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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2021 12:19:46 GMT -5
A topic like this will always be subjective, but here goes…
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it can be lame. As a wrestling fan, I’ve lost count of the number of times a wrestling promotion has imitated a gimmick/character that is far more successful elsewhere, the imitator obviously not being anywhere near as strong as the original. I won’t turn this into a wrestling analogy thread, but if you’re familiar with the WWF’s Ultimate Warrior, he was a success on many levels, but when WCW painted face paint on a guy, and called him Renegade, well it just didn’t have the same impact. How could it?
You can pick your own analogy. Some work, some don’t.
I liked the idea of the multiverse in DC when I was old enough to understand it. I liked the idea of other Earths, where a Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle could be happy together, where Lex Luthor might be on the side of the angels, where Batman and Robin could be active during WWII. It all felt “organic”.
What of the Marvel Multiverse? To be honest, it felt like they were playing “catch-up”. It’s hard to put my finger on anything specific, it just felt like it was less organic, and a lot more contrived, than the DC Multiverse. A bit like Marvel were trying too hard at something that was “late to the party”.
One has to be careful not to make blanket statements. Nuance is better. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed some Marvel Multiverse tales. Hell, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is awesome! Various WHAT IF? tales have been great. I just feel that, much like a photocopy, Marvel’s multiverse has been less successful (on a personal level of fan enjoyment) than DC’s multiverse. It also felt like the DC Multiverse had a more coherent, believable reason to exist, a more believable genesis, while the Marvel Multiverse just felt like a cash cow, an attempt to jump on a bandwagon, a Renegade to DC’s Ultimate Warrior, if you will.
That’s as best as I can explain it, and I know others may well have an opposing view. It’s all there to be enjoyed and not picked apart too pedantically, but at the same time, on a purely personal fan level, the Marvel Multiverse hasn’t appealed to me as much as the DC Multiverse.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2021 12:44:24 GMT -5
I was literally thinking about this very topic this morning, triggered mostly by my disdain for the "numbering system" Marvel uses for their various worlds (I literally can't keep track of a single "index number", DC had this system down in the pre-Crisis continuity).
Your write-up nails it for me from the exposure I've had to Marvel's Multiverse, though overall I don't really read much material past the early 2000's, but definitely aware of stuff like Into the Spider-Verse.
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Post by Cei-U! on Dec 24, 2021 14:20:51 GMT -5
The DC Multiverse wasn't so much organic as syncretic. Most of its components existed independently before being introduced to DC: the Earth-S heroes were originally published by Fawcett, Earth-X's by Quality, Earth-4's by Charlton. Even the All-American heroes--Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern--didn't actually belong to DC until 1945. It's not unlike the way the classical mythological pantheons were made up of numerous local deities who became subordinate to the dominant culture's gods, or the way Will Scarlett, Alan-a-Dale, and Maid Marian, once the stars of their own story cycles, were incorporated into the Robin Hood legend.
Marvel, on the other hand, made a point of all their characters co-existing in the same world, not just the super-heroes but also the war and Western heroes, the monsters, Robert E. Howard's barbarians, even the teen humor characters. The other realities that came later--New Universe, 2099, Ultimates--were consciously created by a handful of editors, writers, and artists within a comparitively short span, an entirely diffeent process than DC's acquisition of ready-made realities with years, even decades, of backstory.
Cei-U!
I haven't had enough caffeine for this!
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Post by kirby101 on Dec 24, 2021 14:21:18 GMT -5
Marvel stopped being "organic" when they started to mandate a Big Event where somebody important dies every year. And having every book be part of it.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 24, 2021 14:37:19 GMT -5
I, too, have a disdain for Marvel’s numbering system. I mean, did they really need designations for the early DC/Marvel crossovers, the Spidey/Transformers crossover, etc?
I do like Cei-U’s use of the word “syncretic”. True though that is, I guess I still feel that DC’s multiverse at least has the appearance of being organic, whereas Marvel’s feel contrived.
