From Infoceptor:
Today is truely a sad day. The well respected public relations coordinator Beau Yarbrough, has made it official that he will be leaving Blizzard Entertainment and pursueing a journalism career. Beau headed the fan site program for a little udner a year and a half and it’s very sad to see him go. He helped out many sites during his tenure (Including Infoceptor), and it is definitely greatly appreciated. Infoceptor bids goodbye to Beau and we thank you Beau for the great you have done for the Blizzard community.
Originally published at Blizzard’s Web site.
This Fansite Chat was moderated by Bridenbecker and Beau Yarbrough who voiced the questions from the fansite webmasters in the channel. The DiabloIIDevTeam consisted of team members: Max Schaefer, Matt Householder, and Tyler Thompson with a special appearance by Ken Williams and the PR support from Lisa Bucek, and Beau Yarbrough and everyone knows Bill Roper .
[Beau-PR] Hi, guys. The fun will start in a moment.
[Beau-PR] The last few people from Blizzard North are logging on right now. If you guys can hold on for a few more moments, we’ll be good to go.
[Beau-PR] OK, looks like we’re ready to start. Thanks for coming on short notice to this fansite chat about the 1.08 Diablo II patch.
[Bridenbecker] Why have Casting Delays for most spells been linked together so you can’t switch between skills that have Casting Delays?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Those casting delays exist for the same reason that casting delays exist at all; to cut down on the graphic overload that was causing so many people trouble. To compensate, the spell damages have been increased greatly. If you could switch between the skills with no delay, it would defeat the purpose.
[Bridenbecker] Was there any intention to use the Patch 1.08 changes to force users to buy the Expansion?
[BRoper] We wanted to give players some of the benefits of the expansion set without requiring them to buy the expansion. There was no conspiracy to use this as a tool to “make people buy the expansion” and, in fact, we wanted to do just the opposite by giving people some of the excitement, challenges and benefits of expansion just for being loyal Diablo II players.
[Bridenbecker] Why does it seem you are pushing people to party by giving better drops and experience bonuses?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Because we encourage people to party! Many of the character skills were designed with parties in mind. Previously, people would exploit the fact that multiplayer games gave the same bonuses without partying. Besides the strategic elements, parties playing on the same level cut down our server loads, giving less lag to everyone.
[Bridenbecker] There seems to be a problem with repair costs. Is this being addressed?
[BRoper] We are aware that some items have seen their repair costs increase. We are identifying which items were effected and will be handling this as we find the items. This was not an intentional change.
[Beau-PR] OK, we had a computer crash, so I’m asking this one: Some server side changes were recently announced. Were these planned, or done in response to complaints about the 1.08 patch?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] There are several categories of changes: mistakes we made in rolling out 1.08 (which was huge!), bug-fixes that 1.08 introduced, and some responses to customer desires. With a patch this big it is to be expected that there will be a few glitches. For example, the monster levels for expansion crept into classic D2 for the patch. It was corrected quickly.
[Beau-PR] Next: Can you now gamble for exception items?
[BRoper] You will not be able to gamble for Exceptional items in classic Diablo II, but you *will* be able to gamble for them in the Expansion.
[Bridenbecker] The Gems show what will happen if placed into armor. Will socketed armor be available or is this a bug?
[BRoper] We are going to make the Horadric Cube recipe that will allow players to get a socket in a rare item work for Armor in classic Diablo II games :)! This will be available in patch 1.09.
[Bridenbecker] We can now gamble for throwing weapons, however, they still cannot be magic or exceptional, just superior. Why is this?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] There are no magic throwing weapons in Classic D2! There will be, however in the Expansion. Because of the oddity of having them in the gamble screen we might just add some magic properties for Classic D2! 🙂
[Bridenbecker] How are players like Barbarians supposed to deal with physically immune monsters?
[BRoper] Berzerk is a good skill for the Barbarian to counter this. Any melee character having weapons with elemental damage will do that damage to the monster, and finally, partying with other characters that are not dependent soley on physical damage is a great way to deal with any threat.
[Bridenbecker] Why are things like chipped gems and damaged low level items dropping in Hell?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] The whole drop system has been rewritten to allow for a greater dynamic range of drops. We have had some reports that indicate the slight possibility that there is a bug with the system that will resolve itself as server code is updated.
[Bridenbecker] How will sorceresses handle Hell with the immune monsters?
