So, I've been thinking about why all the attempts at bringing back the infinite multiverse keep failing. So far we've had
>Convergence
>Doomsday Clock
>Death Metal
>Now Dark Crisis
Here's what I think
>Nobody actually cares about anything other than the Main DC universe.
>The few people who keep calling for the Infinite Multiverse to be brought back actually mean they want the post crisis shared earth gone and want Pre-Crisis Earth 1 back as the main Earth with Pre-crisis Earth 2 and Earth S maybe having one book each, so all these resurrections of the Multiverse don't actually count in their eyes.
Your thoughts?
meh, maybe some people feel like that but the real reason all the multiverse revival shit fails is because DC is filled to the brim with hacks.
> Geoff Jones
> Scott Snyder
> Josh Williamson
These guys are simply too moronic to properly structure a reboot that would actually stick and all their cosmic bullshit will only be remembered for introducing or reintroducing older characters
Taylor, king and Bendis are all much worse.
yeah, there are worst writers, but these people were elevated to 'architects' of the dc continuity and their linchpins were all shit (Doomsday Clock, Metal - Death Metal, Dark Crisis)
i dont know much about bendis, but is it true he leaves gay characters in his wake?
not necessarily gay but he pretty much always does something that's hard to erase by future authors and that something is usually bad
Because the Multiverse is the antithesis to continuity.
Either you have one (or a few) universe where everything matters or you have a multiverse where nothing matters.
Marvel did it best with the 616 Universe and the Ultimate Universe, because both had active continuities. It was not just one book.
Both of you are wrong
People were fine with Earth-1/Earth-2 for a long time
Elseworlds were around and people were okay with that
What Modern DC (and Marvel) don't understand about the Multiverse is that it isn't an invitation to have every world interact on a regular basis. Maybe in limited form and between distinct worlds, and maybe once you have all the Supermen together or all the Batmen together or something, but not in the modern way where it feels like you have a shitload of multiversal teams together, and everybody seems to interact every other month. There was a reason the Earth-1/Earth-2 JLA/JSA team-ups were once a year. Anyone going Multiverse Bad is more creatively bankrupt than DC and Marvel's hackiest.
is close to the correct answer.
There's no coordination at DC for the last 12 years.
>Convergence
Fill-in story. Johns practically told people to ignore it on Rip Hunter's board or something.
>Doomsday Clock
Heavily delayed, and Didio fricked things up for it. Snyder accidentally let slip that it wasn't in continuity or something like that at some point in an interview before correcting himself
>Death Metal
A real slog of a miniseries that had like one really good comic (the Superboy-Prime one). Not many people read it partly because of COVID, and partly because it wasn't very good
>Dark Crisis
DC fricked everything up and drove a lot of readership off during the Bendis years to now, and also did the other three in the last decade. How do they expect anyone to believe anything in this mini really matters at a minimum level?
>, but not in the modern way where it feels like you have a shitload of multiversal teams together, and everybody seems to interact every other month.
Except, that doesn't really happen either, it is still more along the lines you previously described
>Maybe in limited form and between distinct worlds, and maybe once you have all the Supermen together or all the Batmen together or something,
I mean DC did like the Infinite Frontier and the Justice Incarnate minis inbetween Death Metal and Dark Crisis. Every other book just took place in the main DC Universe. Oh, and Wonder Woman briefly visited the gender bent Earth on her way back Valhalla for one issue. That's enough to constitute overuse?
>Not many people read it partly because of COVID, and partly because it wasn't very good
moronic take, Death Metal sold higher than Metal per Snyder, and Metal was DC’s second highest selling event ever
>moronic take, Death Metal sold higher than Metal per Snyder, and Metal was DC’s second highest selling event ever
Seriously doubt. Provide hard numbers.
>Because the Multiverse is the antithesis to continuity.
thats not really the case pre-crisis
It fails because people know it means nothing. They still don't do Elseworlds stories set on these alternate Earths so what's the point? Also, people want the pre-Flashpoint DCU back and know they're not getting it so why should they care?
I wish they'd just bring back Elseworlds. YEah, what they're doing with the Black Label stuff is kinda like that, if you squint, but not really, most of it is just 'hey, it's Batman, but with SWEARS!'
