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dantastic 's review for:
Crisis On Infinite Earths Deluxe Edition
by George Pérez, Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway
Walls of antimatter are destroying the worlds of the multiverse and it's up to the superheroes of many earths to band stop them and their maker, the villainous Anti-Monitor!
I read a handful of issues of this miniseries over the years but never read it in its entirety. Imagine my delight when my mom got me this for Christmas despite me being "hard to buy for."
Crisis was created to get rid of the multitude of parallel earths and just have one DC earth in the name of simplification. In retrospect, I don't think kids had nearly as big of a problem with the multiverse as the adults. Anyway, the story had a lot of heavy lifting to do. How do you go about destroying universes, killing off characters, and telling a good story at the same time?
Fortunately, Marv Wolfman and George Perez were up for the task. Coming off their revolutionary run on New Teen Titans, Crisis was the assignment of a lifetime. While the story is hokey by today's standards, in 1985 it was pretty revolutionary. By the time the dust settled, Supergirl and the Flash were dead, along with a lot of other characters. Unlike today when heroes don't usually stay dead for longer than a year or two, those deaths stuck around for a while, over two decades in the case of Barry Allen.
George Perez was George Perez, the dynamo that still doesn't get the credit he deserves. Panel after panel is packed with characters, dozens at times, AND he stuck the deadlines. Not only that, the characters looked how they were supposed to look thanks to meticulous research.
The Monitor and the Anti-Monitor battling for the fate of the multiverse made for some tense moments. The heroes and villains go through the meat grinder and the multiverse was very nearly destroyed. Pretty heavy stuff for 1985. You know when Darkseid has to help out, the shit has really hit the fan.
I should also mention how coherent the story was. The last crossover of this magnitude I attempted to read, Final Crisis, was the dog's breakfast. This one was tightly plotted and made as much sense as a story featuring hundreds of people in costume punching things can. There were also some heartfelt moments, most notably Superman holding Supergirl's body and Wally West taking up the mantle of The Flash. With a couple more decades of reading under my belt, Crisis feels like an episode of Doctor Who or Star Trek with some Michael Moorcock thrown in.
Crisis was done in the name of simplifying the continuity of the DC universe and fully integrate the Quality, Fawcett, and Charlton heroes they acquired the previous couple decades into the fold. However, "simplifying" the continuity had some unforeseen repercussions. Firstly, it created a multitude of continuity issues of its own that would necessitate further tweaks every few years. Secondly, and much worse, it created the popular mass crossover storylines that encompass the entire company's books but are ultimately unsatisfying in the name of grabbing fat stacks of cash.
While I don't think Crisis on Infinite Earths stands the test of time as well as some books from the period, it does mark a transitional point in the DC Universe and much of the modern DCU starts here. 3.5 out of 5 stars, though it would have been a five if I'd reviewed it as an eight year old in 1985.
2019 Read: For some reason, I thought the impending birth of my son would be a good time to re-read Crisis. Instead of focusing on all the problems it caused and fun it eliminated from the DC universe, I intended on focusing on the story itself, the creation of a new universe from the ashes of thousands of old ones.
Thirty eight hours later, my son is about to be shot from my wife's loins like a cannonball, as I understand the birthing process, and I finished the story in a haze sometime early this morning.
Crisis is pretty fucking good if you like Bronze Age stories. Marv Wolfman had literally hundreds of characters to work into the mix and he did a fantastic job. The Anti-Monitor is a damn believable threat and the way the story unfolds is masterful. There is nothing I would call filler in this. The premise is worthy of a Doctor Who series finale. One godlike being is destroying universes and another godlike being is assembling a force of heroes and villains to oppose him.
Even with a premise like that, Crisis could have easily shat the bet without George Perez on the art. George Perez is the best artist of the Bronze Age and possibly of 1980 to the present. Every panel is crammed with characters and details and George doesn't skimp. Some panels have over a hundred individual characters in them.
Crisis reads like a loveletter to everything that came before at times. Wolfman and Perez work Anthro, Kamandi, Enemy Ace, and hundreds more characters into the mix, even to just show them in a panel or two. The character deaths that appear on screen are meaningful and powerful. THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE BROUGHT BARRY ALLEN BACK!
One of the things I loved is that Marv Wolfman didn't build the story around the usual suspects of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Superman gets more screen time than the other two but it's the Superman of Earth-2 that gets his moment in the sun. The Monitor recruits people like Blue Beetle for his initial team rather than Batman and it isn't Batman that saves the day, which seems appropriate since Batman is a detective and not Reed Richards.
Anyway, at the end of the day, this should be the measuring stick for blockbuster events and I shouldn't hold it responsible for all the imitators. I'll go back to my wife's side and get ready to catch the kid as he comes flying out of her uterus.