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 24, 2021 15:10:27 GMT -5
A topic like this will always be subjective, but here goes… They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it can be lame. As a wrestling fan, I’ve lost count of the number of times a wrestling promotion has imitated a gimmick/character that is far more successful elsewhere, the imitator obviously not being anywhere near as strong as the original. I won’t turn this into a wrestling analogy thread, but if you’re familiar with the WWF’s Ultimate Warrior, he was a success on many levels, but when WCW painted face paint on a guy, and called him Renegade, well it just didn’t have the same impact. How could it? You can pick your own analogy. Some work, some don’t. I liked the idea of the multiverse in DC when I was old enough to understand it. I liked the idea of other Earths, where a Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle could be happy together, where Lex Luthor might be on the side of the angels, where Batman and Robin could be active during WWII. It all felt “organic”. What of the Marvel Multiverse? To be honest, it felt like they were playing “catch-up”. It’s hard to put my finger on anything specific, it just felt like it was less organic, and a lot more contrived, than the DC Multiverse. A bit like Marvel were trying too hard at something that was “late to the party”. One has to be careful not to make blanket statements. Nuance is better. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed some Marvel Multiverse tales. Hell, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is awesome! Various WHAT IF? tales have been great. I just feel that, much like a photocopy, Marvel’s multiverse has been less successful (on a personal level of fan enjoyment) than DC’s multiverse. It also felt like the DC Multiverse had a more coherent, believable reason to exist, a more believable genesis, while the Marvel Multiverse just felt like a cash cow, an attempt to jump on a bandwagon, a Renegade to DC’s Ultimate Warrior, if you will. That’s as best as I can explain it, and I know others may well have an opposing view. It’s all there to be enjoyed and not picked apart too pedantically, but at the same time, on a purely personal fan level, the Marvel Multiverse hasn’t appealed to me as much as the DC Multiverse. The last time Marvel's expanding universe felt organic was (first) the 1960s, when Golden Age characters were revived / added to the Silver Age, with the occasional villain manipulation of reality sending heroes into alternate universes (as seen in 1968's The Avengers Special #2). Then the Bronze Age, where Lee, Thomas & Englehart's expansion the universe was more about uniting/explaining more of the publisher's titles than going overboard with 100,000 realities and characters (the state of Marvel since the 1980s)--the latter being the very reason so many of DC's titles had become an incoherent, silly mess demanding the perfect solution in the form of Crisis on Infinite Earths. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Dec 24, 2021 19:47:10 GMT -5
A topic like this will always be subjective, but here goes… They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it can be lame. As a wrestling fan, I’ve lost count of the number of times a wrestling promotion has imitated a gimmick/character that is far more successful elsewhere, the imitator obviously not being anywhere near as strong as the original. I won’t turn this into a wrestling analogy thread, but if you’re familiar with the WWF’s Ultimate Warrior, he was a success on many levels, but when WCW painted face paint on a guy, and called him Renegade, well it just didn’t have the same impact. How could it? You can pick your own analogy. Some work, some don’t. I liked the idea of the multiverse in DC when I was old enough to understand it. I liked the idea of other Earths, where a Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle could be happy together, where Lex Luthor might be on the side of the angels, where Batman and Robin could be active during WWII. It all felt “organic”. What of the Marvel Multiverse? To be honest, it felt like they were playing “catch-up”. It’s hard to put my finger on anything specific, it just felt like it was less organic, and a lot more contrived, than the DC Multiverse. A bit like Marvel were trying too hard at something that was “late to the party”. One has to be careful not to make blanket statements. Nuance is better. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed some Marvel Multiverse tales. Hell, INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE is awesome! Various WHAT IF? tales have been great. I just feel that, much like a photocopy, Marvel’s multiverse has been less successful (on a personal level of fan enjoyment) than DC’s multiverse. It also felt like the DC Multiverse had a more coherent, believable reason to exist, a more believable genesis, while the Marvel Multiverse just felt like a cash cow, an attempt to jump on a bandwagon, a Renegade to DC’s Ultimate Warrior, if you will. That’s as best as I can explain it, and I know others may well have an opposing view. It’s all there to be enjoyed and not picked apart too pedantically, but at the same time, on a purely personal fan level, the Marvel Multiverse hasn’t appealed to me as much as the DC Multiverse. The last time Marvel's expanding universe felt organic was (first) the 1960s, when Golden Age characters were revived / added to the Silver Age, with the occasional villain manipulation of reality sending heroes into alternate universes (as seen in 1968's The Avengers Special #2). Then the Bronze Age, where Lee, Thomas & Englehart's expansion the universe was more about uniting/explaining more of the publisher's titles than going overboard with 100,000 realities and characters (the state of Marvel since the 1980s)--the latter being the very reason so many of DC's titles had become an incoherent, silly mess demanding the perfect solution in the form of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I assume by “demanding” you mean completely unnecessary, and by “perfect” you mean ridiculously poorly written. |
