The Achievements of "Crisis on Infinite Earths": Good, Bad or Neutral?

[Lorendiac]

As I see it, there are seven key achievements that resulted from "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Here's the list I came up with:

SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

I want to take a Survey. Please rate each of those Seven Achievements as Good, Bad, or Neutral.

(Neutral could mean that you don't think it was necessary to do it that way, but it didn't turn out to be a terrible mistake in the long run. Or it could just mean that you personally don't really care about that point one way or the other!)

I will post my own opinions later, but right now I'm just asking for everybody else's opinions, instead of trying to "argue" with you to make you see things from my point of view :)

[Samurai]

1) Good... way too many goofy things in the past, and Superman's powers needed to be toned down severely.

2) Good. Again, too much goofyness that needed to be redone, and Perez's version was incredible!

3) Neutral. I always liked Barry, and while Wally's done a good job too, I still sorta miss Barry.

4) Good. I agree with the "Kal-el is the last survivor of Krypton" policy. Not too sure I like the new Kara that was just introduced.

5) Good. I like the sense of continuity and legacy, of generations of heroes inspiring and leading to the next.

6) Good. It has made cross-overs MUCH easier, and allowed Captain Marvel to join the JLA and JSA.

7) Neutral. This has been used for both good and bad purposes, IMHO.

[Shellhead]

1. Superman reboot: good, because there was so much goofiness from silver age Superman titles. EDIT: wow, Samurai and I were simultaneously thinking the word "goofy" while pondering silver age Superman.

2. Wonder Woman reboot: bad, because it was unneccesary and contributed to the total nightmare involving Wonder Girl's origin.

3. Death of Barry Allen: neutral. On the one hand, it proved that DC was capable of permanent change involving one of their icons, which has raised the stakes for suspense in their other titles. Unfortunately, the rise of the CSI franchise has exposed the wasted potential of Barry Allen's other occupation, police scientist. Wally has benefitted from some good writers, but he lacked the potential that Barry had.

4. Death of Supergirl: neutral. Good for the same reason as Barry Allen, but with all the supergirls that have popped up since then, there was clearly fan interest the outstripped the dramatic value of the Crisis limited series.

5. Merger of the Earths: neutral. Some good stories got told that wouldn't have otherwise occured, especially with characters like Blue Beetle, Question and Black Adam. But there were some negative impact involving characters, especially Huntress, Fury, and Hector Hall. Infinity Inc became redundant with the Teen Titans and soon dropped out of sight.

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse: bad. Subtracting things from a shared setting is generally bad, as it gives writers fewer ideas to work with. And I really miss the annual JLA/JSA crossovers, they just haven't been the same since they moved to the same world.

7. Creating handy excuses: bad. If that was the intent of the Crisis, it failed bigtime, leading to more troubling issues with Zero Hour and Kingdom, which gave us the ultimate lame excuse: hypertime.

[Sk8maven]

> SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS
> I want to take a Survey. Please rate each of those Seven
> Achievements as Good, Bad, or Neutral.
>
> 1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

Neutral (in the sense it was both good AND bad). It weakened his mythos because he was no longer The First and Best, but merely The Best of the New Lot. OTOH it preserved his supporting cast, which would otherwise have taken some drastic rewriting. (And incidentally it left room for other heroes to have taken more prominent roles, e.g. the Golden Age Green Lantern.)

> 2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

Bad, especially in the ways it impacted the JSA. The infamous Byrne "Hippolyta time travel" hole-plug helped, but was such an excessive complication!

> 3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

Good. Not that I have anything against Barry, but the story was so well-done it should never be undone.

> 4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

Bad. It never really "took", which is why we've had ersatz Supergirls aplenty ever since.

> 5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

Mostly good. Some stories that didn't make sense before Crisis, now do. And the JSA *WERE* the primal, seminal superhero team and always should have been regarded as such. OTOH DC blew off its opportunity to get its continuity properly sorted out, and we've had Crises every ten years as a direct consequence.

> 6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

Bad. A lot of them didn't/don't really fit (Captaain Marvel et al, for instance). Blue Beetle got an especially miserable retcon that turned him from "a positive, upbeat Spider-Man type" to "an ersatz Spider-Man" and eventually sealed his doom.

