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Superman's New Haircut

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Superman's New Haircut

Old 04-14-15, 04:42 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Ugh. What a fucking headache. Just cancel everything and keep DCE publishing to a series of unrelated, non-continuity-bound stories that are just good, period.
Old 04-14-15, 04:58 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy
Ugh. What a fucking headache. Just cancel everything and keep DCE publishing to a series of unrelated, non-continuity-bound stories that are just good, period.
I have days where I'd be all for that, but on the other hand I can sometimes be a massive appreciator of complex continuity and callbacks to characters created in the 50s or some such.
Old 04-14-15, 05:22 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

I have a 70s Justice League of America issue where they called back to a (then unknown) origin that was set in the 1950s. I also use to love when Reed Richards and Ben Grimm served during WWII.
Old 04-14-15, 05:25 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

I'm glad I stopped reading comic books in the late 70's.
Old 04-14-15, 08:37 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Pre-Crisis DC was never hard to understand. If I could get it at 8, there was nothing to worry about. But oh well...
Old 04-14-15, 09:02 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy
Pre-Crisis DC was never hard to understand. If I could get it at 8, there was nothing to worry about. But oh well...
Well, to be fair, there wasn't much continuity to speak of in those days. Most comics were standalone, one-and-done. Titles rarely crossed over or affected each other. It wasn't until the mid 80s when continuity really started to matter with crossovers and longer storyarcs and such.

I was a kid in the 80s and that was the heyday of my comic reading, and I was rarely confused. I think many people overestimate how confusing comics are. After all, this is a medium mostly meant for kids. If kids can understand it, then adults surely can as well. It's also far far easier to get into comics nowadays due to the internet and being able to look up anything on wikipedia or google. Back when I was a kid there was no internet, so if I wanted some backstory on something I had to track down back issues manually. The internet has made things so much easier.
Old 04-14-15, 09:11 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

That's assuming someone has enough interest in comics to look all that stuff up. For one, synopses are rarely as satisfying as actually reading the comic, so you risk people being turned off by how ridiculous continuity really is when written out in long form. Two, if I have to do a ton of research to just understand this pamphlet I bought for 4.99, why bother? At some point, continuity became a hook to reward longtime comic book readers, and then became this overwhelming hassle as they had to justify every thing that happened in every comic ever fitting together.

I'll admit, I was really upset when I finally did some reading on convergence and all the talk was it was a placeholder so that DC could move offices.
Old 04-14-15, 09:20 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Continuity is a double edged sword.

Personally, I love continuity. Even in things like TV, I highly highly prefer serialized TV shows over episodic TV shows. I just love ongoing stories where everything matters.

However, I do agree that continuity over a long period of time gets to be a mess. When comic stories written in 1960 are still canon today, it is going to get very messy. There is absolutely no way you can condense thousands and thousands of comics written over a 50 year time period into a "10 year sliding time scale" like Marvel uses. It just isn't going to work.

Yet continuity is important. Standalone stories can get messy too without having at least some continuity. For example, if Peter and Gwen are dating in one story and then in the next story it is Peter and MJ with no explanation as to what happened to Gwen, then that is bad and just as confusing.
Old 04-14-15, 09:47 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by kgrogers1979
Well, to be fair, there wasn't much continuity to speak of in those days. Most comics were standalone, one-and-done. Titles rarely crossed over or affected each other. It wasn't until the mid 80s when continuity really started to matter with crossovers and longer storyarcs and such.
Oh there was plenty of continuity, pre-Crisis. Books were mostly contained to their family of titles, but there still were crossovers, multi-parters across titles, etc. Books like New Teen Titans and Batman & The Outsiders did an amazing two-parter across books. Of course 30 years later it's all blown way out of hand, but back then you could have continuity without becoming enslaved to it. Most of the time, though, it was fast and loose. That way you could have something as ridiculous as JLI alongside the grittier Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. I miss that kind of variety.
I was a kid in the 80s and that was the heyday of my comic reading, and I was rarely confused. I think many people overestimate how confusing comics are. After all, this is a medium mostly meant for kids. If kids can understand it, then adults surely can as well. It's also far far easier to get into comics nowadays due to the internet and being able to look up anything on wikipedia or google. Back when I was a kid there was no internet, so if I wanted some backstory on something I had to track down back issues manually. The internet has made things so much easier.
Independent publishers used to produce these amazing comics indexes that summarized runs on major titles. I remember I had them for New Teen Titans, Legion, and I think even Crisis on Infinite Earths. They were amazing resources back then.
Old 04-14-15, 09:54 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by kgrogers1979

