Crisis on Infinite Earths Deluxe Edition

Crisis On Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

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.

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