DC's Multiverse as i would like it to be.

[llozymandias]

If i had my way when Final Crisis ends, the DC Multiverse would be truly infinite. It would be divided into several sections/strands. They would include:


1.) Pre-Crisis; Earths 1, 2, 3, 12, C, C-Minus, S, T, X, Prime, etc.. These earths were not impacted by the COIE. Kara Zor-El/Supergirl/Linda Lee Danvers & Barry Allen still alive. Lexor still intact. Brainiac still in original form. Earth-X's Freedom Fighters native to Earth-X. Quality characters on Earth-2 are their counterparts. Earths 3, & Prime are still intact. Earth-Prime's only Superman counterpart is Ultraa.


2.) Crisis; Earths 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, C, C-Minus, D, S, X, Prime, etc.. The original Crisis (& the events leading up to it) happened here. Kara, Barry, & Lexor are still dead. The Freedom Fighters (& other Quality characters) migrated from Earth-2 to Earth-X. The universes destroyed by the Anti-Monitor are still gone, but remembered.


3.) Post-Crisis; each of the different continuities that appeared after the COIE has its own universe here. Including the earth first seen in issue #11 of COIE, & last seen just before the MOS mini-series.


4.) Current; New Earth & the 51 or so universes first seen in 52.

[GLover]

I think the layout you set forth is a good one. It's reader friendly, in that everyone gets pretty much what they want. There would almost have to be a title to satisfy your appetite under this format. Also,continuity would become much less of a nightmare, assuming that one universe has nothing to do with the other.

[llozymandias]

I think the layout you set forth is a good one. It's reader friendly, in that everyone gets pretty much what they want. There would almost have to be a title to satisfy your appetite under this format. Also,continuity would become much less of a nightmare, assuming that one universe has nothing to do with the other.


There would still be plenty of crossovers between the earths/universes. Very few characters would have the power/technology/or whatever is needed to travel between universes. Most crossovers would not involve a threat to the very existance of the multiverse/omniverse/or whatever.:D


Each section/strand (of the multiverse) would have its own imprint. Each title would be labelled to indicate which earth ( in the imprint's strand of the multiverse) that the title takes place on. There would be an ongoing WHO'S WHO, the definitive directory of the DC Multiverse. Or maybe each imprint/strand would have its own ongoing WHO'S WHO. WHO'S WHO might be primarily an online thing to help everyone keep track of everything.:D


All cartoons/comic strips/tv shows/movies/novels/ etc. based on DC's characters would take place somewhere in the DC Multiverse.:D

[GLover]

There would be an ongoing WHO'S WHO, the definitive directory of the DC Multiverse. Or maybe each imprint/strand would have its own ongoing WHO'S WHO. WHO'S WHO might be primarily an online thing to help everyone keep track of everything.

Sounds good. This way when a character unfamiliar to you pops into you favorite title, you have a resource for getting some background on them. I don't think DC has published anything recently that adequately encapsulates the state of the multiverse. Of course by the time something like that makes it to the stands, the whole DCU would have been retconned. How many people have both the money to buy, or the time to read every DCU title that comes out? Reading Countdown helps, but it just skims the surface of some interesting stories, and makes you wade through crap about Jimmy Olsen getting superpowers...

There are so many reasons for DC to publish a guidebook to the multiverse, it's not even funny.

[llozymandias]

Sounds good. This way when a character unfamiliar to you pops into you favorite title, you have a resource for getting some background on them. I don't think DC has published anything recently that adequately encapsulates the state of the multiverse. Of course by the time something like that makes it to the stands, the whole DCU would have been retconned. How many people have both the money to buy, or the time to read every DCU title that comes out? Reading Countdown helps, but it just skims the surface of some interesting stories, and makes you wade through crap about Jimmy Olsen getting superpowers...

There are so many reasons for DC to publish a guidebook to the multiverse, it's not even funny.


It occurs to me that it would be better if WHO'S WHO were a free online thing. Constantly updated with reader input. Every so often a printed edition, perhaps. If it's free, readily available, & up to date; it would be a great resource for everyone involved readers, writers, artists, editors, etc..

[chastmastr]

I would happily buy that! :) I would suggest that some continuities not have crossovers (some worlds might work well with crossovers and some might not).

David

[ProjectFanboy]

It occurs to me that it would be better if WHO'S WHO were a free online thing. Constantly updated with reader input. Every so often a printed edition, perhaps. If it's free, readily available, & up to date; it would be a great resource for everyone involved readers, writers, artists, editors, etc..


There's a lot of similiar things out there but if the actual companies of all comic books collaborated together it would be better than the comic book glossary on my site, wikipedia or anything else for that matter.


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[Laughing Mask]

it would be cool if one of the earths was Dark Knight Returns.

[lazlo_toth]

I always liked that Crisis Special that showed Earth-D and it's multi-racial, politically correct "JAA."

