Which Plan? What Plan?

**The Batman** · 11-06-2006, 05:02 PM

This week's Lying in the Gutters had this to say about the Post-IC OYL DCU"

Mike Bise, the man who exposed the "Infinite Crisis" HC changes on the DC boards is continuing his challenge with the thread, "There is NO Master Plan At DC," exploring the popular belief that despite the spin, universe continuity is not being planned but being made up as it goes along.

He cites evidence, as well as the significant changes made to "Infinite Crisis" HC, Walt Simonson's version of how Kendra (Hawkgirl) was working in a museum for a year at the beginning of the "One Year Later," but six months into "52" was still working at a library and the state of (Hawkman) Carter...

"I don't just mean that Kendra didn't know where Carter was; I mean that nobody knew where Carter was. It had not been decided at that point what had happened to Carter other than that he had dropped out of the comic. As a result, there was a certain constraint on saying much about Carter. What could you say other than--Carter? Oh, yeah. He's missing."

And since Johns is going to put Hawkman in the new "JSA" comic, that has to be set up too, even though no one at where Hawkman is, currently..

Bise also cites Stuart Moore on "Firestorm" stating that he tied an issue into "52" by leaving a speech balloon unfilled in, and letting Steve Wacker add the dialogue. Which doesn't exactly sound like the greatest big crossover continuity tie in, in the world, I have to say.

Still, it's more than in "Civil War: X-Men."

You can also check out one of the original threads over at the DC boards here.

Reading through the original posts I get the feeling that this is as much about dislikeing DC as it is laying bare some grand conspiracy on the part of DC to trick us into buying a bunch of comics. That being said, I think that there's a world of difference between not having any plan whatsoever and having a plan that just doesn't factor every single one of the bajillion characters DC has to worry about.

What does everyone else think? Do you buy this?

**PanzerMega** · 11-06-2006, 08:09 PM

I think there was a plan. Coordinating 52 and One Year Later, not to mention launching new series spinning out of Infinite Crisis, means that there had to be some sort of plan.

I always just figured everything would start to come together more when 52 is nearing completion. I'm not going to hold it against the company for having a couple of continuity errors with a few characters out of thousands.

Now if 52 ends and there isn't a point apparent to the last year's worth of books, then I'll concede that there wasn't a very good plan in place.

**Bored at 3:00AM** · 11-06-2006, 10:12 PM

I don't get what the big deal is here. There's a plan, but it's subject to change because creators and fan reaction.

Look at Nightwing. Does anybody think it was DC's plan to have Bruce Jones stink up the joint and get replaced?

Look at The Flash. Was it DC's plan for it to be so miserably recieved?

**RichStanz** · 11-06-2006, 11:41 PM

While I think that original posting is more bitter than actually constructive, not to mention he accuses DC of lying. But I can see where the anger comes from.

Personally, I don't mind contonuity errors like Shadowpact being in "52" and also trapped in that town during the year, but I think overall there was no point to everything.

Outside of a few DC characters, I've never been able to get into the whole DC universe concept - mainly because of COIE. I know as a reader I can read any story I want, whenever I want, but the fact that the publisher made an event where decades of stories could be negated by saying "its pre-crisis, so it didn't actually happen" always turned me off.

I bought all 4 of the countdown mini-series because I wanted to get into DC. I really wanted to be in on the ground floor of a shared DC universe event. And I liked all 4 of the mini-series and wanted to see what they were building to. And once IC hit, I was really disappointed.

I wouldn't say there was no plan, but:
1.) What exactly were Alexander Luthor/Superboy-Prime's goals? It sort of changed between making a new earth and bringing back earth 2. Having the main villian change his motivation mid-storyline is always risky, and this time it came off sloppy. It seemed to elicit such a casual response from Luthor, in my opinion, that I didn't know what was at stake. If the villian isn't more concerned about this, why should I care?

2.) How is New Earth different from pre-IC earth? At least the original COIE set up the rules for the new earth, but it was never really explained in IC. Did time start over? Do people remember the old earth?

3.) What exactly did Donna Troy's team accomplish? It seemed like for a few issues they just kept flying towards this big light in space. What were they trying to stop/protect?

