I don't mind something taking longer. A good TV example is the "Court Martial" trilogy in THE A-TEAM. It needed 3 episodes to tell the capture, trial, etc. There is no way they could have done that in a 42-minute episode. No way at all.

Same with Galactus' original story (3 issues). One issue would not have been enough.

Where there is a creative need to tell a longer story in comics, fine. Our host doing the entire MOS arc in one issue would have been impossible. Ditto "The Lazarus Affair" (4 issues) in early 80s Batman. 

But where it may be a marketing tactic, I think it's flawed.

Mr/Mrs Editor walking into a room is fine if it's, "This complex Green Lantern tale, involving many sectors of space, really needs 3 issues to work."

But a marketing mindset (not blaming one editor) of, "Let's drag this story out for 12 months, and a #0 issue, so we can market it as a deluxe trade!" is one that I am not a fan of.

It's all subjective, of course. Some may have felt the Galactus trilogy was too long; others may feel "Secret Empire" is too short. It's up to the person.

But I read so many great tales from yesteryear. No rose-tinted glasses from me, I promise (some 70s Man-Wolf issues I read were not enjoyable to me) whilst some modern comics are great, e.g. I am enjoying G.I. JOE comics.

However, generally, I like how things were done and dusted in no more than four issues years ago. And they were good. There was that late 60s Cap/Bucky arc (where Cap appeared to die, Rick Jones wore the Bucky outfit/mask, they battled Hydra). It was 3 issues. That was enough. 

One can read and enjoy some of these 3-issue/4-issue arcs. But anything I have to put a catheter in to read (e.g. "Secret Empire"), well I'm just not a fan of that approach.

There were so many partners and sidekicks that happened so long ago, and they seemed really effective at the time. Robin. Toro .Aqualad. Namorita. Hawkgirl. Mary Marvel. Captain Marvel Jr. The Lieutenant Marvels.

I guess Fawcett's Marvel Family really were the first ones to push the topic... but for the greatest part, there were three super-heroes* in their own books, and while their powers were rather carbon copy, I don't think their characters were as much so. Of course, they were similar, and with a regular team up book, they probably WERE the first de-uniquers.

*Or four, if you want to count Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. DEFINITELY de-unique!

There's one I didn't mention - Captain America. At that time, in the era of new heroes, it was no surprise that there was a surfeit of patriotic heroes. A cross of two genres, if you will - comics and patriotic fervor - shortly thereafter set burning brightly by 12-7. It was inevitable.

The question is... were the original comic book heroes themselves de-unique versions of prior heroes? It's often said that Superman had his origins, in part, in Hugo Danning in Philip Wylie's "Gladiator." Batman is something of an amalgam of, among others, Sherlock Holmes and especially the Shadow. Captain America followed the Shield by ten months. The Flash, and then the Whizzer, seem pretty obviously based on Hermes/Mercury. And so on.

Maybe it was inevitable simply because it was already present, in a manner, with those first comic book characters.

I mean, TV did that a lot. The Six Million Dollar Man, eh? Well, wasn't there a bionic man before him? And in the live-action Hulk series, there was a two-parter - "The First" - where there had actually been a Hulk 30 years before Banner's Hulk.

De-unique has become a word here at JBF Central. But what's the word for those who predated the heroes we've come to love?

Happened with inanimate objects too, most notably vehicles. Was KITT the first special car? Well, no there was KARR...

That story, "The First Batman" is, believe it or not, not the first "First Batman" story to make it into print, but is a case of the editors re-using an idea from an earlier issue, in this case, one in which Batman discovered a pro boxer who once used a "Batman" identity in the ring. In the update, the costume is worn by Bruce Wayne's father at a costume party, leading to him meeting the mob boss who will one day send Joe Chill to kill him and his wife.

It's worth noting that DC's "families" of characters came late in the game for them compared with Marvel's embracing the idea. Of course, Fawcett's "Marvel Family" with its various Uncles, Lieutenants, and Bunnies was the granddaddy of them all, setting the standard for multiple iterations and enjoying phenomenal sales as a result. Mary, Junior, and the gang were extremely popular back in the day.

While DC had occasional forays into "de-uniqued" (sigh.) versions of their characters, Superboy, who is only Superman himself in a series of non-continuity bound adventures as a boy, is really the only one to stick around from the Golden Age. Green Arrow endured a number of knock-offs such as Miss Arrowette, Green Error, and Xeen Arrow, but none were introduced as recurring characters. 

