Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-18172179-20141003193641/@comment-220364-20141004001053

SforHope wrote: New Earth is special because that's the earth where most of the iconic and well known characters were developed as well as their respective stories and they followed the first premise under which the characters were created with minor alterations.

Not quite. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. started out on what was later designated "Earth-Two". That's where the first appearances trace from.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and others were "moved" to Earth-One. Those versions, which are the immediate precursors of the New Earth versions, have first appearances from the late 1950s. This is consistent with how DC has treated the characters.

The Earth-One versions were the templates for the New Earth versions, not the Earth-Two versions. It's also worth noting that the Earth-Two/Earth-One differentiation is a retcon. There was no intent on DC's part to reinvent the characters, they just kept chugging along as the other Golden Age superheroes fell to the way side in the early 1950s and and the concepts were then re-worked in the layer 1950 and early 1960s.

Most people doesn't know that there are a number of versions and takes on the same character and just look up for the most common/well known version of them. The infobox provides a global description of the character and that's why, in the case of New Earth characters only, the first appearance should be the first ever as well as the creators.

Not knowing that there was an earlier, different version in cannon isn't a reason to use the original story for a version introduced at a much later date. It is also at odds with the guidelines used in the content of the character pages. Content wise, material from the pre-Crisis Superman, Batman, etc. are not included on the New Earth pages due to the conflicts it creates in the character histories. This is why the New Earth page does not list the "L"s of Krypton for Superman, the characters' activities during WWII, meetings of Presidents prior to Regan, and so on. This stuff is relevant to the versions that first appeared in the 1940s or 1950s, but not the ones that first appeared in 1986. Having the first appearance field imply that those 40+ years of appearances apply to a character is a disservice. Pointing out in the notes that there are older versions of the characters does a better job of informing and providing relevance.

I would like a field be present to add a link directly from the first appearance point in to infobox to the Notes section. It would facilitate passing that information along.

As for the creators, I think we're on the same page. I've pointed out previously I'd prefer an "Adapters" field for not only other media but also for the comics. For me, "Creators" is the only thing that should point back to the original version of a character mainly because, as you point out, people like Miller, Byrne, Morrison, and so on have modified what came before.