4.) What exactly did (real) Luthor's society of super-villians do? I know they wanted to destroy Metropolis? Why? "Because if it falls, then every other city falls" ... okay, but why?

5.) What exactly did Booster Gold discover when he went back to the future? He came back to our time with a renewed purpose, looking for the Blue Beetle scarab, and a way to defeat Brother Eye, but not one of these moments happened on-panel. He just showed up with the answers one day, and it felt like an obvious plot device.

6.) How necessary was Brother Eye/OMAC to the actual story of IC? Or for that matter the Spectre or Raan/Thanagarian War? I'm not talking about The "OMAC Project" or about showing the dissent of the trinity, i'm talking about the advancement of the plot of Infinite Crisis? How big of a threat was Max Lord after all? Cause if he was just manipulated by Alex Luthor and SB-Prime, why didn't they do it themselves? What exactly did they have to gain by sitting back and waiting for Lord and the Spectre and the Thanagarians and the villian society to go crazy? I guess it was to provide distraction, but it seemed like the moment Luthor/SB-Prime started acting, there was a unified front to stop them.

7.) What was the point of the Flashes going into the future? Yeah, Barry Allen died in the original COIE - but that's it. There isn't some grand tradition of Flash making a sacrifice every Crisis - its only happened ONCE. There wasn't one issue done from Wally West or Bart Allen's POV. And the whole sacrifice sequence happened over the span of six pages. It felt more like a sneak preview commercial for Flash's own post-IC book, then it did a stunning plot twist.

Most of my problems with IC come from execution. The four storylines were being built up to reaching some sort of conclusion. But most of them were resolved in a rushed fashion. Spectre was just beaten by god for crossing some undefined supernatural line, Blue Beetle just showed up and defeated Brother Eye (and it wasn't explained how until 7 months later in his own comic), two versions of Superman just showed up and beat up the super-villians. Hearing about all the changes in dialogue and art, sets off a warning that the whole event was rushed. But what exactly were they rushing to?

It just felt like the four minis raised a bunch of questions. Then IC created a new batch of questions, and as an afterthought sort of answered some of the questions of the mini-series. Then "52" created some more new questions, and will later have some answers to its series and some of the lingering plot threads from IC.

I don't mind change. I think the best thing to happen out of all of this was the creative energy on the OYL titles. I just don't see why they couldn't editorially make a decision to push their titles forward and get the top creators signed onto these projects.

Were people really asking for a 20th year revisit to COIE? Were there that many dangling plot threads that needed to be resolved?

But the need to create 4 mini-series to build up to another mini-series which is answered in a year-long weekly series was ultimately pointless, when as a reader, I tried to get into it, and in the end I felt dis-satisfied with the resolution. And as a result I just stuck to the same titles I was reading before all this (they just happen to have high profile writers/artists on them this time).

**Rylon** · 11-07-2006, 01:11 AM

I doubt DC has a well thought-out plan. Whatever plan they do have is probably complicated by the fact that seem to have trouble keeping writters on books for more than a single story arc.

That said, I have few answers for you, RichStanz.

1) They had diffrent goals. SBP's goal was to bring back his Earth and live the idyllic life he remembered. Luthor's plan was to replace the post-crisis Earth with a perfect Earth. He never defines perfect, and he rejects several Earth and combinations of Earths.

2) Supposedly, the changes from post-COIE Earth to post-IC New Earth are going to be reviled gradually as time goes on. I would imagin that there is not list of changes that writters will revile, but rather when a writter changes something for whatever reason, New Earth will be touted as an explaination.

3) The fight at Metroplis was suposed to be a simbolic vitory. If you can take-over and decimate the city protected by the world's most famous Superhero, then the Cities guared by other superheroes will be easy pickings. Espicially when many of them fought in Metropolis.

IC had a speicific goal: make Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman clear-cut black and white Good Guys. If there was a plan isn't a list a plot points and retcons, its a stylistic change. Obviously they wanted to get rid of, once and for all, Bat-dick, emo Superman, and Warrior Wonder Woman. Other heroes are obviously suposed to follow this example. Super-Villains are supposed to be evil, no more grays.

