Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Minor problem on Earth-Six. (Not like it's a crisis or anything.)

Part one: History of a Crisis

DC Comics has a huge problem: they don't know when to admit that they fucked up. Continuity is a rather touchy subject in terms of comics fans, but when the same central set of characters is being managed by anywhere north of three dozen mix-and-match creative teams, mistakes are to be expected. Why, for instance, can't Alfred remember what Bruce had for breakfast in Detective Comics #852?

(Trick question; Batman was dead in #852.) Spoilers: do not read the previous sentence if you have not read Final Crisis 6. <-- There's Grant Morrison-esque sequential storytelling for you. Is this a fifth-week event? Because that looked like a TANGENT. (Give yourself 10 points if you got all three of those jokes.)

Back to the task at hand, continuity is going to be broken, played with, and retconned so long as shared-universe storytelling exists in any form. However, much like the President in Dr. Strangelove (and a few real people whose names I cannot think of without shuddering) DC has a tendency to go big-red-button-happy whenever things aren't going their way. The difference is DC's big red button doesn't trigger a nuke. It is simply the "shot heard round the comic store." And they have named their abomination "Crisis."
While Crisis is now synonymous with a Staples-esque easy button, creating multiverses, destroying multiverses or resetting continuity like an N64 game with a graphical glitch, originally (pre-1985) the term Crisis was used to denote the annual team-up issues between Earth 1's Justice League of America and Earth 2's Justice Society of America. The precedent for this ruling was set forth in the court of sensible storytelling and the monumental trial "Flash of Two Worlds vs. any logical pseudo-science." Now, with universe-hopping a possibility and Golden Age heroes and Silver Age heroes meeting each other (and realizing they shared similar names, costumes, villains, and storylines due to the fact that creativity doesn't exist on any numbered Earth) one story per year is in the bag. The only task they had before spitting each carbon copy crisis out of the printing press was having a (not particularly bright) six year old read the preliminary script and name it whatever he sees fit.
Examples:
  • Crisis on Earth One
  • Crisis on Earth Two
  • Crisis on Earth Three (yep, there are more)
  • Crisis on Earth A (point the way to Earth WTF, would you)
  • Crisis Between Earth One and Earth Two
  • The Super-Crisis that Struck Earth Two
  • The Negative Crisis on Earths One-Two (did they just subtract Earths? Can we divide Earth 5 by Earth X? Find the area under the curve of Earth 2? . . . must stop . . . before . . . I make a . . . Power Girl joke.)
  • Crisis on Earth X
  • Crisis in Eternity
  • Crisis on Earth S
  • Crisis in Tomorrow (*Gasp!* It's only a day away! Err . . . so I've heard.)
  • Crisis in the 30th century
  • Crisis in triplicate (Documentation on this Crisis can be found in the sub-basement of your local City Hall building.)
  • Crisis from Yesterday
  • Crisis from Tomorrow (they already essentially reused a title with some preposition swapping)
  • Crisis above Earth-1 (Snakes on a Watchtower)
  • Crisis on New Genesis
  • Crisis between Two Earths (another redo)
  • Crisis on Apokalips
  • Countdown to Crisis (not to be confused with Countdown to Infinite Crisis or Countdown to Final Crisis)
  • Crisis in Limbo (Really DC? How low can you go?)
  • Crisis on Earth Prime (read it, STUPID!)
  • Crisis in the Thunderbolt Dimension
  • Family Crisis (which should be a sitcom starring Reginald Vel Johnson)

Then everything changed in 1985, when Crisis took on a whole new meaning (and a slightly more sinister purpose in the editorial offices, which were coincidentally locaded at 666 Fifth Avenue.) But, as they say in the biz, "TO BE CONTINUED" (barring writer or artist delays)

No comments:

Post a Comment