ron@wjvax.UUCP (Ron Christian) (06/18/85)
First of all, upon being pressed, I will admit that buying 'Crisis on
Infinite Earths' is probably not the best way to get involved in the
DC universe. I started reading/collecting comics in the days when
Marvel was going great guns and DC wasn't worth wasting money on.
(This is my opinion, of course.) This was about 1972 or so. My first
comic was Spider Man #100. I then went back and purchased SM back to
#32 and bought a bunch of others as well.
My main attention shifted from SM to the X-Men with about the third
issue of the new team. The exception to this was Starlin's Warlock,
which, during it's brief existance was *THE TITLE* for me. Anyone
remember it?
Then, it seems, there came a time when all the good artists, editors,
et. al. from Marvel migrated to other companies. Quite a few to DC.
But me, no, I'd been buying Marvel for years. Had an emotional attachment
to the characters of several titles, and damned if I was going to change.
Then things started going to hell. They canceled Howard the Duck. The
art started to deteriorate. The *stories* started to deteriorate. Inks
became murky. Titles started to be shuffled around frequently to provide
for more 'first issues'. A greater effort was going to connecting the
comics with other markets, I.E., Micronauts (actually the best of these),
ROM, Transformers, and (ugh!) Secret Bores.
Someone who has followed the people involved with drawing, scripting, and
editing could probably tell me what happened. But now I'm getting interested
in DC's stuff. Bought the issue of legion (?) with Changeling vs Terminator
and gee, why didn't I start collecting this comic before? And gee, about
half of the names in the credits are familiar.
Anyway, I hadn't intended to blither so long. I've started reading CoIE,
and, well, I can appreciate what's happening here (marvel, in true copycat
fashion is starting to do the same thing. See recent Avengers.) but
I find the layout and scripting of CoIE to be too fragmented to really tell
what in hell is going on. The panels are cluttered. Too many characters to
tell them apart easily. Is this a result of not being familiar with the
DC universes, or has anyone else noticed it as well?
Well, this has wandered too long. Had to get it off my chest, I guess.
--
__
Ron Christian (Watkins-Johnson Co. San Jose, Calif.)
{pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix,vecpyr,certes,isi}!wjvax!ronboyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN) (06/20/85)
> From: wjvax!ron (Ron Christian) > First of all, upon being pressed, I will admit that buying 'Crisis on > Infinite Earths' is probably not the best way to get involved in the > DC universe. Gee, didn't I just say something to this effect to Jeff... :-) > I started reading/collecting comics in the days when > Marvel was going great guns and DC wasn't worth wasting money on. > (This is my opinion, of course.) This was about 1972 or so. No arguments from me. Back in 1972, *I* thought most of DC was pretty bloody awful, too, and that Marvel was the cat's pj's (no offense, Raul). > ...Starlin's Warlock, > which, during it's brief existance was *THE TITLE* for me. Anyone > remember it? Youbetchum, Red Ryder. *Great* stuff! > I've started reading CoIE, > and, well, I can appreciate what's happening here (marvel, in true copycat > fashion is starting to do the same thing. See recent Avengers.) but > I find the layout and scripting of CoIE to be too fragmented to really tell > what in hell is going on. The panels are cluttered. Too many characters to > tell them apart easily. Is this a result of not being familiar with the > DC universes, or has anyone else noticed it as well? Well, I've noticed it as well, and yes, a lot of it is not being familiar with the DC universes. I suspected that this would be the case for someone new to DC [is there an echo in here? in here? in here? :-)]. In fact, this is primarily the whole reason for COIE: their multiverse has grown too large and complicated, and newcomers to DC are getting hopelessly confused. COIE is meant to clear away and simplify the DC Universe. I've heard some comments from assorted folks that COIE is just a sap to the "fan boy" audience; that if DC wanted to simplify things, they could just as easily just picked an arbitrary month and said, "OK, from here on, we've got just one universe, with these characters, and to hell with reconciling 50 years of continuity!" I can't really argue with this, but I'm glad they're doing COIE, because it seems (to me) like a year-long Christmas present for those of us who've been with DC a long time. To just scrap everything and start from scratch would strike me as rendering the previous 50 years of DC comics as essentially meaningless. CRISIS acts as a memorial service for the horse that's being put out to pasture. I regret that the non-fan has gotten lost and confused, but this "fan boy" loves every minute of it. As for the clutter, I'd say it's from trying to cram as much into 12 issues as possible. It might've worked better as a 24-issue series, or a 12-issue series of double-sized comics, but them's the brakes... And as I said once before, CRISIS *does* seem more like a documentary than a piece of fiction, which I suspect is part of the problem, and that it seems that each issue is less than a twelfth of the whole. Just stick with it. In one sense, CRISIS could be to DC what FANTASTIC FOUR #1 was to Marvel. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA soon to be: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.COM