Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics | Tagged: Batman, dc comics, Multiverse, wildcats

When Comic Book Characters Hate the Multiverse Too (WildCATS Spoilers)

Everything is multiverse now, and that's a problem if there are an infinite number of replacements ready to step up with a new haircut.

Published Tue, 09 May 2023 07:57:12 -0500

by Rich Johnston

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Everything is multiverse now, and that's a problem. What began as a fun "What If" became comic book publishing lines, before spilling over into the superhero TV cartoons, shows and movies, and where Crisis On Infinite Earths, Doctor Strange and Spider-Verse treads, Everything Everywhere All At Once follows and mops up the Oscars. And the appeal of the multiverse is strong, it takes something you like and regurgitates it in hundreds of different ways. You like Batman? Well here's a Batman in feudal Japan, or one where he's really the Joker, or one where he's Jack The Ripper. You can have any story you like, as long as it's Batman. Some of my favourite comic book stories are multiverse stories, and I think the Jonathan Hickman remake of Secret Wars with a patchwork planet from different realities was genius. But, if anything can happen, and everything matters, you run the real risk of making nothing matter. Rick And Morty played with this issue for laughs, what consequences are there for any actions if you can just step sideways into a dimension where it didn't happen? And you can mow through versions of characters without feeling anything, if there's the knowledge that there are an infinite number of replacements ready to step up with slightly different origins, or maybe a new haircut. What price Multiverse?

And now the characters themselves are complaining. In Batman #900, we had the Dark Knight Batman express his feelings on the Multiverse matter, and the next week Grifter from WildCATS finds himself on a similar journey across competing realities.

All of them are… awful. And each one is worse than the last. Not so much Elseworlds as Do As You're Told Or Elseworlds. Less like a Multiverse and more a Multi-worse, am I right???

Looked like he went to Mark Millar and Dave Johnson's Red Son as well. Although even if he thinks he has finally found his version of normality, someone is always going to step out of the shadows…

As it's time for more of the Wildstorm characters to make themselves known. Hey, Jim Lee is now President as well as Publisher and Chief Creative Officer, there will be more merging of the Wildstorm and DC Comics lines to come…

WILDCATS #7 CVR A STEPHEN SEGOVIA
(W) Matthew Rosenberg (A/CA) Stephen Segovia
With his teammates thinking he's dead, Grifter fights for his life in a future conquered by…the HALO Corporation?! It's Grifter vs. the Void for the fate of an enslaved humanity!
Retail: $3.99 In-Store Date: 05/09/2023

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