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Topic: Q for JB: CRISIS and after (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Josh Goldberg
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Posted: 28 December 2014 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | 1  

I believe JB's original proposal for Superman didn't even involve a reboot.  Everything he wanted to do would have been done within the existing established continuity.

Damn.  CRISIS didn't fix what wasn't broken.  It broke what wasn't broken.  And I feel like that damage has never been repaired to this day.


Edited by Josh Goldberg on 28 December 2014 at 7:13pm
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 28 December 2014 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | 2  

Sorry, JB, I wasn't sure of how much interaction you had with the powers that be at DC prior to the actual launch of MAN OF STEEL. I did think at least that you presented your wish list that included removing SUPERBOY from the canon that somebody might have said "But that will ruin LEGION!" or possibly "OK, we'll have to do repair work on LEGION but it'll be brilliant!"

As for when LEGION and TITANS declined--sure, maybe it wasn't right after CRISIS, but I suggest that the changes that CRISIS initiated are what led to the decline in quality on TITANS and all the confusing "fix-it" plots over on LEGION.

On TITANS, Wally became the Flash so we lost Kid Flash; Donna became Troia (Sorry, George, but that was an awful design!); and the book about sidekicks became irrelevant when the main heroes were suddenly younger (WW, Flash, even Superman was experiencing a lot of things for the first time).

On LEGION, they could have just ignored the absence of Superboy and Supergirl, but instead they "fixed" it--and then they "fixed" it--and they "fixed" it again! Until everything was so confusing that they had to reboot it! And then reboot it a couple more times!

My premise is that CRISIS set things in motion that destroyed DC's most popular books, even if it took a few years. It's the same as if Marvel suddenly removed Cyclops from existence and then kept doing stories that showed how the early X-Men "really" came together and did recaps of the early New X-Men without including Cyclops. Would X-MEN still be popular now and have a dozen books if Marvel did that? Or what if the Simon family had won ownership of Captain America? Would Marvel have to rewrite all of AVENGERS history?

Some above blame the changing creative teams on the decline in popularity, but if you were a creator, would YOU want to work on these confusing books and have your hand tied in a dozen ways? I don't think it's coincidence that BATMAN, who was the LEAST touched by CRISIS, drew the very best writers and artists over the next two and a half decades and helped solidify his superstar status.
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Roy Johnson
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Posted: 28 December 2014 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | 3  


 QUOTE:
Crisis should have been either all or nothing. Scrap the existing continuity and start from scratch (and not half heartedly like Nu52), or don't go that route at all and just have a big crossover with all the characters. Wolfman however seemed fixated on 'fixing' the DC universe when it wasn't really broken


I agree there was no need for Crisis but if they did it they should have gone all the way. So did Wolfman.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 28 December 2014 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | 4  

I believe JB's original proposal for Superman didn't even involve a reboot. Everything he wanted to do would have been done within the existing established continuity.

•••

Yup. The reboot was DC's idea. Probably if it had been done just a couple of years earlier, no one would have thought of it. But every desk up at DC had a shiny new Mac, and computer terms were buzzing in everyone's brains.

As to CRISIS -- of course DC could have been fixed without it! Nothing more was required than to simply stop mentioning all the "confusing" stuff -- things that were confusing only in the minds of elitist fans, and fans-turned-pro, who had memorized every comma of forgotten lore, and assumed that they, and they alone possessed the wit and wisdom to comprehend DC's "universes."

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Jason Schulman
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Posted: 28 December 2014 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | 5  

CRISIS itself wasn't even a well-written series. The Perez artwork is lovely, of course, but that's really all it's got going for it.

(I'm still convinced that it was mainly DC writers who couldn't keep track of which characters lived on which Earth, not DC readers.)
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 29 December 2014 at 3:26am | IP Logged | 6  

You know, it just hit me. CRISIS was like what they say about lying. It's just easier to tell the truth because every lie you tell requires another lie and another lie, etc.

