Was Crisis on Infinite Earths a mistake

>- Supergirl and Powergirl backstory became overly convoluted

Supergirl wasn't an issue because she didn't exist anymore, they should have retconned out Power Girl too but Alan Kupperberg liked her and had enough clout to keep her.

>- Alfred became Bruce Wayne's foster parent for no reason

Good move.

>- Hawkman became two different characters (Carter Hall and Katar Hol) with different backstories living on the same Earth

Hawklore wasn't fucked up by COIE it was fucked up by an editor not understanding the Hawkworld mini.

>-Whole DC history became insanely compressed to only 10 years

That was already the case with Earth-1 pre-Crisis and the WW2 stuff was still going on post-Crisis.

> Supergirl didn't exist anymore
But she does. She was created by Lex Luthor from the Pocket Universe.

I hope this is an ironic post and that you're not actually a smoothbrain who thinks 1985-2000 DC was bad, user.

>But she does. She was created by Lex Luthor from the Pocket Universe.

That's not the Supergirl you posted, and the mirror universe one has nothing to do with Power Girl.

>I hope this is an ironic post and that you're not actually a smoothbrain who thinks 1985-2000 DC was bad, user.
Why would I? Quality content all around

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Well she was supposed to replace Kara Zor-El.

It was a case of poor execution but the end result was that DC came back from the brink by finishing the process Marv Wolfman and George Perez had started with NTT in 1982. Which is to say they finally modernized DC into a company that could stand up to Marvel.

>DC could stand up to Marvel
They could do it without destroying the Multiverse. They could just move all the comics into Earth 0 or sth.

They could have, but they didn't want to. The thing that DC editorial hated the absolute most in the 1980s was the multiverse, as it was seen as something that turned kids away from reading their books. "Oh this comic isn't about the REAL Superman or Green Lantern it doesn't MATTER" was the argument they'd use. Of course this was more likely something the editors believed rather than kids, and the weak sales were due to titles being of very poor quality and done in an antiquated style.

The original plan for COIE didn't even involve the strange ending it actually has where everyone is now on "and have always been on" the same earth. The original ending according to Marv was that the surviving four or five earths were smushed into one and everyone was now living on it, but everyone still remembered the multiverse. Of course editorial fucked around with the production of COIE MANY times during the year or so when it came out as Roy Thomas has extensively written about, with the Earth-2 situation turning especially ugly.

And why would they make all the original stories made by original authors non-canon?
Batman comics made by Bill Finger should be canon. Same with Superman comics made by Jerry Siegel.

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>poor sales
Maybe that was the reason. Idk. Still they could do sth different.
>ending was changed
I didn't know about that. Interesting.
I wouldn't really mind the first ending to be honest. Too bad editorial staff changed it.

DC is strange setting. More than half of it's greatest moments seem to be mistakes.

Kingdom Come couldn't decide whether it was supposed to be about Superman Bad or Superman Da Bess. The Dark Knight Returns is written in Millerspeak. Infinite Crisis brought with it Batman's Brother Eye project biting everyone in the ass without a hint of remorse from him, cemented SBP as irredeemable, and had to have the Joker neck Alexander Luthor because the heroes wouldn't kill him after everything he did with no remorse. Blackest Night was full of cringeworthy zombies shouting WOO WOO WOO and being overpowered for no particular reason, all at the behest of Nekron who for some reason the narrative hinted at having valid, complex motivations but never explored them by the time the skittles arrive on the scene. At the time Final Crisis was published editorial meddling and delays made it come across as incoherent, and Countdown did less than nothing to help explain it other than give people powerlevel argument fuel about SBP and Extant. Amazons Attack! was basically Heroes in Crisis for amazons and olympians before Heroes in Crisis was even a thing. Flashpoint never fucking explained why Professor Zoom can meddle with the timeline no problemo when Barry creates an awful fucking one he then annihilated. Convergence felt like an excuse plot to have everyone depowered and confused all because of a Braniac with poorly explained powers. Darkseid War made a fight between Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor seem less impressive than the Hulk going all-out on Rulkie AFTER previous comics such as Constantine, Earth 2: World's End and that one JL special specifically established even the New 52 Darkseid emanation has legit cosmic powers that let him ravage entire universes after killing entire Justice Leagues by himself-that one's more on the New 52 as a whole, but it was VERY FUCKING BADLY explained if-fuck this post is getting too long

You forgot the cringefest that was Injustice. But other than that I think you're right. That's why I don't bother with DC after '86.

