Doom and Gloom: The Multiverse
I am not a long-time DC geek. I say that because I want it to be clear that I’m not approaching this topic with a sense of entitlement, that “I’ve been reading DC for 20 years so they damn well better not mess things up…” If anything, my recent conversion into a DC fan (starting with Identity Crisis and increasing with Infinity Crisis and all the tie-ins) allows me to say what some might call heresy: The multiverse can go to hell.
I understand the purpose of the multiverse, the whiff of sci-fi that it brings into comics, the way it allows generational gaps among heroes and how nice an element of confusion it can be. But it’s a crutch, and always has been. It’s a way to explain incongruities amid continuity (which seems a bit ridiculous, since we’re talking about make believe men in tights). So it was that during Infinite Crisis (which was as well coordinated and dramatic of a mega-event as comics has ever seen), I almost felt relief to see the multiverse bite star dust. Good riddance to bad rubbish and all that.
But now, as revealed in an amazingly cipherable riddle from Dan Didio, we know the multiverse “still exists.” And this pisses me off.
I suppose, having said the above about the multiverse’s inherent worthlessness, I could simply say that the multiverse is needless crap and I’m annoyed to have it further meddling with my future enjoyment of DC comics. Just as any stamp of Civil War on a Marvel cover sent me running, I’ll be carefully looking out for hints of multiversial intrusion into my books. Any whiff of cross-dimensional mischief, and I’m gone. However, that isn’t what really annoys me about this news. That would be the very clear problem that any revival of the multiverse invalidates so much progress DC has made and stomps on the company’s defense of its mega-event. Bringing back the multiverse completely invalidates Infinite Crisis.
DC has always been a bit too obsessive over the sanctity of their characters and the continuity of the DC universe. Especially starting with Crisis on Infinite Earths (but even going back to the JSA-JLA crossovers), the company has planned each mega-event as a way to “fix” things, to reboot and present a new, clean entry point for new readers (while selling a few million books in the process). Especially in the form of Zero Hour and Armageddon 2001, they’ve really only mussed things further. And, with dozens of separate books steered by different creative teams, there are always bound to be incongruities cropping up. Marvel handled matters in a different way entirely (at least after Onslaught sent people away in droves) by starting afresh with their Ultimate line.
In Infinite Crisis, DC resorted to their same old rubric for rebooting the universe, they just took things to a heretofore unseen level, by plotting a truly company-wide crossover that both honored the company’s history and made for exciting comics and, most importantly, streamlined things by pulling all these disparate threads into a single ribbon. They killed the multiverse.
Since then, we’ve seen the relaunch of several characters in new ways (some successes and some failures), and, most importantly, there hasn’t been any turmoil over continuity. We’ve just seen a lot of good, simple superheroics and a renewed focus on the individual characters and teams. But, perhaps by plan or perhaps because this lack of a historic brouhaha had led to Marvel jumping back on top in a big way, the powers that be decided to stick those big purple hands back into the universal stew at the beginning of time.
Maybe not-too-coincidentally, this comes as their World War Three and Countdown events are looming. Just a little tidbit to the readers to draw interest into the next mega-events. Except, we’ve seen around the blog-o-sphere a certain amount of exhaustion at these spectacles. Civil War dropped readers as the series dragged on, and now it’s been largely eviscerated in public. There are already groans about World War Hulk, Marvel’s next big one.
What the publishers should see is that before long, they’re going to have to engage readers a lot more to keep them faithful enough to drop a huge chunk of change on a big series with lots of tie-ins. And to do that, readers need to be convinced that the mega-event will matter.
With his “multiverse still exists” riddle, Didio and DC showed that Infinite Crisis mattered much less than they’ve always claimed. And so, I ask, why should I believe the next one will be any different?
Did Infinite Crisis really do away with the multi-verse? I saw it more as cleanng away the dross left from the original Crisis On Infinite Earths – i.e. Batman is a rat-bastard and Wonder Woman didn’t appear until 10 years into the Big Two’s career.
But, don’t worry. I don’t think they’ll go back to the Earth-2 of yore. It’s more likely it’ll be some kind of compromise that will kind of piss off everybody but will be tolerated.
I agree with the Fortress Keeper. You can credit Crisis on Infinite Earths for doing away with the multiverse, but Infinite Crisis? Not really with you on that one, nor do I see how the return of the multiverse invalidates IC. Invalidating COIE, maybe, but not IC.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently flawed with the existence of the multiverse. As with anything, it’s what you do with it. I think the creation of the multiverse as a way of explaining how the JSA in the 40s and the JLA in the 60s could both exist with Superman and Batman around was a great idea. Same with how the properties from other publishers that DC acquired could have their own histories yet never cross paths.
COIE and IC both impress me with how they gave storyline justification to “real life” events. But for all their creative brilliance, they grew from the creative blunders of other “real life” creators that necessitated some house-cleaning.
Now, a year after Infinite Crisis, I hardly see how we’re already in need of more repairs. The multiverse was a utilitarian thing first and foremost. Bringing it back as a creative tool seems to just be a pandora’s box and I am NOT going to buy the next Crisis that re-collapses the realities once they change their minds about it again.
To me, COIE was an effort that crippled the multiverse, and IC followed in and finished it off. I guess I may have taken too literally the scenes in which all worlds are being pulled into one.
Either way, bringing it back as they seem to be doing is pointless and cheapens future Crises, as you said. Also, it’s annoying.
Well, since there wasn’t a multiverse from 1986 until 2007, I think it’s safe to say COIE eliminated it. What Alex Luthor did, in my understanding, was re-created it so he could pick the “perfect Earth” from the batch.
2005*
I was going off of Dan Didio’s declaration that the multiverse will exist at the end of 52. But at least we’re in agreement that there wasn’t a multiverse since 1986.
The more I think about it, the more I completely disagree with the bolded statement that bringing back the multiverse completely invalidates Infinite Crisis. Beyond the established case that Infinite Crisis didn’t eliminate the multiverse – as that happened 20 years (give or take) earlier – the return of the multiverse would only intensify Alex Luthor’s failure. In trying to create one perfect universe, he ended up restoring (or re-creating, depending on where they go with this) infinite imperfect realities.
Good post/comments. Wish I had something worthwhile to add to the conversation.