought Superman-Prime for a bit. See. I don't know if I would want to take up room in a significant event like that for something could conceivably happen elsewhere -- after all, it's a writers' prerogative how he uses up his limited panels -- but I certainly wouldn't have minded if it happened.

Well your idea about heroes at least referencing their relationships was good.

Iwas speaking specific face time. Since Wally and Kyleare so close he might have been a prime choice to talk Kyle down or persuade Kyle to overpower Parallax (little cliche though)

 

[Aristotle]

(cue someone making a crack about how it had to be "super-Hal")

 

[BrianWilly]

Well your idea about heroes at least referencing their relationships was good.

Iwas speaking specific face time. Since Wally and Kyleare so close he might have been a prime choice to talk Kyle down or persuade Kyle to overpower Parallax (little cliche though)

I would definitely have liked something like that. But, still, I get how hard it must be to fit in all that stuff you need to fit in into something like SCW, I don't really blame anyone if they don't throw in non-sequiturs. Interpersonal relationships, especially with people not even in the cast of the series, reeeeally weren't the highlight here. I mean, maybe the whole Kyllax thing would have better if it was more about actual existing material and not stuff invented out of thin air, but that wasn't the route Johns had set up.

Really? I'm a huge DC buff and for some reason I'm drawing a blank on that. When were they close? I remember that they end up together in the first Titans Tomorrow arc, but I didn't remember that they were ever close in mainline continuity.

Bart and Rose were teammates in the 90s Titans series, where he had a (largely one-sided, admittedly) crush on her. Which is really not that noteworthy, sure, I mean who even remembers the 90s Titans series, right?...if not for the fact that Johns referenced this pretty repeatedly throughout Rose's appearances in the latest series, from both characters, and throughout the series Bart's even one of the few people who could get to her. I hardly expect her to start breaking down in tears, sure, but...playing on her cell phone? Seriously? At his funeral?

Seriously?

It's mean, it's not like Rose Wilson even has that many people she could conceivably call friends for these writers to remember!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

As a big Aquaman fan, I actually didn't mind the sword and sorcery angle too much as an arc. DC just mishandled it from start to finish. No way in hell should the series have ended before Orin was back on his feet, at least. I applaud Tad Williams for playing up the Aquanewb's street cred deficiency by having him just try to do the best he can and even avoid using his first name, since it's the same as Orin's surface name, but it frankly is not enough. Tad Williams supposedly had a big master plan for resurrecting Orin and getting everything set up in its proper order--they should've let him go ahead with that instead of pulling the rug out from under him and leaving us with the Aquanewb, whose personality is still, after over a dozen issues and numerous cameos, almost a complete unknown. Whenever Orin comes back, I have a bad feeling that we're going to see the baby thrown out with the bathwater, too--no water hand, no Topo, no Sub Diego, no acceptance of his kid's death and more centered personality, no anything that's actually been a good addition to his mythos over the past five years.

 

[GoldenAgeHero]

the sword and sorcery stuff is what got me into reading aquaman and busiek was doing a fine job with it,although the pacing could pickup here and there. When the creative team switched I dropped the title.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

That's sad, given that Tad finally gave us some of the answers Busiek kept promising us but never got around to. The art was a bit puzzling, but Williams' story turned out to be pretty solid, except for being cut short in the end.