rangerBlog - November 26th, 2007

01:34 pm - Multiverse Schmultiverse

Over at Newsarama, there's a nice editorial list of the known post-IC DC Multiverse.

I have 2 reactions to this;

1) Elseworlds Finest: Supergirl/Batgirl better damn well be one of these Earths.

2) If you can't wrap your head around time travel and alternate dimensions, you shouldn't be a geek.

Brady asks which future Earth Kamadi comes from (fairly rational, though the answer may be 'none') and then follows it with Lady Quark and Dark Angel. That bugs me. Both those characters are survivors of destroyed Earths. They don't have to 'come from' (his phrasing) anywhere. For the 20 years between Crisis and infinite Crisis, they didn't 'come from' anywhere. Just because the 52 is back doesn't mean they have equivalent homes.

(It's possible he was asking whether their Earths now had equivilants, but I'm gonna rail against this because the stupid-reading aligns withe the words of other idiots, and it's the mindset that irks me so.)

Quoting:
Over in Action Comics, there’s a Legion of Super-Heroes running around that’s a continuation of the original, Adventure Comics #247 Legion. If the Legion that Supergirl is currently hanging with is the future of “New Earth,” where is this other Legion from? Sure, there will be claims of an alternate timeline within the “New Earth” Universe, but then we have to call in the theoretical physicists (or Grant Morrison) to tell us the difference between an alternate timeline contained within a universe and a wholly “different universe” that was created by Mr. Mind altering time over and over again to create new universes.

a) No, you don't. Alternate timelines are the logical result of the same 'stuff' of the universe unfolding to a different result. The DC 'universes' are not timelines they have different base 'stuff,' and no different unfolding could result in them having a 1:1 correlation with any other Earth. Alternate Timelines are Possibilities-- states that this Earth could have had. Alternate Earths are Impossibilities-- states this Earth could never achieve because of fundamental underlying differences. (Like the pre-crisis DCU having many Green Lanterns-- but only one of the was tied to Oa and the Guardians. The overall pattern-- Green Lantern-- was the same, but the underlying stuff was different on every world, like a cup made of tin, or a cup made of plastic, or a sup made of ceramic. Same form- different building blocks.)

b) The post-IC DCU is not an internally consistent closed system. You don't get to trace everything back and it all fits. Lady Quark came from nowhere Post-Crisis. This Legion might do the same. And since all indications are that they actually are the original Legion, 'assigning' them to one of the new 52 would actually require rewriting their history-- and then they'd no longer be the originals, would they?

(Maybe they are from another timeline of New Earth and thus have been rewritten and no longer 'come from' pre-Crisis Earth 1. I dunno. But the sentiment irks me.)

Look, it's not that complicated. Sci-fi used to refer to alternate timelines as 'other dimensions,' but the terminology became unwieldy as fictional worlds grew complex. Over at marvel the negative Zone actually is another dimension, but each branch of the multiverse contained its own 'copy' of the Negative Zone. Calling these branches 'dimensions' was confusing and inaccurate, so called them timelines.

(Dimension is, in fact, entirely accurate. Every time you add a dimension is contains everything under it. Genus contains many species, Family contains many Genus, Order contains many Families. Timeline contains many dimensions. Multiverse contains many timelines.)

This is merely annoying when it comes to the DCU- idiot fanboys can't keep it straight but Creators seem to get it mostly right. Over in the Marvel Universe it's rapidly approaching toxicity.

Back in the day, writers at Marvel handled time travel willy-nilly, and Mark Gruenwald was tasked with writing
Gruenwald's Rules of Time Travel which laid out a view of the multiverse that the company followed with great consistency for almost 30 years.

(This wonderful essay leaves out some detail stuff such as branched timelines being merged back into one another... but very few stories deal with that anyway. It's reasonably complete without becoming confusing.)

