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Post by rberman on Dec 1, 2018 22:58:35 GMT -5
That is a good point. Godzilla was once part of the Marvel Universe, but I suspect he is elsewhere now. So I do understand what you mean. During Matt Fraction's run on Uncanny X-Men, he used a character, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, who, at that point, had only ever appeared in the Godzilla book. That seems to imply the Godzilla stories are canon, even if they are never directly referenced.
Well sure, they have to be canon! Godzille meet Devil Dinosaur, who met Boom Boom, Sunspot, and Warlock from X-Men comics. Except I guess that Moon Boy is Moon Girl in the latest reboot. |
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Post by Cheswick on Dec 1, 2018 23:06:00 GMT -5
During Matt Fraction's run on Uncanny X-Men, he used a character, Dr. Yuriko Takiguchi, who, at that point, had only ever appeared in the Godzilla book. That seems to imply the Godzilla stories are canon, even if they are never directly referenced.
Well sure, they have to be canon! Godzille meet Devil Dinosaur, who met Boom Boom, Sunspot, and Warlock from X-Men comics. Except I guess that Moon Boy is Moon Girl in the latest reboot. I thought taxidriver was suggesting that the Godzilla issues were no longer considered canon but, rather, stories that took place in an alternate universe. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2018 6:25:16 GMT -5
I was suggesting that, perhaps erroneously. ;-)
BeccaBear, for me, I think the constant revisiting of alternate universes by DC ruined a lot for me. Did umpteen "Crisis" sequels really do anything?
Who were they supposed to appeal to? New readers wouldn't really care much for 20-year-old stories that they may not have read or been aware of, anyway. And long-term fans like myself probably sighed and said, "What, another Crisis event?"
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Post by zaku on Dec 2, 2018 7:49:58 GMT -5
Well the last Secret Wars was all based on the Marvel Multiverse. It was the most similar thing to DC's Crises that Marvel ever done. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2018 8:12:25 GMT -5
Was it change rather than illusion of change, though?
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Post by hondobrode on Dec 2, 2018 11:41:09 GMT -5
Marvel has always prided itself on not needing a reboot, but, the sliding timeline has always rubbed me the wrong way.
All the alternate timelines might as well be different earths / dimensions.
DC was doing it right with the multiverse, but, I'll be the first to say that at that time DC needed some shaking up, and Wolfman and Perez, two Marvel hot shots, helped reinvigorate the company.
Honestly, I don't think DC has ever embraced their multiverse enough.
I'd make different imprints for different earths, that way you could have Earth-1 Shazam, now Earth-0 I think (ugh) and Earth-S and easily know the difference, especially with a single page preface / last issue recap.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2018 12:00:02 GMT -5
Marvel seemed to do "mini-reboots", e.g. the Mephisto/Spider-Man retcon a few years back. Or simply diverged with another earth.
Do they need a Crisis-style reboot? Does any company?
Crisis on Infinite Earths is beautifully illustrated, but if you ask me, the story is only average - then and now. Through historical eyes, I have to ask whether it was ever necessary even if it did lead to great stories like JB's The Man of Steel. At the time, it felt special to my young eyes, but it never felt like the greatest or most necessary storyline.
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Post by rberman on Dec 2, 2018 12:28:51 GMT -5
Sliding timelines are a necessary convention which I appreciate, because a story which occurs over a few days can take a year to create and bring to market. They allow heroes to be as busy as we are, rather than spending most of the year either doing nothing or, worse, doing something interesting that we miss. The characters in FF#1-50 are the same now as they were in the 1960s, and I am glad that the circumstances of their creation did not straightjacket the details of the story’s internal timeline. Even Busiek started doing Astro City stories set in the past, because he missed key moments in the life of one hero while he was busy telling a story about another one. Classic X-Men gave Claremont the luxury to go back and tell some of the in-between stories.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2018 12:40:03 GMT -5
Sliding timelines are useful, and I never have heard complaints from fans of James Bond and the like over his sliding timeline.
It can get silly - e.g. Sherlock Holmes being active during WWII in one of the Basil Rathbone films - but you just get on with appreciating the storylines, anyway.
