Now Destroy Your Multiverse

This image is likely copyrighted, but used here only for fair use purposes to illustrate the point of this blog entry. I will gladly remove it at its owners' request.

I need to talk to you about alternate realities, or what most writers now refer to as the "multiverse" concept.

Something that nearly all writers of superhero fiction have either forgotten, or if they aren't old enough, never knew in the first place: The concept of a "multiverse" was created as damage control.

When DC Comics reinvented the comics' "golden age" character The Flash in the 1960s, for a new generation's audience, they held on as long as they could leaving unexplained what had ever happened to Jay Garrick – The Flash whose title was published in the 1940s. The one with the silver Hermes helmet…?

The Flash was suddenly a modern chap named Barry Allen… whose costume was more of a one-piece space-age bodysuit than the traditional acrobatic outfits of the previous era's super-powered crimefighters.

Except for Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, most superheroes were suddenly completely different people behind their masks, getting strange costume upgrades in the name of modernity. And about the two main money-makers, Superman and Batman – weren't they getting a bit long in the tooth? Just how old was Bruce Wayne by 1969 – 30 years after he first donned the cape and pointy ears?

More directly… just WHERE THE HELL WAS Jay Garrick, now that this "Barry" was operating under the name The Flash?

Alan Scott… wasn't he Green Lantern? Who was this Hal Jordan dude? If Scott was anywhere around, wouldn't he at least have something to say about this modernized interloper? Even in the name of keeping his business cards relevant?

In the real world, the reason was simple – those old "super" characters had faded by the post-war years. During the war, most of them had been handed over to sub-par artists and writers who turned them into clownish fodder, while their original creators were, in some cases, aiming rifles at Nazis along the European front. Besides, nobody who still read comics cared for those caped poops anymore. There was a crying need to bring them up to date for the sake of attracting fresh readership, from a new generation that witnessed manned spaceflight, and cold-war paranoia.

By the comics' "silver age," Der Fuehrer was dead and everyone knew it. Real heroes in green had saved the day, not mincing domino-masked acrobats in caped pajamas.

Über-geeks will moan and kvetch that it was waaaaaay more complicated and nuanced, why superheroes underwent a mass-makeover that included a regime change of even their secret identities…

But it wasn't.

It was about money. Period. And so Barry Allen – a new Flash for a new demographic – was born.

But readers who still remembered Jay Garrick needed answers. Had Jay ever met Barry? Did they sign a contract of ownership for the name "Flash?" Did Jay get a royalty? Just for fun, did they have an informal footrace just to see if the title "Fastest Man Alive" would change hands? Did Garrick go on permanent vacation now that a successor had relieved him?

None of that would do. The mystery of Jay Garrick's fate hung like a storm cloud until the matter could no longer be ignored. Jay Garrick was still The Flash, somewhere else. In an alternate universe, one in which Barry Allen didn't exist… and vice-versa. It's a multiverse… and DC is bringing you stories from a different universe now. The one we covered in the 40s… it's still there, but no longer our main focus. That, by the way, conveniently answers a whole slew of pesky what-ifs.

Superman and Batman were too big as "major players" to have different secret identities. In this new universe, there's another Clark Kent, and a Bruce Wayne. They're far more important than Jay Garrick, who had to just hand over his job to a whole other guy.

The multiverse was created to solve the logistical problems of the march of time – to keep publishing stories about characters who were created so distantly in the past, that to just keep them young and flexible 40 years later would be truly absurd from an aging audience's viewpoint – or a league of comics purists.

A lot of comic-book – specifically superhero – lovers, may argue that this has all only served to create greater enjoyment of these worlds of imagination. It has exponentially increased the possibilities for over-the-top fantastic storylines and plot concepts. So what's the problem, you ask? Well, unfortunately, it's all being sold that way to budding writers.

And that shifts focus away from older concepts, like say, writing WELL.

Inspirational articles aimed at aspiring storytellers now have headlines like, "Creating A Plausible Multiverse," "Who Are Your Characters In A Grand Scheme Scenario" or even "Have You Considered Your Story In An Alternate Reality."

Really? All fiction is already, technically, alternate reality, but roadmapping alternate-alternates is a bit over the edge of competent tale-telling for new writers. Enormously better advice would be to hone one's talents (maybe for years, decades) writing about your 'original' universe, before pondering the what-ifs of characters that are likely not well-developed to begin with.

The writers of comic books have you laughably out-gunned, to quote Nick Fury from The Avengers movie. They have nearly an entire century's worth of backstory to work with and embellish upon, regarding many of the iconic characters they write about. Superman, Batman and a handful of DC's properties, for example, are pre-WWII creations – and even they were technically derivative then. (Superman was inspired partially by early 20th century pulp characters like Doc Savage, and Philip Wylie's protagonist in the novel Gladiator. Believe it or not, Batman was not the first action character to use a bat as the theme of his avatar…)

A new writer doesn't have that kind of ammo. Your characters do not have 90-year legacies of reinvention. You haven't really fully introduced us to them in the context of their current 'reality' yet. So why muddy the water beyond recognition by wasting your time re-creating him/her/it in regards to an alternate-universe persona with tweaked histories, quirks, etc?

You are defeating yourself as a writer. Don't do it. Interest us in your character. Period. If you can't do that well, nobody gives a shit about his alternate universe counterpart. We don't have time for the other him, anyway – we're still experiencing his original incarnation. Nobody cares. Only you – misguidedly – do. Get used to that.

Are you a writer? Or just a geek mentally masturbating? You are the 'god' of the universes you create on paper – bring about the apocalypse upon all but one of them, and describe it in ways that make others interested to read about it.

IT. Not THEM.

Destroy your multiverse. It isn't serving you.