House to Astonish Episode 86
Paul and I are a couple of days late due to super-busy schedules, but we’ve got discussion of Chris Roberson’s Monkeybrain Comics, Grant Morrison’s MBE, the DC cancellations and launches, Carlos Pacheco being honoured by Getafe and a canter through the solicits. We’ve also got reviews of The Massive, Spider-Men and Extermination, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe takes tea with the vicar. All this plus the Phantom Stranger’s business card, the embroidered teacosies of Amanda Conner and a knighthood for services to disco.
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“What you were initially suggesting was that Earth-Two might not have been a well-liked idea (except by Gardner Fox) and that’s just factually incorrect.”
No, I asserted that Earth 2 wasn’t a great idea, not that it wasn’t a well-liked idea. I know for sure people liked the fuck out of it. Hence all those annual “Crisis” crossovers.
“But your initial argument came off as “Well, I wasn’t keen on pre-Crisis Earth-Two, and therefore I doubt anyone else really was either.” I hope that’s not what you meant, because it’s an entirely self-serving argument.”
I never said that, so you are correct. My assertion is that the whole Earth-2 isn’t that great a concept in the first place. Alternate earths? Yeah, great concept in of itself. Earth-2 as implemented by DC from the 1960s through 1980s? Kinda problematic and not that great in the end.
But it’s ok, Brian, you can love Earth 2 allllllllllllllll you want.
The next House to Astonish needs to be about Paul and Al arguing over which DC alternate earths are better. Which will be a ball, since I know Paul could give two wits about the pre-Crisis DC multiverse
“But it’s ok, Brian, you can love Earth 2 allllllllllllllll you want.”
There’s no call to patronize me, AJ. I’m not trying to impose my preferences on anyone. I’ve merely been defending the fact that the premise doesn’t require a Matrix-style download into the cerebral cortex before attempting to read.
Not once in this thread have I argued that the old Earth-Two is something everyone here should like or embrace. In fact, let me just quote myself:
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not trying to argue that pre-Crisis Earth-Two was “interesting” or “compelling.” Whether or not something is interesting or compelling is always going to be up to the individual reader.”
Okay?
Brian, you are taking this all rather too seriously. You’re also mixing all our arguments together into one big macro argument — I don’t think Earth 2 as a premise is complex (other people are saying that), just cumbersome. And not all that great, as I have stated before.
But seriously, I’m about two posts away from saying “Y u mad, bro?”
AJ, the only person I’m “mad” at in this thread is that Two Bed Two Bath guy for stealing my thesaurus.
As for any confusion I might have, I blame that on you. Earlier in this thread, I suggested to you that more people than just Gardner Fox must have liked the Earth-Two concept. Your response was: “Not necessarily.” Yet, here you are now saying: “I know for sure people liked the fuck out of it.” I’ll remind you that both of these responses were in regards to Earth-Two specifically.
Erm…. well, how am I supposed to reconcile “Not necessarily.” with “I know for sure!” and if you knew for sure, then why didn’t you just say so from the start instead of needlessly steering me away from the simplicity/complexity argument I was enjoying?
Brian, calm the fuck down.
Yeah, I get it that some people as curious kids and want to devour anything fictional, and once they get exposed to something, they just want to know more. Happens to everyone with one thing or another.
Probably happens with comics less often, based on the dwindling readership and many confusing/illogical/ridiculous premises established over the past 70 years.
The argument that “7-year-old-me understood it” is irrelevant. Put yourself in the shoes of not the average reader, but the average non-reader. You think anyone at WB would ever remotely consider making an Earth-2 movie?
“Brian, calm the fuck down.”
No need, really. I’ve got a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Lagavulin 16-year in the other. If I were any calmer, I’d pass out. The unfortunate problem with e-mails, texting and forum messaging is that you can’t always read tone and people will often make false assumptions about your emotional state.
As to the rest of your post, I’m not interested. I decided to adopt a policy of disregarding you once you deemed it appropriate to cheer a troll who did that drive-by on me earlier, and I’m only responding to you now to inform you of this.
