Wild River Review talks with writer Marv Wolfman about the creation process, the surprise success of New Teen Titans, the genesis of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the recent return of the DC multiverse:
I keep saying, and I mean it, since I’m the one who decided we should get rid of the multiverse, how could I complain when someone else decides to bring it back? I did Crisis on Infinite Earths because DC’s sales, except for Titans and Legion, were pretty poor. DC needed something big and I came up with the idea of the Crisis to convince Marvel readers that this wasn’t their father’s DC any more. We needed something big, splashy, controversial and completely thought out in all details to demonstrate how good the DCU could be. It took me many years to work up the story you saw and I have to say I still stand by it today, which I can’t always say about everything I’ve done.
(Via the Forbidden Planet blog)
April 16th, 2008 at 10:02 am
And all these years later, COIE is still the gold standard for universe-shattering, company-wide mega-crossovers. No one’s been able to do it better, IMO.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I thought getting rid of the multiverse was the best thing to ever happen to DC… I know I’m probably in the minority with that view. There are still DC books I really enjoy today, but that decade (actually, a little less than a decade) after the original Crisis is still my favorite period for comics (and especially DC) ever.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Before CRISIS the DC universe could be explained in a couple sentences about parallel worlds. After CRISIS it would take paragraphs to explain how and why characters not only didn’t exist any more, but NEVER existed (and that still doesn’t make any sense). If the CRISIS was so well thought out in advance then how come Roy Thomas was told after the fact that characters he’d been writing about in ALL STAR COMICS didn’t exist and he couldn’t use them any more? I always thought CRISIS went about 2 issues too long and I stopped buying DC comics after CRISIS.
April 16th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Amazing how two people can come away with totally different viewpoints…
For me, I didn’t care about an explanation as to why certain didn’t exist anymore and never did. I just like the slimmed down, more “realistic” (in comic book terms I mean, I know it’s practically an oxymoron) DCU. it just happens that the time of the first Crisis ushered in the kinds of comics I’ve loved best, and still do.
Anyhow, now we’re faced with explanations about the return of the multiverse and who knows what else. Not that I care, really. I ignored 52 and just about anything else pertaining to the multiverse. The Sinestro Corps War is really the only exception I’ve made to that.
Generally, I prefer leaving the parallel universe stuff to Star Trek. And even they haven’t always handled it well.