> 7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

Neutral (very mixed bag). Some characters fared better than others - Black Canary, for instance, became simply "the daughter of the Golden Age Black Canary", without all the Freudian mishegass. Hawkman, OTOH...well, it took about twenty years to get *him* sorted out again!

Maven

[gorosaurus]

1. BAD. Superman's reboot was unnecessary. All the DC titles were goofy in the 60's. Don't like part of his past, don't put it in a story. They didn't reboot Batman, and his title was just as goofy , thanks to the TV show. They did change the tone of the stories; which worked. Also, want a less powerful Superman? Bring back the Sand-Superman or something like that.

2.BAD. Wonder Woman. I gotta agree with SK8MAVEN and Shellhead on this. Plus, Miss Liberty took the Golden Age's place in JSA history, only to be replaced by WW's mom? And DC said multiple earths was too confusing
for the readers.

3. BAD. Why couldn't they let him retire in the future with Iris?

4. Neutral. Kind of anti-climactic to erase the continuity of a character so not even her cousin can be affected by her death. Kill her or erase a character, don't do both.

5 and 6. BAD It was nice to look forward to the annual JLA/JSA teamups. Plus a lot of stories could have never happened the way they were originally written. Also, now there are way too many heroes on one Earth.

7. BAD. Continuity never got better after Crisis. Jason Todd's parents were killed by Killer Croc and later by Two-Face, way too many Supergirls; a writer worth his salt can tell a great superhero story without rebooting or erasing characters and events.

[Chris Lang]

SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).
Actually, the total reboot of Superman continuity did NOT happen in Crisis. For six months afterward, we still had the Earth One Superman who was mourning the recent death of Kara Zor-El. Then came John Byrne and MAN OF STEEL to remove Earth One Superman from continuity. I think it was later explained that a Hypertime flux caused the Earth-One Superman to be replaced by the Byrne reboot Superman, or something like that.

Anyway, I didn't like the throwing out the baby with the bathwater approach back then, and I still don't. Only the TRULY obsessive about continuity should have felt the need to reference the truly goofy goings on of the Weisinger era (such as Superman's making Lois fat in order to save her life, or Jimmy Olsen's starting a Beatle craze in 1000 BC). Such things could easily be Mopee'd. (Mopee was the Woody Allen lookalike who claimed to be responsible for giving the Flash his powers in a story called 'The Real Origin of the Flash', which was ignored and considered non-canonical long before Crisis came along).

Yes, the reboot gave Superman a fresh start, but removing his past from continuity did the Legion of Super-Heroes continuity damage from which it has never recovered (for what it's worth, I quit when Levitz left the books and the 5-year gap happened). Byrne felt that Superboy stories had no tension, since Superboy had to survive in order to become Superman. So he removed Superboy from canon along with Supergirl, the Phantom Zone, non-Green varieties of Kryptonite including Red Kryptonite, and of course all previous versions of Superman's villains and supporting cast. This meant that all past Legion stories in which they played a role were non-canonical. As a result, the Legion has been rebooted several times.

Not to mention the fact that afterwards, whether Superman was a founding member of the JLA or not depended on what day of the week it was. Since the rest of the DC Universe didn't get the 'clean slate' treatment, the rest of the JLA had pieces of their history missing (as if chewed out of their history book by a ravenous dog). The complete reboot of Superman's continuity did more damage to DC's shared universe than the Crisis ever did.

While the reboot may have been Good for Superman, it was Bad for all those in the DC Universe whose histories were tied in with the now out of continuity previous Superman.

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).
Again, while Wonder Woman was given a fresh start, certain people associated with her were retcon casualties. Donna Troy's history was invalidated by the reboot, resulting in a series of retcons, till eventually she was killed off (I'm surprised they decided to bring her back). But all in all, I'm Neutral on this one.

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.
I was sorry to see Barry Allen go, but he made his exit in style, dying as a superhero should, saving billions of lives. All in all, I'd say Good.

