We interrupt this program . . .

So, how about that coronavirus . . .?

Before I begin this post, please remember these two important facts:

1. I am neither a doctor, nor do I play one on TV; and
2. These are my opinions.

Novel coronavirus (aka coronavirus or COVID-19) has been labeled as both an outbreak and a pandemic. Let's take a look at a few definitions:

epidemic: affecting or tending to affect a disproportionately large number of individuals within a population, community, or region at the same time (emphasis mine)

outbreak: a sudden rise in the incidence of a disease (emphasis mine)

pandemic: occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population (emphasis mine)

Based on the definitions (epidemic is included as more people recognize that particular word moreso than pandemic) -- I used the online Merriam-Webster dictionary (clicking on the links will take you directly to the definitions) -- as of March 16, 2020, coronavirus doesn't fit any of those definitions. The cases of influenza (flu) still outnumber those of coronavirus. But coronavirus is new, and we are used to hearing about the flu.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be watching and attempting to stop the spread of coronavirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nCoV/index.html)  has practical information on dealing with coronavirus, but here is my own, hopefully helpful, list. There's nothing earth-shattering here, just practical information we all learned through the years.

1. Don't panic. The media have been, for lack of a better metaphor, screaming "fire" in a crowded theatre. As a result, people have panicked, including stockpiling armageddon-level amounts of water, toilet paper/other paper products, and cleaning products.
2. Be informed. Visit your healthcare professional for your best care, or visit the CDC web site (link above) for more general tips.
3. Improve personal hygiene: Wash your hands (especially after using the bathroom); avoid unnecessarily touching your nose and face; don't cough or sneeze into your hands, use a tissue whenever possible.
4. If you're sick, stay home.

Wherever you may be (I'm lousy about blogging regularly, so I have only one or two people who read my blog at this point), stay safe. I'll be back with my look at how DC Comics should have dealt with their original Crisis in a day or two.

How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis, Part 3: My Original Solution

No matter how much I enjoyed the story as a whole, to say I wasn't happy with the ending of Crisis on Infinite Earths would be an understatement. My favorite earth in the DC multiverse was gone, even though most if not all of its heroes survived. Writer Marv Wolfman refused to kill off the original Superman, so he, his wife Lois Lane, Superboy of Earth-Prime, and Alexander Luthor of Earth-Three were sent off to a paradise (that turned out to be not so much of a paradise, but I'll get to that in a later column). The Earth-Two Robin and Huntress died at the hands of the Shadow Demons. My beloved Justice Society of America truly were the losers as most of the remaining team members were sent into limbo to stave off Ragnarok for eternity.

As much of a fan of the Justice League of America as I was in the 1970s, its was the Justice Society of Earth-Two who were my favorites. As I stated previously, I looked forward to the annual JLA/JSA crossover each year after reading "The Creature in the Velvet Cage" in Justice League of America #113 in 1974. Team-ups with the heroes of Earth-S and the New Gods and the All-Star Squadron just made me love the annual tradition more. The revival of All-Star Comics made me even happier as I was introduced to a new generation of JSA members, including Power Girl, Star-Spangled Kid, and the Huntress. But Crisis took my favorite heroes away in the present and Roy Thomas' Young All-Stars didn't do much for those heroes in the past.

I had an idea, though, of how DC should have begun their new single universe, and I wasn't afraid to share it with DC. I am sure that Dick Giordano laughed at my ideas -- if he even read them, since DC didn't accept unsolicited proposals then. These are the things I remember of those ideas from 35 years ago:

1. Kal-L was rocketed to Earth from Krypton and landed in Smallville in 1917. He was found by John and Martha Kent and raised as their son Clark. Clark ended up in Metropolis in 1938 and soon made his first appearance as Superman. He worked at the Daily Star with Lois Lane under the editorship of George Taylor. Kal-L's cousin, Kara Zor-L, landed nearly 60 years later, having traveled in suspended animation. Clark had no career as Superboy.
2. Clark and Lois married and had a son, Clark, Jr., with the help of Dr. Fate, who encased Lois' womb with a magical charm that kept the boy from harming his mother in utero. Clark, Jr. spent summers in Smallville with his grandparents. He met Lana Lang during those summers. They attended college at Metropolis U, married, and had twins, Clark III, nicknamed Trey, and Leigh. Lana went into broadcast journalism at WGBS, while Clark worked for Perry White at the Daily Planet. White had worked at the Star in the 1950s and jumped to the Planet later.
3. Kara made her debut as Power Girl in 1975 or '76, met Wonder Woman on a JSA case and was helped in assuming the identity of Karen Starr.
4. Trey and Leigh would have been teens in the '80s. They would be the inspiration for the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th century. Leigh was to be a bit of a rebel, going behind her parents' backs to work on the GBS daytime drama, Secret Hearts, under the alias of Lynda Leigh. Trey and Leigh would also be the last of Kal-L's line to have full super-powers. As stated in a Legion story, after the third generation the powers passed on randomly after that.
5. Bruce Wayne became an orphan at age 10 in 1925; his brother, Thomas, Jr., was a baby. By the time Bruce debuted as Batman in 1939, he had studied acting and science and medicine and trained his body to be physical perfection. He took in eight-year-old orphan Dick Grayson in 1940 and met the love of his life, Selina Kyle, the same year.
6. Selina was the jewel thief known as the Catwoman. She fought Batman off and on for over a decade before giving up a life of crime and reforming. They married in 1955 and had a daughter, Helena, in 1957.
7. Thomas, Jr. grew up, studied medicine, and intended to practice medicine as his father had. But tragedy struck him and his wife, leaving their young son, named after Thomas, Jr.'s brother, an orphan. Bruce II was taken into his uncle's home. His discovery that the elder Bruce was Batman inspired young Bruce to decide to become an even better Batman. His uncle had failed in his goal to eradicate all crime, but he wouldn't. (This would explain why the second Batman was a bit darker in his methods, and also why Bruce II's cousin Helena calls him "Uncle" -- he's always been a bit of a brooding individual and seems much older than he is.)
8. Helena debuted as the Huntress in 1977, after her mother was blackmailed into committing one last crime. The original Batman retired with Selina's death.
9. There was to be a second Dick Grayson, who had a similar origin to the original Dick Grayson, and brought in by the first Dick Grayson to help "humanize" the second Batman.
10. Additional members of the Batman family included Batwoman, Bat-Girl (who would later take on the identity of The Silhouette), and the second Batgirl. Commissioner James Gordon would have been made younger for the original Batman's adventures. His son, James Jr., would have become commissioner after Bruce Wayne's death in 1978. James Jr.'s children are Tony and Barbara.
11. Princess Diana of the Amazons rescued Steve Trevor off the shores of Paradise Island. She won the contest to determine the champion who would return Trevor to the United States. She became the heroine known as Wonder Woman.
12. Diana rescued young Donna Troy from a burning building. Donna was taken to Paradise Island to live and train, though she would eventually return to the States and take on the identity of Wonder Girl.
13. Shortly after Donna was rescued, Diana discovered she was pregnant with Trevor's child (they had married years before, during the Justice Society's period of retirement, after she realized that the war on crime was never-ending). The child was named Lyta after her grandmother, Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons, and later became Fury of Infinity, Inc.
14. This one is kind of odd, but I also feel it was a genius idea: Green Arrow and Speedy were trapped in time with the other members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, though each was in a different era. When they were rescued by the Justice League and Justice Society, Oliver Queen became a liberal out for social justice, and Roy Harper joined the Teen Titans for a while but struggled with being a teen out of time and turned to drugs for a short period.

As I look upon the ideas that I remember, I notice that Batman had a lot of history repeating (maybe I had Two-Face on my mind?). I don't remember how I dealt with the villains like the Joker or Penguin or Luthor who, in the DC multiverse, had doppelgangers on Earth-One and Earth-Two. I do seem to remember that Silver St. Cloud was a new Catwoman, a heroine from the outset who put on the costume after discovering that Bruce II was Batman.

I still think this idea has merit. Of course, John Byrne created three fantastic Generations series that took a similar yet vastly different path with the whole idea of legacy. And my solution has evolved a bit over the years.

Next up: How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis: Zero Hour and Beyond

How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis, Part 2: The Crisis!

I'll admit it. I was excited about Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I read every bit of news I could lay my hands on in the months leading up to the January 1985 launch. There was a lot of speculation about which worlds would live (Spoiler: only one, though I believe at one point Earth-One and Earth-Two were both supposed to survive -- one for the modern heroes and one for the golden age heroes) and which worlds would die (all the rest). The Comics Buyer's Guide and Amazing Heroes were great sources of new information as it was released. For a guy who looked forward to the annual JLA/JSA crossover, Crisis promised to be that and more!

