Coincidence. Distant cousins. Henry and Nora look different. Pick one
Spoilers Crisis on Infinite Earths Discussion (CW Event Spoiler Thread)
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I'm glad to hear about Jay and Joan, but I still want to know about Harry Wells and Jesse.
I wonder if they'll be doing more with the Rogues now? Other than Capt. Cold and Heatwave, they really haven't done much with them, especially compared to how big a part of the comics they are. My only experience with the comics is the first 5 collections of the New 52 series, and even there they have a pretty big presence in two or three of the books.
Okay, in last night's Flash episode, Cisco had drawn a map and a timeline depicting the state of affairs on the new Earth-Prime (I'm commenting here because it applies to all the shows, not just TF). According to the Arrowverse Wiki, the map contained the following locations:
Dinosaur Island??? Interesting. And Santa Prisca -- that's where Bane comes from right?
Anyway, here's the timeline:
Still a little vague on a few details, like when Superman's career began, although we know it was before Kara's pod landed. And it looks like Earth-1's Batman's history overwrites Earth-38's, at least from 2015 onward, since Supergirl had previously implied that Batman was still active during its run.
Dinosaur Island??? Interesting. And Santa Prisca -- that's where Bane comes from right?
Anyway, here's the timeline:
Still a little vague on a few details, like when Superman's career began, although we know it was before Kara's pod landed. And it looks like Earth-1's Batman's history overwrites Earth-38's, at least from 2015 onward, since Supergirl had previously implied that Batman was still active during its run.
What I want to see is the rediscovery of the multiverse. And why doesn't Vibe have his powers?
Interesting touch that the Earth-Prime version of the events of "Crisis on Earth-X" involved "time travelling Nazis," not alternate-Earth ones. A necessary tweak, however, since as far as this reformed and combined world is concerned, alternate Earths don't exist and never have (though we know they're wrong about that).
^Good catch about the time-traveling Nazis.
Judging from the timeline, I was wondering if it meant that President Marsdin replaced President Brayden in Earth-Prime's history. However, I just rechecked the "documentary" portion of Arrow's finale, and in the shot of the gathered heroes from Invasion!, it's still Brayden giving the speech. But that can still work. Invasion! happened the week before Christmas 2016, after the presidential election but before the inauguration. So when the nameless US President was killed, his sitting VP, Brayden, would've taken over as POTUS for the remainder of his term. Before, I'd assumed that Brayden was the President-Elect and continued on from there, but in the new history, we can assume that President Nameless lost the election to Marsdin, Brayden finished out the last month of his term after the Dominators killed him, and then Marsdin took over on January 20.
However, this would require rewriting Earth-38's history, because Marsdin first appeared in a Supergirl episode airing October 2016, a month before the election. So in the original history, she was in her second term when she was exposed as an alien, but here, she would've been in her first term.
Judging from the timeline, I was wondering if it meant that President Marsdin replaced President Brayden in Earth-Prime's history. However, I just rechecked the "documentary" portion of Arrow's finale, and in the shot of the gathered heroes from Invasion!, it's still Brayden giving the speech. But that can still work. Invasion! happened the week before Christmas 2016, after the presidential election but before the inauguration. So when the nameless US President was killed, his sitting VP, Brayden, would've taken over as POTUS for the remainder of his term. Before, I'd assumed that Brayden was the President-Elect and continued on from there, but in the new history, we can assume that President Nameless lost the election to Marsdin, Brayden finished out the last month of his term after the Dominators killed him, and then Marsdin took over on January 20.
However, this would require rewriting Earth-38's history, because Marsdin first appeared in a Supergirl episode airing October 2016, a month before the election. So in the original history, she was in her second term when she was exposed as an alien, but here, she would've been in her first term.
Because it was the old Earth-1 Cisco who regained his powers not the new Earth-Prime one. The Earth-Prime one has the memories of the original events but didn't actually live through them.
I guess that would open the door for a proper Earth 3, with similar villains
Anyone up for a little speculation? Thanks to the online library, I've just read the Smallville Season 11 comics, which are apparently considered more or less canonical to Smallville (despite their Wonder Woman story contradicting a third-season Easter-egg headline about the Themysciran queen addressing the UN) -- and which feature their own distinct version of the Crisis, in which a race called the Monitors has been using some extradimensional force called the Bleed (from Milestone Comics) to wipe out parallel Earths (and universes too, I guess, though how destroying Earth also destroys the universe is never explained). It got me wondering -- is this version of Smallville reconcilable with the "Earth-167" we saw in CoIE, or do we have to treat them as distinct interpretations?
