My biggest problems with COIE are: 1) it was unnecessary. Nobody couldn't understand Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-S, etc. 2) it was poorly planned; I still don't believe that ALL the editors sat down and said, "Here's what happens when we start from scratch with every character and title. Here are the conflicts that are going to arise. Here are the characters that will be problematic. 3) it was dishonest, in that it DIDN'T restart every title; I've noted previously that the money maker titles such as Batman, Green Lantern, and the New Teen Titans were barely touched; and I think the Outsiders book never even acknowledged any crisis. Rebooted Superman plus Pre-existing Batman equals confusion and conflict and a violation to the readers.

I was slightly miffed in that my "knowledge vault" was about to be locked forever - but more so that some of it still applied and some of it didn't.

As for the Ultimate universe... eh. Some writers decided that they wanted the existing characters, but wanted to do their stories "right" - and they happened to start with (at the time) the most popular characters at Marvel, in Spider-Man and the X-Men. Envy is one of the deadly sins; this was a pure example of it, in that some writers really felt they could write those two titles better than Stan did.

Mind you, all of this is my perception - I didn't work at either Marvel or DC, so I don't know the inside poop. But they still seemed like bad ideas at the time, and terrible ideas as time has passed and they have had to be revisited.

What's YOUR Crisis?

Case in point: if Superman and Spider-Man met for the first time today, we'd need a ten-issue series: the first four would explain HOW Superman and Spider-Man can "cross universes", the four after that would be the adventure, and the remaining two would be wrapping up, explaining how Superman and Spider-Man can return to their own universes.

Back to CRISIS: it happened. Yet DC has felt the need to revisit it over time with ZERO HOUR, FINAL CRISIS, INFINITE CRISIS, UNCLE TOM COBLEY'S CRISIS, etc, etc. 

Why did they bother to revisit an event? Just tell new stories. 

As for the Ultimate Marvel reprint, well given that it took several issues for Peter Parker to become Spider-Man, I didn't see the point, not when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did it in about 12 pages.

It smacked of editorial fatigue. "Oh, fer cryin' out... If I have to read one more story with dinosaurs, vampires, or shape-changing aliens..." The impression given was that certain story premises were simply being taken off the table. At DC, the fatigue centered upon their parallel worlds set-up. Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-3, Earth-Prime, Earth-S, Earth-X, and just arrived thanks to emigrate Marvelite and knee-slapper Roy Thomas, Earths-C and C-Minus. Ho ho. Earth-A had been a one-off created by Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt and Earth-B was a letters column construct where readers were invited to place any story they didn't think fit anywhere else. Wonder Woman had been visited by a parallel earth counterpart prior to "Flash of Two Worlds" in WW #59, but that did not lead to anything and had not come up again since. The Flash had been to a Mirror-Earth courtesy of the Mirror Master, but again, it wasn't a factor in the overall cosmology. 

So that was it. Seven separate worlds, with a couple of recent High-Larious tack-ons thrown in to make fun of the rest and a couple of outliers that no one spoke of anymore. But Marv Wolfman and many of the fans of the day simply could not abide it. Couldn't wrap their heads around it and couldn't understand why anyone would want to. Being essentially Marvelites, they'd bought in to the party line that everything Marvel did was great and anything DC had...? Really just needed to go away in favor of something more Marvel-like. Marvel had the goods. DC? Well, we can fix it... I dunno. It'll still be DC. And therefore lame. But hey, they're cuttin' checks and I'm here now, so... 

Fan consciousness was at an all-time high in the Eighties. JB likes to demur as to the sales on the X-Men during his tenure, but the buzz surrounding the book at that time was at an all-time high. Reprints were being issued. Parodies were appearing right and left, including in Marvel's own Crazy Magazine. X-Men Companion editions were issued and interviews given. Critical re-examinations of the run were being written right and left. The Dark Phoenix Saga itself may not have sold especially well initially, but it was selling everything else that mentioned or reprinted it and led to increased exposure of the title, which caught up to the book in terms of sales later, when the arrival of Paul Smith drew a lot of attention from the fan press, his style being perceived as more Byrne-like than Cockrum's, which wasn't taken to by the comics media in the same way. Fan chatter was non-stop.

Once the buzz had gotten going, they needed more stuff to buzz about, and Wolfman knew that blowing up the (yawn!) tired, ol' parallel-Earths schtick would light fires under any number of bushels and get the fan press going. "DC was going to be more Marvel-like? Oh, thank god! I can't stand their stuff now! Not that I ever read it, because, really, who could? It's so... Not Marvel, y'know? But maybe now, I could... If they bring over some Marvel talent to keep this going... They have? Really? I didn't notice. I don't read DC, y'know..."

My local paper carried a story in the Entertainment section from a DC-issued press release prior to Crisis. The headline read, "Universe to Become Simpler." Underneath it, it revealed that Supergirl was going to be killed. "See? We're killing everything in a short skirt! Can't get any more Marvel than that!" 

Have the whole shebang illustrated by George Perez and the fans were ready to beat a path to DC's doorstep for this massive, death-infused, Mea Culpa for their previous lack of Marvel-ness. Why, by the end of these twelve issues, DC would be socked so full of Marvelinity and Marvelitude that you'd think that was Spidey himself swinging by. (It's not. It's the Blue Beetle, but you can see how hard we're trying here, right, True Believer?)