4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.
I'm neutral on this one, meaning I don't think it was necessary to do it this way, but it was not too bad in the long run.

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)
Neutral again in the 'I don't think it was absolutely necessary' sense. I had no trouble differentiating the JSA's Superman from the JLA's Superman, and so on. Personally, I think the only thing wrong with the Earths was their designations. I would have avoided the number designations altogether, and called them 'Earth JLA' and 'Earth JSA'. Still, the new world where a JSA existed on the same world as the JLA has led to some interesting stories. So I'm Neutral on this one.

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

This, I feel, was a Bad idea. Especially for Captain Marvel and the Marvel family. In his own world, Captain Marvel is the equivalent of Superman. On the same world as the rest of the heroes, Captain Marvel is just another 'cape'. While writers like Mark Waid (in Underworld Unleashed and Kingdom Come) have tried their best to define what makes Captain Marvel stand out, he still doesn't seem quite as special sharing the same world as Superman.

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

I'm Neutral on this one. I can't decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing.


Chris Lang

[The Shadow]

ALL good

1. Made less god-like. Brought back the Kents.

2. She needed to get away from Steve Trevor and go more classical. Ditching the original Invisible Plane was good too!

3. 2nd best thing to come out of Crisis. Wally is INFINITLY more enjoyable than Barry.

4. Superman should be the "Last surviving Kryptonian" and his cousin happening to survive was bad.

5. Tied for best thing to happen in Crisis! Trying to figure out what you were reading, which Batman this was, who was who and why is he married in this crossover but not that one sucked! I was a new reader just before Crisis and was glad it became easier!

6. Other half of the best thing to happen! No more crappy "Lets open some portal" stories. Now all the DC characters inhabited the same earth! To those that say The Marvel Family NEEDS it's own earth, I would counter that there's no rule that DC MUST have some regular crossovers. The Joker in a Cap Marvel book wouldn't be good... so you work with the Marvel Family villains... BUT in the case of the JSA, Cap Marvel should be able to be on call or a member without resorting to a "lets open a portal and get Marvel's help!"

7. Allows for a more streamline DCU

[hondobrode]

As I see it, there are seven key achievements that resulted from "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Here's the list I came up with:

SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

~~~ GOOD. It streamlined continuity. For this alone Crisis was worth it IMO. I've got a complete Superman collection from that point on and it's one of my favorite runs. I wish they wouldn't have reintroduced practically everything since then, but some things are a welcome return like Krypto. ~~~

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

~~~ GOOD. This was much needed as her history too was way messed up. The only thing I don't like is an overemphasis IMO on the mythological aspects. I think more straight superheroics need to be played up with a stronger crossover within the main DCU. ~~~

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

~~~ NEUTRAL. Yes I like Wally as the Flash, and if the rumors are correct, then Impulse now Kid Flash will become the next Flash soon, but Barry was great. Interestingly, Wolfman said he left the door open for Barry to come back but either a. no one else has picked up on it or b. DC is standing by its "Dead is dead" policy, at least with Barry, not like Superman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, etc. ~~~


4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

~~~ GOOD. I think this part was good getting rid of her, tho I did like the character, she was not that compelling and had been a sales failure. I have not read about the latest Loeb Supergirl but she looks intriguing. Getting rid of "the other Kryptonian" was a good thing in my mind as it made Superman a more tragic figure and he had more loss that way. I guess if anything I have trouble with the current character's basis if anything. I understand DC's need to bring a successful Supergirl into continuity, but if she's the last girl from Krypton, we're kind of back to square one IMO, unless DC wraps it into the Infinite Crisis series which I believe is going to tie into Hypertime. THEN I could really dig it. ~~~

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

~~~ GOOD. It brings the different Earths together into one continuity. That's cool, tho I have never talked with anyone who ever had a confusion over Earth-1 and Earth-2 or even the concepts of Earth-3, X, S, Prime, etc. Those inter-Earth crossovers were always really cool too. ~~~

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

~~~ GOOD. Continuity wise I think it helped to streamline everything. If we still want the old C. C. Beck flavored Captain Marvel, then tell those stories Mr. Jeff Smith, and we'll just not include them in continuity. I'm ok with that. The whole concept of the continuity rich DCU for fanboys and the stand alone non-continuity mainstream All Star concept. ~~~