On the surface, they seem quite incompatible, since they interpret the Monitors and the method of destruction in completely different ways. But then I got to thinking... Arrow and The Flash established that the Monitor and Anti-Monitor had been known and written about by the ancients, that the Crisis had been prophesied and anticipated over the ages. So I wonder if maybe the Season 11 Monitors could've been copycats of a sort -- some sort of cult that learned of the coming Crisis and decided to try to bring it about themselves, like apocalypse cultists wanting to hasten the end. Maybe the Anti-Monitor even backed them somehow -- since he was trapped, maybe he found a way to influence an outside group to do his dirty work for him. The leader of the S11 Monitors said they'd been working for eons to bring about the end, but that could've been exaggeration or distorted history. (I wondered if they could've been one of Mar Novu's tests to destruction, but they'd destroyed far too many Earths for that. He would've been working against his own goal.) Once they were defeated in 2012, the Anti-Monitor would've put other plans in motion. Maybe it was the damage they did that strengthened the Anti-Monitor enough to carry forward on his own.
There are other problems, though -- mainly that in the Earth-167 scene in CoIE, neither Clark nor Lois takes the idea of a threat to the multiverse seriously. You'd think if they'd actually faced a similar threat, they wouldn't be so dismissive. On the other hand, maybe they dismiss it because they assume they've already resolved the Crisis and don't believe a similar threat could recur so soon.
Also, the S11 comics treat Smallville as Earth-1, and the show itself established an "Earth-2" with Clark as the evil Ultraman. But of course every world would count itself as Earth-1. There's actually a line in the comics where one of the Monitors scoffs at the idea of the Smallville Earth's inhabitants assuming theirs is the prime Earth.
If anything, the hardest part to reconcile might not be the S11 comics, but the Smallville finale's flashforward, which apparently was set in 2018 and had Clark still active as Superman and still not quite married to Lois. But in the CoIE episode airing in late 2019, Clark gave up his powers at least several years before, since he and Lois have daughters who are probably at least age 3, old enough to make things, including messes. Of course, this isn't too hard to reconcile, since other Earths in CoIE are visited in the relative past or future, so the Earth-167 scene could've been several years ahead. Except that Lois says it took Clark "about a decade" to develop a sense of humor. Hard to tell when she's counting from, though, since she's known him a lot longer than that.
The S11 comic's Bart Allen storyline, which established the Speed Force and the legacy of other speedster heroes, also got me thinking about the multiverse, since the Speed Force transcends timelines. There was a bit where Bart was visited by Speed Force echoes of other speedsters, and it occurred to me that they didn't necessarily all come from the same Earth. We didn't see their faces, so it's nice to imagine that one of them was Earth-90's Barry Allen. Also, getting a bit spoilery for the comic:
Things might get tricky if the Arrowverse ever introduces Darkseid, because S11 had Smallville's Darkseid briefly appear and claim that he was the sole Darkseid existing in the multiverse, so if the Arrowverse incarnation is substantially different, that would be a contradiction. But of course, Smallville Darkseid might simply have been mistaken in his arrogance, or lying/boasting for the sake of his ego.
On the surface, they seem quite incompatible, since they interpret the Monitors and the method of destruction in completely different ways. But then I got to thinking... Arrow and The Flash established that the Monitor and Anti-Monitor had been known and written about by the ancients, that the Crisis had been prophesied and anticipated over the ages. So I wonder if maybe the Season 11 Monitors could've been copycats of a sort -- some sort of cult that learned of the coming Crisis and decided to try to bring it about themselves, like apocalypse cultists wanting to hasten the end. Maybe the Anti-Monitor even backed them somehow -- since he was trapped, maybe he found a way to influence an outside group to do his dirty work for him. The leader of the S11 Monitors said they'd been working for eons to bring about the end, but that could've been exaggeration or distorted history. (I wondered if they could've been one of Mar Novu's tests to destruction, but they'd destroyed far too many Earths for that. He would've been working against his own goal.) Once they were defeated in 2012, the Anti-Monitor would've put other plans in motion. Maybe it was the damage they did that strengthened the Anti-Monitor enough to carry forward on his own.
There are other problems, though -- mainly that in the Earth-167 scene in CoIE, neither Clark nor Lois takes the idea of a threat to the multiverse seriously. You'd think if they'd actually faced a similar threat, they wouldn't be so dismissive. On the other hand, maybe they dismiss it because they assume they've already resolved the Crisis and don't believe a similar threat could recur so soon.
Also, the S11 comics treat Smallville as Earth-1, and the show itself established an "Earth-2" with Clark as the evil Ultraman. But of course every world would count itself as Earth-1. There's actually a line in the comics where one of the Monitors scoffs at the idea of the Smallville Earth's inhabitants assuming theirs is the prime Earth.
