DC Universe Legacies

[bat39]

Just read this...truly a brilliant series.

Its basically the same premise as Marvel's "Marvels" series - we follow an ordinary joe (this time a cop rather than a photographer) and his life as he witnesses the birth of the Golden Age of heroes, then the Silver Age and so on and so forth - the history of superheroes unraveling in parallel with his own life.

Legacies somehow doesn't quiet capture the magic Marvels did but it does a thoroughly good job giving us snapshots of the various eras of the DCU. The earlier issues, recapping the Golden Age and Silver Age in particular are marvelous. With the later issues, things understandably tend to get cluttered a bit (given how much status quo's have changed in the Modern Age and how 'event-heavy' contemporary comics are). Also the choice of events to focus on gets a bit odd sometimes - stuff like Crisis, Death of Superman, Knightfall etc. are totally understandable but an awful lot of time is spent on Final Night and Hal Jordan's rebirth as Spectre. Also the history for some reason ends rather abruptly just before Infinite Crisis - not at all touching upon the last half-decade of pre-Flashpoint continuity.

Time works in a rather wonky fashion in this series too (hardly any time seems to pass between the Golden Age and Silver Age - but the time from Superman's debut to Infinite Crisis seems to span around 25-30 years - with our everyman audience surrogate and his family ageing but the heroes - not).

But on the whole its a great little exploration of DC's history and some rather obscure corners of the DCU in the fun little 'Snapshots' backups.

[Lee Stone]

It would be a nice revelation if the timeline that Wally saw was this one... and everything between Infinite Crisis and Flashpoint was just simply erased.

[GlennSimpson]

Yeah, I was really excited about the idea of that series when it was introduced, but I expected it to include a realistic aging timeline, which it most certainly did not.

[MajorHoy]

...The earlier issues, recapping the Golden Age and Silver Age in particular are marvelous. With the later issues, things understandably tend to get cluttered a bit (given how much status quo's have changed in the Modern Age and how 'event-heavy' contemporary comics are)...

I agree the earlier portions were much better than towards the end, but I know I first started regularly reading DC comics during the early 1970s, and it was things like Len Wein's run on Justice League of America that really grabbed me, especially since it was the JLA/JSA team-up in issues #101-102 with the Seven Soldiers of Victory that I started with.
As for the lack of enthusiasm I had for the latter part of this series, I had stopped regularly buying comic books for a while in 1995, so that may be part of my prejudice against it. Also, it really signaled a change in the way the DC and other comic books were handled/written, and that may also be a part of it.
But a part of me also wonders if their was a loss of enthusiasm as well if Wein was getting any word of the impending changes from Flashpoint / the New 52 by then.

[manofsteel1979]

I enjoyed it at the time, but it's timing was odd. It was like DC was finally exploring and consolidating their history and continuity and weaving it Into something somewhat coherent, only to erase nearly all of it with the New 52.

On it's own though, it's a good read.

[JAG2045]

I enjoyed it at the time, but it's timing was odd. It was like DC was finally exploring and consolidating their history and continuity and weaving it Into something somewhat coherent, only to erase nearly all of it with the New 52.

I felt the same way about the book, it also felt weird because the last thing in it was Blue Beetle entering Checkmates castle before his death and it just kind of ends, seems a strange place to just end the book (especially since it misses everything post-IC between that and Flashpoint)