My two cents about DC comics

[Who?]

I have read many times, in a million diferent ways: Pos-crises dc suck, or that the continuity in DC is screwed. Well, this is true, in some ways, after all there is no plausable way of explaining why Barbara still cant walk.

However, sorry to say, DC is not the mess that some fans paint it to be. I started reading comics after the Zero Hour, i was eight, the first comic i bought was Superboy, I dont remember the number, but it was a fight with his own Bizarro clone. I loved it, I started buying all of the DC comics, nowadays I´m a fan, I know pretty much everything worth knowing about dc (i still cant figure out why people ar so crazy about hal).

What I´m trying to say is that, if pos-crises DC was so hard to get, thm a eight year old wouldn´t be able to get into the continuity. Okay, so we still have big problems like Power girl, donna troy and Hawkman (though he was fixed), but in general, DC is MUCH easier to read then any Marvel comic, and even with all the porblems, thy dont resort to cheap shots such as the Ultimate Marvel.

[HelloKittyKat]

I started reading comics on a regular basis when I was nine, so I agree with you. However, what's discouraging to many readers in my opinions is not a long continuity in itself, but all the random bonehead concepts, stories and mistakes you have to acknowledge along with it. Crisis rectified much of this in DC's case, but soon mistakes were made and of course bad stories would crop up, and they will continue to be repeated until the creators learn some common sense (after the whole Hawkman debacle, you would've thought DC would've learned it's lesson, but then the John Byrne Doom Patrol rears its head . . .).

[Anthonynotes]

I'm guessing it's mostly older (i.e. my age and up) fans that are probably more likely to ponder the merits of which was better (pre-Crisis, which they grew up on, or post-Crisis, with the various changes it wrought). Whether or not Barbara can/should be able to walk or not is a seperate debate from which set of DC continuity was better (or Hawkman's mess).

One of Crisis' main problems was the various retcons (too many seemingly gratuitous) made to various characters afterwards, such as Hawkman, or continuity confusion about their new reality, such as whether or not Supes/Bats were founding JLAers. The fact that Supes' reboot also hosed Legion of Super-Heroes' continuity (no Superboy) is one of the main factors that led to Zero Hour (*gag*).

As for DC being less confusing than Marvel, I'm wondering if its lack of having multiple alternate futures (even pre-Crisis) might be one factor--- its "future" seems to be "whatever leads to the Legion of Super-Heroes"---along with, say, not having way too many of its books tied heavily into Superman or Batman (despite both characters' multiple titles over the decades), vs. the multitude of X-titles. Though I guess "confusing" is in the eye of the beholder.

As for Hal: Hal rocks... that's all. Well, that, and he's the Green Lantern I grew up on (when *I* was eight years old, Superboy, Earth-Two, and Kara Zor-El were all still canonical and frequently used DC elements...I know, I know...). :-)

I did enjoy the Zero Hour old-Superboy-meets-new-Superboy crossover issue, though.

Personally, I think pre-Crisis continuity was apparently mostly confusing to the editors/head honchos more than the readers---who *were* eight year old kids being exposed to all this stuff. I mean, whenever Earth-Two showed up, they actually threw a caption or two in the story explaining in a few sentences the whole parallel-Earths deal (or to summarize: Earth-1 = the mainstream or "real" universe, home of the JLA; Earth-2: the JSA's universe; any other rarely-appearing Earths, explained as they went along...). Crisis and the Superman reboot seemed an attempt at mimicking then-better-selling Marvel's one-universe style (and writing tactics), despite Marvel having plenty of alternate realities of its *own*.


-B.