Thread:Tupka217/@comment-1013969-20171016161114/@comment-1013969-20171017115531

Moviebob did a short video (CONTINANITY) on why continuity became a big deal.

While people like to claim the Pre-Crisis multiverse was "confusing" there was a one page (maybe two) that explained the whole thing in stories formally set on another Earth or involved a crossover. At best it was something that happened twice a year if that often...until the early 1980s when a regular book set on Earth-Two become a thing.

DC had actually wrote two stories to explain the transition from Earth-One to New Earth...except no one actually used them. The Legion went along as if they were still the future of Earth-One and then to draw light on the problem they had Cosmic Boy go back in time and find out that everything about 20th century history they knew was wrong. But the Legion had time travel so there had to be either an alternate timeline or parallel universe neither of which was supposed to exist in the New Earth continuity. The whole point of Crisis was gone in less then a year! And the effort to explain the Legion just made things worse as it left the question of where Mon-El came from.

Then Hawkworld came along and Hawkman started giving everyone headaches (You could make of joke out of Hawkman and Dark Phoenix sitting in a bar comparing just how messed up their histories were...yes it is that bad)

The ironic thing is Marvel should have showed DC just how unviable a 'one Earth one timeline' was. Even back then Marvel continuity was a mess that a bunch of really silly methods were being used to keep things together...like all the times Doom was out of character was thanks to a malfunctioning Doombot that thought it was Doom. Let's just ignore that Doom Q&A would have to be utter crap for that to happen.

The multiverse was a good safety valve regarding continuity. From 1961-1985 DC had no reboots soft or hard to its main Earth as any out of continuity stories could be dumped elsewhere. In the period 1985-2009 DC has no less then five "reboots" to the main universe: Crisis, Zero Hour, JLA/Avengers, Infinite Crisis and Trinity. In the 2009-to present DC has had two "reboots": Flash: Flashpoint and the merging of the New Earth and Prime Earth Supermen.

Then we have the Dark Multiverse (which odds are is likely to be forgotten when Metal is done)