However, I do agree that continuity over a long period of time gets to be a mess. When comic stories written in 1960 are still canon today, it is going to get very messy. There is absolutely no way you can condense thousands and thousands of comics written over a 50 year time period into a "10 year sliding time scale" like Marvel uses. It just isn't going to work.
I think the Marvel way works reasonably well; while you're reading new comics, you keep in mind that all the previous stuff happened, but in a sort of vague way the older it is.
Old 04-14-15, 09:59 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Apropos of nothing, but this took me back; I found the covers to those Teen Titan index books from the mid 80s. Quick Google search and here they are! Man I haven't seen these covers in 30 years...

Spoiler:








Old 04-14-15, 10:20 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

I always wondered if DC really licensed that out to them. I used to love reading who's who and the marvel guidebooks, although like I said some of those entries were really convoluted. Heck I used to buy those rpg resource guides as well.
Old 04-14-15, 11:42 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy
Pre-Crisis DC was never hard to understand. If I could get it at 8, there was nothing to worry about. But oh well...
Anyone confused by Pre-Crisis continuity and that actively read DC comics was mostly brain-dead. I think DC wanted to pare down their universe and have one timeline like Marvel had at the time, killing off excess characters. I never bought the idea it was confusing. That was always a very lame excuse used by DC.

Supposedly there will be monthly books after Convergence that aren't set in the current 52 continuity.
Old 04-15-15, 07:10 AM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy
Apropos of nothing, but this took me back; I found the covers to those Teen Titan index books from the mid 80s. Quick Google search and here they are! Man I haven't seen these covers in 30 years...

Spoiler:








I loved the Indexes. I was really into Wolfman and Perez' New Teen Titans, but the OCD in me wanted to know the entire history of the Titans and read everything in order. I couldn't afford or even find all of the back issues, so these indexes were the bomb!
Old 04-15-15, 08:17 AM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by fujishig
I always wondered if DC really licensed that out to them. I used to love reading who's who and the marvel guidebooks, although like I said some of those entries were really convoluted. Heck I used to buy those rpg resource guides as well.
DC was very cool with those Official Index books. They were made with DC's approval (after proper licensing fees of course).
Old 04-15-15, 04:44 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by Hokeyboy
Oh there was plenty of continuity, pre-Crisis. Books were mostly contained to their family of titles, but there still were crossovers, multi-parters across titles, etc. Books like New Teen Titans and Batman & The Outsiders did an amazing two-parter across books. Of course 30 years later it's all blown way out of hand, but back then you could have continuity without becoming enslaved to it. Most of the time, though, it was fast and loose. That way you could have something as ridiculous as JLI alongside the grittier Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters. I miss that kind of variety.

Independent publishers used to produce these amazing comics indexes that summarized runs on major titles. I remember I had them for New Teen Titans, Legion, and I think even Crisis on Infinite Earths. They were amazing resources back then.
They always had those little dialogue boxes for the reader so they can read the issue that is referred to in the story.

Originally Posted by PhantomStranger
Anyone confused by Pre-Crisis continuity and that actively read DC comics was mostly brain-dead. I think DC wanted to pare down their universe and have one timeline like Marvel had at the time, killing off excess characters. I never bought the idea it was confusing. That was always a very lame excuse used by DC.

Supposedly there will be monthly books after Convergence that aren't set in the current 52 continuity.
Back before Crisis they would just stop writing the characters they weren't using. I was fine with that.
Old 04-15-15, 07:44 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

I used to love these

I could see how strong a character was or what their powers were. They tried to duplicate it several times but this was the best run IMO.
Old 04-15-15, 11:19 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by PhantomStranger
Anyone confused by Pre-Crisis continuity and that actively read DC comics was mostly brain-dead. I think DC wanted to pare down their universe and have one timeline like Marvel had at the time, killing off excess characters. I never bought the idea it was confusing. That was always a very lame excuse used by DC.