So the emphisis on Metropolis and Superman is supposed to put Superman in leadership position in the DCU.

5) I don't know. I'm hoping that this will end-up being revealed in 52.

6) Well Brother-Eye was supposed to be the cumulation of Bat-dick. The idea was clearly to say, "see, this is way you don't want the Batman being a paranoid jerk, because it ends up with this!"

Plot wise, Brother-Eye controlled and kept-track of the OMACS. Alex wanted to get rid of as many superheroes as posible, and using ordiary people as superhuman hunters is a good way to keep superheroes pulling their punches.

I don't know about the War or the end of an era in DCU magic.

7) What is really confusing is that DC is moving away from legacy characters. The Flash and The Blue Beetle seem to be the biggest exceptions. Even the new Blue Beetle is more directly connected to the origional (Dan), than the prior one (Ted).

**glennsim** · 11-07-2006, 10:48 AM

I think the key point here is the Hawkman example. It appears that DC decided that Hawkman was going to be "missing" following Infinite Crisis, but didn't decide ahead of time where he would be and the circumstances of his return, presumably intending to keep it vague so that a later writer could fill the in the blanks.

As a result, some inconsistencies arose.

I think it was a same situation with Batman's departure at the end of Infinite Crisis (where he appears to get directly on a ship), and the flashback to his departure in Batman/Detective (where he spends some time training Harvey Dent). Editorially, they decided that Batman was going to "go away", but didn't hammer out the details, so you have two interpretations.

The question is, is it a reasonable expectation that they would have worked these things out ahead of time. I think it would be nice if they did, but understandable when they don't, as the eventual writer might have a better idea than what they'd established behind the scenes.

**RichStanz** · 11-07-2006, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by Rylon

1) They had diffrent goals. SBP's goal was to bring back his Earth and live the idyllic life he remembered. Luthor's plan was to replace the post-crisis Earth with a perfect Earth. He never defines perfect, and he rejects several Earth and combinations of Earths.

That's the problem with Alex Luthor - he never explains what exactly he's looking for; what is the perfect earth? He's supposed to be the main villian, he needs more motivation/explanation to his purpose. Just saying he wants the "perfect" earth leaves room for too many inconsistensies. That's just sloppy writing to not explain what your main bad guy is after.

Originally Posted by Rylon

2) Supposedly, the changes from post-COIE Earth to post-IC New Earth are going to be reviled gradually as time goes on. I would imagin that there is not list of changes that writters will revile, but rather when a writter changes something for whatever reason, New Earth will be touted as an explaination.

Even though I couldn't get into COIE, I can still appreciate that as risky a move as it was, they still went all the way with it. Yeah, 52 had some "history of the dcu" but only gradually rvealing the changes of new earth is sort of cheating. Why did I have to read IC then? What did that series tell me that I couldn't also find out in 52 or a OYL or some new "new earth" book that has yet to be published. It just seems like a mary-sue plot device to explain things.

Originally Posted by Rylon

3) The fight at Metroplis was suposed to be a simbolic vitory. If you can take-over and decimate the city protected by the world's most famous Superhero, then the Cities guared by other superheroes will be easy pickings. Espicially when many of them fought in Metropolis.

That's what I always figured, but you just explained better than the actual series. The book just says "if it falls blah blah blah..." Considering the big super villian society fight was what they were building to, you would think they would give it, just a little more page space. It didn't happen til mid-way through the last part of the series (and it was resolved off panel)

Originally Posted by Rylon

IC had a speicific goal: make Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman clear-cut black and white Good Guys. If there was a plan isn't a list a plot points and retcons, its a stylistic change. Obviously they wanted to get rid of, once and for all, Bat-dick, emo Superman, and Warrior Wonder Woman. Other heroes are obviously suposed to follow this example. Super-Villains are supposed to be evil, no more grays.

If that was the only intention, why didn't they just write them like that? What was the point of all the Crisis related stuff when a simple editorial direction could have gotten rid of "Bat Dick"? Don't want Superman to come off emo - then just tell the writer you're making him too emo, make him stronger.

