Now, I've come across Post and Pre crisis stuff when dealing with the DC universe, but, what exactly IS it? What changes were made?

And, what is Zero Hour? What changes were made?

The Crisis storyline pretty much (at the time) wiped out the alternate worlds, and (under the guidance of John Byrne, Frank Miller, and a few other good writers and editors) forced the DC universe to decide once and for all what was going to be canon and what wasn't. The storyline involved a creature called the Anti-Monitor who wanted to annihilate everything (and almost succeeded), who ended up being stopped when the Flash (Barry Allen) sacrificed his life to destroy the Anti-Monitor's machine.

The long-lasting effects are still felt to this day. For instance: Right now there's only two "True" Kryptonites; Green and Red. Green is exceedingly hard to come by (unlike the old days when everyone had Kryptonite), and Red was actually created as an isotope of the Green by Batman do handle Superman in a non-lethal manner if anyone ever got control of the Man of Steel's body. There HAS been another "Red" in the past, but that was Kryptonite in name only; it was created by Mr Myxyzptlk's 5th-Dimensional magic as a practical joke. In the broadest sense of the terms, there's two colors of K, but three types. The whole Kryptonite question on quizzes is one of the great comic book trick questions.

Another effect was the setting up of the "Pantheon". Essentially it sets up a hierarchy of power levels and capabilities. Who's the strongest DC hero at their peak? Superman, followed by Wonder Woman, then Martian Manhunter and Captain Marvel. Who's the fastest? Flash (by far), followed by Superman (though Impulse will likely overtake Supes when he grows up). What's the most powerful weapon in the Universe? Green Lantern's ring. Who's the most dangerous hero alive? Batman, because he makes it his business to be, and you'll never see him coming. It basically, in other words, enforced the idea that every first string (and even most second string) heroes should have something definite that helps people differentiate them from their peers (DC has a two-decade-old reputation for creating "Flying Bricks").

And a third effect was to once and for all clear up the details of assorted heroes' origins. Did Superman have his raw power as an infant? No. Is Diana the first Wonder Woman? No, her mother worked with the JSA during WWII. How many Green Lanterns have there been? 4 on Earth (not including Jade and G'nort). And DC editors hold writers to those origins. Thinking you know better is what got DC's continuity horribly screwed up to begin with.

ZERO HOUR, on the other hand, was essentially the Crisis That Never Happened. It was, to be exact, the story of former Green Lantern Hal Jordan, now calling himself Parallax, teaming with former second-string-hero-turned-villain Extant to attempt to rewrite history in their own image. Doing so, the heroes were told, would wipe out the current reality (according to a group of time regulators known as the Linear Men). So everyone and their grandmother jumped and went to whup Parallax and Extant's asses. Minor changes resulted from this (mostly in the Legion of Superheroes comic, and a few other minor glitches), Parallax went off to do his own thing, and Extant has showed up a few times since then, trying to rewrite history again (he showed up a year or so ago in JSA, and was apparently killed). But broadly speaking, nothing broad sweeping happened, except that time travel was written out of the DC Universe.

The problem was that...time travel is a fun thing to play with so long as you don't go overboard with it. So long as you don't damage continuity, what's the problem?

The problem started when DC started writing the Elseworlds stories (essentially "What If?" stories...take familiar heroes and put them in other time periods, settings, and unfamiliar situations). These were wildly popular with people for a number of reasons, and it would have been neat to see what develops in those places, buuuut...They're supposed to be one-shot deals. Two events changed that forever.

The first is summed up in two words: Kingdom Come. This brilliantly-written, and beautifully-rendered story is, technically, an Elseworlds story (at the moment...it happens in a future). But people were so compelled by the events in the story that they didn't really want to have to say goodbye to the ideas and characters and story that went down. And rightfully so.

