Blogging The Crisis #8

OK, this is a kickass cover. Flash has obviously been through a hell of a lot and he's not the kind of guy to just kill someone even if that someone is a douche like Psycho Pirate.

So, we know what's about to happen at some point in this issue. The fact that it starts off with Flash imprisoned in some kind of goo while Psycho Pirate stands below him and prattles on. Oh, this isn't gonna end well. Psycho Pirate is primarily concerned about the apparent death of the Anti-Monitor. Psycho Pirate has obviously read his share of comic books because he focuses on the word "apparent". He's scared to death and the irony hasn't escaped him.

Sure enough, Anti-Monitor shows up a couple of panels later and says, "Dude! What did you think? I was just gonna go away after a little thing like being disintegrated." He then puts on a shirt that says, "100% Badass" and he struts around the room. I'm paraphrasing a little.

Page 2 is all about Darkseid. He's used the awesome power of the planet Apokolips to hide the entire, freakin' world from the Anti-Monitor so he can strike from the shadows if necessary. Darkseid is one of my favorite villains and this is why. He's got godlike power but he knows when and where to use it most effectively.

One weird thing: Every word balloon of Darkseid's contains at least one misplaced set of quotation marks. Examples:

"I have diverted all our energy to "cloak" our presence."

"Remember that "lesson" Desaad."

Um, just Cloak and Lesson would have worked fine. What sort of euphemism is Darkseid using, here. Wait. No, I don't want to know. The number of weird quotes makes me wonder if Wolfman isn't making some sort of dig at Kirby, here. Anyone have an idea what gives?

Anyway, next up is a page devoted to The Guardians of the Universe. I love these guys. Even when they walk around bickering amongst themselves it's cool.

Following the Guardians in the One-Page-Per-Group Parade is the Legion of Super-Heroes, another of my favorites. This brings up a question though: How, exactly, is the Crisis affecting Earth-1 in the 30th Century as well as in the 20th? I know, I know: Multiversal shifts and powers beyond the ken of mortals, etc. etc. but it still freaks me out a little.

Speaking of Earth-1 in the 20th Century, we find Firestorm brooding atop a water tower as Firehawk searches for him. When she finds him she doesn't greet the news that Killer Frost is "hot" for him as a good thing. Firestorm smoothes that over by saying, "Hey, she was mind-controlled, Baby!". However he nearly blows it with his next comment. Safety tip: When you've just talked someone down from being jealous at you, informing her that you're "getting a message from The Vixen" is not the best course of action.

Cut to what's left of the Justice League Sattellite. Vixen has called Firestorm in along with a seriously weird collection of people including The Atom and T. O. Morrow to figure out what's wrong with the Red Tornado. Well, it turns out that the Red Tornado has been turned into a Red Thermonuclear Device by the Anti-Monitor and it blows the crap out of the JLA Sattelite. Everybody aboard escapes relatively unharmed although Blue Devil (I told you it was a weird bunch of people) ends up chasing Morrow who is whisked away by Brainiac. Blue Devil stumbles into another random space warp and falls into Omega Men #31. I suppose it could have been worse. He could have landed in X-Men #141.

Now the real action starts. Anti-Monitor in his new stylin' armor is overseeing the construction of an antimatter cannon that will destroy the remaining five universes. Oh, noes!

I have a bit of a problem with the opening sentence, however:

The Antimatter Universe stretches on for thirty-two zillion light years.

Zillion.

Yeah, that's not a real number, guys.

The gun is being assembled on Qward where the Flash is imprisoned and where Psycho Pirate is, well, not doing much at this point. Flash frees himself by slowly increasing his inner vibrations (badass!) and he leaps down and punches out everyone else in the room in three nanoseconds. He would have done it in one but he had to get lunch.

Psycho Pirate pees his pants and asks Flash not to kill him. Flash says, "OK". I guess we don't quite get the scene from the cover but it's close. Instead, Flash comes up with a wacko plan to mess up Anti-Monitor and his little cannon, too! He grabs Psycho Pirate and runs around the room at super speed so he can use his emotion-control powers to make the Thunderers of Qward really pissed off at Anti-Monitor. It works! They all zap A-M and Flash runs off to destroy the cannon. He does so by doing the thing he always does: Run fast as hell. Here's the aftermath:


Anti-Monitor would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling Earthlings!

The last two pages consist of the Challengers of the Unknown (recently used to great effect in The Brave and the Bold) picking up on something weird which turns out to be The Spectre screaming. When that dude screams, it's kinda hard to ignore.

This was a good issue without a lot of filler. This series really shines when it focuses on a single, big action per issue. Flash's destruction of the cannon was well done and, just like Supergirl's, his sacrifice had meaning.

Next Issue: Best. Cover. Ever.

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Previous Installments:
Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Blogging The Crisis #7

This is one of those covers that frequently makes "Best Covers of All Time" lists. It is powerful and it conveys the stakes the heroes (and villains) are fighting for.

The Death of Supergirl part is well done and I'll get to that later. However, the first part of this issue is all exposition all the time and it makes me tired. Therefore, I'll try to shorthand it for you.

