Anybody else growing tired of apocalyptic crisis every week!

[Jon Clark]

For me it's that the scale of things has gotten to big. Originally Superman or Batman dealt with threats to individuals. A criminal trying to fix a football game by trying to take out a star player or a corrupt mine owner whose workers were in danger due to unsafe conditions. Then in the Silver Age you got some large scale threats mixed with smaller ones. This issue the Flash is stopping a guy with an ice gun from robbing a bank and next issue he is stopping an invasion from another dimension, But even those large scale threats tended to be single hero things- Flash destroys the dimensional gateway before those invading aliens would even get on Superman or Hal Jordan's radar. By the Bronze age we had even lass of the large scale foes and most times the threats at most were to the hero's hometown. Maybe two Green Lanterns teamed up to solve a problem, but something that needed the whole assembled Corps plus the Guardians to personally get involved maybe three times a decade.

But now every story is on such a large scale that Superman's foes are a threat to the whole planet and you would wonder just why the Green lantern Corp isn't sending someone to deal with it. And the JLA is involved in cases that make it apparent that Earth is the ONLY place with heroes that can prevent universal destruction. The people of Alpha-Andromeda Ketrus III certainly don't have any heroes to send when the Anti-Monitor is loose or a rogue New God is threatening to undo the Big Bang. If all creation is imperiled then no one in the universe is more suited to deal with it than a pair of egocentric billionaires (Lex and Bruce). And after 14 billion years of relative peace these threats all appeared in the last 10 years because they were waiting for Earth to create the Speed Force, have a home grown set of Lanterns, and above all else give us a nut in a bat-suit.

This is all so much better than stories about saving regular individual people we could relate to.

[Kevin Street]

Oh man, you touch upon things that I've been thinking about for years. In brief, I think that growing exaggeration with time is a problem with all serialized storytelling, but particularly so with comics. In every kind of serialized storytelling - whether it's soap operas, movies, novels, or whatever - you get this problem where things that were initially grounded become more and more exaggerated over the years, as new creators come in and inevitably take the greatest exaggerations of their predecessors as their new baseline. In comics this is a real problem at both of the major publishers, and it's a serious problem at DC where there are characters that have been around for seventy years or more. Batman is a great detective, then he becomes the world's best detective, then he reaches the point where he can figure out who did it from a single clue and there's no point writing mysteries for him anymore, and beyond that he reaches the point where he can fight Darkseid and New Gods are afraid of him. Villains start out a little mean, then eventually all become merciless killers. Hawkman had one reincarnation, then he had dozens, now he's been reincarnated all across space and time. Booster Gold used to be a bit goofy, now he's an idiot. Every crisis has to be worse than the last one, to the point where there the people they're supposed to be saving aren't even in the story because the scale is too big. Everything gets bigger and bigger until the characters are all too exaggerated to be human (whether they're powered or not) and all the limits and realistic touches that used to make stories great just aren't there anymore, so they end up exclusively fighting each other in pointless battles that are as obscure as Sumerian mythology to anyone who isn't already a fan. Limitations and scaling back exaggerated characteristics makes stories better. That doesn't mean the stories all have to be set on Earth. It just means the characters should still be human, with some sort of limitations and capable of failure.

[mortymantis]

[QUOTE=Ascended;4057626]Yknow, I was thinking the other day how society must be impacted by all the crap that happens to the DC earth. I mean, in the last year the planet fell into the dark multiverse, fell into the Phantom Zone, was almost eaten by a space giant, was invaded by gods (twice), lost the moon, was flooded....and that's not counting all the "regular" crazy stuff like speed force storms, invasions of intelligent gorillas, militarized Bat-soldiers.....or just the building destroying chaos that is any superhero fight ever.

Its an earth where magic is real and anything can happen, and these people.....they're used to this. Somehow a balance exists. But what would that do to society? When any day could be the last day your planet exists, and you could walk around the corner to find anything from a Bloodlines parasite to a H Dial to Superman changing his pants......how long do you wait to get married? Do politicians play the same kind of games, or do they have to accomplish something quick or get voted out? How often do people go to a church, and how badly do they fight over religion?

