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Post by gothos on Apr 2, 2015 15:47:17 GMT -5
I'll be blogging on this soon, so I thought I might see what people here thought of it.
What about it? Massive Mistake-- or Incalculable Error?
(Just kidding, I see why they did it the way they did at the time, but despite some fun moments it doesn't pull together as a story at all.)
What I find most interesting is that Wolfman creates a lot of characters that seem to be patterned on Judeo-Christian archetypes. The Harbinger: "Judas." Pariah: both "Jonah" and "Wandering Jew." And the Monitors, who are opposed as "protecting angel" and "destroying angel," though possibly with less kinship to Biblical angels than to The Watcher and Galactus in FF#48-50.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 2, 2015 15:51:01 GMT -5
It was utterly unnecessary, poorly executed and opened a can of worms that was absolutely horrific for the genre.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,871
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Post by shaxper on Apr 2, 2015 15:54:53 GMT -5
I actually love the idea of a planned reboot for the entire universe. In my mind, it was sorely needed, but the planning was half-assed.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2015 17:05:17 GMT -5
I liked the idea of a company-wide crossover, back when it was still a new idea. And I enjoyed the first half of the series, though they flubbed the ending. But the universal reboot was unnecessary, and caused more problems than it was worth, for me.
Plus, there's that whole killing Supergirl thing. Still haven't forgiven them for that.
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Post by Phil Maurice on Apr 2, 2015 19:47:09 GMT -5
It was utterly unnecessary, poorly executed and opened a can of worms that was absolutely horrific for the genre. I generally agree , though I feel the execution was mitigated somewhat by Gorgeous George's jaw-dropping art. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Apr 2, 2015 19:48:41 GMT -5
I'm in the process of indexing COIE and it's even worse than I remember. Yes, outstanding art and some moving individual scenes but you can hear the wheels grinding from first to last. The plot is arbitrary, nonsensical and an insult to this reader's intelligence, with Marv Wolfman demonstrating a profoundly staggering ignorance of cosmology and physics. "Comic book science" is not an acceptable excuse, not for a story on the scale of this. I'd come to think I hated Crisis for its longterm effect on the DCU and on the industry as a whole but now I remember that the series itself reeks.
Cei-U!
I summon the emphatic thumbs down!
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Post by Icctrombone on Apr 2, 2015 20:28:09 GMT -5
Say it aint so Kurt! Crisis was ground breaking and heart rendering because of the finality with which the characters were killed and the Universe was realigned. Of course the ending falls flat because no one remembers it but this was a major under taking by DC. And almost 30 years later , it has been undone but it still stands as a incredible event.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 2, 2015 20:31:42 GMT -5
Say it aint so Kurt! Crisis was ground breaking and heart rendering because of the finality with which the characters were killed and the Universe was realigned. Of course the ending falls flat because no one remembers it but this was a major under taking by DC. And almost 30 years later , it has been undone but it still stands as a incredible event. None of which actually means it was good. Which it wasn't. Nor was it remotely necessary. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2015 21:02:00 GMT -5
It was utterly unnecessary, poorly executed and opened a can of worms that was absolutely horrific for the genre. Slam Bradley sums up my views of this DC Comics Event that left my head spinning for years to come ... he is right on the $$$$$. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Apr 2, 2015 21:02:14 GMT -5
As a Marvel guy first, I used to think that Crisis was absolutely necessary. Now that I have more knowledge of Pre-Crisis DC, I see that all they needed to do was modify how they portrayed individual characters as opposed to getting rid of the multiverse. John Byrne has mentioned many times that he would have been happy using Pre-Crisis Superman to tell the same stories, but it was mandated from above to do a "new" version. If Byrne was allowed to use the Pre-Crisis version, the damage NOT done to the Legion alone would have been worth the effort. The fact that Batman really didn't get a reboot at all, and went on to overtake Superman in popularity after DKR's, is proof that a soft reboot without shattering reality was all that was needed.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Apr 2, 2015 21:11:32 GMT -5
As I've said numerous times, an issue of All-Star Comics was one of the very first comics I ever bought. As was an issue of JLA with the annual JLA-JSA team-up. I was probably 8 or 9. It took me maybe 10 minutes to figure out the whole "multiple Earths" thing. If a 9 year old who had read maybe a dozen comics could understand it, adult writers and editors sure as Hell should have been able to figure it out.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Apr 2, 2015 21:20:55 GMT -5
Earth 2 was a rather brilliant solution for never-changing characters like Batman and Superman. Used probably, you really could eat your cake and have it too.
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Post by Phil Maurice on Apr 2, 2015 21:28:57 GMT -5
The fact that Batman really didn't get a reboot at all, and went on to overtake Superman in popularity after DKR's, is proof that a soft reboot without shattering reality was all that was needed. To be fair, Superman and Batman had been jockeying for position long before DKR, with each having the "upper hand" at various times. But your point is well taken.
Marvel's initial approach was to simply ignore stories that didn't serve the immediate needs of the universe they were building. Thus, we get a Captain America frozen in 1945 and Namor an amnesiac vagrant. The characters literally become "tabula rasa" upon which new stories can be writ.
This is complicated by the efforts of latter-day comics pros' obsession with exhuming and poring over the viscera of those old stories in mostly futile attempts to make it all fit together.
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Post by chadwilliam on Apr 2, 2015 21:36:10 GMT -5
I'm a big Superman fan - he's second only to Batman in my opinion - and yet I have no interest in the character in any of his incarnations (with the exception of All Star Superman) after 1986 because of Crisis. He's just not the same guy to me. That's more of my thoughts on John Byrne/what followed Byrne rather than my thoughts on Crisis but Crisis is what has made their characters so disposable. In other words, regardless of its merits as a story, I don't feel that its legacy justifies its existence.
And as for the notion that Crisis was necessitated by DC's history being so convoluted, why did it take three issues of The Untold Legend of the Batman to explain everything you needed to know about Batman, one Anniversary issue to do the same for Superman (Action 500), one issue for Flash (issue 300), etc and yet twelve issues for you just to understand how those stories were being thrown away? |
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Post by Phil Maurice on Apr 2, 2015 21:54:44 GMT -5
and yet twelve issues for you just to understand how those stories were being thrown away? In the hands of the right people, it would have taken just a single issue for each and you'd still have room for a pin-up or two but yeah, great question. And beautifully passive-aggressively phrased.  |
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