Anyone else hate the multiverse AND IC?

[yourverysilly]

Everytime I flick through my Infinite Crisis GN I always get pissed off. I think its the multiverse. I eman, I know I'm a batman fan and stuff, so delving into the more sci fi elements of geekery may not be my strong point, but the whole idea just annoys me. Its just DC trying to please evryone and keeping the original characters from the 40s in for nostalgias sake, but yet still trying to erase everyones memory of there cringe worthy exploits, while making it believeable. How come we have to reinvent the continutiy every few years? Joe Chills in, Joe Chills Out, Joe Chills In, Joe Chills Out. We know your just putting him in for the sake of batman begins, so that you can get more readers. which is also why you created that godawful all star batman abomination.
THAT BEING SAID: Infiinite Crisis was ment to do everything I just said...except it didn't, way to have some balls DC and follow through with your plans.
Anyway, basically, I wanted to know if anyone else didn't like IC or doesn't like this whole multiverse thing.
(whenever I come on these forums I feel more and more like a comic book geek stereotype. I need to go and steal a kids lunch money now, you know, to balance things out.)

[Crisis]

actually i liked the mulitverse....it makes more sense and if dc actually could have made hired someone to make sense of those different timelines that appear in each comic book especially superman's precrisis...then it would have made a lot of things made more sense.

[trickster]

Heh. I like your description. Especially the "cringe worthy part".

[groovebot1976]

i've always hated the multiverse. it just seems cheesy at this point. i was pretty glad as a kid when they got rid of it and combined everything, but i think that dc has always had a bad time resolving their history and combinations of worlds. so no, you aren't alone :)

[Velvis]

The multiverse never really went away. Even before IC, in the Legion/Titans x-over, the Fatal Five recruited 99 otherdimensional versions of themselves to become the Fatal Five Hundred. And there was something like that going on all the time in some book or other throughout the whole 20 years after the first Crisis. We just pretended otherwise.

[Ilash]

When I first read that they were bringing back the Multiverse, I wrote it off as Didio again trying to revert everything to the Silver Age, a trend which I'm generally not all that fond of. But the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. It allows for all sorts of fun alternate stories and as long as they keep the "combined" DC earth that we've had for all thse years as the focus of most mainstream DCU titles then what harm does having the Multiverse actually do?

[Babylon23]

I like the idea of the multiverse as it currently stands:

From the look of things, DC is still keeping all of their existing titles on the 1 earth, so it's not like they're going back to the way things were pre-CoIE. The JLA and JSA, for example, are still on the same world. Other than some changes here and there, the bulk of the world's history remains the same as it was post-CoIE.

With the new multiverse, they get to play around with alternate reality versions of their characters. It's a cool sci-fi tool that has worked well countless times in the past, in books, comics, movies and TV. I don't see a problem with that at all.

[Brad Barton]

i don't hate the "idea" of the multi-verse, but I hate the gimmick of getting rid of it/bringing it back every 10 years.

Actually, this time they only waited one year, think about that.

[The Shadow]

With the new multiverse, they get to play around with alternate reality versions of their characters. It's a cool sci-fi tool that has worked well countless times in the past, in books, comics, movies and TV. I don't see a problem with that at all.

But as was stated above...

The multiverse never really went away. Even before IC, in the Legion/Titans x-over, the Fatal Five recruited 99 otherdimensional versions of themselves to become the Fatal Five Hundred. And there was something like that going on all the time in some book or other throughout the whole 20 years after the first Crisis. We just pretended otherwise.

So if it worked for 20+ years why even bother to bring it back? If you're not going to undo everything that was done for 20+ years... why bother when you can use Hypertime or just ignore it as has been done for 20 years?

I posted this elsewhere but it pretty much sums up my feelings.

While I LOVE DC, I think their superhero line underwent a backward slide the last couple of years and regressed while Marvel has progressed. As I said, you can't please everyone all the time and the really whiney fanboys are having a hard time with things (Bendis ruined the Avengers, Iron Man's a douche and so forth), but overall the Marvel line is great because it's taking some creative chances whereas I feel DC isn't. By creative I don't mean a weekly series... I mean story-wise.

