Discussion: Comic books and the Multiverse

[Orpheus Jones]

There's been a strange phenomenon occurring in the DC multiverse involving comic books. This has first occurred during DC's silver age starting with the Barry Allen Flash of Earth-1 who was inspired a comic book superhero of the same name, who just happened to be Jay Garrick of Earth-2.

Another example includes the Justice League in Earth-Prime, the universe we live in and where the comic books somehow chronicles their adventures and their private lives, much to the JLA's surprise.

Another would be that in Pre-Crisis Earth-1, Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family of Earth-S are chronicled in comic books as well and vice versa.

Most recently, this comic book oddity has happened in Grant Morrison's Multiversity comics.

So what do you think is the cause of this phenomenon? Do the writers and artists of DC Comics just happen to be psychically linked to the multiverse? Is DC being controlled by the Monitors or the Gentry or someone/something else that surpasses even them?

Let's discuss.

[t hedge coke]

I talked about it at length here, but what I find most fascinating is the history of "us" reaching into the DCU, and how often that correlates to going bad and/or gaining super powers. The narrative fabric, apparently, gets into "us" and Cary Bates turns evil, Jann Jones might even, while some may be sympathetic, and some get so enmeshed they just go native, as it were. Even our universe is just recursively inside the broadest DCU, the DC Multiverse, but also a living, thinking entity that sometimes appears as a cube, sometimes as a horned humanoid figure.

This is mostly unplanned and uncoordinated of course, but it's rich soil to grow stories in. And, makes up - for me - some of the most interesting material in Planetary, Seven Soldiers of Victory, and The Multiversity.