When someone wants to distinguish the heroes of the Marvel DC often uses two arguments converted almost axioms, unchanging truths, between fans and authors: DC heroes have a treatment that brings them to be virtually Gods on Earth while the humans are Marvel and DC have a tradition of "legacy", which allows several people to inherit the mantle of a particular hero, who is not given, at least as much, in Marvel. Curiously, these two facts differentials arise from the same point: The DC heroes were born before the Second World War and Marvel no.
The first is easy to understand, the concept of what should be a hero has changed over time, there is more to do a bit of old movies to realize, in the 30's what the public wanted were champions of good and it could all be possible without breaking a sweat (and there are a legion of unemployed sociologists that be willing to explain it better than I if you ask them).
The second is more related to the hardships of war, forced to save paper and inks and, especially, with the changing tastes of the public, who leaned more towards the horror comics of the EC, which made superheroes fall into oblivion, and his series was canceled gradually. In the mid-50's DC decided to revamp some of its concepts forgotten providing them with a new approach closer to science fiction, 46 years before he coined the term Ultimate Marvel, DC took a chance to update their heroes by providing them with new sources and personalities.
Thus, where there had been a former football player he had aspirated some strange vapors that gave him super speed suddenly appeared a young police accident scientist who gave almost the same powers, where there was a vigilante with fitted coat a power ring carved by him and whose only weakness was wood was now a member of a cosmic police force whose ring inherited from a dying alien had a flaw that prevented him from running against yellow objects. Little by little all the DC heroes were affected by this renewal on their identities or personalities (As the case of Green Arrow began as a millionaire car-arrows, and other contraptions that resembled Batman and ended up as social activist par excellence of the DC Universe), but still remained a question to be resolved, if these heroes were entirely new and had no relation to their honónimos of the Golden Age, where were the latter?
The principle of the problem
The answer to that question would come in 1961 when Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino created one of the best superhero stories of all time " The Flash of Two Worlds " an instant classic, with the passage of time would to become a real headache for fans of the DC Universe.
The story started with a flash ready to work in a charity function where his girlfriend worked, to a group of schoolchildren Flash fakir performing a trick, the rope that stands alone, thanks to its ability to vibrate objects, the trick with Flash just climbing the rope and disappearing at the top of the stage, however Barry Allen appeared again at the scene of Central City, but in a town called Keystone, where it resided the Golden Age Flash with who share the adventure.
The Fox and Infantino cartoon laid the foundations of the DC multiverse, two lands, one with the heroes renewed and another with the classics, separated by "vibrational frequency" a barrier from the time passable and crossed again in 1963 with Crisis Earth One and Earth 2 Crisis adventure in which the JLA (League Justice of America) and the JSA (Justice Society of America, a group of heroes emerged in the wake of World War II) had to join forces to catch the villains who had discovered how to cross the interdimensional barrier. The story helped develop Earth-2 continuity in that not only could be recovered to the classic versions of the new heroes but allowed the creators age characters such as Superman and Batman and even go beyond creating the sons and daughters of the heroes of the JSA (Batman included).
Over time the concept of a multiverse was becoming larger, including superheroes land that had been acquired from other publishers, versions of the classics (like Earth 3 where all the superheroes are villains and the only hero who faces them is Lex Luthor), or any concept that the writers are passed through the head (there was even a land where we lived was supposed to comics readers and writers that "tuned" for their dreams with what happened in other land). In the end the thing was growing and growing, the same hero could have multiple versions of himself, and had to come the Crisis on Infinite Earths (see forthcoming article) to bring order to simplify the entire Earth into a single continuity.
The tradition continues
The simplification of the UDC did not bring, however, eradication of the legacy of tradition, in fact one of the most memorable moments of the crisis was the death of Flash (Barry Allen) and Wally West Relay (until then Kid Flash), and so from time to time we find heroes and villains who leave their name and power to new blood that sometimes come to overshadow its predecessors (such as the case of Ted Kord as Blue Beetle, which is the second to carry the mask of blue beetle that once carried the forgotten Daniel Garret). This tradition, however, is limited to second-class heroes, the increasingly lucrative world of Merchandising and licensing films and pressure from the fans has led to DC to join the bandwagon of resurrections and revivals (the JSA and must have retired more times than Maradona) instead of betting on new tenants for their coats.
