@professorrespect:
Sure, but how much can we ignore reliably?
I mean, how much one can ignore or consider reliable is one of the main points of debates such as this, in my opinion.
I don't know if there's an official Secret Files issue or something talking about JSA Gog, but as far as the in-story information goes, my beliefs are exactly what I've mentioned before.
I consider ITNO Gog and TKC Gog to be two different versions that should not be composited. And until I see any official statement from an unbiased official-source stating that they are the same being, I will keep pointing out how different they are and how illogical it is to composite them.
While they may have changed small parts of the character (a sort-retcon as stated before etc) the fact they directly mention his Superman ventures in the same breath as everything else shows it's the same person. The individual giving this information was Mr Terrific: from a narrative standpoint there's no reliable way of saying "he was wrong" let alone Terrific being wrong.
I'm not saying that Terrific was wrong. I agree that Gog already had an established history in that timeline and had fought Superman in events mirroring the present-day stuff that happened in Action Comics.
I do not agree that all the backstory and time-travel stuff that was established in Action Comics was just an hallucination on Gog's part.
That would be completely disregarding the work of the ITNOG creative team and prioritizing the TKG creative team just because their comic came out later.
To me, if the character is portrayed in such a blatantly different way, it shouldn't be treated as the exact same character, especially in a battleboarding scenario where we are looking for consistency.
I can't see this as the case other than the difference in powers and changes in backstory. There's no indication this is the case and the comic itself doesn't try to get it over as a new Gog, in fact they do the opposite by mentioning his old Post Crisis work.
It can't be a reboot if they aren't ignoring what happened before. A reboot is, officially, "A reboot discards continuity to re-create its characters, plotlines and backstory from the beginning." as per Wikipedia (ofc it's subjective, but it's a pretty good reference)
There is A LOT of precedence in DC history for characters to receive significant retcons (if you insist that the word "reboot" is too much) while keeping some of their previously established appearances.
This has been going on since the Crisis on Infinite Earths days. Not every character received a major comic reboot after the Crisis, some of them continued their stories from where the Pre-Crisis era left off, but all of them changed in some way and they are still considered different versions.
Examples:
Aquaman was an half-human/Atlantean hybrid in the Earth-One Pre-Crisis continuity. In 1989 (two years after the main reboot had already happened) he received an all-new backstory where it was established he was a full Atlantean and only thought he had been an hybrid before finding out the truth. Most of the majors events in his life were kept the same and there were still references in the Aquaman comics of the 90's to stuff that had happened in the Pre-Crisis days when he had a completely different backstory (now retconned to be just a false assumption on his part). Still, Post-Crisis Aquaman is undeniably a very different character from the Pre-Crisis version and a lot of the Pre-Crisis stuff can't possibly had happened in the territory of his new backstory, yet some of the Pre-Crisis stories are still established to have happened in this new continuity.
Would you still composite them based solely on the fact that there are references to Pre-Crisis events in the Post-Crisis comics?
Martian Manhunter was originally established as coming from a version of Mars similar to 20th century science-fiction pulp literature. This version of Mars was shown to clearly exist, there were other Martians living there and there was never any reason to doubt any of that. In 1989, a Martian Manhunter miniseries established that the pulp science-fiction version of Mars was actually a false memory implanted by Saul Erdel to save J'onn from going catatonic, that the version of Mars he actually came from was completely different, all other Martians had been dead for millennia and his real name wasn't even J'onn J'onzz. THEN, in 1998, a few years after Zero Hour, a new Martian Manhunter comic series established that his current origin was now a mix of the previous two; the Martian civilization had been gone for millennia but there were still other Martians around, the planet was once again a bit closer to 20th century pulp and J'onn was his real name. Throughout ALL these retcons, MMH's career as a hero in the Post-Crisis stories was not significantly retconned. Mars and the Martians changed drastically between each retcon, but MMH was still acknowledged as the same character that existed throughout all these events.
Now, if someone were to create a battle thread pitting Mars against Krypton or something like that, would it be legitimate to composite the 1989 Martians with the 1998-onwards Martians because there were still references to pre-1998 MMH in the comics, and claim that the 1989 Martians lack of fighting-skill is an anti-feat for the entire Martian race?
Hell no! They're two completely different versions.
I can name several more such examples.
This is the same area in which I place Gog. Just because there is still some acknowledgment of previous history in his JSA appearances, doesn't mean it's the exact same character.
They don't do any of that there. They don't make Gog from the beginning, they keep his design and general outlook and modify other aspects. That's not a reboot, nor is it significant enough to be a different Gog altogether.
Isn't that the whole idea behind reboots? Keeping some basic concepts and changing others?
They obviously wouldn't change his basic design, or it would stop being Gog.
Again this does not match up with the information given in the comic itself. If there was a retcon, it was one done really shit
Welcome to the Geoff Johns school of writing lol
He does this in every comic he writes. Even if there wasn't any official reboot event he just creates retcons anyway.
Look at Brightest Day. He makes up an entire new backstory for Mera which directly contradicts some of her previous appearances under the expectation that people just didn't care enough about Mera to point it out (and somehow it worked because I rarely see people differentiate pre and post-Brightest Day Mera). And he reintroduced the "hybrid" backstory for Aquaman, once again with ZERO explanation since a couple of years before that the Post-Crisis backstory was still in effect.
I personally make a distinction between the pre-retcon or post-retcon characters. But you do you, it's not like there's an official rule.
PC Superman as you will see mentions the fact that Gog wasn't from the future, he was just "deeply disturbed". This also showcases that they are using the same Gog, but explaining his old backstory as him being crazy and warping visions he was getting from KC Gog into his own weird version instead. He might have went to the future at one point, but his old backstory was obsolete by that point.
If his old backstory was obsolete and he never displayed the previous powers of time-travel, why would I consider them to be the same character in a powerscaling debate? That doesn't add up for me, which is the main point I'm trying to make.
Yeah but this instance in particular was meme-worthy because they particularly mention that no one got seriously hurt at all lol.
Have you read the JSA issue where the Injustice Society attacks the headquarters and Wildcat proceeds to defeat every one of them? At one point he even challenges one of the villains to a one-on-one fight without using powers. And the guy accepts and loses the fight!
THAT is meme-worthy.
They do, and when you have everything pointing to there being no difference between JSA and Superman Gog and nothing even suggesting he was retconned, I can't really agree with it.
You said so yourself, his old backstory was obsolete and his powers were different. That's all I personally need to not consider them to be comparable.
But if this is an agree-to-disagree situation, fine by me.
Cheers.
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