Linkspam doesn't like these dark mornings

[cofax7]

Link by way of James Nicoll: a review of a feminist utopian novel written in 1889. Coolness! This is the sort of thing I would want to have a Kindle for.

Um. This is Superman's new look? Seriously? Huh.

Something fun (and pretty!) to brighten your Monday: Karen Healey plays FCM (or Cliff, Shag, Marry) with Archie Kennedy, Old Spice Guy,

Comments

[eregyrn]

Congrats on the job thing! Will cross fingers for continued developments in that direction.

Yeah, the Superman thing -- that isn't an official redesign of the Main Character. Though really, it figures that most people are reporting it that way -- because DC's multiverse continuity would give headaches even to someone who kind of follows their comics. But believe me, when a comics company gives one of their major characters a REAL redesign, you know about it.

(They officially redesigned Wonder Woman a couple of months ago -- gave her a new costume and, it was reported, screwed around with her origin story. Which baffles me, but whatever. However, that was official in the sense that in WW's main book, you should expect to see the redesign reflected... for at least a couple of years. Superheroes who get redesigns sometimes retain them only for the period of time that a current creative or editorial team is in charge, and then 2 or 3 or 5 years down the road, you can expect an equally-heralded return to the character's "classic" look, or whatever. Superman himself went through this for like a year in the 90s, when they -- no lie -- split him into Red Superman and Blue Superman, with blue skin and weird electrical powers and everything. Google "blue superman", seriously. That was official, it was reflected in the main character's main books and everything. It last pretty much just 1 year, and then he went back to "normal".)

DC is particularly known for its multiple Earths and its "elseworlds" series. They are ALWAYS putting out these one-shot graphic novels, or limited series, in which they just let a creative team go to town on various famous characters, and instantly, an AU is created. I find this interesting about DC. They are perfectly happy to just say "yeah, we have a multiverse". I mean, sure, they had the Crisis on Infinite Earths thing a while back, theoretically collapsing the multiverses in an attempt to neaten things up. But it seems like they haven't gotten the multiverse bug out of their systems. Many of their animated series, for example, effectively take place in AU versions of the "main continuity". A new series that's about to debut, featuring "Young Justice" (the sidekicks of the main Justice League characters) has been specifically said to be intended to be set on Earth-16. (Needless to say, movies are always AUs, too.)

Anyway -- the clues here are "Earth One" and the fact that it's a limited series of graphic novels. It's complicated, but, Earth One used to be "the main DC universe", in a sense, but it got destroyed in Crisis anyway. The mainstream DC universe right now is "New Earth" (AFAIK). So I guess they're resurrecting "Earth One" as yet another reboot universe. But believe me -- I'd put money right now on it not really affecting whatever you want to regard as "the main DC universe"'s Superman or anyone else. I'm sure they're just going to keep puttering along in their classic state in their main comic titles.