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-it was explained at all, why Earth 0's JL could punt Darkseid back to Apokalips then build a Hellbat-suit that let Bruce go head to head with him and kick him to the curb then get out with no consequences. On the subject of the New 52, Pandora's so forgetable I don't even remember anything about her other than she had something to do with the Seven Deadly Sins. The Reign of Doomsday is just a cheap attempt to recreate in that Doomsday hype. Doomsday Clock took far too long to come after shoehorning in a character that didn't need to be shoehorned into anything else as an uber cosmic threat, admittedly for a story that ended up being structured in such a way that said uber cosmic threat status wasn't actually the point. Seriously, for all my gripes about Johns I'm actually impressed about what a nice save he made in that final issue after all the delays. As for Dark Nights Metal, Heroes in Crisis and Year of the Villain-I think they're self-explainatory.

Despite everything I just said, I do enjoy DC as a setting and bashing it isn't the point of this post. It's just, I really don't like about how a lot of it's tentpole moments aren't put together well. And in many cases, such as Final Crisis which I do actually like, it really feels more the fault of editorial having very specific ideas they bent the plot in half to push through. I still don't understand how the hell Prime Time and Maxwell Lord (who I will never stop reminding people, USED TO BE A HERO AND NOT A MIND CONTROL CARICATURE) haven't had their redemption arcs yet. Fuck, I wasn't sure how Zatanna was going to come back from the mindwipe thing and somehow Seven Soldiers did it okay.

What I'm trying to say is, in retrospect COIE feels like a warning about how retarded editorial was. And that much like the movies, DC as a setting suceeds on the merit of individual writers having resonant passion projects as well as the required talent, not anything it does in an organised and deliberate manner.

>Blackest Night was full of cringeworthy zombies shouting WOO WOO WOO and being overpowered for no particular reason, all at the behest of Nekron who for some reason the narrative hinted at having valid, complex motivations but never explored them by the time the skittles arrive on the scene
that's not a good criticism for Blackest Night

Sorry, I'm sure I left out lots of stuff. I was about to say I left out Injustice because it's not canon but...fuck, there was an Injustice/He-Man crossover where Darkseid bust in and tried to get the Power of Greyskull right? The Orrery of Worlds and hypertime was namedropped. And now there is what seems to be a canon series about the only good Skeletor in the whole multiverse going on a quest to stop Anti-He-Man. And it turns out He-Man has his own goddamn metaverse like Superman did in DoomClock.

...the He-Man content that appears to be canon to DC is also fucking amazing, and a perfect example of what I mean when I say that DC runs on happy accidents.

Well, it's mine and I'm standing by it. The undead did not feel intimidating. The way they parrotted the way they died at the heroes felt like something that everyone in-character should've started groaning and making fun of. And I simply find Nekron boring and bafflingly having hints of not necessarily being a generic evil destructive cosmic force that were never given a valid premise.

Look, the problem with Blackest Night for me is that I feel it was trying to evoke a lot of emotions that didn't hit home.

>Nekron boring and bafflingly having hints of not necessarily being a generic evil destructive cosmic force that were never given a valid premise.
well, he his.
Do you think the God of Death needs a reason for being the God of Death?
Does Ra needs a reason for being the God of Sun?
It's simply how it is

There's a way to do HE SIMPLY IS well, to incorporate it well into stories and the thing is-DC has done that before. The oneshot where Death helps Element Girl commit suicide-specifically the flashback where she got her powers from Ra-did it well. Dr. Fate's rebellion against the other Lords of Order due to gaining compassion for the human condition fuck current JLD btw did it well. Back when it was canon, Carey's Lucifer did it REALLY FUCKING WELL.

Nekron did not do it entertainingly, or convincingly. Things that "simply are" do not engage in petty catfights using their undead minions unless they are also demons, which Nekron was never presented as. And I still think if it had only given a Batman: Lost style oneshot about what Nekron's deal actually fucking is, I might've come away with a better impression of Blackest Night than just an excuse for all the skittles to fly around zapping things and each other like Saiyans.

Blackest Night is worse than just badly written to me. It's fucking boring.

Actually it just occured to me-I could've summarised my hate for Johns!Nekron just by saying he's Imperiex all over again. Fuck Imperiex. What a pathetic shit of a cosmic being.

>>ending was changed
>I didn't know about that. Interesting.