Considerg all the online kvetching alone about Wally West and the Giffen JLI, was it worth getting rid of so much just to get back to silver age morality?

Its really interesting to read that the four multi-earth survivors of COIE weren't originally supposed to be part of IC? Then what was IC supposed to be about because they were the main plot points All the magic/space war/OMAC/villain society stuff took a clear step back for the reveal of SB-Prime - he was the main bad guy. If it wasn't orginially about him - then who was the main bad guy?!

It just stinks of a rush job to get to OYL. And none of it was necessary. And they figured since they were bringing back the crisis, they could also do all these homages like killing another flash and bringing back earth 2 superman, when none of these things seemed integral to the story. It just seems like whatever story they may have had was totally lost in their desire to create moments.

**phantom1592** · 11-07-2006, 02:16 PM

Originally Posted by RichStanz

If that was the only intention, why didn't they just write them like that? What was the point of all the Crisis related stuff when a simple editorial direction could have gotten rid of "Bat Dick"? Don't want Superman to come off emo - then just tell the writer you're making him too emo, make him stronger.

Well maybe they wanted to show growth somehow. I mean if Batman wakes up one day and says I'm not a jerk anymore.... then suddenly he's acting out of character. Now however he's seen the death and destruction his paranoia caused. Having the revelation can now lead to a better Batman without ignoring the earlier stories. Same with the others. Using their past to make a better future is a much better route to take then an editorial mandate.

As for the spectres war on magic. The only thing I can think of for that was a distraction. All those big mystic types like the Spectre and Dr. Fate could have stopped SBP with a word. In order to make them more of a threat they had to have a reason why the spectre didn't show up to stop him. He fought the Anti-monitor, and SBP was NO anti-monitor.

Donna Troy's quest.... i have NO idea what they did.

**scratchie** · 11-07-2006, 02:24 PM

Originally Posted by The Batman

... some grand conspiracy on the part of DC to trick us into buying a bunch of comics.

They wouldn't!

**RichStanz** · 11-07-2006, 04:00 PM

Originally Posted by phantom1592

Well maybe they wanted to show growth somehow. I mean if Batman wakes up one day and says I'm not a jerk anymore.... then suddenly he's acting out of character. Now however he's seen the death and destruction his paranoia caused. Having the revelation can now lead to a better Batman without ignoring the earlier stories. Same with the others. Using their past to make a better future is a much better route to take then an editorial mandate.

Understood that they couldn't just ignore past characterization. But I feel something like James Robinson's 8 part storyline helped explain the transformation away from "bat-dick" better than any bit in IC.

I know DC is a business and all, but turning the restoration of the trinity into this universe sprawling epic just spun out of control, in my opinion. Hell a Crisis that resolved around Supes, Bats, WW all bickering while one villian took advantage of that, seems so streamlined and simple. But piles and piles of clutter were just added on top.

**CYOTI** · 11-07-2006, 04:59 PM

Originally Posted by RichStanz

That's the problem with Alex Luthor - he never explains what exactly he's looking for; what is the perfect earth?

How can you define a perfect Earth? As Superman himself said, there can never be a perfect world where Superman exists and the worlds that Alex Luthor revived all originated fom the Earth-2 Superman.

So really Alex's quest to find a perfect earth was about as fruitless as that of medieval alchemists and their quest for spiritual perfection and the philosopher's stone

Originally Posted by RichStanz

Yeah, 52 had some "history of the dcu" but only gradually rvealing the changes of new earth is sort of cheating. Why did I have to read IC then?

To see how they went from the Earth that survived COIE to a new Earth recreated after IC just as CoiE never showed us the changes that occured to Superman, Wonder Woman and all the other super heroes, the same goes for IC.

What did that series tell me that I couldn't also find out in 52 or a OYL or some new "new earth" book that has yet to be published. It just seems like a mary-sue plot device to explain things.

Look up the definition of Mary Sue, there is nothing Mary Sue about what the DC writers did. They showed us the transition from the previous era of DC to a new era, it's just up to the new writers to explore whats happening.

