Is DC wasting their best fictional asset? Posters at Comic Bloc think that may be the case:

I’ve always seen superhero comics as a narrative genre: that means that I’m not really interested in concepts which are proposed just “for the sake of showing them”, but I’d like that every idea, storyline, character, etc., had its own development and identity. I sincerely think that practically everything in comics must find its own voice; should not it be like this, a lot of concepts would become simply meaningless.
At the end of 52, when the concept of multiverse was re-integrated in continuity, I was full of enthusiasm; in particular, after that I read Grant Morrison’s interview in which he stated that he would have liked to make of every earth the basis of a distinct comics line (or something like that). The idea was pretty strong, and was reinforced by subsequent interviews to Waid, Rucka, Johns, etc.
I must say, sadly, that one year later these good proposals have not been realized; on the contrary, I think that Countdown wasted much of the multiverse’s potential.
Countdown has been probably the worst way to use the concept of the parallel earths. All the maxiseries does is showing alternate versions of already seen heroes, but it’s all pretty void; there is no real development to the characters, the world they inhabit, etc.
Just think about the Nazi Superman of Earth10: all we see in Countdown is an Aryan Superman which is not much more than the nth variation on the theme of “Evil Superman”.
We never really know anything about Earth10, or about the “Wagnerian” revamp of it Morrison talked about. And the same thing can be said about practically all the remaining earths.
In conclusion, one year later, the only earths which have had a bit of a development have been Earth-8 (the Lord Havok one) and Earth-9 (the Tangent one).
I really hope that DC invert this tendency (because I think that the responsibility of this is certainly not the writers’): how I would liked to read a noir story (not necessarily a whole line of comics, of course!) by Greg Rucka on Earth-4!

I have to admit – I kind of feel as if the multiverse has been treated pretty poorly in Countdown. And, if the rest of the Comic Bloc thread is a good indication, I’m not alone: 

“However, with there being a limit of 52 universes, I am unhappy and even fearful over DC’s handling of the Multiverse post-52. Less than a year later we now know over half of the universes and many of them are near identical to New Earth with just a few changes (i.e. Earth 51 and the other Earth that Prime destroyed where the sidekicks had inherited their mentor’s costumes/mantles)… In the future, I hope DC think very carefully before commiting to a concept for another universe unless they find themselves with no universes left to fill. 52 universes are enough, if handled well, and a return to infinite universes runs the risk of the multiverse becoming too bloated and inundated with failed concepts.”

“If you read Johns’ JSA, he is handling the multiverse very well with his Kingdom Come arc. Earth-22, based on the Kingdom Come, story line is a world where the JSA did not influence the next generation of heroes the way they are now trying. A theme that carries over nicely from 52. Johns’ also teases Earth-2′s existence… Admittedly in Countdown, the Earth’s have been handled horribly with the exception of a few. A bad example of the use of the multiverse is the use of near-identical Earths as cannon fodder (Earth-15 and Earth-51). A good example is the expansion of Earth-3.”

“If the DC is willing to create such an inmersion for some of these new Earths then it could achieve good things .But if they want to develop those between inmense battles and megaevents in miniseries they are doomed to fail.I just pray Geoff Jhons dont screw the new E-2 by giving us a ‘cool’ storyline killing some charachters just to heat up things a bit in the upcoming annual.”

You know, giving us a “cool” storyline would be great – My problem with the way we’ve seen the multiverse since 52 has been based more on the seeming rush to introduce new worlds that are based on past glories without any real storyline…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Fandom, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.