COIE was originally a ten-issue limited series which was to be followed by a two-issue series called History of the DC Universe that set the new universe straight, for a total of 12 issues of this "event" total. The original final ending according to Wolfman was the ending that still made it into issue 10: Spectre and Anti-Monitor fight at the dawn of time, the Anti-Monitor is destroyed but as a result the heroes wake up in a merged world.

However, the editors thought this was leaving things too ambiguous. According to Wolfman and Thomas they really REALLY REALLY wanted to drive home the idea that the old DC was DEAD DEAD DEAD so they had COIE extended to 12 issues, with the new final 2 issues going balls deep to reassure you that not only doesn't Earth-2 exist, it never existed.

>DC is strange setting. More than half of it's greatest moments seem to be mistakes.

Event comics have never been the strongest point of any company, honestly. They're about spectacle and flash like big blockbuster action movies.

DC had a lot of good in that era. Especially the late 90s.

give us the deets on the Roy Thomas stuff?

I agree but...okay, this is going to somewhat controversial so let me say this with the caveat that in spite of everything I overall greatly prefer DC to Marvel and insofar as I agree events are the Michael Bay movies of comics:

I think Marvel, particularly post-00's Marve relative to post-00sl, is better at doing big dumb cosmic space fights that actually /feel like cosmic forces are at work/ even though they also tend to job out a lot of cosmic beings during them. The Galactus Engine? That was fucking WHACK how a shitton of Celestials showed up just to slow it down while setting space ablaze with their lasers. Ultimates 2? Chock full of trippy art and the use of abstraction as a plane of cosmic combat. The only Defenders run anyone cares about? Even though it was mostly a jokey lighthearted story, when Dormammu detonated the heart of Eternity he remade the universe in his image. Agents of Asgard? Ignored Secret Wars, a feat in itself.

It's like, I absolutely get they're not high art. But when post-00s DC does cosmic fights, I genuinely feel frustrated that even things like Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor are reduced to swinging their fists at each other. And, and-FUCK don't even get me started about how Scott Snyder retconned every single human being into having the potential to millyrock the Anti-Monitor with their bare fucking fists, since they can take on the human-martian hybrids that THE FIRST CREATOR of THE FIRST VERSION OF THE DC MULTIVERSE designed to wreck her entire cosmic race of multiverse creators. Who, according to the omniscient text box narration, fear her. Forget Dan Turpin, we are currently in a situation where Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are technically one training montage away from being more powerful than Superman that no other writer wants you to think too hard about.

I should, of course, qualify that with DC having exceptions that prove the rule. Say what you like about Milk Wars, I...did not see that ending coming.

But Nekron is a threat because he is a God of Death
And he doesn't need a reason for doing what he do if he is a simple God Of Death

As I said with the examples of Imperiex and the counter-example of Lucifer: I fully understand that, I just think in Nekron's case it was executed in a way that was completely underwhelming and boring.

All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc were pretty popular books with solid reader bases, but they were "unfortunate" enough to be on Earth-2. Thomas was the E-2 "editor" at that time (which didn't mean anything overall as all he did was edit his own two books and occasional side projects and crossovers) and so he asked how he was supposed to continue the comics after COIE given that both titles were deeply invested in the golden age characters. He negotiated with the higher ups and originally he was going to get a dispensation. His books would be allowed to continue "as if the Crisis hadn't happened yet" and being the only DC books to do so, which would let him continue to use the GA Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman etc.

But during production of COIE the higher-ups changed their minds again, not only saying that Earth-2 would be destroyed and never mentioned again at the end of the crossover and you're going to have to make this work or else but ALSO assembled a list of other characters that they wanted removed that had originally not even been planned to be touched by COIE such as the Golden Age Green Arrow and Aquaman.

So Roy had to entirely fuck up his plans leading up to issue 60 of All-Star Squadron and they got in a penciller to hastily change up the story in order to make it fit, though if you read the Mekaniqe story it still reads incredibly clunkily. And with those golden age characters removed and Infinity Inc now literally just coexisting with the vastly more popular Teen Titans the titles suffered immensely. All-Star was relaunched as the anemic "Young All-Stars" with new expys for the vanished Trinity and Infinity Inc ended a few years after the event. Roy felt severely burned by this and has never really gone back to DC as a monthly writer again, despite him being a DC fan first and foremost.

I'm of the opinion that DC has fucked up its canon so many times in so many ways that the only way they'll ever be able to save their comics as a narrative is to abandon the multiverse a a concept entirely and distill all their stories into a House of Mouse style metanarrative with the characters themselves as self aware nebulous and polymorphic archetypes performing storytelling for the sake of the reader.

