Anyone else getting the impression that Infinite Crisis.... [Archive]

soda

04-05-2006, 11:05 AM

Let's talk editorial policy for a moment, to me, here is the issue at hand:

- What DC has done, with OYL, 52, and IC, is a creative risk, a big creative risk, particularly risky, in my opinion, is that 52 won't have any of the DCU's "big guns". Two years ago, before countdown to infinite crisis, if you had told me that DC comics was going to publish a big event book, that would be 52 issues long, without Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman involved, and that stared (from what we're told) the elongated man, black adam, steel, the question, rene montoya, and booster gold, I would have laughed you out of the room, and told you it was doomed to failure. That's how countdown (a story staring blue beetle and booster gold) and day of vengence (a story staring a bunch of magic themed characters I'd never heard of before), and Villians united (Catman), changed the world.

In my view, DC figured out that Stan Lee was right, 40 years ago, and had been right all along, that the way to go is a shared universe, Without a truly shared universe, one that's interconnected on so many levels, there is absolutely no reason for any fan to care about any c and d-stringers in a universe. A shared universe is what makes people care, Stan Lee's marvel made you want to pick up another book by that publisher for every book you read (Lay's potato chip marketing), you read one book, thought to yourself "hey that was really cool", read another book, thought the same thing, and so on, because the universe was shared, themes events and characters in one book were translated over to other titles, this not only made it easier for someone reading one title to get into others, it also provided out-of-the-box emotional investment in the characters. Stan Lee was a genius, and a visionary, who built marvel into a force that overtook DC as the market leader. Most of the ills that marvel is going through these days (and there aren't many, business is pretty good, from what I'm hearing) are directly related to the fact that they've moved away, on an editorial level, from Stan Lee's vision. Marvel today is early silver age DC, a company with a de post facto multi-verse, that is struggling to avoid crossover mania.

To me, you only need to fix things that are broken. Wonder Woman didn't need to be restarted (for example). All my life, DC has been struggling to sell Wonder Woman, they finally get Greg Rucka on it, and the book flies off the shelf, and so, they decide to cancel it and restart it? That's a risk, to me. Doing the same with the Flash is a risk. Sitting on the status quo with both of these titles would have been the easy thing to do. Superman is the same way, all my life, Superman sold okay, but no one was chomping at the bit, desperate to read big blue. Even when Superman was launched with all new creative teams (Azz and Lee) post-Hush, there was buzz, and the book sold okay, but did anyone really care? I dropped the azz + lee run after two issues, because I didn't see the plot going anywhere (doesn't look like I was mistaken). The Superman books we have right now (all three of them), are the best superman stories I've read, in a consistent, monthly format, in my lifetime. To me, that, and going back to the 70's neal adams/denny o'neill and the 90's Paul Dini Batman are the two great creative triumphs of OYL and IC. Those are radical changes, Superman and Batman don't suck anymore, who couldn't be psyched about that?

That being said, OYL hasn't been all good:

-Supergirl is in every single freakin' book. My theory is that Supergirl and Wolverine are the same person, I'm going to start calling Kara the "wolverine of the DC universe". Legion of Superheroes was only an okay OYL titles, will probably pick up another issue, then decide to give it a long run or drop it.

- Nightwing is the new Batman. He had absolutely horrible writers One year ago, and he has bad writers OYL, he's best written (strangely enough) when he guest stars in birds of prey, when he guest stars in teen titans, and when he's in IC (he does get around, though, maybe he's wolverine too? See, though, that's the power of a shared universe). The two big OYL disappointments I had, Nightwing and Outsiders, both star Dick, a character who I absolutely adore.

- some other OYL titles (Green arrow, etc.) were only okay.

more next post...

Nick Kal

04-05-2006, 11:10 AM

What was wrong with Nightwing in his own title?

soda

04-05-2006, 12:01 PM

final point:

To me, here's the bottom line on the creative risk factor, I think that OYL has been moderately creatively risky, and more of a fine tunning, with some radical changes, and some subtle ones (Birds of Prey seems like exactly the same book). To me, that was what was needed. There have been some good things and some bad things to come out of OYL, IC and 52 thus far. However, let me concentrate on the huge big good thing that I haven't touched on yet. DC's editorial, their brain trust, right now, really does believe in the product that it's putting out there. I'm not sure marvel does. When a braintrust really believes in it's product, that's when you're more likely to see creative risk taking, that's when you're likely to see the kind of bold innovation that you want to see in comics. How do I know this? A few factors:

- My local Comic book store owner has a sales rep at DC. DC has these guys, and they call all the comic book store owners in the country to try to solicit material and to boost sales. Marvel doesn't have this guy. When the product is bad, this guy has the worst job in the industry, because he's the person shop owners complain to about editorial direction when the product stinks. When the product is good, he has the easiest job in the industry, because he can have a conversation with a shop owner that goes like this:

DC rep - hey, comic book store owner, how's it going?

Store owner - good.

DC rep - hey, just calling to check in, and to tell you that you're going to want to order more copies of the new blue beetle coming out.

Store owner - no I'm not.

DC rep - yes you are.

Store owner - yes I am, okay, put me down for 40 more copies.

DC rep - will do.

That conversation actually happened between the sales rep and my local shop owner about two weeks ago, when product confidence is high, the only sales pitch you need is "yes you are (going to buy this)".

My shop sold out of the Blue beetle book before I got there (I get to my shop every Friday), BTW.

The other big indicator that there's product confidence is that DC's "sales tools" are helping, I'm not sure about marvel's. Joe Quesada says that variant covers are a "sales tool", however, I know very few shop owners who up their orders for a comic with a variant cover. My shop owner has never once ordered a single extra comic because of a variant, as he put it, the supply of variants, for him, exceeds the demand, he's already ordering 150 copies of the book anyway, he'll get six variants with that, but there are only four people who come to our shop who are into variants and who will buy them, so he usually holds the variants for the people who he knows will want it, but he's usually sitting on a couple of variants anyway, so there's no incentive for him to order more copies to get more.

On the other hand, every single time DC has announced that X issue of a comic will be returnable, my shop owner has proceeded to order a whole bunch more issues of that comic. He ordered 30 more copies of each of the returnable issues of 52 as soon as DC said they would be returnable. That's because DC never declares something returnable that isn't a hot book, and that they don't think, in thier brain trust room, will sell out. The wonder woman sacrifice issue was returnable, do you think DC has gotten a single return of that book, ever? If I had another copy of the Wonder Woman Sacrifice issue, I sure as heck ain't returning it. Due to a Diamond screw-up, my comic book guy got 30 more issues of IC #5 two weeks ago instead of Robin, he told Diamond to go ahead and send the Robins, and to bill him for the ICs, Diamond asked him if he'd like credit for the ICs instead, he said "no, because they'll sell, I ain't returning them." That's product confidence, and consumer confidence, and that's what DC really has right now.

Shellhead

04-05-2006, 12:15 PM

In my view, DC figured out that Stan Lee was right, 40 years ago, and had been right all along, that the way to go is a shared universe, Without a truly shared universe, one that's interconnected on so many levels, there is absolutely no reason for any fan to care about any c and d-stringers in a universe. A shared universe is what makes people care, Stan Lee's marvel made you want to pick up another book by that publisher for every book you read (Lay's potato chip marketing), you read one book, thought to yourself "hey that was really cool", read another book, thought the same thing, and so on, because the universe was shared, themes events and characters in one book were translated over to other titles, this not only made it easier for someone reading one title to get into others, it also provided out-of-the-box emotional investment in the characters. Stan Lee was a genius, and a visionary, who built marvel into a force that overtook DC as the market leader. Most of the ills that marvel is going through these days (and there aren't many, business is pretty good, from what I'm hearing) are directly related to the fact that they've moved away, on an editorial level, from Stan Lee's vision. Marvel today is early silver age DC, a company with a de post facto multi-verse, that is struggling to avoid crossover mania.

I totally agree. What made me buy lots of Marvel back in the 70's was that sense of a shared universe, that any given hero or villain might show up in any given title as a guest-star or opponent. It helped that a majority of the heroes operated in and around the NYC area. It also probably helped that writers and artists often worked *at* Marvel, instead of at home and then fed-exing or emailing their completed work in. That made collaboration easier, especially when coordinating guest-shots in other titles. Somewhere along the line, Marvel lost sight of this and started do mega-crossovers instead. The simple guest-appearances and sharing of villains was better, because it kept things on a smaller and more manageable scale while still boosting sales.

Cayman

04-05-2006, 12:16 PM

Yes, it doesn't really seem like any changes that matter will come out of IC. The OYL books just aren't goig off in exciting new directions.

Cay

JulianPerez

04-05-2006, 12:18 PM

Who is it that is saying that INFINITE CRISIS didn't change anything? It, and the miniseries that preceded it, changed one thing about the DC Universe: it stopped sucking across the board.

Batjerk is outta here, the Paul Levitz story arc on JSA with the Gentleman Ghost is worth reading and lots of fun, Busiek, arguably the greatest talent of our generation, is writing both a kickass Sword and Sorcery version of Aquaman, and has finally made Superman likeable again for the first time since 1986.

While I am disappointed about the return of the multiverse not happening, the multiverse was in IC used in several important ways: the first was it was used to actually make Power Girl, previously a shrieking feminist under Gerry Conway and a wooden bore under everybody else, was truly LIKEABLE thanks to IC: she was sympathetic as being a lonely person without a past, and now that she discovers that she has one, and a family, too, we feel her joy. Ditto for the way, way cool Catman under Gail Simone, who is now officially the coolest character in the entire DC Universe. Detective Chimp as leader of a magic-using superteam? Vundebar! Tres magnifique!

Soda, I absolutely agree with everything you've typed so far. Kudos! The shared universe is absolutely the model to go, because it brings trippy characters and concepts into play. Ideas, unlike seafood, become MORE fresh if you put them on a shelf and wait a few decades. Hell, when you read a Geoff Johns book and he's stuck in there A JUPITER LIGHTNING MONSTER from (of all the things in the world) an issue of TOMMY TOMORROW, you KNOW the DCU is in good hands.

I do agree with you about some characters being overexposed. The whole "Bizarro as crazy/frightening" is now starting to feel done to death and stale. Ditto for Deathstroke the Terminator, who if he was to play God in a game of golf, the game would go to Slade...but it would be very close.

DarthAstuart

04-05-2006, 12:57 PM

i tend to agree with the posters who suggest that it's a great thing simply that the DCU is being "freshened up" with a renewed energy, exciting new creative teams, etc. i'm a big fan so far of pretty much all the OYL stuff I've read (not that I've read it all, or even close--mostly Batman stuff and Superman stuff).

BUT i think this crossover really NEEDS some kind of big, fat event-level CHANGE to truly exist as a sequel and heir to COIE. that's what COIE was all about--not just a big cosmic story involving the entire DCU, not just a refreshing and redirection of the creative style of the entire line, but also many worlds becoming one. A big, fat, massive change to the DCU.

come on. just throw me something. maybe 52 will be the place where the real changes happen--I guess a year without bats, supes, and WW is a pretty big step. (just wish they'd had the guts to do it for real with NO books featuring these characters for a year, instead of wimping out with 52 running concurrently with the OYL books.)

PatrickG

04-05-2006, 12:58 PM

Well, over at Newsarama, Didio is hinting that Superman's origin and continuity may have shifted again... And suggesting that Linda Danvers, at least as portrayed by Peter David, may never have existed.

He also suggests that characters who died pre-IC may never have died in the new continuity.

Looks like the post-IC earth may be a "greatest hits" version of Post-Crisis continuity.

Ie. The modern status quo remains the same but the "how we got here" is subject to tweaking.

Bored at 3:00AM

04-05-2006, 01:18 PM

It was stated by Didio and others, in interview after interview, that IC wasn't about sweeping changes to the DCU but about cleaning it up and polishing it off. In true internerd fashion, that was all summarily ignored for supposition about the return of the multiverse and whether or not Dick Grayson was going to be Batman and Donna Troy Wonder Woman.

Bah! Actually listening to what the creators and editors have to say is for sissies! That sort of stuff leads to cooties and moving out of parents' basements.

But, seriously, while I wasn't expecting anything on the level of Donna Troy becoming Wonder Woman or Dick Grayson becoming Batman (again), I was kinda expecting some sort of major cosmic change to the way the DCU operates in regards to parallel Earths and how the characters view their past history.

Although, again, its entirely possible the One Year Later titles are just playing coy about all this until Infinite Crisis is over. I just don't want them to go through all this and then go back to the same old, same old of nobody knowing the Golden Age Superman existed again. As clunky as the old Multiverse was, at least it gave a better approximation of DC's long history than the Post-Crisis "That never happened! This guy next existed!" way of handling things, which always rubbed me wrong and led to countless headaches on the part of creators and fans.

soda

04-05-2006, 03:43 PM

But, seriously, while I wasn't expecting anything on the level of Donna Troy becoming Wonder Woman or Dick Grayson becoming Batman (again), I was kinda expecting some sort of major cosmic change to the way the DCU operates in regards to parallel Earths and how the characters view their past history.

Although, again, its entirely possible the One Year Later titles are just playing coy about all this until Infinite Crisis is over. I just don't want them to go through all this and then go back to the same old, same old of nobody knowing the Golden Age Superman existed again.

If you're looking for a major change to how characters view their past history (ie, pre-COIE), you're probably going to get that. With all the dopleganger mania that's been going in DC, I think it's pretty obvious that the top brass of the DCU (supes, bats, and WW, amongst others) are aware of the multi-verse, and we know Powergirl is. I'm guessing that all will be revealed and there will be a real understanding of how the history of the DCU works, rather than a point of nobody knowing the golden age superman existed.

However, if your expecting the DCU to be someplace completely different post-IC, well, sorry to disappoint you. There should be new characters, and a new status-quo, but it should still be the DC universe, as a pre-IC fan would know it. In 1985, the DCU needed a major overhaul, the multi-verse had to go, and DC needed radical change. In 1985, that's what the DCU got, in COIE. In 2006, the DCU needs fine-tuning, some places need a complete overhaul (bats, aquaman), some places are fine (birds of prey), and some places need a slight adjustment, but not an overhaul (supes). In 2006, I think, the DCU pretty much got what it needed, perhaps not to the complete success of COIE, but we'll let history sort that one out.

However, here is what I will say, the major victory, to me, of IC is this: Mega-crossovers don't suck anymore. The bar has been raised, IMHO. IC has been, for this fan, very enjoyable, more enjoyable than any major crossover that I can remember for a long time (I would say the last one, that I really dug, was Kingdom come, don't know if that counts). In general, to fans of my generation (people who weren't fans when COIE hit, I started reading in 1990), there really haven't been any good mega-crossovers, there have been crossovers of varying quality. Some were decent, like knightfall, some were okay, like Bruce Wayne, fugitive, and many were downright awful, like Batman war games. I thought Identity Crisis and House of M were about the same, quality-wise, I didn't know, as a fan, that a mega-crossover could be anything but a money-sucking, collassal letdown. Then IC hit, and a mega-crossover was a money-sucking (that part will always be true), collassal very pleasant surprise (but I'm not complaining about plopping down my hard earned coin). To me, if I'm Joe Quesada, Brian Bendis, and Mark Millar and the brain trust at marvel, I have a reaction like people did in the mid-80s when watchmen hit, if I read IC, then I look at what I have planned for civil war, I'm going home at night, and whatever I wrote for civil war, I'm tearing up and redoing, because post-IC, it's not going to be good enough anymore. To me, as a marvel fan (I'm not "for" one company, and "against" the other, I believe comics are strongest when both marvel and DC are strong) this is only good for marvel and good for the industry. I want the standards of quality to go up.

Ian J.N.

04-05-2006, 04:23 PM

Yeah, I'm starting to get the "That's it?" feeling. As part of the story, COIE had a pivotal event which resulted in massive reboots throughout the DCU. In IC, the changes are smaller and only tangentially related to the main plot. Rather than institute the revamps piecemeal, DC tied them all into a single miniseries, which was smart of them. The problem with making IC the cornerstone, though, is that there needs to be that big COIE-level event which anchors all the little ones, and it doesn't seem like that's going to be the case. IC has a hollow centre.

That said, it's been an enjoyable story. You just have to put aside the "most important event ever" hype and disregard the year long buildup, because the payoff isn't going to match. I keep reading expecting a big payoff, but actually, I think we've already seen most of it. It's been diffused to us throughout the story, and in the interviews, previews and OYL titles.

DarthAstuart

04-05-2006, 05:12 PM

ultimately, maybe part of this is just a bummer for fans (like me, and I'd guess others reading this) who are spoiler addicts and can't stop reading tidbits that leak out...they've done an amazing job of keeping secrets considering the amount of material in IC, the crossovers, the specials, the OYL books...

but man. one big huge surprise that no one saw coming would just rock. maybe there will be one--hell, if the Earth-2 supes were to stick around in the DCU, that would be a pretty big thing for me.

Silvermane

04-05-2006, 06:07 PM

Yes, and it's disappointing if it's true. Without some radical changes, INFINITE CRISIS will just be another routine DC crossover series rather than the heir to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

My sentiments exactly. So far, it looks like there won't be any real changes other than a few sensational deaths. I'm starting to smell a bait and switch... It seems a waste of a crossover event (as I've said elsewhere) to simply dust off some old unused characters and concepts for a big fight only to have the "good guys" win a fight and realize that they were right all along. I don't know. I was expecting a bit more growth in DC as well as the characters. This doesn't feel like it. Oh well, as someone said above, maybe they are holding back some major reveal for issue 7. So far, though, I am less thrilled with each new issue.

The whole thing just has the feel of an opportunity missed. Does anyone know what I'm saying?

soda

04-06-2006, 12:12 PM

The whole thing just has the feel of an opportunity missed. Does anyone know what I'm saying?

I know what your saying, and I hear that too, all the time. That IC just doesn't have that "big" single thing that changes everything (like the anti-monitor destroying the multi-verse in COIE), however, here's what all of that fails to consider: IMHO, IC Is quite possibly, the single best mega-crossover, quality-wise, of all time. I will gladly make that trade, every day of the week, and twice on sundays, I will gladly eschew the single universe-shattering event happening for a quality story that truly makes me remember it in another twenty years. Five years from now, am I going to remember "house of M"? Even though it got rid of most of the world's mutants? Probably not.

Ian J.N.

04-06-2006, 01:00 PM

I know what your saying, and I hear that too, all the time. That IC just doesn't have that "big" single thing that changes everything (like the anti-monitor destroying the multi-verse in COIE), however, here's what all of that fails to consider: IMHO, IC Is quite possibly, the single best mega-crossover, quality-wise, of all time. I will gladly make that trade, every day of the week, and twice on sundays, I will gladly eschew the single universe-shattering event happening for a quality story that truly makes me remember it in another twenty years. Five years from now, am I going to remember "house of M"? Even though it got rid of most of the world's mutants? Probably not.
As I see it, there are two ways for a comic book event to make an impact: make long lasting changes to the status quo, tell a good story. The changes that IC has made are predominantly minor, localized to individual characters (as opposed to the shared universe as a whole), and largely unrelated to the main plot. In that regard I'm disappointed that IC hasn't delivered on the promise implicit in the build-up.

The story, however, has been great. IC isn't quite as epic in scope as COIE, but it's less random and more personal, with a strong theme on the nature of heroism, and interesting meta-textual commentary about the comic book universe--how the more extreme fans see it, what DC's philosophy is, etc. It's been an enjoyable miniseries, and I can see myself re-enjoying it again, even after the dust has settled.

So ultimately, yeah, I think this has been the best crossover event DC has ever done. Maybe it doesn't have the mind-blowing changes, but we've gotten a good story, plus several companion stories to go with it. I consider IC a success.

glennsim

04-06-2006, 02:20 PM

Here's my take:

With the advent of New Earth at the end of #6, we have a new Earth with a new history. Now, that history isn't going to be radically different from what we're familiar with, but judging by the images we saw when the Earths re-merged, Superman is going to have a career as Superboy, Batman caught his parents' killer, Wonder Woman is back to being an original JLA member etc.

But there may be other changes that we don't know about and won't know about until they get referenced. The History of the DC Universe feature in 52 will probably help.