Now... All we have to do is come up with a story... Story... Hmmm.... Storystorystory... 

Well, of course, having it be a massive crossover is a given. "Secret Wars" did that so well that DC now had a road map to Marveliscious levels of sales success in that regard. Throw in some Red Skies (tm) and have Wolfman's dumb blonde gun moll of a thug-for-hire supplier reimagined and repurposed (the earliest of Crisis's reboots) for this epic and they were off to the races. Of course, I can imagine how difficult some of the thought processes were...

"We'll select a wide-ranging and interesting number of guest-stars to focus on, building interest in why this specific team was being chosen... Annnnnd then give them nothing whatsoever to do after issue 2, because it turns out the former rent-a-thug Monitor can summon everyone all at once and hey, plotting comic books is hard... We'll blow everything up at the end of this issue and just print a white page and later, um, do the same thing again, because, again, this stuff is hard to do... Can we stop using the Flexographic press, please? It's making it look like the Red Skies (tm) are raining cinnamon sprinkles... Thank you. Geez, what now? Gotta list here of things the other editors want me to do, like turn WW back into clay and cut Wally's speed in half, but y'know what? I don't have to worry about that now. I can just do all that in the last few pages of issue twelve using Monitor-Breath... Man, George draws heroes looking agape really well. I should really write another ten pages of them all doing that some more..." 

I get how tough it must have all been.

Supergirl's death was hailed by many as her finest moment on-panel, but look at the issue in which she's killed. She's had nothing to do in the previous six issues and appears in the opening scene with Batgirl, and then... nothing until the end, when her death accomplishes... making the Anti-Monitor run off-panel to change his clothes. Man, she really did a number on that guy's wardrobe. And once they'd killed Kara, it was time to kill Barry. Well, long past time, really, since we've had him rolling around on the floor cringing, and crying, and blubbering, and cowering and whimpering at the feet of the villains for the entire series to this point. What a dignified end for a proud legacy character. Really gets to you, doesn't it? Sigh... It's the respect, really, that I find so moving.

Now the series goes into crunch time and it's discovered that the ending that was agreed upon (Everyone starts over at the end of the series) can't be done. Was never going to be done. No one wanted that. Editors across the board at DC all start looking up from their Gameboys and ask, "When was that decided? I never said I would do that..." And the compromises begin. Clearly, this is not going to have the effect anyone thought it would at the outset. Roy Thomas is mad because he won't have the original Earth-2 versions to play with anymore, but becomes delighted by the fannish possibilities of now rewriting Golden Age stories to fit this new paradigm, without Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman around. Who did solve the Funny Papers Crimes if not them? Has anybody here heard of Iron Munro? Anyone? Superman before Superman guy? Kinda like Philip Wylie's Hugo Danner, but not? No? Well, you're gonna!

And we did. But we did not care. After the conclusion of Crisis completely gutterballed and nothing was left changed except that the Earth-2 Superman was allowed to go off into happiness-never-never-land with an odd collection of Wolfman pet characters (Psst! Whatever you do, guys, do NOT punch the walls in there! Just saying is all!) DC was left with nothing to do but start following through on all their promises of change in the individual titles, slowly... And not at all consistently. That Marvel-like unified continuity we said we were putting together for all you Marvelites and Marvelinas out there? 

We really didn't mean it. In fact, things are going suck so badly from now on, you will not believe it. All the mocking and scorn we used to get for the whole parallel Earth thing will be as nothing... Nothing I tell you... to the bad press we here at DC will bring upon ourselves going forward, as Crisis Rebooting and Fixing the Kontinuity becomes the ONLY business we are in from now and forever afterwards. 

Crisis gave DC an identity and a purpose that it has slavishly adhered to ever since. It is a laughing stock of pointless self-re-examination and it will forever try to journey further and further into the abyss of its own navel until it finally disappears forever. 

It was a poorly thought-out series on its own, never mind how badly the botch-job of a coherent, seamlessly-unified Kontinuity went afterwards. Crisis itself was a lousy comic. And unfortunately, in that sense, as well as so many others, it really did set the pace for everything that's come after it from DC.

It's late in the game now, but you know what DC just might try doing if it really wants to court Marvel readers? Writing an issue of the JLA that's as good as Fantastic Four #5. 

The Game Boy didn’t come out until 1989. 

As a young kid who was just starting to buy comics and was focused entirely on Marvel when CRISIS came out, the random issues I saw had the opposite of the intended effect on me. I thought those multiple Earths looked cool and wanted to see more of them. 

The new Flash (Barry Allen) and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) come to my mind, but I don't think that counts as a reboot.

And Sergio, you're about to get inundated by a hail of Superboy responses and claims that reboots have always existed in comics, being as American as apple pie... Brace yourself. But you're right. Reboots in the modern sense did not begin until Crisis. 

(Hal is actually my least favorite Green Lantern.)

You can try to catch every little bit, but you'll only make it difficult. It'll create even more problems. 

Best to just let it all fall on the kitchen floor - and sweep it up/deposit it in the bin. Then start afresh with new cereal.