I did not give Crisis a fair shake on my last read. It's the grand daddy of them all and should be treated as such. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
I read a handful of issues of this miniseries over the years but never read it in its entirety. Imagine my delight when my mom got me this for Christmas despite me being "hard to buy for."
Crisis was created to get rid of the multitude of parallel earths and just have one DC earth in the name of simplification. In retrospect, I don't think kids had nearly as big of a problem with the multiverse as the adults. Anyway, the story had a lot of heavy lifting to do. How do you go about destroying universes, killing off characters, and telling a good story at the same time?
Fortunately, Marv Wolfman and George Perez were up for the task. Coming off their revolutionary run on New Teen Titans, Crisis was the assignment of a lifetime. While the story is hokey by today's standards, in 1985 it was pretty revolutionary. By the time the dust settled, Supergirl and the Flash were dead, along with a lot of other characters. Unlike today when heroes don't usually stay dead for longer than a year or two, those deaths stuck around for a while, over two decades in the case of Barry Allen.
George Perez was George Perez, the dynamo that still doesn't get the credit he deserves. Panel after panel is packed with characters, dozens at times, AND he stuck the deadlines. Not only that, the characters looked how they were supposed to look thanks to meticulous research.
The Monitor and the Anti-Monitor battling for the fate of the multiverse made for some tense moments. The heroes and villains go through the meat grinder and the multiverse was very nearly destroyed. Pretty heavy stuff for 1985. You know when Darkseid has to help out, the shit has really hit the fan.
I should also mention how coherent the story was. The last crossover of this magnitude I attempted to read, Final Crisis, was the dog's breakfast. This one was tightly plotted and made as much sense as a story featuring hundreds of people in costume punching things can. There were also some heartfelt moments, most notably Superman holding Supergirl's body and Wally West taking up the mantle of The Flash. With a couple more decades of reading under my belt, Crisis feels like an episode of Doctor Who or Star Trek with some Michael Moorcock thrown in.
Crisis was done in the name of simplifying the continuity of the DC universe and fully integrate the Quality, Fawcett, and Charlton heroes they acquired the previous couple decades into the fold. However, "simplifying" the continuity had some unforeseen repercussions. Firstly, it created a multitude of continuity issues of its own that would necessitate further tweaks every few years. Secondly, and much worse, it created the popular mass crossover storylines that encompass the entire company's books but are ultimately unsatisfying in the name of grabbing fat stacks of cash.
While I don't think Crisis on Infinite Earths stands the test of time as well as some books from the period, it does mark a transitional point in the DC Universe and much of the modern DCU starts here. 3.5 out of 5 stars, though it would have been a five if I'd reviewed it as an eight year old in 1985.
2019 Read: For some reason, I thought the impending birth of my son would be a good time to re-read Crisis. Instead of focusing on all the problems it caused and fun it eliminated from the DC universe, I intended on focusing on the story itself, the creation of a new universe from the ashes of thousands of old ones.
Thirty eight hours later, my son is about to be shot from my wife's loins like a cannonball, as I understand the birthing process, and I finished the story in a haze sometime early this morning.
Crisis is pretty fucking good if you like Bronze Age stories. Marv Wolfman had literally hundreds of characters to work into the mix and he did a fantastic job. The Anti-Monitor is a damn believable threat and the way the story unfolds is masterful. There is nothing I would call filler in this. The premise is worthy of a Doctor Who series finale. One godlike being is destroying universes and another godlike being is assembling a force of heroes and villains to oppose him.
Even with a premise like that, Crisis could have easily shat the bet without George Perez on the art. George Perez is the best artist of the Bronze Age and possibly of 1980 to the present. Every panel is crammed with characters and details and George doesn't skimp. Some panels have over a hundred individual characters in them.
Crisis reads like a loveletter to everything that came before at times. Wolfman and Perez work Anthro, Kamandi, Enemy Ace, and hundreds more characters into the mix, even to just show them in a panel or two. The character deaths that appear on screen are meaningful and powerful. THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE BROUGHT BARRY ALLEN BACK!
One of the things I loved is that Marv Wolfman didn't build the story around the usual suspects of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Superman gets more screen time than the other two but it's the Superman of Earth-2 that gets his moment in the sun. The Monitor recruits people like Blue Beetle for his initial team rather than Batman and it isn't Batman that saves the day, which seems appropriate since Batman is a detective and not Reed Richards.
Anyway, at the end of the day, this should be the measuring stick for blockbuster events and I shouldn't hold it responsible for all the imitators. I'll go back to my wife's side and get ready to catch the kid as he comes flying out of her uterus.
I did not give Crisis a fair shake on my last read. It's the grand daddy of them all and should be treated as such. 4.5 out of 5 stars.