In a way, you don't really know ANYTHING about the history of New Earth, until you read about it in a comic published after IC. You can make some assumptions, but it's not a sure thing until it gets confirmed.

So unless you read it in a OYL-or-later story or 52, it doesn't count...

Which is pretty exciting, in a way.

One thing I'm not sure of is what the heroes' memories will be. I assume that something will happen in #7 that will make everyone remember the New Earth history and only the New Earth history, maybe with the exception of people like Power Girl (unless she gets yet another history on New Earth). Or they could remember a combination of all of their histories, but that seems odd.

rfahey

04-06-2006, 03:59 PM

I was hoping for some massive overpowering threat, like that in the original COIE. But I do feel that this story was much more fleshed out, and the fact that DC didn't feel it needed to destroy everything previously established and rebuild is probably a good thing. Moreover, I have to say that the first several times I read through COIE (many years after its original release), I wasn't a huge fan. It felt very poorly planned and nonsensical. Even today I think that I like it more for what it accomplished than as a standalone story. As for IC, even though the actual threat to the current universe came and went relatively quickly, it had a satisfying narrative thread complete with complex villains. I think that it will age well.

soda

04-06-2006, 04:12 PM

I think that it will age well.

To me, that's the key. I think that when people, twenty years from now, look back at this epoch in comics (turn of the century, after the industry was just recovering from what happened in the 90s), that infinite crisis will be the first, big, must read story that future generations will hear about.

Here's a funny story my local comic book guy told me, that I don't know if it's true or not. I wasn't a fan when COIE originally came out, so I couldn't tell you. He told me that at the time the original crisis came out, that what everyone was reading, and talking about at the time, was marvel's secret wars. He told me that crisis came out, and one, marvel was the dominant company of the day, so crisis wasn't as big, and second, that crisis was a long-winded, complex, silver-agey (for lack of a better word) plot. However, in the twenty years since, COIE has aged well, and risen in regard, while Secret war has gone nowhere (no one I know has a secret war trade, everyone I know has a crisis trade). I guess this is a long-winded way of saying that you never know what history will decide to glorify and what it will choose to discard, however, I feel good about IC's prospects for aging well.

Silvermane

04-06-2006, 04:26 PM

The story, however, has been great. IC isn't quite as epic in scope as COIE, but it's less random and more personal, with a strong theme on the nature of heroism, and interesting meta-textual commentary about the comic book universe--how the more extreme fans see it, what DC's philosophy is, etc.

See, I disagree and I think that's what is most disappointing. I don't think this story has been very profound at all. I inwardly groaned when in IC6, Alex informed S-P that he didn't vanish to E-P because something about him had changed and S-P saying it was because of what they made him do. So, there really are worlds where everyone is good and worlds where everyone is bad just by virtue of having been born on those worlds? It's a bit simplistic and juvenile. So what, there was no crime or no really "bad" people on E-P ever before? Doesn't make sense. I keep waiting for shades of grey to emerge, but with one issue left, I fear that all we will have is good guys versus bad guys.

Everything the writer leads us to believe is that the pocket universe guys have been wrong all along and that they are the ones that needed to learn something about the nature of heroism. Well, that's all well and good, except that if they are not the ones left standing after all of this, then why should I care? If these were just a few nutty silver-agers who can't hack it in a modern world, then why dust them off at all? Did you bring them back just to show how right you were twenty years ago when you got rid of them? (I won't even get into how contrived these characters' actions have been in order for DC to make that point).

It may seem like I am too negative, but I don't want to be. If DC has used this series to say anything meaningful so far, I've missed it. Please, someone, tell me what the nature of heroism theme is here. I want to recapture the high hopes I had for this book up until issue three came out.

soda

04-06-2006, 05:22 PM

Dude, I totally hear what you're saying.

A lot of people on this forum would tell you you're insane for not digging IC, I'm not one of those people.

A lot of people (like Jeff Krammer and Joe Rice) will tell you that IC sucks turds, and that your totally right for not liking it. I'm not one of those people either.

Bottom line is that I believe it takes all types to make the world, and that comic book fans, as a group, are amongst the most fractured, splintered, most disagreeing lot that the good Lord ever put on this earth, or any other, to break biscuit. If you can write something that 50% of the fan base likes, you take that, because that's way better than most books get these days. All of this is a just a really long-winded way of saying buy what you like, and ignore what you don't. If you're not totally into something, don't buy it, the way our industry is right now, there's too much quality out there for anyone to buy anything that they aren't totally, 100%, head over heels in love with.

Let me detour this conversation for a second, then get back to the point you raised in your post. To me, I look at the Diamond top 300 sellers every month, and you know what three books make me scratch my head to no end, that I totally don't get, 100x more than you don't get crisis?

ultimate spiderman

Amazing Spiderman

New Avengers

Uncanny xmen

I don't get those four books. I don't buy any of those four books (NOTE: will get the Brubaker run on Uncanny, though). However, every single month, those four books always manage to show up in the top twelve (or so) overall sellers in a market. Amazing Spiderman, IMHO, is the best of them, right now, and amazing has been mediocre since "sins past". Uncanny has sucked for fifteen straight years now (am excited about the brubaker run), I don't see why anyone ever buys that book, ever. New Avengers is horrible. I read the sentry arc, and it made my head hurt. What about the latest issue (that I got a peek at in the shop), Luke cage, in motown, acting tough?!? WTF. Ultimate Spiderman is nothing but talking heads, I like character pieces as much as the next guy, but talking heads twice a month, every single issue? Please. And the stories aren't even that good. I read the New Avengers Illuminati special, and I thought it was okay, but here's the thing, compare new avengers illiminati to Infinite Crisis Secret files and origins, and guess what? Both books are basically the same thing. No villians, just a bunch of guys in a room, talking, just a talking heads book, with no action. Nothing happened in either of them. But I thought Infinite Crisis SF&O was one of the best books I've ever read, and that the illiminati special was okay, above average, but it didn't change my life, or anything.

However, it takes all types to make the world. Some people dig some things, and other people dig others. I figure that all of those people who buy the four books I mentioned above can't all be buying it every month and hating it, some of them must buy it and dig it. There must be people out there who think Bendis is God's gift to comic fans. There must be people who are digging amazing spiderman, there must be people who are reading and enjoying uncanny xmen. I have no freakin' clue who they are, or why they believe this, but the numbers tell me that they're out there. Don't worry if you don't get IC, I want to assure you that's okay.

I'll get to your plot points in my next post...

soda

04-06-2006, 05:42 PM

Everything the writer leads us to believe is that the pocket universe guys have been wrong all along and that they are the ones that needed to learn something about the nature of heroism. Well, that's all well and good, except that if they are not the ones left standing after all of this, then why should I care? If these were just a few nutty silver-agers who can't hack it in a modern world, then why dust them off at all? Did you bring them back just to show how right you were twenty years ago when you got rid of them? (I won't even get into how contrived these characters' actions have been in order for DC to make that point).

I think you're missing the ying and yang that's going on here too. it's not so much that "nutty silver agers" who need to learn something, it's the heroes of the mainstream DCU who are really the people learning here, not so much the silver age characters. Here is something I would put out there, in all of IC, to me, there are only two characters, that I've seen, who are being held up as paragons of virtue in this six issue series. Those two paragons are:

Earth two Lois Lane - think about it, she's the only one of the four characters in the pocket dimension whose sane. She's going to die, and she's okay with that, she's at peace about it. Kal-L will do anything to save her, the other two (luthor and SBP) each have their own agendas.

Earth one Dick Grayson (Nightwing) - Think about this. Batman refuses Kal-L because he doesn't want to live in a world where Dick Grayson is a lesser person. Kal-L goes back to Luthor and says "I don't know if we're doing the right thing, the Dick Grayson here is such a great guy" to which Luthor replies "yeah, he's a great guy, but he's one saint in a world of sinners." When Connor Kent meets up with Dick in teen titans, he's absolutely in awe of Dick.

To me, the flawed characters are the DCU's "big three":

Batman's flaw is his paranoia.

Wonder Woman's flaw is her willingness to kill.

Superman's flaw is his weaknesses, his softness, his lack of assertiveness and ability to lead.

Kal-L's flaw is that he sees the entire world in black and white. He's the captain America of the DCU.

SuperBoy Prime's fault is that he's so blinded with a desire to get what he wants (his home and his family) that he's completely oblivious to the consequences. SBP's flaw is, essentially, that's he's a kid who never grew up.

Alexander Luthor's flaw is that he's a luthor, and that at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, he wants what all luthors want.

Please note, there is no twisting of characterization here, at all, to me, who read COIE, these character developments are all perfectly plausible. Kal-L is the DCU's captain america, in COIE, SBP is a kid in COIE, Luthor is a luthor in COIE, to me IC is a progressive character scketch, it's a very realistic portrayal of how these characters (who weren't very well developed, personality wise, in COIE) got to where they are.

The lesson on heroism is everyone teaching everyone. Batman is learning to be less paranoid, Superman is learning to be more super (for lack of a better word), in the case of clark and bruce, you see the effects OYL. We haven't seen Wonder Woman OYL, but I'm guessing she's really learning about the consequences of what she did.

It's not that the modern age character are perfect, and the silver age ones need to be put in their place, it's that the modern age characters are imperfect and are learning and growing and becoming better heroes due to what the silver age characters have let loose.

Like I said, only the E2 Lois and the E1 Nightwing are exempt. Everyone else has flaws, and makes mistakes.

Silvermane

04-06-2006, 07:35 PM

I think you're missing the ying and yang that's going on here too. it's not so much that "nutty silver agers" who need to learn something, it's the heroes of the mainstream DCU who are really the people learning here, not so much the silver age characters. Here is something I would put out there, in all of IC, to me, there are only two characters, that I've seen, who are being held up as paragons of virtue in this six issue series. Those two paragons are:

Earth two Lois Lane - think about it, she's the only one of the four characters in the pocket dimension whose sane. She's going to die, and she's okay with that, she's at peace about it. Kal-L will do anything to save her, the other two (luthor and SBP) each have their own agendas.

Earth one Dick Grayson (Nightwing) - Think about this. Batman refuses Kal-L because he doesn't want to live in a world where Dick Grayson is a lesser person. Kal-L goes back to Luthor and says "I don't know if we're doing the right thing, the Dick Grayson here is such a great guy" to which Luthor replies "yeah, he's a great guy, but he's one saint in a world of sinners." When Connor Kent meets up with Dick in teen titans, he's absolutely in awe of Dick.

To me, the flawed characters are the DCU's "big three":

Batman's flaw is his paranoia.

Wonder Woman's flaw is her willingness to kill.

Superman's flaw is his weaknesses, his softness, his lack of assertiveness and ability to lead.

Kal-L's flaw is that he sees the entire world in black and white. He's the captain America of the DCU.

SuperBoy Prime's fault is that he's so blinded with a desire to get what he wants (his home and his family) that he's completely oblivious to the consequences. SBP's flaw is, essentially, that's he's a kid who never grew up.

Alexander Luthor's flaw is that he's a luthor, and that at the end of the day, when it's all said and done, he wants what all luthors want.

Please note, there is no twisting of characterization here, at all, to me, who read COIE, these character developments are all perfectly plausible. Kal-L is the DCU's captain america, in COIE, SBP is a kid in COIE, Luthor is a luthor in COIE, to me IC is a progressive character scketch, it's a very realistic portrayal of how these characters (who weren't very well developed, personality wise, in COIE) got to where they are.

The lesson on heroism is everyone teaching everyone. Batman is learning to be less paranoid, Superman is learning to be more super (for lack of a better word), in the case of clark and bruce, you see the effects OYL. We haven't seen Wonder Woman OYL, but I'm guessing she's really learning about the consequences of what she did.

It's not that the modern age character are perfect, and the silver age ones need to be put in their place, it's that the modern age characters are imperfect and are learning and growing and becoming better heroes due to what the silver age characters have let loose.

Like I said, only the E2 Lois and the E1 Nightwing are exempt. Everyone else has flaws, and makes mistakes.

These are two excellent posts. Thanks for the response. Believe it or not, being told to chill is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. I feel better now. I do agree on Secret Files. I thought it was a fantastic read.

I only take two issues with what you've said. First, I have yet to see any of the mainstream DCU characters acknowledge even in the smallest way that they may have something to learn. Maybe it's too subtle. I would love to see one of the big three say that they see or understand or even accept some of the criticism levelled at them because from where I sit, it ain't all wrong. I just haven't seen that yet.

The other disagreement I have is with the characterization. I can see how the pre-crisis characters got to where they are in their motivations, frustrations and desires. I can see how S-P can be so blinded by his desire to go home that he will do anything necessary to get there. However, he should always believe that he is doing the right thing. I'm sorry, but S-P gleefully, maniacally and bloodthirstily grinning ear to ear in anticipation of beating people to death and enjoying it as he does in IC6, gloating that he killed Titans without even trying - that's just too far a stretch for me.

I will keep buying the book for two reasons: (1) the hope that there will be a satisfying conclusion which addresses all of my concerns and (2) I really am digging all of the little geek moments. :D

shyguy

04-06-2006, 08:24 PM

Rhydaman

04-07-2006, 04:43 AM

I inwardly groaned when in IC6, Alex informed S-P that he didn't vanish to E-P because something about him had changed and S-P saying it was because of what they made him do. So, there really are worlds where everyone is good and worlds where everyone is bad just by virtue of having been born on those worlds? It's a bit simplistic and juvenile. So what, there was no crime or no really "bad" people on E-P ever before? Doesn't make sense. I keep waiting for shades of grey to emerge, but with one issue left, I fear that all we will have is good guys versus bad guys.
Don't you have to take into account the reliability of the speaker there? S-P has clearly flipped. His view of how wonderful life on Earth Prime was is obviously rose-tinted. Or "simplistic and juvenile", if you will. That doesn't mean that the DCU as a whole contains worlds where all are bad or good simply by dint of their birth.

Silvermane

04-07-2006, 06:53 AM

Don't you have to take into account the reliability of the speaker there? S-P has clearly flipped. His view of how wonderful life on Earth Prime was is obviously rose-tinted. Or "simplistic and juvenile", if you will. That doesn't mean that the DCU as a whole contains worlds where all are bad or good simply by dint of their birth.

That's true

wolverine0815

04-07-2006, 07:53 AM

The biggest change I see is them killing Conner and possibly bringing him back as Supernova due DC's fight over Superboy. IMHO that is not a big change when you look at IC as a whole.

PatrickG

04-07-2006, 08:10 AM

Except Supernova debuts in the missing year and OYL, Conner is still considered dead by Batman, Lex Luthor and Robin.

Conner is dead.

Now... If you're following things, it seems very possible that ANOTHER Superboy is back in continuity before Conner...

Bored at 3:00AM

04-07-2006, 08:32 AM

Well, the Golden Age Batman is on the cover of the next month's issue of JSA, so I guess that answers that.

Good.

I think the single Earth has proven to be too good an idea to dump at this point, but it did leave a bunch of different characters in the lurch. It appears that this New Earth will still allow the older heroes to remember the original incarnations of Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman, even if the current history doesn't include them. Which means Power Girl doesn't have to run around pretending she's not Superman's cousin anymore.

Add into that the pretty heavy hints that the New Earth has re-incorporated Superboy, the Phantom Zone villains and Wonder Woman's membership in the original JLA, then I am a happy camper with what Infinite Crisis has accomplished. All of those seem like pretty major changes to me--and should have been made many, many years earlier in my view.

DarthAstuart

04-07-2006, 11:46 AM

i think maybe part of the reason why I'm feeling disappointed by IC in terms of big changes is that a lot of the change seems like it will actually unfold in 52. i liked soda's post above a lot, in terms of what each of the Big 3 need to learn, and certainly the OYL books I've seen seem to indicate that these characters either are learning those lessons, or are about to. Batman seems to have become more centered and Superman (well, Clark Kent, actually) is taking more initiative than ever.

But why are they doing that? Where are they learning that? They're not learning it in IC. we can only assume they'll learn it in the one year between. Is that what part of 52 is about? we've been told no Big 3 in the series, but could we see Clark, Bruce and Diana? and if not, when/where will we see these changes?

to me, it's lots of us being told "things are changing, here is how," and not enough of DC showing us through stories what has changed, is changing, or will change. i mean, say what you will about COIE, but damn, LOTS of big change IN the book and not off-panel or just in a writer's brain/philosophy.

drpblunt

04-08-2006, 07:03 AM

Tom

04-08-2006, 07:11 AM

my whole problem with IC and for that matter COIE was that they are less "stories" and more "mission statements" why did it take an entire investment of time and money to see for example batman go from batass to cool batman??

in otherwords if DC wanted to make some changes to the way these characters are portrayed just make the changes, dont tell me i have to invest time and money to buy peripherial "specials, minis etc" just to find out what DC's mission statement is for the next decade.
I don't quite understand this argument. One look at DC's sales over the last year is answer enough as to why they did it this way - like it or not, crossovers sell, and good crossovers sell big. And if all you want is for them to make whatever changes they feel they need and move on to telling good stories, then why would you feel you have to invest time and money into something you feel is unnecessary and in which you have no interest?

drpblunt

04-08-2006, 07:33 AM

I don't quite understand this argument. One look at DC's sales over the last year is answer enough as to why they did it this way - like it or not, crossovers sell, and good crossovers sell big. And if all you want is for them to make whatever changes they feel they need and move on to telling good stories, then why would you feel you have to invest time and money into something you feel is unnecessary and in which you have no interest?

ok look, i asked that question in a rhetorical sense, but thanks for the economics lesson :)

and i dont feel the need to buy all the tie in stuff (i never do in "Events")
but my point is that the industry has gotten so rediculous with the "event" stuff and with IC in particular its like using a hammer to perform brain surgury, the changes occurring seem to me to be subtle, but hey thats my opinion.

but yeah i really do understand the financial end, but my angst is strictly from the consumer end, and i dont like to "feel" forced into buying periphial products whether i have the intention of buying them or not.

Captain Manhatten

04-08-2006, 07:55 AM

Let's talk editorial policy for a moment, to me, here is the issue at hand:

In my view, DC figured out that Stan Lee was right, 40 years ago, and had been right all along, that the way to go is a shared universe, Without a truly shared universe, one that's interconnected on so many levels, there is absolutely no reason for any fan to care about any c and d-stringers in a universe. A shared universe is what makes people care, Stan Lee's marvel made you want to pick up another book by that publisher for every book you read (Lay's potato chip marketing), you read one book, thought to yourself "hey that was really cool", read another book, thought the same thing, and so on, because the universe was shared, themes events and characters in one book were translated over to other titles, this not only made it easier for someone reading one title to get into others, it also provided out-of-the-box emotional investment in the characters. Stan Lee was a genius, and a visionary, who built marvel into a force that overtook DC as the market leader. Most of the ills that marvel is going through these days (and there aren't many, business is pretty good, from what I'm hearing) are directly related to the fact that they've moved away, on an editorial level, from Stan Lee's vision. Marvel today is early silver age DC, a company with a de post facto multi-verse, that is struggling to avoid crossover mania.

I know that, in the 1980s, Jim Shooter tried to maintain tight editorial reins at Marvel, to maintain continuity. Problem was, we were moving into an era where the writers were becoming stars and sometimes prima donnas and he lost a lot of writers over it. But that aside, I think there is a BIG difference between having a continuity that makes you want to buy another book which in turn makes you want to be another and then another in 1961 and trying that in 2006. The difference is about $2.87 to $3.87.

In the 1960s, comic books cost 12 cents per copy, later 15 cents. I could beg two dollars from my father and buy every comic both Marvel and DC put out every week, or at least all the ones I wanted. Sure comic books are an adult market now but, as adults, we also have many other things to worry about and that we want besides comic books. At $3.99 or so, I am not sure that a tight continuity that makes you feel you need to read a bunch of other comics is going to put them on top. For instance, outside of IC itself, I have purchased a grand total of two tie-ins. Just two issues, period. I just won't be pulled into buying a bunch of other comics I'm not into just because some story element crosses over. In fact, one of the things that had me buying more DC than Marvel after the huge price hikes was that DC comics did tend to be more self-contained. Something that was an advantage in one place and time can become a disadvantage in another.

soda

04-08-2006, 03:38 PM

Thanks for the responses, guys, sorry I've been away from this topic for awhile, My mom came home from a long trip this weekend, so I've been away from my computer for a while, but I'm back now.

