That was the tagline for one of the biggest, maybe THE biggest event in the history of DC Comics.
But was it necessary? I recall reading afterwards that big reason for doing it was that readers were getting confused about continuity between Earths 1& 2 to which I say, seriously? The only comics that dealt with Earth 2 were All star Squadron which was set in WWII and Infinity Inc which was set in the modern era.
But I also recall something about Superboy and the Legion really messing things up, could this be true?
Was it necessary? I didn’t think so. DC didn’t much do the Marvel-style plots that dragged on for years and wandered among multiple titles. So, nobody was really confused about continuity. I daresay nobody CARED about continuity. It was a calculated money-grab event.
I’m not a big DC guy, so feel free to tear my uninformed opinion to shreds, but it seemed to me that the main purpose of crisis was to separate the DC universe from its past as a silly purveyor of kids comics. Its hard to be taken seriously with Beppo the wonder monkey, bat mite, and red kryptonite that turns superman into a ant hybrid hanging around in continuity.
You could say the exact same thing about Marvel’s past. Millie the Model? Sheesh. Check the Marvel Chronicle sometimes, they published their share of wince inducing stuff in the 40’s-early 60’s.
Was it necessary? Maybe not. But I still think it was good, and the messing up of Superboy/Legion history was resolved relatively quickly. The immediate aftermath of the Crisis was a well done, cohesive universe with multiple generations of super-heroes.
What screwed things up afterward was editors with their own visions for characters deciding to enforce their visions without regard to post-Crisis continuity.
Superboy (the one that inspired the Legion) had to be shoved into a pocket universe because Byrne’s Superman reboot had him never be Superboy. So yeah some stuff got messed up, but that’s nothing compared to Hawkman.
Millie the Model is shakespearian compared to shit they put out these days. Squirrel Girl? One off jokes in throw away one shot comics intended to burn off inventory stories on 5th week shipping dates should be left forgotten.
I didn’t know that there even was anyone who hated Squirrel Girl. I thought that the world was divided into those who loved her, and those who have never heard of her.
It also wouldn’t surprise me if it was seen as a “barrier to entry” for bringing in new readers. “We have these heroes, and those heroes, and they’re similar, but they’re in two different continuities, but don’t worry, you’ll get used to it eventually.”
They didn’t start using the Charlton characters until AFTER Crisis, and the Syndicate didn’t have ongoing stories. Swamp Thing was totally in Earth One continuity until the 90s, when the Vertigo Divide was instituted.
Captain Marvel did have an ongoing book, but it didn’t have a Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc, like Earth Two did. There was a Freedom Fighters book in the mid-70s, but, again, no Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, etc.
It may have been a good thing or not, but it was not necessary. The only person confused about the five earths that showed up from time to time was a Writer named Gerry Conway (He also didn’t get the concede that we – you, I, all the people reading this message board etc. – were on earth prime. He kept arguing that flash never really showed up here so we were not earth prime. :rolleyes:) He was the only person I can remember claiming that the five main earths were “too confusing”.
Superboy and the legion didn’t mess up anything but were screwed by the crisis.
But that happened before the ink had dried on Crisis number 12. You had Jason – raised in the circus - Todd running around in Teen Titans while meanwhile you had Jason – so stupid he stole the Batmobile’s hubcaps – Todd running around in Detective. At the same time and issues that were published the same month. You also had three different Billy Batson/Shazam characters over the course of maybe three years. (The original one, followed by the one who was Dr. Savanna’s nephew, followed by the excellent Jerry Ordway one. And I think several of them overlapped for a while. ).
The biggest problem was that there was not enough editorial control or pre-planning for the last few issues of crisis. Marv Wolfman wanted everyone at the beginning of time to remember the multiple earths which would’ve solved a lot of the problems. But DC changed its Mind around issue nine? 10? And made him change it so it was a “clean slate“. Wolfman tried to patch issues 11 and 12 with the new mandate but stuff still slipped through the cracks like the earth two Bat family being alive at the end of the series and then being forgotten
Was Millie the model ever part of the Superhero continuity? Marvel did have a bunch of really stupid villains for a while but rather than destroy the universe they simply had Scourge kill them all off.
I think Millie made a cameo appearance in FF Annual #3, the marriage of Reed Richards and Sue Storm.
To reply to the original post, it was total unnecessary. I grasped the concept of parallel universes when I was nine years old and reading one of the Silver Age Flash comics that had Jay Garrick in it.
Fenris: I’ve been reading the “Tomb of Dracula” series and my reaction upon reading #1 was: “My God, Gerry Conway actually wrote something worth reading.”