The other was DC's truly alternate setting "Tangent". Aside from names of characters, nothing was the same as in the DC universe, and yet...once again the writers had in many cases created these wonderful characters. They did a month of Tangent Comics, and it was so wildly successful that a second month of Tangent Comics and stories were written a few months later (it was intended to be a one-shot deal, but earned itself an encore).

Sooooo...DC used Kingdom Come as the launch point to blow the lid off of what they call the "Biggest Secret In All Creation". They call it Hypertime, and it's essentially a parallel 5th dimensional realm outside time and space. And from there you can see that the Linear Men were wrong. Time isn't one linear stream; it's an ever-branching thing, full of infinite possibilities, and some of those branches might even come back into the "main" time stream, or influence them. It's just a very big and soppy way of telling people that they were wrong to eliminate time travel stories, and that they promise to be responsible in regards to what influences them.

Since then we had the "DC One Million" storyline that was immensely popular, Wally West (The Flash) was lost in time once and ricocheted into a parallel world another time (replaced temporarily in this world by his parallel world counterpart Walter West, a much grittier Flash). JLA just went through a mind-bending and amazing story called the "Obsidian Age". And so long as it doesn't warp continuity, it doesn't hurt anything, and all is well.

Hope that answers your questions.

In the early-to-mid 80s, the DC Universe was fragmented. Their characters literally existed in their own universes with crossovers and some overlap but not much in common. This comes from how the DC was formed, by buying/getting the rights to characters from various smaller companies in the early days of comics. (For example, the Marvel family, including Captain Marvel, was owned by a different company until DC bought them up and until Crisis the Marvel family existed in its own universe from the Bats/Superman universe)

So anyways, in the 80's the Editors realized they had a mess. Continuity was virtually non-existent among the various books, and figuring out who had done what and if Character A hated Character B or even knew Character B existed was next to impossible, so they (or rather some writers, I don't have my Crisis books here at work to check this out) decided to do something about it. They created a year long story line where all of the DC Universes would be destroyed and in the end a singular Universe would be created, containing all of the characters people wanted to keep, killing off some of the characters (such as Supergirl), and most importantly giving future writers a somewhat cleaner slate to work with. With only a few exceptions, none of the characters know what actually happened during the Crisis; they know Something Big happened and they succeeded, but they only remember the joined worlds history's now, not the multiverse they had before.

Oh and by Editorial Declaration, from that point onward, as far as the main stream DCuniverse was concerned, there was 1 and ONLY 1 Universe now. Elseworlds exists completely outside of the DC Universe and never the two shall meet.

Perhaps one of the biggest things to have come out of the Crisis was Superman's power down. Up until Crisis, Superman was experiencing the classic example of Power Creep you've ever seen. Towards the end of his Pre-Crisis run, his powers were out of control; he was at the stage where he could rearrange planets with ease, not to mention having a million and a half powers no one but the diehard fans even remembered (Super Hypnosis, SuperVentriloquism, etc....). Writers were having a harder and harder time justifying why Superman was staying on Earth and why he didn't stop all crime and fix all accidents on the planet in the first minute of each day then kick back for the rest of the day. They also had more trouble coming up with credible threats for him as well; when you can reignite stars wtih your laser vision, having someone coming at you with supersized toys doesn't seem too dangerous. Editors also wanted to cut back on the amount of Kryptonite on Earth so that wouldn't be the copout it was becoming all the time.

So John Byrne was brought in right after Crisis to come up with the new Superman, a weaker Superman, but hopefully a more approachable Superman (and a more writable Superman). His powers were cut back greatly, though he was still one of the top Heroes on Earth. That is why people (especially people in debates) talk about PreCrisis (PC) Superman and PostCrisis Superman (Current Superman).

That said, Crisis was 20-some years ago, and since then Supes and now many in the rest of the JLA (Flash, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Batman and to a lesser extent Plastic Man) have been experiencing power creep again, but so far it isn't as bad as it was pre-crisis. (Some somewhat questionable events aside)

In a nutshell, Crisis collapsed the DC Universe down from a multiverse into a universe, and depowered Superman, killed Supergirl and saw Flash sacrifice himself to save the Universe.