Crisis on Infinite Earths #1
Art by George Perez, ©1985, 2020 DC

January 3, 1985, finally arrived and the Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 hit the stands. I had to wait until later in the month to get my shipment of comics since I lived in a small rural town, about seventy miles away from the closest comics shop. From the opening captions, "In the beginning there was only one, a single black infinitude, so cold and dark for so very long that even the burning light was imperceptible. But the light grew and the infinitude shuddered, and the darkness finally . . . screamed, as much in pain as in relief. For in that instant a multiverse was born. A multiverse of worlds vibrating and replicating . . . and a multiverse that should have been one, became many." (Marv Wolfman, Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, 1/3/1985, p. 1)

The main protagonists of that first issue were the Monitor and his assistant Lyla, and the twelve heroes they summoned to help save the multiverse. Those first twelve heroes were:

• Superman of Earth-Two, representing the Justice Society of America
• Firebrand of Earth-Two, representing the All-Star Squadron
• Obsidian of Earth-Two, representing Infinity, Inc.
• Psycho-Pirate of Earth-Two
• Firestorm of Earth-One, representing the Justice League of America (pre-Detroit era)
• Green Lantern John Stewart of Earth-One, representing the Green Lantern Corps
• Cyborg of Earth-One, representing the New Teen Titans
• Geo-Force of Earth-One, representing the Outsiders
• Dawnstar of Earth-One, representing the Legion of Super-Heroes
• Psimon of Earth-One, a member of the Fearsome Five
• Killer Frost of Earth-One
• Blue Beetle of Earth-Four
• Arion, Lord of Atlantis
• Solovar of Gorilla City
• Doctor Polaris

From the outset, with the loss of Earth-Three and the Crime Syndicate, who were needed for the Monitor's plans, the stakes were raised. Even though the Crime Syndicate appeared rarely since their first appearance in 1964's Justice League of America #29, readers knew that DC was serious about cleaning house. By the time the final issue of the maxi-series was released on December 19, 1985, every reader had been taken on a journey that introduced new earths and new heroes but also had its share of losses. By the time the curtain closed, only one earth remained.

DC had made some hard choices. The plans moving forward were to make Superman the sole survivor of Krypton again, so Supergirl was sacrificed -- and died a hero's death. But what about Power Girl, the cousin of the Earth-Two Superman? Well, her origin changed, became more mystical and tied to the legend that was Arion, Lord of Atlantis. Another casualty of the Crisis was the Huntress, daughter of the Earth-Two Batman and Catwoman. She survived because she was at the dawn of time with the other heroes when the new universe was born, but her parents never existed on this new earth. It was perhaps best that she and her "brother," the Earth-Two Robin perished.

There were also plans for Wonder Woman, so the Earth-Two version retired to Olympus with her husband, Steve Trevor, and the Earth-One Amazon was devolved into the clay from which she was formed. A new Princess Diana made her entrance to Patriarch's World a short time later as part of DC's Legends event.

Despite some solid work from writer Marv Wolfman and artists George Perez, Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, and Jerry Ordway, DC's Crisis was like the road to hell: paved with good intentions. Cracks began appearing almost immediately and within a couple years, DC faced continuity gaffes with the original Captain Marvel, Hawkman, Wonder Girl, and more.

Next: How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis: My Original Solution

How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis, Part 1: Leading up to the Crisis

"Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the DC Universe will never be the same."

Promotional ads for Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Art by George Perez and Dick Giordano; ©1984, 2020 DC

Those were pretty big statements to make, but DC began promoting their first company-wide crossover with tagline in 1984. Crisis on Infinite Earths was the culmination of work begun as a project at least two years earlier as a history of the DC universe. Comics historian Peter Sanderson was hired to read every DC comic ever published as part of that project. What was originally going to be a straightforward DC history soon became two separate projects: Crisis, which would be 12 issues in length with the final two issues being a concise history of the DC universe, and Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe.

The origins of the project are fairly clear. DC editor Len Wein is believed to have answered a fan's letter in a Green Lantern letter column that admitted that DC's continuity was a little messy (I'm paraphrasing), with some stories simply not fitting into DC's known multiverse. I'll admit that there were some inconsistencies. DC's continuity wasn't as simple as Marvel's at that time. But the Marvel universe at that time was less than 25 years old while the DCU was approaching 50.