Back to my drink.
I fully agree with Brian about the overemphasis on making books “new reader friendly.” I’ve mentioned (on these very boards, I think) that I started reading comics during Chris Claremont’s X-Men run, and when I saw a subplot oe I didn’t understand, I asked the friend who got me into comics to explain it, and when he didn’t know, I just assumed it made sense if you’d been reading longer than we had (surprising how often that WASN’T true with Claremont!) and hoped I’d eventually learn the rest of the story through reading back issues, which I bought obsessively. Nowadays the internet would make it even easier to get caught up.
Moving back to the debate (and I really hope this isn’t boring anyone or annoying anyone – including Brian – but there’s no new X-Axis yet, so…) I never said the old version of Earth 2 was impossible to understand – in fact I said it “isn’t impossible to wrap your head around to be sure.” What I did say is that a multiverse in which the “Trinity” and their extended supporting casts were born around the same time on both Earths is less complicated than one in which they were born earlier on one Earth than the other but everyone else was born at the same time on both Earths (you can say it doesn’t matter that some things are the same – after all, Hitler, Churchill, et al. aren’t the main characters, who cares when they were born? – but are you then saying that the universe itself, within the fiction of the stories, has singled them out as so important that everyone else is just a backdrop against which their adventures take place? And if so, why doesn’t moving them around in time affect the outcome of world events more?)
Honestly, if it were up to me (and the idea of just not doing the reboot wasn’t an option, nor was having the JSA be the elder statesmen of the world the JLA lives in like they were in post-Crisis, pre-reboot continuity), I would have just gotten rid of the Earth 2 versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman and left everything else the same as it was pre-Crisis, with the JSA fighting Hitler. The only reason there were Earth 2 versions of the Trinity is that they existed in Golden Age continuity, but if we’re getting rid of old continuity, they don’t need to exist at all.
And to be clear: I’m not saying people shouldn’t write stories in which Batman operated in the 40s or the 80s or the Victorian era or ancient Rome or whatever floats your boat. I’m saying that if you have two worlds as part of the SAME fictional reality in which the date of Bruce Wayne’s birth and the birthdates of the people he knows varies from universe to universe while everything else stays roughly the same, you have to either give some explanation for that (something as simple as “God thinks Batman’s cool and likes to move him around” will do) or you’re tacitly acknowledging that Batman is a fictional construct WITHIN the context of the story, which is sloppy writing if you’re not intentionally breaking the fourth wall.
To sum up, the only points I’m trying to make are:
1) The idea of Earth 2 as a world where the “Trinity” exist at the same time as they do on Earth 1 is simpler than one where they exist at different times. Not “better,” just “simpler.” It may even be WORSE, but it’s still simpler.
2) DC appears to have decided that, given a complete continuity reboot, they’d rather go with the simpler idea than the more complex one.
Even if we can’t agree on my point 1, I think we can at least agree that DC appear to agree with my point 1, even if that makes them and me idiots. And even if we all agree that my point 2 is a bad idea on DC’s part, I think there’s compelling evidence to suggest it’s accurate.
“What I did say is that a multiverse in which the “Trinity” and their extended supporting casts were born around the same time on both Earths is less complicated than one in which they were born earlier on one Earth than the other but everyone else was born at the same time on both Earths”
I don’t see why it should be. Whether you go with the old geezers or their newly-rebooted, younger versions, we’d still be talking about a book that’s clearly labeled “EARTH 2”
So, if you understand the implications of such a title (that it’s a book about an alternate earth) then there’s no need to be confused by, anything really. You ought to know going in that it’s going to be “different versions of the characters.” Could be geriatric versions. Could be child versions. Could be reverse-gender versions. Could be monkey versions.
So why should one of these be more or less confusing than any another? Point is, anyone who’s going to buy a series called “EARTH 2” should already be expecting to see an earth that isn’t quite the same as DC’s main version.
