I had the Hypertime of my life

While reading over the various bits on Newsarama about 52 (interview with Mark Waid, interview with Geoff Johns, interview with Keith Giffen and the last week of those questions about the series--although, seriously, if your comic REQUIRES an online Q&A after, your comic isn't doing its job--and 52 isn't the only title to do that, so I'm not picking on it), it occurred to me that the whole ending of 52 seemed familiar, sort of.

And then I remembered a little thing called Hypertime.

You know, the concept pioneered by Grant Morrison and Mark Waid back in the late '90s as a way to cicumvent the lack of a multiverse and drive the DCU back into the lunacy of the Silver Age. Looking at this Wikipedia article on Hypertime, I see that it has been mentioned during 52 despite pretty much being cast aside years earlier.

I'm left wondering what's the point of the ending of 52. Why create a new multiverse (yeah, yeah, yeah, I just spoiled it--if you're reading THIS blog then you would have HAD to have encountered the end of the series) when one already existed--one that was much more vast and presented far more possibilities?

I'm sure there are numerous answers (the most logical one I've thought of being that 52 Earths is easier to understand than the mess-that-Hypertime-was), but it strikes me as odd that the big reveal was really a solution to a problem that was (theoretically) already solved--or a problem that was solved, recreated by Geoff Johns in Infinite Crisis and then solved again for the hell of it, a year later.

I am looking forward to the interview with Grant Morrison about the series, because I haven't seen much said by him about it.