The first is easy to understand, the concept of what should be a hero has changed over time, there is more to do a bit of old movies to realize, in the 30's what the public wanted were champions of good and it could all be possible without breaking a sweat (and there are a legion of unemployed sociologists that be willing to explain it better than I if you ask them).
The second is more related to the hardships of war, forced to save paper and inks and, especially, with the changing tastes of the public, who leaned more towards the horror comics of the EC, which made superheroes fall into oblivion, and his series was canceled gradually. In the mid-50's DC decided to revamp some of its concepts forgotten providing them with a new approach closer to science fiction, 46 years before he coined the term Ultimate Marvel, DC took a chance to update their heroes by providing them with new sources and personalities.
Thus, where there had been a former football player he had aspirated some strange vapors that gave him super speed suddenly appeared a young police accident scientist who gave almost the same powers, where there was a vigilante with fitted coat a power ring carved by him and whose only weakness was wood was now a member of a cosmic police force whose ring inherited from a dying alien had a flaw that prevented him from running against yellow objects. Little by little all the DC heroes were affected by this renewal on their identities or personalities (As the case of Green Arrow began as a millionaire car-arrows, and other contraptions that resembled Batman and ended up as social activist par excellence of the DC Universe), but still remained a question to be resolved, if these heroes were entirely new and had no relation to their honónimos of the Golden Age, where were the latter?
The principle of the problem
The answer to that question would come in 1961 when Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino created one of the best superhero stories of all time " The Flash of Two Worlds " an instant classic, with the passage of time would to become a real headache for fans of the DC Universe. The story started with a flash ready to work in a charity function where his girlfriend worked, to a group of schoolchildren Flash fakir performing a trick, the rope that stands alone, thanks to its ability to vibrate objects, the trick with Flash just climbing the rope and disappearing at the top of the stage, however Barry Allen appeared again at the scene of Central City, but in a town called Keystone, where it resided the Golden Age Flash with who share the adventure.
The Fox and Infantino cartoon laid the foundations of the DC multiverse, two lands, one with the heroes renewed and another with the classics, separated by "vibrational frequency" a barrier from the time passable and crossed again in 1963 with Crisis Earth One and Earth 2 Crisis adventure in which the JLA (League Justice of America) and the JSA (Justice Society of America, a group of heroes emerged in the wake of World War II) had to join forces to catch the villains who had discovered how to cross the interdimensional barrier. The story helped develop Earth-2 continuity in that not only could be recovered to the classic versions of the new heroes but allowed the creators age characters such as Superman and Batman and even go beyond creating the sons and daughters of the heroes of the JSA (Batman included).
Over time the concept of a multiverse was becoming larger, including superheroes land that had been acquired from other publishers, versions of the classics (like Earth 3 where all the superheroes are villains and the only hero who faces them is Lex Luthor), or any concept that the writers are passed through the head (there was even a land where we lived was supposed to comics readers and writers that "tuned" for their dreams with what happened in other land). In the end the thing was growing and growing, the same hero could have multiple versions of himself, and had to come the Crisis on Infinite Earths (see forthcoming article) to bring order to simplify the entire Earth into a single continuity.
The tradition continues
The simplification of the UDC did not bring, however, eradication of the legacy of tradition, in fact one of the most memorable moments of the crisis was the death of Flash (Barry Allen) and Wally West Relay (until then Kid Flash), and so from time to time we find heroes and villains who leave their name and power to new blood that sometimes come to overshadow its predecessors (such as the case of Ted Kord as Blue Beetle, which is the second to carry the mask of blue beetle that once carried the forgotten Daniel Garret). This tradition, however, is limited to second-class heroes, the increasingly lucrative world of Merchandising and licensing films and pressure from the fans has led to DC to join the bandwagon of resurrections and revivals (the JSA and must have retired more times than Maradona) instead of betting on new tenants for their coats.
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