The issue opens with Lyla "DON'T call me Harbinger" and Alex Luthor hanging out on a floating rock in a place "between the universes". Lyla mentions how calm she feels which is Pariah's cue to show up and bring everybody down:

"Boo, hoo, hoo," Pariah says. "Everything is bad. It's all my fault. I can't control where I go. I swallowed my gum."

Then Lyla says, "Take us to Earth, Pariah." She's asking him to control where he goes which he mentioned earlier was impossible. So, he takes them to Earth. Thus controlling where he goes. Buh? Also, she didn't say which Earth but it turns out that they're going to all of them. Well, all of the ones that are left.

Quick runthrough of the "Assemble The Heroes" scenes:

Earth-S: Captain Marvel and his Extended Family show up just in time to watch Dr. Sivana disappear. He's headed for Brainiac's ship. Then there's another one of those "I call bullshit" moments. Changeling (or Beast Boy or whatever he was known as then) is shocked, SHOCKED! to discover a talking tiger. Um, Changeling can fucking turn into a talking tiger! Maybe Tawky Tawny's smoking jacket threw him off.

Earth-2: Yolanda Montez mopes about in her brand-new Wildcat costume, translates her thoughts for herself, and otherwise does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Earth-X: God, I hate Earth-X! The whole Freedom Fighters team pisses me off. Here's a bit of dialogue from The Human Bomb (italics theirs):

I can almost see the other Earths becoming clearer in the sky. And even a Human Bomb doesn't want to see the explosion that will occur if they all appear at once.

Other Earths: Other stuff.

The whole point of all this Earth hopping was to get one representative of each Earth to go stand on a big, floating rock (pictured, left). Lyla sure loves those floating rocks. You'll see more of them later. They're all over the place!

So, who have we got on that rock? Why was each of these people chosen? It seems that the primary criterion was that each person be the Superman of that world:

Lady Quark: Very powerful. Only survivor of her entire universe. Makes sense.

Superman of Earth-1: Duh!

Uncle Sam: Urge. To. Kill. Rising.

Captain Marvel: Again, 'Duh!'.

Superman of Earth-2: This makes it a little Kal-El heavy but I'll allow it just for the "ZOMG! Two Supermanz!" factor.

Blue Beetle: There are definitely more powerful heroes on Earth-4 but Ted spends most of his time at the Gathering of Survivors just wanting Pariah and the Gang to get on with it. Ted speaks for the reader in this scene so I'll allow his presence.

Then Lyla steps up and delivers one of the biggest infodumps in the history of literature. For being a ton of exposition, though, it's pretty well done and it kept my interest. Short version: There was this bad Oan (the Oans are the dudes who created the Green Lantern Corps) named Krona who was all full of hubris and pretty much led to the creation of the Antimatter Universe. What a douche!

Next, Pariah proves that he is unmatched in Being a Downer by telling a story about himself which is pretty much THE SAME STORY LYLA JUST TOLD ABOUT KRONUS! Hubris, soulless science, woke up the Anti-Monitor, blah, blah, blah.

There's some bickering and posturing and a brief "Who's life is worse" contest (Pariah wins) before everyone agrees to go back to his or her respective Earth and recruit a bunch of people to attack the Anti-Monitor's fortress. Which leads to this panel:



Dang. That's pretty cool. Also, floating rocks!

Everybody on Strike Force Badass (my name) flies into the Antimatter universe (which is not easy). There's a big, weird castle or something and almost everybody has trouble affecting the scary rock creatures who attack them. Old, fat Superman gets hit so hard he bleeds which kinda freaks him out.

The Kryptonians are the only ones powerful enough to get to the heart of the fortress with some help from Dr. Light (no, not the rapist, the mean Japanese woman). Then we have pages and pages and pages of fighting. It's all pretty cool but it's also there to lead up to this moment:



Supergirl sees that the only way to end this is to hit the Anti-Monitor with everything she's got. Literally. It's too bad that you have to slog through all of the exposition of the first half of this issue to get to one of the most moving and well-done character deaths in all of comics. But, there you go. You take the good with the bad.

So, the Anti-Monitor doesn't die but he's really, really hurt. Kara pretty much disintegrated him. Unfortunately for her, Anti-Monitor returned the favor. Everybody cries and/or swears vengeance and then there's one of those weird comic-book funerals where half the people are in wacky costumes.

This issue had more good than bad, for sure. The action scenes were HUGE and that's the stuff Wolfman and and Pérez excel at. Also, the last panel where Superman flies into space with Supergirl's cape-enshrouded body is one of the saddest things anyone has ever drawn.

Next week: Flash kicks ass!

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Previous Installments:
Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

Blogging The Crisis #6

The cover is good for being an extreme close-up of a really ugly dude. I prefer the covers that have a million heroes on them but I can see how they'd want to vary the images a bit. Also, even George Pérez has got to get tired of drawing all those little, tiny people. Wait, who am I kidding? George Pérez never gets tired of drawing that stuff.

