DC Universe: Legacies
Aug. 22nd, 2010 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daibhidcDC Universe: Legacies confuses me.
It's meant to be the history of the current DC Universe ("New Earth"), not one of the other fifty-two universes, or a Hypertimeline, or whatever the terminology du jour is for out-of-continuity. I mean, it has "DC Universe" right there in the title; it's not like it says DC New Frontier: Legacies, or has one of those alternate-Earth logos they were throwing around during Countdown. Also, it was advertised as such. But ... I'm not sure it is.
The opening two issues are fine: they show the Golden Age from the perspective of a kid named Paul Lincoln. He's working for a small-time mobster in the early thirties, but straightens up after a meeting with Sandman and the Atom, and is in college by the time the Justice Society disbands.
Issues 3 and 4 are set in the Silver Age. And this is where it gets odd.
It's definitely the Silver Age, by the way, and not the "early Modern Age" readers are used to getting in flashbacks to the period between Superman's current-continuity debut and Crisis On Infinite Earths. The Cheetah is a woman in a costume rather than a lycanthrope, Toyman is robbing banks with a giant robot, Catwoman thinks being a cat-burglar in a purple evening gown and a green cape is a good idea. It's very, very Silver Age. The only concessions to modern age continuity are that Lexcorp exists (so Luthor isn't a mad scientist who blames Superman for his hair loss) and the Golden Age characters aren't on Earth-2.[1]
And if that's the way DC want to go with the history of New Earth, fair enough. It's a bit of a shock to me, who started reading comics properly post-Crisis, but it fits with their current policy of, well, being very Silver Age (Barry Allen's back! Hal Jordan's back! Krypto the Superdog is back!! Even Grant Morrison's Batman is riffing off late-fifties stories which, ten years ago, DC was trying very hard to forget ever happened.)
What did confuse me when I read #3 was that, at the dawn of the Silver Age, Paul Lincoln is still a young adult, and has just enlisted in the police academy. This suggests that it's been maybe a decade since the Golden Age ended. At first I thought this was a minor continuity problem they hadn't spotted.
But in #4, there's a scene of a villain tearing up the street, and in the foreground is a VW Bug with flowers painted all over it. The inference is clear: the Silver Age happened in the sixties.
Which is absolutely right in publishing terms, where the Silver Age started in 1956 or so. But it makes no sense when it comes to comic-book time, unless they're really claiming that Bruce Wayne has been Batman for more than fifty years.
Now maybe there's an absolutely brilliant explanation for this coming up. If so, I'd be fascinated to see it, because as things stand it's just silly, and clearly isn't the history of the DCU we were promised.
[1]And at that, I was disappointed that Grant Morrison's brilliant remix of Flash of Two Worlds, which maintained the spirit of the original in a universe where they weren't on two worlds, has been dropped. Apparently, on New Earth, Barry and Jay just ran into each other one day and it wasn't a huge deal.
It's meant to be the history of the current DC Universe ("New Earth"), not one of the other fifty-two universes, or a Hypertimeline, or whatever the terminology du jour is for out-of-continuity. I mean, it has "DC Universe" right there in the title; it's not like it says DC New Frontier: Legacies, or has one of those alternate-Earth logos they were throwing around during Countdown. Also, it was advertised as such. But ... I'm not sure it is.
The opening two issues are fine: they show the Golden Age from the perspective of a kid named Paul Lincoln. He's working for a small-time mobster in the early thirties, but straightens up after a meeting with Sandman and the Atom, and is in college by the time the Justice Society disbands.
Issues 3 and 4 are set in the Silver Age. And this is where it gets odd.
It's definitely the Silver Age, by the way, and not the "early Modern Age" readers are used to getting in flashbacks to the period between Superman's current-continuity debut and Crisis On Infinite Earths. The Cheetah is a woman in a costume rather than a lycanthrope, Toyman is robbing banks with a giant robot, Catwoman thinks being a cat-burglar in a purple evening gown and a green cape is a good idea. It's very, very Silver Age. The only concessions to modern age continuity are that Lexcorp exists (so Luthor isn't a mad scientist who blames Superman for his hair loss) and the Golden Age characters aren't on Earth-2.[1]
And if that's the way DC want to go with the history of New Earth, fair enough. It's a bit of a shock to me, who started reading comics properly post-Crisis, but it fits with their current policy of, well, being very Silver Age (Barry Allen's back! Hal Jordan's back! Krypto the Superdog is back!! Even Grant Morrison's Batman is riffing off late-fifties stories which, ten years ago, DC was trying very hard to forget ever happened.)
What did confuse me when I read #3 was that, at the dawn of the Silver Age, Paul Lincoln is still a young adult, and has just enlisted in the police academy. This suggests that it's been maybe a decade since the Golden Age ended. At first I thought this was a minor continuity problem they hadn't spotted.
But in #4, there's a scene of a villain tearing up the street, and in the foreground is a VW Bug with flowers painted all over it. The inference is clear: the Silver Age happened in the sixties.
Which is absolutely right in publishing terms, where the Silver Age started in 1956 or so. But it makes no sense when it comes to comic-book time, unless they're really claiming that Bruce Wayne has been Batman for more than fifty years.
Now maybe there's an absolutely brilliant explanation for this coming up. If so, I'd be fascinated to see it, because as things stand it's just silly, and clearly isn't the history of the DCU we were promised.
[1]And at that, I was disappointed that Grant Morrison's brilliant remix of Flash of Two Worlds, which maintained the spirit of the original in a universe where they weren't on two worlds, has been dropped. Apparently, on New Earth, Barry and Jay just ran into each other one day and it wasn't a huge deal.