I'd first like to apologize to bored at 3 AM for hijacking his thread a little bit, but this conversation is too interesting not to continue. I want to address silvermane's post first, I'll get to shyguy and captain manhattan in my next post.

I do agree on Secret Files. I thought it was a fantastic read.

To me, that was one of the great joys of IC, to read another Marv Wolfmann comic after all these years and to realize that the wolf-man's still got it. To me, the secret files took the personality shift of AL, SBP, and Kal-L, and made them plausible by showing how their time in the paradise pocket dimension affected them. To me, this was the last logical link that was needed to get from COIE to IC. Plus, it showed us another Marv Wolfman comic after all these years, I picked up the book not expecting much out of it (I knew the set up, and what it would be about), and I was blown away by how good this book was.

I only take two issues with what you've said. First, I have yet to see any of the mainstream DCU characters acknowledge even in the smallest way that they may have something to learn. Maybe it's too subtle. I would love to see one of the big three say that they see or understand or even accept some of the criticism levelled at them because from where I sit, it ain't all wrong. I just haven't seen that yet.

Okay, here's my response to this (valid critism, BTW). Comic book characters are like the Bush Administration: they never admit they were wrong, about anything, however, unlike the Bush administration, comic book characters will grow, change and evolve when something isn't working. You're never going to get that panel where the character says "I was wrong, I was wrong! I resolve to change my ways and learn the true meaning on Christmas." It's not like "A christmas carol", comic books are filled with the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Take Tim Drake, for example, if you read the last issue of Teen Titans (the first OYL issue), and you saw what Tim Drake was doing, you know where this is going, you've seen it happen a million times before, and you'll see it happen a million times again, good intentions, bad result. It's the entire premise behind Batman's spy satellite, and Charles xavier's decision to send a green, untested group of mutants to a place like krakoa to extract the x-men. good intentions, bad result. However, Batman will never say he was wrong. What will you get? You'll get something a lot more subtle, you'll get Batman having a breakdown like what happened in IC #3, that was rock-bottom, and you'll have Batman then do the right thing, and start to mend fences, starting with nightwing.

The conversation between Nightwing and Batman in IC #3 is the point where Batman has resolved that things can't keep going the way they are, and has resolved to make the changes that need to be made. So, while there's no on-camera admission by the characters, the character changes, and if you picked up the OYL batman, you'll see those changes in place. Superman's moment of truth came in IC #5, when he was fighting against his older half, you saw the internal turmoin in the "this is your life" series, you saw Kal-L judge kal-el, and there's no way that doesn't have some kind of emotional impact on Supes. again, no on-camera admission, but you know changes are going to be made.

The other disagreement I have is with the characterization. I can see how the pre-crisis characters got to where they are in their motivations, frustrations and desires. I can see how S-P can be so blinded by his desire to go home that he will do anything necessary to get there. However, he should always believe that he is doing the right thing. I'm sorry, but S-P gleefully, maniacally and bloodthirstily grinning ear to ear in anticipation of beating people to death and enjoying it as he does in IC6, gloating that he killed Titans without even trying - that's just too far a stretch for me.

this is another valid critism, to which I would counter with two points:

1) in the specific case of SBP in IC #6, remember that he's now "altered", he's no longer the person he was before, what we don't know is what happened to him when he was in the speed force. By his own admission, he was there for "years", we don't know what kind of effect all those years on a red sun planet would have on him, personality-wise, we don't know whether he was in isolation, or what. He didn't take being trapped with AL, Kal-L and lois in paradise real well, one only wonders how he took being trapped by himself on a red sun planet.

Recall that in IC #4, when the fight actually occurs with the titans, there's nothing gleefull about the killing at all, he's trying to stop himself, and he's horrified by what he's doing. He feels he was forced into it.

2) In the case of AL, and Kal-L, I feel like they're characterization is natural, Kal-L's big thing is finding a way to save Lois, but as you saw in IC #5 and IC #6, Kal-L is still basically a good person. AL is a luthor, and at the end of the day is motivated by what all luthors want, and the message seems to be that he's motivated by this whether he realizes it openly, or not.

stealthwise

04-08-2006, 03:46 PM

Take Tim Drake, for example, if you read the last issue of Teen Titans (the first OYL issue), and you saw what Tim Drake was doing, you know where this is going, you've seen it happen a million times before, and you'll see it happen a million times again, good intentions, bad result. It's the entire premise behind Batman's spy satellite, and Charles xavier's decision to send a green, untested group of mutants to a place like krakoa to extract the x-men. good intentions, bad result.

Actually, if I may interject, I can actually see Robin's efforts working out. A storyline like that would provide something different from the cliches that you point out, and would show that heroes CAN make good use of their science and powers in order to improve their situation or the world's.

soda

04-08-2006, 04:13 PM

Yeah, but people don't really read Crisis on Infinite Earths because it's good; they read it because it's a necessary read if you want to understand the history of the DC Universe. I mean, as a story, it's tedious, drawn-out, and boring. It's really not even a story so much as it is a tool to get from one place to another in terms of the stories that writers were free to create. If I had to recommend either it or Secret Wars as an entertaining read, I'd go with SW in a heartbeat. It's not read as often anymore, but that's because it doesn't really have anything to do with the Marvel Universe as it currently is.

I think Infinite Crisis will be largely the same, or maybe even less-read than COIE because it ultimately won't have had as big of an impact on the DCU. I mean, they can only harp on Wonder Woman killing Max Lord for so long before people get tired of it and/or it's written out of continutiy. And since a lot of the changes that IC is making seem to just be changing things back to the way they were before COIE, there's even less reason for people interested in DC history to pick it up. Likewise, I don't imagine that Civil War will have a huge lasting impact on the Marvel Universe, but it'll probably be a better story.

This is seriously a great post, it brings to light several very interesting things:

1) the accusation that COIE isn't "good", but that people only read it because it's "required". I've heard this argument, a lot, over the years, and there's no doubt that there's a lot of truth to it. Let's be clear: COIE is a different comic, from a different time, it's inaccesible, dense, terse, and very hard to get into. I read it, the first time, years ago when I was just starting in comics, and I remember thinking WTF? I didn't know who most of those characters were (nor did I care at the time), so I put it away, thinking I must be a bad person because I saw Jonah Hex and the Crime Syndicate of America and Lady Quark (and her husband, Lord Volt) and I didn't care. It wasn't until years later, when I read COIE, again, and reread it again, that things started to make sense, and that I found out that this really was a very good book. Not easy to get into, but Homer's Illiad, to name but one other example, is hard to get into, for a modern audience, too. Don't confuse something being "bad" quality wise, with being hard to get into. COIE is hard to get into, I'll grant you that, but it's an excellent, fulfilling read, at least it is to me, and it deserves it's place as a classic.

2) To me, I have a very, very hard time believing that Civil war will be a better story. Please, note, this isn't a knock on marvel, and this isn't about the whole marvel-dc thing, it's just a statement. I have a very hard time believing that the next big DC crossover will be as good as IC. To me, big mega-crossovers are just geometrically hard projects to get to work just right. IC is one of the few that are really clicking on all cylinders, and I have a hard time seeing anyone matching that in the near future. The history of big mega-crossovers is filled with busts, is filled with things that fans would like to forget (zero hour, war games, house of m), and is filled with a lot of half-baked ideas that didn't come close to panning out. Look at house of M, eight issues, and I could have done it in three:

issue one: world goes to white
issue two: house of M, xavier's grave shown at the end.
issue three: wanda wishes away all the mutants.

There, three issues, and I told you what took BMB eight issues. Obviously, House of M was mostly "filler", that's the way these things generally go, and that's how I think Civil War will go, but what do I know? Put another way, here's a joke at my local comic store: "yeah, if IC was House of M, it would be 52." What do we mean by that? IC is one of the tightest comics ever written, everything happens so fast, every three pages of IC is like the last three pages of the coolest comic you've ever read, it has a briskness of pace to it, it doesn't waste page space, a lot happens in a confined space. House of M was the polar opposite, five wasted issues, by my count, if IC wasted as much page space as House of M (went as far with nothing happening), it would be 52 issues long.

I don't think that IC will be a sucessor to COIE, by the way, I said above that I think COIE was actually an excellent comic, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the reason why most people read it the first time is because it's needed to understand DC continuity. The argument that's it's needed is accurate. What I think IC will be is the watchmen or DKR of it's generation, instead of the COIE, it will be the comic that people get their hands on, and that just blows people away to the point where everything changes as a result. We're already seeing the fallout of Crisis, ironically, at marvel. Look at the format for annihilation, and the illumnati one shot prior to civil war. That's how countdown to infinite crisis, and the four IC specials changed the world, that's the new industry paradigm.

soda

04-08-2006, 04:52 PM

I know that, in the 1980s, Jim Shooter tried to maintain tight editorial reins at Marvel, to maintain continuity. Problem was, we were moving into an era where the writers were becoming stars and sometimes prima donnas and he lost a lot of writers over it. But that aside, I think there is a BIG difference between having a continuity that makes you want to buy another book which in turn makes you want to be another and then another in 1961 and trying that in 2006. The difference is about $2.87 to $3.87.

In the 1960s, comic books cost 12 cents per copy, later 15 cents. I could beg two dollars from my father and buy every comic both Marvel and DC put out every week, or at least all the ones I wanted. Sure comic books are an adult market now but, as adults, we also have many other things to worry about and that we want besides comic books. At $3.99 or so, I am not sure that a tight continuity that makes you feel you need to read a bunch of other comics is going to put them on top. For instance, outside of IC itself, I have purchased a grand total of two tie-ins. Just two issues, period. I just won't be pulled into buying a bunch of other comics I'm not into just because some story element crosses over. In fact, one of the things that had me buying more DC than Marvel after the huge price hikes was that DC comics did tend to be more self-contained. Something that was an advantage in one place and time can become a disadvantage in another.

This is a seriously great post (lots of them on this thread), and one that is a valid economic concern about the state of the modern industry. I hear it all the time, comics are too expensive. While I largely agree with that, here's my take on this:

1) to me, expense in comics goes hand in hand with the shared universe. What DC is trying to do by having a shared universe is (inarguably) trying to get more of your money. There can be no argument about this. Some people will like this, some people won't. However, I believe DC chose the perfect time in history to do this. Why? Because the current state of the industry is such that, if your the type of person who isn't into the shared universe, guess what? You have plenty of quality options to take your purchasing dollars to. If your the type of person who doesn't like the shared DC universe, I have two (DC) options for you:

Jonah Hex
Detective comics

Every issue of Jonah Hex is a one-shot, and it's high quality a comic book (great writing, great art) as there is on the market right now. If you hate the inter-connected universe, and you just want one great book, get Jonah Hex. Paul Dini (the Paul Dini, one of the greatest Batman writers in history) is starting a run on Tec in July, each issue will be a standalone detective story. If your a marvel guy, get Dan Slott's thing, I bought the last issue, and found it to be very accessible. The point is that we're at a point in comic book history where we're seeing a proliferation of styles and genres that we haven't seen in this industry since the early 50s. There's something for everyone, if you're not into the shared universe, skip it, those of us who are will buy the books.

I know this sounds like a broken record, but it bears repeating: vote with your dollar, don't buy what you aren't totally in love with, there's too much good material out there for you to read a single page you aren't digging.

Here's the line, in the quoted post, that really hit home for me:

"I just won't be pulled into buying a bunch of other comics I'm not into just because some story element crosses over."

To me, that's cart before the horse. The marketing pull of the shared universe doesn't work at all if the books suck. If I read one book, think "wow that was really cool", read a shared book and think "wow that was really lame." That's the last lay's potato chip I'm going to eat. I'm not going any further if the books suck. I was originally planning to not get any of the IC specials and tie-ins, then, my comic book shop guy handed me the "day of vengence IC special". I hadn't asked for it, he just handed me the comic, and told me, "you're buying this". I said okay. I read it, and I was floored. That was one of the best comics I've ever read, I didn't know who any of those characters were, but I cared. A while later, I picked up day of vengence as a trade at wonder-con, I read it and was floored, no one told me it was that good. So now, I'm planning on picking up the shadowpact ongoing when it comes out. That's shared marketing, but if I had picked up "day of vengence IC special" and thought "this sucks" or if I had picked it up and thought "meh, this was okay, but it didn't change my life", guess what, I wouldn't have picked up the day of vengence trade, and I wouldn't be getting the shadowpact ongoing.

An example? After the day of vengence IC special was so cool, I was chomping at the bit waiting for the rann-thanagar war IC special, I got it, and it was okay. It was pretty good, but it was no better, and no more special than a hundred other books I've read. I had the chance to pick up the Rann-Thanagar war as a trade recently, but I passed, and I likely won't be getting the Ion 12 issue series coming out.

Shared marketing is only a sales pull if the stories are really cool (the Omac project IC special blew me away, I'm getting the Checkmate ongoing, and I was getting the OMAC project series as single issues, and I dug every one of them). If the stories stink, no one is going to buy something just because it crosses over, nor should anyone be expected to. That's not the point of shared universe, the point only works when the story quality is high.

soda

04-08-2006, 04:56 PM

Actually, if I may interject, I can actually see Robin's efforts working out. A storyline like that would provide something different from the cliches that you point out, and would show that heroes CAN make good use of their science and powers in order to improve their situation or the world's.

yeah, but this is a comic book, what are the chances of that happening?

stealthwise

04-08-2006, 08:45 PM

yeah, but this is a comic book, what are the chances of that happening?

Heh, no idea. Depends on how editorial wants it to go, as there's no way that they'll be able to bring back Superboy unless DC gives it the ok. Many have guessed the effort will result in a Bizarro-boy, which would be cool enough I suppose. But giving Robin a hard-fought win would really advance the character in terms of having him show initiative and succeed where his mentor has failed.

DarthAstuart

04-08-2006, 10:23 PM

this is one of the better threads in my brief time lurking here, so i have to mix it up...

It wasn't until years later, when I read COIE, again, and reread it again, that things started to make sense, and that I found out that this really was a very good book. Not easy to get into, but Homer's Illiad, to name but one other example, is hard to get into, for a modern audience, too. Don't confuse something being "bad" quality wise, with being hard to get into. COIE is hard to get into, I'll grant you that, but it's an excellent, fulfilling read, at least it is to me, and it deserves it's place as a classic.

wow, I really disagree. I think COIE is a good story that's not all that well told. And that's taking into account the perspective that it's a comic totally of its time, the mid-eighties. that's just a YMMV thing, I guess, but I really dunno about comparing it to the Illiad!

to me, it's not hard to get into because of its age or even the density of its story. it's hard to get into because after a while, it totally loses momentum and has about two or three different "endings" before the whole shebang wraps up. talk about "writing for the trade"--there wasn't a trade to write for back then, but I do think Wolfman padded out that story big-time to make it 12 issues. so to me, it's a dense story, but could use a severe streamlining, because I honestly lose the momentum pretty much every time I read it.

What I think IC will be is the watchmen or DKR of it's generation, instead of the COIE, it will be the comic that people get their hands on, and that just blows people away to the point where everything changes as a result. We're already seeing the fallout of Crisis, ironically, at marvel. Look at the format for annihilation, and the illumnati one shot prior to civil war. That's how countdown to infinite crisis, and the four IC specials changed the world, that's the new industry paradigm.

again, man, GOTTA disagree. IC is not changing industry paradigms! it is doing crossovers in some innovative ways (the four lead-in minis, the huge buildup) and to me, for the most part, it's doing it well. but that's certainly not reinventing the wheel. marvel actually built that paradigm with Secret Wars, and for the most part, with the occasional tweak or attempt to have a fresh take, the major superhero crossover is largely the same animal.

Watchmen and DKR changed comics and are true classics because in content and storytelling techniques they were truly revolutionary. the density of moore/gibbons work; the naked simplicity of miller. two very different approaches but totally new ways to create mainstream comics. layers, depth and characterization that was head and shoulders above anything marvel or DC had done before.

IC is a really fun story. I'm enjoying it mostly. But that's all it is--a really fun, really good superhero book. superhero fans and DC fans may be thinking about it for years, but it isn't reinventing any wheels, and it certainly isn't revolutionizing anything about the medium itself.

imho, of course... :)

Bored at 3:00AM

04-08-2006, 11:02 PM

I'd first like to apologize to bored at 3 AM for hijacking his thread a little bit, but this conversation is too interesting not to continue.

Hijack away, soda. My initial concerns that Infinite Crisis wasn't actually going to change anything about DC continuity seem to have been completely unfounded, so the thread is a dead end as far as I'm concerned. Feel free to have your way with this thread as you will.

Red Berens

04-09-2006, 12:22 PM

Hijack away, soda. My initial concerns that Infinite Crisis wasn't actually going to change anything about DC continuity seem to have been completely unfounded, so the thread is a dead end as far as I'm concerned. Feel free to have your way with this thread as you will.

I agree with you, Bored. I think the biggest problem is the multiverse won't be brought back, and that basically, nothing is really going to change. At least with the original Crisis, DC had a plan, a goal they wanted to accomplish. I do not see that with IC. It just seems like another big big story, that in the end doesn't really do much. Really, whats the difference between this and the Worlds at War story?

It's probably all our own faults though - we saw it as a sequel to this biggest single event in DC history, and assumed this one would be on par, if not bigger and better.

I wonder how long we'll have to wait for the next big Crisis story. One that actually does something.

IPW

04-09-2006, 12:31 PM

I agree with you, Bored. I think the biggest problem is the multiverse won't be brought back, and that basically, nothing is really going to change.

I disagree with this statement. I think DC found middle ground. True the multiverse didn't return. But there are fan, I am one of them, that didn't want it to return. There is only one Earth, but it is a "New Earth" with alot of the less silly element of the Golden and Silver Ages. Just give the creators time to explore this "New Universe" before stating nothing changed.

Bored at 3:00AM

04-10-2006, 12:26 AM

I agree with you, Bored.

You agree with me? You sure? It doesn't sound like it. Re-read the post of mine you quoted again. I said "my initial concerns that Infinite Crisis wasn't actually going to change anything about DC continuity seem to have been completely unfounded". In other words, I thought IC wasn't going to change anything, but it seems I was wrong and it appears it actually has made pretty major changes like restoring Superboy, Joe Chill, Wonder Woman's JLA history and the Phantom Zone villains.

So, I don't think you're agreeing with me here.

lawman

04-10-2006, 04:22 AM

But there may be other changes that we don't know about and won't know about until they get referenced. The History of the DC Universe feature in 52 will probably help.

In a way, you don't really know ANYTHING about the history of New Earth, until you read about it in a comic published after IC. You can make some assumptions, but it's not a sure thing until it gets confirmed.

So unless you read it in a OYL-or-later story or 52, it doesn't count...

Which is pretty exciting, in a way.
And pretty much a pain in the ass, in another way.

We went through exactly that state of "everything you know is wrong" (despite the present-day status quo being the same!) 20 years ago, after COIE, and it produced years worth of headaches. (Can anyone say "Legion?" How about "Hawkman?" "Wonder Girl?" I could keep going...) Subjecting us to it again is not progress.

And after #6, I'm leaning strongly toward the camp that feels IC as a story is all hat and no cattle, too.

I'm not going any further if the books suck. I was originally planning to not get any of the IC specials and tie-ins, then, my comic book shop guy handed me the "day of vengence IC special". I hadn't asked for it, he just handed me the comic, and told me, "you're buying this". I said okay. I read it, and I was floored. That was one of the best comics I've ever read, I didn't know who any of those characters were, but I cared. A while later, I picked up day of vengence as a trade at wonder-con, I read it and was floored, no one told me it was that good. So now, I'm planning on picking up the shadowpact ongoing when it comes out. That's shared marketing, but if I had picked up "day of vengence IC special" and thought "this sucks" or if I had picked it up and thought "meh, this was okay, but it didn't change my life", guess what, I wouldn't have picked up the day of vengence trade, and I wouldn't be getting the shadowpact ongoing.
Really? DOV Special? Okay, to each his own. I was really excited about IC at the outset -- and I must admit that the renewed editorial focus on a convincing "shared universe" is something I wholeheartedly appreciate -- but the actual execution of IC and most of the crossovers has produced little more than that "meh" from me. It doesn't have that visceral sense of high-stakes suspense that COIE had, and it's not even in the same ballpark as Watchmen or Dark Knight. Heck, despite the deeply disappointing final issue, I'd even say that I found Identity Crisis a far more emotionally compelling story than IC.

glennsim

04-10-2006, 08:29 AM

And pretty much a pain in the ass, in another way.