The issue starts out with a very cool scene in which the Anti-Monitor (that's the dude on the cover who has been referred to as The Monitor up 'til now but that's too confusing) ramps Psycho Pirate's power up so he can send every single person on the three remaining Earths into advanaced states of suicidal terror. The last five panels on page 2 are particularly well-done. The three worlds are reflected in Psycho Pirate's eyes and you can see the mixture of awe and fear in his face as he realizes what sort of god he's become.

Next, the Monitor's sattelite is attacked by big, pink lightning bolts and a bunch of heroes are trapped inside as it tears itself apart. I mentioned Marv Wolfman's flashes of odd dialogue before but this issue seems to consist of a long string of non-sequiturs. For example:

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: Katana...Winged One -- Do you need my help?

KATANA: I would not turn down your help, J'onn J'onzz!

AZRAEL: Do not worry, Martian -- I will save that outsider.

HARBINGER: The Martian Manhunter is right...The Monitor's ship can't survive.

Buh?

Right about what, now? How did Harbinger get MM's opinion on the structural integrity of the ship from his request to help a couple of people? I looked very closely and I couldn't find any other words by Martian Manunter so that's what Harbinger must have been responding to. Wacky.

So, Alex Luthor (the young, Pip-The-Troll-looking one) tries to use his ill-defined matter/antimatter status to umm...save every one by er, making some computations and, I don't know, hooking himself up to Cerebro or something. Wolfman is saved from having to explain exactly what the hell Alex is up to because Harbinger shoots him in the back of the head with a big, pink lightning bolt.

What is with the big, pink lightning bolts?

She does this in order to (attempt to) sacrifice herself and destroy the whole ship. BOOOOOM!!!! The explosion takes up the lower half of the page and looks like the death of the Death Star. Oh, and Pariah's martyr-sense must have gone off as Harbinger was deciding to sacrifice herself to save everyone else. That would only make him the second most put-upon person in the room so he had to "teleport to somewhere more perilous". Ass.

I'm not sure how blowing the hell out of the ship everyone was on saved them but it apparently worked because we see all of them later on.

Meanwhile, The Atom (no, the other one. No, the other other one. The one named "Al". That's right) is tending to Wildcat who lost a fight with a building and is all smashed up and lying in bed. It's an emotional scene but the sight of Wildcat's little cat nose and whiskers pushed up on his forehead kind of kills the somber mood.

Yolanda Montez is lurking outside the window, watching Atom and Wildcat. She helpfully translates the Spanish words she thinks into English for any telepaths who are listening in. Seriously, the words are in thought balloons and we're supposed to believe that she thinks things like, "We could have been un gran equipo...a great team, Ted."

Next up, Lex Luthor, the one from Earth-1 back in his green-and-purple armor days, is getting his ass kicked by Superman when Brainiac teleports him into his big ship which looks like Brainiac's head but with tentacles. Man, that robot dude is into some freaky shit.

Then a whole bunch of stuff happens which I'm pretty much gonna gloss over because it all shows how freaked out and pissed off everybody is on the three Earths which are being controlled by Psycho Pirate. Of course, with all the crap that's happening around them, I don't think Psychie had to give them much of a push.

The worst effect of the Piratical emotion manipulation is that the heroes of those Earths believe that the ones who have come in from outside are responsible for the chaos. There's a pretty good scene where Captain Marvel (no, the other one. The one with the red suit and lightning bolt. That's right.) and Supergirl duke it out because he's all mad and stuff.

Before that, there was a crappy scene featuring the Freedom Fighters doing the same thing. Shit, I hate these guys. I can't explain my irrational dislike of the Freedom Fighters but even without that I think they were the wrong choice for this scene. Uncle Sam is a plain-talkin', cornpone kinda guy which makes lines like the following fall flat:

"We got us a menace to fight and if we've got to tear apart those costumed outworlders to do it -- then by golly we will!"

"By golly"?

"We got us"?

Oh, Christ. Seriously. That sort of language doesn't convey the proper negative emotions to me. The fact that Phantom Lady is standing there looking pornier than ever fills me with even more rage. And don't get me started on Doll Man. Argh!

Brainiac picks up some more bad guys. The madness continues. Uncle Sam breaks his hand on Steel's face (haw, haw!). Y'know, the usual. Until Harbinger does something cosmic and brings three more Earths into the (relative) safety zone. She and Alex Luthor end up on a floating rock in space and after they talk for a while, Alex utters the funniest line in the whole series, so far.

"How do we get off this floating rock?

Comedy. Freaking. Gold.

We end the issue with Yolanda Montez putting on a costume and becoming the new, improved Wildcat. Unfortunately, she does it with the following bit of monologue:

"You do not...cannot know how much you mean to me Ted. How much you inspired me. And you cannot know about my powers and what I can do. This is for you, Ted Grant. I'm no longer just Yolanda Montez, reporter. From now on, Ted Grant -- I'M THE NEW WILDCAT!!"

Did she really have to bring up Ted's name three times? OK, we get it. You're having an imaginary talk with Ted. Maybe he's the voice in her head like Firestorm had that scientist guy and she has to keep saying his name or he'll curse her.

