Now that DC isn't officially doing ELSEWORLDS anymore, where are those stories set?

[Buried Alien]

DC is not officially doing stories labeled "ELSEWORLDS" anymore, but that doesn't mean they've given up doing ELSEWORLDS style alternate reality stories. Now that the ELSEWORLDS banner has apparently been retired, where do those stories fit? A new Multiverse?

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[The Shadow]

A new Multiverse?[/COLOR]
I never thought they eliminated the Multiverse... but they were taking the Marvel approch to it (MUCH better than how they were doing it!)

But why do they have to be categorized? The "Batman-Jack the Ripper World" or the "Batman-Dracula" world? Why can'tt they just be simple stand alone stories that have no "universe to call their own"?

[Joe Rice]

They take place in comic books.

[comicstar100]

They take place in comic books. ahahahhaah, yes they do indeed.

[Michael P]

It doesn't matter.

[Nintendite]

They take place in comic books.


..Shocking revelation.




Well, I personally think that the DC Multiverse still sorta exists, but the space between the universes is so vast that it might as well not exist. Imagine it as a big collection of dots with each dot representing a universe. Before COIE, the dots were really close together, after COIE, there was only one dot. But then, when Elseworlds and the short-lived concept of Hypertime came into being, more dots came into existance, but are so far away from the Mainstream universe on the omniversal map that it takes near godlike power for them to interact with each other.

I so overthought that.

[Ontir]

The Elseworld stories took place on the infinite Earths that got numbered in Infinite Crisis, just before they were eliminated from history.

[Captain Smith]

Does anybody think that alternative universes are not going to be part of the DCU in the future?

They just keep coming back and coming back.

[RichStanz]

I never thought they eliminated the Multiverse... but they were taking the Marvel approch to it (MUCH better than how they were doing it!)

But why do they have to be categorized? The "Batman-Jack the Ripper World" or the "Batman-Dracula" world? Why can'tt they just be simple stand alone stories that have no "universe to call their own"?

And that is the number one reason I can't get more into DC and thought Infinite Crisis was disappointing.

I liked the four IC mini-series just fine, but the fact that those four stories were made just to help explain what happened to the multi-verse and superboy-prime, I just tuned out.

I liked Elseworld just fine, but the moment they need to clarify and tell me "this doesn't count, it's not real*" and care less about the story and more about its annotation in the big DC encyclopedia, I lose interest.


*whatever "real" means in comic books;)

[Kara Zor El]

Where do Elseworlds exits? Where ever your imagination allows.

[Paul Newell]

Well they were all listed as separate worlds in the Absolute Crisis companion and some were shown to exist in Infinite Crisis....Right before they were all folded into New Earth. So, presumably, they no longer exist.

[Captain Atom]

Read DC Nation http://www.dccomics.com/news/?nw=6740

It tells that they are still ways from Elseworlds so they'll be back.

[Super Buddies Forever]

Well they were all listed as separate worlds in the Absolute Crisis companion and some were shown to exist in Infinite Crisis....Right before they were all folded into New Earth. So, presumably, they no longer exist.

Although I suppose Hypertime confuses the matter. While they were destroyed in their multiverse setting, you could probably still reach them if you took the right Hypertime stream.

[glennsim]

I basically looked at it this way.

Elseworlds stories don't have anything to do with the regular DCU. They are out-of-continuity stories that don't have any connection to the DCU's cosmology.

In Infinite Crisis, we learned that there were some parallel Earths that resembled the Elseworlds we'd seen before. But I don't think this negates the first point, which means they can continue to produce more Elseworlds-style stories.

[Matt K]

I'm confused. Acording to the back of my Checkmate issue Elsworlds are coming back sometime soon.

[The Batman]

Well, weren't the majority of Elseworlds stories very clearly not attatched to the mainstream DCU and very clearly existing within another fictional universe?

I mean if they still produce these imaginary imaginary stories I think that we can probably still figure out pretty easily what fits and what doesn't fit.

[dancj]

But the label is unnecessary in most cases. Did New Frontier need to be labelled and categorized? Did Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

Elseworlds was never intended to just be a blanket label for any out of continuity story. It was for stories that take a DC character and place them in a different historical (civil war/french revolution etc) or literary (Frankenstein, Isle of Dr Moreau etc) setting or make some other twist (Mix Superman + Batman, have Superman be sent from Earth to Krypton etc).

Over time some stories such as The Golden Age and Kingdom Come were given an Elseworlds label that shouldn't really have been, but most Elseworlds books fit the pattern described above

Dan