In 1985 Detective Comics(DC) set forth to make their titles more reader friendly. To do this, they wanted to get all of their characters into one universe and have a set origin story. To do this, DC had to destroy the other universes and either move or destroy the characters from those universes.
Superman, for example, existed in multiple universes. His history and origin were different in each. This lead itself to confusion amongst a new reader who would pick up a few Superman titles and see the inconsistencies. Crisis, as it is now commonly referred to, solved all of that. DC recreated their universe of superheroes in such a way that the definitive origins had to be told still. Crisis was a giant reset button.
I was eight years old when this came out. By the time I was reading comics the after shocks of crisis had settled down. All the magazines would refer to it as when DC got straightened out. I had never read it. That is until I picked it up at the library a couple of weeks ago collected in trade paper back(TPB) format.
I am pretty unfamiliar with DC continuum. I grew up on marvel stuff and only picked through some DC titles. This TPB was great though. It was reader friendly for people just stepping in. You could see the epicness of the project. It was a compelling story. It was also the beginning of cross title crossovers. Best of all, it was for the fans. Sure it made money, but it was ultimately for the fans.
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