Such was the slogan for DC Comics' super-event, Crisis on Infinite Earths. It came out in the same year that Marvel Comics was having their super-event, Secret Wars in 1984. The event comic was fairly new at the time. Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths were the first of their kind, and you could say it was for a reason -- the big two publishers had a glut of super-heroes and -villains, and, it was getting a little difficult to keep track of them. As stated in the introduction for the Absolute edition, Crisis writer Marv Wolfman had long wanted to take all his favorite DC heroes and mash them together in a super-story.
So mash them they did. Join me today as we take on the Absolute edition of. . .
Crisis on Infinite Earths
by Marv Wolfman and George Perez
I didn't have a positive review of Secret Wars, and unfortunately I have the same opinion of Crisis. . .well for the first half at least. Three issues are spent introducing characters, and multiple times you're told that the world is dying. Yes, we get it. The Antimatter Universe is encroaching on the positive matter universe, and we need to stop the Anti-Monitor from taking his machines to crash the planets together. Gee thanks, I only needed to hear that 7 times in every issue of this collection.
Exposition can be so good. Claremont and Cockrum's run on Uncanny X-Men demonstrate this so well, and the exposition easily highlights individual characters in a sea of colorful cast members. You get to know them with exposition. The same is done here, although oftentimes there's one page of exposition for a single character that we never see again in the full twelve issues. It's just not needed for this kind of story. It's all over the place, yet it's really just telling the same story with different characters -- take a look at this Earth, well, now it's gone. And how about this one, yep, also gone.
Much like a Transformers movie, the intensity gets tiring, but it does hit a stride around issue 7, The Death of Supergirl. Determined to save her cousin from the Anti-Monitor in the Antimatter Universe, Supergirl makes a valiant effort and helps to stave off the enemy by breaking his containment suit, forcing him to retreat. You really believe the threat here: in the Antimatter Universe, Kryptonians can bleed, and yes, they can even die. It's a wonderful 1-page eulogy that Superman gives his cousin and a worthy death for Supergirl.
This is all a build-up to what I consider the main purpose of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the Flash is the primary reason that the DC Universe exists. Barry was the first (I think) to call back to the Golden Age DC Comics, and he was the first to "discover" the alternate Earths, one of the things that makes DC Comics ubiquitous and unique. In Crisis Barry returns from his self-imposed exile in the future, to prevent the Anti-Monitor's world-devouring machines and, in so doing, "dies" (really now we know he just lost himself to the Speed Force, per The Flash: Rebirth). It's a hero's send-off for the person who is arguably the best Flash of them all.
There's such a brilliant sequence in Issue 8 of Crisis, "A Flash of the Lightning!" Barry's running and he's trying to create a vortex to combat the Antimatter energy of A-M's machine. He's succeeding but, his massive speed takes him through time, and the reader "flashbacks" to three other moments in previous issues. It's a great call-back that evokes a sense of deja vu, and finally explains to the reader why they saw Barry earlier.
Notice how the Anti-Monitor's "face" has a look of horror in that first row, as he notices that Barry is winning. And then look at Barry's "face" has a similar look of horror, as he sees what his feat is doing to him. What a great page.
The fallout of Barry's actions result in a halt to the impending merge that the 5 remaining Earths are undergoing. But it's a band-aid at best, because where the Earths overlap with one another, time fluxes create chaos on the overlapping planets. The supervillains of the five Earths, led by our Earth's Lex Luthor and Brainiac, make a run for global -- no, universal -- domination, only stopping when they realize that the Anti-Monitor is still alive. There's a brilliant plot twist that forces heroes and villains alike, to band together and travel to the time before time itself!
Issues 9-11 hold the fallout of a story that I couldn't predict, resulting in a fight for reality itself. It's the stuff of great comic books. Considering that it's about the multiverse, has a wonky time travel plot that still makes sense, it's the stuff of a great DC comic book. Over the course of 12 issues, I've derided Crisis and subsequently praised it. Take the clunky, dense first half of the story with a grain of salt. The second half is worth the wait. If you can stick it for issue 7 and on, the story will reward your patience and call back to what you just read and deepen it.
