Earth-1 x2

While there are still DC comics I like, I haven't been shy about stating my displeasure at many of the changes wrought by the Flushpoint. And mostly, that displeasure has been about editorial decisions and directions. Terrible and illogical costume designs. Captain Marvel becoming Shazam! A trend towards splashier art at the expense of story content. Forced crossovers between unrelated books. A continued refusal to offer recap pages. A 90s too-many-books, everyone's-a-anti-hero, Liefeld-welcome approach to comics. And now there's the Earth-2 project.

While it seems in good hands with James Robinson - this generation's Roy Thomas - at the helm, DC has still thought it important to leak various terrible costume designs for Earth-2 heroes, as well as announce that the Earth-2 versions of the Trinity are well on their way to being killers (and Superman is still pantless). Yay, more anti-heroing! I would have thought the appeal of bringing back the Golden Age heroes was to feed into something retro. Since Earth-1 is determined to be a darker DCU, where heroes are treated like mutants over at Marvel, and even Superman doesn't inspire trust, well, by contrast, Earth-2 would have looked to more innocent, happier times. But no. From what we know, it may well be an even darker place in the DC Multiverse.

It's not necessarily an unjustifiable choice. The Golden Age of comics WAS sometimes insouciantly violent, with criminals and Nazis buying the farm, in sometimes gory fashion. Even Batman started out using guns. So a more sanguinary world isn't impossible to imagine as a consequence of the Golden Age, as written. But is it enough of a change from the regular DCU? And let's not forget we're only now learning about that new DCU. If Earth-2 is yet ANOTHER DCU we have to learn about, well, what's the point? Couldn't they all be on the same Earth (aside from the killer Trinity, obviously)? Sometimes I think some of the books that have been sold as presumably Earth-1 actually take place on Earth-2 anyway, like The Shade or Mr. Terrific.

When they invented the concept of Earth-2, it was a way to teach younger fans about DC's long history, or reconnect with older fans of those characters. Wow, it was your dad's Flash and Green Lantern, you know? Or your granddad's if, like me, you discovered Earth-2 through Roy Thomas' All-Star Squadron. The whole point was to revive an ancient part of DC comics history. What's the point here? If we're not actually going back to the Golden Age and its design ethic (even if I trust Robinson to portray many of the characters adequately), then we're not really paying homage to DC's past. Instead, we're just creating a second Earth-1 full of redesigns.

Just something else the people in charge of DC Comics don't seem to understand the appeal of.