It can be awkward. It'll never tie together. In GoldenEye, M calls Bond a "relic of the Cold War", yet in one of the Daniel Craig films, she is talking about missing the Cold War (the blooper there is that in GoldenEye, she is supposed to be new in the role of M).
These are things that one can never avoid in a sliding timeline.
Ben and Reed's WWII exploits were often mentioned in early FF tales. They couldn't do that now, not unless they came up with some convoluted reason why Reed and Ben had been active during WWII. You can only put one character into suspended animation.
I guess the thing to do is to accept that a sliding timeline will have inconsistencies, and that there is no way around that. Topical references only add to the inconsistency, e.g. a character meeting JFK or Nixon and then also meeting Obama or Trump (Heaven forbid!).
But I prefer sliding timeline inconsistencies to "blow it all up and start again" Crisis-style reboots.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 2, 2018 16:14:11 GMT -5
Personally, I never, ever liked the Multiverse Concept -- it is too misleading and confuse new readers and all that; and the Crisis on Infinite Earths is one of the most outlandish storylines ever. I know Marvel has one or more of these concepts and I never, ever bother with it at all. I just feel numb after reading them and discard the book(s) back to my LCS for credit. I'm not sure it's possible to disagree more with something. Two of the first comics I bought when I was 8 years old were issues of All-Star Comic and issues of JLA with JSA and Shazam team-ups. It took my 8 year old mind about 30 seconds to figure out the multi-verse. And I introduced a number of people to comics over the years. Not a one of them was incapable of understanding multiple Earths and realities. It's a standard science fiction trope that goes back to at least the late 40s. What happened is that middle-aged writers at DC weren't able (or didn't care to) keep track and that caused butt-hurt among anal-retentive fan-boys...many of whom became writers and editors. So in answer...Does Comics Need a Multiverse? No...Comics don't "need" much of anything. But there's nothing wrong with multiverses. They can be very fun and useful. What Comics do need are more fans who aren't awful. (The last statement is not necessarily directed at anyone on these boards and definitely not at Mecha.). |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2018 16:30:46 GMT -5
Slam_Bradley ... I need a day to think about what you said here.
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Post by berkley on Dec 2, 2018 16:55:43 GMT -5
Like everything else, it all depends on how it's used. It can be a fun story device, and in the hands of a talented writer it can even be something really special. But it can also be stupid, lazy, and repetitive in the wrong hands.
From the outside looking in, I have the impression that it has become perhaps a little too much of a fall-back in superhero books the last several years - perhaps it can be traced back to Ellis's Planetary, which felt fresh and innovative at the time but has been imitated to death by now. But I admit that's an impression based on limited reading so I could be wrong.
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Post by zaku on Dec 2, 2018 18:25:41 GMT -5
I just want to add that the aforementioned Secret Wars is considered by Marvel a reboot (the multiverse is destroyed and recreated). Yes, it's quite similar to the pre-Secret Wars multiverse, but there are some changes (Ultimate Universe was destroyed, Mile lives in the 616 universe, Doom has a new face, etc)...
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 2, 2018 18:36:51 GMT -5
If I remember this right, there was an Earth Prime mentioned in DC comics which was our (the readers) world, with no superheroes. Marvel did something once where they made a few comics titled Marvels Comics which were supposed to have been the comics that would be on newsstands within the Marvel 'universe' and it had Thor being high-tech because people on his Earth didn't imagine he could actually be the Norse god, Spider-Man was a monster, as the X-Men were, and the Fantastic Four comic was officially authorized by the four members. A cute idea maybe dating back to comments on Spidey Super Stories being the comic on newsstands on Marvel Earth, as were those Amalgam titles like Iron Lantern, Dr. StrangeFate, X-Patrol and Spider-Boy and The Legion Of Guardians. I think the concept can be fun but it can also get way overly involved. If it can't be explained simply... Not sure how much explaining the do in the Spiderverse things, maybe they just say here they all are and let you make of it what you will? People used to enjoy filling in the details for themselves and not having every single thing all mapped out in guide books or encyclopedias! Who knows, maybe J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert were the bad influences?  |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2018 18:52:52 GMT -5
I wasn't aware that Spidey Super Stories was what it was until BeccaBear mentioned it elsewhere. It is quite interesting, I need to read more of those books.
Blaming Tolkien and Herbert? You could be right. ;-)
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