Comments on: Comic Book Questions Answered #6

By: joel greenberg

joel greenberg — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:28:53 +0000

I started working at a baseball card comic book store a few weeks ago. Eventually, I got around to cracking open the Overstreet Guide To Comics and while glancing through the book, I started to think of a childhood(50′s) comic I used to purchase, but did not see it listed. I then went to this internet and had no luck either. The comic book was called Benjamin Brain, and he was a Rube Gldberg-type kid. Do I have a “false memory”, or did it actually exist? Thanks.

By: Kelson

Kelson — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 14:57:10 +0000

Thanks for answering my question! And just think, if I’d waited a few weeks…

Glad to know he’s still in the business!

By: Joe Gualtieri

Joe Gualtieri — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 08:01:18 +0000

The River analogy is not how Hypertime was supposed to work.

From a (presumably drunken Grant Morrison to a drunken Warren Ellis to you:

http://forums.delphiforums.com/ellis/messages/?msg=1990.28

Take a glass sphere studded all over with holes, and then drive a long stick right through the middle of it, passing exactly through the center of the volume. That’s the base DC timeline. Jab another stick through right next to it, but at a different angle, so that they’re touching at one point. That’s an Elseworlds story. Another stick, this one rippled, placed close in so that it touches the first stick at two or three points. That’s the base Marvel timeline. Perhaps others follow the line of the DC stick for a while before diverging, a slow diagonal collision along it before peeling off. This sphere contains the timeline of all comic-book realities, and they theoretically all have access to each other. In high time, at the top of the sphere, is OUR reality, and we can look down on the totality of Hypertime, the entire volume.

By: Vert

Vert — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:38:36 +0000

Brian-

Thanks for answering my Hypertime question! (I’m Scott)

I accept your answer, (it makes sense) but I think I was hoping for some behind-the-scenes machinations. Oh well…

Bring on the gossip!

Thanks again!

By: Brian Cronin

Brian Cronin — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:33:26 +0000

Yeah, Eric, that’s basically it – it is Waid and Morrison saying, “Why can’t we just attribute the basic concepts of fiction to the actual DC Universe continuity?”

It’s a very simple concept.

By: Eric Grant

Eric Grant — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:48:21 +0000

Oh I see, it’s another name for the concept “fiction”.

I first bumped into it in Batman/Planetary.

By: Jeff Holland

Jeff Holland — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:44:30 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertime is a pretty good explanation.

By: Eric Grant

Eric Grant — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:54:30 +0000

I’ll bite. Can anyone explain Hypertime? I’ve heard it mentioned but never know what it referred to.

By: yo go re

yo go re — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:16:35 +0000

Is the origin we got for Grant Morrison’s Prometheus (in the New Year’s Evil one-shot) the origin we were intended to get? I thought, at the time, the clues were pointing to him really being the time-displaced Batman from “Rock of Ages.” Maybe it was just that Howard Porter’s people all looked the same, and having two muscular guys with white hair was just too much to process…

By: Jeff Holland

Jeff Holland — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:20:34 +0000

That’s not all. Order five bottles of Hypertime now, and you’ll also get a this streak-free buffering pad that opens strange passageways to other dimensions where Superman’s a Russian!

By: Bret

Bret — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 16:12:23 +0000

Wow!
It does all that for just $19.95?

By: Jeff Holland

Jeff Holland — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:40:00 +0000

That is an awfully good point. And I do love that the characters are all aware of how underwhelming “speed force” sounds. But “Hypertime” actually does sound like Booster Gold’s time-saving floorwax that’s also a dessert topping.

By: Mark_Lucas_TBP

Mark_Lucas_TBP — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:33:16 +0000

I think “Speed Force” is exactly the kind of name a realistic person, like Wally West or Max Mercury would have come up with. Now Bart Allen would have called it something crazy and Booster Gold would have made it sound like a floor cleaner and copyrighted it.

By: Jeff Holland

Jeff Holland — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:37:27 +0000

I just reread The Kingdom last weekend, and the fact that nobody at DC could figure out what to do with Hypertime – a concept so simple it was basically, “It’s all fiction, meaning it can all be true, so don’t get bent out of shape about continuity!” – is mindblowing to me. That it got put away in favor of “Superboy Punches The Timestream” is probably what made me start wondering about Dan Didio.

Hypertime. The Speed Force. Does it seem like Waid’s great at coming up with big ideas, but not so hot on naming them?