Now, as for Zero Hour, I've read it but I'm not quite sure of everything. It was
an attempt to fix up some of the stuff that was still screwed up from Crisis. Things like Hawkman's history (which it didn't really fix) and the origin of the Legion of Superheroes (the 30th Century Heroes who were inspired by Superboy joining them... but in Post-Crisis there never was a SuperBoy so how did they come about?). It was a little less effective than Crisis, but still did the job. In many ways, it stopped Time Travel (or at least made it a great deal more difficult) in the DCU the way the Crisis stopped Multiversal travel. Sadly I cna't recall more details about Zero Hour at this time to explain more.

Oh and before you ask, Hypertime came about in the late late 90's with the miniseries "The Kingdom". It was an attempt to explain how "Kingdom Come" (An excellent book if you can find it) could still be the Real Future of the DCU, when so many little things had happened which would make Kingdom Come impossible (issues with Green Lanterns were the big thing but other little details were coming up too). Since Kingdom Come wasn't issued as an Elseworlds originally, it was canon in the DCU, yet the Editors still held that there was only 1 DC Universe despite the fact that the current Universe could not lead to Kingdom Come without a lot of bending and twisting.

Hypertime brought back the DC Multiverse but not the way it was before. There still was officially only 1 Universe, but in the past there could be alternate histories, and in the future there can be alternate futures. Basically, it comes from the idea that if you show 3 people the same scene, they will describe the scene as 3 different scenes, vaguely alike but different. With Hypertime, each person actually saw the scene as they described it because for the split moment they were looking at it, the scene was as they described it.

http://www.lby3.com/comic/archive/hypertime.html may help describe it a bit better I hope.

Of course despite everything, it looks like DC is inching back towards a more normal multiverse anyways, with the Earth-2 Graphic Novel they had awhile back and even the JLA/Avengers crossover that is ongoing (the jury's still out on if that is in Continuity or not; the Editors from either company haven't come out clearly on either side yet)

Well I hope that helps murky up the waters a bit.

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael wrote this stupid crap:
SNIP!

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Can I call Jynx! on this considering we both said virtually the same things at the same time? *G*

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Neo-Blindy wrote this stupid crap:
Now now, children, you're both geeks.

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Blindy wins the thread.

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael's fortune cookie read:
Red K makes his skin transparent, thus allowing his assorted interior cells to all suck up solar radiation directly, supercharging his powers. So yeah.

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Which of course let's you subdue him without killing him...how?

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There was much rejoicing when Maradon! said this:
Which of course let's you subdue him without killing him...how?

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Supes would be forced to isolate himself and vent massive amounts of energy to get to non-overload levels. Overload causes massive agony (made worse by the fact that his superhuman senses would be on overload). When Batman's stuff was used against the JLA, Supes had to go to the Watchtower (on the Moon) and essentially opened up his heat vision full blast to spend enough extraneous energy that he could deal with it.

See, I don't really care for DC, but this kind of stuff interests me.

Now, if you feel like it, could you explain Kingdom Come in depth a bit please?? I know I've asked before, but the idea intrigues me so much.

I've known for a long time that Deth's knowledge was great, but I didn't know it was GODLIKE!

Edit: Some one explain why Doomsday DID NOT KILL SUPERMAN in "Justice League"

[ 01-21-2004: Message edited by: Cysa The Clown ]

[ 01-21-2004: Message edited by: Niklas ]

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Niklas had this to say about Knight Rider:
When you are ready to have a serious conversation about green lantern, you have my e-mail address.

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Yeah people who whine about Kyle being the Earth GL are like people who nearly 20 years ago whined about Barry Allen dying. They were wrong, and Hal Jordan whiners are wrong now. It's not like Hal was the first GL. He's just the one with the most time on the clock. And like most of the Silver Age incarnations, he was pretty one-track. New isn't always better, but when a decision is made with any sense of finality (Hal is now DEADER THAN A DOORNAIL...he used the power he stole to restart Earth's sun in the Final Night story), that's it. Whining about it is akin to whining about patch messages in EQ.

