The more I think about "alternate timeline" stories, the less I like them. Someone smarter than I once said that alternate timelines (or alternate universes) were a way of making up for a bunch of bad writing with a whole bunch more bad writing. And in the end, what do you get? More inconsistencies than a bowl of badly-mixed cake batter. Comic books are especially notorious for this kind of thing. Even in comic books as conceptually simple as The Punisher there seem to be alternate universes, alternate stories, alternate alternateness. A friend and I went into a comic books store once and I happened to see a comic called Crisis on Infinite Worlds. Or maybe it was Infinite Crisis. Or Crisis on Infinite Earths. I don't remember - there was a crisis, and it was apparently infinite, but past that, I'm no expert.
So he undertook to explain it to me, using merchandise on the shelves as visual aids, and occasionally with the input of the proprietor. I still didn't get it. Either comic book fans are a lot smarter than I am, or none of this shit makes sense to anyone and they're just nodding and smiling and pretending to be up to speed. Or maybe the true fans understand all the alternate universes and alternate timelines and the mere poseurs are the ones who mumble "I don't think I get it."
So he's showing me some comic book and trying to explain it to me.
"It would make more sense if you read it from the beginning."
"The main one?"
"Yeah. Some of it, anyway. You'd need to read the two alternate histories first..."
"Alternate histories? They aren't alternate timelines?"
"Sort of, but not really. So after the alternate histories, you'd need to read the virtual timeline..."
"The what?"
"It's like an alternate timeline, only it never really happened. Kind of like the dream season in Dallas, only some of the stuff in the virtual timeline got into the main alternate timeline, and then that led to the sub-alternate timeline..."
"Is that the one where Superman was a Nazi?"
"No. That's a virtual timeline. And he was a Communist, not a Nazi."
"My mistake. Authoritarian regimes sometimes run together on me. But wouldn't he have been Ineffectual-Bush?"
"What?"
"If everything in that timeline is the opposite of this one, he should have been Ineffectual-Bush. The opposite of an animal would be a plant, and the opposite of having super powers would be complete ineffectiveness. So, Ineffectual-Bush."
"But if he was a bush, he couldn't move. He'd have to be an animal. Maybe a mollusk of some kind. Barnacle-Man or something."
"Barnacles don't move either."
"Mudskipper-Man. That was he could swim and crawl across the mud flats."
"But he'd still be ineffectual."
"Oh, absolutely, that's a must. But the timelines CAN get a little confusing, but remember that this comic book is a sub-alternate timeline of an alternate timeline spawned by a virtual timeline that relies on stuff in the two alternate histories. And then there's the crossover..."
"The what?"
"That's where timelines from two distinct universes intersect. Like that one where the new-old Punisher and the new-old-new Batman got together to defeat the old-new-old Joker."
"Does anyone get laid in that story?"
"What?"
"I'd feel better about this whole mess if someone, somewhere, was actually getting some sex out of it."
"I don't think so, no."
"I was afraid of that."
"But anyway, there's the pseudo-alternate history, the one where Kal-El ended up landing in the Garment District and turned into Sewing Machine Man, and him and his sidekick Scissors Boy fight against the evil Off The Rack Man and HIS sidekick, One Size Fits All Boy."
"A ripping yarn, I'm sure. Get it? Ha. I crack me up."
"But then Mitochondrion Man and Clodhopper, the girl with the huge foot, come back from the future, and then they have to fight Count Nausea and the Gag Reflex, only because it's an alternate timeline, the Egad Flux doesn't work the same way, and they end up spawning a whole bunch of muddy cannibal children, and..."
"I can see this is going to take a while. Lunch at the Indian restaurant?"
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