Issue 12 is an epilogue of sorts, with a "final crisis." I'm not too fond of it, as the needless exposition returns with attention paid to a lot of unnecessary characters. Only maybe 5 pages of this comic book are important, and I found myself wanting to skim through it. Basically, Earth has been merged into a single Earth now, where there was never any other Earth. It's an amalgam of all the Earths, taking most of the shared history together, but with a thorough inspiration from Earth-1, the Earth with most of the heroes that we're familiar with. This means that some heroes, even though they remember their whole lives, their entire world never existed! Their loved ones -- never existed! Their homes -- never existed!
Issue 12 is where the Editorial staff rears its head, and there's even three pages of a "truth dump." With mere words, Wonder Woman was retconned into death and a clay birth. With mere words, Batman never had a son (Helena Wayne) with Catwoman. At the same time, new stories were set up as well, with Wally West taking up the mantle of the Flash, and a new Wildcat. Sometimes ham-handed editorial is necessary, and if I had to call it, they did it pretty cleverly in Crisis, leaving open several windows for other stories. The closing letter is from Dick Giordano, who even comments on all the story opportunities that it opened, and how well the writers took advantage of it.
All said and done, Crisis was a significant bookmark in the history of DC Comics and the industry in general. Most comic events follow the format that it (and Secret Wars) set, shaking things up, killing off some characters or three, while "passing the torch" of one costume from one person to another. Frustratingly, some comic events have even written these events merely to set up some other event or story.
One would be remiss to miss Crisis, but at the same time there's a lot of it that you can skim. If you ever get a chance, read this from your local library, but don't spend too much time on it. Tell them Kevin sent you.
The fallout of Barry's actions result in a halt to the impending merge that the 5 remaining Earths are undergoing. But it's a band-aid at best, because where the Earths overlap with one another, time fluxes create chaos on the overlapping planets. The supervillains of the five Earths, led by our Earth's Lex Luthor and Brainiac, make a run for global -- no, universal -- domination, only stopping when they realize that the Anti-Monitor is still alive. There's a brilliant plot twist that forces heroes and villains alike, to band together and travel to the time before time itself!
Issue 12 is an epilogue of sorts, with a "final crisis." I'm not too fond of it, as the needless exposition returns with attention paid to a lot of unnecessary characters. Only maybe 5 pages of this comic book are important, and I found myself wanting to skim through it. Basically, Earth has been merged into a single Earth now, where there was never any other Earth. It's an amalgam of all the Earths, taking most of the shared history together, but with a thorough inspiration from Earth-1, the Earth with most of the heroes that we're familiar with. This means that some heroes, even though they remember their whole lives, their entire world never existed! Their loved ones -- never existed! Their homes -- never existed!
All said and done, Crisis was a significant bookmark in the history of DC Comics and the industry in general. Most comic events follow the format that it (and Secret Wars) set, shaking things up, killing off some characters or three, while "passing the torch" of one costume from one person to another. Frustratingly, some comic events have even written these events merely to set up some other event or story.
One would be remiss to miss Crisis, but at the same time there's a lot of it that you can skim. If you ever get a chance, read this from your local library, but don't spend too much time on it. Tell them Kevin sent you.
BONUS PANELS:
The obligatory, and infamous "Flash dies" scene. If you haven't seen it before, now you can say you saw it first, here. There's always hope!
Amidst all the chaos of the crisis, Dr. Sivana sees an opportunity to -- rule the world! It's quite hilarious:
Take a look at this page from George Perez. Wally West, as Kid Flash, and Jay Garrick get on the Cosmic Treadmill to go back to the time before time began, and he uses a clever layout to show points of view at the same point of time:
The panels continue and zoom out of his penitentiary, to the entire planet, while he talks about the past:
You see, I like to REMEMBER the past because those were BETTER times than now. I mean, I'd rather live in the PAST than today, wouldn't you?
I mean, NOTHING'S ever certain anymore. Nothing's ever PREDICTABLE like it USED to be. These days...you just NEVER know who's going to die...
...and who's going to LIVE.It's half meta-commentary and half-foreshadowing. . . dare I say it -- perhaps there's a Rebirth in the works?
The genius is in the backdoor that Marv Wolfman wrote into the story. He wrote all of these opportunities for new stories, and ways to call back the hold. And when he gives Psycho-Pirate those words, he's commenting on the readers themselves -- whether they can accept change or not. Whether they can move on from the stories of the past and tolerate the new ones that don't acknowledge their favorites.
Have we?
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