To kick things off, I thought I’d post about one of the nerdier things I’ve done lately.
For those of you who don’t know, DC Comics has started another “mega-event” that stretches throughout all their mainstream comic books. IGN has an excellent guide to Infinite Crisis and what it’s about. As they say there, rereading the original Crisis on Infinite Earths should provide some insight on what’s to come.
So that’s what I did. Here’s what I noticed.
Who’s come back:
-The Crime Syndicate of Amerika. One of the first Earth’s wiped out in the Crisis, they showed up recently in Kurt Busiek’s run on “JLA” and before that in Grant Morrison’s “Earth 2”. While they originally were just an alternate (and evil) Earth, the newer issues have placed them in the evil, antimatter universe. (Yes, antimatter is evil apparently. So is yellow.) Kurt Busiek also gave us…
-The Return of Krona, the renegade Guardian who looked at the beginning of time and made it go blooey and caused all the multiple earth stuff in the first place. The end of “JLA/Avengers” has him being put into an egg, and being watched over by the JLA. (I guess the Avengers who too busy dissasembling and whatnot.)
-Supergirl. Originally killed during the Crisis, we didn’t see a “real” Supergirl for many years, instead having a number of Supergirls with non-Kryptonian origins: a couple Superman’s daughters messes, the alien shapeshifter/earth angel Supergirl/Matrix (despite that hokey description, Peter David’s run is really excellent and worth tracking down), and of course, Power Girl. Now we have a real deal last daughter of Krypton who arrived in the pages of “Superman/Batman” and is currently fighting everybody in the pages of her own book. But Speaking of Power Girl…
-Psycho Pirate. The emotion manipulating villian was a pretty crucial part of the first Crisis, and also the sort of “half sequel” to Crisis that played out in Grant Morrison’s “Animal Man” (one of the best comic runs ever, by the way, and definitely required reading for Crisis-philes.) Currently he’s messing with Power Girl in “JSA Classified” by giving her a lot of different origins, which I find pretty funny considering the history of the character. The interesting thing that ties into Crisis is that she seems to be doing a lot of things that the Pre-Crisis Powergirl did, like chatting with Huntress on a rooftop. The Pre-Crisis characters had a connection, whereas the Post-Crisis ones don’t. I think we’ll know a lot more when the last issue in that “JSA Classified” arc comes out soon.
-The Society of Super Villians, lead by Luthor and Braniac. The new Society has a lot more flair, but the fact remains that an issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths was a war against pretty much every villian ever trying to take over the few Earths remaining, and it seems like a new huge war is brewing.
-Dr. Light. He had his head messed with in Identity Crisis, and now he’s pissed. A new, heroic Dr. Light was created during Crisis on Infinite Earths, and played an important part (with a lot of “this is your destiny” sort of stuff”) But now the original villian Dr. Light zapped all the powers from the retired hero Dr. Light. So in both, we get an important Dr. Light, though on different sides.
-Random Crisis characters. Pariah and Lady Quark really weren’t important except during Crisis, but in the latest issue of Villians United, they showed up again after a really, really long hiatus. A pretty obvious tie, though what it means isn’t.
-Evil black thingys that attack randomly. Sorry, not big into the OMACs, but they seem to be serving a similar purpose to the Anti-Monitor’s equally lame Shadow Demons.
-Trials of the Flash. Barry Allen went through a big murder trial, then went to the future to find his wife, where he thought he could relax before the future started to get eaten. Wally West went through a big trial involving his entire Rogue’s Gallery fighting and two Professor Zoom’s, then got to settle down with his wife and new twins. Barry Allen died in the Crisis. Would they dare go for killing a second Flash? For what it’s worth, I don’t think so, I think it’s more likely they want us to believe that and then they’ll kill the original Flash, Jay Garrick.
What it all means:
Well, I have a couple answers, most of which are cop-outs.
-The first is pretty obvious. They’re going to use a lot of similar story elements to lead you to certain conclusions but also throw you off the trail to do some surprises.
-More specifically, there’s going to be some big universal crisis that changes “the rules” of the DCU. Partly this is going to be from magic dying, as a result of the events of Day of Vengence. Also whatever the heck is going to come out of the Rann/Thanager War miniseries, and tying into the Return of Donna Troy stuff involving Titans and gods and who knows what else.
-Expect it all to involve parallel earths in some way. The simplest answer is going to be, “yup, we can multiple earths again, even though we said we blew them all up then had them slowly creep up again and had to come up with a plot device called Hypertime to explain why this happened…” We’re already starting to see this effect more prominent: the newest Superman/Batman crossed over with a Marvel “Ultimates” knockoff (with the dead Hawkeye teaming up with Luthor… that’s just weird) AND the “Red Son” Superman universe, AND the “Batman Beyond” universe.
-My craziest theory is that the whole Infinite Crisis and House of M concepts from the big two comic publishers are somehow interrelated. They both involve these massive reality rewritings, and both are timed with each other. The last time the universes crossed over in “JLA/Avengers,” it was because of Krona, who was responsible for the Crisis. Yes, this WOULD pave the way for a new Amalgam line, but I wouldn’t count on it…
What’s not coming back
-The Blue Beetle. Crisis tried to relaunch him into the mainstream DCU, and Infinite Crisis put a bullet through his brain. Consequences, sure, but I doubt that Ted Kord is coming back. Maybe a new Blue Beetle, there’s a few theories abound about that, but Ted Kord is gone.
-Monitor and Anti-Monitor. No fair reusing pretty hokey characters in this age of more interesting characterizations.
-Old Superman. They’re going to do some time passage stuff and establish a new status quo timeline, but not going to introduce realistic aging and not going to have a parallel earth where Superman is old.
That’s all I got for now. If you’ve got anything to add, or questions, please post a comment…
“And the universe explodes around him. And from the dawn of creation comes death… it is the end of all that was. To be continued…?”
–Dave
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