Crisis on Infinite Earths

Rating:
Summary: Introducing the DC Universe, version 2.0
Review: Although I am a comic book collector, my interest in 'super-powered hero' books has never been that great. But after hearing the buzz about "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and how it changed the face of the continuity and direction of the DC universe, as well as the comic book industry itself, my aversion to hero funnybooks took a backseat to my curiosity. I also love the art of Alex Ross, and found his painting of the TPB's wraparound cover (pencilled by "Crisis" artist George Perez) to be almost as big a draw as the contents inside. There's over 500 different characters depicted in the rendering, quite possibly making it Perez and Ross' most painstaking and arduous undertaking.

Despite its purpose- to simplify the DC Universe and create the continuity as we (kind of) know it today- I found "Crisis" a challenge to read, and not only because it's almost 400 pages in length. There's nearly 50 years worth of heroes, villains, and adventures implied and depicted in this tome. If you're not familiar with most of the DC heroes or history prior to 1985, as I was, it'd be best for you to bone up before you dive in. I suggest cracking open a few "Who's Who in the DC Universe" back issues. In fact, it took writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez over four years to complete this work, most of that time spent simply researching all of the characters involved. From the most obscure scrubs to the heaviest hitters, from the lamest "morts" to the coolest fan-faves, just about every good guy & bad guy had some involvement in this adventure. There's also plenty of titanic battles, amazing rescues, selfless sacrifices, and plenty of silly "snappy" one-liners (my favorite was "Well cut my calories and call me skinny!")- everything you've come to expect from a classic four-color tale.

Although the "Crisis" TPB is somewhat pricey- about thirty dollars retail- the trade paperback is in full color, and printed on good-quality glossy stock. It's also 365 pages long, which translates into a lot of panels to view and countless word balloons to peruse. And as a gesture to fanboys of lesser means, it's much more affordable than its original limited-run hardcover counterpart. DC also restored & slightly enhanced 'Crisis', including perfect color separation, and even little bits of highlights & shadows that have different degrees of lightness & darkness. What a great way to make the characters look more three-dimensional (in the visual sense at least). Except for these slight alterations, however, the art looks pretty much same as it did when first released: mostly solid hues, the use of zip-a-tone for shading-the way comics were made before the advent of PhotoShop and computer-aided coloring.

I will now end my review by assigning you a totally meaningless and time-wasting activity: try to find Skeletor from "Masters of the Universe" in the "Crisis" TPB. He makes a one-panel cameo somewhere in the second half of the book. Happy hunting!

'Late!

Rating:
Summary: funfunfunfunfunfunfunfunfun
Review: you're probably here because you like mr. moore and probably if you like him you have intersts outside of a nine panel grid-well you get to put that BFA to good work and have a hoot of a time

Rating:
Summary: Depends, A LOT, on what you are looking for....
Review: First things first - if you are looking for comics with real literary merit, you can find them but not here. This is not "The Dark Knight Returns", or "Watchmen". In fact, it's sort of the ulitmate expression of the way comics were before those works - full of overly earnest guys and gals with stupid titles and silly costumes, doing their level best to save the universe.

And if you are a comic reader of today without much interest in how the books got to where they are now, move along - this is a complicated story, and not really that great on its own, self-contained merits.

But, if you have a real love of the DC Universe, both where it was in the past and where it is today, this book is pretty much essential, since it chages so much about the fundamentals of that universe. Not necessarily for the better - it seems to me that DC traded a multiverse concept that looked complicated, but was logical if you understood it, for a single universe that seemed simpler, but only got more confusing the closer you looked. Those issues, though, are somewhat beyond the scope of the book.

At its heart, this book is something of an ode to the rich history of the DC Universe, full of characters with decades of history, many of them long forgotten. Sure, a lot of them get destroyed in the processs, but I think it's done with an appreciation for all that was.

In the long run, this story is a bit of a mess, but it's an important mess, and quite a good looking one. There are better books you can get in the genre, and you should get those first. But if you are interested in comics history, you really ought to read this one eventually.

