The Secret of 52
I'll be getting to a new comics post - covering such comics that have come out this past week and the week before that I've ordered - later this weekend, but I've read some of them now and in last week's (10 days ago) DC Nation column by Dan DiDio he revealed the secret of the 52 event in a fairly simple letter code. I'm sure that if I were to take a minute to hit the main comics boards or even other comics blogs I would find it all disclosed and discussed in posts 9 or 10 days old, but I didn't see the comic until now.
So, if you know already, or if you don't care about spoiling the story, read on.
Take the first letter of the first word and that of every third word to reveal:
"The secret of fifty-two is that the multiverse still exists."
I don't immediately know quite what to say about that.
On the one hand, anyone who's read a range of DC titles knows that almost from the conclusion of 1986's Crisis On Infinite Earths -- a huge event with the central goal of elminating the multiverse -- verious writers have been trying to undo it here and there.
(For those coming in from outside of comics, the multiverse is simply an essentially infinite series of alternate realities, each with its own Earth (well, there would also be an infinite number of realities in which there was no Earth) and cast of characters. Some of these are very similar to the mainstream realities we know from the comics, while others are wildly different.)
Given all the grief characters have been put through in events which intended to collapse the multiverse into a single reality and fix any of the continuity errors that resulted during and immediately afterwards -- from the above mentioned Crisis On Infinite Earths in 1986, to 1994's Zero Hour to last year's Infinite Crisis -- this could be easily seen as another slap in the face, be that the face of of a fan or one of the multitude of characters who've gone through Hell over these things.
Don't get me wrong, it's not that I disapprove of the end result -- comics universes are better off with a multitude of realities lying just a heartbeat, just a vibration, out of sync with the mainstream one. All that's necessary is that a responsible editorial hand be present to keep the piercing of the barrier between realities a more special event rather than a commonplace one.
The potential downside, though, is that it's another of those matters where I can't help but wonder how much this sort of reversal callouses the sensibilities of the reader. Sure, these are all fictional characters and anything can be done with them, but if deaths and tragedy can be so completely undone then what's to give any long-term reader a sense of gravity to any event. What's there to make someone care?
It's an old question in comics, though, as almost no one really dies permanently. Even Bucky Barnes has been retroactively saved from death. Comics fans of any durability are constantly challenged with attempts to make the best of these matters, seeing them as potential regained and an opportunity for new tales, we generally roll with the blows and, well, as I said -- make the best of it.
Every comic fan I've ever met has had his own highly subjective standards by which each of these undoings is judged. Many will simply embrace anything to undo a loss they never felt good about. So it is that I've been surprised by what some people have endorsed, such as one long-time fan ultimately giving a nod of approval to the decision to bring Norman Osborne, the original Green Goblin, back from the dead on a basis that was, ultimately, nostalgia and marketing. Basically he was being seen as Moriarty to Spider-Man's Holmes -- a classic villain not to be effectively replaced.
But, I digress.
So, 52 is ultimately a reaffirmation of the multiverse, no matter how hypocritical that might appear given then it rolled out of Infinite Crisis, which was all about an attempted re-creation of the multiverse.
Many items are up for speculation, but we also know that 52 will culminate in an event they're calling World War III. An even which may be at least symbolically depicted in this image:
We'll see...
Tags: 52
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