They are regressing by returning all the silver age people back to their spots (Hal, Ollie etc.), they returned Jason Todd effectively ruining a great story by concocting arguably the DUMBEST return of a character in comic history (a retcon punch?? Winick still has a job how?) and even their "earth shattering events" (like Identity Crisis, 52 and Infinite Crisis) have all seemed stale to me because I've read it. I've read a Crisis now 3 times from DC in the last 20 years (Crisis, Zero Hour and IC... have there been more I'm forgetting?)

DC billed 52 as a year without Superman et all., but it felt rushed (especially at the end) and the ending was painfully anti-climactic. It was also billed as a "fix" for characters (Batman's less dick and so on) but all that was fixable with good writing. Paul Dini has crafted some great Batman tales of a non-dick... that could have been done without a Crisis.

The One Year later books were so hit-and-miss that it was like a craps shoot and they SO screwed up the Wonder Woman relaunch that I question the need for it because Rucka was telling some great stories.

Sadly they are mucking (AGAIN) with Superman's origin (Zod, Phantom Zone, Birthright in, Byrne out...) and I gotta ask... WHY??? What does ANOTHER tweak accomplish? Same with the Joe Chill thing as yourverysilly already mentioned.

As I said... regression. Not all bad... but nothing new or forward moving.

[geordiesteve]

I don't hate the idea of it, but it's not something I would enjoy reading. I liked the occasional Elseworld story, but I'd prefer to see the 'real' Earth 1 or whatever, characters progress and change over time. Having different version of people drifting between Earths or interacting with themselves from other worlds doesn't appeal.

I didn't get 52 as I couldn't afford it and the characters used were not among my favourites. And now that I've read what Countdown is about I'm just not interested again. I used to be a huge DC fan and I agree with what The Shadow said about Marvel moving forward and DC trying to regress to the Silver Age. DC have some fantastic characters, but they're just not using most of them in a way that appeals to me and I'm saddened by that.

[Gargus]

Multiverse stuff is interesting and all and I liked the idea I just wish it was implemented better is all. As of now I am confused on alot of things about and in turn I dont enjoy it at all and tend to stay away from things that involve it in any fashion.

Infinite crisis is same thing more or less. Cool idea and I liked the basic idea but it was done poorly and when I got done reading it I didnt understand anymore than before I read it. It needed to be streamlined alot, to much going on in it.

But then again Im not a avid DC reader so I may have missed alot going on.

[MythicBrawn]

DC could have kept the multiverse and simply established a single Earth as the one the comics follow. In this regard, Marvel got it right. DC is so concerned about combining their multiverses into one and then splitting them out again that it has become one giant mess. The elseworld stories were great ways, when done well, to look at alternate histories of DC heroes/villains. Something becomes popular (Smallville, Birthright, etc.) then DC wants to shoehorn that into Superman's origin/continuity. Those universes should be separate and distinct from the mainstream DCU. Guess it won't be long before elements of All-Star Superman start to creep into the current Superman titles too. No wonder there are arguments about the state of Superman. The convolution of the DC universe sucks and it may just take another Crisis event to fix it. And, when it occurs, the DCU will be fixed and set in stone never to be changed again. Yeah, right!!!

[The Batman]

I enjoyed Infinite Crisis for what it was, a big company wide crossover event, and I think that as an idea the multiverse could be really interesting if handled properly.

I liked the way that the idea of multiple universes was handled within the Wildstorm universe. It was there when need be as a tool for writers to use, but it didn't become a crutch for explaining away poor continuity and solving nerd problems. I don't know if this new returned mutliverse will be used as a tool or a crutch - have we seen it in use yet? - but obviously I'm hoping more for the former and not so much for the latter.

[blackphoenix]

Wasn't a fan of Infinite Crisis. After issue #3, I was just buying it to complete my collection. It was like a regurgitation of Crisis and Zero Hour.

I'm of two minds on the Multiverse. I like being able to explore multiple takes on the heroes, but how many times can we have Hero A of Earth 66 meet his counterpart on Earth 69( :p )and have it be interesting?

[ocelotrevs]

I've just had enough of it all now.
I've knocked my DC stuff on the head now, it's too much, and to keep up with it all. It's too much, and too confusing.