Crisis on Infinite Earths

Comic Info

Crisis on Infinite Earths #7

Reprints Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12 (April 1985-March 1986).  Something has been unleashed and antimatter is consuming the multiverse.  It is up to the heroes of the world to try to stop the collapsing multiverse and find themselves teamed with someone called the Monitor who has been watching them for years.  The Monitor’s ultimate enemy the Anti-Monitor desires to destroy all the universes and the Monitor himself.  As worlds fall, heroes and villains might find they have to work together if they have any hope of survival.

Written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez, Crisis on Infinite Earths was the DC Universe’s massive redux of their comic line.  The twelve issue maxi-series had immense effect on all of DC’s titles which continues to this day.  The series has been collected in a hardcover, trade paperback, and a Crisis on Infinite Earth:  The Absolute Edition.

For someone who reads Marvel Comics, the DC Universe is a big scary place…and the pre-Crisis world is even scarier.  This series was a means to take the dense world and streamline it for new readers and current readers…and this ended up being a dense series itself.

Crisis on Infinite Earths #8

The story is just loaded.  Not only does it keep twisting and turning with multiple direction (in a multiverse) and even if you flip the collection, you can see how loaded each page is with dialogue and text…it is far heavier than most comics.  In addition to all the text, the story continuously changes direction.  Normally that would be problem, but here it works.

I like that the series incorporates almost all of DC’s characters…past, present, and future.  The series has many first appearances Harbinger, Pariah, Dr. Light, and Lady Quark all appeared in the series and characters like Blue Beetle and Captain Marvel were solidified in the regular DC Universe.  There were a number of deaths including the Crime Syndicate of America, Dove, Aquagirl, Green Arrow (Earth-2), Huntress (Earth-2), Immortal Man (ironically), Kid Psycho, Kole, Lori Lemaris, the Losers, Mirror Master, Robin (Earth-2), Wonder Woman (Earth-1), and the biggest deaths Supergirl and Barry Allen’s Flash.  The Crisis also leads to Wally West becoming the Flash, a new Green Lantern Corps, and new Wildcat, Dr. Midnight, and Hourman for Infinity, Inc.

Alex Ross’ great presentation

The art is quite strong.  Perez just captures the essence of all of the characters.  With tons of pages with loaded with characters, it is fun to just look and identify the characters.  I still look at Perez’s character designs for Crisis on Infinite Earths as some of the definitive looks of these characters.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is a must for DC fans…it is a self-contained story (something that most massive series have forgotten) and any related DC stories just “add-on” to the total story.  I do recommend checking out the one-shot issue Legends of the DC Universe:  Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (February 1999) if you can and read it between issues #4 and #5.  Crisis on Infinite Earth is one of the more challenging DC reads and leads into other “Crisis” series like Zero Hour:  Crisis in Time (1994), Identity Crisis (2004), Infinite Crisis (2005), and Final Crisis (2008).