We went through exactly that state of "everything you know is wrong" (despite the present-day status quo being the same!) 20 years ago, after COIE, and it produced years worth of headaches. (Can anyone say "Legion?" How about "Hawkman?" "Wonder Girl?" I could keep going...) Subjecting us to it again is not progress.

When we finished the first Crisis, I found myself thinking "everything in their history counts, unless they tell us it didn't." After this one, I find myself thinking "nothing in their history counts, unless they tell us it did." Now maybe that's just a subjective perspective and it's really all the same thing. Or maybe I learned my lesson the first time and am more wary this time. But for some reason I find myself more accepting and happier with the concept this time. Maybe I just haven't seen any fallout yet on this one...

Jolly Mon

04-10-2006, 10:11 AM

I guess the problem I have is more from a story standpoint than an "end-result" standpoint. To me, the whole of this story boiling down to two pissed-off juveniles trying to get their own way is just lame. The armor SBP comes back wearing looks like the Anti-Monitor because.... he liked the style?!? That alone was a huge letdown.

lawman

04-10-2006, 01:12 PM

Yeah, I agree, I too was hoping for a more convincing motivation (and more intimidating villain) as the ultimate "big bad."

And the story's just been too compressed (which is ironic, given the total pagecount including all the buildup and crossovers)... lots of red herrings and/or interesting threads (as with SBP's armor) that just weren't followed up. (Including, for example, the destruction in Gotham City... and, as someone else noted, too little "man-on-the-street" reaction to the crisis overall. We really don't have a good sense of its total scope.)

Too many contrivances, too. With heroes teaming up all over the place as problems emerge -- some of them (e.g., Green Arrow) seeming literally to be everywhere at once! -- are we really expected to believe that when Nightwing sent out an alert, nobody was able to respond? Heck, look at the team that was able to converge on Smallville at the drop of a hat just one issue before!

soda

04-10-2006, 01:25 PM

wow, I really disagree. I think COIE is a good story that's not all that well told. And that's taking into account the perspective that it's a comic totally of its time, the mid-eighties. that's just a YMMV thing, I guess, but I really dunno about comparing it to the Illiad!

I've read Homer's Illiad seven times in my life, I consider it to be (probably) the finest book ever written in the history of human civilization. IMHO, everything that watchmen did, the Illiad did 2,700 years earlier. I'm not saying COIE is the same as the Illiad, quality wise, what I'm saying is that they're both comparably impossibly hard to get into....For a modern audience. That last qualifier is important, the Iliad was written in Greek, by the first great rock star of the modern world, Homer was a musician, not a writer, or a poet. However, it is from a foreign land, a foreign culture, and a lot of it might as well be alien to a modern audience. I read it the first time when I was in high school, and I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I'd ever read in my life. It wasn't until I reread the book, many times over the years, that I started to "get it". Taking college classes in Greek History, and reading Greek mythology, Greek plays, and learning more about the culture really helped everything make sense too. Reading COIE was almost the same experience, there are whole parts of both books that you just skip over the first time you read it, because you find the language/whatever to be that inaccessible. The first time I read the Iliad, I used to skip over the long, declarative battle-field speeches. Okay, you're going to shove a spear through that guy, we get it, could you please wrap the speech up and get on with the spear shoving already? Again, this isn't a quality comparison, this is an accessibility comparison. The Illiad is terse, weird, and very hard to get into as well, but that doesn't mean the effort wasn't worthwhile, just that it takes a lot of effort.

to me, it's not hard to get into because of its age or even the density of its story. it's hard to get into because after a while, it totally loses momentum and has about two or three different "endings" before the whole shebang wraps up. talk about "writing for the trade"--there wasn't a trade to write for back then, but I do think Wolfman padded out that story big-time to make it 12 issues. so to me, it's a dense story, but could use a severe streamlining, because I honestly lose the momentum pretty much every time I read it.

There's a guy I know who goes to my local comic book store, really cool guy, named Chris, who says the same thing about Watchmen, every time we talk. He always sits down, and convinces himself that today will be the day that he finally reads watchmen, and for some reason, he can never finish the book. He always looses interest in it, before the end. Look, I'm not saying that your critism of COIE is baseless, I too think it's a little longish, and, of course, I just spent the better part of an entire post a bit up this thread bashing BMB for padding House of M, so let he who is without sin....

In any case, while I do agree that COIE does meander a little bit, I'm not sure I agree with the "space padding accussation". Meander? I can see that, but I think that's related to space-padding. In our modern age, every time you read a marvel comic, there's some space padding for the trade. That's marvel, we're used to it, we're used to the fact that everything has to be a six or eight issue arc in order to fit nicely into a trade. However, I think that COIE meanders, not to fill space, but to make sure that every single character used has some final plot resolution, even if that resolution is just a gateway to a new status quo. I don't expect IC to go out of it's way to tie up every loose end, but in 1985, when Marv Wolfmann was trying to reinvent an entire company (as opposed to just fine tunning it, like Johns is now with IC) it was important that every character of the silver age receive some resolution. Again, you can call that comics for the sake of continuity, as opposed to entertainment, if you want, and I'm not saying that the critism is without merit, I think it has a point, but I also think that it was unavoidable.

again, man, GOTTA disagree. IC is not changing industry paradigms! it is doing crossovers in some innovative ways (the four lead-in minis, the huge buildup) and to me, for the most part, it's doing it well. but that's certainly not reinventing the wheel. marvel actually built that paradigm with Secret Wars, and for the most part, with the occasional tweak or attempt to have a fresh take, the major superhero crossover is largely the same animal.

Watchmen and DKR changed comics and are true classics because in content and storytelling techniques they were truly revolutionary. the density of moore/gibbons work; the naked simplicity of miller. two very different approaches but totally new ways to create mainstream comics. layers, depth and characterization that was head and shoulders above anything marvel or DC had done before.

You know what's funny about history? I'm a history buff, BTW, if you came to my house, and I was watching TV, chances are you'd catch me watching the history channel. The thing I've noticed about history is that no one knows what is going to be a classic for the next generation until history has it's say. People talk about how IC is missing that one major thing in it, people talk about the empty feeling, but really the reason why DKR and watchmen are classics is because when they came out, people picked up the book, read it, and went "holy crap!" DKR had that Frank Miller grim and gritty style that's been copied over and over and over again for the last twenty years. DKR is, doubtless, very cool, but if you look at it, it's really a very simplistic plot. The genesis of that plot (future batman, return of the dark knight, fight with superman) is unique in how outrageous it was, but the execution was nothing special. Watchmen is, in many ways, the polar opposite of DKR, DKR is about style, watchmen was a standard panel comic, not unlike a million other silver age comics. Watchmen, by and large, has a visual style that's just panel after panel of talking heads, with very little action going on, what makes watchmen unique is that realism of what's going on, that even though these characters are super-human, you can relate to all of them as human beings. That's something that the silver age, an era of cookie cutter, cartoonish comics, didn't really have. To a modern reader, both of these classics seem dated, because both of them were copied so many times between then and now, what people don't get is that watchmen and DKR came first, and that, when they came out, they blew people away.

To compare IC to watchmen or DKR is ludicrous. In my time as a comic reader, the only book I've ever read that compares is Kingdome come. However, here's the trick, the first time I read Watchmen, DKR, and Kingdome come, I didn't like any of the three. I read Kingdome come, and I was really confused by what was going on (I mean, I got the plot, what I didn't have was character motivation, this was 2001, when I was just getting back into comics, and I didn't have the background on the DCU). same with watchmen and DKR (for similar reasons). If you're new to the DCU, I can see how IC would have some barriers to understanding what was going on, but in my mind, it will be a classic, someday.

lawman

04-10-2006, 01:35 PM

I don't think DK or Watchmen feel dated at all.

They each blew me away from the very first issue when they first came out (1986 was a damn good year for comics!), and sustained that level of intensity right through to the very end. Their respective styles have, as you note, been "copied" many times since, but never equalled -- each stands on its own as a supremely satisfying reading experience, second-rate knockoffs notwithstanding.

COIE is slightly more a creature of its time, but still a satsifying read in its own right, IMHO... although one does have to have some familiarity with pre-Crisis DC to really appreciate it. I don't think the storytelling is significantly less sophisticated in any particular way as compared to IC.

Now, reading the 1958 Superman tales in the recent Showcase phone book... those seem dated!...

yeoman

04-10-2006, 01:49 PM

Tom

04-10-2006, 02:03 PM

Didio, of course, having giving us reason to trust his word. Oh, wait, he's flat out said he'll lie about what's going to happen.
And hey, it turn out he was right after all. There aren't going to be sweeping changes to the DCU; there isn't going to be a multiverse; Clark is still Superman; Diana is still Wonder Woman; and Bruce is still Batman.

Michael P

04-10-2006, 02:07 PM

Shellhead

04-10-2006, 02:09 PM

So far, I've been disappointed by Infinite Crisis. The 4 minis contain significant chunks of the story, but I resent the idea of spending an extra $60 just to be able to enjoy a 7-issue series. And having just finished IC #6, it looks like the payoff from this series will be minimal. I admit that I was hoping for the return of the multiverse, and that anything short of that was unlikely to make this series a worthy sequel to the original Crisis. At this point, One Year Later seems more like One Yawn Later to me.

The artwork has also been disappointing. The duelling covers between Lee and Perez was a good idea in concept, but the reality has been less than I expected from either artist. The interior work has been rough, inconsistent and a little weak on the story-telling, with random changes in facial features from panel to panel, and Power Girl's breasts also randomly changing in size.

Worst of all, Geoff Johns has not given this his best effort. He wrote some excellent Flash stories, and some really amazing JSA sagas, like Stealing Thunder and the King of Tears. But this time around, it just feels less like a story and more like a marketing brochure for DC's current product line. On this page, a couple of characters are speculating on some cosmic threat, then on the next page, other characters are fighting some menace from one of the minis, with no resolution to either scene here. Major plot points blatantly contradict each other, leading to big and somewhat messy scenes that leave me shrugging, "so what?"

To be specific, Superboy's powers seem to vary considerably from his three appearances during the first Crisis. Kal-l seens utterly blind to the consequences of his actions early in IC, then in issue #6, he seems to know exactly what the ramifications will be. Batman abruptly becomes nice again after years of dickish behavior, because why? His Brother Eye program got hijacked and then he had a brief conversation with some Superman he doesn't remember? All the Teen Titans and their allies are on super-teleporting-speed-dial for Superboy, but only two show up when founder Nightwing asks for help? Superboy rips up Lex Luthor's armor in one issue, then we see Lex hiding shortly after that battle nearby in an undamaged suit of armor?

It's just amazingly slopppy writing from a writer who used to care enough to get it right. Maybe Johns is burned out. I suspect that he had to write this with too much input from Didio and various editors, leading to lots of compromises and last-minute changes that didn't work, like Marvel's notorious Clone Saga.

DarthAstuart

04-10-2006, 03:56 PM

i think we're both pretty much on the same page here, but in the hopes of keeping this awesome thread alive...

IMHO, everything that watchmen did, the Illiad did 2,700 years earlier.

well, duh. :) one of my favorite saying is "there's nothing new under the sun." so true.

I'm not saying COIE is the same as the Illiad, quality wise, what I'm saying is that they're both comparably impossibly hard to get into....For a modern audience.

on that, I totally agree. whyat you seemed to be saying originally is that the fact that COIE is a product of its time is why it can be hard to get into, and what I was trying to say is that it's also hard to get into because it's kinda not so great in spots. but yeah, it's very inaccessible to readers who don't know a lot about continuity...

which gets to a random point that always bugs me about continuity conversations, which is that if we ever get to this totally clean & easy continuity, what's the fun/point of that?! how else do new fans (or even ignorant old fans) learn about continuity if they aren't reading something, totally confused, and yet intrigued enough to buy all the back issues and figure everything out?

In any case, while I do agree that COIE does meander a little bit, I'm not sure I agree with the "space padding accussation". Meander? I can see that, but I think that's related to space-padding. In our modern age, every time you read a marvel comic, there's some space padding for the trade. That's marvel, we're used to it, we're used to the fact that everything has to be a six or eight issue arc in order to fit nicely into a trade. However, I think that COIE meanders, not to fill space, but to make sure that every single character used has some final plot resolution, even if that resolution is just a gateway to a new status quo.

I think that's true...BUT (and there's always a but, isn't there?) I think it's also true that the story just goes on way too long. there's a couple of false endings in there (it's honestly been several months since I re-read it, and I have no brain for trivia/facts/much of anything at all, so I don't recall what exactly they are) that to me rival the end of Return of the King. as of IC #6 at least, I think it has a much tighter focus. but then, if they tacked five issues onto IC, maybe it'd have a couple of false endings too.

If you're new to the DCU, I can see how IC would have some barriers to understanding what was going on, but in my mind, it will be a classic, someday.

yes, BUT...I'm saying IC isn't a classic because the storytelling isn't as strong or as innovative as either Watchmen or DKR, and you're saying it isn't a classic YET because it's inaccessible to new readers. right? or am I missing something?

and you're right--time creates classics. but so do brilliant artists. the reason people said "holy crap" for Watchmen or DKR is, as you said, the fact that these were revolutionary pieces of comic book entertainment. (and I'll just ignore the fact that you think the storytelling in DKR is "nothing special" for the time being. :p ) i wouldn't go so far as to say they were instant classics, but they were close.

could IC become a classic in comics? maybe, i guess. it will certainly be a watershed moment in the history of DC, but that's because they created it to be. they made it an event, the story didn't.

but if it is a classic, it can never be a classic in the same way that Watchmen and DKR are classics, because those two series fundamentally changed the way comics were seen and the way comic book stories were told, at least from a perspective of the comics mainstream. if IC is ever a "classic," it will simply be a classic superhero comic, no more, and no less--several orders of magnitude down from true groundbreaking classics of an entire artform.

a comparison, to be clearer--Die Hard is a classic action movie (IMHO). Citizen Kane is a classic MOVIE. two completely different levels of classic.

soda

04-10-2006, 06:15 PM

well, duh. :) one of my favorite saying is "there's nothing new under the sun." so true.

My version of that: every modern myth is simply a re-interpretation of Homer's Illiad, and every modern adventure story is a re-interpretation of the Odyssey.

which gets to a random point that always bugs me about continuity conversations, which is that if we ever get to this totally clean & easy continuity, what's the fun/point of that?! how else do new fans (or even ignorant old fans) learn about continuity if they aren't reading something, totally confused, and yet intrigued enough to buy all the back issues and figure everything out?

There are only two possible reactions, aren't there? You either throw your hands in the air, chalk it up as too confusing, and give up, or you keep at it, persevere and understand. Which writer it is that introduces you to the story has a lot to do with it, an interesting mystery is a lot more fun to solve than one that's presented un-interestingly. Yeah, Hawkman is a mess, but if I don't care about Hawkman, why do I want to figure it out? That's why I've put in so much effort over the years to try to understand DC continuity, however, I agree that without the paradoxes, it isn't as much fun.

On the other hand, there's the marvel way (which is what I find interesting). I was reading an interview at newsarama this morning, before I went to work, in which BMB talked about the illumanti special, and he talked about marvel continuity, because several people pointed out to him that the meeting he depicts couldn't have happened when he said it did. His reply was essentially to wave his hands, and say "that's the magic of comic books". I love the marvel way, of pretending that inconvenient continuity doesn't even exist (only remember the past as you want to). Joe Quesada has said that Marvel "doesn't do crisises." and he's right, they don't pay enough attention to continuity to even acknowledge the inconsistencies that led DC to crisis.

I think that's true...BUT (and there's always a but, isn't there?) I think it's also true that the story just goes on way too long. there's a couple of false endings in there (it's honestly been several months since I re-read it, and I have no brain for trivia/facts/much of anything at all, so I don't recall what exactly they are) that to me rival the end of Return of the King. as of IC #6 at least, I think it has a much tighter focus. but then, if they tacked five issues onto IC, maybe it'd have a couple of false endings too.

You are right, there are several false endings (the anti-monitor banished to the anti-matter universe, the universe reforming, the battle in the negative matter universe, the second battle). Again, I'm not Marv Wolfmann, so I don't know what the purpose behind this all was, I can tell you this, though, the E2 Robin and Huntress apparently die well into COIE #12, and their "deaths" are pretty important, so getting all those details in might be why the book was extended. I don't know, I do think you have a point.

and you're right--time creates classics. but so do brilliant artists. the reason people said "holy crap" for Watchmen or DKR is, as you said, the fact that these were revolutionary pieces of comic book entertainment. (and I'll just ignore the fact that you think the storytelling in DKR is "nothing special" for the time being. :p ) i wouldn't go so far as to say they were instant classics, but they were close.

could IC become a classic in comics? maybe, i guess. it will certainly be a watershed moment in the history of DC, but that's because they created it to be. they made it an event, the story didn't.

but if it is a classic, it can never be a classic in the same way that Watchmen and DKR are classics, because those two series fundamentally changed the way comics were seen and the way comic book stories were told, at least from a perspective of the comics mainstream. if IC is ever a "classic," it will simply be a classic superhero comic, no more, and no less--several orders of magnitude down from true groundbreaking classics of an entire artform.

a comparison, to be clearer--Die Hard is a classic action movie (IMHO). Citizen Kane is a classic MOVIE. two completely different levels of classic.

This bothers me, and variations of this logic bother me. Here's my personal opinion (this is purely IMHO): The best comic book I've ever read is probably Kingdome come. Most people say DKR or watchmen, and while I certainly esteem both books, Kingdome come is #1, for me. I like the modified Divine Comedy (one of my fav books) that runs throughout Kingdome come. The first time I read it, I didn't get it, like I didn't get DKR or watchmen the first time, but they all grew on me. However, here's my point: part of the reason why I hold Kingdome Come in higher regard than DKR or watchmen is simply because Kingdome Come hasn't been copied so many times, by so many people, like the other two. I wasn't a fan before 1990, I don't know what watchmen and DKR were like when they were first published, before other people had duplicated it ad naseum. Here's the problem: it's hard for me to tell if Watchmen and DKR are simply the best, or just were first. In other words, when subsequent copies came out, were any of those copies actually better? (for the record, my answer, based upon what I've read is "No")

Okay, so now that I've said something border-line heretical, what's the point? The point is that this quote:

"it will certainly be a watershed moment in the history of DC, but that's because they created it to be. they made it an event, the story didn't."

is problematic for me. Yes, DC clearly made IC a big event, but which order do the cart and horse go in? Is IC an event because DC made it an event, or did DC make this a big event because the story was worthy of that distinction? We've see comic book companies make something an event because they decided it was going to be an event, whether the story quality demanded it or not ("it's summertime, time for the annual mega-crossover. What'll we do this year?") so often that we assume something is a certain just cynically. What I am saying is that, while there can be no doubt that DC did want to make this a mega-event, just the fact that they did doesn't, and shouldn't take away from the fact that IC is a very good story, on it's own merits.

Put another way, yes, Citizen Kane and Die Hard are two very different movies, however:

1) Citizen Kane isn't a perfect film. Neither is Die Hard, yes, clearly they are two very different kinds of movies, but, here's the catch, by what right does Citizen Kane get the Academy Award nomination and Die Hard not? (please note: I'm not arguing for Die Hard and against Citizen Kane, for the record, I haven't seen either movie, I'm just arguing by what right does one receive recognition as a classic and the other not?)

Here's a less extreme example. A few years ago, gladiator won the academy award (and status as an "instant classic") over a much better film "crouching tiger, hidden dragon", this year, I saw "crash", and "brokeback mountain", and I thought they were both pretty good, but "Sin City" was the best movie I saw last year. I know quite a few people, who aren't comic book fans, over at some of the movie sites I frequent, who also think Sin City was either the best film of last year, or a strong contender. I submit that it should have at least gotten a nom. The point I'm trying to make is that, yes, the gap between Die Hard and Citizen Kane is big, and no one argues that, however, to put one up for due consideration as a classic movie, period, and the other one not based upon their being "different kinds of movies", is, to me, problematic, because the logical implication is that whether or not you are eligible for status as a "classic movie, period" is a function of what type of movie you are, viz, that dramas, like citizen kane, are eligible for the title "classic movies, period", but that action movies, like Die Hard, aren't and are eligible only for the lesser classic label "classic action movie".