Supposedly there will be monthly books after Convergence that aren't set in the current 52 continuity.
To be fair the Earth 2 stuff was pretty confusing, with Batman being married and having a daughter, and then Infinity Inc. and Young All Stars trying to all fit together somehow; Gardner Fox had done a great job explaining away the golden age heroes as another Earth, but then you had duplicates of the main heroes. After Crisis they allowed some top creators free reign on recreating characters like Superman and Wonder Woman, and actually got some great stories out of it. The problem became when people wanted to introduce the old elements back: the old version of Krypton and Krypto, the old Hawkman, a deaged and then reaged JSA, Hippolyta as the Golden Age WW, eventually leading to the return nobody really wanted by that point, Barry Allen. Don't get me wrong, guys like Geoff Johns and James Robinson did a great job piecing things together with a real love for the characters and history, but they had to do soft reboots every other year (poor Legion).

Last edited by fujishig; 04-16-15 at 12:50 AM.
Old 04-15-15, 11:25 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

I think they just wanted to copy the more successful and cohesive Marvel Universe model. The "real" universe was the one that had the modern versions of Superman and Batman so nothing really mattered on Earth Two. Basically the Golden Age of DC had no real bearing on the current events of the modern DCU, unlike the Marvel Universe where one of their flagship characters had history and continuity from the 40s to the present day, which seems more impressive.


I never read DC til the late 80s/early 90s and by that time Earth 1 and 2 were gone. Years later, around the mid 2000s I remember my friend trying to get into superhero comics because of the DC cartoons he grew up on and the new movies coming out but he was a little discouraged by the complicated continuity of DC. Especially Earth 1 and 2. Regular comic readers may have been cool with it, but to newcomers they might be a little intimidated.

I never liked DC's attempts at stressing the shared universe angle.

Last edited by brayzie; 04-15-15 at 11:38 PM.
Old 04-16-15, 11:09 AM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by fujishig
To be fair the Earth 2 stuff was pretty confusing, with Batman being married and having a daughter, and then Infinity Inc. and Young All Stars trying to all fit together somehow; Gardner Fox had done a great job explaining away the golden age heroes as another Earth, but then you had duplicates of the main heroes.
I still don't understand the confusion...as I stated before, I started in '73 when I was eight and there absolutely was no confusion. All Star came back in '75 and it wasn't confused as to where it fit. The only thing back then that may have confused new and casual readers would probably have been Brave and the Bold. Almost every story Haney wrote was out of continuity. He would randomly write a story about the GA Batman and the next month it would be back to the modern Batman.
Old 04-16-15, 11:28 AM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

The multiple Earths were never confusing. They made the DCU much more diverse and a lot more fun... as a kid, my mind was blown watching older and younger Superman interact, a Batman who married Catwoman and had a daughter superhero who fought alongside a grown-up Robin, etc. It took the "What If" concept and combined it with 'standard' heroes and stories to great effect.

The problem wasn't the multiple Earths; the early 80s DC problem was a lack of strong creators on many of their core books. For every New Teen Titans or Legion of Super-Heroes, there were about a half dozen 'Justice League Detroits'....
Old 04-16-15, 12:21 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

I just recently got more into DC Comics (I preferred Marvel as a kid) and haven't found the multiverse confusing. I read through Crisis on Infinite Ears, Infinite Crisis, etc and that seemed to clarify it well enough in short time. It is a shame to see DC backing away from some of the multiverse stuff to merge everything into one/few universe(s). Even Marvel seems to be ready to bid farewell to their single universe with the Ultimate line and upcoming Secret War.

Edit: I don't think this will be the last time DC merges and eventually un-merges multiple continuities.

Last edited by Undeadcow; 04-16-15 at 01:50 PM.
Old 04-16-15, 01:40 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Yeah. Multiple worlds in either company never confused me as a kid. You just accepted it and moved on. Even as an adult, it doesn't sound confusing but I guess people that get easily confused are the masses.
Old 04-16-15, 07:34 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Originally Posted by Undeadcow
I just recently got more into DC Comics (I preferred Marvel as a kid) and haven't found the multiverse confusing. I read through Crisis on Infinite Ears, Infinite Crisis, etc and that seemed to clarify it well enough in short time. It is a shame to see DC backing away from some of the multiverse stuff to merge everything into one/few universe(s). Even Marvel seems to be ready to bid farewell to their single universe with the Ultimate line and upcoming Secret War.
I loved Crisis on Infinite Ears. Blackest Knee was also good.
Old 04-16-15, 08:33 PM
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Re: Superman's New Haircut

Arm-and-leg-on 2001 was fantastic until the changed the identity of Monarch at the last minute.

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