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 24, 2021 22:28:19 GMT -5
The last time Marvel's expanding universe felt organic was (first) the 1960s, when Golden Age characters were revived / added to the Silver Age, with the occasional villain manipulation of reality sending heroes into alternate universes (as seen in 1968's The Avengers Special #2). Then the Bronze Age, where Lee, Thomas & Englehart's expansion the universe was more about uniting/explaining more of the publisher's titles than going overboard with 100,000 realities and characters (the state of Marvel since the 1980s)--the latter being the very reason so many of DC's titles had become an incoherent, silly mess demanding the perfect solution in the form of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I assume by “demanding” you mean completely unnecessary, and by “perfect” you mean ridiculously poorly written. No, "demanding" as in DC--with few exceptions--was largely a joke--a ship going in circles of barely detectable continuity. COIE was DC setting decades of nonsense right, and jettisoning much of what made DC's content laughable compared to Silver/Bronze Age Marvel. Its success was due to the readers longing for that correction, and finally getting it in one of the few comic "events" that lived up to that descriptors' meaning. |
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Post by kirby101 on Dec 25, 2021 9:48:59 GMT -5
I think there is valid criticism of COIE being over long and a bit of a mess at times. But I agree with tark that it was necessary at the time and cleaned up the DCU. It made rebooted books like Superman and Flash post crisis much better.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2021 10:00:07 GMT -5
I think there is valid criticism of COIE being over long and a bit of a mess at times. But I agree with tark that it was necessary at the time and cleaned up the DCU. It made rebooted books like Superman and Flash post crisis much better. I was 5-6 when COIE was released. Even at that age, around the time I started reading comics, I could understand the idea of multiple Earths. Perhaps not the scientific semantics, but a that age, I could understand different planets. So it wasn’t a stretch to believe in more than one Earth. As I got older, and what I read of DC Comics’ Earths made them sound distinct, I understood Earth-S and the like. So while COIE is beautifully drawn, I consider it to be the comicbook equivalent of BLADE RUNNER: “beautifully shot and photographed”, but with a story that really doesn’t stay with you. That’s just my view, of course. |
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Post by beyonder1984 on Dec 25, 2021 10:15:29 GMT -5
The irony about using The Renegade analogy as a failed copy of the Ultimate Warrior is that the Ultimate Warrior + Sting (Blade Runners) copied The Road Warriors. And they had copied Mad Max. So imitating does not always mean the new version is inferior.
Anyway, DC's multiverse (until 1990s Hypertime and 2000s 52 stuff) was more natural to me as well.
With Marvel, I loved What If comics as one-shot thought experiments to see "what could have happened", but when Marvel canonized each alternate version (such as Timequake + Spider-Girl/Fantastic Five) it took away the charm and seemed forced. DC eventually fell into the same trap with Elseworlds.
Marvel makes Time confusing. Although I enjoyed the 1990s Guardians of the Galaxy, it was a "possible future". DC's Silver Age Legion seemed more real.
I never got into the Captain Britain stuff.
Marvel probably should have stuck with alternate timelines instead of labeling them as alternate earths. Even Squadron Sinister/Supreme is mind-boggling at times. Marvel has crossing over in its DNA so is always tempted to have spin-off universes meet 616 (another label I dislike), like 2099 and Ultimate. And then there's Marvel Knights-type comics, that don't quite feel that they fit.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2021 10:55:43 GMT -5
The irony about using The Renegade analogy as a failed copy of the Ultimate Warrior is that the Ultimate Warrior + Sting (Blade Runners) copied The Road Warriors. And they had copied Mad Max. So imitating does not always mean the new version is inferior. Of course. I mean, in the WWF, I think Demolition carved out a good niche for themselves despite being imitators of a kind. I think Deadpool has done rather well, despite similarities to others. So, yes, imitators can be successful - or even better in some cases. On the Multiverse issue, I do feel DC has done it better. And Marvel’s designations are silly, they are like the numbers you see on a modem. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2021 10:57:27 GMT -5
I think Crisis did the exact opposite of what it was purported to do, making a bigger mess of continuity than ever before.
