[net.comics] DC COMICS PRESENTS #87/Earth-Prime

boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (07/19/85)

> From:	rochester!ciaraldi	(Mike Ciaraldi)

> I just read DC Presents #87, in which Superman (of Earth-1)
> gets zapped to Earth-Prime (the parallel earth where we live, or at
> least the one where Supes is a character in a magazine published
> by DC Comics, edited by Julius Schwartz, etc.).
> While there he meets the Superboy of Earth-Prime, a boy
> who was sent to Earth from Krypton (the one in Earth-Prime's dimension)
> just before it was destroyed, about 15 years ago.
> This boy is adopted by the Kent family and given the name "Clark".
>
> At the beginning of this issue, Halley's Comet comes by and activates
> Superboy-Prime's latent powers. He teams up with Superman (Earth-1)
> and at the end of the issue they are both zapped away.  They
> will reappear in next month's issue of SUPERMAN, according to the 
> next-episode blurb.

> Well, at the beginning of the issue, Superman is mourning the death of
> Supergirl.  Therefore, this story takes place after Crisis on Infinite
> Earths #7.  
> But it is established in COIE #6 that only five of the
> parallel universes still exist at that point,
> namely Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-4, Earth-S, and Earth-X.
> [...] 
> So, how can Earth-Prime still exist?
>
> I don't have an answer, but it seems like a pretty obvious inconsistency.

First of all, considering that Earth-Prime is the universe in which the
events of the DC Multiverse are published as comic books, I suppose that
it would be logical to assume that it is "outside" the DC Multiverse,
thus not affected by the Crisis.
	I sincerely hope that all this Earth-Prime nonsense is stopped
once CRISIS is over, or the whole purpose of the maxi-series will totally
negated. I never liked any of the Earth-Prime stories, and don't like the
concept to begin with. This issue of DCCP (which I haven't read, but plan
to) seems to be the ultimate offender. They shouldn't have their cake and
eat it too. Earth-Prime is supposed to be "our" universe, and there just
aren't any (nor *can* there be) any super-heroes in our universe. When I
first heard about this team-up, I had hoped that maybe the Earth-Prime
Superboy would simply be a human with the name Clark Kent (I'm sure there
must be someone out there with that name) who helps out Superman in some
way, and that calling him the "Superboy of Earth-Prime" was just poetic
license. Sigh.

--- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA)

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kwc@cvl.UUCP (Kenneth W. Crist Jr.) (07/20/85)

> > From:	rochester!ciaraldi	(Mike Ciaraldi)
> 

> eat it too. Earth-Prime is supposed to be "our" universe, and there just
> aren't any (nor *can* there be) any super-heroes in our universe. When I
> 
> --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA)
> 
      Sorry, but around issue 154 of Justice League of America it was shown
that Earth-Prime unfortunately can have super-heroes. Our first was a guy
named Ultraa who was rocketed to Earth-Prime from a distant planet and was
raised in the wilds of Australia. Some JLA members were transported to E-P
where they foiled a bank robbery and later met Ultraa when an object from
another planet who was hunting Ultraa showed up. I think it had been buried
in the Antartic ever since Ultraa crashed on E-P about twenty years earlier,
but I'm not sure. It's been a long time since I read it.
      Anyway, Ultraa realized that Earth-Prime wasn't set up to handle the
destruction generated by fights between super-powered people and decided to
go to Earth-One with the JLA to live out his days in peace in Earth-One's
Australia. This lasted about twenty issues and he showed up again.
      So, Earth-Prime can have super-heroes (and villians) but I don't
remember reading in the newspapers about the destruction caused to New York
City by the battle mentioned above, except in the JLA comic. Did you people
in New York decide to keep it to yourselves?

						Kenneth Crist
						kwc@cvl
						Computer Vision Lab
						University of Maryland

~r Megaton