Having said that, I think the multiverse should be damn near infinite. Any time somebody comes up with a viable idea for a parallel world, they should be able to use it. You want Dick Grayson to be Batman and Bruce Wayne to be his teen sidekick? How about having Alan Scott as the Green Lantern of sector 2814 and the entire GL Corps has a weakness to wood instead of the color yellow? How about a world where all the heroes, no matter what their powers are, rely solely on the use of elaborate traps with Hostess snack cakes as bait in order to capture bad guys? Run with it, it's not like you ever have to revisit the place if the story doesn't work the first time...I remember a Legion fanfic I got talked into participating in in which I posited the existence of a "Brainiac Consortium," an other-dimensional fraternity consisting of various alternate versions of Brainiac 5, and the membership requirements were A) there had to be a Supergirl/Kara Zor-El/Laurel Gand analogue in the picture somewhere and B) the Brainy in question had to figure out the trick of using the Infinite Man to destroy the Time Trapper, the resulting energies released by the merging of these two disparate forces being necessary to open a portal to wherever it was the consortium met. The story sucked, but I always liked that concept, and it's the kind of crazy thing you can only do if there's a nearly infinite number or parallel worlds...

[lazlo_toth]

There's a lot of similiar things out there but if the actual companies of all comic books collaborated together it would be better than the comic book glossary on my site, wikipedia or anything else for that matter.


Wouldn't EVERYBODY be better off in all sorts of ways if DC and Marvel could honestly collaborate a little more? JLA/Avengers is probably one of my favorite stories ever just because of the thrill I got seeing DC and Marvel characters interacting. I'm sick of the various spats the two companies have with each other, they all seem petty. DC and Marvel aren't rivals the way Coke and Pepsi are, and it was Marvel trying to act like that was the case that had a lot to do with the industry crashing in the 90s, IMHO. I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of comic readers buy titles from both companies every month, and I also think it's safe to say that even guys like Romita Jr. and Bendis, who've never done any work for DC that I'm aware of, have some DC character that they're fond of and wouldn't mind taking a crack at some day, just like just about everybody working for DC probably has a soft spot for a Marvel character or two. I think a little more genuine cooperation between the two companies would be a plus for the fans, the creators, and the entire industry.

[BoosterBronze]

I think the layout you set forth is a good one. It's reader friendly, in that everyone gets pretty much what they want. .


Gotta disagree there. Imagine a story where suddenly Superman is helped out by ANOTHER Superman.

Then they have to stop and figure out which Superman he is. How do you even explain that? It's not like they can say "I'm the Silver Age Superman!"

Superman 1: I'm Superman with the following origin (He then describes the "Birthright" series).
Superman 2: Pleased to meet you. I'm Superman with a very similar origin, but not quite the same, because in my universe, which is different than this universe, the Crisis of Infinite Earths never happened.

[chastmastr]

Never was hard for me to figure out when I was a kid. They had not only Earth-One and Earth-Two but occasional stories which hinged on Supes or someone being in a one-shot parallel universe without realizing it at first. They seemed to accept it a bit too glibly ("Why -- I must be in a parallel universe!") but it wasn't at all hard to follow.

Of course this sort of thing can be done badly, but I don't think that will be affected by the presence or absence of the possibility of parallel Earths -- we'd just get bad stories set on the one Earth. So I'd like to see the return of infinite possibilities. :)

David

[Laughing Mask]

and another is batman beyond!

[llozymandias]

Gotta disagree there. Imagine a story where suddenly Superman is helped out by ANOTHER Superman.

Then they have to stop and figure out which Superman he is. How do you even explain that? It's not like they can say "I'm the Silver Age Superman!"

Superman 1: I'm Superman with the following origin (He then describes the "Birthright" series).
Superman 2: Pleased to meet you. I'm Superman with a very similar origin, but not quite the same, because in my universe, which is different than this universe, the Crisis of Infinite Earths never happened.


This is one way that a free ongoing online WHO'S WHO would help. In your example DC can simply specify which earth (of which imprint/strand) the visitting counterpart is from. The readers can then find out more about him. Btw the birthright Superman is not the silver age version. Like the All-Star Superman, he is a newer version with some elements of the silver age version.

[chastmastr]

Heck, I think that it wouldn't be worth the effort to team them up unless there was enough obvious difference to contrast them, so it should be as easy as it was in the past. I mean, Old Superman or Superwoman or Vampire Superman or Red Son Superman as opposed to, say, Left-Handed Superman. While I don't think Arena was spectacularly well-written, it showed how easy it would be to have variant versions of folks meet up and exchange who they are before fighting (or trying to avoid fighting).

Which may have been the point, honestly -- to get us to see what possibilities there are in alternate characters. (Otherwise I feel like the story didn't need to be told; we could have just seen Monarch gathering people for a page or two, and then show up with all of them in Countdown.)

David

[earl]

it would be cool if one of the earths was Dark Knight Returns.

I'd think the right people could definitely tell a good Superman or maybe JLA story based around the original Dark Knight Returns.

[NotSuper]

it would be cool if one of the earths was Dark Knight Returns.
There is. It's Earth-31.

[Laughing Mask]

i was thinking the other day,

one of the earths should be the 60's batman show!

[octothorp]

i was thinking the other day,

one of the earths should be the 60's batman show!

The Planetary/Batman one-shot from, oh, some time ago now, did show the goofy Adam West Batman as one of the alternate-universe Batmen. It is within the bounds of possibility, then, that TV-Batman has his own universe among the 52. If not the 52, then certainly within the upcoming Megaverse (see Booster Gold). And didn't Jason Todd mention a "Happy Fun Time Batman" earlier in Countdown? I'd say that describes TV-Batman!