KC COLUMN: THE NEVER-ENDING STORY, part 4: 1986

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Grendel collection

by KC Carlson

PREVIOUSLY ON NEVER-ENDING STORY: (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

The early 1980s were a tremendously exciting time for comic books, as comic creators were making bold new leaps in presenting their stories to an increasingly sophisticated audience. Superhero comics began to mature, introducing much more and much more elements of “realism” into the four-color pages. Long-dormant genres of comics — as well as brand new ones — appeared. things were changing so rapidly that old publishers — pushed by their writers and artists — scrambled to invent new ways to present comic material, such as mini- and maxi-series and graphic novels. There was much more emphasis on the self-contained story (with beginning, middle, and end), another mature industry development that the media and readers typically outside of superhero comic books began to embrace in a big way. and if the old-school publishers weren’t prepared to try something new, there were dozens of young independent publishers anxious to experiment.

THE introduction OF EVENT

After experimenting with finite storytelling, contained in the new formats of graphic novels and limited series, both marvel and DC began planning another major storytelling revolution — although not one based on purely creative principles. The megastory was loosely developed to be similar to the 12-part maxi-series while telling a story that was much bigger — that would potentially involve the entire fictional worlds of both publishers, featuring plot elements that would spill over into the regular ongoing titles. In common comic hype-speak, these would not just be stories — they would be Events!

Secret Wars

Marvel’s was called marvel very Heroes: secret Wars and DC’s was titled crisis on unlimited Earths. The event origins are just as interesting as the actual stories themselves, as the two come from completely different places, with debate and fan argument over the history (which was first?) and which one was “better”.

Secret Wars was published first. Cover-dated may 1984, it probably hit the stands in January or February of that year. prior to its launch, several marvel characters, many notably professor X and Spider-Man, began to sense something dangerous. This ultimately led to numerous of the most significant marvel characters assembling in Manhattan’s central Park, where they encountered a mysterious alien structure, entered it, and disappeared! When next seen in the pages of secret Wars #1, we discovered that the heroes had been transported to another universe by a powerful and mysterious character known as The Beyonder. and we rapidly found out that The Beyonder had also transported numerous big-name marvel villains to this world (with the imaginative name of “Battleworld”), with the intent of having the heroes fight the villains in a “secret war”.

While there were a few dramatic moments to be had, and a few interesting developments among the characters, secret Wars rapidly developed into a 12-issue fight book. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. marvel was widely known for their often-bombastic battles, and much of their fan base loved them for it. but the epic setup (involving numerous of Marvel’s most significant characters) and the big format (a 12-issue maxiseries, plus lots of crossovers into other books) indicated to the fans that big things were going to happen, although ultimately, all the changes were either cosmetic or temporary. Spider-Man got a new, black, alien costume (which would be developed into something much more interesting later). The thing chose to stay in space for a while, and She-Hulk replaced him in the wonderful Four. The Wasp died, temporarily. Colossus broke up with Kitty Pryde. and shock of shocks, the Hulk broke his leg! three new characters were introduced in the series — the villains Titania and Volcana and a new Spider-Woman (Julia Carpenter) — but none of them developed into major characters. There was some good artwork here and there by Mike Zeck and Bob Layton.

At the time, some fans felt that the plot of secret Wars was not much much more developed than kids playing with toys of the characters and making up crazy adventures on the fly. Ironically, this was not far from the actual truth of its development. secret Wars was first conceived, not as a comic book series, but as a new line of marvel action figures developed by Mattel. marvel was then tasked with creating a comic book series to support the new toy line, discussing why these particular characters had come together. Not only had “event” comics been created with secret Wars, corporate synergy had officially reared its omnipresent head in comic books.

CRISIS IN unlimited COMIC BOOKS!

Crisis collection

Crisis on unlimited Earths had a little corporate in its origins as well. It was loosely conceived to celebrate DC’s 50th anniversary as a comic company, but writers Marv Wolfman and Len Wein had other ideas.

After the shared-universe concept was applied to the golden Age DC characters (The Justice society coming together, Superman and Batman team-ups), fans realized that practically all of the heroes published by the company co-existed in the same fictional universe. As this happened more-or-less organically over decades, a lot of inconsistencies popped up, some caused by the passage of time itself. (For example, how could Batman still be a young man in the 1960s when it was apparent that he had adventures in the 1930s and 40s?) much of these discrepancies were resolved when writer Gardner Fox and editor Julius Schwartz applied the concepts of parallel earths to discuss that we were actually seeing multiple versions of similar characters. The heroes of the golden Age (the Justice Society) lived on Earth-2, and the modern-day heroes (the Barry Allen Flash, the Hal Jordan green Lantern, the JLA) lived on Earth-1. (Yes, they got the numbering backwards, chronologically, Schwartz later admitted.)

That explanation helped, but still there were inconsistencies: There were no finite points of separation for the characters that had been continuously published from the late 1930s on — including Superman, Batman and Robin, and wonder Woman. Plus, different editorial “fiefdoms” (which existed into the 1970s) did not always coordinate story elements, leading to different versions of Atlantis, or different pantheons of gods. Further, DC kinda went crazy with the parallel universe concept, as they created a new earth each time they acquired older characters from defunct publishers. Fawcett characters came from Earth-S (for Shazam, as they had lost the trademark for Captain marvel to marvel Comics). Earth-X held characters previously published by quality comics — except for the previously recognized Plastic man and Blackhawks, who caused their own problems. Earth-4 was for the Charlton characters, such as Captain Atom and Blue Beetle. Plus, there were other parallel universes, like Earth-3, where supervillains ruled.