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

~~~ GOOD. This was desperately needed as there were lots of problems, although the one thing that Crisis failed in was tight supervision so these same type of problems didn't happen again. There was no single Continuity Cop overseeing the Whole Big Picture and discrepancies and inconsistencies started to crop up as each group editor oversaw their corner of the DCU with their characters but no master presence coordinated between them all, thus, we're back to fixing those problems now 20 years later. ~~~

~~~ I WILL say that reading Crisis back in the day it was so exciting to see the whole DCU being reconstructed and reborn. " Marvelized " if you will. It really felt that from that point on everything was going to be interrelated and tightly regulated. Sadly, it drifted away from that pretty quickly. I think they are going to pick up on what they missed last time and I think fandom at large will respond very positively to it. I know I am greatly looking forward to it. ~~~

~~~ One last point. For those that say that the pre-Crisis DCU was too confusing, I think it's clear that the post-Crisis DCU is even more confusing in certain aspects because of the lack of a Supreme Continuity Cop to explain these things correctly. Donna Troy, Wonder Woman, and esp Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes are really got bogged down by the Crisis. Again, hopefully all will be solved with the Infinite (and hopefully last) Crisis. ~~~

~~~ I also think that part of the beauty of the DCU is the proliferation of the different versions of characters, like the complete spectrum of Batman stories over the years. Hopefully, DC will explain these with the help of Hypertime so we can have our continuity and some variation too without being too confusing. ~~~

[Apathy Boy]

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).Bad. It was a good idea to jettison some of the more recent continuity (A newly formed Krypton? The Superboy years? Ugh!)

But other changes deviated too far from what Superman is, so much so that the character no longer was recognizeable. Clark Kent ABSOLUTELY has to be the biggest nerd in Metropolis, not a high school jock (I'd argue that this change alone made Post-Crisis Superman more "god-like" than his Pre-Crisis predecessor). The Post-Crisis origins of Supergirl and Zod were a mess. And I hate, hate, hate that Lex Luthor was no longer Clark's former childhood friend.

I'm still undecided whether I like that Ma and Pa Kent are stil alive. Good supporting characters, but I think their deaths also contributed to Superman's "strange visitor" mystique.

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).)Awful. The worst change to come out of Crisis. We got a handful of decent stories out of it, but the long-term damage was too great. Again, the changes took Wonder Woman too far away from the core of the character. She was a rookie when every other superhero was established? The loss of the secret identity? Good-bye Trevor Barnes?

The character is an absolute mess right now (and for the last 15 years or so)because of the changes wrought by Crisis.

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.Good in a major way. Not only was it the most touching death in comics history, but it also brought much-needed focus to the Flash franchise. From that point on, the Flash wasn't just about some dude who runs fast; he was about legacy.

4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.Good.The second-most touching death in comics history. Plus, I always felt the only other living Kryptonian should be Zod. (Because I don't want to have to think about Superman getting it on with his super-hot cousin if he really wanted to bring Krypton back to life.)

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.).Neutral. The parallel earths thing was a pretty neat idea, and much less complicated than what came later. And it just feels wrong that Superman wasn't the first superhero in the DCU.

Some decent stories have come out of it, though. And the "legacy" theme that runs through so many great comics wouldn't exist if it weren't for the merger.

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.Neutral. I loved the old-school DCU Multiverse. And as I said, I don't think it was all that complicated.

On the flip side, the Crisis HAD to have a major effect on the DCU. And I can see the value of a merged universe.

It's just a shame that DC apparently had no plan in place for their new universe and completely screwed the pooch in the subsequent years (see: Wonder Woman, Hawkman).

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.Good. I'm not a continuity nut, so I don't really care about whether past stories actually "happened" or not.