The weird dialogue plus the "everyone is pissed off and suicidal" repetitions made this my least favorite issue so far. It had its moments but as a whole it was unsatisfying. However, Supergirl dies next issue so that'll be something to look forward to.

'Til next time, true believers!


---------------
Previous Installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

Blogging The Crisis #5

Here we go! This is crossover mania! This is a filet of crossover on a bed of crossover with a crossover salad on the side!

The cover with its split-screen faces down the center is indicative of the events and theme of this issue. This one contains all the wacky stuff a crossover can do and then some. Let's go:

Issue #4 ended with a multiverse-encompassing darkness and issue #5 begins with the same thing. Big Bad Mystery Guy is talking to Psycho Pirate. Well, he's actually telling Psycho Pirate to shut up for, like, the millionth time. Red Tornado is there, too but we still have no clue why.

Next up we have a scene with no fewer than three "I'm surprised by your arrival" takes. Pariah kneels over the recently corpsified Monitor. Lyla-who-is-no-longer-Harbinger surprises Pariah and freaks out because she killed the Monitor. Then they are both surprised to hear the Monitor's voice but (oh, Snap!) it's just a recorded message on a (small "m") monitor.

Monitor-on-the-monitor says, "Lyla, I totally knew you were gonna kill me and I worked it out so it actually helps the multiverse. So, good on ya". Monitor signs off and Lyla has a Who Can Cry More? contest with Pariah. The bawling doesn't last long, though, because the new, improved, fully-grown Luthor baby appears to provide the remaining exposition.



There's some more stuff concerning Big Bad Guy in the darkness with Psycho Pirate and The Flash which doesn't do much to further the story but that's OK because the next three pages are what other comic pages want to be when they grow up.

Earth-1 has been merged with Earth-2 and everything's gone completely crackerdog! In a single page Pérez and Wolfman show us a couple of dinosaurs, aircraft from every era they could think of (past and future), cavemen, native americans (complete with teepee) and some Mayflower pilgrims on the roof of an apartment building. Also, any panel with Sinestro, Sgt. Rock, and Nuklon in it makes it onto my top-ten list.

But wait! There's more!

The next two pages contain the image most people think of when "Pérez" and "Crisis" are talked about: (click to embiggen)



That's a whole mess o' superheroes. Others have spent entire websites listing said heroes. I'll just say that it looks like the weirdest cocktail party ever. Pérez excels at this stuff. I mean, dang! Look at that! Everybody's distinct and doing something to set them apart from their fellow heroes. The stretchy types are stretching and at least a few of the ground-based ones are probably thinking "Man, I hope that horse doesn't crap on me!"

I want to bring your attention to one detail:



Sorry for the terrible reproduction. It's a shot of old, fat Superman holding Dawnstar. Um, what's going on, there? What were they up to when they got teleported to the Monitor's ship? I'm not pointing any fingers but the last time we saw Superman he was talking about how he probably wouldn't see his wife ever again. Damn, Supes! The bed ain't even cold.

Next we see a few more images of Earths Gone Wild followed by Katana once again relegated to the role of translator for the new, mean Dr. Light.

I've decided that Sgt. Rock improves anything he shows up in. There's a panel at the end of page 10 with Rock and Swamp Thing which makes me very giggly. Rock! Swamp Thing! Oh, man! That is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to see.

A bunch of other crap happens to show how screwed up things are including the Green Lantern Corps getting obliterated and Superman punching out a saber-toothed tiger. The tiger fight didn't make it into this post from Chris Sims but the ones that are there will thrill and amaze you.

Anthro's annoying family shows up in Stately Wayne Manor, a dinosaur (or something) gets its ass kicked in Russia and then we finally see what Bad Guy is doing with (or, more to the point to) the Red Tornado. Sort of. He's unleashing all his tornado-ness at once and letting it loose on the combined Earths.

The heroes assemble and stop the storm at which point everyone says, "OK. We're in. We'll help save the worlds". As if all the shit that happened up to that point wasn't enough to convince them.

Finally, the Bad Guy shows up:



Buh? I thought the good guy was the Monitor. OK, Wolfman, I'll roll with it. Whatevs.

That would have made an excellent final page wouldn't it? Yes, yes, it would.

Instead we get the Freedom Fighters on the last page. I hate these guys! I just can't take Doll Man and Uncle Sam seriously. And Phantom Lady's costume is obviously held on by sheer force of will.



That's her superpower, right?

This issue's dialogue and captions were often overlapping and redundant but that was more than made up for by the awesomeness of the space & time-warp effects. The reveal of the (anti?) Monitor was a bit anti-climactic but that's probably because I knew it was coming. Man, that dude sure is ugly.

No talking apes in this issue but there were plenty of cavemen gaping at biplanes so that's a mitigating factor. This was a fun issue which moved the story along nicely and left us with a good setup for whatever is to come next.

Previous Installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Blogging the Crisis #4

So, the cover seems to indicate that the Monitor is gonna die in this issue. Of course, the Monitor himself also told us that along with the ending of issue #3. Compositionally, this is a great cover. Cool setting, lots of circles and excellent use of space. I especially like the arrow pointing at the corpse just in case we'd forgotten which one the Monitor was.

