Reading Infinite Crisis: Superboy SMASH!

DC's Infinite Crisis, the sequel to the groundbreaking and industry-changing Crisis on Infinite Earths. The premise here is pretty straightforward: Supermen from Earth-Prime and Earth-2 try to restore the "Perfect Earth" to our Earth, for a very understandable reason. This reason is that--

Our super-heroes suck. They are ineffectual and useless to society. One of them killed a guy (Wonder Woman snapped Max Lord's neck); one of them set up a Big Brother system in the sky (Batman); one of them's sitting around and doing, literally, nothing at all but watching television (Conner Kent, Superboy); one of them went evil (Hal Jordan), and et cetera.

So there's your premise. Superboy Prime and Kingdom Come Superman and Alexander Luthor try to make their perfect Earth, bringing destruction etc. to the universe.

How this trickles down to the entire DCU is interesting, but not too compelling. Bludhaven gets bombed by a villain I don't know, and Batman's O.M.A.C.s attack Themyscira, so you have plenty of action. The Freedom Fighters get killed too, by the Society of Super Villains or something.

I guess a problem with the event is that it isn't really new-reader-friendly. I mean, I know who the Freedom Fighters are, and I have a passing knowledge of the Flash legacy, but if you bring up Barry Allen return from somewhere to save someone, or have the Spectre do something from his chest cavity, or have Conner Kent moping around somewhere, that's not gonna have any emotional impact to me. None.

Another problem with the event is that it feels recycled and a little trite, I guess. Batman takes a gun to Alexander Luthor's head, but there's absolutely no drama there, because we know he won't shoot. The inherent comedy of Superboy Prime's immaturity undermines his threat level. The villains here are basically alternate versions of Superman's supporting cast. I wish DC didn't rely so much on its trinity, because they have a goldmine of other characters. I think there were two panels devoted to some Green Arrow fanservice, and a page or so for Animal Man.

Okay, by now you can tell my feelings about Infinite Crisis, but we should all realize that the main reason for these events is to tell new stories, because that's exactly what Infinite Crisis did. It had all kinds of monumental events like the death of the Freedom Fighters, which gave us a new eight-issue miniseries, as well as Wonder Woman's need to learn what humanity is, as well as a new Blue Beetle (with his own ongoing!), and other stuff I'm forgetting/ ignoring.

All in all, Infinite Crisis isn't a stellar event comic, but it's not bad either. The cover price of 15 bucks is somewhat worth the seven issues, and considering how I would've paid 27 dollars if I actually kept up with the event, that's definitely a good deal.

One last, over-arching problem is DC's apparent target audience. I feel like this was aimed more for aging 40-year-old's who've read 10 year's worth of DC, and not me. I flipped through the first issue of Final Crisis and that's exactly how I felt as well.

Which doesn't exactly bode well for DC's continued readership.