It wasn't that hard previously...Earth-1/Earth-2. Annual team-ups of the JSA and JLA, fun. Earth-3, nice twist. Earth-S, makes sense, Shazam world always had it's own feel (Tawky Tawney for example works great there, doesn't make as much sense on say Earth-1). And so on...I can honestly say I was never confused and if anything, thought it all made a lot of sense and was pretty cool (and I was a young reader back then).
With Crisis, it's like no Superboy or Supergirl? Why would that be cool? Plus the whole Legion of Super-Heroes no longer makes sense, despite attempts to retro fit the pocket universe explanation (how complicated would THAT be to a new reader with no background?). Everything I just read in the amazing All-Star Squadron run no longer really held together, but parts did, but not exactly.
No more team-ups between the JSA and JLA crossing Earths? Those were awesome! Batman and Catwoman didn't have baby Huntress? Oh, and now we'll have to figure out a new back story for Power Girl? Captain Marvel lives in the same world as Superman? So...now they're not so special anymore. And per Batman Year One, Catwoman is now...well, yeah (great art by Mazzucchelli though).
It just wasn't well thought out...what DC needed instead IMO was more magic like what Alan Moore did with Swamp Thing. No grand "events" to rewrite continuity, just brilliant and refreshing storytelling.
Marvel never needed to focus on a multiverse to my taste (other than references like What If?), and when they dabbled in a "big event" with Onslaught followed by Heroes Reborn, it felt like they were going down the same path until Heroes Return shifted back to more the status quo. The main Marvel universe always felt like this awesome place to me, and while I accepted divergent timestreams, dystopian alternate futures, etc. as being part of the mythos, a full-blown multiverse takes away a lot of the luster for me of what made the core setting special (and a different flavor of super-hero storytelling than DC).
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2021 10:59:57 GMT -5
I think Crisis did the exact opposite of what it was purported to do, making a bigger mess of continuity than ever before. It wasn't that hard previously...Earth-1/Earth-2. Annual team-ups of the JSA and JLA, fun. Earth-3, nice twist. Earth-S, makes sense, Shazam world always had it's own feel (Tawky Tawney for example works great there, doesn't make as much sense on say Earth-1). And so on...I can honestly say I was never confused and if anything, thought it all made a lot of sense and was pretty cool (and I was a young reader back then). With Crisis, it's like no Superboy or Supergirl? Why would that be cool? Plus the whole Legion of Super-Heroes no longer makes sense, despite attempts to retro fit the pocket universe explanation (how complicated would THAT be to a new reader with no background?). Everything I just read in the amazing All-Star Squadron run no longer really held together, but parts did, but not exactly. No more team-ups between the JSA and JLA crossing Earths? Those were awesome! Batman and Catwoman didn't have baby Huntress? Oh, and now we'll have to figure out a new back story for Power Girl? Captain Marvel lives in the same world as Superman? So...now they're not so special anymore. And per Batman Year One, Catwoman is now...well, yeah (great art by Mazzucchelli though). It just wasn't well thought out...what DC needed instead IMO was more magic like what Alan Moore did with Swamp Thing. No grand "events" to rewrite continuity, just brilliant and refreshing storytelling. Marvel never needed to focus on a multiverse to my taste (other than references like What If?), and when they dabbled in a "big event" with Onslaught followed by Heroes Reborn, it felt like they were going down the same path until Heroes Return shifted back to more the status quo. The main Marvel universe always felt like this awesome place to me, and while I accepted divergent timestreams, dystopian alternate futures, etc. as being part of the mythos, a full-blown multiverse takes away a lot of the luster for me of what made the core setting special (and a different flavor of super-hero storytelling than DC). Absolutely! I agree with every word. It was never confusing to me. If I could get to grips with all the silly alphabet groups in boxing, with more to come no doubt, I could sure as hell get to grips with Earth-S, Earth-1, etc. |
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Post by tarkintino on Dec 25, 2021 11:41:14 GMT -5
I think there is valid criticism of COIE being over long and a bit of a mess at times. But I agree with tark that it was necessary at the time and cleaned up the DCU. It made rebooted books like Superman and Flash post crisis much better. Agreed, especially straightening out the Superman end of DC after the damage caused under Weisinger. |
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