It was more difficult and more confusing for writers and editors to keep on top of the artificial "history" that was dictated to them than just sticking to the printed history.
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Josh Goldberg
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Posted: 29 December 2014 at 6:38am | IP Logged | 7  

JB, I can't find it anywhere but I believe you've told us before.  Care to refresh our memory as to what your original in-continuity proposal for Superman was, before the reboot was proposed?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 29 December 2014 at 7:44am | IP Logged | 8  

It was fairly simple. A cataclysm occurs which sends Superman on a quest to set things right. In the end, it requires him to start over from square one.
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Ed Love
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Posted: 29 December 2014 at 7:46am | IP Logged | 9  

I enjoyed CRISIS for what it was and still enjoy re-reading it from time to time. Perez art elevates almost everything.

Most of the flaws really came AFTER the story as there seemed to be nothing set in stone. From the stories that JB, Roy Thomas and Wolfman himself, editorial powers kept changing their mind as to what the story was to do even while it was being written. Thomas was originally assured it wouldn't change ALL-STAR SQUADRON as that was set in the past. Wolfman wanted no one to remember the multiple Earths, but was told the heroes were to remember which is how the last two issues are written. Yet, when the new continuity titles started, no one remembered except the Psycho Pirate who was driven insane by his memories. This wishy-washiness continued into the relaunches. Superman and Wonder Woman are completely rebooted. Batman and Green Lantern and Teen Titans are not. Barry Allen is still dead with Wally West to become the new adult Flash. Captain Atom is rebooted despite the Ditko version recently appearing in a team-up with Superman and Firestorm. Hawkman is rebooted a couple of years after the series despite the 1960s Kubert verstion having a series and team-ups and working with the JLA after Crisis leading to several fixes making even less sense. The point seemed to combine various Earths into one, yet DC almost immediately gets rid of the biggest and most prominent alternate Earth characters - the Justice Society, leaving just a few behind including the one that is one of the bigger continuity holes, Power Girl. The Crime Syndicate, the founding members of the JLA get re-explained again and again. Editorial was smart to say, "no" to Alan Moore's plans for the Charlton characters which lead to WATCHMEN. If only they had said, "no" a couple more times.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 29 December 2014 at 7:59am | IP Logged | 10  

From the stories that JB, Roy Thomas and Wolfman himself, editorial powers kept changing their mind as to what the story was to do even while it was being written.

••

And before. As some will recall, Dick Giordano originally offered me the job of creating a "History of the DC Universe," which would run 12 issues, sort everything into some kind of order and then, in the last issue, blow it all up. The next month, all the books would begin again with issue 1.

This was at dinner with Dick and Frank Miller in, I think, Atlanta. Frank told me I would be insane to take on such a project. I told Dick there was no real chance that I ever would, as my "encyclopedic knowledge" of DC history was a myth. What I really had were the phone numbers of Roger Stern and Peter Sanderson! "Get them to do it!" I said.

Obviously, the project mutated quite a bit from that point.

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Brian O'Neill
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Posted: 29 December 2014 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | 11  

Afterwards,it was at a point where  the main story of CRISIS was going to have everything 'blow up' with the end of CRISIS # 10, then the HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE would be a 'filler' for the next two months, the only title DC would publish during that period, then 'everything gets a new # 1'.
Clearly, in the meantime, they had some 'out of continuity' books that they didn't want to reschedule, so CRISIS 'blew it up' in # 10, just confused the hell out of everyone in its last two issues, and that two-issue 'concise history' was published as something of an afterthought, just after the 'post-CRISIS' Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman went on sale. 
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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 30 December 2014 at 2:19pm | IP Logged | 12  

I think many fans have an obsessive need for events to
"fit together logically," so for them, it makes sense that
CRISIS led directly to MAN OF STEEL and YEAR ONE and it
was all planned in advance. I'm surprised by the number of
die-hard fans I've met for whom it's news that there were
several "post-crisis" issues of SUPERMAN and BATMAN.
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