i'm going to talk about crisis on infinite earths again

does it even exist?

i) were any ILC-ers 'there', i.e. reading DC before and then during the Crisis? (I only started reading DC post-Crisis, i.e. IT WORKED)

ii) what if anything remains of the 'single universe' thing in DC Continuity, and how does it actually effect storytelling?

iii) Crisis - classic or dud? (as a comic)

iv) the effects of Crisis - classic or dud? What did DC gain and lose from it?

v) Should there be a Crisis 2?

Yes, I know those are quite big questions. Sorry.

Dud. it's more or less unreadable. The art is great, but the page layouts are awful, so each page is full of too many fussy little pictures, making the eye want to do anything other than read it.

ii) the most significant thing (i can think of) is how it affects the Golden Age heroes, who are, by necessity, tied in to WWII. But luckily, weird science and hinky magic explanations aboud as to how fellows like Jay (Flash) Garrick, Alan (Green Lantern) Scott and Ted (Wildcat) Grant are still in crimefighting condition, some 60 years after their debuts. I know there was some Hypertime thing, which essentially replaces the Multiple Universe idea with Alternate Timelines, introduced in the Kingdom Come follow up, Kingdom, but I don't think it's actually been used that much. Though in Superman/Batman, there's some wild alternate-timeline craziness going on, and it's a lot of fun.

iii) classic, still the highwatermark for Cosmic Shenanigans.

iv) DC gained a fresh start on some of their most convoluted histories, though in the case of Superman, they've managed to make them just as convoluted all over again. In terms of the post-Crisis Batman, the changes were far subtler. Wonder Woman, meanwhile, got the shaft by being completely stricken from the DC timeline, not to appear in "Man's World" until the Legends event the following year. Post-Crisis, The Flash got exactly what the character needed, a brand new life. Wally West as the Flash remains the best outcome of the Crisis as it managed to bridge the Silver and the Current Ages beautifully, and finally fulfilled the rarely-voiced implications of the very notion of teen sidekicks.

v) I don't think a new Crisis is needed, I think what's needed is for comic nerds to lighten the fuck up. But if we can get an awesome Worlds Will Live, Worlds Will Die space epic, I'll be down.

I only hopped over to DC after John Byrne hopped over to Superman, so technically I started reading DC post-Legends. Crisis was always this important mythical thing where Important Characters Died & such, so I always held it in high esteem. My mom bought me the series (the original issues! they never TPBed it until recently, the schmendricks) for my 13th or 14th birthday, maybe sooner. [Answer to be continued in iii).]

ii) what if anything remains of the 'single universe' thing in DC Continuity, and how does it actually effect storytelling?

Huk OTM re: the Golden Age characters. This might overlap w/ my answer to iv), but the only true effect I can see re: Crisis is the need for every moment to Mean Something and Matter - there's no room for Earth 2 shenanigans, everything has to follow a linear timeline & adhere to continuity (whatever the hell it is). It probably kept writers from letting stuff fly, unless they're continuity bloodhounds lookin' to revamp / transmogrify unused charaacters, OR recast odd goings' on in some more "sensible" light.

iii) Crisis - classic or dud? (as a comic)

I have fond memories of it - the art's purty (especially w/ Jerry Ordway inking Mr. Perez), and the story (when it wasn't dealing with x-over related plot stuff) was grandiose and epic. The Anti-Monitor was cool, too. The regular Monitor & Harbinger - not so cool. (Does Harbinger's recent death in S/B have any impact on this impending Crisis? Was there something in Crisis that explains this, perchance?)

iv) the effects of Crisis - classic or dud? What did DC gain and lose from it?

When I first read it, I was all for continuity & referential integrity & "realism" in my tales of cosmic & super-heroic derring-do, so Crisis got the big thumbs up from yours truly. Really, though, all that matters (to me, now) is making the CHARACTERS realistic - the stories can be as wacky and out-there as they want, but if the characters are equally unhinged, then something's lost. (Thanks, Grant!) The idea of Crisis is fine & all, but DC lost a bit of its charm & innocence in trying to "simplify" its backstory & align their brands and characters more w/ the Marvel way of things (which is probably the point @ which the Big Two officially turned their backs on the non-Direct Market outlets and started catering to 30-year-olds & investors).

Also, officially hitting REBOOT on characters seems like a lazy cop-out, even if they were able to bring on talented folk (Perez on Wonder Woman, Byrne on Supes, Frank Miller on Batman) to do the dirty work. And, fittingly, they've been in a state of relative flux ever since - they're STILL trying to fix Superman, Green Lantern's gone through a slew of "fixes" and "changes", the Justice League has expanded & contracted a few times, and let's not talk about the Legion, let alone ZERO HOUR - so I don't know if they gained a damn thing. The fact that they're at once going further up their own ass to fix their multiple fixes while simultaneously hearkening back to the good old days of sci-fi closets and monkey robot fun - I'm not sure if this is a sign of strength or a cry for help.

v) Should there be a Crisis 2?

Sure, why not? It's a total capitulation to fanboys & girls everywhere that're chock-full of trivial minutae & emotional investment in pieces of paper, but I'm one of them, so I'm game. I don't think they'll be getting anyone else to give a rat's ass, though - "Hey, teenagers & pre-teens! We're celebrating the anniversary of an event that happened before you were born! Come join us!" (Also, w/ Geoff Johns @ the helm, I fear readers will be steamrolled by more DC "history" than folks will be willing to handle.) (I can only speak for myself, though.)

ii) i read superman in the sixties a couple of years ago and just now dipping back into dcu i'll think 'wait, why are the kents still alive? didn't they die after they caught that pirate cold when they went back in time with superman to dig up pirate treasure? what gives?' and then i'll think 'hmm, crisis i guess'.

iii) classic, it makes no fucking sense to me

iv) what daver sez, ditching age old daffiness loses alot of the dc charm, simplifying would seem to be a move toward the kids market but it sure didn't work out that way.

v) eh, nah.