That's a false metric, and is reflective of an implied elitest snobbery towards things of a certain type. The Illiad is amongst the most gory, blood-filled, action books in the history of mankind. Hector and Achilles are clear templates for Superman and Batman, and if the Illiad were made today, it would be, guess what, a Rock 'n Roll song performed by the beetles, the rolling stones, areosmith, and (insert name of your favorite musician here) put together. The Illiad was, in it's own time, a pop culture sensation, that became a classic because people forgot it was a pop culture sensation, and because the culture to which it was a pop culture sensation ultimately disappeared.

stealthwise

04-10-2006, 07:26 PM

And hey, it turn out he was right after all. There aren't going to be sweeping changes to the DCU; there isn't going to be a multiverse; Clark is still Superman; Diana is still Wonder Woman; and Bruce is still Batman.

Right on. I mean, the multiverse would be cool to bring back in some form, but you really don't need it, given that you can tell any tale you want in Elseworlds form or through the Vertigo line anyways. All an Earth-2/3/131 gives you is an opportunity to screw it all up by having those characters cross over with the main DCU.

And Clark should be Superman, Diana should be Wonder Woman and Bruce should be Batman, because every other time they've tried otherwise its failed miserably.

shyguy

04-11-2006, 12:19 AM

is problematic for me. Yes, DC clearly made IC a big event, but which order do the cart and horse go in? Is IC an event because DC made it an event, or did DC make this a big event because the story was worthy of that distinction?

Well, that seems fairly easy to answer. Insofar as Infinite Crisis even has a story, it's clearly just a mishmash of various things that longtime DC fans are going to see and say "cool!" to. The most blatant example is something like Earth 2 Wonder Woman literally dropping out of the sky, talking to the other Wonder Woman, and then vanishing (it's kind of funny when you think about it), but there are other examples, too, like seeing e2 Superman again, Superboy wearing the Anti-Monitor's armor, a Superboy/Superboy fight, etc.

Basically, take a bunch of scenarios that would have made good Silver Age covers, play them out with a flimsy plot stringing them together and you have IC. All of this stuff is happening because it's cool to see a bunch of superheroes team up and fight a bad guy/ each other, not because any writer had anything fresh or interesting to say about any of the characters.

While it's true that snobbery has to be avoided when comparing comics (the last thing we want to do is sound like certain indy-comic readers who turn up their nose at superhero books), one has to choose his battles, and Infinite Crisis ain't one of 'em. To make a comparison - Watchmen was written to deconstruct superheroes (before it had been done every single month in one book or another); Infinite Crisis was written because it's cool to see Superman fighting Superman.

That doesn't mean every big event is a bad story, but most of them are. It's hard enough to tell a coherent (let alone good) story with the huge cast that most big events entail, but most of them aren't created with the purpose of telling a good story in the first place. This goes double for DC events, which usually aren't even stories so much as they're tools for changing continuity or fixing errors that past attempts at fixing continuity have created.

And it's also not to say that a comic based on the fact that it's cool to see a good artist draw a bunch of superheroes on the same page has to be bad. That's all JLA/Avengers was, and it was a blast. What was the plot behind it? I dunno, something goofy about Krona and magical whatsits - but who cares? It was cool seeing both company's Captain Marvels fighting together!

But it also can't really be denied that things like Watchmen function on a different level than things like Infinite Crisis. Especially since Infinite Crisis isn't even that good as far as big events go. Most of the important stuff is happening in other books; IC is just little glimpses at a bunch of largely-unrelated stuff that's going on all over the DCU with spotty artwork and predictable writing.

And a good example of a story that worked the other way around (i.e. someone had an idea that warranted an event) is Seven Soldiers. The strength of Grant Morrison's idea was enough to get DC to commit to a 30-issue maxiseries. While it seems fairly obvious that someone saw Infinite Crisis as a great way to build up a ton of hype, get people to buy a plethora of books that ultimately have little if any connection to the miniseries, snare in fans with a bunch of "kewl" things like the return of pre-Crisis characters and the deaths of B and C list characters, and have a convenient platform from which to launch two more hype-driven events (52 and OYL), it also seems fairly obvious that nobody was sitting around DC one day and said, "Hey, I bet a Klarion revival would sell millions!"

I love the marvel way, of pretending that inconvenient continuity doesn't even exist (only remember the past as you want to). Joe Quesada has said that Marvel "doesn't do crisises." and he's right, they don't pay enough attention to continuity to even acknowledge the inconsistencies that led DC to crisis.

Well, DC is no better, or someone would have asked how come Max Lord isn't a robot anymore by now.

And frankly, ignoring that kind of continuity (the Illuminati thing) is fine with me. DC has gotten to the point where they've screwed with continuity so much that a huge percentage of the comics they've released leading up to IC have been about continuity. I like that Marvel doesn't release books that are about continuity. Although the occasional Crisis-type thing can be fun.

PatrickG

04-11-2006, 04:47 AM

And I'd lay even money that, come June, Wally will still be the Flash.

Same Talking Malibu Stacy, new hat.

Actually, Didio did say in his latest Newsarama interview that the new Flash won't be Wally.

Also, he ended up saying that the Flash from IC #5 IS the new Flash.

soda

04-11-2006, 04:17 PM

Well, that seems fairly easy to answer. Insofar as Infinite Crisis even has a story, it's clearly just a mishmash of various things that longtime DC fans are going to see and say "cool!" to. The most blatant example is something like Earth 2 Wonder Woman literally dropping out of the sky, talking to the other Wonder Woman, and then vanishing (it's kind of funny when you think about it), but there are other examples, too, like seeing e2 Superman again, Superboy wearing the Anti-Monitor's armor, a Superboy/Superboy fight, etc.

Basically, take a bunch of scenarios that would have made good Silver Age covers, play them out with a flimsy plot stringing them together and you have IC. All of this stuff is happening because it's cool to see a bunch of superheroes team up and fight a bad guy/ each other, not because any writer had anything fresh or interesting to say about any of the characters.

While it's true that snobbery has to be avoided when comparing comics (the last thing we want to do is sound like certain indy-comic readers who turn up their nose at superhero books), one has to choose his battles, and Infinite Crisis ain't one of 'em. To make a comparison - Watchmen was written to deconstruct superheroes (before it had been done every single month in one book or another); Infinite Crisis was written because it's cool to see Superman fighting Superman.

That doesn't mean every big event is a bad story, but most of them are. It's hard enough to tell a coherent (let alone good) story with the huge cast that most big events entail, but most of them aren't created with the purpose of telling a good story in the first place. This goes double for DC events, which usually aren't even stories so much as they're tools for changing continuity or fixing errors that past attempts at fixing continuity have created.

And it's also not to say that a comic based on the fact that it's cool to see a good artist draw a bunch of superheroes on the same page has to be bad. That's all JLA/Avengers was, and it was a blast. What was the plot behind it? I dunno, something goofy about Krona and magical whatsits - but who cares? It was cool seeing both company's Captain Marvels fighting together!

But it also can't really be denied that things like Watchmen function on a different level than things like Infinite Crisis. Especially since Infinite Crisis isn't even that good as far as big events go. Most of the important stuff is happening in other books; IC is just little glimpses at a bunch of largely-unrelated stuff that's going on all over the DCU with spotty artwork and predictable writing.

And a good example of a story that worked the other way around (i.e. someone had an idea that warranted an event) is Seven Soldiers. The strength of Grant Morrison's idea was enough to get DC to commit to a 30-issue maxiseries. While it seems fairly obvious that someone saw Infinite Crisis as a great way to build up a ton of hype, get people to buy a plethora of books that ultimately have little if any connection to the miniseries, snare in fans with a bunch of "kewl" things like the return of pre-Crisis characters and the deaths of B and C list characters, and have a convenient platform from which to launch two more hype-driven events (52 and OYL), it also seems fairly obvious that nobody was sitting around DC one day and said, "Hey, I bet a Klarion revival would sell millions!"

Here's what you said above that I don't agree with:

- But it also can't really be denied that things like Watchmen function on a different level than things like Infinite Crisis.

I do agree that Watchmen is on a different level from IC. What I don't agree with is that "things like" Watchmen function on a different level than "things like" IC. When you make the comparison as just Watchmen with just IC, that I can accept, what I can't accept is that watchmen is better because it's a certain kind of book whereas IC is inferior because it's a certain type of book. That is snobby elitism, at it's finest, it's the doctrine of using a blanket statement to avoid having to examine things on a case-by-case basis. It's the mantra that something that fits into this type of whole is better than something that doesn't. No, it doesn't, what kind of thing something is doesn't tell you anything about that thing's quality.

something else you said above that I completely agree with:

"That doesn't mean every big event is a bad story, but most of them are."

I agree with this, most big events are bad stories, and that's just all there is to it. My two favorite example are Batman 'War Games' (the worst crossover in history) and House of M (an eight issue comic that could have been done in three). I did dig Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of victory (what I read of it), but off the top of my head, there are very few other crossovers I can think of that I liked. I wasn't particularly taken by Identity Crisis, I thought it was a little better than House of M, other people loved Identity Crisis, I thought it was good, but not great. Keeping in mind that Kingdome Come is my all-time #1 fav, if I had to pick the next most interesting mega-crossover / event of my comic book reading lifetime (post 1990), "Infinite Crisis" wins the biscuit, over "Long Halloween" (does that count?) and "Knightfall" (in that order, Knightfall's first book is cooool, but it falls apart fast). I'll probably read SSoV as a trade sometime soon, and after I do, it will probably find it's way onto this list, somewhere.

So yes, mega-crossover do suck, in fact they tend to suck way more often than not, and to not just suck a little bit, they tend to suck hard all the way. I don't feel that IC is in that same boat, and I know a lot of people who have been reading it and who feel the same way I do. Yes, there is the coolness factor, and the bells and whistles, but I knew a guy when I was at Berkeley who said exactly the same things you're saying about IC (almost verbatim, BTW) about some of the great classics of all-time. Here's what I recall of the conversation (keep in mind, it's been five years, and the memory fades, so don't crucify me if my memory isn't perfect):

- the Illiad is just an all-star team of whose who in the greek warrior class mythological aristocracy, the war is just an excuse for having a mega-crossover battle, in which Aeneas fights Achilles, and Hector can take on Odysseus.

- The Oddssey is the most hodge-podge, poorly constructed, arbitrarily thrown together plot of all time. What's the logic governing the seeming random nature of the Islands that Oddysseus visists (ten years prisoned by circe, another one has a cyclops monster?)

- Pride and Prejudice is pure romantic wish fulfillment, with the flimsiest excuse for an actual plot. They should call that book what it actually is: a victorian england fairy tale. (Note: P & P is one of my favorite books)

- The Divine Comedy is nothing by a historical attempt to systematically define the afterlife, to separate out heaven, and hell and to assign a tier and a rank to everything (note: translated into comic-book speak, what he's saying is that the Divine Comedy is nothing but an attempt to define continuity. It is inarguable, BTW, that "continuity hammering" was a large part of the reason why the divine comedy was written, to clarify notions of the afterlife found in the holy bible).

- Everything that the Divine Comedy is guilty of doing, Saint Augustine's "City of God" is a far more nefarious perpetrator of. (His exact words, as I recall, were "and City of God is even worse!")

- there is no book, in human history, that's more "filler" than moby dick. It's 400 pages of crap, then you get one really cool symbol at the end (the white whale, captain ahab's leg, etc.), and it's a classic for that one thing, name one thing that happens the first 400 pages of Moby Dick. No one can. The first 400 pages of Moby Dick can be summarized as: "Call me Ishmael, I got on a whaling boat, we went after the great white whale..."

- While we're on the subject, there is no book in human history with more problems than the Bible: flimsy plot, bad characterization (the "God" found in the old Testament, and the book of revelation, is clearly a different guy than the "God" found in the new testament), seemingly random plot turns, repetitive plot (the same exact story, happening 30 times in a row, is the book of judges), eye candy to catch your attention (read the book of revelations), random plot elements just thrown on because the writer felt like it (a whale? c'mon.)

He went on like this for hours (we were at a drinking party).

more next post...

soda

04-11-2006, 04:41 PM

look, I don't mean to take this out on you, or to imply that something is better than something else, when it clearly isn't. In fact, I'm of an opinion that I don't believe in telling other people what to think, I'll just tell you what I think, so everything you're hearing is just my take on it. However, that being said, the point of the excercise in my last post is that cynism (and I'm just about as cynical as anyone, when it comes to comics, don't believe me? Read my comment to Stealthwise about his Robin theory) can deconstruct anything into garbage. Everything stinks, if you look at it long enough, you can find warts in anything. Yes, IC and many of DC's events are "continuity hammers", so is the Divine Comedy, so is War and Peace (ever read War and Peace? The point of half of that book is to push a certain interpretation of Napoleon's invasion of Russia, that is, to rewrite history to remember those events a certain way, and according to a certain historical school of thought, if that's not blatant "continuity hammering" I don't know what is. I can speak authoritatively on this because, when I was a college Sophomore, I read War and Peace twice in order to do a research project on it for a poli sci class). Now, I haven't said anything about IC, or it's place in history. I've said, before, that I think it might be a modern classic, but not enough time has passed, and soda doesn't have the power to declare something a "classic", only history does. My personal take is that it's very good, and certainly one of the finest mega-crossovers I've ever read. Not on the same level as DKR or watchmen, or kingdome come, but a very good piece of work. The rest, I leave to history.

DarthAstuart

04-11-2006, 04:58 PM

There are only two possible reactions, aren't there? You either throw your hands in the air, chalk it up as too confusing, and give up, or you keep at it, persevere and understand. Which writer it is that introduces you to the story has a lot to do with it, an interesting mystery is a lot more fun to solve than one that's presented un-interestingly. Yeah, Hawkman is a mess, but if I don't care about Hawkman, why do I want to figure it out? That's why I've put in so much effort over the years to try to understand DC continuity, however, I agree that without the paradoxes, it isn't as much fun.

i think you're absolutely right--it's all very personal. it's down to the writer for some, the artist for others, etc. i just always kneejerk to folks who advocate less continuity, because i think continuity is at least half the fun, and with the way the web/comic shops function now, learning about everything you've missed has never been easier.

However, here's my point: part of the reason why I hold Kingdome Come in higher regard than DKR or watchmen is simply because Kingdome Come hasn't been copied so many times, by so many people, like the other two. I wasn't a fan before 1990, I don't know what watchmen and DKR were like when they were first published, before other people had duplicated it ad naseum. Here's the problem: it's hard for me to tell if Watchmen and DKR are simply the best, or just were first. In other words, when subsequent copies came out, were any of those copies actually better? (for the record, my answer, based upon what I've read is "No")

that's my feeling too, and I'd bet many if not most fans would agree that DKR/Watchmen were both the first and best in their respective subgenres (grimngritty/superhero deconstruction).

but copies, ripoffs, attempts to tell similar stories? they're still irrelevant to the quality and value of the original work, aren't they? you keep referring back to the iliad, and I'll run in that direction too--the classic hero's journey, the one from Star Wars and every other damn myth and story in the universe. is that sequence of events less powerful because it's been told before, or does its value and power depend on who is doing the storytelling, and how well they do it?

hell, kingdom come is your favorite. i love it too. i like DKR more, but by your logic, DKR may not be the better book simply because it was first in the line of "stories about the future of superheroes."

What I am saying is that, while there can be no doubt that DC did want to make this a mega-event, just the fact that they did doesn't, and shouldn't take away from the fact that IC is a very good story, on it's own merits.

you're right--the fact that it's an event shouldn't be a factor in the quality of its story. but in terms of the impact it's having on the marketplace, the DC universe, readers--the fact that it is an event makes it an automatic pole in the dirt of the history of comics. so in that sense, it's going to be notable whether or not the story is good.

i'm with shyguy on this, too--this is a story that was driven by marketing and sales concerns. that's not a slam, it's what I'd view as a simple fact. i don't think didio and his cabal got together to come up with a cracking good yarn. i'm sure they wanted to, but what they came together to do was to come up with a big event that would sell comic books. that's the nature of mainstream pop culture--it's mostly commerce driven.

again, that is NOT a reflection on its quality. lots of great stuff can be done with mainstream pop art, and just because it is or isn't in that category doesn't make it automatically bad or good. but the whole cart before horse question here is ultimately irrelevant, because I don't think there can be any doubt that the entire idea of IC was at some point initially inspired by a question of, "what can we do to sell more comic books?"

1) Citizen Kane isn't a perfect film. Neither is Die Hard, yes, clearly they are two very different kinds of movies, but, here's the catch, by what right does Citizen Kane get the Academy Award nomination and Die Hard not? (please note: I'm not arguing for Die Hard and against Citizen Kane, for the record, I haven't seen either movie, I'm just arguing by what right does one receive recognition as a classic and the other not?)

well, first off, getting an oscar nomination does not automatically make a movie a "classic," and not getting one doesn't automatically make a film NOT a classic. i don't think any reasonable movie fan would say that's an absolute barometer of greatness.

and the rest gets into the whole idea of what DOES make a classic, which is open to plenty of debate, and which brings me to this...

I do agree that Watchmen is on a different level from IC. What I don't agree with is that "things like" Watchmen function on a different level than "things like" IC. When you make the comparison as just Watchmen with just IC, that I can accept, what I can't accept is that watchmen is better because it's a certain kind of book whereas IC is inferior because it's a certain type of book. That is snobby elitism, at it's finest, it's the doctrine of using a blanket statement to avoid having to examine things on a case-by-case basis. It's the mantra that something that fits into this type of whole is better than something that doesn't. No, it doesn't, what kind of thing something is doesn't tell you anything about that thing's quality.

i could be wrong but I don't think anyone is arguing that watchmen is a "certain kind" of book and IC isn't, and that makes watchmen a "classic" and IC not one.

there are just so many ways to define classic. here are a few off the top of my head.

--impact on the art form
--quality of the storytelling
--timelessness
--recognition from the industry
--recognition from readers
--thematic concerns and how well they are tackled

a classic doesn't need all of these things. it may need ones I didn't come up with off the top of my head. but that looks like an okay list to me.

i think on every item on that list, and any other you'd come up with, Watchmen is a classic. I think IC is not, nor will it ever be. Time will come and time will go, but no one will ever say that Superboy Prime showing up in the Anti-Monitor's armor will ever hold a single tiny candle to Doctor Manhattan building a crystal temple on Mars.

and that is NOT because IC is a fun escapist superhero comic and Watchmen is something "higher" or "better." those qualitative factors don't enter into it, and you're right, it's snobby to even suggest such a thing.

what enters into it are judgments on all those items on the list, and many others. Does IC tell its story as well as watchmen? I'd say no. Is IC's story innovative, exciting, challenging in the way Watchmen was? No. Does IC break any ground whatsoever in storytelling techniques and utilization of the art form? No. Are its themes clear and well defined and well expressed? No. Is it even at all timeless, in other words, in fifty years will anyone have any real reason to read it? I'd say no, but that's probably one area where time WILL decide, and should.

My point ultimately is that everyone's MMV, and quality is to a degree up to the reader. but there are still independent factors that can be set up and utilized to judge the quality of a work, and those can be debated and whether each work does or does not meet each criteria can be debated too. i think by any list of those criteria that you can come up with, i can tell you that IC is not a classic and never will be.

and I LIKE IC!

(there's also the matter of intent, which is both valuable and uselsess; in other words, i don't think geoff johns ever intended to tell a story as complex as watchmen, so should they even be in the same sentence?)

soda

04-11-2006, 06:54 PM

there are just so many ways to define classic. here are a few off the top of my head.

--impact on the art form
--quality of the storytelling
--timelessness
--recognition from the industry
--recognition from readers
--thematic concerns and how well they are tackled

.....

My point ultimately is that everyone's MMV, and quality is to a degree up to the reader. but there are still independent factors that can be set up and utilized to judge the quality of a work, and those can be debated and whether each work does or does not meet each criteria can be debated too.