[Ontir]

For me, Crisis is the greatest example of being careful about what you wish for. For years, many of us wished that the Earth 1, 2, etc. characters were all on one world, but I don't think much forethought was given, to what the aftermath would be. Supergirl, Donna Troy, Powergirl, Fury, and the entire Legion of Super-Heroes were royally screwed by the affects of "Crisis." It also ushered the way for the multiple re-boot problems DC has had ever since, with Doom Patrol being completely screwed most recently, and while I'm enjoying "W/K's" "Legion," I still can't see any reason why they needed to re-boot. I don't think I'm alone in that, either.

[Captain Jim]

For me, Crisis is the greatest example of being careful about what you wish for. For years, many of us wished that the Earth 1, 2, etc. characters were all on one world, but I don't think much forethought was given, to what the aftermath would be. Supergirl, Donna Troy, Powergirl, Fury, and the entire Legion of Super-Heroes were royally screwed by the affects of "Crisis." It also ushered the way for the multiple re-boot problems DC has had ever since...

Well said. I agree completely.

[aeastwic]

As I see it, there are seven key achievements that resulted from "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Here's the list I came up with:

SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

I want to take a Survey. Please rate each of those Seven Achievements as Good, Bad, or Neutral.

(Neutral could mean that you don't think it was necessary to do it that way, but it didn't turn out to be a terrible mistake in the long run. Or it could just mean that you personally don't really care about that point one way or the other!)

I will post my own opinions later, but right now I'm just asking for everybody else's opinions, instead of trying to "argue" with you to make you see things from my point of view :)


1. Good. Superman was way too powerful, just like he is becoming today. A superhero that is too powerful is just too hard to write compelling stories for.

2. Neutral. I haven't followed WW all that much. Don't really know the difference.

3. Good. Barry was a great character, but Wally is also. You have to hand it to the Flash, this is really good, transfering the mantle of the Flash from Jay to Barry to Wally. I really like that three different people have been this hero. Barry's death was also well done and memorable.

4. Good. Kara was a good character, but she was never really a three dimensional character. It was a good idea to give her meaning, although it took her death to do it. Making Superman the only survivor was good.

5. Neutral. Having Jay and Wally together is good. Having Captain Marvel and Fawcett City is just ridiculous. The hero community on Earth is too crowded and some of the older heroes have not aged well, not matter what new spin Geoff Johns puts on them.

6. Bad. From point 5, there are just too many heroes and villians running around. You could have kept the worlds completely separate and not had cross-overs. Oh wait, that would have lasted three issues. I guess there was no clean way to do this. They could have merged like they did and forgotten about a lot more characters.

7. Bad. At first it was great. But Crisis is 20years old and showing it's age. There are too many writers, books and situations since then that have made DC continuity a mess. It's inevitable with the amount of stuff published.

Bottom line. Crisis was a great idea and done well, but the aftermath was jumbled up again after 20 years of stories told. Time for another reboot....

[aeastwic]

3. BAD. Why couldn't they let him retire in the future with Iris?



Because writers afterward would have screwed around with the character and not let him retire. He's dead and he somehow manages to pop up once in awhile, either from sometime in that month before Crisis, in an alternate universe or in an extended flash-back (no pun intended).

He even showed up in heaven when Green Arrow came back from the dead!

I keep expecting to see him walking around my office and go BOO!

[hondobrode]

I agree with Ontir about what happened with the girls and that the Legion didn't need a reboot though I too really am liking the current version.

[glennsim]

[QUOTE=Lorendiac]As I see it, there are seven key achievements that resulted from "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Here's the list I came up with:

SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

GS: Neutral. Would have been "good" if they'd either rebooted everything in the DCU or prepared for the obvious problems (Superboy/Legion type stuff)

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

GS: Neutral. Would have been "good" if they'd either rebooted everything in the DCU or prepared for the obvious problems (Wonder Girl)

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

GS: Good. Provided a sense of forward motion (no pun intended).

4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

GS: Bad. Superman doesn't have to be the only survivor of Krypton, and it left out too much stuff. Maybe would have been neutral if they had firmly established Power Girl as the replacement and worked out the other kinks in continuity early on.

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

GS: Neutral. Would have been good if they'd firmly established replacements for the Earth 2 Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. As it was, it was too vague.

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

GS: I'll go with "good" here. I don't have a problem with them all living in the same world, and if there's no need to a separation, it's good not to have one.

