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Categories: Commentary
Tags: batman, comics, dc, marvel
DC Comics just wrapped the yearlong Countdown to Final Crisis leading into Final Crisis which follows Infinite Crisis, Identity Crisis, Crisis on Multiple Earths, and (the biggie) Crisis on Infinite Earths — a 1985 series which either split DC’s history into Pre- and post-Crisisness or taught editors that it was easier to hit reboot than maintain continuity.
Thanks to Wikipedia, I don’t have to actually read comic books to keep up with them. For instance, Wikipedia tells me that in Countdown to Final Crisis Jimmy Olsen gained superpowers, became Mr. Action, and eventually turned into a scaled giant and fought Darkseid across Metropolis until “Ray Palmer emerges from Jimmy’s head, having shut down the device inside Jimmy that was storing the essences of the New Gods.”
You won’t see that on the CW.
Other highlights included the death of Earth-51’s Batman (which is a tragedy), the destruction of Earth-51 by Superman-Prime (a statistic), and the Monitor of Earth-8’s killing of the Jokester of Earth-3. If you’re curious, Earth-Prime used to be our Earth, but became an alternate reality in 1968 when Earth-1’s The Flash teamed up with DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz.
Back to Final Crisis, one of the storylines due this summer is Batman: R.I.P. At this point there’s merely speculation about R.I.P.’s possibilities, but would DC get ready to off Bruce Wayne just as The Dark Knight hits theatres? Why not, he died in 1979. Of course that was the Pre-Crisis Golden Age Bruce, not the Post-Crisis Neo Silver Age (shoot me).
I venture that most of the people who see The Dark Knight will have never read a Batman comic book. They don’t need to. Batman is pop culture. Adam West taught them all they need to know about the character. But let’s say after seeing Christian Bale punch Heath Ledger, they’re curious about the source material.
First off, New Reader will be hitting Batman somewhere around issue 680. I’m assuming they’ll pick up Batman and not Detective Comics, Batman and the Outsiders, Superman/Batman, All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, or any of the other miscellaneous titles which feature the Caped Crusader. Anyway, New Reader picks up Batman and sees that they’re coming into the story ~679 issues late (of course, thanks to Crisis on Infinite Earths, nothing before 1985 matters anyway, but they won’t know that). And the issue is part x of whatever Batman R.I.P. runs for.
I’m guessing they put the issue down. First off, they’re late to the party and buying the back issues of Batman R.I.P. are more then they intended on spending (‘cause the days of cheap comics are long gone) and second, they like Batman, why would they want to read something called Batman R.I.P?
The point I’m getting at is, at this point comics are so crisis-laden that they’ve become impenetrable to new readers. And while I’m picking on DC, Marvel is just as culpable — like the recent retcon which found Spidey making a deal with the devil to save Aunt May by erasing his marriage.
On April 29th, 2008 at 6:44 am, The Bookshelf wrote:
Thinking about DC continuity gives me a headache.
On April 30th, 2008 at 7:01 pm, Bluraven79 wrote:
Wow…you’re a comic nerd too! Awesome! I confess, I’m fairly new to the DC bandwagon (my GF recently bought me the DCU Encyclopedia, which is a HUGE help!), and so I can see the confusion you’re talking about! I’m more of a Marvel guy, and this whole Secret Invasion thing, is almost as bad DC’s Crisis-fixation. Although, to be honest, I’m praying they ret-con Steve Rogers’ death…though I saw on G4 that Brian Michael Bendis said he doesn’t retcon. Good post!
On May 1st, 2008 at 10:46 pm, Paul wrote:
uh, spoiler alert dude!