If anything, the hardest part to reconcile might not be the S11 comics, but the Smallville finale's flashforward, which apparently was set in 2018 and had Clark still active as Superman and still not quite married to Lois. But in the CoIE episode airing in late 2019, Clark gave up his powers at least several years before, since he and Lois have daughters who are probably at least age 3, old enough to make things, including messes. Of course, this isn't too hard to reconcile, since other Earths in CoIE are visited in the relative past or future, so the Earth-167 scene could've been several years ahead. Except that Lois says it took Clark "about a decade" to develop a sense of humor. Hard to tell when she's counting from, though, since she's known him a lot longer than that.
The S11 comic's Bart Allen storyline, which established the Speed Force and the legacy of other speedster heroes, also got me thinking about the multiverse, since the Speed Force transcends timelines. There was a bit where Bart was visited by Speed Force echoes of other speedsters, and it occurred to me that they didn't necessarily all come from the same Earth. We didn't see their faces, so it's nice to imagine that one of them was Earth-90's Barry Allen. Also, getting a bit spoilery for the comic:
I find it interesting that Earth-167's speedster Bart Allen died (apparently) in a story set in late 2011 or early 2012, and then Earth-1's Barry Allen was empowered in a 2013 event. It's almost as if Barry filled the opening that Bart's death created, or inherited his portion of the Speed Force.
The comic's portrayal of the Black Flash is different from the Arrowverse version, but that Black Flash seemed to be destroyed at the end of the story, so maybe Zolomon's Black Flash was its replacement in a similar way. The two portrayals of the Speed Force aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough to be reconcilable.
The comic's portrayal of the Black Flash is different from the Arrowverse version, but that Black Flash seemed to be destroyed at the end of the story, so maybe Zolomon's Black Flash was its replacement in a similar way. The two portrayals of the Speed Force aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough to be reconcilable.
Things might get tricky if the Arrowverse ever introduces Darkseid, because S11 had Smallville's Darkseid briefly appear and claim that he was the sole Darkseid existing in the multiverse, so if the Arrowverse incarnation is substantially different, that would be a contradiction. But of course, Smallville Darkseid might simply have been mistaken in his arrogance, or lying/boasting for the sake of his ego.
^ Interesting analysis, though I never really buy that things like comics and tie-in novels are actually canon for TV series, no matter how they're billed.
OTOH, I do consider the "Smallville" scene in "Crisis" to be canon with respect to the original show, and I found it a lovely and appropriate coda for those versions of the characters.
OTOH, I do consider the "Smallville" scene in "Crisis" to be canon with respect to the original show, and I found it a lovely and appropriate coda for those versions of the characters.
Well, the Smallville Wiki treats the comics as an integral part of the continuity, so I'm going by that. And I like being able to count tie-ins as part of the continuity, so my default has usually been to count them unless there was a reason not to.
Anyway, "canon" is not about medium, it's about authorship. It means the stories told by the original creators or their direct successors, rather than imitative works by other people like licensed tie-in authors or fanfic authors. So post-series tie-ins from the original creators, like Joss Whedon's post-series Buffy and Firefly/Serenity comics, the Babylon 5 novels outlined and edited by J. Michael Straczynski, or the Avatar/Korra comics co-plotted by Konietzko & DiMartino, are as close to a canonical continuation as you can get, and as long as there's no other, incompatible version of the story being told anywhere else, there's no reason not to accept them.
In this case, the Smallville Season 11 comics are written by Bryan Q. Miller, who was a writer and story editor on the show in its last few seasons -- not very high on the production staff, but a member of said staff, so he could be considered a direct successor. So it's a borderline case. Which makes it a judgment call, and that's what makes it interesting to speculate about.
Anyway, "canon" is not about medium, it's about authorship. It means the stories told by the original creators or their direct successors, rather than imitative works by other people like licensed tie-in authors or fanfic authors. So post-series tie-ins from the original creators, like Joss Whedon's post-series Buffy and Firefly/Serenity comics, the Babylon 5 novels outlined and edited by J. Michael Straczynski, or the Avatar/Korra comics co-plotted by Konietzko & DiMartino, are as close to a canonical continuation as you can get, and as long as there's no other, incompatible version of the story being told anywhere else, there's no reason not to accept them.
In this case, the Smallville Season 11 comics are written by Bryan Q. Miller, who was a writer and story editor on the show in its last few seasons -- not very high on the production staff, but a member of said staff, so he could be considered a direct successor. So it's a borderline case. Which makes it a judgment call, and that's what makes it interesting to speculate about.
This 2-parter has just been released as a trade paperback under the title Crisis on Infinite Earths: Paragons Rising, and I've just read it courtesy of the Hoopla digital library (not sure if this link will work for others: https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/13437019 ). There are two stories, both set during the first act of Part 2.