Rating:
Summary: The book that ruined my favorite comic
Review: This book (originally a 12-issue monthly limited series)is interesting in its effort to cram 60 years of D.C. Comics characters & history into one storyline. "Crisis" was an effort to 'streamline' the D.C. Universe by disposing of alternate Earths & unloved silly characters (like Krypto the Superdog). The story had some heat by killing off some major characters, but the worst thing about Crisis is it ruined the continuity of my favorite super-hero group. The Legion of Super-heroes was my favorite since childhood & I loved all the characters & follow the stories religiously. Then "Crisis" came along & destroyed much of established storylines. The Legion then shifted gears to a darker version with 'new' characters who we were now supposed to believe "had always been there due to the Crisis." After that failed attempt, they 're-booted' the whole Legion concept & started over from scratch. But they lost this long-time fan. I gave up on D.C. because they ruined the Legion & it's never been the same since. The Legion of Super-heroes had a long-term loyal following that was basically jettisoned after the crisis. Long Live the Original Legion!

Rating:
Summary: waste of time
Review: i bought this book to see how the flash(barry allen) dies.man not only was i disapionted in how the flash dies,the rest of the book was just as disapionting.prety much a book filled with heros no one cares about.plus the action jumps around too much.one min your reading about a group of heros doing battle,then it jumps to the next scene.this book never lived up to the hype!major stinker!!!

Rating:
Summary: You can have your reality and eat it too!
Review: I've always appreciated that old adage:"You can't have your cake and eat it too." Thing is, if one of the theories of alternate realities is true, you CAN have your cake AND eat it too! Because in one reality you have it and in the other you eat it! And that's why many of us sci-fi and comic book readers have always loved that concept. Think of H.Beam Piper's series of "Paratime" stories or Keith Laumer's "World's of the Imperium" stories. When comic book writers had that particular device to work with, the results were some of the most enjoyable reading I've ever had. I consider the seminal story in FLASH # 123(Silver Age,Sept.1961)by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella "Flash Of Two Worlds", where Barry Allen encountered Jay Garrick to be nothing short of pure genius! TRUELY INSPIRED, the idea that the heroes of the Golden Age comic books were inhabitants of an alternate reality. (Although I think they mislabeled Earth-1 and Earth-2. Earth-1 should have in all fairness been the original Golden Age world.) I looked forward every year to the annual team-up between the JSA and the JLA. The notion that there were different versions of our beloved heroes in parallel universes was purely exhilirating! I can't imagine what entered into the minds of Marv Wolfman and his minions to try and destroy that wondrous multiplicity of parallel earths. To this day, nearly 20 years after the events of COIE, IT JUST REALLY PISSES ME OFF!In fact it reminds me of the way the Soviets purged their history books every year, actually touching up old photographs, removing or restoring people in them by who was in favor with Stalin and who wasn't. George Orwell also wrote about that kind of revisionism in "1984". Who could have imagined that the editors of DC Comics would resort to such a device? I keep reading the justification for this was to clear up the confusion of all the multiple versions of their characters and restore a sense of "continuity". HUH? I was eleven years old when I read that original FLASH story and I wasn't confused! As for continuity? In a Comic Book Universe? Come on,GIMME A BREAK! Sure, I take my comic books seriouly, but by removing the alternate reality option from the DC Universe, you've taken away the best device writers have for explaining all those inevitable discontiniuties that will arise when you have scores of various writers and artists all chronicling the adventures of a particular character over the course of around 65 years. Anyway, as I see the DC Universe, it's still a mess with plenty of discontinuites and contradictions. And I know they are just dying to do alternate realities and parallel universes at DC: in the Silver Age they were called "Imaginery Stories", now they call them "Elseworlds". How do you classify these stories? Imaginary stories of an already imagined reality? SHEESH! When DC writers were allowed the parallel world option, it was a far more elegant solution than the so-called "Elseworlds" mess they seem to have imposed on themselves. Untie the hands of the DC staff and bring back all our beloved parallel Earths! UNDO the chaos that has existed since the COIE debacle that actually spawned far more confusion than it (supposedly) cleared up. Besides, as all of us lovers of the parallel Earths know: ALL THOSE SUPPOSEDLY ERADICATED WORLDS CONTINUE TO EXIST! If you follow the time-line back to the time of COIE, the time-stream split into at least two or more tributaries: the current DC Universe and those in which THOSE EVENTS NEVER TOOK PLACE! At least that's the case if the theory of alternate time-lines is true. SO COME DC GIVE US ACCESS TO THAT OTHER TIME-LINE, where the chaotic and ill-considered events of COIE never took place! AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, SINCE YOU BROUGHT BACK OLIVER QUEEN AND HAL JORDAN, YOU MIGHT AS WELL BRING BACK BARRY ALLEN!!!!!