>Earth 2
I'm not familiar with the pre-COIE Earth-2 stuff other than some of the basics, but god it's amazing how it sounds like back then Earth-2 was just as much of a clusterfuck as it was when the New 52 introduced Earth-2 again.

I'm still not sure what the bigger plot prolapse was, Wonder Woman implicitly having had Fury/Donna BY FUCKING ACCIDENT with Steppenwolf. They never explained it, but oddly it wasn't presented as rape, and to this day I have to assume Steppenwolf used to lurk blind dating circles the way Darkseid steals other people's chairs. Or Jimmy Olsen, after being picked by Mr. Miracle's motherbox SPECIFICALLY for having a higher purpose, unceremoniously going mad with power/trying to turn the world they colonised after Darkseid pulverised their old one into a giant Motherbox/being essentially bottled by Green!Alan Scott/being literally forgotten about when Fury's amazon macguffin box reset reality to make that world the same as the old one even though in theory he's this super buff New God that with one zap erases Barda's armor which somehow turns her into a complete coward that literally runs away and hides on a human evac ship.

...also since Constantine established Darkseid's assault wrecked the very source of all souls and drove Heaven itself into retreat AND would eventually result in the whole damn universe becoming desolate? The only reason the "happy ending" for the original residents of Earth-2 wasn't a bad joke, was because shortly after Darkseid went to Darkseid War to die, being rez'd by Grail using the Anti-Life Equation, and turned into a baby with one shot from her eyebeams.

God fucking dammit both Grail and Laughs exist in DC.

Having read Dial H and Morrison's Green Lantern, which sort of did that? I agree with the caveat that you don't necessarily have to abandon the multiverse a concept. You just need to play continuity lose and fast, hell make time on Earth-0 being wibbly wobbly for all I care

>I'm not familiar with the pre-COIE Earth-2 stuff other than some of the basics, but god it's amazing how it sounds like back then Earth-2 was just as much of a clusterfuck as it was when the New 52 introduced Earth-2 again.

Nah, original Earth-2 was:
>superheroes got started in the 1930s and the first generation mostly retired by the start of the 50s
>they had kids
>the JSA got back together in the early 1960s after meeting their Earth-1 counterparts
>the kids gradually got into superheroing themselves as a second generation
>the JSA teamed up with the JLA and also did regular hero stuff until the 1980s
>the young members eventually branched off to form Infinity Inc
>then COIE

The reason editorial hated it was that the JSA were old people. No kid would want to read a comic with an old person as a protagonist, that's why DC placed a hard cap for 29 on heroes in the 1980s.

Oh. Fair enough. Shame, I won't pretend to be a JSA buff but what from little I know of them, like that time Alan Scott fought his son and then hugged it out and also that time Guy Gardner met an evil dominatrix Mary Mavel after having had a heartfelt confession in hell, the JSA seem like pretty cool dudes.

>The only reason the "happy ending" for the original residents of Earth-2 wasn't a bad joke, was because shortly after Darkseid went to Darkseid War to die, being rez'd by Grail using the Anti-Life Equation, and turned into a baby with one shot from her eyebeams.
didn't the happy ending happened after Convergence?

As I recall it was published after Convergence, but in-story the migration happened while Darkseid was in the process of subsuming the planet into Apokalips/devastating the universe and the abstract aspects of it like the Red, the Green, the Rot etc all by himself plus some parademons.

>but physical things can’t harm the-
I know.
It was specifically pointed out that Darkseid’s half-martian son was some fucking how millyrocking all the Parliaments on original Earth-2 to death just by burrowing into the earth’s physical core. Multiple characters on the good guy teams commented how this shouldn’t have been possible, but DC remembered that even new god emanations are cosmic beings that day I guess.

Yes I’m fucking mad that not only did some humans with guns drive off the Furies in Wonder Woman’s solo title, but thanks to Snyder there is an actual fucking explaination for any similar inconsistencies of human punching above their weight division, why do you ask

>The reason editorial hated it was that the JSA were old people. No kid would want to read a comic with an old person as a protagonist, that's why DC placed a hard cap for 29 on heroes in the 1980s.
Not just the 80s. I'm getting a hard "the more things change" vibe here.

>golden and silver age comics suck
Kys

Sth

What does that mean?

>Kingdom Come couldn't decide whether it was supposed to be about Superman Bad or Superman Da Bess. T
I want to fight you for listing these as demerits and comparing these two to the trash you listed.

