Crisis of the Soul AKA Crisis at the Heart of Darkness

[samurainoir]

Anybody ever heard of this proposed sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths by Paul Levitz and Jerry Ordway?

I'm reading an article about it in Back Issue #9. The project eventually morphed into Legends, but it's kind of interesting to see how different a project it was initially.

Guy Garner was originally going to be called Iron Lantern! The Creeper tastes blood and becomes Evil. Star City is destroyed. Elongated Man Kills to save Sue Dibney.

[kryptosmaster]

When i saw the thread title I was coming in to say it became Legends but that's about all I know about it.
Rich

[Earth 2 Chris]

I read that BackIssue! article recently too. Sounds like it morphed into Legends, but some of the Legends creators were apparently oblivious too it?

Shows how up-in-the-air things were at DC at the time. As the first Crisis was winding down, DC leaked a totally new Flash series, with a whole new, non speedster character to be written by Wolfman and Wein, in an article in Amazing Heroes, only to make Wally the Flash in Crisis #12. The supposedly-new Flash was to be named Mackenzie Ryan and even had his named mention in a Teen Titans issue of the time, but he never came to be!

Chris

[The Toyroom]

Didn't they toy with the idea of the non-speedster Flash being a chick? Following in the footsteps of Wildcat and Dr. Light who were gender-switched in Crisis.....

[Earth 2 Chris]

Didn't they toy with the idea of the non-speedster Flash being a chick? Following in the footsteps of Wildcat and Dr. Light who were gender-switched in Crisis.....

I'd heard that once too, but most of what I read was Mackenzie Ryan was to be a single dad. Maybe the female angle comes from the cross-gender name and the later Tangent Flash.

Chris

[samurainoir]

Titans Tower: The Flash

They toyed around with different ideas, including a female Flash and the non speedster. Wally was an 11th hour decision...

Pérez says that no one liked the idea of creating a female Flash, if for no other reason than the gimmick of creating female versions of former male characters had already been done twice in Crisis (with the new Dr. Light and Wildcat). "We still had the Wally West storyline up in the air from the Titans. Marv came up with the idea first, I liked it, and we let the mantle go on to a younger character. Now there are still two Flashes... but one - the Golden Age Flash - "is definitely a much older man and one is a teenager. It's much more of a father/son relationship than before. It opens up a whole new idea for stories. "I think our decision to make Wally West the Flash worked out nicely - after all, he's the only other person who ever wore the costume.

[samurainoir]

It looks like Crisis of the Soul also had the same mission as Legends to launch all these new concepts into the DCU. Including the Earth-bound Green Lantern Corps that Staton and Englehart were working on, and a US government sponsored JLA (which I guess branched into both JLI and Suicide Squad eventually which was launched by Legends).

I'm thinking Legends was one of the most successful crossovers besides the original Crisis given the fact that you did have Wally West's Flash title, Giffen's Justice League, and Suicide Squad successfully spinning out of it. Plus Darkseid did finally become a Big Bad against the entire DCU on a Doctor Doom type level.

What did we get from Millenium? The New Guardians? Invasion gave us The Blasters.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Legends was actually pretty good too. I can't say that about any other big DC crossover, other than maybe Final Night, that was pretty good. Zero Hour had potential, but Hal being the bad guy was just wrong. If you can accept that, the mini itself came closest to having that Crisis feel and the time warp issues were fun.

The worst had to be Genesis. That was such a non-event.

Chris

[The Toyroom]

Legends was a "clean" mini-series.....easy in, easy out....Yeah there were cross-overs, but the 6-issue core mini was short and sweet. Not long and dragged out like other minis that followed later.