And come to think of it, isn’t making both versions of the characters appear too similar (same age and all that) even more likely to cause confusion amongst new readers? I mean, nobody’s going to mistake a grey-haired Superman for the guy currently appearing in Justice League.
(There was a TV series called “Earth 2” that was about space travelers in the distant future colonizing another planet, so it’s not entirely accurate to assume anyone buying a book called “Earth 2” is going to know it’s about another dimension, but for the sake of argument let’s say you’re right about that.)
If I buy a book called “Earth 2” and I get a world full of monkeys versions of the characters, I think “cool, monkey world.” If I buy a book called “Earth 2” and I get a world full of reverse-gender versions of the characters, I think “cool, transgender world.” And if I buy an out-of-continuity story based on the premise “what if Batman were a monkey?” or “what if Superman were a woman?” I think “ooh, Elseworlds, these are fun.” But if I buy a book that is clearly set in-continuity with the main DCU, and it features a world (from which characters can travel back and forth with the main DCU) in which Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman – and their supporting casts – are monkeys, but everyone else is human … I want an explanation. Why those people? Shouldn’t the world be a different place if there’s a handful of talking monkeys living among normal humans? I would at least assume there IS an explanation, even if it’s not made clear in issue 1.
To relate it to something less hypothetical: There’s no law that says you have to be disappointed that Marvel never explained why some mutants weren’t affected by M-Day. There’s no law that says you have to think it’s sloppy that the only discernable pattern determining which mutants weren’t depowered is “the ones the writers still wanted to use in stories.” You’re free to not give a fuzzy rat’s patoot. But I maintain that it would be much easier (and I cannot stress enough how much I am NOT saying that “easier” equals “better”) to explain M-Day to someone unfamiliar with it if you could say “All mutants lost their powers because an omnipotent woman decreed there would be no more mutants” instead of “All but a few mutants lost their powers because an omnipotent woman decreed there would be no more mutants but she missed most of the important ones.”
All I am arguing is “less complex” vs. “more complex.” I an not arguing “better” vs. “worse.”
“X” is less complex than “X but Y.”
I think that last sentence sums up my point to the extent that nothing else I say can clarify it better if that doesn’t do it.
ZZZ, you’re obsessed with details that are completely unimportant. For some reason, you seem to think that when presenting a world where the superheroes are much older, that it’s not only important that readers be made aware that everyone else in human history is the same age, but it’s also important that a reason be given as to why this is.
Why do you continue to insist this demands an explanation? Everyone involved in this discussion, whether they loved or hated the original premise of Earth-Two somehow managed to get their head around the concept without having to be told “Everyone else in history was born at the same time, and here‘s why…” None of this was of any consequence in the previous incarnation of Earth-Two, so why are you putting it out there as some obstacle that needs to be overcome today?
You know, I’m just going to quote Jerry Ray from earlier in this thread.
“Why were the heroes born earlier on Earth 2? Because that’s the premise of the stories. You don’t need an in-story reason for it.”
Precisely.
Can we take a time-out here? I’d just like to go on record to say that I’m rather enjoying this discussion. Even in spite of a few attempts by others to cast me as an angry, raving lunatic, I love each and every one of you. Mind you, that’s probably just the scotch talking.
Oh, and here’s some arguments that some of you should be making, but haven’t yet made…
“Brian, even though an Earth-Two based on the original version shouldn’t be too confusing, it’s not 1976 anymore. Comics are way more expensive and more difficult to find. Experimentation is much more costly than it used to be, and it’s therefore even more important that the marketing of a new series does what it can to attract readers. A series featuring “Gay Alan Scott” is going to grab more attention than “Geriatric Alan Scott.” Whoring to the mainstream media has sadly become rather important. Or at least more important than it used to be.
Secondly, younger characters just tend to sell better. Granted, you could go back and set an Earth-Two series during the WWII era while those Golden Age characters were still young. But we’re now 67 years past the end of WWII, and it follows that the younger readers of today are probably less connected to that era. A superhero who operated during WWII is likely not going to be as of much interest to them as it was to your generation.”
