Losing COIE from continuity: how do you feel about this specific aspect of the New 52

[Buried Alien]

The New 52 has been quite a departure from previous DC work in many ways, but I feel that one way it really stood out is that the New 52 finally removed CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (in any form) from the present mainstream DC continuity. For a quarter century, DC's internal continuity scheme was essentially built around the framework of COIE. Until September, 2011, all DC Comics stories that took place within its main continuity occurred within a timeline that started in the mid-1980s, and no subsequent tweaks or rearrangements (e.g. ZERO HOUR, INFINITE CRISIS, FINAL CRISIS) could remove COIE's indelible stranglehold on continuity.

Then came the New 52, which finally accomplished what everything else didn't: it removed COIE itself.

How do you feel about this? I ask not about the universe that crew out of COIE (so please, folks, no complaints about Wally, Stephanie, Cass, etc.; this really isn't about that), but the very idea that the first great DC crossover event that defined twenty-five years of DC's continuity from 1986-2011 is now truly of no consequence on the present (New 52) continuity.

My thought: I think it's liberating. COIE was my favorite DC event of all time, but after a quarter century of stories that existed in its shadow, I thought it was really refreshing to start off in a new DCU that was not touched by COIE.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[batGRRRl4ever]

COIE was fantastic, for it's time. And what I mean by that is by today's standards the book is filled with MANY outdated characters that people wouldn't be familiar with. So yes, I too find the loosening from that time in their publishing history to be refreshing.

Now, if only Marvel would do a restart/reboot as I find most of their books just too convoluted to follow anymore...

[stk]

GOOD.

I have always hated CoIE, right from the time it was coming out. It set the template for everything I have hated in company-wide crossovers ever since.

I have loved nearly everything else Wolfman & Perez have ever worked on in their careers, together or separately, but holy mother of all creatures great and small, do I hate CoIE.

[Jabare]

Since I'm not 40+ I don't really care. COIE happened so long ago, I'm kind of still surprised we still bring it up after the other Crises. I thought DC just wanted us to ignore it with all the retcons they've made following.

[sunofdarkchild]

It only seemed to have any importance when there was another crisis like Zero Hour. Otherwise its existence seemed to be ignored. So it doesn't matter to me.

[stk]

It only seemed to have any importance when there was another crisis like Zero Hour. Otherwise its existence seemed to be ignored. So it doesn't matter to me.

Ignored except that the Multiverse, the one big thing that made me like DC more than Marvel, was gone. Along with a ton of characters.

[Buried Alien]

Ignored except that the Multiverse, the one big thing that made me like DC more than Marvel, was gone. Along with a ton of characters.

...and also because several tentpoles of the Post-COIE DCU couldn't work without them: Barry Allen dead/Wally West is Flash (direct consequence of the Crisis), Clark Kent having living parents on Earth and not being a nerdy guy (indirect consequence of the Crisis), Jason Todd being a street delinquent and not Dick Grayson II (indirect consequence of the Crisis), Wonder Woman having first appeared years after many of the other heroes (direct consequence of the Crisis), the Marvel Family hailing from the same world as the other heroes (direct consequence of the Crisis), Hawkman and Donna Troy's screwy continuities (direct consequence of the Crisis).

Most of these things continued to stand in DC continuity until the New 52 wiped the slate clean.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Batman9]

GOOD.

I have always hated CoIE, right from the time it was coming out. It set the template for everything I have hated in company-wide crossovers ever since.

I have loved nearly everything else Wolfman & Perez have ever worked on in their careers, together or separately, but holy mother of all creatures great and small, do I hate CoIE.

You don't like Final Crisis?

[Mr. Holmes]

Yeah I thought Crisis on Infinite Earths was just the most contrived, convoluted, and dumbest thing I've ever read. Just really misguided altogether. The story itself has its problems as mentioned earlier. Then it ended up making continuity way more complicated than it ever was before the Crisis event. I think the New 52 is pretty much the Post-Crisis reboot done the right way.

[stk]

You don't like Final Crisis?

Final Crisis was by far the least offensive to me of all the Crises. I rate FC well above CoIE, IC, Zero Hour, whatever. But I wouldn't say I was a fan. Company-wide crossovers in general leave me flat. IMO, they bring out everything that is worst and work least about comics.

[Buried Alien]

I think even if one is a fan of COIE itself, as I was, after twenty-five years of it being the framework around which the entire DCU was built, it's hard to say that it wasn't something of a creative albatross. By the 21st Century, it seemed ridiculous that writers had to limit themselves in mainstream DC continuity books to certain storylines because of a crossover published in 1985/1986.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Mr. Holmes]

I was reading Matt Fraction's wiki the other day, and apparently the reason he became a Marvel fan was because COIE came out around the time he got into comics, and he found it really weird and impenetrable.

[Batman9]

Final Crisis was by far the least offensive to me of all the Crises. I rate FC well above CoIE, IC, Zero Hour, whatever. But I wouldn't say I was a fan. Company-wide crossovers in general leave me flat. IMO, they bring out everything that is worst and work least about comics.

I love Final Crisis. What do you not like about IC? I'm planning on getting the omnibus.

[Buried Alien]

I was reading Matt Fraction's wiki the other day, and apparently the reason he became a Marvel fan was because COIE came out around the time he got into comics, and he found it really weird and impenetrable.

I was temporarily out of American-style superhero comics at around the time Marvel and DC were offering SECRET WARS and COIE because I was then pursuing anime more passionately. By the time I returned to American superhero comics a few years later with BATMAN: A DEATH IN THE FAMILY, I noticed that things were different (including Batman having another Robin than Dick Grayson). At the time, I didn't understand the reasons that the WONDER WOMAN and FLASH titles had rebooted with new numbering systems, or the reason that many of the characters behaved differently from how I remembered them pre-1985.

Backtracking those years from the relative reference point of the early to-mid 1990s was one of the most interesting experiences of my life.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Kyle Anderson]

...and also because several tentpoles of the Post-COIE DCU couldn't work without them: Barry Allen dead/Wally West is Flash (direct consequence of the Crisis), Clark Kent having living parents on Earth and not being a nerdy guy (indirect consequence of the Crisis), Jason Todd being a street delinquent and not Dick Grayson II (indirect consequence of the Crisis), Wonder Woman having first appeared years after many of the other heroes (direct consequence of the Crisis), the Marvel Family hailing from the same world as the other heroes (direct consequence of the Crisis), Hawkman and Donna Troy's screwy continuities (direct consequence of the Crisis).

Most of these things continued to stand in DC continuity until the New 52 wiped the slate clean.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Other than the death of Barry Allen, nothing of that needed to have COIE in continuity to "work", in the same way the only thing that needs Flashpoint right now is the Pandora story. It was a reboot. The instrument of the reboot, i.e. the crossover, doesn't need to be in continuity, because it was the one reshaping that continuity.