[BRoper] No monster is ever immune to every type of damage, so having some points in other skill trees will carry her through, especially since many of her spells have had their damage greatly increased and are more effective at lower levels. Also, finding secondary items with non-specialty spells on them is a good back-up. And again, finding someone to party with is always a good option. And FUN too :)!
[Bridenbecker] Was there a change to item dropping / magic find?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Magic find has been changed. It was possible previously to stack enough magic find to allow for a ridiculously good item drop. However, there is also the previously mentioned treasure class bug that could be affecting magic find to a greater degree than we intended. As mentioned before, this will resolve itself as all the game servers are updated with correct code.
[Bridenbecker] Is Gold supposed to be split with Party Members, and be split across acts?
[BRoper] Gold that is picked up off of the ground is split across party members, but NOT gold from selling items and NOT when you pick up gold you drop when you die. This was a bug that was up for a little while, but it has been fixed. Finally, this applies to both the expansion and classic Diablo II.
[Bridenbecker] With the new focus on party play, how are single player characters balanced to handle Hell and Nightmare modes?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] There are always options for single players. All the character classes can deal all the damage types. Even if a character has spent his/her skill points in too specific a spectrum, they can find items to compensate. When 1.08 went up, the monsters were of too high a level. It may have seemed impossible to play. This bug was fixed, and everyone should be able to finish the game solo. It is a bit harder now, though, as was requested by legions of our customers.
[Bridenbecker] Are you planning on adding more server side Horadric Cube recipes for Diablo II classic?
[BRoper] Yes
[Bridenbecker] We have followed up on a 1.08 patch with some server side changes, what about people who do not play on Battle.net?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] There will be a downloadable patch (1.09) that gives the non-Battle.net players all the same changes that are on battle.net. This should be available within a couple of weeks.
[Bridenbecker] Was the reduction in walk speed intentional, or was it a fix?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] People were able to run too fast, and it caused a number of de-sync bugs (like not having NPCs in town). These usually happened when a player would run at top speed for long distances.
[Bridenbecker] What changes are made to Iceblink?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Iceblink was way too powerful. Combined with Multi-shot or Strafe, it was way out of balance. The current IceBlink functionality is that it works 13-50% of the time. However, due to a bug, it is not displaying the percentages, so it seems broken. This will be remedied in 1.09.
[Bridenbecker] How have Boss drops been changed / modified?
[BRoper] End Bosses (Diablo, Duriel, etc) have had their drops modified so that they are MUCH better and will be better EVERY time to kill them, not just the first time. This makes risk/reward better.
[Bridenbecker] Why did you cap the number of times strafe hits at 10?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Strafe was actually a very dangerous spell at high levels. You would be stuck shooting for too long, and in this way was similar to why we changed Zeal for the Paladin. We capped the number of shots but upped the damage for Strafe. Also, we increased its range!
[Bridenbecker] Does Magic Find work with minions in the new patch?
[BRoper] Yes, any +s to magic find that your character has will apply to kills scored by your minions.
[Bridenbecker] Some new features were listed in the patch.txt but are not in the game, will they be added?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Some of the expansion changes crept their way into the patch text (I blame sleep deprivation!). We’ll update the patch text to the correct changes ASAP. Sorry for the confusion!
[Beau-PR] OK, with the end of the beta period (thanks, beta testers!), do you have anything SPECIAL planned?
[DiabloIIDevTeam] We’d like to invite all the high level hardcore players to voluntarily take part in a dueling tournament!!! Since the characters are being erased anyway, there’s nothing to lose, so we thought it would be fun to have a little informal tournament. We’d like to invite all hardcore players to join the channel that we will announce on our forums shortly. The tournament will take place June 27. This will be totally voluntary, informal, and with no prizes or anything, but since the beta’s ending, a champion must be crowned! Details will be posted on our forums shortly!
[Beau-PR] OK, thanks guys for coming. I know this was short notice.
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Goodbye from the Development team (Max Schaefer, Tyler Thompson, Matt Householder, and a special appearance by Ken Williams.)
[Beau-PR] This was also the first fansite chat for Susan Sams’ successor, Lisa Bucek. Say hi to Lisa, everyone.
[DiabloIIDevTeam] Hi Lisa!
[BRoper] Thank you all for coming out to the chat — we will see you on Battle.net when the Lord of Destruction arrives on June 29th!