>Dr. Fate's rebellion against the other Lords of Order due to gaining compassion for the human condition
Has always been retarded and should have been a precipice he could not have come back from. Being a lord of order is not about saving little Timmy from a bullet during a robbery. It's about balance.

Giving in to "humanity" makes Dr Fate a lord of Chaos and it should be the last thing he ever does before the rest demolish him.

You...want to fight me because I'm saying Kingdom Come's actual writers disagreeing on how it's plot should proceed made the story ring incoherent in places? Okay I guess. That's a strange hill to die on. I would've assumed you were going to object to me not liking the actual story even though it does have gorgeous art, but it's a free country.

Well, right now the Lords of Order and Chaos essentially are self-appointed titles taken by humans that tortured the secrets of magic out of a primordial magic goddess and Nabu is literally guilty of trying to erase all magic on earth and try to annihilate the Sphere of the Gods with it so.

Congrats. I guess modern JLD granted your wish in the most monkey's pawish way possible.

>I would've assumed you were going to object to me not liking the actual story even though it does have gorgeous art, but it's a free country.
Learn to read that's half of why I said that. You people who focus on metatextual disagreements rather than the story are retarded.

The second shit about Nabu and the lords is a misreading based on you being a faggot and actually enjoying the initial "ACTUALLY THERE WERE ALLLLLLL EVIL" retcon.

Warrior was fucking great user, Guy Gardner is such an underrated character

>that dr fate spoiler
You are my friend
You are not. And Nabu didn't rebel to save Timmy, he rebelled because the other Lords of Orders went
>well, yes, chaos is winning and will wipe out trillions of beings in the universe, but, what goes around, comes around, in the new universe, it will be order's turn, so, fuck everyone everywhere for now.

Kingdom Come is overrated, indecisive trash and you can sit here raging at me, or accept it. But I want to make one thing very clear: I HATE HATE HATE the new JLD retcon with the fury of a thousand exploding suns.

You too are my friend.

Honestly it wasnt a mistake, maybe poor handling afterwards.
They achieved a better streamlined universe. Just afterwards the incorporating of all different universes was weird. Some worked, like Charlton, Fawcett. Others like JSA and ySuperman not.

smeed

>Honestly it wasnt a mistake, maybe poor handling afterwards.
I mean to a certain extent, you could say this about all the DC tentpole events that...weren't executed as well as they could have been.

Personally, I'm just underwhelmed by how mundane the Anti-Monitor's powers are before Snyder suddenly barged in with his 6TH DIMENSION bullshit. I mean, he controls antimatter and builds big guns and tuning forks when you get down to it. Can't Dr. Fate easily deal with that, and wasn't Captain Atom around at the time for that matter?

I'm glad Darkseid got the killshot and the New Gods steered clear of the whole thing at the time, though. Kinda makes it awkward that Barda and Scott never told the others about the multiverse-that-was, but then since Final Crisis I've always wondered why Barda and Scott haven't said more things like "Hey guys, is that Imperiex/Nekron/Krona fella bothering you? Have we mentioned we're actually superdimensional, self-aware platonic ideas? If you and my emanation here can build a gadget that can...I don't know, ESCAPE him into the Sphere of the Gods, I'm pretty sure we could kill that guy by sitting on him". I mean, we know the real answer is because that wasn't a thing until Morrison introduced the idea, but still.

>Sth What does that mean?
something

>>golden and silver age comics suck
>Kys
I didn't say that. Quite the opposite actually.

> Warrior was fucking great user. Guy Gardner is such an underrated character
I like Guy Gardner, but this series was pretty dumb.

The whole Earth-Two thing was stupid in the first place. The Daily Star magically changed into The Daily Planet in the middle of a story arc, and it was still run by George Taylor for a while. Besides, The Daily Star became The Cleveland Evening News in the second issue and then back to being The Daily Star again in the third issue anyways. Batman didn't have noticeable changes besides stuff like New York becoming Gotham, a closet becoming the Batcave, the Batmobile kept changing between being red and being black and was originally just called, "Batman's Car," etc. But both the Batman and Superman stories never gave any indication that at any point it was the end of one continuity anf now it's the beginning of another. When they introduced Barry and Hal, they should've just had the mantles passed down to them by Jay and Alan.

>When they introduced Barry and Hal, they should've just had the mantles passed down to them by Jay and Alan.
You're probably right. I'm just saying that COIE didn't make things any less convoluted. I am not trying to convice anyone that DC made always flawless decisions before the Crisis.