Rating:
Summary: part of comics history, but not for the casual reader
Review: How is it possible to review this graphic novel objectively? People seem to either love it or hate it. And both with good reason. It was a story 50 years in the making that still has major ramifications, both positive and negative, for comics today.

Longtime comicbook readers feel that they need "continuity" in the stories they read. Continuity is the idea that a fictional universe, such as the one in which DC's superhero comics take place, operates with a certain logic and is internally consistent. By 1961, however, DC was having trouble with continuity. How could they explain that, twenty years ago, Batman and Robin were fighting Nazis and hanging out with FDR, while in the present they were fighting Commies and hanging out with JFK ... but Robin was still only a teenager???

Since DC's WW2 stories were too fondly remembered to just be ignored, the editors decided that they all took place in an alternate universe, dubbed Earth-2. The present-day DC heroes lived on Earth-1 and were a good deal younger than their Earth-2 counterparts, not having debuted until after WW2. Every year Earth-1's Justice League teamed up with Earth-2's Justice Society, whose Robin was an adult, whose Superman had grey hair, etc., etc.

By the early 1980s, DC decided that the multiplicity of Earths-- of Supermen, Batmen, and Wonder Women--was hurting the company's ability to attract new readers. The DC universes needed to be simplified into a single universe and duplicate characters eliminated. This move has remained controversial ever since, but I maintain that it was the right thing to do, because I only became a DC reader in the aftermath of CRISIS.

When I was growing up, my first knowledge of superheroes came through Saturday morning cartoons, namely Superfriends and Spider-Man. The first comic book I ever bought was a pre-Crisis JLA/JSA teamup. It was confusing as hell because it didn't fit into the template I had picked up from Superfriends: Who was this grown-up Robin? Why did Superman have grey hair? And just what was going on in the WW2 flashbacks? Then I realized that, over at Marvel Comics, Spider-Man was the same guy I saw on TV. I realized that if I bought a Marvel comic, Spider-Man would always be Peter Parker from the cartoons and not some geezer from "Earth-P." Marvel was still a young company, without all of DC's editorial baggage. And so I said, "Make Mine Marvel!"

CRISIS came and went without much notice from my pre-adolescent eyes. So what if they killed Supergirl? Her movie sucked. Adult Robin died? Hey, he was never on "Challenge of the Superfriends," so how important could he be? The good thing about CRISIS was that it swept DC's creative playing field clean. If John Byrne had never written Superman, Frank Miller never revised Batman, and George Perez never graced Wonder Woman, the Marvel zombies of the world would still dismiss these characters as naive throwbacks. It was these titles that made me sit up and notice DC. I became a fan of DC's iconic characters. I dug up that JLA/JSA crossover, reread it, enjoyed it, and even bought more back issues of the '70s Earth-1/Earth-2 teamups.

So in that sense, CRISIS was a success. DC's late '80s relaunches brought new readers to the company and redefined their characters for a new generation. But the editorial staff never really made explicit what had and hadn't changed in the new post-Crisis universe, so contradictions started creeping in. Some writers decided to ignore the Crisis altogether. And now, 20 years later, the DC universe looks more convoluted than it did back in 1961. That means that CRISIS failed in its goal of revising continuity. Rather, it wrecked continuity so badly that DC's creators threw out the concept altogether.

So people who hate CRISIS can blame people like me--Generation X babies brainwashed by too many TV channels--for why DC thought the Crisis was necessary. But now I look through my back issue collection and see stories like "The Freedom Fighters of Earth-X! The Crime Syndicate of Earth-3! The Marvel Family of Earth-S!" and can understand the excitement that those tales must have caused when they first appeared. CRISIS is the last, greatest, and by far the saddest of those classic stories.