Originally published at Macworld:
MacCentral recently brought readers a preview of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, the forthcoming real-time strategy game from Blizzard Entertainment. The one question MacCentral couldn’t get answered when we talked with senior game designer Rob Pardo was whether and how the game would support Mac OS X. PR coordinator Beau Yarbrough has put those questions to rest — Warcraft III will be available for Mac OS X, and will run on older versions of Mac OS as well.
Yarbrough points out that the screenshots MacCentral readers have seen before now have been culled from the Windows version of the game, which was being demonstrated on PC-compatible systems at last week’s E3 expo in Los Angeles.
“Warcraft III is being simultaneously developed for Windows and Mac OS,” said Yarbrough. To prove the point, Yarbrough provided a trio of screenshots showing Warcraft III running in a window on what’s clearly a Mac OS X desktop.
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is the latest chapter in Blizzard’s hugely popular real-time strategy game series. Blizzard says the new game employs more role-playing game elements than its predecessors. Players can take the role of one of four different races in the game: Humans, Orcs, Night Elves and the Undead as they go head-to-head against each other in online play via Blizzard’s Battle.net gaming servers. Of course, a rich single-player mode is also included, with a multitude of challenging missions.
“The Macintosh versions (Classic and Carbon) are up-to-date and the carbonized version is shown running under Mac OS X in the screenshots,” said Yarbrough.
Here’s an irony for you, those of you who collect and trade ironies:
DC Comics‘ Elseworlds – what we older fans once knew at Imaginary Stories, although that apparently wasn’t as exciting to the marketing department – mostly suck. That’s not to say that all of them do, but as the concept wears on, and Bob in accounting gets his chance to write on, the quality level has dropped from the heights it started at (with either “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” or “Batman: Gotham by Gaslight,” depending on where you begin counting from) to even lower than the average DC Comic. Why it’s dropped so low is open to discussion, but it’s hard to say that they’ve been knocking the ball out of the park every time at bat.
This problem has been particularly acute in the non-Prestige-Format-pay-five-bucks-or-more Elseworlds, like annuals or a particularly dreadful issue of the otherwise quite nice “Batman Chronicles.”
Additionally, DC’s 80 Page Giants also mostly suck. Sure, there’s always one or two good stories in each – Tom Peyer seems to be responsible for most of those, now that I think about it – but they never justify their $5 price tag. Mostly they seem to be ways to keep underemployed creators in work and … well, no, that seems to be about their purpose in life. They’re certainly not a celebration of the short story, since so few of the ones told in the Giants are any good.
 So it was with zero anticipation that I awaited the arrival of the “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant earlier this year.
And kept on waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
And then it was revealed that, lo and behold, publisher Paul Levitz had pulled the plug on the book after it had gone to the printers – and long after it had been through the editorial process and had been thoroughly looked at by all those in the loop, including, apparently, Levitz. Alas for Levitz, since Britain normally gets their books later than the U.S., some bright lad had chosen to print off roughly 1,500 copies early for Britain, and shipped them off before the “do not publish” edict was handed down.
One has to love the Internet. That one, of course, being me. In addition to all the rest it’s done for me – found me a wife, gotten me two jobs, let me geek out and talk to creators whose work I’ve loved for years – it also got me a wedding present of one of the 1,500 copies of “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant.
Here’s the big irony, for those of you wondering what it is: “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant, combining both the lackluster Elseworlds and the less than lackluster 80 Page Giant format, is a winner.
Since most people may never see it – DC has been apparently embarrassed about the whole situation and thus slow to remove the offending story and republish the thus 70 Page Giant – here’s a comprehensive review. (I’m not scanning the whole damn book in, no. DC’s lawyers should scare everyone and they certainly scare me.)
The first story, “The Reaching Hand,” by D. Curtis Johnson and Aaron Lopresti, is a Lovecraftian horror story set in Gotham, with detectives Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent investigating strange deaths in Arkham Asylum, with the help of their assistant, James Olsen. The story’s not any big surprise, given both the name and the fact that the first death is one Ralph Dibny. But it’s neat to see stretching powers viewed through the lens of “god, that’s kind of creepy.” The writing is appropriately overwrought, Dent’s descent into crazed obsession the same. There’s an in-joke I suspect I’m not getting – the chant “H’Ya Yag-F’Nagh!” – but it’s an enjoyable little story, and the Cthonic villain who rises from the depths below Gotham makes sense and wasn’t one I guessed. (The punchline at the end of the story was, however, telegraphed, but Lopresti does such a good job making stretching unpleasant that it hardly matters.)
