Which is true. Except for when it isn’t. There’s plenty of Batman fun that comes from him interacting with demons, amazons, martians, and doomsday devices. The Batman of Year One can also have a Sci-Fi closet, and it seems to me that the character, and the fans are all the better for that. The biggest detriment to Batman over the past several years has been the Denny O’Neil-style Batamentalism that says Batman is ONLY this way.

The shared universe concept isn’t the problem. The problem is editorial assuming that because characters exist in the same universe that their adventures all have to have the same tone and attitude. Captain Marvel can work just fine in the DCU, if he’s written well. A universe is a pretty big place. Plastic Man doesn’t have to be a gritty urban vigilante because he and Batman live in the same universe.

For that matter, Batman works better in a world that does not include magic-powered Amazons from hidden islands or time-travelling con-men superheroing for the ego-boo. The conceits built into the Batman franchise are incompatible with the conceits built into other DC comics, and only by ignoring or altering them can the characters be made compatible.

But no. Captain Marvel has to be revamped and made “serious” so that he can fit into a world in which he does not belong. He’s more out of place in the DC universe than Howard the Duck is in the Marvel one.

But I guess the concept of the shared universe is so cool and fun that it’s worth warping or eliminating characters in order to incorporate them. Contrived compromise is preferable to artistic integrity, as long as the result is that we get to see bowdlerized versions of our favorite characters interacting with each other. Got it.

Back in the ’80s, it occasionally happened that TV shows on NBC referenced each other; the doctors from St. Elsewhere wandered into the Cheers bar, Detective Munch moved from Homicide to Law & Order, Third Watch and ER did a crossover, etc and so on. Imagine for a moment that NBC decided to follow up on that little trend by doing a lot more of it, eventually mandating that ALL of their shows take place in the same universe. All of them; My Name is Earl, Days of Our Lives, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, ER, Crossing Jordan, Deal or No Deal, The Office, the Apprentice, West Wing, Last Comic Standing, all of them.

Suppose it got to the point that if Earl showed up in ER’s lobby, the producers had to make sure he was injured and taken to Chicago’s hospital in that week’s episode.

What happens now? First, all shows are locked into a rigid sequence of episodes; they can’t be re-run in random order anymore. Second, anyone who likes a given show has to watch or at least be aware of every single show on the schedule lest they miss some important point about their favorite show. Suppose the big season-ending surprise about ER actually appeared on that night’s Conan O’Brien show? Fourth, there would be an enforced homogeniety to all the shows; the tome would have to be modified so that the earthy detectives on Law & Order could believably move within the silly world of Scrubs. The uniqueness of each show would be destroyed for the sake of continuity. Fifth, the setup would alienate older fans of the shows and deter new viewers from getting into the shows. NBC would shrivel up and die.

The only way to “save” comics is to kill the shared universe. Characters should cross over in much the way they did on Cheers and ER and the White Shadow; incidentally and without anybody worrying about how well the plotlines matched up that week. Each character should exist in its own self-contained universe as much as possible, and crossover information limited to crossover books such as JLA.

As long as the publishers insist on this idiotic state of affairs (which does not exist in any other entertaiment media; do all of Universal’s movies exist in the same universe, or all of Acclaim’s videogames share a world?), there will be editorially-mandated manglings of logic, character and plot.

Get to the root of the problem. Infinite Crisis is a tumor caused by the cancer of shared universes. It’s a cancer that grows by destroying the fun.

that should be a separate post…”what other cliches could you have piled onto the 1st 2 issues of Identity Crisis?”

Maybe a dark secret from Ralph’s past that comes out to haunt…oh wait, Meltzer did that too.

I guess Batman could have called Ralph a loose cannon and ordered him to turn in his badge.

(And how exactly did Batman make the Brother Eye system? Did he whip it up in the Batcave between fights with the Joker? And send it up into orbit at night, when nobody was watching?)

But Countdown to IC, well…yeah. You’ve pretty much hit the nail absolutely on the head here. This is the writers’ disdain for the Giffen-era JLA leaking like toxic waste into their stories–they also went ahead and whacked Rocket Red, too, not long afterwards, just in case anyone thought about liking him.

I just thank God my purchase of that book was tax-deductible.

Since Countdown I’ve read Omac Project, and that was a trudge. But to me it marked a falling-off from a promising start, not more of the same.

This statement is always rather blithely made as if it’s iron-clad fact, but the fact is that DC’s developed plenty of Marvel-style everyman characters (Firestorm, the Kate Spencer Manhunter, etc.) and Marvel has some of the most iconic and easily-recognized characters in the business (Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America). I think people are confusing “iconic” with either “angst-free” or “squeaky-clean,” which would give DC an advantage simply by dint of the fact that tons of its characters have Golden and Silver Age roots. But that’s really not what “iconic” means. The Hulk is about as iconic peoas you can get – he’s a combination of Jekyll and Hyde and Frankenstein, which are rooted in Manichaeism and the Prometheus myth for god’s sake – but he’s also about as angsty as it gets. And even Batman, one of DC’s Big Two icons, can angst with the best of them; Bruce Wayne gets agonizing callbacks to his tragic origin with a regularity that puts Spider-Man’s periodic wailing on the Brooklyn bridge to shame.

Decades of each company trying to imitate each other’s most popular qualities have blurred the line considerably between the companies’ styles, and the results have mostly made for some pretty good reading. Superman: Secret Identity is essentially Superman done in a realist Marvel style (“the world outside your window”), and it manages to also be one of the best portrayals of Superman as an icon in the last decade; Marvels made the Marvel Universe’s stable of everyman superheroes seem iconic and godlike simply by shifting our perspective to that of an actual everyman. The difference between “Marvel-style” and “DC-style” is more in readers’ minds than anything else.

DC tends to stink at doing angst. They seem to think lots of red blood and characters being relentless jerks is what works. The comics sell so maybe they are right, but I know they are sellig less to me.

I like both companies, but I like both when they do what they do best. Both Infinite Crisis and Identity Crisis read like DC trying to do Marvel, and doing it poorly.

The idea of a character Bible is interesting, Paddy. I still think writers and artists should have a little bit of leeway when it comes to writing, because that’s where true creativity flourishes and you get great stories, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a foundation of the character and general personality traits. It will probably never happen, but it’s an interesting idea.

Some people just can’t admit it.

I remember seeing somewhere I think on CBR about how DC plan to put together a bible for each of the characters. Since I’ve seen that I’ve been thinking to myself why haven’t they got one already.

Any here’s hoping it provides more than history of the character but also specific guidelines on how that character is supposed to act, react and what not.

You’ve talked about wiggle room in a both these articles but should the writer/artist have this wiggle room.

What Mike Loughlin said above about the story still sucking if the characters were done properly may not be true. If a writer/writers had to write the story so that they protrayed characters accurately then is it possible that the writer/writers will put enough thought into the story that it might actually be good?

The air of contempt is something that I’ve noticed building roughly since the heyday of Kyle Rayner but lately it seems to be turned up a few notches. It doesn’t seem like they’re even trying to hide it anymore. It appears that the constant fan cry of characters being made more “relatable” has resulted in them being written as either: (1) really stupid, (2) really pathetic, (3) really depressed, or (4)a combination of all the above. I guess somebody out there’s enjoying it, but I’ve never thought brain splattering was all that entertaining… unless Bugs Bunny was involved.

Max Lord’s weird character turn, on the other hand, I’ve officially written off as a Superboy-punching-time effect, just like him not being a cyborg anymore (which WAS specifically included as a time-fracture thingy in the IC Secret Files special.) Yeah, it’s a silly plot device in and of itself, but it’s silly in a nicer way.