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  1. #1
    Guardian of the Universe comicstar100's Avatar
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    Default What would the DC Universe look like without Crisis on Infinite Earths

    If Crisis never happened what would the DC Universe look like today?

  2. #2
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    I don't know, but I have a feeling more consistent use would be made of some of the alternate Earths.

    The JSA would never have been moved over to the JLA's Earth. Zero Hour likely wouldn't have happened. Same goes for Infinite Crisis. We wouldn't have characters like Harbinger and the Monitors. Wally West probably wouldn't have become the character he is today. The landscape would be remarkably different, I'm sure.

    Outside of continuity, this one is a big "maybe", but perhaps the industry wouldn't be so reliant on events like it is now. It probably still would be, though. But Crisis is really the first one that started killing heroes and proclaiming that "Things will never be the same," and the first one to reboot a universe. So, there is a possibility that the industry would be very different today if it didn't happen. However, I have a feeling that something else would have just taken its place instead.
    Last edited by Vampire Savior; 11-01-2019 at 12:31 AM.

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    Hard to say.

    Earth 2 probably would've stayed longer. And unless they introduced some characters from there on the main earth, no JSA/Infinity Inc on main earth would mean: no JSA dying in Zero Hour, Johns' JSA would be drastically different if they let him do it at all, Starman would probably be very different, probably no Hector/Lyta in Sandman, no Kyle/Jade, no Jesse in the Flash family, no certain team line ups happening like Obsidian and Nuklon on JLA or Jade in Outsiders, and lots of other little stuff.

    Maybe no future complete/partial reboots and hard continuity clean ups like getting rid of atlantean Peeg and trying to introduce the JSA for the umpteenth time. Or maybe they would've done it to differentiate themselves from the sliding timescale. Again, hard to say what later higher ups would think.

  4. #4
    Extraordinary Member Güicho's Avatar
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    All the screeching* about characters never marry, have kids, age, and die, (as narrative that sticks), and is closer to real-time, would dissipate since there was a whole ongoing parallel Universe dedicated to exploring exactly that!
    Wile the parallel ongoing sliding-time-scale U. could continue with the main characters always in their prime, without constantly having to reboot them.

    *Of course we know this is complete BS, that's just phonies who don't really mean or want real-time, they just want the narrative to stick with the characters they grew up with, and would just as soon complain when it moved on from their favorites.
    Last edited by Güicho; 11-01-2019 at 08:42 AM.

  5. #5
    Astonishing Member Tzigone's Avatar
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    Outside of continuity, this one is a big "maybe", but perhaps the industry wouldn't be so reliant on events like it is now. It probably still would be, though. But Crisis is really the first one that started killing heroes and proclaiming that "Things will never be the same," and the first one to reboot a universe. So, there is a possibility that the industry would be very different today if it didn't happen. However, I have a feeling that something else would have just taken its place instead.
    That's a really interesting thought.

    Quote Originally Posted by Güicho View Post
    All the bitching about characters never marry, have kids, age, and die, that sticks, and is closer to real-time, would dissipate since there was a whole ongoing parallel Universe dedicated to exploring that!
    Wile the parallel ongoing sliding-time-scale U. continue the main characters always in their prime, without constantly having to reboot them.
    They were already aging pre-COIE - Dick going off to college, then later Donna getting married and such. Maybe they would have frozen them there and not let anyone get any older, but it's unlikely, IMO. I think at the very least, Gar would have made it adulthood. Then again, even now they don't want to let that happen.

  6. #6
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    I thinkthe 'generational' element to the DCU would never have been established, at least no to the extent that it is today. We wouldn't have the JSA as forerunners to the JLA. Wally West likely wouldn't have become Flash, and with Jay Garrick also on a different earth and not Barry's predecessor, you wouldn't have the 'Flash legacy' concept. The same applies to Black Canary to an extent. We might not have gotten the second-generation 'Young Justice' sidekicks either.

    Also, with another earth to play around with the idea of characters growing older and passing the torch onto the next generation, we may not have got the same progress with the 'mainstream' Earth 1 character. So potentially no Superman-Lois marriage, Batman having a son etc.