Okay, there. I have no counter-argument which means I just owned myself.
“I’m saying that if you have two worlds as part of the SAME fictional reality in which the date of Bruce Wayne’s birth and the birthdates of the people he knows varies from universe to universe while everything else stays roughly the same, you have to either give some explanation for that (something as simple as “God thinks Batman’s cool and likes to move him around” will do) or you’re tacitly acknowledging that Batman is a fictional construct WITHIN the context of the story, which is sloppy writing if you’re not intentionally breaking the fourth wall.”
Agreed.
“Why do you continue to insist this demands an explanation? Everyone involved in this discussion, whether they loved or hated the original premise of Earth-Two somehow managed to get their head around the concept without having to be told “Everyone else in history was born at the same time, and here‘s why…” None of this was of any consequence in the previous incarnation of Earth-Two, so why are you putting it out there as some obstacle that needs to be overcome today? ”
For what it’s worth it made sense me to when I first started digging into the DC Universe because I read the Wizard Zero Hour special which laid out the publication history and continuity details of the company. It really wasn’t until ZZZ pointed out the whole “Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman lived at different times, but no non-superhero real-life noteworthies like Gandhi or Hitler did” that it dawned on me how fundamentally messy Earth 2 is a premise. Before that, my grips was pretty much that I just wasn’t too into regular crossovers with alternate earths, and the divsions between Earth 1/Earth versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were always messy, given the fact that they never went out of publication like Jay Garrick or Alan Scott.
Also, apparently I’m a troll now? Huh.
The same can be said of Spider-Man. With Marvel finally deciding that the 616 universe and the Ultimate universe belong to the same fictional reality, we now have two Peter Parkers with different birth-dates spread across two worlds.
I’ve heard other readers complaining about Marvel connecting 616 to the Ultimate universe for various other reasons, but not for the one ZZZ has given.
So, even though what he’s said is technically true, the fact of the matter is that very few people seem to care.
“Also, apparently I’m a troll now? Huh.”
I was referring to Two Bed Two Bath, not you.
Ok, my apologies.
“I’ve heard other readers complaining about Marvel connecting 616 to the Ultimate universe for various other reasons, but not for the one ZZZ has given.”
To be far, for years Marvel insisted that the Ultimate was merely its own thing, and not part of the “proper” Marvel multiverse, in contrast to DC’s parallel earths, which were introduced right smack dab in the pages of Flash and Justice League of America and considered part and parcel of those narratives right off the bat.
Of course, Marvel completely changed their tack.
Argh, “to be fair”.
No worries.
Now, I don’t know squat about the DCu and will never claim to, so I can’t weigh in on this discussion with an aside that the simple premise of the Ultimate imprint was “We pretend 616 doesn’t exist for the sake of this universe and we’re starting again.” The Ultimate universe may as well be owned by another comic company, since I think the official line is that it’s not even in the Marvel U multiverse, hence why M-Day had no effect there.
From the conversation (I will admit to some skimming since I don’t know jack about the DCu… just to re-affirm) I’m not sure if Earth 2 is DC’s “Ultimate” equivalent or if it truely is something more… complex.
I guess the difference may be that it may have been spawned from a Crossover, where Marvel just launched the Ultimate imprint with a clear mission statement.
Err..the “No worries” was in response to “My apologies.”
“To be fair, for years Marvel insisted that the Ultimate was merely its own thing, and not part of the “proper” Marvel multiverse.”
Yep, those are some of the complaints I’ve heard.
“From the conversation (I will admit to some skimming since I don’t know jack about the DCu… just to re-affirm) I’m not sure if Earth 2 is DC’s “Ultimate” equivalent or if it truely is something more… complex.”
The New 52 Earth 2 is definitely in the traditional DC multiverse mold, as right off the bat characters are switching universes.
“I’m not sure if Earth 2 is DC’s “Ultimate” equivalent or if it truely is something more… complex.”