The "Next Issue" tag at the end of issue #3 said:

"This is the BIG ONE! The End Of The Multiverse!"

Nuh, uh! This is only the 4th issue. If everything's over, we're gonna have the most boring eight-issue run since the Official Handbook of the Desks of the Marvel Universe. You can't fool me, Wolfman!

The issue begins with Supergirl (now with totally-awesome headband action!).



Supergirl pays a visit to Batgirl on the top of a skyscraper 'cause that's how superheroes roll. Batgirl gets all mopey about the end of the world and Supergirl darts off to pull a pilot from a plane that's breaking up in mid air.

We then get a few panels of John Constantine talking to Steve Dayton. Dayton became Mento just to impress a chick. And it worked! He also adopted Changeling, the green, shapeshifting dude from the Teen Titans. When you're the fifth richest man in the world you can get away with that crap.

Back to Constantine. Dude! What is with that suit? It's 3-M green! Roadsign green! I'm used to the chain-smoking, trenchcoat-wearing Vertigo version of Constantine. At least this one has a cigarette:



Both of those scene-lets are lead-ins to a shot of Pariah looking like Bea Arthur and moaning yet again about how much his life sucks. Turns out his life is also endless. He shows up on an Earth which was made up just for Crisis as far as I can tell. Um, as opposed to the other ones which are real or something. Sigh.

Anyway, Pariah not only gets to watch another world die around him, this time the three remaining superheroes on the planet try to kill him. Pariah can't be killed 'cause that'd end his suffering. The cosmic sad sack finally does something kinda useful when he saves Lady Quark just before her Earth (with her family on it) is obliterated. Man, there sure are a lot of "last sons and daughters" of various planets running around. Good thing they all have superpowers.

The next couple of pages are devoted to Kimiyo Hoshi, the meanest astronomer ever. The Monitor rewards her antisocial behavior by turning her into the new Dr. Light. Complete with a costume exactly like the previous Dr. Light's:



The Monitor's got bigger things to worry about than designing new outfits, man! He's got a multiverse to save. At least he uses the best sound effect I've ever seen:

YAAGGGGGGGG!

That, my friends, is the sound of someone becoming Dr. Light.

Then a bunch of nearly comprehensible stuff happens:

• The still-faceless bad guy kidnaps Red Tornado for some damn reason.



• Firestorm and Killer Frost go back to Arthurian times, freak out Vandal Savage and are nearly decapitated by the Shining Knight. Oh, for fun!



• All the tuning-fork things get attacked by the combined might of all the shadow demons.



• The new Dr. Light hurls invective at everyone in sight. Katana gets my favorite line of the issue: "Has everyone forgotten I speak Japanese?" Man, Katana can't catch a break. First, her sword is useless against impending Armageddon now she's upstaged by Superman who can not only fly, he swoops in and finishes translating before she can say another word. I bet his accent's better than hers, too.

Next, the Monitor teleports Pariah to his swanky extradimensional pad. Pariah then tells us about his tragedy-magnet powers, like, three more times. We know! Let it go, dude!

Then there's a really nice two-page spread where no new information is imparted but it's really pretty and it gives us an idea of the scale of the crisis. Literally everything is getting messed up. No one is having a good day and we're all doomed.

Then BOOM! Harbinger whacks the Monitor. She zaps him with an energy bolt and he blows up and falls a million stories. Just like The Emperor when Darth Vader tossed him down that shaft (what the hell was that doing in his throne room, anyway?).

Pariah's all, "Damn! I did not need to see that!"

He freaks out just as everything goes white and the next three pages show us many, many images of the multiverse getting eaten by the antimatter.

THE END

Huh. I guess the tagline at the end of #3 wasn't kidding. The next eight issues will just be a couple of guys remembering how cool it was back where there were things like "time" and "width".

Issue #4 felt like it was trying to do too many things simultaneously. It was all over the place and, therefore, didn't have the impact that each of the previous issues did. It was fun to read but it loses several points for a complete lack of talking apes.

'Til next week, true believers, make mine Marv Wolfman!

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Previous Installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Blogging the Crisis #3

This is the cover I most associate with Crisis on Infinite Earths. It really sums up all the chaos that's going on throughout the multiverse.

We begin with the Luthor kid who has grown to adolescense in just a few days. Oh, and the Monitor is keeping him in a big glass sphere. Fortunately, Luthor Jr. has developed cognitively as well as physically so he can speak English (or whatever language they speak in Monitorland). Harbinger reminds us via internal monologue that she's working for the Monitor's adversary and then she goes off to report to said bad guy.

Harbinger meets Psycho Pirate who was obviously picked on a lot when he was in school. I love it whenever anyone calls Psycho Pirate by his villain name because it always sounds like a rude insult. "Nice going, Psycho Pirate!"

Unnamed bad guy shows himself to be as tired of Psycho Pirate as the rest of us are. He also shows himself to be a bit off the mark when he claims to know what the Monitor is up to "as he thinks it". Um, so, are you aware he knows about the Harbinger-bot who's been programmed to kill him? Huh? Huh?