Next up is Bronwyn Carter and Greg Luzniak’s “Rockumentary,” which tells the story of Lex Records. It’s probably the weakest story in the volume, but no stinker in the vein of so many other 80 Page Giants. Basically, toss in some Good Girl art, the All Stars and Blackhawks as swing and jazz bands, and the core Silver Age heroes as the Beatle-esque Heroes and you’ve got the idea. The story doesn’t take the imaginative leaps it ought to – Black Canary shows up as an interviewer, instead of in some singing role and why Ra’s Al Ghul is in the story at all is a little confusing – but there’s some other clever bits, with an Indigo Girls-like Harley and Ivy and the Teen Titans being a Menudo-like group with an ever-changing, always-young roster.
 Then we come to the deal breaker, the story that kept the book from being published, “Letitia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter!” by Kyle Baker, with Elizabeth Glass and David Gaddis. This is a cute little story about the Kents getting a night in a hotel room by paying the aforementioned Letitia to stay and watch the infant Clark. Reading this – and it’s very cute – I have to assume that Levitz has never seen a Warner Brothers cartoon, which for years featured indestructible toddlers making their signature characters crazy trying to keep them safe. OK, so Baby Clark gets trapped under a boulder, swings on a ceiling fan, sucks milk directly from a cow, wanders into traffic and eventually gets microwaved. Which one of those acts was Levitz thinking would result in copycat behavior? I watched Looney Tunes for years and never once did I drop an anvil on my little brother. Even when he deserved it. The worst thing about this story is that, in the end, it’s so damn good. This would have been the standout if fandom had gotten to see this 80 Page Giant. And knowing that it’ll probably be excised when/if the book is ever republished is just sad.
 Chuck Dixon isn’t known for being Mr. Funny, but “The Vigilantes in Apartment 3-B,” with art by Enrique Villagran might just change that. Babs and Dinah are a pair of sexy roommates in this set of seven newspaper strips, who just happen to be the crime fighters Black Canary and Batgirl as well. The strip includes their dating perils, a gratuitous shot of Babs in a half-open bathrobe and a romantic reversal for one of the girls. It’s a fun riff on the venerable cheesecake “Apartment 3-G” newspaper strip.
And then there’s the return of the Super-Sons from the 1970s “World’s Finest” title. Apparently, this story, by original Super-Sons writer Bob Haney and artist Kieron Dwyer, is set in the modern day, not the hipster 1970s the characters previously occupied. Personally, I liked Superman with sideburns, but maybe that was just me. The story is a little creaky – Haney’s dialogue isn’t exactly cutting-edge – but it’s a hoot to see the teenage Superman and Batman treating issues like “gee, my Dad Superman will be around forever, so I’ll always be in his shadow” seriously. And the sight of the original World’s Finest team together is also cheesy fun. (I happen to think making Superman and Batman something less than bosom buddies, as has been done since “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” is a realistic and appropriate characterization.) The one really nice part of this story is its method of (trust me, this isn’t a spoiler, but rather the point of the story) killing the senior Superman: Of course, this is also why he wouldn’t tow a giant sack with all the world’s nuclear warheads behind him through space.
Then comes the first of the obligatory very funny Tom Peyer pieces: “Scandalgate,” with art by Ty Templeton. President Superman is embattled with an unspecified crisis, and the supervillains are harrying him: Zod is the special prosecutor, Silver Banshee and Metallo are cable news commentators and all the assembled supervillain/journalists will ask press secretary Jimmy Olsen is “You young fool! Do you expect your hero to save you now?” Very funny, and to the point, with Lana Lang’s comment “I’m sick of the whole thing! I just want it to end!” Funny stuff, although it won’t be at all topical (one hopes) whenever the edited version of this special sees the light of day.
Chuck Dixon’s second story in the giant – and, yeah, there’s a lot of stories in this, and it’s impressive how many of them are entertaining – posits the rather icky scenario “what if the Waynes had died because Kal-El’s rocket had smashed into them on the way back from the movie theater?” It gets icky immediately, with the much-missed Trevor von Eeden having little Brucie’s face get blasted in the splash page. Lex Luthor steals the baby Kal-El and the story spirals off in a very dark direction from there, ending in the most bleak manner possible. Neat stuff, and more classically Elseworlds, for better or worse, than most of this comic.