If that was the only intention, why didn't they just write them like that? What was the point of all the Crisis related stuff when a simple editorial direction could have gotten rid of "Bat Dick"? Don't want Superman to come off emo - then just tell the writer you're making him too emo, make him stronger.

Because editorial dictates are easier to reverse by later editors and regimes than a large sprawling epic that throws down the gauntlet and saws plainly that Batman isn't a dick, that Superman is suppose to be more assertive etc.

Considerg all the online kvetching alone about Wally West and the Giffen JLI, was it worth getting rid of so much just to get back to silver age morality?

This wasn't Silver Age morality, the Silver Age morality at its most basic acknowledged only black and white, however the new paradigm here is that they acknowledge the black, the white and the grays in between while the heroes still stand firmly in the white.

Its really interesting to read that the four multi-earth survivors of COIE weren't originally supposed to be part of IC?

It doesn's seem that way, according to Jeph Loeb in Wizard, the whole idea of having the original Superman and a faux Luthor as part of the new Crisis why he introduced the various alternate Supermans and drove Luthor insane in Superman and Batman.

It just stinks of a rush job to get to OYL. And none of it was necessary. And they figured since they were bringing back the crisis, they could also do all these homages like killing another flash and bringing back earth 2 superman, when none of these things seemed integral to the story.

The Earth-2 Superman represented both the absolutism of the bygone era where everything was only black and white and also the nostalgia of the fans and writers as for the Flash, it was to show a transition of DC from one age to another.

**CYOTI** · 11-07-2006, 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by RichStanz

3.) What exactly did Donna Troy's team accomplish? It seemed like for a few issues they just kept flying towards this big light in space. What were they trying to stop/protect?

They were trying to stop the anomaly that Alex had created polaris with the help of SBP.

5.) What exactly did Booster Gold discover when he went back to the future? He came back to our time with a renewed purpose, looking for the Blue Beetle scarab, and a way to defeat Brother Eye, but not one of these moments happened on-panel. He just showed up with the answers one day, and it felt like an obvious plot device.

He himself said in the issue where he returned that he and Skeets stole historical records for the time period which is why he recruited Jamie and was able to line up Batman's people for the attack against Brother Eye.

How big of a threat was Max Lord after all?

He was able to control Superman so I'd say: major threat.

Cause if he was just manipulated by Alex Luthor and SB-Prime, why didn't they do it themselves?

He wasn't manipulated by Luthor and SBP, all they did were to tinker with Brother Eye and take control of him after the death of Maxwell Lord.

What exactly did they have to gain by sitting back and waiting for Lord and the Spectre and the Thanagarians and the villian society to go crazy? I guess it was to provide distraction, but it seemed like the moment Luthor/SB-Prime started acting, there was a unified front to stop them.

What unified front? The JLA were being pulled in several different directions with there base of command destroyed and heroes everywhere were either being dragged into the space, hunted by OMAC, facing the New Society or trying to deal with the Spectre.

7.) What was the point of the Flashes going into the future?

They went into the future? I thought they were trying to send SBP into the Speed Force.

Most of my problems with IC come from execution. The four storylines were being built up to reaching some sort of conclusion.

Not when the people at DC said that you didn't have to read any one of the four tie-ins or that you could just read one.

Spectre was just beaten by god for crossing some undefined supernatural line

That was only after Dr. Fate sacrificed himself so that the powers higher up would take notice.

Blue Beetle just showed up and defeated Brother Eye

Now you're just exaggerating what happened, he didn't defeat Brother Eye, he just disabled his cloaking system.

I just don't see why they couldn't editorially make a decision to push their titles forward and get the top creators signed onto these projects.

We've seen how editorial mandates work or not work. Look at what happened to Hypertime.

Were people really asking for a 20th year revisit to COIE?

Not when Crisis was like a revisit of the various annual Crises that DC use to ahve.

Edit: As for the four minis, I thought their purpose was to explore some of the major issues of the DCU that had been simmering for sometime (the world of magic and the unreliability of the Spectre, the political games of the various alien powers, the issue of metahumans and of course the average supervillain in the DCU), but not to actually resolve with the four minis being springboards for new series and ideas that later books could explore in more detail.

**RichStanz** · 11-07-2006, 06:37 PM