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From: boyajian@akov68.DEC (JERRY BOYAJIAN)
Newsgroups: net.comics
Subject: re: CoIE: a non-fan's opinion
Message-ID: <2792@decwrl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 20-Jun-85 08:05:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: decwrl.2792
Posted: Thu Jun 20 08:05:20 1985
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> 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)

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