Here's the problem, you say that your factors are independent, but they aren't, they're dependent, what are they dependent on? They're dependent on what someone else thinks of IC, or watchmen, or whatever. A truly independent metric is something like word count, you can say, for example, that Watchmen has more words than IC, and is therefore a better book, number-of-words wise, because word count is an independent metric, the number of words in a work is a fixed thing, set for all time, that doesn't change as society, times, and personal tastes change. Look at Moby Dick, nobody read it when it first came out, it took ages before later scholars recognized it as classic, but that recognition was dependent on the tastes, preferences and society of those later scholars.

Look, this is not to say that there isn't such a thing as "better" or "worse", or that it's impossible to tell a trash heap from boluga cavier, just that the attempt to make it independent of your own tastes and preferences and society is the first step towards the intellectual elitism position that is independent verification of something being a classic, which is a notion that I find to be utter nonsense. I find the entire concept of the academy awards to be utter nonsense, that's the mother-load of mainstream intellectual elitism.

I wish I had more time to talk today, but I gotta run, more later...

shyguy

04-11-2006, 07:09 PM

Here's what you said above that I don't agree with:

- But it also can't really be denied that things like Watchmen function on a different level than things like Infinite Crisis.

I do agree that Watchmen is on a different level from IC. What I don't agree with is that "things like" Watchmen function on a different level than "things like" IC. When you make the comparison as just Watchmen with just IC, that I can accept, what I can't accept is that watchmen is better because it's a certain kind of book whereas IC is inferior because it's a certain type of book. That is snobby elitism, at it's finest, it's the doctrine of using a blanket statement to avoid having to examine things on a case-by-case basis. It's the mantra that something that fits into this type of whole is better than something that doesn't. No, it doesn't, what kind of thing something is doesn't tell you anything about that thing's quality.

Well, I think we have to define what "things like Watchmen" means before we go any further.

I used the term to signify stories that are idea-driven to a degree that things like Our Worlds at War and Knightfall aren't (i.e. Watchmen is about the concept of superheroes, OWaW is about Superman fighting some Galactus ripoff). It's a little hazy since Infinite Crisis does make some metatextual commentary (in an extremely clunky and obvious fashion), but in general it seems that we can make a distinction between stories that center around Batman hitting someone in the face and stories which deal with deeper issues.

I'm totally in tune with your wariness of intellectual snobbery, but I think there are some fairly simple distinctions to be made between stories told because the writer had something to say and stories told because it's summertime and having a hot artist draw the Justice League and Teen Titans teaming up will sell thousands of copies.

Keeping in mind that Kingdome Come is my all-time #1 fav, if I had to pick the next most interesting mega-crossover / event of my comic book reading lifetime (post 1990), "Infinite Crisis" wins the biscuit, over "Long Halloween" (does that count?) and "Knightfall" (in that order, Knightfall's first book is cooool, but it falls apart fast).

I actually wouldn't consider Kingdom Come to be in the same category as something like Knightfall or Wargames. It seems like one of those cases where a writer and artist had something to say and it just so happened that it was also bound to be a smah hit, whereas Knightfall and War Games were just ploys to get people to buy a bunch of bad Batman comics that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise (actually, I like Knightfall, but it's not really that great).

Yes, there is the coolness factor, and the bells and whistles, but I knew a guy when I was at Berkeley who said exactly the same things you're saying about IC (almost verbatim, BTW) about some of the great classics of all-time. Here's what I recall of the conversation (keep in mind, it's been five years, and the memory fades, so don't crucify me if my memory isn't perfect):

Well, I agree with a lot of what he says. Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books, too, but it's just a really old romantic comedy. The Iliad is gimmicky, sometimes incoherent, and often dull as dirt to boot. The Bible is a bunch of stories that frequently contradict each other and most of them are outrageously boring. "The Classics" are just a bunch of books that a lot of people throughout history like a lot (and that a lot of people like to feel smart for having read); it's not like they're objectively good or anything. Heck, we tend to hold Shakespeare's plays above everything, and that's the very picture of lowest-common-denominator entertainment.

I'll be the first one to say that The Coming of Galactus is every bit as good as anything the medium has ever produced... I'm just not going to defend Infinite Crisis, because I think it's a bad story insofar as it's even a story at all.

Kid Kamikaze10

04-11-2006, 08:08 PM

Xephon23

04-12-2006, 05:12 AM

For newer readers, these are sweeping changes. Heroes trusting each other? Batman not a dick? Superman interesting? Wonder Woman... well, who knows what her and her family are up to. A huge Green Lantern Corps? New Blue Beetle? Luthor publicly hated? Who's the Flash? Seven Soldiers? C-Listers step up? All these things came out of Crisis and it's setups. People who have been reading for 10 years or less are getting a radically different DCU than they have been used to. It's the old-timers and returners who aren't feeling the changes, because to many of them, this is the real status quo.

great point. I've always been a Marvel...zombie. THat company has been leaving me so flat that I jumped on the DC books with Infinite Crisis and have been enjoying the **** out of it.

DarthAstuart

04-12-2006, 11:20 AM

Here's the problem, you say that your factors are independent, but they aren't, they're dependent, what are they dependent on? They're dependent on what someone else thinks of IC, or watchmen, or whatever.

i would say they're dependent on nothing so less as some kind of consensus.

listen, we can in theory argue this back and forth till we're both numb in the fingers, but i'll just never believe that there isn't some form of objective, independent criteria that can be established to define a "classic."

if you go into any english department at any university and try to argue that The Davinci Code is a classic, you will be laughed out of the joint. Try it again in fifty, 100 years--same deal.

that's not elitism. that's simple fact. ask 100 random people who've read both Watchmen and IC--go to Comic-Con and set up a booth and take a survey. I would bet my right foot that Watchmen would get a LOT more votes as a classic than IC.

and that is NOT saying IC, or davinci code, are in any way bad! THAT is why it's not elitism. if I said, "IC sucks cause it's not a classic like Watchmen," then THAT would be elitism.

what I'm saying is that IC is really fun and good for what it is, in my humble opinion, but it will never be a classic, except perhaps by the standards of superhero adventure comics, or major publisher event series.

Look, this is not to say that there isn't such a thing as "better" or "worse", or that it's impossible to tell a trash heap from boluga cavier, just that the attempt to make it independent of your own tastes and preferences and society is the first step towards the intellectual elitism position that is independent verification of something being a classic, which is a notion that I find to be utter nonsense. I find the entire concept of the academy awards to be utter nonsense, that's the mother-load of mainstream intellectual elitism.

and I'm saying that I think you're wrong. :) intelligently argued, to be sure, but I disagree. (not necessarily on the oscars--i think that's a different debate, though.)

you CAN define a "classic" independent of individual tastes. that's what makes it a classic and not "books I like." and again, i just don't think it's intellectual snobbery to think that AT ALL. it's a realistic view of how art is consumed by culture.

soda

04-12-2006, 01:31 PM

All I have to say is this....

Good job, soda! You're doing something I try to do in a way I'll never have the ability to do: Defend IC in a way in which people understand and don't flame you (keep in mind, I don't try to attack many people with my posts).

I really needed your help when I was arguing with pretty much everyone from the Death Spiral Thread (keep in mind, not in the Death Spiral thread)!

Once again, good job, and it's great to see that someone is enjoying IC as much and/or more than I am!

:D

I just wanted to reply to this post, because I find this comment to be very funny. Most of the people who I've been arguing with on this thread don't fall into the category of Jeffrey W Krammer, Joe Rice or Shellhead, most of the people don't vociferously hate IC. Those people do (don't know about Shellhead, for sure, but that's the drift I'm getting from his posts). I think IC is a pretty good story, as an exemplar of escapist superhero fantasy, which occassionally rises to a higher point, and that's executed far, far better than most mega-superhero crossovers, I would consider it a rousing success. Put another way, I'm not nearly as pro-IC as Jeffrey W Krammar is anti-IC, I could never be that partisan, however, if I had to label myself, I would say I'm squarely in the "pro" column. Judging by the reaction of other fans at my local shop, and who I talk to at wondercon, I'm very far from alone in that sentiment.

It's actually rather easy to argue with DarthAstuart and Shyguy, because, as much as their position is different from my own, I can understand their POV. To me, that's the key to disagreeing with someone without having it become a flame war, people are much more likely to treat a divergent viewpoint with respect if you've done your own homework before you present it. A well thought out, well argued, argument with a ridiculous conclusion is typically met more warmly than a poorly thought out, hastily constructed argument with a reasonable conclusion.

I also think that, sometimes, people on this forum forget that they aren't representative of the casual fan. I'm guessing here, but I think that if you took a survey of people who frequent CBR, you'd find a very heavy stock of material from indie publishers and vertigo on the typical pull list (lord knows I buy a lot of vertigo titles). Most people I see who visit my local shop don't grab anything that's not put out by marvel or DC, even DC's vertigo imprint has ridiculously low order totals, outside of Y the last man and fables (and even those two books don't sell like more mainstream titles). The fan response I'm hearing, from rank-and-file people out there is that IC is nothing short of an absolute smash hit. Here's a quote, on this topic, from DarthAstuart's last post that bothers me:

i'm with shyguy on this, too--this is a story that was driven by marketing and sales concerns. that's not a slam, it's what I'd view as a simple fact. i don't think didio and his cabal got together to come up with a cracking good yarn. i'm sure they wanted to, but what they came together to do was to come up with a big event that would sell comic books. that's the nature of mainstream pop culture--it's mostly commerce driven.

again, that is NOT a reflection on its quality. lots of great stuff can be done with mainstream pop art, and just because it is or isn't in that category doesn't make it automatically bad or good. but the whole cart before horse question here is ultimately irrelevant, because I don't think there can be any doubt that the entire idea of IC was at some point initially inspired by a question of, "what can we do to sell more comic books?"

Here's why it bothers me, because it brings up the mental image of Dan Didio in his office, at 1700 Broadway, and he's got this money making machine, and he's asking himself "what can I do to make this money making machine print me some money?" If it were that simple, if you could just sell our your creative principles, flip the switch on the money making machine, and have it pop out dollars, a lot of other people would be getting rich making comics. Making money was absolutely, positively, 100% without a doubt a big part of the equation for why DC published IC. However, money is a big part of the equation for why any publisher publishes any comic. Why is Spider-girl on the chopping block every six months at marvel? Money. It's not that it isn't a good comic, it's that it's a good comic that doesn't sell enough, or that conflicts with marvel's other creative perrogatives for the spidey universe. My bottom line is this, something making money, and something being bad creatively aren't the same thing. It's possible for something to be good creatively (Dan Slott's Thing is struggling, and it shouldn't be, it's a great comic, Spider-girl, etc.) and to not make money, however, the converse is also true, it's possible for something to make a lot of dough without selling out it's creative soul. There isn't an inverse relationship between art and the drives of market capitalism, it's possible to have your cake and eat it too.

This is not to say that IC will ever be adapted for "masterpiece theatre", clearly, even it's staunches supporters don't believe that. However, if I had to list the best events of my comic book reading life, my list goes Kingdome come, then IC (Watchmen and DKR came out before my time, as I've said). Yes, I believe money was a motive, and yes, IC is making DC a huge, honkin' pile of it, but on the flip-side, if it's that bad, why is anyone buying it? If it really sucked, it should have sales figures that would be low enough to convince DC not to do it again. I didn't care for house of M, for example, so what did I do? I dropped the book.

soda

04-12-2006, 01:59 PM

i would say they're dependent on nothing so less as some kind of consensus.

listen, we can in theory argue this back and forth till we're both numb in the fingers, but i'll just never believe that there isn't some form of objective, independent criteria that can be established to define a "classic."

if you go into any english department at any university and try to argue that The Davinci Code is a classic, you will be laughed out of the joint. Try it again in fifty, 100 years--same deal.

that's not elitism. that's simple fact. ask 100 random people who've read both Watchmen and IC--go to Comic-Con and set up a booth and take a survey. I would bet my right foot that Watchmen would get a LOT more votes as a classic than IC.

and that is NOT saying IC, or davinci code, are in any way bad! THAT is why it's not elitism. if I said, "IC sucks cause it's not a classic like Watchmen," then THAT would be elitism.

what I'm saying is that IC is really fun and good for what it is, in my humble opinion, but it will never be a classic, except perhaps by the standards of superhero adventure comics, or major publisher event series.

and I'm saying that I think you're wrong. :) intelligently argued, to be sure, but I disagree. (not necessarily on the oscars--i think that's a different debate, though.)

you CAN define a "classic" independent of individual tastes. that's what makes it a classic and not "books I like." and again, i just don't think it's intellectual snobbery to think that AT ALL. it's a realistic view of how art is consumed by culture.

Now, onto DarthAstuart's most recent post. When I made my last post, what I was hoping to get in reply was actually something exactly like what DarthAStuart said above.

- If you go to the Department of English, at any university, and try to argue that the Da Vinci code is a classic, you will get laughed out of the place...

however

if you go to a meeting of women who participate in Oprah's book club, and you try to argue that the Da Vinci code is a classic, your POV will get considerably farther.

The point is, whether or not your argument for the Da Vinci code as being a classic is met with sneers or jeers is a direct function on the audience you choose to make that argument in front of. It's a dependent metric. Whose right? Many people would say that the English professors are right. However, when it was first published, "English professors" said that Moby Dick was a pile of rubbish (I agree with them), then, later English professors said it was a classic. This isn't restricted to Moby Dick, this happens all the time. Things that one generation considers taboo are embraced by another, things that one generation thinks of as the greatest thing since sliced bread go into cannonical exile in future generations.

Look, this isn't to discredit the validity of English Professors. I'm not Stephen Colbert (whose show absolutely rules, BTW), I trust books, and I trust facts, and I trust that English Professors (or, as Stephen would call them, "experts") generally know what they're talking about. However, "know what your talking about" isn't an independent, qualitative measure of something, it is, at best, a dependent, informed, approximation, and while it can be argued that it's better to take an informed approximation over an un-informed one(something you do everytime you stop and ask someone else for directions), it cannot be argued that the informed opinion is the same thing as independent, objective knowledge.

When you ask people in line at Comic-Con for thier opinion of Watchmen, you're doing the same thing. That's not indepedent knowledge, that's democracy, and they're not the same thing. Here's a comment you made that started out okay, but that shows the problem:

"what I'm saying is that IC is really fun and good for what it is, in my humble opinion, but it will never be a classic, except perhaps by the standards of superhero adventure comics, or major publisher event series. "

As long as you qualify what you're saying by stating that it's "your humble opinion" and nothing bigger, your safe. You are the person on this planet who best knows what you know (well, you and Charles Xavier :) ) If you want to say that, in your humble opinion, IC will never be a classic, guess what, you're safe, because you've clearly made IC's status as classic, or not, a dependent variable, ie, dependent on you, and what your feeling is, at this very moment. However, when you try to make it independent, when you try to tie in the notion of being "classic" with being "objective", there I have a problem. Being classic is, in my mind, by definition depedent and non-objective.

Look, you can go ahead and call something a classic if you want to, without having it be intellectual elitism, but the point where you cross that line is when you try to make it objective. In the act of making the criteria indepedent you are, consciously or not, imposing your own personal tastes, ideologies, and preferences onto the definition, in the very act of trying to make it objective, you've made it dependent. Intellectual elitism is the act of doing this, and refusing to recognize what you're doing.

Shellhead

04-12-2006, 02:08 PM

Most of the people who I've been arguing with on this thread don't fall into the category of Jeffrey W Krammer, Joe Rice or Shellhead, most of the people don't vociferously hate IC. Those people do (don't know about
Shellhead, for sure, but that's the drift I'm getting from his posts).

I was cautiously optimistic about Infinite Crisis at first, because I have enjoyed the writing of Geoff Johns on JSA, Flash and sometimes Teen Titans. Cautious, because I have been unhappy about some DC events in recent years, especially Identity Crisis. But I wasn't willing to buy into the preludes (like Countdown) or the tangential minis (like Rann-Thanagar War).

For me, the high point of Infinite Crisis was a small moment in issue #2, when Kal-l was talking about Earth-1 and Earth-2, and there was a pair of adjacent panels depicting the Justice Society and the Justice League at their respective meeting tables. I liked that, and I have generally enjoyed the annual team-ups those two teams pre-Crisis.

Since then, I have become progressively more disgruntled with Infinite Crisis. The minis proved to be nothing but sideshow acts, while the main event has been a disappointingly small story about DC's Big Three. And even then, Johns has done a weak job on writing those three, skimping on characterization and hand-waving aside long-standing problems for suspiciously quick redemption. And the long-awaited Superman vs. Superman fight was short and unsatisfactory, falling far short of the exciting Perez cover for issue #5.

And there have been lots of plotholes to go with the characterization problems. First we see that all these extra Earths are vacant, in IC #5. By issue #6, we see that they are actually fully populated worlds. Superboy's powers seem to adjust to whatever situation he is currently in, despite being clearly defined in his few appearances during the last Crisis. Nearly every Teen Titan that ever lived shows up within a second of Connor calling for help, but virtually none of them show when founder Dick Grayson calls for help. This isn't just a question of maintaining continuity with 20+ year old issues, this is the current storyline failing to maintain any sort of internal logic.

Judging by the OYL titles I've seen so far, the changes wrought by Infinite Crisis are relatively minimal, and will probably fade in about a year, maybe two at the most. So what is all the fuss about? Not very much, as far as I can see. Superboy is gone, but that's not going to stick, judging by the extreme number of Supergirls that we've seen since the first Crisis. Superman lost his powers... yeah that's going to change back soon enough. Batman isn't protecting Gotham? O-kay. Etc. The only explanation that makes sense is that DC simply wanted to cash in on the Crisis again, 20 years after the first time.

The Shadow

04-12-2006, 03:06 PM

I was cautiously optimistic about Infinite Crisis at first, because I have enjoyed the writing of Geoff Johns on JSA, Flash and sometimes Teen Titans. Cautious, because I have been unhappy about some DC events in recent years, especially Identity Crisis.

Since then, I have become progressively more disgruntled with Infinite Crisis. The minis proved to be nothing but sideshow acts, while the main event has been a disappointingly small story about DC's Big Three. And even then, Johns has done a weak job on writing those three, skimping on characterization and hand-waving aside long-standing problems for suspiciously quick redemption. And the long-awaited Superman vs. Superman fight was short and unsatisfactory, falling far short of the exciting Perez cover for issue #5.

And there have been lots of plotholes to go with the characterization problems. First we see that all these extra Earths are vacant, in IC #5. By issue #6, we see that they are actually fully populated worlds. Superboy's powers seem to adjust to whatever situation he is currently in, despite being clearly defined in his few appearances during the last Crisis. Nearly every Teen Titan that ever lived shows up within a second of Connor calling for help, but virtually none of them show when founder Dick Grayson calls for help. This isn't just a question of maintaining continuity with 20+ year old issues, this is the current storyline failing to maintain any sort of internal logic.

Judging by the OYL titles I've seen so far, the changes wrought by Infinite Crisis are relatively minimal, and will probably fade in about a year, maybe two at the most. So what is all the fuss about? Not very much, as far as I can see. Superboy is gone, but that's not going to stick, judging by the extreme number of Supergirls that we've seen since the first Crisis. Superman lost his powers... yeah that's going to change back soon enough. Batman isn't protecting Gotham? O-kay. Etc. The only explanation that makes sense is that DC simply wanted to cash in on the Crisis again, 20 years after the first time.
It's amazing how we cannot see eye to eye on most Marvel stuff (New Avengers for example) but still be TOTALLY on the same page with DC!

I agree with everything you said above!

Shellhead

04-12-2006, 04:34 PM

It's amazing how we cannot see eye to eye on most Marvel stuff (New Avengers for example) but still be TOTALLY on the same page with DC!

I agree with everything you said above!

I'm tempted to say that it's because I am applying a harsh standard to both companies, while you are giving Marvel a free pass.

But maybe not, maybe I'm somehow being unfair to Marvel. Maybe I have an irrational dislike for the way Quesada runs things, or the way Bendis writes a team book, or the way Hudlin ignores even current continuity. It's hard to say, because many people disagree with my posts about either company.

