What is Crisis on Infinite Earths Legacy

[Triniking1234]

I know going into the post-Crisis era we lost the Legion connection, Superboy stories and Supergirl but saying the whole of Bryne to New 52 was ass? Probably because I enjoyed both.

[SiegePerilous02]

I know going into the post-Crisis era we lost the Legion connection, Superboy stories and Supergirl but saying the whole of Bryne to New 52 was ass? Probably because I enjoyed both.

I wouldn't say the whole era is ass (though Byrne definitely is), but it ended with "Grounded" and aside from "Death", it didn't produce any high profile iconic stories to compete with the ones the Bat corner was producing. Just standard fare material that is to its era what the Bronze age comics were to theirs. The difference is it had worse lore behind it and awkward attempts to bring back older stuff that no longer fit.

And I wouldn't lump the New 52 in that, particularly Morrison who brought the character back to his Golden Age roots before updating some
Silver/Bronze age stuff. New 52 Action makes Byrne look even worse in comparison

[All Star Superman]

Ultimately, COIE's legacy is the following: an epic story with excellent writing and visuals that is sadly tainted by the "either/or" approach it unnecessarily took to DC's not-that-confusing continuity. As a result, the DCU has never been the same and it seems every new regime is interested in trying to fix what COIE damaged and it doesn't appear that there's any way out of this pattern; even "undoing" COIE more than once now hasn't fixed a thing.

[All Star Superman]

Crisis did save DC comics. The problems came latter with lax editors letting writers reintroduce pre-Crisis elements in a very sloppy ways. Then DC's editorial refusing to just reintroduce a new multiverse with set rules and instead coming up with any way they could to make it more complicated than it ever was with stuff like Hypertime and Dark Multiverses when just reintroducing the Multiverse with a few set rules in place would have solved 99.9% of the confusion.

DC didn't need saving, at least not from a narrative standpoint. There was a way to keep the Multiverse around and give sales a boost to better compete with Marvel. Unfortunately, throwing out DC's then-signature concept (Infinite Earths) completely has led to nothing but desperate attempts to fix what should never have been broken.

[kingaliencracker]

I wouldn't say the whole era is ass (though Byrne definitely is), but it ended with "Grounded" and aside from "Death", it didn't produce any high profile iconic stories to compete with the ones the Bat corner was producing. Just standard fare material that is to its era what the Bronze age comics were to theirs. The difference is it had worse lore behind it and awkward attempts to bring back older stuff that no longer fit.

And I wouldn't lump the New 52 in that, particularly Morrison who brought the character back to his Golden Age roots before updating some
Silver/Bronze age stuff. New 52 Action makes Byrne look even worse in comparison

This is not accurate. Whether you liked MAN OF STEEL or not, it sold better than YEAR ONE and GODS & MORTALS by a substantial margin. A lot of what was established by Byrne & Wolfman following the reboot and then subsequently by Stern, Ordway, and Jurgens carried over into mainstream adaptations and are more or less the templates being used in Superman comic books today. Stories like EXILE, TIME AND TIME AGAIN, and PANIC IN THE SKY are generally considered by many Superman fans to be some of the best Superman stories of all-time.

Again, I know when we're talking quality this is entirely subjective. But to say the only notable story to come out of that era was the death arc seems unfair to me.

[SiegePerilous02]

This is not accurate. Whether you liked MAN OF STEEL or not, it sold better than YEAR ONE and GODS & MORTALS by a substantial margin. A lot of what was established by Byrne & Wolfman following the reboot and then subsequently by Stern, Ordway, and Jurgens carried over into mainstream adaptations and are more or less the templates being used in Superman comic books today. Stories like EXILE, TIME AND TIME AGAIN, and PANIC IN THE SKY are generally considered by many Superman fans to be some of the best Superman stories of all-time.

Again, I know when we're talking quality this is entirely subjective. But to say the only notable story to come out of that era was the death arc seems unfair to me.

Man of Steel outsold them at the time, but I'd argue Year One has the stronger long term impact and holds up better as a comic you could give to someone as a mature take on the art form and genre. Byrnes MOS is painfully dated even compared to Perez's Wonder Woman. Them being used as the template for media adaptations also isn't the most glowing endorsement, considering he hasn't had a fully embraced film hit since the first two Reeve films. STAS is pretty great for what it is, but it did reinforce that Superman is at best "charmingly boring" and upstaged by Batman and members of his own supporting cast. Smallville pulled a lot from the pre-Crisis comics, particularly with Lex.