As for pre-Flashpoint DCU, I feel they knew they'd fricked up the main universe so hard, the only thing they could do was a hard reset. So many characters dead, fricked up or just plain derailed and ruined, a chronic unwillingness to take a chance on actual *new* characters, not just ones shoved into a legacy and writers unwilling or unable to commit to any kind of status quo because every five or six months, they need to put everything on hold for Geoff Johns' latest Magnum Opus. I can't think of anything more miserable as a creative than having to put your book on hold for half the year because you have to work in yet another railroaded tale of an interdimensional god pitching another cosmic b***hfit.
Says a lot that you can take most of what I've said up there and it applies to DC in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018...
>I wish they'd just bring back Elseworlds. YEah, what they're doing with the Black Label stuff is kinda like that, if you squint, but not really, most of it is just 'hey, it's Batman, but with SWEARS!'
It's also the vast majority of YA/Kids OGNs. Just written badly and with concepts people aren't really interested in.
>As for pre-Flashpoint DCU, I feel they knew they'd fricked up the main universe so hard, the only thing they could do was a hard reset. So many characters dead, fricked up or just plain derailed and ruined, a chronic unwillingness to take a chance on actual *new* characters, not just ones shoved into a legacy and writers unwilling or unable to commit to any kind of status quo because every five or six months, they need to put everything on hold for Geoff Johns' latest Magnum Opus. I can't think of anything more miserable as a creative than having to put your book on hold for half the year because you have to work in yet another railroaded tale of an interdimensional god pitching another cosmic b***hfit.
Which is also why they kept Johns still in control of the line and making crossovers like Forever Evil and Darkseid War after the New 52 reboot.
Still, for all the mess they were making out of the original universe, I'd say it was still very much fixable and the reboot was unnecessary. And in anycase, it does no good to replace a one mess with another mess. The only difference was the New 52 was created a mess instead of being turned into one.
This. We can’t even get books for a lot of the main characters on Earth 0, why should I give a shit about “infinite Earths”? All we get are more Batman books, there’s no reason I should care about whether there’s one Earth, 52, or infinite because it doesn’t mean anything. Put out some books set on these alternate Earths and then maybe people will care.
Williamson is just a moron who thinks that rehashing CoIE is something zoomers or millennials care about.
>why all the attempts at bringing back the infinite multiverse keep failing.
But they haven't failed. They're back. They haven't gone anywhere. They've just been lazy to do anything with them.
The main problem is they use it as a reason to abandon firm canon and any sense of continuity for lazy egotistical writers to just do whatever they want for the most part.
Yet at the same time none of the modern stuff fans want, like kid Jon who doesn’t have a sexuality teaming up with Damian, is allowed to be done in ongoings.
>The main problem is they use it as a reason to abandon firm canon and any sense of continuity for lazy egotistical writers to just do whatever they want for the most part.
Not quite. Both are ongoing problems, but they are not directly related. DC has been without a firm detailed canon or history for the universe since like the New 52. But even removing the attempts to bring back the multiverse from the above stories, we'd still have the same timeline and history confusion. At most I'd say the Multiverse stuff is merely being used as a smokescreen to try and distract issue regarding the main universe being a mess.
I guess they figure if they keep telling the same story over eventually they'll get it right. People seem to be buying them.
>People seem to be buying them.
They're really not. Dark Crisis has no hype or energy surrounding it. Why do you think they're renaming it mid run?
except they still frick it up each time, at least batkek was funny but dark crisis has nothing going for it outside of being another attempt to convolutedly recontextualize the multiverse and establish an even bigger darker bad as well as force a whole generations of legacies
Just think about it, what has happened with the multiverse each of those times? Immediarely destroyed again so they can "restore it" once again. These stories have failed because they don't have ant actual purpose, the "multiverse" is empty before and after any of these big events.
And while the DC Universe at large is occupied in this sysiphean task the batbooks keep popping up like mushrooms, meaning none of this "multiverse" is ever explored.
why do more universes when they can't get a single one right
This. Try getting the main universe continuity cleaned up first.
this is an advertisement in hawkman v5. hawkman.
if someone were to buy this shit to begin with (and they probably wont because of the shitty webcomic art), why hawkman?