    I do wonder though if DC would have rebooted eventually by simply shifting focus to another earth? Maybe at some point in the late 80's or early 90's they'd simply 'retire' Earth 1 and have a new earth with rebooted versions of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman etc. and possibly new holders of the mantles of Flash, GL etc. 'Tec # 500 broached the subject of new iterations of Batman popping up every couple of decades on a new parallel earth - maybe they'd simply have followed through on that and given us a new earth with a rebooted lineup?

  7. #7
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    It would be much less of a mess.
    We'd lose some of the generational aspect. At least with the JSA, but they would be on Earth-2 with their legacies. But the main Earth had already flirted with progression, Dick Grayson after all became Nightwing BEFORE COIE happened and we saw another Robin. Much as I'm not thrilled with getting carried away with that gimmick (such as having seemingly an endless supply of Robins) I can still see something like it happen even without COIE. Barry could still be killed off and Wally could still become a new Flash; he'd just be Flash II instead of Flash III, and he of course could still interact with Jay and the other speedsters in the Multiverse. There is nothing in the pre-Crisis Earth-1 set up that precludes stuff like the death and marriage of Superman, Wonder Woman becoming a literal ambassador to her people, and multiple generations of sidekicks from existing down the line.

    And we would have avoided the headaches that befell Superman, Wonder Woman, DONNA TROY, the Legion, Supergirl, the Hawks, Power Girl, etc, none of which were worth the trade off of allowing the JLA and JSA to have an easier time setting up Thanksgiving dinner or some ****.

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    I suspect that much of Superman's environment would still have been allowed to fade away. Perhaps not jettisoning as Byrne did, bu the Pre-Crisis books had already rid him of Kandor and (for all practical purposes) Krypto, and I expect that would have continued.

    Wally West would still have become the Flash, because Barry's title was a mess, and on its way out.

    By now (probably 10 years ago actually), editorial would have had to deal with the ages of the E2 characters. I suspect all of them except The Spectre and Dr. Fate would have disappeared. Whether Infinity, Inc. could have survived on their own, I don't know. I do think we would have gotten to see Thomas' All-Star Squadron follow WWII to it's end; and I'm sorry that we didn't.

    Especially if Infinity, Inc. didn't make it as a title, I think we would have started to see E1 versions of characters like Dr. Fate, Mister Terrific, Dr. Midnight, and Power Girl. I suspect that like The Post-Crisis Huntress, they would have been a bit different from their E2 namesakes.

  9. #9
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    I suspect that much of Superman's environment would still have been allowed to fade away. Perhaps not jettisoning as Byrne did, bu the Pre-Crisis books had already rid him of Kandor and (for all practical purposes) Krypto, and I expect that would have continued.
    This would have been far preferable to what we got. I prefer the stuff they were sidelining to what came after post-COIE, but even just putting them into the background and shifting focus/adding new stuff would have been fine. What they did just created more headaches for future writers who may have wanted to utilize (or even just reference) that older stuff. it's short sighted and frankly kind of selfish. Ditto for Wonder Woman.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by SiegePerilous02 View Post
    This would have been far preferable to what we got. I prefer the stuff they were sidelining to what came after post-COIE, but even just putting them into the background and shifting focus/adding new stuff would have been fine. What they did just created more headaches for future writers who may have wanted to utilize (or even just reference) that older stuff. it's short sighted and frankly kind of selfish. Ditto for Wonder Woman.
    I do not disagree. Perez wrote some good stories, and the art was eye-popping, but the Crisis utterly tore the heart of Wonder Woman.

  11. #11
    Extraordinary Member Restingvoice's Avatar
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    Batman's still gonna keep moving towards darkness after Frank Miller, Year One will still be written, but this time as a retcon instead of an origin of a new universe, Jason Todd's still gonna die but this time it's because he's too similar to Dick Grayson rather than too different...

    Wally will not be The Flash, but he may get a new identity similar to Nightwing since they're the same age.

    Supergirl will still be alive until she's killed or disappeared in order to keep her a teen and represent the teenage girl demographic after the 2000s and only after the 2000s because DC didn't care about girls in the 80s and 90s

    Helena Bertinelli may still exist since Helena Wayne only exists on Earth 2.