Bad Guy apparently doesn't have access to comic books in the negaverse, either, because he says, "The dead can present no threat". Dude, the dead show up and threaten things all the time. Oh, well, your funeral.

Now I begin to show my ignorance of DC history. The Flash was exiled to the future? Fair enough. I was just unaware of that. Anyway, Flash is living in Central City in the future of Earth-1 and things are breaking up there, too. He relaxes his internal vibrations to return himself to his proper time. This is why I love the Flash. Hell, this is why I love comics. The Flash is living in the future because he has changed his vibrational patterns!!!! Damn. That is awesome. All he has to do is stop the "future vibrations" and he snaps back to the 20th century.

Flash shows up in the middle of The Teen Titans and The Outsiders who are trying to keep everything from being erased. Here's another scene which reminds me that I was not reading DC in '85. I don't recognize several of the combatants. I know Nightwing, Changeling and Metamorpho, of course but Katana, Kole and Captain Sideburns (Jericho) must not have stuck around much past the turn of the decade.

I'm serious about the sideburns:

I mean, dang! Look at those things. He's like Super-Lemmy Kilmister. Even the animated Teen Titans version has them:



The assembled heroes are trying to save people and keep the world from crumbling while explaining their powers and relationsips in as much detail as possible. Oh, and we meet another hero I'd never heard of, Halo, who seems to have stolen Lightspeed's schtick. Also, Black Lightning saves an elderly couple. Actually, he may have blown them up. The events of that last panel are kind of unclear.

Superman and Batman show up just in time to see the Flash die. Again. This time his component atoms are spread out until he disappears in a bolt of lightning. Sucks to be Flash.

Quick one-page interlude of Brainiac (the big robot one) observing the encroaching anti-matter. He speeds off to pick up Lex Luthor. Yeah, that's gonna end well.

Now we move into the meat of the story. This is the kind of stuff I was hoping to see! The crazy-quilt cover has not misled me. Wolfman has thrown every World War II comic together in order to dump Geo Force, Dr. Polaris and Blue Beetle into the middle of it. The Monitor has placed one of his ginormous tuning forks on a Markovian battlefield. So, there's Nazis and superheroes and soldiers and tanks and Eastern European peasants all over the place! Hijinks ensue.

I know my way around Sgt. Rock but The Losers and Haunted Tank are not in my active comics vocabulary. I learned most of what I needed to know about them from the clunky exposition, though. This scene is awesome. It's a veritable cliche gumbo what with the WWII-isms and the superhero declarations not to mention Dr. Polaris practically wringing his hands with maniacal glee. It all ends tragically when one of the squads gets eaten by the anti-matter. Guess which one:

"They were called The Losers. But they were winners to the end."

Um, no they weren't. They got eaten by anti-matter. Also, the War Office had obviously run out of tough-guy nicknames when The Losers joined up. Gunner, Sarge, Navajo Ace and Captain Storm are descriptions, not monikers.

The scene ends with another "SKRAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" sound effect (#2 so far) and we move on to the only talking-ape appearance of the issue. Not a good trend. Not only that, King Solovar dies! Damn you all to hell!!

Next a bunch of superheroes show up in the old west. Jonah Hex is there along with Bat Lash, Nighthawk, Scalphunter and Johnny Thunder. It's a shorter version of the WWII scene above with an even weirder collection of superheroes. The Monitor really should have done a little more research before sending John Stewart, Cyborg, Psimon and Firebrand to the Wild West. It ends the same as the previous timewarp, though, with nearly everyone getting eaten by anti-matter. #3 isn't the happiest of issues.

Continuing with the "not happy" vibe, the Legion of Super-Heroes gets its ass kicked by the anti-matter. Namely, Kid Psycho gets anti-matterized. Maybe "Kid Psycho" has different connotations in the 30th century but that doesn't seem like a particularly heroic name to me. But then, I liked Dazzler's '80s costume so who am I to talk?

We end the story with the Monitor watching everything get zapped out of existence only to have Harbinger tell him it's time to DIE! Uh, oh.

#3 is my favorite issue so far. Wolfman and Pérez outdo themselves by cramming an absurd number of characters into it. There's even room for the story to advance! The dialogue is pretty silly throughout but it does its job. Crossovers like this suffer from self-introduction syndrome worse than any other type of comic and this issue has it in spades. Still, it's a lot of fun and it ends on a classic cliffhanger. Although, we know Monitor won't get out of it, the ending doesn't lose its punch.

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Previous Installments: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2

Blogging The Crisis #2

I really liked the first issue's cover but this one is confusing. It's hard to see what's going on and the perspective is weird. Still, it's got that cool Statue of Liberty way in the background and an ape in the foreground. "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"


On to the issue:

First off, we take a trip to "The Dawn of Man" to meet Anthro. I suppose his brothers "Psych" and "Poli-sci" are back at the village. The Dawn of Man bit is for real. Anthro's dawning all over the place. He gets three full pages all to himself which, given how much stuff Wolfman and Pérez had to cram into this issue, is a lot of real estate.

