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Post by wildfire2099 on Sept 22, 2023 21:38:26 GMT -5
ps The Kingdom introduced Hypertime, which was a reboot to re-establish a multiverse, I listed that... It was kinda a slow ongoing thing that started there and got defined by Morrison in Multiversity.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 22, 2023 21:48:02 GMT -5
DC's had other reboots, if you count soft reboots and such, like Flash of Two World's or the New Look Batman. Heck, Showcase #4 is a reboot, really.
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Post by zaku on Sept 23, 2023 2:09:37 GMT -5
DC's had other reboots, if you count soft reboots and such, like Flash of Two World's or the New Look Batman. Heck, Showcase #4 is a reboot, really. Well we could distinguish between implicit reboots (like the ones you mentioned) and explicit ones, when the reboot is recognized as such within the story by the characters themselves.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2023 6:43:09 GMT -5
Showcase #4 was explained as an expansion of the mythos by creating the Earth-1/Earth-2 construct, not a reboot since the older events were still part of ongoing canon.
This is the "continuity" story I'd really love at this point:
The scene is dark. A lamp comes on and Superman sits up in bed. He looks to the other side of the bed and says, "Honey, wake up, you won’t believe the dream I just had!".
You see Lana sit up on the other side and she says "All right Clark, what is it?".
Superman says "There was this major crisis, it destroyed the very fabric of reality as we knew it. Nothing made sense in this place, the parallel Earths collapsed into one for a long time, we were all different people, it was all so strange. And then more crises kept happening, each one seeming to break reality even worse".
Lana says, "That settles it, no more Kryptonian food before you go to bed".
Superman says, "Go to sleep, Lana. You know, you really should wear more sweaters".
The Newhart credits roll. Comics become normal again, "events" mostly become a thing of the past, and you can read an issue or two of a comic series and get a full story experience.
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 23, 2023 7:13:05 GMT -5
Showcase #4 was explained as an expansion of the mythos by creating the Earth-1/Earth-2 construct, not a reboot since the older events were still part of ongoing canon. This is the "continuity" story I'd really love at this point: The scene is dark. A lamp comes on and Superman sits up in bed. He looks to the other side of the bed and says, "Honey, wake up, you won’t believe the dream I just had!". You see Lana sit up on the other side and she says "All right Clark, what is it?". Superman says "There was this major crisis, it destroyed the very fabric of reality as we knew it. Nothing made sense in this place, the parallel Earths collapsed into one for a long time, we were all different people, it was all so strange. And then more crises kept happening, each one seeming to break reality even worse". Lana says, "That settles it, no more Kryptonian food before you go to bed". Superman says, "Go to sleep, Lana. You know, you really should wear more sweaters". The Newhart credits roll. Comics become normal again, "events" mostly become a thing of the past, and you can read an issue or two of a comic series and get a full story experience. Bobby Ewing agrees.
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Post by MDG on Sept 23, 2023 7:56:45 GMT -5
Showcase #4 was explained as an expansion of the mythos by creating the Earth-1/Earth-2 construct, not a reboot since the older events were still part of ongoing canon. I like to think Flash 123 didn't create the Earth 1/Earth 2 concept as much as reveal it.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2023 9:16:29 GMT -5
Showcase #4 was explained as an expansion of the mythos by creating the Earth-1/Earth-2 construct, not a reboot since the older events were still part of ongoing canon. I like to think Flash 123 didn't create the Earth 1/Earth 2 concept as much as reveal it. Yeah, this is a little "define our terms" concept here. When I said "creating" the construct, I meant very literally a "real world" creative team constructed a retro-fitted explanation that expanded the definition of what was canon without contradicting the past (hence again why I don't consider it a reboot). In terms of the creative element itself, to your point, it was played as a "reveal" which was very satisfactory to many of us who loved the concept.
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Post by Chris on Sept 23, 2023 9:18:51 GMT -5
"And there were these three Phantom Zone villians, but only one ever spoke telepathically..."