J. Roberts

04-12-2006, 06:00 PM

great point. I've always been a Marvel...zombie. THat company has been leaving me so flat that I jumped on the DC books with Infinite Crisis and have been enjoying the **** out of it.

Out of curiousity, have you found it hard to follow everything that's happening in IC? I'm also a Marvel guy, and I'm borrowing a buddy's copies of IC, and without forums like these I wouldn't have a clue what's going on.

shyguy

04-12-2006, 06:21 PM

Here's why it bothers me, because it brings up the mental image of Dan Didio in his office, at 1700 Broadway, and he's got this money making machine, and he's asking himself "what can I do to make this money making machine print me some money?" If it were that simple, if you could just sell our your creative principles, flip the switch on the money making machine, and have it pop out dollars, a lot of other people would be getting rich making comics. Making money was absolutely, positively, 100% without a doubt a big part of the equation for why DC published IC. However, money is a big part of the equation for why any publisher publishes any comic. Why is Spider-girl on the chopping block every six months at marvel? Money. It's not that it isn't a good comic, it's that it's a good comic that doesn't sell enough, or that conflicts with marvel's other creative perrogatives for the spidey universe. My bottom line is this, something making money, and something being bad creatively aren't the same thing. It's possible for something to be good creatively (Dan Slott's Thing is struggling, and it shouldn't be, it's a great comic, Spider-girl, etc.) and to not make money, however, the converse is also true, it's possible for something to make a lot of dough without selling out it's creative soul. There isn't an inverse relationship between art and the drives of market capitalism, it's possible to have your cake and eat it too.

Yes, but, as I've said, it's also fairly easy to tell when something is planned just to make money and when something is has more thought behind it.

I'm not saying that every single aspect of IC is a cold-blooded move to make money, but that's clearly the overall motive behind it. I'm sure that Johns is having a blast playing around with all of these characters and that Jimemez loves drawing them, and they're both making something that they think is good... but that doesn't mean that the impetus behind the thing wasn't primarily money-based. I mean, we didn't need 4 6-issue miniseries to tell the stories leading up to IC. Obviously even a mega-crossover has some creativity behind it, but that doesn't make them any less of a commercial event. Every comic is published with the intent to sell as many copies of it as possible; some comics are published solely with that goal in mind.

The trick to something like IC is to think, "Would this book sell if it didn't feature Superman and Batman but rather, say, Supreme and Professor Night?" Probably not. Whereas Watchmen is about a cast of unknowns and still sells to this day.

Yes, I believe money was a motive, and yes, IC is making DC a huge, honkin' pile of it, but on the flip-side, if it's that bad, why is anyone buying it? If it really sucked, it should have sales figures that would be low enough to convince DC not to do it again. I didn't care for house of M, for example, so what did I do? I dropped the book.

Well, that's easy. Bad comics sell by the truckload, especially when they boast Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman on the cover. It's really no trick to get a crossover with a popular writer and tons of popular characters to sell a lot of copies, no matter what the content is. Marvel could publish an issue of Uncanny X-Men that was nothing but blank pages and it would still outsell Manhunter and The Thing. A comic book's quality is almost completely unrelated to how much it sells.

The Shadow

04-12-2006, 06:45 PM

I'm tempted to say that it's because I am applying a harsh standard to both companies, while you are giving Marvel a free pass.
I dunno... I call stuff like I see it... and I think the progressive way Marvel is trying out things while DC seems to be regressing appeals to me more. That bein said Marvel does some sh!t stuff that I am critical of as well!

soda

04-12-2006, 06:55 PM

The trick to something like IC is to think, "Would this book sell if it didn't feature Superman and Batman but rather, say, Supreme and Professor Night?" Probably not. Whereas Watchmen is about a cast of unknowns and still sells to this day.

This point is rather easy to deal with. Just wait for 52, a year without superman, batman, or wonder woman, and a book starting rene montoya, booster gold, the question, steel, black adam and the elongated man. My prediction? 52 will sell buckets.

Look, I'm not saying that Superman, Batman and WW on the cover isn't having an effect. Everyone whose ever bought anything from marvel knows there's a reason why Wolverine is on the cover of every book, so, far be it from me to say that you're totally wrong. You're not, to the casual fan, it is mainly about whose in it. I was having a discussion with Mon-el on the other thread on this forum, he's a booster gold fan, who doesn't want to shell out for 52 just to read about one character he likes. Me? I buy writers. I'm buying IC because Geoff Johns is writing it, and he's one of my favorites, and I'm buying 52 because four of my favorite writers are writing it.

However, on the other hand, there have been mega-crossovers before, many involving supes bats and WW, and I can honestly say that the level of excitement that I hear from fans has never been this high. Maybe they like something you don't, who knows? I'm not saying IC is the greatest thing ever, but it's also clearly not just any other crossover.

Well, that's easy. Bad comics sell by the truckload, especially when they boast Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman on the cover. It's really no trick to get a crossover with a popular writer and tons of popular characters to sell a lot of copies, no matter what the content is. Marvel could publish an issue of Uncanny X-Men that was nothing but blank pages and it would still outsell Manhunter and The Thing. A comic book's quality is almost completely unrelated to how much it sells.

I never understood that.

You look at my boxes at home, there is not one comic that I've purchased since 2001, when I got back into comics, that's the second issue of a series, where I thought the first issue sucked. There might be exceptions, certain really great writers (Gail Simmone, Jeph Loeb) have a habit of playing you out for a while sometimes, and of course, there's Frank Miller, whose a whole other class, but by and large, if I read something that I think stinks, that's it, I drop the series. Robin has incomprehensible art? Drop. The plot in this book isn't going anywhere? Drop. I mentioned earlier in this thread that there are four books I don't understand:

Amazing Spiderman
Uncanny X-men
Ultimate Spiderman
New Avengers

They're all top twelve sellers, despite that fact that they're all atrocious comics, amazing is the best of the lot, and it's mediocre. I hear quite a lot of griping about this, and my response is, if you hate it, don't buy it.

shyguy

04-12-2006, 08:13 PM

This point is rather easy to deal with. Just wait for 52, a year without superman, batman, or wonder woman, and a book starting rene montoya, booster gold, the question, steel, black adam and the elongated man. My prediction? 52 will sell buckets.

52 also has an enormous amount of hype behind it. At any rate, the point wasn't that only books with recognizable characters on their covers will sell, rather that books with recognizable characters on them will sell regardless of quality. 52 isn't IC, either.

However, on the other hand, there have been mega-crossovers before, many involving supes bats and WW, and I can honestly say that the level of excitement that I hear from fans has never been this high. Maybe they like something you don't, who knows? I'm not saying IC is the greatest thing ever, but it's also clearly not just any other crossover.

Other mega-crossovers don't have the advantage of being the sequel to the mega-crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, nor were they preceded by a full year of promotional comics (including a $1 80-page-special) and directly tied into the last successful "event" (Identity Crisis). From a marketing standpoint, DC is doing everything right with IC that they didn't with, say, Our Worlds at War. IC also features the entire DCU in a way that most mega-crossovers haven't. That's why everyone was talking about IC months before the first issue was ever released.

It's also worth noting that IC is very timely in that it's coming at the apex of both silver-age and 80's nostalgia.

You look at my boxes at home, there is not one comic that I've purchased since 2001, when I got back into comics, that's the second issue of a series, where I thought the first issue sucked. There might be exceptions, certain really great writers (Gail Simmone, Jeph Loeb) have a habit of playing you out for a while sometimes, and of course, there's Frank Miller, whose a whole other class, but by and large, if I read something that I think stinks, that's it, I drop the series. Robin has incomprehensible art? Drop. The plot in this book isn't going anywhere? Drop. I mentioned earlier in this thread that there are four books I don't understand:

Amazing Spiderman
Uncanny X-men
Ultimate Spiderman
New Avengers

They're all top twelve sellers, despite that fact that they're all atrocious comics, amazing is the best of the lot, and it's mediocre. I hear quite a lot of griping about this, and my response is, if you hate it, don't buy it.

Eh, like you've mentioned, quality isn't the only reason people read comics. A lot of it has to do with characters. For example: aside from Walt Simonson's run, Wonder Woman was a horrible book for the last, oh, five years or so. But because I'm interested in what Wonder Woman's up to, I stuck with it. Conversely, I've heard really great things about the last Aquaman run, but I don't really care what Aquaman's doing these days, so I never picked it up.

I have a bad habit of sticking with books that I don't like because I want to see how the story ends, and I know I'm not alone in that. OMAC and Rann/Thanagar War were terrible, but I finished those. Likewise, even though I think IC is a mess, I'll stick with it to find out what happens. And, having spent hard-earned money on these books, I reserve every right to complain about them.

soda

04-13-2006, 11:18 AM

I think we're pretty much on the same page with the marketing for IC and 52. I never debated that DC's promotional department has, seriously, taken it's game to a whole new level, or that this is a big part of the reason why IC is doing so well, and why 52 will do so well. My point about 52 is that, just because it is going to sell so well, refutes (in my mind) any supposition that it is "all about the characters" (not saying that's what you're saying, just saying that I hear that a lot). There's clearly more to a good comic than that. On the other hand, I don't think 52 is all marketing hype. Speaking as one reader, I'm giving 52 three issues. I'm planning to buy the whole thing (because four of my favorite writers are on it), but it has three issues to show me something before it gets dropped (it probably will show me something, but I haven't read the first issue, so I can't say for sure). Three issues is the credibility that the four writers who write 52 have built up with me, due to that credibility, I'll wait and see, without that credibility? I'd drop the book after one bad issue.

See I believe that the Universe is bigger than any one character. As I outlined earlier in this thread (and as Captain Manhantan disagreed with me on), the genius of Stan Lee was the shared Universe, the genius of silver age marvel was that comics weren't about who your particular favorite character was, comics were marketing, and written and published, as packaged, shared universe. Fans of silver age marvel might have have bought spidey, the hulk and the fantastic four, but what you were really buying was the "marvel universe". I'm personally a big fan of the shared universe, many might see it as a shallow attempt to use slick marketing to make more money, and while I certainly agree wholeheartedly that there is a lot of that to it (Silver age marvel had a shared universe, well and good, but they would have dropped that approach like a hot potatoe if it didn't sell comic books), I, for one fan, prefer the shared universe approach, philosophically, in my comics. I also prefer buying single issues to waiting for the trade, for the record. DC might be a marketing juggernaut right now, but I can honestly say that this makes very little difference in what books I, personally, buy, and if you've been keeping tabs on my discussion with DarthAstuart, you'll know that what I buy, what I think, right now, is the only data I consider to be independent.

Anyway.....

Eh, like you've mentioned, quality isn't the only reason people read comics. A lot of it has to do with characters. For example: aside from Walt Simonson's run, Wonder Woman was a horrible book for the last, oh, five years or so. But because I'm interested in what Wonder Woman's up to, I stuck with it. Conversely, I've heard really great things about the last Aquaman run, but I don't really care what Aquaman's doing these days, so I never picked it up.

I have a bad habit of sticking with books that I don't like because I want to see how the story ends, and I know I'm not alone in that. OMAC and Rann/Thanagar War were terrible, but I finished those. Likewise, even though I think IC is a mess, I'll stick with it to find out what happens. And, having spent hard-earned money on these books, I reserve every right to complain about them.

For the record, the only Wonder Woman comics I have in my box at home are all from Greg Rucka's run on the book. I never bought WW before one of my favorite writers came onto it, and it was his presence on the book that convinced me to pick it up. I thought the Rucka run was excellent.

I also had never bought an aquaman comic in life before I bought the first two OYL issues. The reason? Not because I found Aquaman particularly unappealing, more because someone like kurt busiek finally took over the book. His artist (forget his name) is pretty good too. I haven't decided how long I'm going to stick with Aquaman, but I'm digging it so far.

Just look at what I did with the four IC minis:

OMAC - unlike you, I thought OMAC was pretty good, and I bought the whole run as single issues.

Rann-Thanagar - bought the first issue, didn't like it, skipped the rest.

Villians United - a mistake I made. I dropped this book after two issues, because I didn't think it was going anywhere, I was wrong. I should have had more faith in Gail Simmone, I picked up #6, on a whim, and was blown away, and instantly had to get the three issues I was missing.

Day of Vengence - didn't think anything of it, got it as a trade, and loved the trade. So much so that I'm going to pick up the new Shadowpact ongoing.

While I'll agree with you that you reserve every right to complain about something you spent your hard earned money on (some people just like to complain). To me, that stance is really illogical. Again, just my opinion, but if something is crap, I think you drop it. The only vote you have (as I've said time and time again) is your dollar, the only way you can convince marvel and Dc to not make crap is to not buy the crap that they make. It amazes me how many people buy Uncanny xmen, and complain about it, well, if you hate it that much, and you've been hating it that much for 15 years now, why do you keep buying it? You know why marvel keeps making such crappy issues of uncanny xmen? Because the thing sells 80,000 copies, every month, and marvel isn't stupid enough to tamper with crap that's selling. If they can put forth no effort, and put some hack on uncanny, and sell 80,000 copies, and put their good xmen writers on some other book (like, say, astonshing) and have that sell 150,000 copies a month, can you see why uncanny has sorry-ass talent on it for 15 years? The only way you'll ever convince marvel, or DC, to put good writers and artists on books is to not buy the crap. If uncanny sold less than 20k a month, marvel would do something, they aren't going to cancel it, but they would shake it up, they would fix it. As long as it's selling 80k a month? Why bother. The only vote you have is your dollar, you can talk all you want about "it's my dollar, and my right to complain", but by spending that dollar on crap, all your doing is telling marvel and dc that you want more crap. Your voting for the status quo.

At a time when, IMHO, this industry is overflowing with quality, when I can easily, easily name a half dozen marvel books, alone, that are light years better than the Amazing Spiderman, ultimate spiderman, uncanny xmen, and new avengers, and at a time when I can name, easily, a half dozen other marvel books that are pretty good, and significantly better than said four, why in the heck would I spend a dime on four crap titles when (even if I'm a marvel zombie, which I'm not) I have Ulitmates, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate xmen, Astonishing xmen, Captain America, Daredevil, the thing, she-hulk, young avengers, etc. to choose from, and those are all better books? Cap, Daredevil and Astonishing xmen are three gold-star titles, three of the best books in comics, why would I buy junk when those books are there, and, in the case of cap, she-hulk, thing, and daredevil, not enough people are buying them as it is? I'd like to cast my vote for more cap, more daredevil, more she-hulk, more thing, more astonishing xmen, and less Amazing Spiderman, ultimate spiderman, uncanny xmen, and new avengers.

snatch o'reilly

04-13-2006, 12:00 PM

I just want to mention how well Villains United did with characters that no one really cares about. Aside from Deadshot, I could of cared less about all the characters involved, (I hadn't even heard of Catman) but this became the one book that I was most interested in reading each month. It helped that Gail Simone was writing, since I've carried a torch for her since her run on Deadpool. But the point is that if you have characterization, they will come. Villains United did, and is the best of the minis leading up to IC.

On a side note: am I the only person saddened by Superboy's death? I'm surprised a character that was not that liked was supposed to be one of the more dramatic deaths from IC. Blue Beetle biting it was much sadder, yet I hated that guy. (a normal guy with tons of gadgets? why does that sound familiar?)

shyguy

04-13-2006, 01:23 PM

I just want to stress, yet again, that my point was not, "only books with popular characters will sell," but rather "book featuring popular characters will generally sell regardless of content."

And I am voting with my dollar, just on a larger scale. I gave Greg Rucka a lot of opportunities to tell a story that didn't blow, and he didn't deliver, so I'm done with Rucka books from now on (not that the premise of Checkmate interests me to begin with). Likewise, I didn't pick up Green Lantern Corps because Gibbons was writing it and I learned my lesson from R/T War. On the other hand, Simone's VU got me to pick up her Action Comics run, and so on and so forth.

We do have something of an embarassment of riches going on when it comes to comics nowadays, but people simply aren't going to stop following their favorite characters. And even people who complain about Uncanny X-Men must like something about it (even if it's just the satisfaction of having a long run of the book, or of looking at the cool artwork) or else they'd have stopped by now, even though they might complain about it along the way.

But comic sales aren't determined by quality any more than movie ticket sales are, and that's not really anything new.

lawman

04-14-2006, 12:47 AM

And there have been lots of plotholes to go with the characterization problems. First we see that all these extra Earths are vacant, in IC #5. By issue #6, we see that they are actually fully populated worlds. Superboy's powers seem to adjust to whatever situation he is currently in, despite being clearly defined in his few appearances during the last Crisis. Nearly every Teen Titan that ever lived shows up within a second of Connor calling for help, but virtually none of them show when founder Dick Grayson calls for help. This isn't just a question of maintaining continuity with 20+ year old issues, this is the current storyline failing to maintain any sort of internal logic.
Thank you for summing this up so succinctly.

It bothers me, I guess, that a story that was clearly in the works for so long, one that had so much conceptual potential and that raised the stakes so high (not just in terms of marketing), should wind up being so sloppy in so many ways. (It's one of the things that's puzzled me about Johns before... he's not a self-important "self-contained story" writer in that he clearly seems to enjoy using bits 'n' pieces of old continuity -- but he's just not very good at it in terms of getting the details right. And that problem seems to slop over from old stories into his own work... too many details fall through the cracks. For instance, he's admitted in interviews (IIRC) that he has trouble parsing the internal logic of time-travel stories... which makes it doubly odd that he keeps writing them, don'cha think?)

Aside to Soda: as you note, different tastes result in different choices. Which is just underscored by your repeated list of "bad" Marvel books... IMHO Straczynski's ASM is one of the better titles at Marvel these days (and one of the handful I buy reliably), with characterization head-and-shoulders above almost any other Spidey book in several years. Go figure.

Tying these two themes together: if nothing else -- even if IC is a disappointment in the end, and even if its impact on continuity is minimal -- DC has used it as an excuse to corral some really top-notch creative talent onto the OYL titles, which (one hopes) should produce a better-than-average ratio of good stories in months to come. Don't know how long they'll stick around, but for now, it seems like something worth appreciating.

Yoda

04-14-2006, 05:00 AM

And there have been lots of plotholes to go with the characterization problems. First we see that all these extra Earths are vacant, in IC #5. By issue #6, we see that they are actually fully populated worlds. Superboy's powers seem to adjust to whatever situation he is currently in, despite being clearly defined in his few appearances during the last Crisis. Nearly every Teen Titan that ever lived shows up within a second of Connor calling for help, but virtually none of them show when founder Dick Grayson calls for help. This isn't just a question of maintaining continuity with 20+ year old issues, this is the current storyline failing to maintain any sort of internal logic.

Actually we never saw that the multiple earths were unpopulated. Only Earth 2 was shown to be unpopulated. The rest of the earths were created by the split with Superman and in the final pre-OYL issues we saw virtually every character split into multiple copies of themselves. Superboy-Prime also has been altered within the story. Alex infused him with anti-matter, so that could explain away a lot of his power changes. Although i really don't think you can call all his powers "clearly defined" after his previous three appearances. And the Titan's showed up the first time, half were seriosly beat down by Superboy Prime and many who were present were shown to have vanished onto the Earth Two. These aren't major plot holes at all.

Not to say that the series is perfect by any means. I was disappointed in the Superman v. Superman fight as well. I mean they put them on on unpopulated city. They could have had a knock down drag out brawl, which they apparently did, but we didn't get to see it.

I also thought that there was too much going on in issue six. The whole Superboy vs. Superboy fight seemed even more rushed than the above fight, and we aren't even getting it covered in any tangental issues. That definitely could have been fleshed out more. So by no means am i saying this is a perfect series.

Joe-Dono

04-14-2006, 06:24 AM

I was disappointed in the Superman v. Superman fight as well. I mean they put them on on unpopulated city. They could have had a knock down drag out brawl, which they apparently did, but we didn't get to see it.

It was coverd in 3 Superman books (will edit this bit when i get the titles and numbers) it was a strange fight cos every time they connected with each other they slipped into each others lifes.

Hellcow

04-14-2006, 09:48 AM

In my view, DC figured out that Stan Lee was right, 40 years ago, and had been right all along, that the way to go is a shared universe

OK, so I'm probably the ONLY comic fan in the world to feel this way... but hey, I might as well say it.