 Mark Waid and Ty Templeton visit the “DC’s Hall of Silver Age Elseworlds” next, unleashing the first pages of the very funny “President Abraham (Brainiac) Lincoln versus Clark Kent, Metallo,” “Luthor’s Daughter, Wonder Woman,” “Batman with Robin, the Squid Wonder,” “The Golden Age Teen Titans,” “A new tale of the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Revenge of Young Darkseid!,” “Menace of the Gorilla-Explorer” featuring Christopher Grodd Columbus, the Metal Men in “Liberte, Egalite, Metallica” and, my favorite, the hilarious “Batman with Eve” in “Garden of Evil!” which contains the classic line “I must be careful! I can’t let Eve know that her protector, Batman, is secretly her husband Adam!”
And the final story, “Dark Knight of the Golden Kingdom,” would seem mean to anyone who didn’t know that writer Tom Peyer is good friends with “Kingdom Come” writer Mark Waid, since this story mercilessly parodies it, as well as other dystopian Elseworlds. The editorial notes of “from the Bible!” are priceless by themselves, but it just gets better, with the melodrama of Jimmy Olsen having held down the signal watch for 20 years, hoping Superman will return, or the ridiculous children of the superheroes – including a half-Aquaman/half-Hawkman, a half-Fire/half-Black Canary, and the way way way over the top dialogue – which reaches its peak with Batman lecturing Superman with the incomprehensible “Tremble in your sunsplashed world, with its flying pets and bottle cities and x-ray eyes that see everything but the horrible truth! Ignore the bitter realities that lurk in the night, waiting, breathing, waiting. I can’t. I never could. Because hiding won’t bring back Billy, Ollie, Wally, Donna, Dinah and Diana!”
Is this worth paying the, what, $100+ for a copy of the comic on eBay? Probably not, but then, I don’t feel any comic is worth those prices. Is it worth nagging DC Comics about publishing this comic, ASAP? You betcha. ’cause at long last, they’ve got a winner of an 80 Page Giant. They just refuse to show it to you.
Special thanks to my good friend Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, whose wedding present of the “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant marks him as a very cool guy indeed.
This story expands on a story that originally appeared in the December 31, 1998 edition of the Comic Wire at Comic Book Resources.
Over the last few years, DC Comics has put its “skip weeks” – the occasional fifth week every few months that don’t fit into the monthly publication schedules – to good use. The “skip weeks” have been turned into occasions for themed sets of special issues, like the DC/Marvel “Amalgam” titles, the “Tangent” books, “Girlfrenzy” or “New Year’s Evil.” But there’s always been a minority of fans who have felt the events were wasted opportunities, that these events never have any real “importance” to the comics of the regular year.
They can’t say that any more.
December 30, 1998 saw the publication of “The Kingdom” #2, the concluding part of a special event featuring a return to the characters and setting of the fan favorite 1996 “Kingdom Come” miniseries.
But the book did much more than that. Thirteen years after the DC Universe’s cosmology was radically streamlined, with an infinite number of universes winnowed down to just one, in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” limited series, “The Kingdom” threw those closed doors back open again.
The decision to have a sequel to the series hasn’t come without fan criticism of its own. But according to Mark Waid, the writer of both the miniseries and the new set of specials, DC Comics knew they wanted a follow-up to “Kingdom Come” from almost the beginning.
“Kingdom Come” artist “Alex [Ross] and I were invited to discuss it with [editor] Paul Levitz before the fourth book shipped, during 1996’s San Diego convention,” Waid told me on December 28.
Initially, the talk was of an ongoing series, set in the modern day DC Universe.