Anyways...Kingdom Come is...hard to explain. It tells the story of a preacher, Norman McCay, in a near future, who got to know the original 40's era Sandman (not Dream of the Endless...this guy was a superhero during WWII), Wesley Dodds. Dodds for decades had been receiving prophetic dreams, which had in many ways aided his crimefighting career. But Dodds was getting on in years. Towards the end of his life, Dodds started having terrible, prophetic dreams that he could only explain to others by quoting scripture. Specifically, the Book of Revelations.

To understand it better, what you have to know is that in this future, the sons and grandsons of heroes don't defend justice, truth, and the civilian public anymore. They brawl in the streets like gangs only marginally on different sides of a justice line. A decade ago, Superman retired when the people of Metropolis decided that they wanted a murdering godly-powered Punisher-type "kill all the bad guys" antihero named Magog. The shock of the iconic Superman's retirement from the neverending war for truth, justice, and the American Way sent other heroes reeling.

Superman went into self-imposed exile in the Fortress of Solitude, where he pretended on a vast holodeck that he was a farmer in Kansas. Wonder Woman returned to Themiscyra and was relieved of her royal status for failing in her mission in Man's World (outside society). Green Lantern created a space station in orbit called New Oa, and more or less ignored the surface, while watching the heavens for trouble. The Flash grew more and more distant, patrolling his city obsessively (to the point, after his wife died, of losing touch with his own kids) at hyper-speed, righting the most harmless of wrongs. Other heroes faded out, having lost their morale for the most part, and this new, undisciplined, largely untrained generation of heroes took over.

Until Kansas. Magog's "Justice Battalion" was in pursuit of an old-school metacriminal called the Parasite in the heart of Kansas. Parasite attempted to surrender, but Magog's bloodthirsty band of "heroes" wouldn't accept, and in the melee, Parasite lashed out with a desperate salvo, tearing open the containment suit keeping Captain Atom's internal radioactivity under control. The resulting explosion tore across the American heartlands, killing millions in an instant (including most of the Justice Battalion), and rendering the nation's breadbasket radioactive and sterile. This sends the nation's economy into an understandable panic, with shockwaves rippling outwards throughout the world.

These shockwaves, left uncontrolled, will lead to the cataclysm Dodds foretold. But Dodds dies early, unbelieved by even his closest friends...until Norman McCay, the preacher, starts having the dreams. McCay is approached by none other than the Angel of God's Wrath himself, the Spectre. It is the Spectre's duty to use McCay's visions and opinions as an anchor (the Spectre, while near-omnipotent in his power to mete out justice, needs the anchor of a human soul to make decisions) to decide who should be punished as the horrors of the cataclysm play out. And play out they do.

Wonder Woman comes to Superman and attempts to get him to come back, but is at first apparently unsuccessful. He returns, but...well...you should really pick up the collected edition.

The story that ensues from this rather impressive beginning is a story about roles. What roles heroes have in a world, what roles "average" people have, and how we all should coexist. It's a powerful story, made all the more powerful by the amazing artwork, and the work of writers who genuinely know and love the characters they're writing about, and use them to maximum effect. And the prose, the actual words of the narrative itself, are amazing. Kingdom Come is in itself a singular argument that comic books are an art form, and that comic books are a modern mythology, complete with a ragnarok, and a message to convey.

Plus it's just a brilliant comic book. After Kingdom Come, Marvel immediately consulted with Ross (and that's where their post-apocalyptic "Earth X" story came from), and you see a lot of painted comic stories out there these days (DC did Presige-sized books featuring painted stories for a while. There was a Superman one, a Batman one, a Wonder Woman one, a Captain Marvel one, and even a Wonder Twins one called "Form of Water" that was surprisingly good).