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

GS: Bad bad bad. Too much confusion, when confusion is the thing they were supposed to be doing away with.

[dancj]

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity
Mostly good, but it's long since gone stale

2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity
Very very good - not because the new Wonder Woman is great, but the old one was really rather bad

3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

Good

4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

Good.

5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

Good. It's good to have the JSA as part of DCU history and characters like Dr Fate in the regular DCU

6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

A bit of a shame really, but Earth 3 has been brought back anyway and any others they want will come back

7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

I'm not really sure that's aything to do with Crisis since they're doing that to various things that happened since Crisis

[Swingkid570]

I always felt the only other living Kryptonian should be Zod. (Because I don't want to have to think about Superman getting it on with his super-hot cousin if he really wanted to bring Krypton back to life.)


Well, Supes gettin' it on with Zod certainly ain't gonna bring Krypton back to life... :p

[Apathy Boy]

Well, Supes gettin' it on with Zod certainly ain't gonna bring Krypton back to life... :pY'know, I really didn't want to be thinking about that one, either.

[bones mccoy]

Well, Supes gettin' it on with Zod certainly ain't gonna bring Krypton back to life... :p


you never know with kryptonian prison sex.

[GremlinClr]

SEVEN ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRISIS


1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

Neutral This really didn't bother me and I feel it needed to be done.


2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity (everything pre-Crisis got erased from history).

Good I like taking her back to a more iconic character, more Greek mythology fits the character.


3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) so that Wally West, the former Kid Flash, could inherit his mentor's role.

Good While I enjoyed Barry, I agree that Wally West is a much more interesting character. I'll say Good for now if he stays dead.


4. Death of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, and a firm policy (lasted almost two decades) that she had been erased from continuity and would stay nonexistent in the Post-Crisis DCU.

Good It really diminished Superman as a character not to be the sole survivor of Krypton.


5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters. (Now the Golden Age heroes, such as the JSA, and the Silver Age heroes, such as the JLA, all lived in the same timeline and didn't remember things had ever been any different.)

Bad The reason they did this is because people thought multiple Earths was confusing. I would have much rather prefered DC put simple disclaimers on new stories. If it takes place on Earth-2 stick an Earth-2 logo on the cover. Problem solved.


6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse (Earth-S where Captain Marvel and his friends hung out, Earth-3 where the Crime Syndicate of America hung out, etc.) Many costumed characters from those other worlds were retconned into the newly unified mainstream DCU world, however.

Bad See No. 5


7. Creating a handy General Excuse for any Post-Crisis retcons or reboots in the lives of other characters, according to the desires of the writers and editors who ended up working on them and wanted to change or throw away pieces of their old continuity.

BAD BAD BAD BAD I love continuity. I want everything to fit. That's why I like Johns writing so much. He seems to actually care about it.

[PanzerMega]

I think Crisis was a great idea.

Crisis revamped characters that felt desperately out of touch by the early 80s. And merging all of the characters into one world, made for a DCU that didn't require "earth-jumping" for characters to interact.

It was a radical move, but one that I feel paid off long-term for DC as a company.

[Expletive Deleted]

1. Total Reboot of Superman continuity.Bad. There were some good bits, but the Clark-as-Football-Hero thing and the damage to the Legion put this in the negative column for me.2. Total Reboot of Wonder Woman continuity.Neutral. I liked Perez's take, but setting it in the "present" (post-Crisis) opened a far bigger can of worms than was strictly necessary.3. Permanent Death of Barry Allen.Good. He's DC's official martyr, and I like the overall story arc of Wally growing into the mantle.4. Death of Kara Zor-El.Neutral. Killing her off worked, story-wise. Keeping her dead seemed counterproductive.5. Merger of the Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters.Bad. When you need a flow chart to sort out which version of which character was a member of which team and when, something's wrong. That said, the merger isn't really the problem. The decision to massively and inconsistently retcon rather than reboot is the problem.6. Destruction of the rest of the DC Multiverse.Bad. For [expletive]'s sake, it wasn't that confusing. And not all the merged Earths really belong together, anyway.7. RetconsBad. A few retcons, used judiciously, are fine. Saying (to pick an example) that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were never members of the JSA, yet still keeping those stories in continuity . . . feh.