“Alex and then-‘Kingdom’-artist Gene Ha wanted the series to begin, as I recall, with an arc which had a lot to do with the 1998 super-heroes’ relationships with their respective gods. I know that one of us — and if it wasn’t me, I’m sure Alex will set that straight — suggested that Gog himself could be the last of the ‘Old Gods’ who preceded [Jack] Kirby’s New Gods. Unfortunately, with that in place as a working concept and after I produced many, many, MANY pages of notes, plots and outlines in this direction, someone at DC told us we couldn’t go there because [then-‘New Gods’ writer John] Byrne – or someone – was apparently planning/had already seeded ‘the last of the Old Gods.’ Bang, zoom, all those plans gone. Swell. In the meantime, Alex and Gene were still hot on the Olympian/Kryptonian/Shazam/etc. gods connection, and while it sounded great, while I knew that’s where Gene’s heart was, I just couldn’t turn it into something I was comfortable writing given the circumstances, and with deep regret, we mutually decided to all go our own separate ways. At one point, I know Alex and Gene were lobbying to do their story as a separate work at DC, and I was all for it. Don’t know what became of that.”
Here, as has been documented by the Comic Wire and elsewhere, notably including December’s “Wizard” magazine, the two “Kingdom Come” creators’ vision of “The Kingdom” became very different indeed.
“At that point, I elected to start from scratch and jettison any ideas that had been Alex’s – not out of petulance, purely out of creative courtesy. I had become quite taken with Magog and began blocking out an origin for him which transformed him from a parody into a complex and unique character. Those plans are still viable and that’s a story I’d like to tell someday; maybe I’ll get there. But that wasn’t working out either, not at that point. Sadly, none of the 50 pages of outlines and notes I have on the stillborn ‘Kingdom’ ongoing ever quite gelled, and though there are still a lot of workable ideas in there to be mined, most of them will never see the light of day. In fact, long before ‘Gog’ #1, I’d written an entire 38-page Magog-centered ‘Kingdom’ #1 which no one loved, including myself, and which no one will thus ever see.”
While “The Kingdom” wasn’t stillborn, its birth was a troubled one, and the project only began to get back on track about last year, in time for the “New Year’s Evil” week of specials.
“Finally, about the time I offered to do ‘Gog’ #1 as a show of good faith that I hadn’t altogether forgotten about my promise to do a KC follow-up, the pieces began to come together,” Waid said. “Still, until Grant Morrison, Tom Peyer, Dan Raspler and I sat together last summer and created Hypertime, ‘Kingdom’ didn’t crystallize. After that meeting, it was set, and the plot suddenly moved like clockwork.”
That fortuitous moment, one that would ultimately reshape the modern DC Universe, came during last August’s San Diego Comic-Con International. Beyond just an idea that felt right to the creators assembled, Waid felt that “The Kingdom” merited a grand gesture of some kind.
“DC’s pitch to me was to do ‘Kingdom’ week as a bunch of one-shots. I didn’t think that was what the readers had been waiting two years for and pushed to bracket those books within a greater story – but didn’t know what that story WAS until all the bull sessions began to make it apparent that, with the encouragement of Dan Raspler, I could use this opportunity to affect not simply the KC Universe, but the entire DC Universe.”
Who actually came up with Hypertime, though, is tough to say.
“Hell if I know,” Waid said. “As far as I’m concerned, it came from all four of us working in tandem. As far as I remember more specifically, I think I had the basic notion that Gog was inadvertently killing Supermen from different timelines, at which point Grant was the one who realized how that meant that ‘it’s all true,’ that all our stories existed in one big Kingdom. I came up with the name Hypertime, Tom was the one pressing hard to keep us from thinking of it as simply a return to pre-Crisis and instead to shape it into a more modern spin on the old ‘multiple Earths’ reality, and I’ll never forget Grant actually showing me, early one morning weeks later, the cocktail napkin upon which, in typical Morrison-channeling-Einstein fashion, he’d actually DRAWN Hypertime. Who ‘created’ Hypertime? I prefer to believe that it was there all along and we just found it.”
While Hypertime is briefly explained in “The Kingdom” #2, Waid offered this explanation by way of clarification:
“Hypertime is our name for the vast collective of parallel universes out there, in which you can somewhere find every DC story ever published – but it’s also more than that. The standard model of parallel timelines is the branches of a river, right? The main timeline is the main stream while tributaries symbolize the alternate timelines? Well, imagine that sometimes those tributaries feed back IN to the main stream, sometimes for a while, sometimes forever. Other times, they cross OVER for only a MOMENT before going in an altogether NEW direction – and for the most part, no one notices these discrepancies but the fans. In short, the reality of the main DC Universe is a lot more malleable than we’ve ever given it credit for and allows for more wonder and more possibilities than we’d ever imagined.”
