What the editors (of the Silver Age) should have done from the beginning is accept that Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman’s stories have always belonged in the mid twentieth century, through world war two and on into the McCarthy era, but by the 70s they should have started showing their age, and by now they should be fond memories. There should never have been an “Earth-1″ (how erroneous a nomenclature), and I see all this Infinite Crisis silliness being a continuing refusal to accept the inevitable – there’s only one way for there to be a happy ending.

However, from an editorial (and more importantly economic) standpoint, making a DCU without conflict would destroy their trademarks. The people behind DCs intellectual properties want to insure that the stories of their big name characters will forever be fresh and new, in which case they should abandon continuity altogether.

The stories DC should be telling today are new ones with new characters and modern settings. Setting Batman in today’s America is like setting Sherlock Holmes in today’s England. It might sell books, but it doesn’t make common sense. Of course, who would possibly want to tell stories in a universe that made any sense? Where’s the fun in that?

For the rest of you who still buy comics, in a medium where every twenty-eight pages has to end in a cliffhanger, in order to keep the revenue flowing in, there’s no room for happy endings that last. For me? As far as I’m concerned, 1986 was the end of the line. I invented my own issue twelve of Crisis on Infinite Earths in my head. In my version, everyone lived happily ever after. Even Guy Gardner.

But yeah, I can see your point modern DCU has gotten a lot darker through the years,……… but I like it that way.

It’d be funny if the only reality that actually survives through this/resurfaces, is Earth-prime’s superboy.