The first story shows how Felicity tracked down the book containing the identities of the Paragons, filling in that plot hole in Part 2 where the Monitor shows up and tells everyone that just happened offscreen. It also features some characters they couldn't get in the special, mainly Kid Flash and the Ray. (Even though we saw the Ray disintegrated at the top of Part 1. Guggenheim's introduction suggests the version in the comic may be the one from the animated miniseries's universe.) The book Felicity finds is the Book of Oa, and it's in the movie version of Oa, the Earth-12 glimpsed in the CoIE closing montage (and Sinestro is still a Green Lantern there, I guess because the sequel never happened). We also get glimpses of Earths resembling the New 52, the Fleischer Superman cartoons, an "Earth-76" with Wonder Woman (although she doesn't look like Lynda Carter's version), the "Earth-D" from the CoIE special Marv Wolfman did in the '90s, and even a bit where Felicity's team briefly drops in on the climax of the original CoIE on "Earth-85." It's a nice addition to the storyline, filling in a plot gap and some overlooked characters and worlds. Still, I wish it had continued in the spirit of the TV miniseries and focused on screen universes that weren't covered on TV, like Superboy, Lois & Clark, Shazam/Isis, Nolanverse, etc.
The second storyline is less satisfying. It involves Earth-38's Lex Luthor meeting a multiversal Council of Luthors that goes up against a multiversal Council of Supermen (which is where he supposedly gets the idea to go around killing off Supermen himself), but it's kind of a cluttered story that doesn't connect much to CoIE and is just an excuse for the artists to draw a lot of different Supes and Lexes. Unfortunately, they're mostly drawn from comics versions of the characters, aside from one Lex who looks like Gene Hackman. It would've been nice if they'd taken the opportunity to work in likenesses of John Shea, Sherman Howard, and Michael Rosenbaum as Lex, and Dean Cain and Gerard Christopher as Superman (because surely Superboy's grown up by now). Even their versions of the Earth-38 characters don't look much like Jon Cryer and Tyler Hoechlin. And there's a Kingdom Come Superman that doesn't look like Brandon Routh -- and would have to be a different version anyway, since Earth-96's Superman didn't know about Luthor coming after him. Anyway, it feels more like an expendable sidebar than the first story. If anything, it's hard to reconcile with CoIE, because none of the alternate Supermen there had any forewarning about Lex.
Well, realistically, I guess there would've been likeness-rights issues that kept them from referencing other screen universes. But it's still a disappointment that they didn't.
^ I read the thing when the comics were originally released, and found it eminently disposable and forgettable. It didn't help that Felicity is far from my favorite character, so the heavy focus on her was unwelcome. Bizarrely, DC has now released it as a hardcover Deluxe Edition, which is complete overkill for a mediocre TV tie-in.
Yes, the Deluxe Edition is what I was talking about, the version available on Hoopla.
The description of that new hardcover says it has behind scenes extras for the tv episodes. Anything interesting? Pictures, concept art?
In addition to introductory essays by Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim and an afterword by Marv Wolfman, they've got the "script" for the entire "Paragons Rising" story (it's actually a Marvel-method partial script, panel descriptions without dialogue -- I guess that's how Wolfman still works), pencil art for 18 pages' worth of it, and a section of production art, costume designs, and concept illustrations for the TV miniseries. (The first image is a concept design of Old Bruce Wayne's support armature, and the face is clearly a blurred-out Michael Keaton. I guess they hadn't settled on Conroy yet.) There's a really nice concept painting of the Routh Superman in his Kingdom Come costume, hovering in front of the skyline. There are some variant costume designs, including a version of Harbinger's headdress that they mercifully didn't use. There are a couple of pages of the Justice League seat emblems, including four different White Canary options since she didn't have a logo already. There's concept art for the Anti-Monitor, the climactic moment, the quantum tower, the Vanishing Point interior, Mar Novu's lab, and the Monitor's satellite, which they apparently hoped to include before they decided they could only afford to use the Waverider sets.
Thanks. I am more motivated to buy it now.
As a story, I would tend to agree, but “CoIE” made up for a lot of its narrative failings with some of the best fan service ever.
Lately I've been watching Superboy on DC Universe, and it makes me wish even more that they'd manage to get Gerard Christopher, Stacy Haiduk, and/or Sherman Howard into Crisis on "Earth-88" or something. The first two seasons of the show range from unutterably awful to moderately good back down to pretty bad, but the soft-rebooted seasons 3-4 (retitled The Adventures of Superboy) are often excellent, on a par with the contemporary The Flash or the subsequent Lois & Clark. I think it's an underappreciated show. And its third season even delved into the multiverse a couple of times, so there's a link of sorts there. (One episode established that Kal-El's rocket passed through a time warp on the way to Earth and thus arrived at different times in different universes, which could work as a handwave for different Superman universes like Earth-96 and Smallville, although it wouldn't explain how people like Bruce Wayne, Barry Allen, etc. live in different decades on different Earths.)