Rumor has long had it that an already-published comic set in the DC Universe featured something that could only be explained by Hypertime. What was it? Try Waid’s last big name limited series.
“Best simple example: the use of the Blackhawks in ‘JLA: Year One.’ According to some DC stories, Chuck and Andre were killed during the 1950s and couldn’t have been present in ‘JLA: Year One,’ not if there were only one inviolate timeline. So what this suggests is that, sometime in the past, the Blackhawks split off into a Hypertime tributary in which all seven lived – and that tributary fed back into the main DC timeline later down the line so that all seven could live on to become the ghastly super-hero Blackhawks for a minute or two. Did they continue living in this timeline? Depends on where the next writer wants to take it, which Blackhawks they want to write about.
“Confusing? A little, at this early stage – but so was Earth-Two until Julie Schwartz and Gardner Fox were able to play with it for a little while and define the rules. We’re still massaging the fine points, we’re still tweaking the machine with help from Karl Kesel, the first to do a big Hypertime story (in “Superboy”), but that’s the basic notion. As Rip Hunter told the DC heroes in ‘The Kingdom’ #2, don’t be scared by Hypertime, don’t feel your sense of order threatened by these occasional Hypertime fluxes, these carryovers from one ‘kingdom’ to another. Instead, let them be a reminder that the lives of the heroes you love are simply part of a greater legend, a world of wonder where anything can, has, and will happen. Every story you ever loved, every character you ever cared about – they’re still out there, they still exist. Take comfort in that.”
In other words, to echo the mantra the Hypertime creators gleefully repeated at panels that week in San Diego (sometimes in unison): It’s all true.
“The possibilities are endless. Hypertime is an unashamed reaction to nearly 15 years of comics being made ‘more realistic,’ less ‘larger than life.’ As far as we’re concerned, DC Comics shouldn’t be about rules and regulations and ‘can’t happen’s and ‘shouldn’t be’s; they should be about anything and everything that tells a good story and gets fans excited.”
Considering that previous policy was one handed down from on high, it might surprise some fans as to the reaction of DC’s current editorial head honcho. Certainly Waid and his fellow brainstormers were surprised.
“Mike Carlin was all for it, which stunned us – but he let us run with the ball. Thanks, Mike.”
Although he will now forever be linked with overturning the DC Universe’s big continuity revision of the modern era, Waid wasn’t going gunning for “Crisis” out of malice.
“I thought it was a necessary evil at the time,” Waid said. “It certainly created a new, much-needed DC fandom. The problem was that DC was unable to sustain that new cohesive reality not just because of the Superman revamp but because (in, to me, a worse offense) a later editor who need not be named was too obstinate to put the three simple words ‘Ten years ago…’ on the first page of the ‘Hawkworld’ mini which relaunched Hawkman, the poster child for Baffling Continuity. Man … think about how easy that would have made everything.
“Unfortunately, because Byrne got to revamp Superman [in the ‘Man of Steel’ miniseries], every editor at DC suddenly got it in their heads that ANY character was fair game for a similar continuity-discarding revamp, and the results, if the objective was to create a cohesive universe, were so disastrous that no one will EVER be able to repair them. Given that, we decided, why not go the other way? Instead of continuing the Sisyphian task of building a continuity on shifting sand (to mix a metaphor), why not instead invent a mechanism through which inevitable continuity fluxes can be explained? Voila. Hypertime.”
All this serious pontificating doesn’t mean there weren’t fun moments in the creation of “Kingdom” #1 and #2. In particular, Waid enjoyed inserting “the images of Hypertime, all culled from my own comics collection. (And thanks to assistant editor Tony Bedard for orchestrating the production work. Bravo!)”
Now, at the conclusion of the project, Waid’s not sure whether he feels the weight of comic history upon his shoulders, or simply that of a high-profile project.
“Somewhere in between. Historical occasions are determined strictly through the benefit of hindsight. Does ‘Kingdom’ mark a milestone in DC history? Only time will tell,” he said. “I’m as proud of the five solo books as I am of anything I’ve been a part of, and I can thank the great artists for that, as well as my Secret Advisory Squad of Brian Augustyn, Christopher Priest, Devin Grayson and Tom Peyer, all of whom spent many long phone hours with me helping me massage their stories (YOU try writing five books in two weeks!). As far as the bookends go, I’m too close to them. All I can hope is that they fulfill their promise.”
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