Well, I suspect DC might consider it to be the same thing from a publishing strategy point of view, at least.
I’m fairly certain the Alan Scott development was the result of DC looking over at the Miles Morales controversy and the ensuing attention Marvel got from it and then deciding “We need to do something like that.”
You know what one of my favorite aspects of the Post-Crisis JSA is? The way that placing the team in the past of the “main” Earth elevated the Alan Scott Green Lantern into the top-tier guy of his era, and how it was established that he was the Golden Age defender of Gotham City. Thematically, there’s something great about the guy who’s power is a shining indomitable light he fights evil with being the hero of a noir-ish nightmare of a metropolis. One of the high points of the Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee “Hush” storyline was the flashback (featuring excellent watercolored art by Lee) where a young Bruce Wayne saw Alan Scott throw down with Icicle. The Ed Brubaker “Made of Wood” story he wrote at the exact same time for Detective Comics was also pretty solid.
That is going to bug the heck out of me reading Spider-Men now.
It’s been so long since I read an Ultimate comic that I’d forgotten that half the characters were much younger than their 616 counterparts and the other half are the same age (I think it’s more like 2/3 and 1/3 actually, but whatever). I had no problem with that when they were officially NOT in continuity with each other, but this is going to get weird now that they are. I fully expect them to gloss over it completely (and it helps immensely that they’ve killed off so many Ultimate characters that I think they could just not have Peter meet anyone who’s younger than he’d expect them to be) but I’d be really disappointed in the writing if, for example, Peter dropped into the Ultimate universe pre-Ultimatum and met all the important people and didn’t think “How is Mary Jane in high school here but Tony Stark’s the same age he is back home? And the Wasp is still Janet Van Dyne but she’s Asian? How does that make sense? How does a person’s race change but their name and background doesn’t? And Namor’s thousands of years old? How could a guy be born thousands of years apart in two universes where everyone else was born at least within the same century? And Barack Omaba is still president even though I wasn’t there to team up with Stephen Colbert and save him?”
(I may be misremembering that last plot point)
One of my main problems with the post-Crisis set-up was that it necessitated moving Superman waayyy down the ladder to “The world’s 103rd superhero!” instead of “First.” That may not be as important to some, but different strokes, I guess.
The funny thing, is I’ve never been a really big fan of Superman. But I still have certain sensibilities, and they tell me that Supes really needs to be the first guy to throw on the tights. I guess someone at DC finally agreed.
Still, I can appreciate your like of the Alan Scott/young Bruce Wayne bit.
Ultimate Barack Obama should be in his early 20s and have a soul patch.
“That is going to bug the heck out of me reading Spider-Men now. :D”
Sorry
“You know what one of my favorite aspects of the Post-Crisis JSA is? The way that placing the team in the past of the “main” Earth elevated the Alan Scott Green Lantern into the top-tier guy of his era…”
I would say this is certainly true of The Golden Age, which, admittedly is an Earth-2 Elseworlds, which really muddles the waters of the whole discussion going on. :>
The DCnU reboot of Earth-2 is just another nail in the coffin of my DC support, which lasted something like 35 years. (I was one of those kids who loved the annual JLA/JSA cross-over, especially when they started making bigger and bigger, adding in the Legion or time-lost heroes).
RE: Superman as ‘the worlds 103rd Superhero’.
I think I’m going to try and compare Superman to Optimus Prime in this respect.
Optimus isn’t the first Prime and he’s not going to be the last, he’s not the first Cybertronian but he’s without doubt the most badass leader the Autobots ever had.
I just feel having Superman as the first superhero devalues the whole universe because the only way is down compartively, Superman will always be the foremost powerful DC hero; so it creates a universe where this amazing hero pops up and everyone fails to live up to his example.
And adding to AJ’s/odessasteps liking of JSA/JLA combined universe; I’m going to say I thought it was awesome in the old continuity that Wildcat Ted Grant taught Batman how to box.
