Review:
With the recent releases of the multi-part Crisis on Infinite Earths animated films, the seminal universe-shaking crossover event from DC Comics is back in the popular culture. It's amazing to think that next year marks 40 years since the publication of the original 12-issue limited series that shook the DC universe and settled some very tangled continuity.
To mark the occasion, I have been recently reviewing some collections of the Silver Age stories from Justice League of America and other titles like the Flash and the Atom. Let's turn, at last, to a look at the actual Crisis on Infinite Earths story itself. My copy is from the year 2000, so about 15 years after the stories originally ran. Long enough that writer Marv Wolfman gives his own retrospective with a short introduction. He describes where the idea came from, and how it morphed into the now-classic series.
Worlds lived. Worlds died. Heroes lived. Heroes died. And the overall result was a much-needed simplification and pruning of DC's then-convoluted and complex world of characters. And it was no accident; it was one of the things Wolfman specifically set out to do - simplify the DC Universe enough that new readers would not be put off or scared away.
To get there, however, he had to pull into this massive story at least casual nods to all those heroes, Earths, continuity wrinkles. It was a huge, complex undertaking. It meant spending a few panels on the death of one Earth here, an ode to another soon-to-be-erased character there. Sometimes their involvement could only be handled by an appearance in a crowd scene.
Who better to team with, for the artistic realization, than his longtime partner George Perez. A man who, by all accounts, lives for exactly this kind of project. Author Mark Waid, years later in 2007, described Perez as "obsessively compelled to draw every single comics character ever. Ever."*
Even today, nearly 40 years later, the pages and panels produced by Perez in Crisis are striking, powerful and engaging. They demand lingering, taking the time to explore all the little touches and surprises and background additions - what we might today call Easter Eggs. There is no better way to honor characters past and fallen in this Crisis than to breathe in the power, the beauty and the affection of his art.
It was also pioneering work in using the visuals to carry the reader through the story. The encroaching whiteness of oblivion. The stacking of Earths. The tumbling together of thumbnail panels showing the reactions of dozens of characters in a small space. A dozen stacked page-wide thin horizontal panels. Perez shows his mastery of graphical storytelling on page after page after page.
The story itself is shocking enough. The Anti-Monitor is destroying whole worlds and whole universes, absorbing their power and energy and becoming ever stronger. Heroes from so many realms and Earths fight a losing battle, eventually reduced to five Earths in a limbo created by his arch-rival, the Monitor.
They battle through time and space, all the way back to the beginning of time. The final battle leaves the only people with memory of what existed before all trapped in a pocket universe, while the heroes, villains and people of the remaining Earth have survived, but with no memory of other worlds.
Along the way, though, so many heroes die. How shocking it is to read, in consecutive chapters, of the deaths of first Supergirl and then the Barry Allen Flash! Wolfman makes clear that this is not a simple plot device to set up a resurrection in a few pages - this is final! Yet, by his own admission in his intro to this volume, he did deliberately put in a back door, a story hook to bring them back.
Four decades later, this story still shines as a masterful tale. Wolfman achieves his ambitious goals; Perez gives some of his finest work in a storied career. It became the template for universe-shaking crossovers that followed in its wake, very few of which could live up to the quality and sheer audacity of Crisis on Infinite Earths.
* See his introduction to the collection The Brave and the Bold: Lords of Luck
Description:
This is the story that changed the DC Universe forever. A mysterious being known as the Anti-Monitor has begun a crusade across time to bring about the end of all existence. As alternate earths are systematically destroyed, the Monitor quickly assembles a team of super-heroes from across time and space to battle his counterpart and stop the destruction. DC's greatest heroes including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and Aquaman, assemble to stop the menace, but as they watch both the Flash and Supergirl die in battle, they begin to wonder if even all of the heroes in the world can stop this destructive force.
Collects: the complete 12-issue limited series
Authors: Marv Wolfman
Artists: George Perez
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Dec 1, 2000
Parental Rating: PG-13
ISBN: 978-1563897504
Pages: 364 pages
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