[Lorendiac]

First, I want to thank everyone who participated in this, in any of the several forums where I posted my Survey two weeks ago. Sorry it took me so long to get around to entering all the data on an Excel spreadsheet and tabulating the results. By my count, a total of 60 people voted on at least some of the Seven Achievements I listed, and that's better than I seriously expected when I started. Now let's take a look at what they had to say. Rounding each off to the nearest percent of all votes cast on that particular point, here's what I came up with:

#1, the Total Reboot of Superman
Good: 66%
Neutral: 18%
Bad: 16%

#2, the Total Reboot of Wonder Woman
Good: 58%
Neutral: 24%
Bad: 18%

#3, the Permanent Death of Barry Allen and his replacement by Wally West as the new Flash
Good: 74%
Neutral: 16%
Bad: 10%

#4, the death and erasure from continuity of Kara Zor-El, the Silver Age Supergirl
Good: 56%
Neutral: 20%
Bad: 24%

#5, the merger of Earth-1 and Earth-2 continuities and character rosters into a single DCU timeline
Good: 55%
Neutral: 14%
Bad: 30%

#6, the destruction of the other parallel worlds of the old DC Multiverse
Good: 49%
Neutral: 9%
Bad: 42%

#7, the way Crisis created a General Excuse for other sweeping retcons, reboots, etc., in the lives of other characters as their own writers and editors saw fit over the next several years
Good: 35%
Neutral: 20%
Bad: 45%

There was a lot more agreement than I expected. On Achievements #'s 1 through 5, solid majorities of the voters felt that overall, it had been a good idea. (This does not mean that exactly the same people voted Good on all 5 of those points, obviously, although some did.) On #6, it had just less than half of the voters supporting it - but that was still more than the number of people who were convinced it was a Bad idea - the other 9% were the Neutrals who denied either side a clear majority. #7 was the only one where the people voting Bad outnumbered the people voting Good, and they did so with a big 10% margin.

Why was #7 the least popular Achievement? Some voters expressed the feeling that even if having a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was basically a good idea in 1985, its long-range consequences on other characters and groups in the DCU really should have been hammered out in conferences at the very start, with one Master Plan that everybody was then supposed to loyally follow whether it seemed "convenient" or not.

As opposed to having various titles left hanging in the wind, trying to come up with their own spur-of-the-moment retcons as Damage Control. Noteworthy sore spots that were mentioned by various readers in their commentaries on the "Achievements" of Crisis included:

1. The way the erasure of a juvenile Superboy from Superman continuity gutted the older stories about the Legion of Super-Heroes - something that it appears no one in 1985 had bothered to anticipate and plan to cope with at the time Crisis got the green light.

2. The sad fate of Hawkman in his Post-Crisis Retcons.

3. The way the original JLA was suddenly retconned to have never had Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman present as members in its early adventures (which ripped holes in many of its Silver Age stories).

4. The way Donna Troy, the original Wonder Girl, was still a member of the Titans but was now supposed to have been fighting crime as a costumed superhero for much longer than her Pre-Crisis mentor/role model/big sister, Wonder Woman, who was only rebooted as "just now appearing on the scene for the first time" after Crisis had already come and gone, which has led to various tangled retcon origin stories for Donna in subsequent years.

(One theory seems to go that this might have been avoided if everybody at DC had agreed to throw away ALL of their old continuity about the modern age of superheroes the way Superman and Wonder Woman continuity was being erased, and start all over from scratch. Another theory goes that there's no clear reason the George Perez Wonder Woman Reboot couldn't have been set "several years ago" in the same way such stories as "Superman: The Man of Steel" by Byrne, and "Batman: Year One" by Miller, were basically flashbacks to earlier times in the careers of their central characters, well before "the modern day".)

These and other thorny issues that arose in the late 80s and 90s are apparently some of the reasons that 45% of the voters felt that leaving the door open for a wide range of retcons by other writers was a significant weakness in the way the Crisis was handled.