I don't like the shared universe. A lot of the time, I hate the shared universe. A lot of the time it is really forced and done in a clumsy and lazy manner, so I am taken out of the story everytime.

I like hero's to have their OWN stories.

I don't need to see King Kong in Planet of the Apes.

I don't want to see Darth Vader turn up as one of the sword fighters in Kill Bill.

I don't want to see Indiana Jones running the dig site on the moon in 2001.

I don't want to see Mad Max drive Miss Daisy around.

I don't need Spiderman in an Xmen story. Spiderman has his own story, so do Xmen.

I don't need to see Superman and Aquaman playing spin the bottle 40000 ft below sea level.

Alien V Predator sucks.

lawman

04-14-2006, 10:55 AM

Well, it's a tomato/tomahto thing, I guess.

Personally, the sense of a larger "shared universe" is one of the things that's kept me reading mainstream superh-hero comics over the years. I readily admit that the sense of a larger "mythology," beyond what's contained in any given character's book, is a big part of what captured my interest at an early age and has held it since.

Which is not to say that I enjoy clumsy, lazy, or forced storytelling, of course... I just don't think that it's made any more (or less) likely by the shared universe concept. They're independent variables, IMHO.

brotherscrim

04-14-2006, 12:04 PM

I don't want to see Mad Max drive Miss Daisy around.

You're either a damned liar, a communist, or both!

:p

Just messin' with ya. Seriously though - who wouldn't like that?

Ian J.N.

04-14-2006, 12:16 PM

Actually we never saw that the multiple earths were unpopulated. Only Earth 2 was shown to be unpopulated. The rest of the earths were created by the split with Superman and in the final pre-OYL issues we saw virtually every character split into multiple copies of themselves.
Initially, I found the skeletal Earth-2 to be contrived, but after reading issue six, there does seem to be a logic behind it.

"I can feel them. Phantom beings from the fabric of Earth-One and Earth-Two, pulled from their restful peace, reborn in pain and given essence." The situation with Earth-2 is different, because it's a staging ground for the other Earths. Rather than recreate Earth-2 in its entirety, Alex, in his efficiency, isolated the dominant factors--the Golden Age heroes in general, Superman in particular.

It makes sense, too, that Earth-2 would be so important. From a real world perspective, we know the Golden Age to be the inital starting point, from which our modern DCU has evolved. As such, Earth-2 is a baseline for the DCU. Remove the baseline, and you're left with the variations. If you isolate each variation and recombine it with the baseline, presto, you've got one of the many parallel worlds of the multiverse.

That's my fan-wankery for the day. I'll sleep good tonight!

soda

04-14-2006, 12:59 PM

I'll post more on this topic when I get back tonight, right now, I don't have a lot of time. I just wanted to point out three things:

1) whether you dig the shared universe, or not (like I do) is totally a matter of personal taste. I never said it wasn't, it is. Some people like it, other people hate it, and both groups are pretty vociferous in thier position. Incedentally, I can see the argument for both sides, I totally understand what you mean when you say you don't want a shared universe. However, like I pointed out in my long argument with DarthAstuart, there is no independent metric by which you can measure tastes and preferences, there's no independent measure of "good" and "bad" writing, and none for good and bad comics, it's all really a democracy, and people's tastes and preferences are judged, for any one given moment in time, by taking a vote. The point isn't that some people don't hate a shared universe and that some people don't like it, the point is that democracy has shown, conclusively, that fans overwhelmingly prefer a shared universe. That's why Silver Age Marvel was the juggernaut that it was, that's why DC is doing a lot better these days since it copied that formula. That's not to say that everyone prefers it, just that more people do than don't.

2) I think it was clear, if you were paying attention, that having earth-2 show up with no people in, whereas all the other earths had people, was totally, and completely, intentional. I can easily see how you were confused by it, my thing is that I don't think Johns did as thorough a job of explaining this as he should. Part of the reason for that is that he wanted to leave it a mystery, one that makes you wonder, "hey, why are there no people on earth-2?" This may just be because they used a different artists to draw all the earth-2 stuff, but earth-2 felt hollow, to me. My comic book store guy was talking about this the other day, that it felt like AL just recreated earth-2 to placate Kal-L, but that earth-2 wasn't real. You kept expecting it to be a cardboard prop, like Kal-L would open the door to the daily star building, and find that there was nothing behind it, that the front of the building was just a stage facade. That's my take on it, I agree with the posters above who speculate that there's more going on with the situation with earth-2 that what we've been told, or, shellhead could be right, and Johns just could be a lazy writer, I hope we're told which. One thing, though, you know people will be asking him this at con for years, so we should get an answer.

3) For the record, I also never said ASM was horrible, I said the other three books were horrible, ASM I find to be mediocre (which some would take to mean the same thing). I thought "sins past" was the last decent arc, I stopped buying it when I read a few issues, and realized that I wasn't enjoying it anymore. To each his own, it is all a matter of taste, and that book sells so well that I'm sure it has enough fans, without needing me to be one.

Shellhead

04-14-2006, 01:10 PM

2) I think it was clear, if you were paying attention, that having earth-2 show up with no people in, whereas all the other earths had people, was totally, and completely, intentional. I can easily see how you were confused by it, my thing is that I don't think Johns did as thorough a job of explaining this as he should. Part of the reason for that is that he wanted to leave it a mystery, one that makes you wonder, "hey, why are there no people on earth-2?" This may just be because they used a different artists to draw all the earth-2 stuff, but earth-2 felt hollow, to me. My comic book store guy was talking about this the other day, that it felt like AL just recreated earth-2 to placate Kal-L, but that earth-2 wasn't real. You kept expecting it to be a cardboard prop, like Kal-L would open the door to the daily star building, and find that there was nothing behind it, that the front of the building was just a stage facade. That's my take on it, I agree with the posters above who speculate that there's more going on with the situation with earth-2 that what we've been told, or, shellhead could be right, and Johns just could be a lazy writer, I hope we're told which. One thing, though, you know people will be asking him this at con for years, so we should get an answer.

There are several ways that Johns could have addressed the vacant Earth-2 to make the point clearer and possibly more interesting to the readers.

He could have shown heroes popping up on their respective Earths in heavily populated situations, then ended that sequence of panels with the JSA showing up in a totally vacant intersection in broad daylight in a familiar big city like New York City.

Or, he could have had Alex comment directly on it while he is doing stuff on his floaty computer console.

Or maybe a ranting Kal-l could have shed some light... "He promised that he would bring our Earth back, but where are all the people?!?"

Skipping past the vacant Earth-2 as a trivial detail just didn't work for me.

PatrickG

04-14-2006, 01:14 PM

I assumed all the earths were vacant UNTIL Kal-L got hit with the laser and that Kal-L getting hit was what repopulated the earths, because he's something of a cornerstone that the universe hinges around.

stealthwise

04-14-2006, 10:37 PM

OK, so I'm probably the ONLY comic fan in the world to feel this way... but hey, I might as well say it.

I don't like the shared universe. A lot of the time, I hate the shared universe. A lot of the time it is really forced and done in a clumsy and lazy manner, so I am taken out of the story everytime.

I like hero's to have their OWN stories.

I don't need to see King Kong in Planet of the Apes.

I don't want to see Darth Vader turn up as one of the sword fighters in Kill Bill.

I don't want to see Indiana Jones running the dig site on the moon in 2001.

I don't want to see Mad Max drive Miss Daisy around.

I don't need Spiderman in an Xmen story. Spiderman has his own story, so do Xmen.

I don't need to see Superman and Aquaman playing spin the bottle 40000 ft below sea level.

Alien V Predator sucks.

I used to feel this way, but some of the shared universe stuff has been so fun that I don't care anymore. There are enough self-contained stories and Elseworlds, etc, for most characters anyways.

Lurch

04-14-2006, 10:56 PM

All science fiction hinges on the idea that the reader will buy into the rules of it's fictional universe. DC and Marvel have to tackle this task on a huge scale, and I commend them for making the effort. It's the little things about the DCU that attract me to it; Green Arrow and his ongoing battle with/envy of Batman, the Flash legacy, the Green Lantern Legacy, The really big Justice League stories where every hero this side of B'wana Beast are all pulling together. If they ignored the shared universe, much of these great stories would never be possible, I personally like to see nods to shared events in all the books. As for what Infinite Crisis will actually impact, I'm really curious to see how the inclusion of a golden age Batman and Superman in the current continuity will fit. In one year later, we've seen hints that the golden age Batman existed, as well as the Golden age Supes.

I do like what they've done with Tim Drake, as he and Green Arrow had become two of my favorite characters prior to all this. However, whatever happens in 52 better be big for them to have changed good ol' Ollie the way they have. And no matter what the reason, they better change him back. He was perfect before.

multiplexo

04-14-2006, 11:11 PM

are really awesome ideas, except for Alien v. Predator which *was* a sucky piece of pathetic fanboy trash.

I don't need to see King Kong in Planet of the Apes.

I don't want to see Darth Vader turn up as one of the sword fighters in Kill Bill.

I don't want to see Indiana Jones running the dig site on the moon in 2001.

I don't want to see Mad Max drive Miss Daisy around.

I don't need Spiderman in an Xmen story. Spiderman has his own story, so do Xmen.

I don't need to see Superman and Aquaman playing spin the bottle 40000 ft below sea level.

Alien V Predator sucks.

shyguy

04-15-2006, 11:45 AM

Paul Newell

04-16-2006, 12:35 AM

I'm fine with a shared universe as long as it's not harped on all the time. In general, I like to be able to read about one character in his own book and not have to worry that something over in Nightwing or wherever is going to play a big part in Blue Beetle's book.

1960's Marvel comics got it right in this regard - characters shared a universe (which leads to fun, no fuss no muss team ups), but it didn't really play a big part in most stories (i.e. the Fantastic Four doesn't just call up the Avengers when Galactus lands). This makes it even more exciting when team-ups do occur, whereas I wouldn't bat an eye if the latest issue of Green Lantern prominently featured Zatanna and spun off of the Villains United Special or whatever.

I hope that after all of this IC business, DC gets back in the business of making their books more self-contained. Looks like they're off to a good start so far.
I don't know where you got the above idea from....It was the other way around in the 60's. Generally continuity in DC Comics never went beyond the title itself and rarely impacted other characters. Whereas, in Marvel's titles, there were regular scenes where the characters would be always be calling up other characters, who would usually be too busy, in the middle of their own case or away.

shyguy

04-16-2006, 11:01 AM

I don't know where you got the above idea from....It was the other way around in the 60's. Generally continuity in DC Comics never went beyond the title itself and rarely impacted other characters. Whereas, in Marvel's titles, there were regular scenes where the characters would be always be calling up other characters, who would usually be too busy, in the middle of their own case or away.

Well, yeah, that's what I mean. The shared universe often had no impact whatsoever on the story that was going on in whoever's book. Passing Spider-Man on the street doesn't really have an impact on a Daredevil story.

stealthwise

04-16-2006, 06:24 PM

Well, yeah, that's what I mean. The shared universe often had no impact whatsoever on the story that was going on in whoever's book. Passing Spider-Man on the street doesn't really have an impact on a Daredevil story.

Actually, I remember reading plenty of Marvel comics from the 80s that impacted one another in a few ways. One example is from a Spider-Man issue (I think it was Amazing #252), where he learned that his black costume was an alien. He ends up stuck with a paper bag on his head (courtesy of Johnny Storm), and then wonders why it was snowing in Manhattan. The editor placed a text box comment referring to that month's issue of Thor for an explanation. The comics back then were all related in a similar way, and the events had an impact, either major or minor, on all of the titles at the time.

Juxtapose that with comics from the early 21st century, where the books failed to correspond with one another from month to month, hell, the Spider-man books didn't even match each other in terms of internal character continuity.

shyguy

04-16-2006, 10:30 PM

Actually, I remember reading plenty of Marvel comics from the 80s that impacted one another in a few ways.

I agree. I was referring to the 60's. By the 80's, things were much different.

Paul Newell

04-16-2006, 10:41 PM

shyguy

04-16-2006, 10:47 PM

So then what's your point? DC did it just as well during the 60's and both did it just as badly during the 80's onwards. Plus whatever complaints you have about DC's continuity during Infinite Crisis appears to be outstripped by Marvel during Civil War.

:confused:

I wasn't making a point; I was expressing a preference when it comes to shared continuity within a company's titles.

Paul Newell

04-17-2006, 12:32 AM

Fair enough. I guess the point was lost on me as I'm a Legion of Super-Heroes fan and you would generally have a similar thing to Marvel going on when it came to continuity....So, to me, there isn't much difference.

Besides I hated those one/two panel "crossovers" when the Avengers or someone would ask for the FF's help and they would be in the middle of one of Reed's experiments....And the Thing was always carrying stuff.

Constantly. :)

Green Arrow Jr.

04-17-2006, 11:45 AM

But really who knows what's going to happen in issue 7? For all we know, the multiverse might be back and hidden from the heroes from the DCU.

soda

04-17-2006, 11:51 AM

I wanted to ask a question to some of the people who are older around here, and who remember such things (recall, I started reading in 1990, so a lot of the early history is lost on me), but it's something that's always bugged me, and that I just had to ask:

Why didn't the Fantastic Four call up the Avengers when Galactus came to earth?

I keep thinking about this, for years now (and this thread seemed like a good place to ask) but it always bothered me that Galactus showed up, and only the FF and the silver surfer fought him.

Now, if this was the DCU, I can understand why no one showed up, all the DC big heroes each have thier own towns, and there's turf to be respected. After all, when Chemo was dropped on Bludhaven, what's the first thing Superman did? Found Nightwing, you gotta respect turf, that's the way the DCU is. However, it's still a global destruction level event, and whenever something like that has happened, a bunch of DCU characters have always teamed up. Maybe New York is on the east coast, and maybe Gotham is in Florida, and maybe Metropolis is in Kansas (sure seems like it's nextdoor to Smallville on the TV show), and coast city is near seattle, and keystone is down by LA. Maybe all the DCU superheroes would be so far away that they knew that by the time they got there, Galactus would either be gone, or that he's have finished the earth, so, why bother?

But marvel? you all live in New York, and that's where Galactus showed up. You telling me that Captain America, and whoever else on the avengers was around back then, wouldn't look out his window, and say "hey, that giant world destroying creature in the sky is probably a bad thing, maybe I should do something to stop it from destroying the planet?" Oh, but then cap thinks to himself, "no, I'm sure the Fantastic Four have got it under control, after all, it's only a giant world destroying monster." and goes back to bed?

To me, it would be equally ludricrous to have that panel where you see the other marvel superheroes are too busy with their own stuff. "yeah, this is reed richards, we kinda have this giant world destroying guy with cosmic powers here in new york, and...." "Sorry, man, I'd like to help you, but we're hot on the trail of magneto, and my xmen have traced him to a remote hideout in the...." "uh, did you hear me, I think the END OF THE WORLD is a little more important, get your fanny here and help!" "....okay...we'll gas up the blackbird and meet you there."

It just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, suspension of disbelief, but no limit of that suspension can make me ignore the simple fact that if something like galactus does show up, everyone should be fighting, good guys and bad guys, because if galactus manages to devour the earth, won't you feel silly for having not shown up?

Trusty Mutsi

04-17-2006, 02:20 PM

The loss of Bat-jerk alone is worth the whole thing.

I didn't realize we lost Batjerk. From what I saw in OYL, he's still cold and short with everyone. Now this is from quickly browsing through pages (I usually wait for the trade), so maybe I'm missing something.

stealthwise

04-17-2006, 03:01 PM

I didn't realize we lost Batjerk. From what I saw in OYL, he's still cold and short with everyone. Now this is from quickly browsing through pages (I usually wait for the trade), so maybe I'm missing something.

He's now friendly with Gordon, distant towards those he doesn't know, and works well with both Alfred and Robin again.

The Shadow

04-17-2006, 10:45 PM

He's now friendly with Gordon, distant towards those he doesn't know, and works well with both Alfred and Robin again.
FINALLY!

It's about freakin time!

Trusty Mutsi

04-18-2006, 06:26 AM

He's now friendly with Gordon, distant towards those he doesn't know, and works well with both Alfred and Robin again.

But does he ever crack a smile now and then? And how does being distant with those he doesn't know make him less of a jerk?

I know, I'm probably expecting too much at one time. I just want poor bats to be happy again.

NotSuper

04-18-2006, 08:45 AM

But does he ever crack a smile now and then? And how does being distant with those he doesn't know make him less of a jerk?

I know, I'm probably expecting too much at one time. I just want poor bats to be happy again.
I'm fully expecting Morrison to make him a relatively happy individual. The Batman he describes seems more like the Denny O'Neil version--dark, but a nice guy to his friends (of which he has many).

Trusty Mutsi

04-18-2006, 10:50 AM

I'm fully expecting Morrison to make him a relatively happy individual. The Batman he describes seems more like the Denny O'Neil version--dark, but a nice guy to his friends (of which he has many).

Believe it or not, if this is true, that alone will convice me to stick with DC and collect all the Infinite Crisis stuff:)

Otherwise, despite the quality of all the books during and after the event, it's just too much to keep up with.

I need some comics I can afford to read, and enjoy the entirety of.

glennsim

04-19-2006, 09:16 AM

But does he ever crack a smile now and then? And how does being distant with those he doesn't know make him less of a jerk?

I know, I'm probably expecting too much at one time. I just want poor bats to be happy again.

I'd say they have made some movement in the right direction, but it's not enough. Batman shouldn't mistrust people he doesn't know. He should trust them until they give him a reason not to. Granted, he might identify a reason not to much faster than anyone else would, with his deductive abilities and such.

Jukka Laine of Finland

04-26-2006, 11:16 AM

Why didn't the Fantastic Four call up the Avengers when Galactus came to earth?

I've given some thought to that. The Avengers just weren't very powerful team right then. There were Cap, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. The Wasp and Henry Pym had maybe recently came back (not sure about the chronology). And Hank wasn't quite well then, he had some problems with growing to Giant-Man.

Iron Man and Thor were not in the Avengers then. Iron Man was in China and Thor was in Pluto's Netherworld with Hercules. And Doctor Strange was in Dormammu's Dimension (Or was it Umar's).

I guess they didn't answer the phone calls. There were no cell phones back in the 60s. And I doubt they can reach other dimensions in these days, either. Oh yeah, China was pretty much other dimension back then, too.

Scarlet Witch wasn't as powerful as she has been later. This was the 60s. Girls with girly powers.

Typo Lad

05-01-2006, 09:33 AM

Actually, the Avengers were on a mission.

Shellhead

05-01-2006, 01:45 PM

I wanted to ask a question to some of the people who are older around here, and who remember such things (recall, I started reading in 1990, so a lot of the early history is lost on me), but it's something that's always bugged me, and that I just had to ask:

Why didn't the Fantastic Four call up the Avengers when Galactus came to earth?

I keep thinking about this, for years now (and this thread seemed like a good place to ask) but it always bothered me that Galactus showed up, and only the FF and the silver surfer fought him.

But marvel? you all live in New York, and that's where Galactus showed up. You telling me that Captain America, and whoever else on the avengers was around back then, wouldn't look out his window, and say "hey, that giant world destroying creature in the sky is probably a bad thing, maybe I should do something to stop it from destroying the planet?" Oh, but then cap thinks to himself, "no, I'm sure the Fantastic Four have got it under control, after all, it's only a giant world destroying monster." and goes back to bed?

To me, it would be equally ludricrous to have that panel where you see the other marvel superheroes are too busy with their own stuff. "yeah, this is reed richards, we kinda have this giant world destroying guy with cosmic powers here in new york, and...." "Sorry, man, I'd like to help you, but we're hot on the trail of magneto, and my xmen have traced him to a remote hideout in the...." "uh, did you hear me, I think the END OF THE WORLD is a little more important, get your fanny here and help!" "....okay...we'll gas up the blackbird and meet you there."

It just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, suspension of disbelief, but no limit of that suspension can make me ignore the simple fact that if something like galactus does show up, everyone should be fighting, good guys and bad guys, because if galactus manages to devour the earth, won't you feel silly for having not shown up?

Their odds don't look good here... I'm betting on Galactus:

http://image.milehighcomics.com/istore/images/fullsize/95078701518.41.GIF