Man you pegged it. I forgot about the dark multi verse and the phantom

What about a story of how Wayne enterprises suffers from Batman being gone

Or how the daily planet is affected?


What about good old fashioned mysteries that only bats can solve or flash can?

What about the contrast of a super hero being threatened by a non powered villain like lex joker or they justice league having turmoil?

[beetee]

It's that writers today , (King, Snyder, Tynion) feel they need to out Morrison, Morrison and I don't think that's a good strategy. Even Morrison knew how to pace out stories. Ever since Metal... Everything. Must. Be An. Event.

[mortymantis]

It's that writers today , (King, Snyder, Tynion) feel they need to out Morrison, Morrison and I don't think that's a good strategy. Even Morrison knew how to pace out stories. Ever since Metal... Everything. Must. Be An. Event.

The stories seem to neglect that the citizens of earth are even present.
It’s just like super people fighting super villains.

[Buried Alien]

It's that writers today , (King, Snyder, Tynion) feel they need to out Morrison, Morrison and I don't think that's a good strategy. Even Morrison knew how to pace out stories. Ever since Metal... Everything. Must. Be An. Event.

It's all about dynamics. Imagine a movie that's nothing but action, from the first frame to last, with not a second for a breather...or a rock album that's nothing but electric guitar and drums assault for every single second. That gets old after a few plays.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[QBall]

"Is it me", not by a long shot, statistically probably not even in the minority given the variance of genres & titles on the market.

They do seem to sell though (well, stores are buying them and that's all the companies care about) so they'll still be pushed.

[mortymantis]

"Is it me", not by a long shot, statistically probably not even in the minority given the variance of genres & titles on the market.

They do seem to sell though (well, stores are buying them and that's all the companies care about) so they'll still be pushed.

Here's a question that I want to propose to discuss:

Is writing the " invader destorying the multi-verse theme crisis" easier to write than a mystery story?

(Wouldn't it be more challenging to write a five or six part story where the Flash faces a serious challenge against one character like Captain Cold?)

[byrd156]

Here's a question that I want to propose to discuss:

Is writing the " invader destorying the multi-verse theme crisis" easier to write than a mystery story?

(Wouldn't it be more challenging to write a five or six part story where the Flash faces a serious challenge against one character like Captain Cold?)

I would say it is. All you have to worry about in a big event is the spectacle and action. Dialogue doesn't have to be great just fit the voice of the character and the general sequence of events makes sense.

[MajorHoy]

It's all about dynamics. Imagine a movie that's nothing but action, from the first frame to last, with not a second for a breather...

Isn't that a Michael Bay movie or something?

[QBall]

Bombast does seem to be the thing nowadays.

[Killerbee911]

What about the contrast of a super hero being threatened by a non powered villain like lex joker or they justice league having turmoil?

You can't write those stories they have escalated past that point. You think it makes sense in world with a organized Justice League those stories can happen? This isn't just a organized Justice League this Watch Tower, Hall of Justice,We have a teleporter,We have 3 teams worth of best superheroes in world Justice League. The tone of DC isn't an accident ,They come off fighting Dark mutliversal beings and and go fight bank robbers? Even super power ones doesn't make sense to be a challenge. I agree they have too many events but they make to much money to stop doing it now but tone of Justice League pretty much modern Gods. And if you think it is easy sit down and write a couple stories where Superman,Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman can be challenged, Oh yeah they have Batman,Mr Terrific, Flash, Atom and Cyborg you can't challenge them in the intelligence area either.The stakes have constantly be raised because of who they are.

