io9
If you've found DC Comics hard to understand over the past year, chances are it's because of the multiverse. DC used to have tons of alternate universes, but they collapsed into one nice, tidy universe in 1985. Until last year, when suddenly DC had 52 different realities to play with again. I decided to hound DC super-editor Dan Didio for an explanation as to why DC's writers and editors are so obsessed with alternate timelines. Here's what he said the second and third times I asked him, plus some info on multiverses in science fiction.
Physicists disagree violently as to whether more than one version of our universe may exist. The usual fantasy of alternate universes comes from shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who, where you visit another universe and everything's the same except evil, and with more eyepatches or different facial hair. Here's the evil Worf from an alternate universe enjoying some fun leash-play with Garak, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
DC's current weekly comic, Countdown to Final Crisis, featured a long backup feature called "History Of The Multiverse," in which a group of identical men with weird hair tried to summarize every comic in which someone had visited an alternate universe.
For some reason, in DC Comics, the only people who are different in the alternate universes are superheroes, so that Batman is married and has kids, or is a pirate, or was around during World War II. We never see an ordinary person who has different versions in different universes, except maybe for the mail-carrier who starred in that weird crossover between the Milestone and DC universes in the 1990s.
So I was super curious to hear what DiDio, who masterminded the return of the multiverse, would say about its appeal. Is there a philosophical background to the obsession with seeing how things could have turned out differently? The first time I asked DiDio, at the DC Nation panel, he said "Good question" and then didn't really answer. I pressed him a bit more, and here's what he said:
The DC Universe has been built on the multiverse concept. We wanted to bring it back to show the strength of that concept and the multiple interpretations of the characters. And now we're going to focus on the current universe and the current versions of the characters.Mike Carlin added that Julius Schwartz, DC's super-editor from the 1960s to the 1980s, originated the idea of multiple universes, with increasingly complicated and bizarre meetings of different versions of Earth. (Including one in which a DC Comics writer crosses over from "our" Earth to the comic-book Earth, and becomes a supervillain.) DiDio added that a lot of DC's current writers grew up reading those multiverse stories, and had a lot of affection for them. The writers really wanted to explore that nostalgic territory, so DiDio let them.
These answers made sense (especially the part about nostalgia) but they didn't really satisfy me. I wanted to know what it was about alternate timelines that so fascinated a group of writers and editors in their thirties and forties. Was there some intrinsic appeal to the idea of being able to see how your life might have shaped up if you'd made a different set of decisions?
So I cornered DiDio in the hallway a while later, and asked him again what he thought was so intrinsically fascinating about the multiverse. This time, he said it's all about business. He hadn't wanted to give that answer on the panel, because it's boring, but it's also true. DC Comics went on an acquisition binge during the Silver Age, buying up Charlton Comics, Fawcett Comics and a host of other publishers. Because each publisher had its own stable of superhero characters (like Fawcett's Shazam), who barely fit in with the DC characters, it made more sense to pretend that each cast of characters came from a different universe. And then, as the crossovers between the different acquisitions' "universes" became more colorful, they became a fun thing in their own right. As for why DC is revisiting the idea of different universes now, it still seemed to come down to nostalgia, and trying to recharge some old properties.
I never quite got the answer I was hoping for, about the reasons why alternate universes might seem glamorous and exciting to the DC crew. But maybe if I corner Grant Morrison or Dan Jurgens next time, I'll have more luck.
Comments
I always thought it was to allow more freedom of movement without even more retconning than there already is.
actually, i don't NOT understand the appeal of the multiverse. i was VIOLENTLY opposed to the crisis of infinite earth's endeavor of coalescing every universe into a single one.
first of all, there's the richness of HISTORY. the dc universe has all these characters from all these variant earths. this is its heritage. this is far different from something like marvel that keeps coming up with history annihilating (at least revisionistic) ULTIMATE series of books.... with dc, at least you have a diagetic framework to hang revisions. the initial impulse to coalesce was market driven too... they felt they were losing their audience because of too much backstory (very much the impetus for marvel's ultimate)... but this is just a lame smack in the face to longtime fans. embracing the heritage and the backstory - the history provides tremendous depth and possibility. WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE?
secondly, the sci-fi angle... how SOPHISTICATED AN IDEA it is for layman COMIC BOOKS to adopt such a nifty hallmark of sci fi lit! it is potentially relevant to actual cosmology and it's just nifty to think about schroedinger's batman! for me, the appeal is even greater when the disparity between worlds are not great.... when there's just a slight something that is different.
when you're tired of the same old same old of death defying daring doo... to discover yourself suddenly put off balance because you recognize that issue 257 actually occurs on earth alpha instead of earth prime.... that's just neat.
seriously... what's not to like? esp for sci fi fans.
jin
@moff: I agree, that seems like it would be the draw for me.
It's funny to me that all this nonsense started with the most innocent story. The "Flash of Two Worlds" way back in the sixties. The "multiverse" was just a cute way of explaining why the two flashes had never met. Kids got double their superhero, and a really awesome Infantino cover.
Now it's all about juggling "continuity" that was never meant to make sense anyway. *sigh*
[www.comicsinaflash.com]
I'm very grateful for projects like New Frontiers. It'd be interesting to see what Darwyn Cooke's successor, fifty years from now, makes of the mess that Didio is creating these days.
All I can say is that I was a young kid when the original Crisis came out, and they are still the best superhero storyline I have ever read. Especially the issue where Supergirl gets it. Pretty hard to top, but now as an adult, I still love the books (and the updates as well).