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Post by tarkintino on Sept 23, 2023 10:13:34 GMT -5
Superman says "There was this major crisis, it destroyed the very fabric of reality as we knew it. Nothing made sense in this place, the parallel Earths collapsed into one for a long time, we were all different people, it was all so strange. And then more crises kept happening, each one seeming to break reality even worse". Heh. Oh, COIE made perfect sense--the healing, strengthening program the doctor ordered, which DC needed for nearly thirty years before its publication. The Silver Age of the Big Two put their collective feet on the pedal of the Eventmobile (i.e. the "Crisis" stories at DC) and never looked back. Regarding a full story experience in an issue or two--well, you'd have to go back to the early Silver Age, since major arcs (with much world building) spanning several issues (occasionally across titles) was ramped up at Marvel fairly early on, and fans ate that up, instead of asking for episodic monthlies of no consequence.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2023 10:18:47 GMT -5
Some may disagree with my position on Crisis, but I still think I'm correct, I thought about it really hard. I even sat in my thinking chair and all the clues added up.
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 23, 2023 12:30:55 GMT -5
I liked Crisis at first even though I completely disagreed with the reason for its existence. (I never needed anyone to tell me that the Mopee story, for instance actually never happened or that it could be consigned to whatever world Bat-Mite inhabited. But a couple of issues in, it was clear that a story meant to be epic in scope was being squished into too few issues. Wolfman coulda/shoulda been trying to imitate the Iliad (Yeah, I know, I know, a tough haul) with its combination of panoramic grandeur and attention to detail, or maybe The War of the Worlds, which achieved both goals in a smaller time and space. Now, in his defense, Wolfman might have been trying to create the sense of a cosmic blitzkrieg in the suddenness and swiftness of the Anti-Monitor's assault on the universe, and I'll admit that it worked to a point. But the story's sweep worked against its emotional impact (perhaps the deaths of Flash and Supergirl excepted... been so long since I read it that I can't recall how shocking and wrenching either one was), as vast swaths of the DC Universe disappeared in an eye-blink. And as intricate as Perez's art was, it struck me as more crammed than well designed. Panel afetr panel required a magnifying glass to identify any of the scores of famous and obscure characters jammed into them just for the sake of saying they were included amongst the combatants. Hemay well ahve been the wrong choice in hindsight.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2023 15:32:51 GMT -5
I started a fresh read of my Legion of Super-Heroes Archive volumes last night, and no matter how many times I've read these stories throughout my life (and that's quite a few), I seem to pick up something I didn't catch before (though more likely it's I've forgotten something new, my memory is definitely not what it once was). During the first Legion appearance in Adventure #247, Superboy of course meets the classic founding members trio of Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning "Boy" (soon to be Lad). But in one of the shots at the clubhouse, you can see the shaded backs of the heads of a few more unnamed members. I had forgotten that it was implied in the initial story that the Legion was bigger than just those 3 members. And then you get another frame later that shows a couple of faces in fact: And last night when I saw a certain "familar-looking" green-skinned lad with blond hair (second from the right behind the table in the image above), I said hold on, did they just recolor someone to look like Brainiac 5 (who obviously gets formally introduced in a later Legion story)? I looked for a scan of an original Adventure #247 page, and sure enough, seems to confirm that: I know recoloring has been a contentious topic with Archives and Masterworks in general, so I chalked this up to another example. But then I thought, let me check the reprint of this story in the Adventure Comics digest from the early 80's (how I first read the early Silver Age run). And while it further confirmed the coloring change in the Archive, I suddenly realized the panel was missing detail (zoomed in) and one of the word balloons had changed position: This surprised me, I had assumed digests were just shrunk down and my younger eyes were able to handle the smaller images better. But did they routinely zoom/crop material in digests to leave more room for the words? I feel like this rocks my nostalgic world a little when it comes to digests if so.