Anthro is the first Cro-Magnon and he's surrounded by Neanderthals. I know how he feels; I used to work for the government.

Anthro tries to stop a stampeding herd of wooly mammoths from squashing his village. Y'know like the anti-matter is doing to EVERYTHING ELSE! Man, where do I come up with these parallells? Genuis! Anyway, hijinks ensue. It's a regular prehistoric sitcom even after Anthro gets a vision of 30th-century Metropolis.

Which is where the mammoths end up. That's right, due to the multiversal freakout, a herd of raging proto-pachyderms goes tearing through the Legion of Super-Heroes HQ. This is all a setup for Brainiac-5 to use his enormous thinkin' powers to determine that everything's gonna go away real soon.

Cut to Batman interrupting one of The Joker's lamest schemes ever. Joker has killed this rich dude in order to get the rights to colorized silent movies. However, the caption just before this revelation states clearly that the dead dude has heirs. Maybe Joker's gonna kill them, too. He is totally batshit.

Anyway, Batman has enormous thinkin' powers along with enormous ass-kickin' powers. Before he can completely kick The Joker's ass, though, The Flash shows up and dies horribly. He just withers and turns to dust. "WTF?" says Batman. This scene is seriously creepy and Pérez really sells it.

Pérez is not just a good artist, he's one of the best visual storytellers in the business. This whole Joker-Batman-Flash sequence is a masterpiece of panel arrangement. Things are placed in an unconventional manner but it all works so well that I didn't notice any of it until my second readthrough. Pages 13 & 18 of this issue should be included in textbooks about sequential art.

The pace picks up at this point, which is saying something. The fifteen super-beings recruited by the Monitor in issue #1 are sent around the multiverse to protect these big-ass tuning forks which are supposed to mitigate the anti-matter energies. Man, I love comic-book physics!

The Guardians of the Galaxy get their collective ass handed to them by the still-unseen bad guy and Kal-El Baby Luthor (remember the one from Earth-3 in the first issue?) starts growing faster than a soap-opera baby. I don't have a good scan of the Luthorbaby so I'll substitue this image of Pip the Troll.

He looks just like that. Trust me. Cigar and everything.

Next Pariah shows up near the Atlantis tuning fork and proves that his only powers are super-uselessness and ultra-buzzkilling. Psycho Pirate nearly takes Pariah out by making him happy because joy is Pariah's kryptonite. Before Psycho Pirate can finish the job he is teleported into the presence of the Big Bad. It's really dark where the evil dude lives. Also, he can take people's faces away. Don't mess with him.

The issue wraps up with a stunning final page which contains voiceovers from both of Harbinger's controlling forces.

Another good issue. The story moved forward quickly and the art is some of the best I've seen in any comic. There was exactly the right amount of talking-ape content. There was even a sound effect that went "SKRAAAAAAAAA!" How cool is that?

See you in a week with Issue #3 and there better be apes!

Previous Installments: Introduction, Part 1

Blogging The Crisis #1

First off, Crisis #1 has a hell of a cover. Click on the image above to see an enlarged version. That's awesome. I use "awesome" in the sense of "actually awe inspiring". I mean, look at that! You've got a sampling of 1985's finest super-beings floating around The Earth as it gets TORN ASUNDER BY ENORMOUS PINK LIGHTNING BOLTS!

But wait! It's not just one Earth. It's, like, a zillion of them! Holy monkeys! Those Earths just go on forever (one might even say, "infinitely") and they're all getting the crap kicked out of them.

The foldout cover has nice design. You've got Harbinger in one corner and cosmic sad sack Pariah in the other. In the middle youve got some of the most powerful beings in the multiverse being tossed around like leaves in a hurricane. This cover lets you know that DC's not pussyfooting around.

The first few pages live up to the cover's promise. After a "First, The Multiverse Cooled" beginning Wolfman starts right in on wiping out huge swaths of it. In fact, it looks like everything's being erased. As if each universe is part of a comic book or something and the Great Artist is rubbing it out bit by bit. I bet no one has ever pointed that out before. I am a genius.

Then there's a nice scene where the Luthor of Earth-3 sends his son off in a spaceship before everything's destroyed. See, Earth-3 is where the Crime Syndicate live and they're evil versions of the Justice League. So, since everything's wacky, Luthor is the only superhero on the planet and he sends his son away just like... you get the picture. Anyway, it's actually quite well-written and touching interspersed as it is with images of the Bizarro League trying to save the world they have kept under their bootheels all this time.

Next we meet Lyla who is about to undergo a transformation sequence which rivals Sailor Moon. She turns into Harbinger who has the ability to split herself into many copies each of which is able to travel through space and time. Handy! The Monitor (who is just a shadowy figure and a voice at this point) sends her all over the multiverse to get the people he needs to help him save the few earths that are left.

So, where's the first place she goes on her recruitment trip?

Gorilla City

That's right! Talking gorillas, baby! If I had the power to go anywhere I'd hit the enlightened apes first, too. They are shown to be wiser than man. For example, King Solovar sentences a convicted murderer-gorilla not to death (as the barbaric men would do) but to "convesion". I don't know what "conversion" involves but it sounds about as scary as death, to me.