Most enjoyable comics ever.
I'm waiting to see what Grant Morrison does with all this in Final Crisis. That's pretty much the test for me, to see if he can make the multiverse's return more meaningful than just fanboy nostalgia.
It's funny, I came of age Post-Crisis, so I have no problems with reconciling pre-Crisis baggage into one earth. I prefer Kara being from Atlantis, I thought Hippolyta as the JSA Wonder Woman was a perfect fix.
Maybe in 20 years I'll be the one writing "Countdown to Multiversal Consolidation" out of my own fanboy nostalgia...though I'll need a peppier title!
It's simply weak story telling. just like how in X-Files and Alias there was always another absurd "plot" "twist" to keep the "tension" up. It would take balls to really finish a plot or to let fun characters finish their arc, and nobody has any balls.
In a sense, it's actually good that Firefly/Serenity is over: Now we don't have to watch those great characters jump awful sharks.
I hate alternate universes.
Um, y'know, Michael Moorcock popularized the term "multiverse" (a term coined by William James). It'd be nice to see credit where credit is due, especially in an SF site.
@jinchoung: I perfer my mutliverses to be Elseworlds or What Ifs, not part of canon.
Oh and, Jason Fucking Todd will die.
@ceejeemcbeegee: Agree completely. If canon becomes too difficult to follow or interpret, I won't follow it.
@jinchoung: Well, there is another side of the coin. Some of the best work is the result of imposing limitation on yourself. When you can say "Hey, it is in an alternate world" there are no limitations. I'm not talking What-ifs, those are fine in my opinion (But do they really need to be in an Alternate world? Why not just have a big fat preface saying "This is outside the continuity.") But when the "Alternate Worlds" start interacting you get moments like "I am werewolf Superman, you don't know who I am, frankenstein Superman, but I am here to kill you." (Actually, werewolf Superman does sound kind of neat.)
Second: Alternate worlds is no longer sci-fi exclusive. In fact, everyone and their granny are making alternate world stories. I've gotten sick of it. Why does everything have to be a universe now? When Dune came out, Despite it's richly detailed history and fascinating planets, I'm pretty sure nobody was yelling Dune-iverse.
I think by this point, even Hugh Everett would hate the Many-Worlds Interpretation.
Next year, look for Infinite Secret Crisis Wars, where Ultimate Quesadaman fights the Green DeDio from Earth-S to see who can do more damage to the continuity.
(oh yeah. featuring Wolverine)
@zerofritz: "(oh yeah. featuring Wolverine)"
Well done.
First: The Multiverse isn't confusing...at least, it's no more confusing than mainstream corporate superhero comics are in general. In other words, none of it is written for the neophyte, and that point can certainly be debated back and forth, but the multiverse has nothing to do with it.
The multiverse is simple: There are other universes. Things are different there. End of story.
So what you probably should have hounded Dan DiDio about on your noble quest was why you need to read $100 worth of crappy comics every month to follow a story that should be far more simple and elegant than it is. Or why to JESUS they haven't adopted the simple convention of the summary page, which Marvel has in all their books, and which makes them SO much easier to read. Hell, even on books you read every month, sometimes you forget stuff, and a refresher never hurts.
@jinchoung: I'm SORRY, but while reading your POST with every other word CAPITALIZED, all I could HEAR IN MY HEAD was William Shatner doing a VOICE OVER.
@steven522:
huh... i looked over my post and it's pretty darn far from every other word.... but i don't mind the shatner link. anyhoo, guess where i get my writing style from? that's right, AMERICAN COMICS! where certain, evidently KEY words are bolded so that kids and the mentally inept wouldn't fall behind.... i kinda adopted the same policy for the net. : )
@Ghede:
yeah, multiverses and time travel are certainly not the sole domain of sci fi anymore... but still, i dig the idea. especially if it's a bit more involved than evil versions just sporting goatees.
agreed also about economy and greatness being achieved within strict limits.
but for me, the biggest thing that i dislike about annihilating dc's multiverse is it is an attempt to strip out continuity for newbies. as i said, that's such a slap in the face for long time fans and continuity should be allowed to persist. let the newbs catch up.
jin
@ceejeemcbeegee: you're certainly welcome to your preferences. but i really dig the notion of all that stuff being canon. in keeping with the sentiment expressed in the above post, canon imposes limitations. history imposes restrictions. in a way that non-canon stuff is free from. and with a multiverse, todd can be dead on earth prime but story-lines with him can continue in earth-5 or something if they need him as a character. actually, speaking of canon, i wish FM's dark knight stuff had an official place in the dc continuity....
Hey! Here's a novel idea about posting comments in a blog: Use normal capitalization, punctuation, and complete spellings.
The only thing worse than reading through a post like the following:
"man i really liked the movie because it shows how the director knows the characters the other actor was bad there were too many special effects however they needed to have a little more character development"
...is reading a post like this:
"Dude!!!!111111 Teh mooveee roxxorez!!11111!!! ROTFLMAO! I is so L33T 4 because I type like teh retard. PWNED!!!!111!!!!!"
Try to make it easy on everyone, OK?
what are you talking about? and where do you get off trying to tell people what to do? if you have a problem, tough. go tell the mods and if they agree, someone'll get booted. and if they don't, you'll just have to come to grips with the fact that the world doesn't bend over backwords to accommodate your tastes.
@jinchoung: Calm down. You'd think I was talking about you, personally, or something.
Start a discussion:
Login with your username and password below. Or comment on this post via email.
Forgot your username or password? New User?