Welcome to the first post of 2008, the year in which, if we can believe the hype, that “everything changes”!\u00a0 At least, that’s what Marvel and DC are hyping; but so what?\u00a0 Marvel just decided to erase two decades of continuity by having the Devil change history so Peter Parker and Mary Jane never got married.\u00a0 That means, every single Spider-Man comic you bought over the last two decades — TWENTY YEARS WORTH OF COMICS — never happened.\u00a0 So sorry.\u00a0 Please throw them all away.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marvel pulled this before back in the 90’s, saying that Spider-Man was really a clone and that the real Peter Parker has been alive and well elsewhere.\u00a0 Yes, all those Todd McFarlane Spidey-with-his-head-between-his-knees-poses comics were about a clone.\u00a0 Readers dropped the comic, and Marvel had to backtrack by saying no, Spider-Man isn’t a clone after all, but the guy we thought was the real one — he’s the clone.\u00a0 It took years to sort it all out and the whole sordid mess is now remembered as the “Clone Saga”, just as fondly as Germany remembers the Holocaust.\u00a0 Even now, the current storyline is being referred to as “a mistake of Clone-Saga proportions”, and it won’t be long before you hear “Honey?\u00a0 I’m trying to take a Clone Saga and we’re all out of toilet paper.\u00a0 Could you hand me some current Spider-Man comics”?<\/p>\n
Still, that’s not as bad as DC’s plan for 2008.\u00a0 Go get an aspirin and a bottle before reading this; you’ll need it.\u00a0 Ready?\u00a0 Okay, back in the 1980s, DC used to have a bunch of “universes” where different\u00a0characters lived.\u00a0 Superheroes comics from 1956-1985 happened on Earth-1; Golden Age superheroes were on Earth-2; Shazam comics all happened on Earth-S; etc.\u00a0 It was pretty easy to follow; there were even “Imaginary Stories” (aren’t they all?) for things like having Batman marry Catwoman or whatever.\u00a0 Then DC decided to have a “Crisis on Infinite Earths” where all the worlds got scrunched into one new continuity.\u00a0 Most of the comics started over, and if you’d been collecting comics prior to 1985, well throw them away, ’cause they never happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, there were holes all over this.\u00a0 DC had to do another complete revamp a few years later with something called Zero Hour, and I think there was another one @1999-2001.\u00a0 If there was, it left no impression whatsoever.\u00a0 Anyway, a few years ago, DC decided to do “Countdown to Infinite Crisis” followed by — you guessed it — “Infinite Crisis”, which led to “52” in which we now have 52 DC universes floating around out there.\u00a0 Still with me?\u00a0 Fish your comics out of the trash, because they MIGHT have happened.\u00a0 No promises.<\/p>\n
Now DC is having another big crossover hoo-hah where everything changes forever, again.\u00a0 This is the worst editing hack job since the Council of Nicea in 300AD voted to throw away 80+ gospels and settled on four (Sorry, but if it ain’t Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, then it didn’t happen).\u00a0 And they wonder why their sales suffer…<\/p>\n
There is a silver lining here — 2008 will be remembered as the year that the BIG THREE returned to the indie scene.\u00a0 Dave Sim, Jeff Smith and Terry Moore dominated the indie-comics scene for years with Cerebus, Bone and Strangers In Paradise, respectively.\u00a0 These self-published series all features stellar writing, spectacular artwork and — most importantly — each one had a beginning, middle and end.\u00a0 That’s right; they all wrapped up and disappeared not from low sales but because their creators knew that the stories and characters had run their course!\u00a0 No clones, no universes in crisis; characters grew and aged and in some cases died.\u00a0 Permanently.\u00a0 It was wonderful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And now all three creators have announced new series to come out in 2008.\u00a0 Keep an eye out for “Glamourpuss,” “RASL” and “Echo” — that’s where the REAL action will be this year!<\/p>\n
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