Universes Within Universes

So it started with an email sent to me at the Agents of SHAFT website:

Although you contraindicated taking LSD with Dr. Banner's Super-Soldier Serum, I should like to point out to you that, according to Ted White's biography of Captain America, LSD was an integral part of his creation. One of the original super-soldier serums (and the most successful) was actually designed to work with LSD. Of course, you may not want Bush's Legion of Terror to know this information (fortunately it was written down rather than recorded on audio tape or film in government records of the project thus making it completely inaccessible to Bush and his cronies) but, in case you didn't know, I thought that this might be of use to your organization.

Congratulations on a wonderful web-site! This is a wonderful blending of Marvel, DC, various pop movie references, the Wold-Newton universe, and, of course, reality!

Geoffrey Tolle

First of all, Mr. Tolle, great find! I'd never heard of Captain America: The Great Gold Steal (1968), and so was unaware of the connection between LSD and the original Super Soldier Serum. Of course, the reason you wouldn't want to mix LSD with Banner's "new" SSS formula is simple: the mind-expanding drug would likely counteract the Serum's brainwashing effects.

Secondly, I must admit to having been unfamiliar with the Wold Newton Universe, even though it is quite similar in many ways to the amalgamated SHAFT Universe, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. Briefly, the Wold Newton Universe was created by famed science fiction writer Philip Jose' Farmer for his biographies of such pulp heroes as Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, Philip Marlowe, and James Bond, all of whom he connected to one another in an elaborate family tree.

While researching the subject, I ran across this entry on the Kung Fu Monkey blog, which describes the Wold Newton Universe as "the Geek Ph.D." In the Comments section, Kevin Church kindly linked to Dwayne McDuffie's Six Degrees of St. Elsewhere column, which proves that, according to the laws of comic book continuity, most of your favorite TV shows only existed in the mind of the autistic kid from the "St. Elsewhere" series finale.

Dwayne McDuffie has made numerous contributions to the worlds of comics and television, but what I'm most grateful to him for at the moment is his work on the animated series Justice League Unlimited. Appropriately, his St. Elsewhere column concludes with his opinion that "while guest-shots and crossovers can be fun, obsessive, cross-series continuity is silly. It’s silly in comics too. Relax and enjoy the show."

"Justice League Unlimited" represents for me the iconic and definitive versions of the DC Comics superheroes and their collective universe, and "enjoying the show" is exactly what I do. I would much rather watch an episode of JLU than read an Infinite Crisis tie-in any day of the week. DC's current flavor-of-the-month is so humorless and encumbered by continuity that I find the entire enterprise to be ridiculous and unenjoyable.

And that's coming from the person who brought you two issues of Ultimate Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.A.F.T.