Which was actually just the GL Corps' mantra. The original GL had nothing to do with that bunch.

True or False?

[ 01-21-2004: Message edited by: Gunslinger Moogle ]

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael spewed forth this undeniable truth:
Uhhhh...maybe. If it was current continuity Batman, and he had time to plan, Van Helsing would be toast. Batman's one of those folks generally accepted in most "X vs Y" scenarios as being serious trouble, like Doctor Doom is pretty much the guy most everyone doesn't want to screw with, Flash is accepted as the absolute fastest, barring hyperspace (and even then only in certain scenarios), etc.

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What about the Beyonder? Huh? HUH?! =p

Dr. Doom is the fucking shit. NO ONE messes with Victor.

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OtakuPenguin had this to say about pies:
What about the Beyonder? Huh? HUH?! =p

Dr. Doom is the fucking shit. NO ONE messes with Victor.

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Doom conned the Beyonder into giving him all his powers briefly. And then someone conned the Beyonder into turning himself into a baby. Then they finally got the Beyonder to give up and become one of the so-called "Cosmic Cubes".

Power the Beyonder has. Brains is another story.

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
Doom conned the Beyonder into giving him all his powers briefly. And then someone conned the Beyonder into turning himself into a baby. Then they finally got the Beyonder to give up and become one of the so-called "Cosmic Cubes".

Power the Beyonder has. Brains is another story.

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Yeah. I know =\

So, whaddya think? Dr. Doom Vs. Batman.

There is no contest.

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Cysa The Clown stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
question is, who could outsmart Batman?

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GENERAL KRANG!

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Leopold, the Voice of Reason had this to say about (_|_):
Batman has figured out ways to systematically take down Superman.

There is no contest.

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Dr. Doom is Dr. Doom, that is all that needs to be said.

Batman is out of his league.

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Check out the big brain on Cysa The Clown!
question is, who could outsmart Batman?

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I think that's what makes The Joker such a bloody great villain. Joker "outsmarts" Batman regularly, simply on account of the fact that his thinking can be utterly impossible to trace. It's too schizophrenic. (though eventually, he happens to leave one too many clues.)

I can't think of any hero/villain otherwise who could really outsmart Bats, per se. They're all either set in specific patterns of psychosis or too rational.

Otaku, when Doom figures out a way to take on Superman in melee combat and win with utter ease, call me.

[ 01-22-2004: Message edited by: Leopold, the Voice of Reason ]

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Leopold, the Voice of Reason got all f'ed up on Angel Dust and wrote:
I think that's what makes The Joker such a bloody great villain. Joker "outsmarts" Batman regularly, simply on account of the fact that his thinking can be utterly impossible to trace. It's too schizophrenic. (though eventually, he happens to leave one too many clues.)

I can't think of any hero/villain otherwise who could really outsmart Bats, per se. They're all either set in specific patterns of psychosis or too rational.

Otaku, when Doom figures out a way to take on Superman in melee combat and win with utter ease, call me.

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Doom would've gotten ahold of the Kryptonite way before Batman was even thinking about it.

Man, Doom was being evil while Batman was in fuckin Diapers.

I also had "The Origins of The Flash" around. I wonder what happened to those...

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OtakuPenguin had this to say about Pirotess:
Doom would've gotten ahold of the Kryptonite way before Batman was even thinking about it.

Man, Doom was being evil while Batman was in fuckin Diapers.

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Problem with that assumption is that Doom knew about Kryptonite. Likewise, Batman got the sample of Green K he tinkered with to make Red K from Superman. It's not like the stuff's just laying around. And on top of that, keep in mind that it's very difficult to get samples of Superman's DNA to run analysis.

Doom would observe, if he had any amount of time. He'd piece together that you could wear the Kryptonian down, and he would do so, letting other powerful metacriminals take the fall to wear Superman down, or he'd find some way to rob Superman of his stored energy. Or if he was very clever he'd realize Superman has an extreme weakness to magic, and use his own repetoir of spells against Supes.

