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Brian Miller
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Joined: 28 July 2004
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Posted: 24 February 2021 at 12:41pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

If only Marvel had been able to license the DC stuff...
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Rebecca Jansen
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Joined: 12 February 2018
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Posted: 24 February 2021 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

That Dick Dillin GL & GA is really getting the Neal Adams look quite nicely there!

Crisis is where I jumped off buying DC comics, with #7. I bought the first few new Superman issues after missing the mini-series, the Perez Wonder Woman #1 following the Trina mini, but then just Swamp Thing was the last title I cared about. I never did feel Earth 1 and 2 (or X or F or Q etc.) were so hard to explain, I seemed to get it as a little kid, or did someone just manage to do it particularly well and succinctly?

Imagine buying a later comic and it's like freaking Dune and the first third of that with all the background 'history'? I hate to say this but I think 95% of non-fan readers would look to comics for a fun and lighter read. And of course if they can't 'get into' it... if they are repelled in some way from getting what they wanted... another customer lost? I think it was at least a good idea to put part __ of __ on things, best at the top of the cover, that avoids someone not knowing they were getting into buying a bunch of issues from the start (or worse, titles).

I guess what I just wrote is mostly covered by 'every issue is somebody's first issue', maybe even first comic book. I was a sporadic reader/buyer until Star Wars #24 in early 1979, a 'one and done' filler I could enjoy, and then a two-parter followed that... next thing I know I'm willing to see what the Hulk and Spider-Man are like and if I could enjoy them as much. I think the house ads in Star Wars and Galactica did something to get me curious though. And I did read those text bits at the top of the first pages; didn't they stop providing those at one point? Oops, unforced error there.
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Adam Schulman
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Joined: 22 July 2017
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Posted: 26 February 2021 at 7:12am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

"... pounding everything into some semblance of a coherent shape and blowing everything up in the last issue."

***

Of course, if it's possible to pound everything into some semblance of a coherent shape, there's no reason to blow it all up in the last issue.

There were valid reasons for getting rid of the Earth-One/Earth-Two separation with its doppelgangers -- but not because it was too hard to understand. I understood it fine when I was eleven! 


Edited by Adam Schulman on 26 February 2021 at 7:13am
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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 26 February 2021 at 7:21am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Of course, if it's possible to pound everything into some semblance of a coherent shape, there's no reason to blow it all up in the last issue.

••

Hop in your time machine and go back and tell that to Dick et al.

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Steven Brake
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Posted: 26 February 2021 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Earth 1 is us, Earth 2 is (mostly) the same superheroes, a bit older.

I wasn't the cleverest wee boy, but even I could understand that! 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 26 February 2021 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Earth Prime is us.

But it still appeared in comics.

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Adam Schulman
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Posted: 26 February 2021 at 5:39pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Earth-Prime still exists! It even got a number (33). 

Stupidly, for a while the mainstream DC Earth was being called "Prime Earth." So there was both "Prime Earth" and "Earth-Prime."

THAT is much more confusing than the stuff that Dick Giordano and co. thought was too confusing for our poor widdle minds in 1984. 
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Steven Brake
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Posted: 27 February 2021 at 5:08am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Yes, Earth Prime is us. But Earth 1 is "now". And Earth 2 was "then", which sometimes overlaps with "now".

Easy to grasp, even to me! :)
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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 27 February 2021 at 9:23am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

I very nearly tore the muscles that control the rolling of my eyes when I saw the introduction of "Earth Prime" immediately followed by establishing that the "real" Julie Schwartz had a cosmic treadmill in his office.
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Doug Centers
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Joined: 17 February 2014
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Posted: 27 February 2021 at 9:35am | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Ha!
So they took what happened in "The Flash--Fact or Fiction" story which left a cosmic treadmill in Julie's office on Earth-2 and transposed that to Earth Prime?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 27 February 2021 at 9:53am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

So they took what happened in "The Flash--Fact or Fiction" story which left a cosmic treadmill in Julie's office on Earth-2 and transposed that to Earth Prime?

••

And down the rabbit hole you go!

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Doug Centers
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Posted: 27 February 2021 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

"And down the rabbit hole you go!"

...

Yes...again!!
I have a problem with that.
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