Those stories are embraced by a big chunk of the Superman fanbase, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking they are anywhere near as iconic as Knightfall, TDKR, the Killing Joke, Death in the Family, Under the Red Hood, Long Halloween, Mad Love, etc. Only Death is on that level because of the huge impact it had at the time and because it's used a lot in adaptations. All-Star is the biggest story after that, and it's out of continuity and riffs on the pre Crisis stuff.

[kcekada]

Again, I know when we're talking quality this is entirely subjective. But to say the only notable story to come out of that era was the death arc seems unfair to me.

Agreed. The Superman books of that era (I think they may actually have improved after Bryne's exit) were solid, but standard fare for that time. So were most of the Batman titles. Batman's most iconic stories tended to be in graphic novels and mini-series -- not in the regular titles.

[SiegePerilous02]

Agreed. The Superman books of that era (I think they may actually have improved after Bryne's exit) were solid, but standard fare for that time. So were most of the Batman titles. Batman's most iconic stories tended to be in graphic novels and mini-series -- not in the regular titles.

As a rule, the graphic novels are what really pushed Batman to the top, but even in the regular titles, "Death in the Family" and the controversy that surrounded it was much more of a game changer than "Exile" or "Panic in the Sky." Then we get to the later post-Crisis era where Superman books are pretty lame compared to the No Man's Land era as a whole or Murderer/Fugitive.

Superman's status as the most popular superhero was always going to inevitably face, but I think the post-Crisis stories cemented him as being inherently less cool than Batman, and so Batman has surpassed him more thoroughly than he otherwise might have.

[Gaius]

It was good for the character I care about, Wonder Woman, so that's kind of all the really matters to me. Doing away with 4 decades of post-Marston mediocrity was a godsend.

Coincidentally it was only when DC started trying to "fix" the character by reviving rightfully abandoned pre-Crisis concepts with IC that it went off the rails for her.

[SiegePerilous02]

It was good for the character I care about, Wonder Woman, so that's kind of all the really matters to me. Doing away with 4 decades of post-Marston mediocrity was a godsend.

Coincidentally it was only when DC started trying to "fix" the character by reviving rightfully abandoned pre-Crisis concepts with IC that it went off the rails for her.

I still think Perez coming on to the title to overhaul it with a soft revamp instead of a full blown reboot would have been better for her in the long run. If you're not a fan of the wider DC universe it doesn't really matter, but him making her a novice so late in the DC continuity was annoying af.

Bringing back the old content that doesn't fit in new continuity anymore was bad, but changing the continuity that much is the first place has always been a startling lack of foresight. Just stop referencing the older material until if/when a future writer wants to use it. Then let it be their problem if they can make it work or not.

[Stick Figure]

What a convoluted mess! Grateful to have missed this period. I can’t do pre 2000 comics but I’ve tried to read Crisis twice because a friend is always telling me if it’s importance & what a great story it is. I just can’t make it more than an issue. I glance through it as the art is solid but I’m hoping the animated version can be interesting enough for me to watch. I hate when Marvel does multiverse stories though so it’s just not my thing. Just tell good stories and don’t acknowledge stuff from decades ago. Keep it simple.

[superduperman]

You can't really go into COIE blind. It does require at least a semi-working understanding of the DCU leading up to it. "Normies" would read the first issue and wonder why there's an older Superman with an odd S. My biggest hang up with it is how it just "threw away" popular characters like E-2 Superman and Huntress. I kind of hoped they would find some way to salvage E-2 if nothing else. Even if they don't go back to it. But I don't know that there would have been any way to do that. I think the better way to do a reboot would be to "wind down" the old universes by giving all those characters a happy ending and starting from scratch. ALA Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow? And then just start the "new" universe with no mentions of the old universes. They're still out there but we're not going back to them.

[Refrax5]

I think that the late 80s and 90s era of DC had a lot of bold ideas and creative energy coming out of COIE. They tried a lot of new things they wouldn't have otherwise. Some worked and some didn't, but when I read some of those books that I missed out on the first time around, there's so many gems. Hawkworld remains one of my favorite DC stories ever (even if DC made the colossal mistake of setting it in the present), I loved Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn I and II, Messner-Loebs Flash run, JLI, Power of Shazam, etc. Man of Steel isn't my favorite take on Superman (he came across as a little too stodgy, uptight and yuppie-ish for me), but I get why it worked for it's time and it gave us the version of Lex Luthor that many see as the iconic take (I prefer Lex as a mad scientist as well as businessman myself).