Every alternate Earth from Marvel Comics is a nice literal alternate timeline. At some point if you trace things back far enough they shared a common history. It might be 200 years ago. it might be 10,000 years ago, or millions of years ago, but they're the same 'stuff' in a different shape. Squadron Supreme comes from an Earth with Skrulls, and a Sorcerer Supreme, and the same high-level cosmic entities as the mainline Marvel Universe. At some point in the very distant past is branched off. It's an alternate timeline, not a DCU-style Multiverse.

Gru made it and, naturally enough, it was Gru that broke it. In 1990, in Quasar, he made an offhand reference to the New Universe as 'another Multiverse,' opening a crack. With Gru's death, a general easing of editorial restrictions as the comics market imploded, and the cancellation of What If...? the adherence of the Gruenwaldian branching timeline system waned, and started to get inconsistent again.

Enter: The Ultimates. The Ultimate Universe is a full-functioning universe with its own alternate timelines and multiverse. And unlike Squadron-Earth... its fundamentals are completely un-like the mainstream MU. Galactus is different. There (probably) isn't a Living Tribuneral. The Ultimate U is, in short, unpossible.

It's also incredibly consistent, especially with it's treatment of the multiverse. When Ultimates goes to other dimensions, it tends not to go to alternate timelines, it goes up and down the 'stack' of Universes.

Or, more precisely (though no one's phrased it this way) up and down the stack of Multiverses.



Timelines are branches charted on X. They are mutually 'possible.'

Multiverses are charted on Y. They are fundamentally different, unpossible for one another.

I could cite a lot of examples... but this is really how it works. They use M-theory language for the Big Shiny Effect.. and they use it right enough that this is inescapable. There's a vertical stack of Multiverses-- which (other claim) has some sort of linear progression from top to bottom, like a spectrum. The MU-proper Multiverse is another pancake or cross-section in that stack, with all its alternate timelines laid out in the same plane.

Is it that hard? Really? Just because Alternate Dimensions, Alternate Timelines and Alternate Multiverses can all look like the 'Mirror Universe,' does it mean we can't grock they're separate things?

I ask because, you know, Marvel's handbook people can't. A few years ago they started numbering the Earths, to match the MU's # 616. Transformers took place on Earth 120185, if you care.
Except, they labeled unpossibles (Multiverses) using the same system they did for timelines. And some of these timelines were problematic. The retroactively-assigned numbering is based (loosely) on the year and month the alternate first appeared, so the Guardians of the Galaxy was Earth 691 (1969, January.) ...But the GotG was Earth 616-- one of its possible futures-- until 1978. 2099 is 928 (Aug 1992) and I don't think it's ever been officially 'ruled out' as a possible future. (Maybe some of the Exodus stuff prevents it.) MK 2099 is Earth 2992... but MK 2099 is the future of Earth 616, explicitly, as recently as 2006. And Ultimates is Earth 1610.

So, in summary... worlds like Marvel Transformers (an Earth that's largely mundane but has about a dozen familiar Marvel characters, mostly minor) get an Earth #. Averted possible futures (like Guardians of the Galaxy or 2099) get an Earth #. Non-Averted futures like MK2099 get an Earth #. Alternate, unpossible Earths (Ultimates) get an Earth #.

This is a fucking lousy system. I can buy that, say,the TVA would set up a system this bad, assigning every major possible whatever an index number regardless what sort of 'possible' it is... (though MK2099 is still the odd duck out-- at what point does a future merit its own index # if it hasn't branched off yet? Clearly all possibles are not numbered-- we're still in discrete ten-thousands...) but this isn't some sort of wry observation on bureaucracy's myopic inability to deal with a reality more complicated than one thing at a time... this is the system adopted by the geeks organizing the Handbooks. And it's really, really shitty, and it's being used in-universe.

If even the comic book nerds can't be bothered to get time travel right... what hope then do we have that editors and writers will try?

Lazy fucking nerds. You shame all internet nerd-dom. *shakes fist*

(This post is probably the geekiest thing I've done all year. That includes the chart here, so that's saying something.)

Current Mood: irritated