But truth be told, the DCU wasn't that confusing. There were basically five earths that DC told stories on, and a couple others that made the occasional appearance. Those earths were:

• Earth-One: home of the Justice League of America, the New Teen Titans, the Outsiders, the Doom Patrol, and -- in the future -- the Legion of Super-Heroes
• Earth-Two: home of the Justice Society of America; the Seven Soldiers of Victory; Infinity, Inc., and -- in the past -- the All-Star Squadron
• Earth-Three: home of the Crime Syndicate
• Earth-C: home of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!
• Earth-C Minus: home of Just'a Lotta Animals
• Earth-S: home of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family, Shazam's Squadron of Justice and other Fawcett characters, and Kid Eternity (who was originally published by Quality Comics)
• Earth-X: home of the Freedom Fighters, heroes originally published by Quality Comics who migrated to Earth-X from Earth-Two
• Earth-Prime: "our earth," one with no heroes to speak of, though a couple did appear over the years

Did Bob Haney's stories in The Brave and the Bold and World's Finest Comics defy definition? Well, some of them did, such as those in which Sgt. Rock appeared. And how about those Super Sons?

The sergeant's first appearance took place during World War II, which would place the story on Earth-Two, but the yellow oval around the bat on Batman's chest was indication that the story featured the Earth-One Batman. And then there were stories co-starring Sgt. Rock that took place in the present. But Batman also met Kamandi and worked in the daytime when Batman and Detective Comics featured the return of the Creature of the Night aspect of the Batman. Readers generally consigned those stories that didn't really fit to an Earth-B, named for Bob Haney.

So really, did having two Supermen, two Batmen, two Robins, two Wonder Women, etc., muddy the waters that much? Especially considering that when DC reintroduced the multiverse in 2006, there were far more than two or three Supermen, Batmen, or Wonder Women?

But I'm getting ahead of myself . . ..

Next: The Crisis!

Everything Happened . . . or DC Comics the 5G Way

GENERATION ZERO: GODS AMONG US
Cover art by Francis Manapul, ©2020 DC

There's been a lot of talk over the past eight months or so about DC Comics' new 5G (or Generation Five) initiative. It is supposedly a restructuring of DC's 85-year history into five distinct generations and a prequel issue:

• Generation Zero: Gods Among Us
• Generation One: Age of Mysteries
• Generation Two: Age of the Metahuman
• Generation Three: Age of Crisis
• Generation Four: Age of Rebirth
• Generation Five: Age of Tomorrow

According to Jim Lee at C2E2, 5G is not a relaunch or reboot. We'll see.

There are things about this new timeline that excite me. My favorite heroes, the Justice Society of America, are back in a place of prominence during the World War II years alongside the Freedom Fighters, Seven Soldiers of Victory, and the All-Star Squadron. I couldn't be more excited about this. Hopefully, DC will give us some titles out of G1.

There are also some things that don't thrill me as much. Wonder Woman being the first public superhero, for example. No, I'm not being misogynistic; I just believe that if "everything happened," then Superman should still be the first superhero with Batman following along about a year later and Wonder Woman arriving in Man's World just before America's entrance into World War II. You know, the way the stories were originally published. But this is a minor -- and I do mean minor -- quibble. I'm actually more concerned about how they're going to do the time jumps so that the original Titans (Dick, Donna, Wally, Garth, and Roy) have their moment to shine or so that the Super Sons (Jon Kent and Damian Wayne) have their adventures.

The recent firing of Dan DiDio (and the lack of comment on the firing from DC, WarnerMedia, or AT&T) has fans and comics media wondering if 5G is going to publish as originally planned or if it will be scuttled. It has been reported that AT&T/WarnerMedia wants a more synergistic relationship between the comics and other media formats, including TV, movies, games, and more. DC's 85-year history is seen as somehow making that more difficult since Superman has been around since 1938, Batman since 1939, and Wonder Woman since 1941. That sounds like a cop-out. Still, I understand the need for "fresh new ideas." Just ask me about some of the missteps taken with some of my other favorite intellectual properties (Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, etc.). Anyway . . .

Coming up next: How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis, Part 1

It's been a long, long time . . .

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I don't like to get too personal here on my blog about reading, but I noticed it's been well over two years since I last posted a review of any kind. And that's too long! So I've decided to do something about it -- and post something. Will wonders never cease? Lol

Here's the long and short of it: I've been sick. No, I don't have cancer or anything serious like that, and I'm not a carrier of anything contagious. I just get worn out quickly and that makes me susceptible to getting sick in other ways. If I'm careful -- and I am working on that -- I live a perfectly normal life.

My hope is that I will post something here every two or three days. We'll see how long I do that. Lol

Up first? A series of articles on DC Comics' new 5G initiative and the stuff leading up to it, starting with the granddaddy of all crossovers, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Basically, I'm going to write down thoughts I've had through the years on how things should have ended with Crisis. Feel free to post comments. I may even reply.