    Power Girl and JSA will stay on Earth 2

    There will be some kind of Crisis on Two Earths crossover but it won't result in multiversal devastation

    Oh, most importantly Infinite Crisis won't happen the way it did. Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime will remain on their earths and... well... wait... they can still be an antagonist but this time with a different motivation and without the stench of ruining their heroism
    Last edited by Restingvoice; 11-01-2019 at 02:38 PM.

  12. #12
    Ultimate Member Lee Stone's Avatar
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    Whatever it would be, I'd probably like it.
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  13. #13
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    One of two things:

    1) DC might not exist anymore. COIE was a Hail Mary pass. The entire company was in trouble. Big name titles were looking at cancellation. Flash. Wonder Woman. Probably Superman. At one point in the early eighties they even tried to sell it to Marvel. Who didn't want it. That's how bad a shape they were in. And this was after three very successful Superman movies. WB might have used it for movies and TV shows but in terms of comics, I don't know that it would have had a future.

    2) A lot of the older staff probably would have gotten the boot. The Superman rule where nothing is ever allowed to change and everything has to be made for kids would be jettisoned. I don't know that we would be in Black Label territory but the motto "DC comics aren't just for kids anymore" would have very much been true. As others have pointed out, the "sillier" elements of Superman, like Krypto and maybe even any references to Superboy, would be jettisoned as well. He probably wouldn't have gotten a hard reboot but the days of Super-baby stories would be long gone. And any reference to Superboy would probably have been Legion only. We were already starting to see elements of this by the eighties. Superman and Lois' relationship would probably have been allowed to follow the logical path it did post-Crisis. We might have even seen stories where she wakes up in his apartment. Eliot S! Maggin tried to move the relationship forward in the seventies and was overruled. That would probably have stopped.

    In terms of things like Earth 2, I honestly don't know. Given the ages of the characters, it would have started to present a problem by the mid-nineties like it did post-Crisis. It's highly unlikely that something like All Star Squadron or Infinity Inc. would have continued much into the eighties. DC definitely would have experimented more. Things like DKR and Watchmen showed they were willing to. What other projects this would have produced is anyone's guess. I don't know if they had a "Plan B" if they had decided not to go through with COIE. I doubt it would have been nearly as successful as it was.
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  14. #14
    Ultimate Member SiegePerilous02's Avatar
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    I get that they felt it was the thing they had to do to save themselves. And historically it worked...for a time. It was better than a lot of the stuff to come later, but it started the trend of doing something big, attention getting, kind of stupid and destructive to get a sales boost. A short term solution with long term consequences that they didn't plan for all that well.

    Like I think a big event that killed off some major characters (Barry and Kara could still have died even if the Multiverse didn't go with them, with the added bonus of the latter not getting stupidly erased from continuity) and resulted in some status quo shifts, and new creative team overhauls on the major books might have worked. Even with new #1s to go along with the new creative teams/directions, just not in a new continuity.

    Of course that's the benefit of hindsight. But looking back, it's easier now to see how much damage this event did long term despite some good things coming out of it. But story wise, there isn't a single good thing to come out of it that couldn't have worked (more or less) within the confines of what came before, or was worth it at all.

  15. #15
    Extraordinary Member Zero Hunter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by superduperman View Post
    One of two things:

    1) DC might not exist anymore. COIE was a Hail Mary pass. The entire company was in trouble. Big name titles were looking at cancellation. Flash. Wonder Woman. Probably Superman. At one point in the early eighties they even tried to sell it to Marvel. Who didn't want it. That's how bad a shape they were in. And this was after three very successful Superman movies. WB might have used it for movies and TV shows but in terms of comics, I don't know that it would have had a future.
    That is the thing so many people don't seem to understand these days. DC was in trouble. BIG trouble. Most of their big characters were seen as stale and boring or goofy. Wonder Woman and Superman especially. Just look at what was the big sellers around the time of the Crisis. Legion, Teen Titans, and to an extent Batman. People had just stopped caring about pretty much all the old timer like Superman, WW, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and the others. I was die hard comic fan during this period and you could not have paid me to read a Superman book, but I ate up Legion and TT. Without Crisis DC would probably have been shut down within a few years it was that bad. Crisis changed everything and gave all those older characters people had stopped caring about a massive shot in the arm. Suddenly people cared about Superman and the others again.

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