Comments on: 52, fanfic and Ralph Dibny’s Diary – Hyperpost 5

By: Nathan

Nathan — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 23:44:39 +0000

“(I had hoped that the resurrection of the character as a zombie would have brought about the resurrection of the blog, but apparently not…)”

oh god, someone MUST call up Ewing about picking this up again. I mean even if all he does is lambast it (I, as you may not know, am a retarded ass licking Geoffa Johns who is responsible for all that is wrong with the world), but Dibney’s diaries were just a fucking hoot to read.

By: pillock

pillock — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:22:22 +0000

Oh, I think I’ll get another response in before you’re all done. Really, there’s so much room to move in this topic, I expect to see lots of fractal edges emerging before long: some Morrisonian self-assembly bound to take place.

By: Andrew Hickey

Andrew Hickey — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:07:08 +0000

Glad to hear you’re enjoying it, and I’d *love* to read that post(s). And as far as it being tangential – hell, these posts are all tangential to each other…
Once I get to a point where I’ve finished this series, or talked myself into circles (probably another week or two) I’ll do a final linkpost linking the whole series plus people’s responses (so far only Pillock has done one, but others have said they might…)
This stuff’s really only *my* brain fizzing – and the posts so far have been the froth that’s come off the top. To really get all of this sorted coherently would require me to write at least two full-length books – a non-fiction set of essays and a gigantic mega-crosover fanfic novel…

By: David Allison

David Allison — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:20:25 +0000

Just to say, I'm loving this series of posts Andrew! This piece, in particular, has triggered some fizzy thoughts about the difference between The Invisibles as an interactive experience (The Bomb, The Barbelith site, the lettercols, etc) and 52/Mozbats RIP/Final Crisis as an interactive experience (the blog chatter, the Dibny diaries, the Remixes, etc). Unfortunately these thoughts haven't settled yet (too much fizzzzz! how different are these things really? how much of this difference is down to the works themselves and how much of it is down to the changing nature of Internet geekdom?), and they're only tangentially related to your mutliversal musings, but still – MY POOR BRAIN AM HAPPY NOW! Thanks!

By: bjooks

bjooks — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:54:45 +0000

I’d not heard of 52 Remixed, but it sounds interesting. I’d always wondered if someone had done something similar to Countdown — try to pull together one coherent 3-6 issue story from the entire continuity-spanning mess that was Countdown, Death of the New Gods, Amazons Attacks, the specials, the… well, you get the idea. Problem is, even though you might make a more /coherent/ story, I still don’t think it would be much good.

I was going to attempt it once, but before I could my dog vomited on half my copies of Countdown (true story, nice symbolism), and the project literally went into the trash. Que sera sera.

By: Zom

Zom — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:56:57 +0000

52 was definitely about the experience, as was RIP, as is Lost (although I’m thinking Lost is becoming something of a mess)

By: Justin Zyduck

Justin Zyduck — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:50:52 +0000

I’ve not reread 52 since it wrapped up, partly because my reading of it was also very much tied into THE EXPERIENCE. Every week without fail, on my break from work, I’d go down to the comic shop, pick up the new issue and whatever other purchases I’d make, go to the coffee shop, order chai and read it. And then the next day I’d read stuff like 52 Pickup and check that 52 “in-universe” website DC itself was doing to see if there was anything new. I wonder how I’d react to it already knowing the mystery, and reading it at my own pace, divorced from my cozy little routine.

Shame about the Steel bits not being good; is Morrison the only writer to use Steel as a really cool character?

I’d have to go back and see where there might be nods to the Dibny Diary series in 52 proper, but that sort of “referencing the reference” really interests me as a phenomenon. Stuff like “I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!” getting integrated into an actual X-Men movie, and in a recent Amazing Spider-Man, Spidey uses the “everybody gets one” joke from Family Guy. It’s this weird feedback loop, and I find it oddly unsettling sometimes.