@Jacob – Optimus Prime was never established as being the first of the Primes. If that had been the case, and if that had remained the case for nearly half a century worth of continuously-published Transformers stories before a retcon changed it, then some long-time Transformers fans would undoubtedly be making a similar argument to mine.
And you’re not really supposed to measure up to Superman. Having someone succeed in doing so devalues Superman. Which is bad.
Finally, I just have a problem with the idea that Pa Kent might have encouraged Clark to follow in the footsteps of WWII-era heroes because he remembered reading a news article about friggin’ Dan, the Dyna-Mite, or whoever.
Off the top of my head, I’m surprised we did not see a story where Earth-1 Pa Kent would have met a Golden Age hero during WWII, either in theatre or in Kansas.
(If you assume Clark is in the static age of 29-ish in the Bronze Age, the Kents would have found him in the late 40s or early 50s)
—
On a related note, I like the 70s Detective stories (I think there were 2 or 3 of them) were Batman met Lamont Cranston and he admits the Shadow was part of the inspiration for his costume/gimmick.
“I’m surprised we did not see a story where Earth-1 Pa Kent would have met a Golden Age hero during WWII, either in theatre or in Kansas.”
If you mean post-Crisis Pa Kent, then I think they might have. I have a vague recollection of something like that, but I might be mistaken.
I didn’t first encounter the various multiple DC earths until after they stopped existing, but my immediate impression of Earth-2 was that it was like a more boring version of Regular Earth (“In this Earth, Batman is old, and the Flash wears a stupid hat!”). Its existence was always kind of puzzling to me because the other parallel universes were far more interesting and had way more of a point to them – over here was Evil Earth, over there was the “Real World,”, etc. – actual high concepts that seemed to justify an excursion into another dimension. But Earth-2… the whole thing was so farcically anticlimactic, a universe where everything’s the same but slower and shifted into late middle age, like if you found the magical wardrobe to Narnia, only instead of finding dwarves and witches and talking animals, you get a place that looks just like here except that everyone is wearing green hats.
When I eventually learned that Earth-2 was essentially a fanwank that got out of hand, it all made sense. Comics – what can you do?
“Its existence was always kind of puzzling to me because the other parallel universes were far more interesting and had way more of a point to them.”
Sure, but to be fair, Earth-Two’s origin is atypical of how parallel earth ideas are generally conceived. As Martin pointed out earlier:
“Actually Earth-Two came about because Carmine Infantino threw GA Flash onto that Flash of Two Worlds cover in an attempt to flummox Julie Schwartz, who dictated stories from cover concepts.”
And then they further used the same device to bring back more old characters. I’d describe it as a utility for Golden Age character storage. The equivalent of a popular iphone app.
But sure, “fanwank” works.
Come on guys. After a century’s worth of stories about alternative earths, none of this should be that hard to understand. God help any of you if you tried to read Earth X!
I liked the Justice Society. I’m sorry to see that it’s gone. I’ll treat the new Earth 2 like I would the Unlimited Universe (how does that still exist?). If the stories are worth it, I’ll read them, but I’m not going to make the mistake of thinking this has anything other than a name in common with the JSA or the old Earth 2.
@Brian “And you’re not really supposed to measure up to Superman. Having someone succeed in doing so devalues Superman. Which is bad.”
Superman, shining example of what good people everywhere
cancan’t achieve…(Um, if I’d looked back and realised how, um, intense, this debate had gotten I probably wouldn’t have jumped in just to make a snarky comment…)
Whilst I may disagree with Brian about the JSA thing, I do kind of like Superman as an untouchable paragon of virtue.
I think one of my favourite runs is Morrison’s JLA, these are walking gods, you will never be them but hopefully you can be inspired by them to live better, be a better person.
I can understand DC wanting to ape Marvel by making their heroes more human post reboot to try and grab some Marvel sales but it disappoints me a little; I like my DC heroes as bastions of willpower and my Marvel heroes as more relatable people, not the other way around.