Except for a couple of characters, none of them even knew/remembered there were any dead worlds.

That's not really the case. It was an early attempt to reconcile a half-century of continuity problems. By the mid-1980's, it had reached a point at which every issue of a book which featured a character who'd been around more than a couple of years was greeted with a barrage of "The new issue contradicts issue #4 from 1940 in which blah blah blah blah..."; so the editorial reply would be "The new issue takes place on Earth such and such".

Sometimes this worked really well, like the Golden Age JSA aging more slowly on Earth-Two (so you got slightly older versions of the characters, and sometimes their offspring [such as the original Huntress, who's still a great character]).

These days, they just solve continuity problems with a "reboot" -- everything prior to Issue #x didn't really happen. Which explains why older comic readers like myself don't really care about comics anymore -- who cares what happens when the editors will just "take it all back" in a few years anyway? (It also explains why some younger writers don't much respect the long-established characters, but that's a separate rant).

That also goes for Marvel. How many times has Peter Parker grown extra limbs? OR been "altered forever", only to be changed back? Even in recent times.

Yeah, that was the entire core of Infinite Crisis.

Maybe Pariah? Or did he die in CoIE? I need a scorecard.

I was really thinking of Marvel moreso than DC when I wrote my prior comment about rebooting, but I didn't want to turn this into another tiresome "DC vs Marvel" thread. Both publishers are guilty of the same kind of things. As further evidence, I submit the following:

The Marvel Multiverse

Marvel fanboys are loathe to admit it, but they have seen their share of reboots (Heroes Reborn), reimaginings (Spider-Man: Year One), and continuity wipes (The Clone Saga) before the silliness of Spidey-OMD/BND. Whether dealing with characters who are 60+ years old or 40+, one needs to stir the pot from time to time. Sometimes the shake up works (Heroes Reborn) and others it fails (Zero Hour), yet the need to refresh the characters remains. My love for the characters sees me coming back no matter how much I hate the process. After a while you go hoarse from all the shouting and just accept the behavior.

Actually, Secret Wars was created to sell action figures.

And did COIE get its own sticker book? I think not!

Too bad...I tried.

I could make a strong case that the 21st Century comic publishing industry as a whole exists simply as a means of selling non-comic merchandise (action figs, boardgames, Clix, T-shirts, hats, etc.), based primarily on the numbers: comic sales figures vs. collectible/merchandise sales figures.

But I won't...

Pariah can't be killed (despite his apparent death in Villains Untied), and yes he knew.

Waverider found out during Zero Hour (and by extension Hunter was shown as knowing). Harbinger knew at one point but her memories also faded. As a retcon, Power Girl always latently knew, but didn't realise it until IC.

you could make that argument now, especially when it comes to the recent spate of comics based movies and superior box office they are (usually) earning. but back in 1984 that certainly wasn't the case. (yes superman had 3 solidly (or better) earning movies by that point, but superman was a much better established comics property than any other at that point). the fact of the matter is that mattel, after seeing the success of the superfriends toy line, went to marvel and said "we want to make toys based on your heroes and make some of that sweet sweet money. but we want a story we can wrap a toy line around" marvel took its less than wildly successful contest of champions storyline from a year before and retooled it into the Secret Wars, which was the first real company wide crossover. DC used the concept 11 months later with crisis, which is in a lot of ways an entirely different series and a lot of ways very similiar.

DC took the concept that marvel developed and pushed it farther, tieing the main series into most of the regular continuity books, pushing the "buy-in" of the series into greater heights. marvel responded with secret wars 2, which did the same thing, but with less success. sadly this has lead to the same tie-in strategy to sell books year after year after year...

I'm far from a marvel fanboy, however growing up reading primarily marvel i have a little more love for that universe (most of the DC i read was a kid was LoSH so i have a soft spot there as well)

but even those above blunders (which thankfully mostly all occurred while i wasn't reading comics) do not compare with the constant reboots and re-imaginings in DC. I think that CoIE was a phenomenal series for what it attempted and accomplished. (i also think it could have been shorter and a LOT less confusing) but i also think DC should have stuck to its guns when it went with such a drastic (but very intelligent reboot). with rebooting the reboot of the reboot of the reboot, DC just keeps pissing off its die hard fans more and more. at least marvel's super-stupidity is primarily limited to its primary money-making character, spider-man (which is kinda dumb for that reason there, let alone for the sheer stupidity of the storylines)

I'm not "pissed off", but DC is being (IMO) silly about being such a slave to continuity. I appreciate the retrofitting of the JSA (and family) under Johns...but I'm also loving All Star Superman. I don't really both stories to exist in the same "multi-hyper-universe-time".

I think it's "neat-o" to have a/the Multi-verse back in DC...but I think it's a little presumptious of TPTB at DC to think we fans are going to take it very seriously. Even after CoIE, the DC Universe didn't really start to shake-out until the Byrne Superman/Legends series...and even then IIRC we still were waiting for reboots of Wonder Woman, Justice League while getting lots of non-canonical stories from Watchmen, Swamp Thing, then Sandman, Hawkman, etc.