[mortymantis]

You can't write those stories they have escalated past that point. You think it makes sense in world with a organized Justice League those stories can happen? This isn't just a organized Justice League this Watch Tower, Hall of Justice,We have a teleporter,We have 3 teams worth of best superheroes in world Justice League. The tone of DC isn't an accident ,They come off fighting Dark mutliversal beings and and go fight bank robbers? Even super power ones doesn't make sense to be a challenge. I agree they have too many events but they make to much money to stop doing it now but tone of Justice League pretty much modern Gods. And if you think it is easy sit down and write a couple stories where Superman,Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman can be challenged, Oh yeah they have Batman,Mr Terrific, Flash, Atom and Cyborg you can't challenge them in the intelligence area either.The stakes have constantly be raised because of who they are.

I get what you’re saying. The justice league is reserved for big bads. But even with that does the big bad need to be an apocalyptic event? Like wouldn’t a visit from Starro be justice league worthy?

[Doctor Bifrost]

The poor people of the dc earth have had a hard time

You got the fall out of no justice

The totality (the moon blew up!)

Drowned earth


All within like a months time.


Is it me or can we just have the super heroes fighting crime rings or something?

As a matter of fact, yes. I am growing tired of it too. Have been for a long time.

I prefer a DC Earth that looks, to most people, a lot like the Earth we live on in The So-called Real World™. And then there are superheroes - many of whom are not terribly public - who deal with threats that the police and the governments have trouble handling, or who help out with things that slip through the cracks. And usually I prefer heroes with power sets that wouldn't, under any sensible interpretation, warp every real-world human issue into unrecognizable form.

Right now the DCU looks more like normalman - a world defined by enormous masses of superheroes and supervillains, fighting constantly, teaming up all the time, just being everywhere, while the "ordinary humans" just look on, hope they are not wiped out of existence, and somehow survive the constant physical and psychological whiplash.

The crisis of Dark Metal Earth, the breaking of the Source Wall, the destruction of the moon (and the presence of superheroes who can put it back together in an afternoon), the crisis of the Drowned Earth flooding entire cities and transforming millions of people into monsters, the attack on the metaphysical nature of magic itself (which we never understood that well to begin with), untold numbers of humans gaining superpowers because of Source Wall Radiation, the entire Earth is thrown into the Phantom Zone...

All this year. The gods are gone from Olympus! Poseidon is dead! The Parliament of Trees is destroyed! (Good thing we suddenly have a Parliament of Flowers!) Dr. Manhattan made massive changes to the whole history of the DCU!

Ultimately the scale is so non-human that it's hard for me to maintain any interest. Or really engage with the world they're creating. And it's confusing - to me, or to the writers and editors, or to both. I think I recently saw two different origins of "magic in the DCU" - one in JLD/The Witching Hour, one in the Raven miniseries. But I can't say I'm sure.

I used to have this problem with Gemworld. I loved Gemworld as a place within the DCU. I thought it would be interesting if a hero might sometime visit and help out with a problem there, or look for some needed information. Or if a person from Gemworld, with some magical powers, might come to Earth and wind up as a superhero or supervillain, or just someone interesting involved in a storyline. Gemworld (if not overused) seemed like a great potential source of plot lines and interesting characters.

But when writers revisited Gemworld, it seemed like all they could imagine was an enormous, supernatural war that wiped the place out, or changed it beyond all recognition. And I was just getting used to it.

Now I have the same problem with the entire DCU. You'd think that the threat of destruction to the entirety of DC Earth or the DCU would be interesting - and sometimes it can be. But if done too often, it becomes numbing and boring. And leaves you without a clearly-defined, well-designed world on which to build ongoing stories.

When everything is a crisis, then nothing is crisis. 

(Thank you, Buried Alien.)

There's a related literary expression: "When everything is possible, nothing is interesting." It's not universally true. But at a certain level of cosmic mishugas and power inflation, it's nigh-on impossible to make the powers and limitations of the characters clear, and therefore communicate to the reader what the stakes.

They actually made the destruction of the moon boring, given how quickly and easily it was reversed. As a reader, I don't think that's a good thing.

[Naked Bat]

The poor people of the dc earth have had a hard time

You got the fall out of no justice

The totality (the moon blew up!)

Drowned earth


All within like a months time.


Is it me or can we just have the super heroes fighting crime rings or something?

That's Scott Snyder for you. Bigger is always better according to him.