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Post by codystarbuck on Sept 23, 2023 18:33:43 GMT -5
I started a fresh read of my Legion of Super-Heroes Archive volumes last night, and no matter how many times I've read these stories throughout my life (and that's quite a few), I seem to pick up something I didn't catch before (though more likely it's I've forgotten something new, my memory is definitely not what it once was). During the first Legion appearance in Adventure #247, Superboy of course meets the classic founding members trio of Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning "Boy" (soon to be Lad). But in one of the shots at the clubhouse, you can see the shaded backs of the heads of a few more unnamed members. I had forgotten that it was implied in the initial story that the Legion was bigger than just those 3 members. And then you get another frame later that shows a couple of faces in fact: And last night when I saw a certain "familar-looking" green-skinned lad with blond hair (second from the right behind the table in the image above), I said hold on, did they just recolor someone to look like Brainiac 5 (who obviously gets formally introduced in a later Legion story)? I looked for a scan of an original Adventure #247 page, and sure enough, seems to confirm that: I know recoloring has been a contentious topic with Archives and Masterworks in general, so I chalked this up to another example. But then I thought, let me check the reprint of this story in the Adventure Comics digest from the early 80's (how I first read the early Silver Age run). And while it further confirmed the coloring change in the Archive, I suddenly realized the panel was missing detail (zoomed in) and one of the word balloons had changed position: This surprised me, I had assumed digests were just shrunk down and my younger eyes were able to handle the smaller images better. But did they routinely zoom/crop material in digests to leave more room for the words? I feel like this rocks my nostalgic world a little when it comes to digests if so. Comics did change their physical size for the printed material, which could create issues with resizing, for digests, depending on the era of the original story. They might have clipped the panels to fit better. I deal with this daily, when people bring us images they want to have printed at specific sizes, but the original ratio of the image doesn't match the ratio of the desired reprint size. I have to then explain basic mathematics and geometry that you can't just turn a square into a rectangle and similar things.
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Post by zaku on Sept 23, 2023 19:34:03 GMT -5
For fun I tried to recap the various DC mega-events and what impact they had on their universe.
BEFORE CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS
The so-called "Pre-Crisis Multiverse" consisted on an infinite number of worlds, separated by different "vibrational frequencies". This was caused by Krona, who tampered somehow the birth of Creation creating infinite universes. You can't change the past, but you can have multiple possibile futures (like Kamandi's future and Legion's are both possibile futures of Earth-1).
POST CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS
There is only one universe, created by the merger of 5 pre-Crisis universes. There are no parallel worlds, but in theory the past can be changed. Some continuity changes are caused by Superboy Prime's punches. You can have multiple alternate timeline and possibile futures.
POST ZERO HOUR
Hal Jordan, using the residual energies of the previous Crisis, wants to rebuild the universe, also creating parallel worlds. He is stopped by our heroes, but the DC universe is still recreated with some changes compared to the Pre-Zero Hour version (for example a new Legion) and the alternative timelines which existed before ZH are eliminated.
POST THE KINGDOM (Hypertime)
In the mini The Kingdom the Hypertime is introduced. Hypertime is a network of alternate timelines that branch off from the DC Universe. These timelines sometimes overlap with each other, causing alterations in reality. Characters can cross from one timeline to another if needed. To be clear, they are not alternate worlds but alternate timelines, which can be born at any time and then merge again with the main timeline.
POST INFINITE CRISIS
The main DC universe is changed again and a new multiverse is born, but with only 52 new universes. These 52 universes were initially identical to the main one, but thanks to Mr. Mind's tampering they all become different from each other (some of them resemble some of the Pre-Crisis Earths).
AFTER FLASHPOINT/NEW 52
We are the first real reboot after COIE. While in the previous crises after COIE there were more or less marked changes to the DC universe, here almost all the characters start from scratch, differentiating themselves from their pre-New 52 counterparts, even if some events of their past resemble the pre-reboot ones . There is still a multiverse made up of 52 universes.
We will later find out that these changes were caused by Dr. Manhattan!!!
(I will continue tomorrow...)
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2023 20:30:04 GMT -5
Comics did change their physical size for the printed material, which could create issues with resizing, for digests, depending on the era of the original story. They might have clipped the panels to fit better. I deal with this daily, when people bring us images they want to have printed at specific sizes, but the original ratio of the image doesn't match the ratio of the desired reprint size. I have to then explain basic mathematics and geometry that you can't just turn a square into a rectangle and similar things. That overall makes sense, obviously some of that basic geometry as you say is going to matter. This reminds me a bit when I learned some of my Marvel 70's reprint series of earlier 60's material would sometimes drop entire pages to make the overall issue size work for the publishing constraints they had at that point. Or the arbitrary recoloring with the aforementioned Archives and Masterworks (that seems less excusable). At the end of the day, it's not going to make me throw out my digests, it's more just surprise that the editing could be that drastic. Can I still enjoy the stories plenty fine? Of course. Honestly, at my age, it may even be a little gift for my eyes if the sacrifice in the art keeps the text size larger so I can read it a little easier. Though candidly, I'll probably stick to the Archives for the most part, much as the "purist" in me gets annoyed with things like the coloring, the volumes read very pleasantly overall.
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