Anyway, Harbinger freaks out the gorillas and grabs the simian monarch while one of her replicants goes to the 31st century to pick up Dawnstar of the Legion of Super-Heroes in a place called Suicide Slum. Cheery! Also collected are Firebrand from 1942, Psycho Pirate from the nuthouse and Blue Beetle from Charlton Comics.

Some creepy-ass shadow creature infects one of Harbinger's replicants right before she collects Arion who looks like one lonely dude. He's pretty much just wandering around the Ice Age casting spells and stuff. Anyway, the shadow thing can't be good. Mark my words.

Speaking of bad omens, Harbinger uses Psycho Pirate (man, I can't express the pleasure I get just from typing "Psycho Pirate") to turn Killer Frost from Firestorm's deadliest enemy into his love slave. Morally questionable!! And she had to browbeat Psycho Pirate into it. I guess Monitor's philosophy is that to save the multiverse you've gotta break a few wills.

There's a beautifully-drawn one-page interlude during which The Monitor drops a little bombshell: Lyla's gonna kill him. So, he probably knows about the little shadow thing back in the Ice Age. I'm sure it's all going to work out fine.

The next scene is the kind of thing people read these big crossover events for. Lots of superheroes who aren't supposed to be together all in the same place. We've got all of the ones mentioned above along with Psimon the telepathic asshole, Dr. Polaris the magnetic asshole, Geoforce, Cyborg, John Stewart, and Obsidian. Oh, and the old, fat Superman. I know all their names because this is a comic book and they spend the entire two-page spread calling each other by name or thinking about themselves in the third person.

So, everyone gets to wander around a bit before they are attacked by a pile of those shadow guys. They discover that they can't do jack against them. My favorite line from Superman: "Punching them doesn't stop them!" Dawnstar, at one point, is shocked, SHOCKED! to discover that King Solovar is a talking gorilla. I've read a lot of Legion of Super-Heroes and I'm pretty sure they've got whole planets full of sentient refrigerators so I call bullshit on her freaking out about a super-intelligent ape.

Monitor shows up and dispels the shadow guys with a blast of light (their natural enemy) and then tells the assembled superheroes that the end is Extremely Fucking Nigh.

And that's the end of issue #1. Damn good start. It establishes the events, kills billions of people and lets us know the stakes are unbelievably high. Nice stuff.

See also: The pulse-pounding Introduction

Blogging the Crisis Introduction

David Plotz's Blogging The Bible has inspired me to give the same treatment to some of comicdom's holy texts. I'm going to start with Crisis On Infinite Earths.

A little background: Crisis came out when I was 15. I was reading comics heavily at the time but it was nearly all Marvel. Therefore, I was entirely unaware of the series when it was originally published. I didn't start reading mainstream DC regularly until Byrne's Superman revamp. I consider myself to be a C-student of DC continuity. I know the broad strokes but I couldn't tell you everyone who's ever been in the JLA. I have an embarassing amount of information in my head about the Green Lantern Corps but I am an ignoramus when it comes to Haunted Tank or The Crime Syndicate.

This will be my first time reading Crisis even though I know the general storyline. It's kind of hard to hang around other comic geeks without learning about Crisis through osmosis. I'm going in with no preconceptions. I have heard the series called everything from "masterpiece" to "clusterfuck" so I think it's time to form my own opinion.

And to inflict it upon you.

I'll do one post per issue. I've got the 1998 trade-paperback edition and for this post I'll talk about Marv Wolfman's Introduction:

Marv starts out by giving us a little history on himself. Like most comic creators, Marv started out as a fan and he tells a story about a very Monitor-like character he dreamed up as a kid. His excitement about getting to write the story that had been in his head is obvious even 13 years after the fact. He heaps well-deserved praise on George Pérez and then he goes into their motivations for the project and whether they achieved them. His opinion: Pretty much. Well, it got at least one new reader for DC. I didn't even know about Crisis but the reset on the DC Universe got me to pick up some of their titles (see Byrne's Superman, above).

Also, he says something I want to highlight:

"In many ways, I fear, the annual stunt has taken over comics publishing. If it isn't big, if heroes don't die, if worlds don't change, then, many feel the stories aren't worth reading."

A-freaking-men! Wolfman wrote that in 1998! I'll bet he's still saying it. Even louder. This whole Civil War/Identity Crisis thing is like what Hollywood does when a movie makes a surprising amount of money. They keep making it again and again but each generation is weaker than the one before it.

Wolfman then goes on to address the "Why did you kill X?" questions he gets every time he leaves the house. His answer: "Lay off! We didn't kill that many specific characters. We had good story and continuity reasons for the ones we did kill." Of course, he said it more politely than that. Marv's that kinda guy.

One last thing: Wolfman decided not to kill any character who had been created before he was born. Still that left him with a bunch of opportunities to cull the herd. I wonder if he had a hit list of characters he hated like all those lame-ass villains Scourge killed back in the day.