Has nothing to do with the topic. Start your own thread.
fair enough but it's relevant to the larger theme of dc losing money and nothing sticking.
She wrote 3 of these, you’re on crack if you think they didn’t sell. YA Graphic novel sales dwarf monthly comic sales
The DCU is unstable. Multiverse wide Crisis events that cause it to restructure used to happen only once every 25 years (Flash of Two Worlds to COIE). Then every 10 years (COIE to Zero Hour). Then every 5 years (Infinite Crisis to Fashpoint). Now every 2.5 years and decreasing (Doomsday Clock to Dark Crisis). Soon it will be rebooting yearly. That's not stable or can continue.
This multiversal instability has bled to other DCUs like the Arrowverse and DCEU. It's rebooting onscreen in the new Flash movie and being rebooted offscreen from a meta p.o.v. with a Flash again at the centre as Ezra Miller becomes our universe's first real life super villain.
I think Alan Moore cast a spell that infects and destabilises it in 5D namespace and despite Grant Morrison's best counter-magic nothing can be done to save the very concept.
Alternate universes are like spices: they add flavour, texture to the main dish. Use too much, it becomes overwhelming. But there's only so much you can do when the main dish is bland mush to begin with.
Dark Crisis is the first to make it a selling point though. It will stick. In all the others it's been a one panel, easily ommited mention in the last issue "oh btw the infinite multiverse is back". Also they've been ignored because of circumstance or necesity.
>Convergence
Filler event while DC moved offices, it ended with the implication that COIE had been undone which would make no sense, since the next 30 years of DC storytelling were built on it
>Doomsday clock
Didn't actually bring back the infinite multiverse. At all. It only brought up an "earth 1985" and "earth 52" to accomodate the existence of post crisis and post flashpoint continuity somewhere. It's the same principle as the golden age heroes like flash and green lantern eventually becoming earth 2.
>Death metal
Introduced the omniverse of which the dc multiverse is just a fraction, while the gist of Dark crisis is that the infinite, pre crisis multiverse that had been destroyed in COIE is coming back. Even in Infinite frontier and Justice Incarnate, which were the buildup to dark crisis, expressely mention the multiverse/omniverse being infinite before Pariah's meddling.
Out of curiosity, as somebody who thinks it will stick and is presumably supporting it, what exactly are you expecting out of this? Exactly how much material do you expect them to publish on a month to month basis? You can't actually be expecting the Pre-Crisis Earth 1 to become the main universe again? Have you considered any books written would be written and drawn by current year writers with current year sensibilities. Would you honestly want Tom Taylor, Bendis, Megan Fitzmartin writing Pre-crisis versions of the characters? They aren't getting as many surviving writers and artrists from 1985 back as possible, thats before we consider how many of the greats are dropping dead. Have you taken into consideration DC has trouble launching book not featuring Batman?
I want to know exactly what kind of future you are envisioning and presumably hoping for?
Ideally we should get a Justice Incarnate ongoing series to explore the new multiverse and also a few series taking place in the parallel worlds, whether it is the existing multiversity worlds or new ones. The Teen Justice book on earth 11 and the freedom fighters one from a few years back seem like steps in the right direction.
>Ideally we should get a Justice Incarnate ongoing series to explore the new multiverse
So you want a DC reboot of Marvel's Exiles?
>and also a few series taking place in the parallel worlds, whether it is the existing multiversity worlds or new ones. The Teen Justice book on earth 11 and the freedom fighters one from a few years back seem like steps in the right direction.
So more Elseworlds, just with universe notations?
I don't think the Freedom Fighters series sold that well, and I don't think Teen Justice is either.
I’m guessing they think constantly restructuring and changing everything somehow gets more readers thinking it’s a reboot. After Crisis and the New 52, DC has been trigger happy with multiverse destroying and time altering nonsense events cause they sold really well that one time and they want to recapture that same high. It’s all about sales and nostalgia. That’s it. They think constantly going “remember Crisis!? Here’s ANOTHER ONE!” and they completely forget what comes after or the fact that most people working for them give zero fricks about anyone that isn’t fricking Batman and his merry cast of mini Batmen.