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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 14 October 2017 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Mark celebrates the very thing -- relentless de-uniquing -- that brought DC to its present sorry state. The same thing he inflicted on Marvel every chance he got.
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Shane Matlock
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Posted: 14 October 2017 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Probably explains why he was such a fan of Squadron Supreme, too. Yet more versions of those characters! (Although they existed prior to his use of them.) That and the fact he was basically a DC guy working at Marvel so it was his chance to write the Justice League, albeit a warped version of it where they create their version of a Utopia through rather dubious means. 
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David Miller
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Posted: 14 October 2017 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Gruenwald's influence on Marvel, baleful as it was, came at a serendipitous time, preparing me as a reader when it came time to follow John Byrne to the deblighted Brand Echh. Okay, I don't really remember, but there was an adjustment period as I explored the DC universe.

One thing I respect to this day, which I don't see given a lot of attention, is even as JB fit in immediately as a "DC artist" in whatever ephemeral meaning that conveys, he incorporated bits of Marvel-style storytelling and techniques, such as in the way the Daily Planet staff were developed through their own complicated personal lives, not merely as beneficiaries of rescue attempts or fulcrums of repetitive office drama (I'm being unfair to DC comics, but I was like 12 and my impression was the supporting casts were more like theater backdrops). As I was reading from 1986-1992 I saw the style JB introduced permeate the DC comics I read as much as or arguably more than WATCHMEN's dark 'n' gritty.   
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 14 October 2017 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

I was lucky enough to come across the first and second issues of Omniverse at some point, so they're among the many items locked away in my storage unit. As I recall, Gruenwald posited the "Three Worlds" solution of DC's Earth-2 actually being the characters from the late-40's, early-50's as opposed to the originals because of the many variations that had been introduced into the Earth-2 concept since it's inception, such as Superman continuing to work at the Daily Star under Editor George Taylor for instance. 

Clearly, the originals were still "unaccounted for" in the DC cosmology and Gruenwald thought it best to bring them in to explain who the Super-Sons were and why their parents could legitimately be Superman and Batman although they were obviously not the ones who were starring in the rest of the DC titles at the time. The Super-Sons were a major sticking point for the increasingly continuity-conscious fanbase of that time. The official explanation, similar to something mentioned earlier in this thread, was that we didn't see every moment of our heroes' lives, so the Super-Sons were just something that had been taking place "off-panel" all the while... Which really doesn't explain anything. Superman and Batman have been married, raising teenaged boys all this time and no one thought to mention it until now...?

Gruenwald's "Journal of Fictional Reality" was on the case!


Edited by Brian Hague on 14 October 2017 at 11:22pm
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Eric Kleefeld
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 12:05am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Brian Hague:

 QUOTE:
…and then, sadly, the bordering-on-unprofessional Earth-Prime, where DC staffers could interact with the DC characters.

That Earth debuted in the 1968 story, "The Flash — Fact or Fiction?" written by Cary Bates and drawn by Ross Andru. (And future appearances of Earth-Prime were often written by Bates and/or Elliot S! Maggin.) I read it in a reprint when I was maybe nine or ten years old. And I loved it!

Barry accidentally crossed over to a world where there are no superheroes, and his life is chronicled in a comic book. He then sought out the help of Julius Schwartz, who had Barry hole up in the DC Comics office while he went out to buy a list of materials for Barry to build a cosmic treadmill.


Barry then read through all of his own back issues while Schwartz was gone, in order to figure out how to overcome the menace of the month when he got back to Earth-1. (An alien creature that fed on his heat-protection aura.) And at the end, on that other Earth, Julius Schwartz observed that this adventure, too, will be chronicled in a comic book — but he now knows it's real.

I read this story during the first few years of the post-Crisis era, but it had me thinking about all the fun and magic that the Multiverse made available. But as I ended up thinking about it more over the years, I also came to realize you couldn't think about it too much.
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Shane Matlock
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 12:17am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I loved the DC multiverse but trying to explain it all and make it all fit into a cohesive continuity really sucked all the fun and magic out of it! Even though I was much more of a Marvel fan as a kid, I still loved the Justice League of America comics where they'd team up with the Justice Society. The concept of multiple Earths really appealed to me. 
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 12:45am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Eric, I've read that one and still don't love the idea of Earth-Prime. No doubt a great deal of that comes from my first encounter with the place being JLA 123-124 wherein Cary Bates writes himself as a power-mad super-villain and the only hope for three worlds is his hapless buddy Eliot S! Maggin who Bates has trapped inside of a word balloon. Just nauseating.

Have you read Superman #411, Eric? If you liked the original Earth-Prime story, you may like that one as well.

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Robbie Parry
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 8:07am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

(I'm being unfair to DC comics, but I was like 12 and my impression was the supporting casts were more like theater backdrops). 

***

That'd have been my thought, too, although you articulated it better.

I've read a lot of 50s/60s reprints. Good fun tales (you must read the Jimmy Olsen story where he swaps brains with a gorilla!), but as far as the supporting cast are concerned, they are, to use your terminology, akin to theater backdrops.

It's the same with Clark Kent. Around the time Mr Byrne's MOS was released, I had read a lot of 50s/60s Superman tales (black-and-white reprints) and Clark really only seemed to be there to notice something so he could change into Superman. Rarely saw him in his apartment or anything, unless it was to show him witnessing a natural disaster. 

It's one of many reasons I enjoyed MOS, Clark was real to me. It was about the super-action, but I felt I got to know Clark very well, too.
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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 9:25am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Robbie, as a backup to Superman stories, and later in Superman Family, was a feature called "The Private Life of Clark Kent." It certainly would have been unusable in the 50s/60s, but in the 70s, it came from a few other stories that gradually depicted more about Clark Kent. They were fun.

It was an issue that happened at Marvel in X-Men* too. As I'm recalling, with the original X-Men and with the second team, there were so many characters and so much story that it was hard to focus on the characters and any backstory/history. Certainly there were elements of it, and for tales with (around) six main characters, it was undoubtedly a major challenge to get a lot of character history in. This situation reminds me of Justice League of America too, where the non-solo heroes (most often Green Arrow, Black Canary, and Red Tornado at the time) had nowhere to highlight their personal lives BUT JLA.

There was nothing to be done for it, of course; if fans found those characters more interesting, then those characters would have had their own books. But it seemed to be a hard issue.

*Desperately trying to undrift back towards the original topic... :)
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Eric Kleefeld
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Here was the opening page from "The Flash — Fact or Fiction?" It sucked me right into the fun of playing in fictional worlds, and then asking what we mean by "true" or "false" in that context.

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Doug Centers
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Posted: 15 October 2017 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

That was a fun story, Eric.

I have it in a TPB somewhere.
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