1) Yeah, although I was reading more Marvel than DC at the time. DC comics were more expensive, by 15 cents (not a lot, but then again, it's 25%), and the characters I liked most always seemed to be in the lamest stories, and vice versa. I mostly read DC Comics Presents, which was like Marvel Team-Up with Superman.

2) Other answers are better than what I could cobble together with the couple minutes of internet time I've got handy.

3) Classic, but I doubt it works as classically if you come into it without at least some of the frame of reference of the audience it was written for.

4) DC needed to be much, much better planned, and the transition from pre- to post-Crisis should have been seamless and consistent instead of the patchwork we got, little of which seemed designed with any kind of long-term thinking.

5) There can't be. The preconditions simply don't exist. There are no infinite earths on which to set a Crisis 2. Should there be a reboot? That's probably what "Crisis 2" would amount to ... and I don't know. I'd be fine with it if it were well-planned, but it seems unlikely in light of the All-Stars stuff.

Yeah, that's the other think - like blount says, the aim was to SIMPLIFY the DC Universe. But instead of actually, y'know, cleaning house, they just opened up a closet and shoved all the crap they were supposed to pitch in the trash inside there while still possessing the chutzpah to refer TO the crap in the closet in this new "neater" universe.

The more I think about it, the more I think DC was (is?) in desperate need of having their ride p!mped - duct tape & roof tar can only go so far.

ii) Theoretically it's still a single universe with one history, as re-iterated in Zero Hour. Of course the Hypertime shenannigans at the end of the Kingdom made that all moot and we're back to square one. There's also some fallout from the Book of Magic mini and the various Armageddon minis (the Linear Men don't make any sense anymore and they didn't make much to begin with!) and DC One Million fun as it was fucked things up beyond all recognition if you ask me.

iii) Classic in all of it's melodramatic, hyperbolic glory.

iv)pro - We could be sure who was doing what at any given time. Useful for writers I'd imagine. con - The history went. Loads of classic stories became non canon. And some of the retcons took years to play out in all their horrifically overplayed detail (LSH anyone?)

v) Why not? It would be interesting to see whether anyone can write that king of epic story still.

Morrison would be a good bet IMO, but if DC wouldn't let anywhere near Supes a few years back they were never going to let him reboot the entire multiverse (Although rumour has it that he's partially responsible for Hypertime, so it might have been a good thing); and he's busy with Seven Soldiers of Victory so probably doesn't need to be disturbed.

I imagine that's almost the point of SSoV!
DC Boss#1: Listen, we're going to do a new Crisis, totally revamp and redefine things for the next fifty years
DC Boss #2: You know who's been champing at the bit to do something like this? Grant, it's practically all he talks about.
#1: Oh hell no.
#2: It would be great for sales.
#1: But no one could follow him...look at Joe Kelly!
#2: Good point. But if Grant gets wind of this project, he'll demand to be involved.
#1: We'll have to keep him occupied beyond belief so that he'll be so hammered with deadlines that he won't even notice the DCU has changed for five years.
#2: If only we had 6 or 7 characters we really didn't give a fuck about that we could hand him to do whatever he wants to with.
#1: Like who, Mr. Miracle?
#2: Or Zatanna!
#1: What about Klarion, the Witch Boy? Not even the Might Morrison could make him cool.
#2: I like the way you think, do have a sister?

more here:
http://marvwolfman.com/todaysviews.html

-- Tep (icaneatglas...), February 25th, 2005.

I ordered it on Friday. I'm getting kinda giddy about reading it, even though the only comic novelization I've ever read (Stern's Death of Superman) was kinda naff.

also, Wolfman was a writer on JEM!
http://imdb.com/name/nm0938379/

i still wanna find that "if" flash comic...

http://www.newsarama.com/dcnew/Oct05/t_JSAClassifiedCv4.jpg

I found the COIE trade at the local library, so I finally read this whole thing. It was kinda silly and confusing, but with lots of nice bits. However, I found one thing about it a bit confusing... In the end of the story it is explained that only the heroes who were there battling Anti-Monitor at the beginning of time remember the multiple Earths and the timelines that existed before the Crisis, and for everyone else their memories and histories have been changed to include only one timeline and one Earth. However, in the Superman and Batman revamps that followed the Crisis they seem to take their new, post-Crisis origin stories as given, and they never mention that they used to have somewhat different histories before the Crisis. So did DC do some sort of retcon where even the heroes present at that battle against the Anti-Monitor forgot about the pre-Crisis timelines? Does this mean the Psycho-Pirate is the only one who remembers the pre-Crisis universe? (And has any writer besides Morrison made any use of Psycho-Pirate's pre-Crisis memories?) What about Pariah and Harbinger, do they still remember?

I know the whole thing was a bit of mess and I probably shouldn't except to find any coherence in it, but there's still have a few minor details that bother me:

* What did Monitor plan to do with the Psycho-Pirate? It seemed like he was part of Monitor's plan before the Anti-Monitor kidnapped him, but this plan was never explained.

* Also, what was Monitor's plan for Pariah? He mentioned that Pariah had some important role in his grand scheme, but all Pariah seemed to do was hang around the heroes and be miserable.

* When the Spectre and the Anti-Monitor battled, the multiverse broke into pieces and was reunited as one single universe. Why would their battle cause this to happen? The Spectre is supposed to be some sort of vessel of God, right? So does this mean it was God who picked up the pieces of the multiverse and made them into a single universe?