If DC's heroes have any resonance in your memory, whether pre- or post-Crisis, buy this book, read it, love it or hate it, and then put it on your shelf knowing that it's a piece of pop culture history.

Rating:
Summary: Times change and characters grow
Review: Do you remember the 80's? Do you remember DC comics in the 80's? Nothing changed forever and nothing broke the status quo. Storylines spanned one or two issues with maybe a few sub plots spanning multiple issues. When the story arc came to an end everything was as before...

Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first major shake up of the DC universe it was the herald of new strategies for storyline development. Writers could at last permanently affect the characters within the DC universe. It was an event that closed the book on the fanciful heroes and villains of the gold and silver age of comics and opened the doors to the darker and grittier modern day heroes and villains.

Crisis on Infinite Earths came out and tested the boundaries of what the comic buying fans wanted from the DC universe. Crisis on Infinite Earths laid the ground work for the must read graphic novels and story arcs of the late 80's like the works of Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta and Killing joke), Frank Miller (The Dark Knight returns and Batman: Year One) and Grant Morrison (Arkham Asylum)

It allowed the darker side of 'reality' to creep into storylines. Heroes didn't need to be perfect all the time and villans could acutally be vile and do the unthinkable.

By todays standards the story seems tame but don't discount it. It is packed full DC universe lore and effectively sinches off the loose ends into a more reasonable DC setting. If you have read the comics of the era the sub pots within the Crisis on Infinite Earths will make more sense to you but don't let that hold you back.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was a major event and needs to be read to draw the connection between the comics of today with the comics of the past.

With the new season of the animated Justice league spotlighting more of the characters from this era Crisis on Infinite Earths will have more relevance.



Rating:
Summary: Depends, A LOT, on what you are looking for....
Review: So why did DC do this story? According to Marv Wolfman, it was an effort to make the books easier for readers to follow. Destroy all the various DC universes and just create one where all the characters live. Great idea right? Nope. From day one, this series was plauged with trying to cramp too many stories into one book and wrap up as many unfinished stories as they could. It gave me a headage just trying to keep up with the 12 different sub-plots going on each book. There were several characters like Supergirl who died in action....and many of the surviving characters had their names, origins, and powers either altered, changed, or compltedly revamped. In the end, only about five of the DC heroes emereged with their origins and their characters more or less intact; Superman,Batman,Wonder-Woman, Green Lantern, and the Flash. I guess you could say they were the only real survivors, the rest of the DC heroes were all new characters from the inside/out and they really were and still are bad ideas that make for poor reading.

Rating:
Summary: A great big mess, but I like it
Review: For a storyline that tore the ultra-complex DC Universe apart and streamlined it, Crisis On Infinite Earths is, in retrospect, an oddity in the DCU's overall history. It promised to fix the majority of the inconsistencies that had existed more or less comfortably in the DCU (as long as you didn't think about them too much). After 20 years or so, it appears to hold little relevance, however, as many of its "fixes" became undone or completely ignored, and many more contradictions have occured since. And even more so, did all of this really need to be done? I'm torn... honestly, I prefer inter-dimensional team-ups between Earths-1 and 2, but if not for COIE, then Kingdom Come wouldn't make much sense.

Even still, DC did the right thing by collecting it. It is certainly a classic story, and it was some ambitious and entertaining work for its time. I look at it more as a relic of the times than as gospel. Indeed, since its reprinting led to the publishing of the excellent Crisis On Multiple Earths volumes (which refreshed my memory of how much fun things used to be), I prefer to remain in the pre-Crisis years and view COIE as alternate history. Still, Wolfman does an admirable job of sorting through the various realities of the DCU and making some sense of them, even if his overall story is repetitive and is much longer than it needs to be. George Perez, while not my favorite artist, definitely does an amazing job of capturing the epic scope of the story. DC's getting Alex Ross and Perez to collaborate on the cover of the collection resulted in one of the most amazing pieces of comic art I've ever seen.

If the actual choice of reprinting COIE had any problems, it was definitely in the way DC marketed it. It was originally pushed on us as an expensive, slipcased, limited hardcover edition, and DC swore up and down that there would be no trade edition. Sure enough, along comes a trade at a fraction of the price about a year or so later. This one instance has negatively affected my opinion of DC's marketing practices ever since.