Metropolis Mailbag: Triangle numbers?
Anonymous asked:
Could you explain how the whole triangle numbers thing works? I understand that in the 1990s there was as many as 5 Superman titles at once, a comic a week. They all had a separate staff but had one intertwined storyline. How separate was each series from each other?
They were pretty connected, since all the teams planned the ongoing storylines together and then divided the events. That said, when you bought an individual issue you weren't just getting an arbitrary chunk of plot: each comic still had a point ("Superman fights Metallo", "Superman teams up with Flash", "Superman almost gets married to a cavewoman while suffering from amnesia", etc.) and worked as a story in itself. Also, the writers were considerate enough to try to bring you up to speed on what was happening in the other series — like, Jimmy would say "I can't believe I ate that cursed burrito*, and now I'm a giraffe! How will I afford rent?!" Oh, and all the issues had "NEXT ON…" boxes on the letter pages, which could help you figure out what was going on in the other comics.
Even with all that, I think reading one series apart from the others is still less than ideal. You feel like you're missing out on something, especially if it's during a crossover storyline, such as the one that's coming soon…
See, they didn't even bother to give you the issue numbers on that one: they just said "triangle numbers X to X". Those things were pretty handy.