While hardcore DC fans loved the concepts, and certain writers loved trying to figure out how to resolve all the various inconsistencies, the parallel earth concept was eventually deemed by DC too confusing to outsiders. (In comics folklore, fans amended this to say that the concepts were probably too confusing for numerous of DC’s executives who came from a non-comics background.) enter Wolfman and Wein, two young DC writers who loved to play with the parallel earths concepts and were also bothered by the inconsistencies in continuity. At least enough to use that as a basis for the upcoming anniversary event.

Initial plans for the proposed event were made public in a Dick Giordano-penned “Meanwhile…” column that appeared in DC books in late 1982. (Which implied that crisis was probably conceived before secret Wars, but the latter made it to market first –- even after the toy deal collapsed — and crisis was likely, in part, inspired by it — at least in “what not to do” ways. Some industry speculation at the time suspected that marvel had caught wind of DC‘s plans and rushed secret Wars into print first.)  then called “The history of the DC Universe” and described as an “attempt to much more neatly define the DC universe in an exciting adventure yarn that will span 12 issues”, Giordano provided the readers the chance to submit “a murky detail or two you’d like explained or something.” history does not record what fandom’s reaction was, but it was over a year before DC brought up the subject in public again, when they announced that Who’s who in the DC universe (inspired in part by Marvel’s popular 1982 official Handbook of the marvel Universe, developed by mark Gruenwald) would be part of the mix. Eventually, Wein would take responsibility for producing Who’s who (along with recent DC hire Bob Greenberger), while Wolfman would concentrate on scripting The history of the DC Universe, which would ultimately be re-titled crisis on unlimited Earths. It was an inspired choice, as it evoked all of the classic JLA/JSA stories that developed and expanded the parallel worlds concept, as well as hammering home the use of “Crisis” as a uniquely DC thing.

After a year-long, well orchestrated “tease” for crisis where the mysterious monitor would appear in practically all of DC’s regular continuity books — even Jonah Hex — and classic house ads which claimed “Earths will live! Earths will Die! and the DC universe will never be the same!”, crisis on unlimited Earths debuted in 1985. and they weren’t kidding with the tagline that claimed “the DC universe will never be the same!” It started off relatively quietly, with the destruction of Earth-3 and the deaths of the crime Syndicate characters, and escalated issue by issue, claiming various DC minor (or forgotten) characters and other, mostly unseen universes. There was a minor shock as the instigator of the whole thing — The monitor — was killed in an early issue by his evil opposite, the Anti-Monitor. then some “Big Guns” fell, Supergirl in #7 and the Barry Allen Flash in #8. By then, fans knew that DC wasn’t kidding around. By the end of the series, the five remaining universes (Earths 1, 2, 4, S, and X), were collapsed into one, but not without the deaths of dozens of other characters — numerous of whom were alternate versions of existing characters.

Not everything about crisis was perfect. While a lot of the many, numerous crisis crossover issues published as part of the regular DC titles were quite good (especially Roy Thomas’s All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc., where astute fans suspected that we were seeing the end of the classic Justice Society), others had little or nothing to finish with the crisis storylines other than displaying the “red skies” side effect of the Event. “Red Skies” eventually became a derogatory term for any useless tie-in or crossover, regardless of publisher or story. and confusedly, the war hero Losers actually died in two completely different ways — once in crisis #2 and again later in Losers special #1. (It was later revealed that this was done intentionally, although still confusing to some readers).

The wholesale nature of numerous of the deaths in crisis (not everyone got as much heroic “screen time” as Supergirl or The Flash) has led some comics historians to point to crisis as one of the first examples of the growing darkness in comics, which concerned a head several years later, in the 90s. And, comics being comics, numerous (some would say all) of the deaths and events of crisis have because been undone or altered by subsequent creators. That’s the long-standing nature of superhero comics. Ironically, crisis (or at least the numerous subsequent relaunches and “reboots” of the characters) possibly did much more damage to DC continuity and its chronology than it actually solved. now that’s a thesis paper in the making…

Ultimately, publishers came away with one major lesson learned from both secret Wars and crisis — Events, especially when they cross over into recognized titles, sell a boatload! They were here to stay. For a while, they even appeared annually.

ALL roads result in 1986

Dark Knight collection

In the wake of crisis on unlimited Earths, 1986 was DC’s year to shine. The double-barreled blast of Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen was just the beginning, as DC also re-launched some of their icons and created a couple of “wild cards”.

That year, DC published its many well-known and popular miniseries ever: Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. For this project, a new comic format was created — the so-called Prestige Format, a 48- or 64-page comic book, printed on extraordinary paper with cardboard covers. I’m gonna assume that many everyone is already familiar with the story, so let’s focus on everything else that sprang out of the series. At the time, it wasn’t considered part of the actual Batman continuity (although apparently it is now assigned to the Earth-31 multiverse continuity). So it again popularized “non-canon” storylines, paving the way for alterna-verses, Elseworlds, and what-have-you. That’s probably something Miller never intended, especially because what he was really reviving were the “imaginary stories” of the Silver Age — with apparent modern and mature twists — something the now-cool comics fanboys would be horrified to admit.

Individual issues of the four-part series were priced at $2.95, at the time considered an outrageous price for a comic book. I recall some very major discussions back in the day at Westfield on how we would deal with the book, ultimately recommending to owner Sherill that the series was something worth speculating on. However, there were some nervous days as we waited for orders to come in. Luckil