I thought they were on the fourth version of Supes...hmm...

Nope just three:

Earth 2 Kal-L
Silver Age Kal-El
Modern Age Kal-El

The current has had essentially 2 origins. But DC tweaked Byrnes mess, to make him more like the other 2. Birthing matrix, and force field be damned!

Marvel is at war with its own continuity. Case in point: Black Panther and Storm currently. Completely crapping on everything that went before.

House of M was empty spectacle and lame. I like Bendis on Daredevil and Ultimate Spidey, but that's where he should stay.

Killed Alpha Flight OFF-PANEL.

Feh. The mega-stuff, I leave alone for the most part (save Astonishing X-Men, bringin' my Colossus back). I get the smaller things. Daredevil, Punisher, Nextwave, Exiles (yay Spidey 2099), etc. The stuff that doesn't get caught up in the huge crossover nonsense. Plus all the Ultimate books.

My complaints about Marvel (past 10 years or so) is that the Editors-in-Chief tend to 'fall in love' with certain writers, and let them get away with 'too much'.

Case in point: Bendis. This guy is a great writer, especially of 'little dramas' that involve individuals coping with individual issues. Ultimate Spidey, Alias, Daredevil were all freta showcases for his talent...but move him to the realm of the epic (Secret War, House of M) or the Olympian (Avengers)...and his strength at handling individuals becomes a major liability. Bendis *wants* to write a Spider-woman series...let him have that character and leave the Avengers to someone willing to treat it like a team book.

Personally, I think there is something to be said for the work-horse ethic of somebody like Peter David (even though I rarely buy his books off the new shelves) or John Ostrander...guys like this can manage to sell monthly stories with advancing plots, often juggle team rosters, and have plenty of character development all with little or no 'hype'. Guys like this almost always 'play ball' with editorial mandates too.

I always thought Marvel's big problem in in the last 10-15 years was the fact that, after the whole bankruptcy ordeal, they started focusing too much on marketing advice and what "sells". They jacked up the number of mini-series', started doing at least a major crossover a year, rebooted all the titles (because some bonehead thought that new #1's was the way to go), reset continuity (whatever happened to Teen Tony? Lyja? etc. etc.), let stories get out of hand because they were selling, to the point where the story ultimately ended up going nowhere and changing little to nothing (Clone Saga, anyone?). New books were cancelled almost as quickly as they were started (which was good in some cases, but not in others).

In some ways, those problems are still continuing. They've gotten to the point where they have not one, but two big crossovers going at once (three, if you count the X-books and the whole Decimation/198/post-House of M thing going on there). You have one "Origins" mini finishing and another starting. You've got new books popping up left and right (I'm seriously hoping Ms. Marvel picks up and Moon Knight gets a chance to shine). It's the same old same old, just with Quesada leading the charge this time around...

But hey, even with all the problems Marvel's had, they're still beating DC in overall sales...though not by much anymore.

I think it was the two origins that confused me. Thanks again, Darth.

how did Quesada get to be EIC in the first place, I mean wasn't this guy just an artist for marvel. What happened, he drew the Daredevil series with KEvin Smith writing and then they give him EIC for it, doesn't make sense

one word QUESADA

I'm not entirely sure how Quesada ended up as EIC. I actually hadn't heard of him until he did, if that says anything.

Well, they'd put him in charge of the Marvel Knights line, which always seemed like a weird concept.

"Okay, we're gonna publish all these comics, but only the ones under Quesada are we going to make a concentrated effort to be really good books." I never quite understood what that was all about, but I was glad, because it gave us the kickarsest Black Panther ever (not the current travesty). Then again, they also had Angelic Demon-Killing Frank Castle.

Then Marvel Knights did well, so they figured they'd give em all the Quesada treatment. Could've been a good thing. But it's rapidly becoming not a good thing.

IMHO, Marvel made some mistakes in the late 90s, which for some time kept me from readin comics anylonger. Most off the major crossovers with the notable exception of onslaught maybe, just didn't live up to the expectations. One example: X-Men: The Twelve. This story had everything a really great story needs. It was built up a long time ago, it contained a lot of surprises as far as the twelve mutants were concerned and, always important, a great villian. And everything went great in the beginning, Wolvie became Death, had his adamantium back and everything. I could't wait for the nest part.
But in the end....... Apoc is supposed to be some old guy in an armor or something? No f****** way!! How silly was that. I almost felt insulted when I read that and stopped readin comics in general for like 2 years. I stopped reading spiderman a long time ago, some time after the infamous Clone Wars, but for different reasons then most did. I actualy liked the story and the "new" spidey, but then it all got f***** up. What happened to Kaine btw?
I can't say much about DC though, cause I dont read it or only rarely.

There is one thing both, Marvel and DC, are simply doing wrong, but at a different scale. And that is change. In order to stay attractive to readers there needs to be a certain amount of change in comics. But both are not really displaying a lot of willingness to do some major changes, it's rather the other way around. Whenever there was a change that affected the whole comic-universe, such as the death of Supes or his new Powers, Ben Reiley/Spidey, Hal Jordan becoming evil (or not), all the big heroes dying in the battle vs. Onslaught, nothing REALLY changed. Remember all those times when a new arc is announced to change the *enternamehere*-universe as we know it? Did it happen? Not really... No major hero has died, turned evil or something, neither did the villains.

sad thing......

Well see right now in marvel, the whole world is changed because of there only being 198 mutants left in the world. So now all of decimation is taking place.....

Yeah, but how long until they give the more well-known depowered mutants their powers back? Personally, I'm betting that by the next big crossover the only "Decimated" mutants left will be the ones no one really cared about anyway.

Yes that was the point of the whole house of m(besides competing with DC). They made too many mutans so they lowered them a lot! And now in the new avengers you see the energy of all the mutants. So by the end of civil wars, everything will be totally different. It's getting really good and if you aren't reading, you should be.

Actually, no.

Hypertime was only ever used in two comic arcs: The Kingdom, a Kingdom Come spin-off which is roundly regarded as one of the worst comics of all time, and an arc in the Superboy comic (pre-Young Justice).

Other than being the name of a HeroClix expansion, it was introduced by and used by only two creators in the DC Universe, Mark Waid and Grant Morrison, both of whom are now with Marvel. It was never used to address continuity 'problems', but was rather used by Waid to bring back a bunch of 'imaginary' 1960s DC stories that were 'erased' by the Crisis on Infinite Earths and re-establish them as canon post-Kingdom Come.

DC has long said that 'Hypertime' and anything mentioned in relation to it is not canon, and DiDio has said that it will no longer be used at all in the DC Universe.