DC didn't begin bringing in regular "family" style characters and opposite numbers until the mid-Fifties with Batwoman, Bat-Girl, and Bizarro, nearly twenty years after Batman and Superman debuted. Supergirl had a one-issue magical precedent and had a version show up in Superboy before her debut in 1959, but neither was designed to stick around.

Once the Golden Age versions of the characters were established as living on their own separate Earth in 1961, the pattern so often criticized here was set, but still, only the "Big Three" and a handful of others were actually duplicated. Alan Scott is not Hal Jordan, nor is Jay Garrick Barry Allen. As for the other Earths, most of those did not contain doppelgangers. Earth-3, the villainous Earth, did and the magically created and then disposed of Earth-A did. Earths X and S did not. It isn't until Marvel writers came over to DC in the 80's to mock the idea that we started getting funny animal Earths and "Infinite" variations. 

DC books of the 40's, 50's, and 60's had multiple stories in nearly every issue and rarely carried storylines over to the next month. More story ideas were required to fit the formula of DC's books than the later ropey, every month's "to be continued" Marvels. Marvel, however, while requiring less material, happily dove head first into "de-uniquing" their books almost as soon as Lee moved out of the primary writer's position. Roy Thomas created "Counter-Earth" in 1972, a mere ten and a half years into Marvel's existence and populated it with alternative (read "de-uniqued") versions of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, and Victor Von Doom immediately. Thomas also gave us the Squadron Sinister, a group of villains copycatting DC's JLA in 1969. He then copycatted his copycats in 1971 by introducing Earth-S, a parallel world upon which the bad guys' original inspirations, the Squadron Supreme, lived, making the Sinister team duplicates after the fact. Editors have largely been unable to keep them straight since.

Not content with his work to date, Thomas in 1972 created Marvel's own Earth-A upon which Reed Richards became the Thing and Ben Grimm gained a host of different powers. Contrary to what's been written here in the past, Counter-Earth, Earth-S, and Earth-A were not created as one-offs and were immediately brought back time and time again, their characters becoming regular Marvel mainstays in some cases. 

Marvel displayed no reticence in "de-uniquing" its characters early on and continued doing so without restraint afterwards. Spider-Woman debuted in 1977, a mere fifteen years after Spider-Man, in response to Filmation's intent to produce a "Spider-Woman" animated series. Marvel beat them to the punch by fast-tracking the character into an issue of Marvel Spotlight, causing Filmation to call their character "Web-Woman," and even took the fight to them on Saturday mornings by giving Spider-Woman her own animated series. 

She-Hulk came out in 1980, eighteen years after the Hulk, and preceded an onslaught of gamma-powered duplicates that arguably began with the Abomination in 1967. Someone up-thread gave Marvel a "Blue Hulk" idea for nothing. A grand gesture, but unnecessary since Jeph Loeb's daughter and cartoonist Chris Giarusso had a recurring Blue Hulk character already appearing in Marvel Comics humor strips for some time. 

Once "What If" came about in 1977, every issue gave us another parallel universe, populated with de-uniqued straw men, supposedly intended as one-shots, but some were revisited within the series itself, and later the Exiles were created to continuously travel between such worlds constantly. Numbered parallel Earths became a fundamental part of Captain Britian's storyline in 1983 with the debut of the Captain Britian Corps, which is something Marvel would never, ever do, except that they did, quite happily. Since then, we've had Marvel Earths with funny animals and apes. The characters themselves have so many iterations they're tripping over themselves in Ultimate crossovers and Spider-Verses a go-go. Of course, this is all DC's fault somehow.

So... DC, damn them, damn them, damn them a thousand times over, had a few Family style characters and a couple of parallel Earths on which duplicate versions existed in the 1960's. Letter writers of the 70's occasionally bemoaned a Wildcat or Spectre appearance in "Brave and the Bold," but there was never as much confusion as Marvel loyalists would have you believe. It wasn't until Thomas and Wolfman came over from Marvel in the 80's that the number of parallel Earths spun out of control and became ridiculously "Infinite." 

Meanwhile, sainted Marvel, all praise be unto Lee, began minting near-exact duplicates of their characters in long-running, extended storylines more quickly than DC did with theirs, and arguably did so more blatantly and commercially.

But nevertheless, Bad DC. Bad, bad DC. Bad, bad, bad. 

I think I am going to be busy with Google later. ;-)