[ 01-22-2004: Message edited by: Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael ]

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael impressed everyone with:
Doom conned the Beyonder into giving him all his powers briefly. And then someone conned the Beyonder into turning himself into a baby. Then they finally got the Beyonder to give up and become one of the so-called "Cosmic Cubes".

Power the Beyonder has. Brains is another story.

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Cosmic cubes? Like...

But what are they? I got in an argument with a friend earlier today (Batman vs. Superman, of course), and when I said that Batman was ready to deal with anyone in the JLA and got challenged on it, I, uh, had nothing.

2. Plastic Man: Cryonic deep freeze developed from Mr Freeze's weapon systems, then shatter him while his polymer-based body is in a rigid state. He should be able to recover, given enough time.

3. Green Lantern: GL doesn't sleep with his ring on, and the nature of his powers relies heavily on his being able to sleep. So any sort of blindness would work. A post hypnotic suggestion for his unconscious mind to have the ring make him unable to see would be best.

4. Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman's pride is her weak spot. A small nanomachine on the surface of her brain can give her the impression she's fighting someone perfectly matched to her capabilities, someone she could potentially defeat, but who knows all her moves and has matching power. Wonder Woman will essentially defeat herself by eventually wearing herself out or, more likely, giving herself a heart attack.

5. Flash: The Flash instinctively starts to vibrate into intangibility the instant a bullet starts to touch him. Turn this against him by using a vibratory-disruptive bullet with a computerized tip. It enters his body, lodges in his spine, and starts causing hyper-spasms. Essentially give the fastest man alive a case of hyper epileptic seizures.

6. Martian Manhunter: Has to be the first to go, because he acts as the telepathic communication system for the League. Hit him with a dummy missile. He thinks it's an explosive warhead; it's not. It's full of material that will adhere to him and ignite on contact with air. Phosphorous is good, sodium is better, but nanotech machines that convert his surface skin cells to something more flammable would be best.

7. Superman: Red isotope of Kryptonite if at all possible; causing Superman's system to overload. If he wants to live, he'll have to bear the pain of being overloaded in a body now hypersenstive to all sensory stimulus. Venting power will keep Superman isolated.

8. Oracle/Communications: If you manage to take out the Manhunter, the second task would be to disable other means of communication. Batman just planned on jamming the communications system and keeping them away from Oracle's true location (which no one in the League but himself knows). Ras did it by setting up "Babel Towers" to effectively give everyone on Earth aphasia (inability to comprehend written or spoken language) so long as the Towers were operational. He also, following the Batman's plans, used the JLA comlink/signal devices to track the heroes.

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nem-x stopped beating up furries long enough to write:
Can superman snipe people from outerspace with his heaatzzzerbeameeyz

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Yes. When Huntress was in the League, and Gotham was cut off from the rest of the USA during the "No Man's Land" situation, Superman fried the gun of someone getting ready to shoot her from behind while Supes was in orbit using telescopic vision to keep an eye on Huntress.

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So quoth Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael:
3. Green Lantern: GL doesn't sleep with his ring on, and the nature of his powers relies heavily on his being able to sleep. So any sort of blindness would work. A post hypnotic suggestion for his unconscious mind to have the ring make him unable to see would be best.

6. Martian Manhunter: Has to be the first to go, because he acts as the telepathic communication system for the League. Hit him with a dummy missile. He thinks it's an explosive warhead; it's not. It's full of material that will adhere to him and ignite on contact with air. Phosphorous is good, sodium is better, but nanotech machines that convert his surface skin cells to something more flammable would be best.

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Waitaminute. I'm confused. One of the parts of the "Hero Quest" story saw Kyle blinding himself (in battle with Harlequin) to cut off a frightening sight--and further, aren't the power rings supposed to project an emergency shield around their wearers when they get knocked unconscious?

And also, why wouldn't J'onn go intangible and let the missle pass through him?

(random thoughts)