I do think the alternate earths is a wonderful concept that should never have been done away with and that the JSA works better on their own earth. I hate that Barry Allen was killed off and that it was treated (and still is by some) as the only worthwhile thing he ever did as a character. I hated what Johns did to the survivors of the Crisis (especially Kal L, my favorite Superman). I thought the idea that there could be no other Kryptonians besides Superman led to some dumb stuff like a non-Kryptonian Supergirl and pocket dimension Zod and so on.

But I think like any era of comics, there was a mix of good and bad ideas. I appreciate the creativity and willingness to try new things and reinvent the characters, though.

[kcekada]

I can’t do pre 2000 comics but I’ve tried to read Crisis twice because a friend is always telling me if it’s importance & what a great story it is. I just can’t make it more than an issue. I glance through it as the art is solid but I’m hoping the animated version can be interesting enough for me to watch.

The animate version may be more palatable to you, but it will be a watered-down retelling to those of us who were there when the original was released. It was definitely a superb culmination of both the Silver and Bronze Ages. As soon as I saw the Crime Syndicate go out as heroes in the first issue, I knew the series was something special. It simply couldn't have the same effect on someone reading it 40 years later -- and not being versed in the stories that led to it.

And at 12 issues, there is a lot to digest for someone unfamiliar with that era's characters.

[godisawesome]

It got rid of the good Superman and all of their lore and replaced them with a boring alternative. We now have a Superman that is more or less a "it all happened" composite with all of the best elements, but the road to get there was needlessly convoluted by post-COIE chucking all of his stuff and the awkward attempts by subsequent writers to bring that stuff back into a continuity that didn't mesh with most of it anymore



That's what made the Silver Age creation of the multiverse a better landmark. Storylines weren't as complicated back then, and the Multiverse allowed them to preserve most of their content as it was published, with some necessary tweaks here and there in the subsequent years. The tweaks aren't as disrupting when they are spread out, but having one BIG landmark with the goal of altering continuity is inherently different and causes more confusion. Because by that point, DC continuity had gotten more dense than it was in the early Silver Age, and it accumulated plot points that no longer worked in the aftermath. Now they had backissues that no longer made any sense as something the modern stuff would have built off of. COIE is a snake that eats its own tail, it cleans up continuity by wiping out the Multiverse but created the need to refer back to the Multiverse to make any sense of the contradictions between back issues and modern ones.

I don't understand what you mean by this, they were treated as separate entities from their very first appearance. Earth-2 was introduced like 4-5 years after their debuts.

The Silver Age itself amounted to a hard reboot of Flash and Green Lantern, and not one to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, whereas COIE became a hard reboot for Superman and Wonder Woman, but not for Batman (again), Flash, or Green Lantern - and for the latter two, it effectively removed the hard reboot between the Silver and Golden Ages. The separate Earths idea was a conservative creative decision to protect some assets and not protect others, much like what COIE was.

Again, the biggest actual difference is really focused on the contrasting advantages and disadvantages of a single story vs a multi-verse - and especially how it impacts creators who want to leave a mark and “progress” the story versus those who want to write “classic” formulaic stories with an eternal status quo.

Multiversal stories give you a story to make changes someone else may hate (“Batman marries Catwoman!”) while letting them suggest it doesn’t really count (“...That’s only on Earth 2, so the main Bruce can safely cycle through love interest and be single forever!”). Single continuity settings mean that major adventures and events happened and must be acknowledged (“No Man’s Land! President Lex! Wally West grows up as Flash!”) but also means that unpopular arcs are tougher to root out (“Hal Jordan went evil!... Okay, actually, he was possessed by a Space Cockroach!”)

From my personal perspective, multiversal stories always inevitably lead to one world getting favored over another, and an inevitable compulsion to move characters to Earths that “matter,” all while enabling conservative editors to refuse to allow changes by shunting them off elsewhere. Why would I care about Alan Scott or Jay Garrick if they have a book that will inevitably be given less attention because it’s not the main one? And isn’t it better just too have multiple-generations of heroes who just exist with each other?

And I HATE any anti-marriage BS from editorial, even if supplemented and compensated by “They’re married over here, guys!”, because the same impact can be done by just having stories set in the past of the future terrifies someone.

...Plus I’m from the 90’s, so I think that President Lex, Lois and Clark’s marriage, The Black Ring, and the pre-Hardcore Silver Age revanchist stuff from Geoff Johns was great. I *do* agree that the Legion got screwed, and that Bronze Age Superman was good, but ultimately it’s not like there were stories that stand out as better or more meaningful Pre-Crisis.