DC Finest: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One by Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas, Doug Moench, George Pérez, et al.

DC Finest: Events: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One

Collection published: 2025
Contents originally published: 1985-86
Acquired: December 2025
Read: January 2026

Writers: Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas (with Dann Thomas), Gerry Conway, Jason Todd, Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, Alan Moore, Robert Kanigher, Mindy Newell

Pencillers: Curt Swan, George Pérez, Mike Clark, Arvell Jones, Rafael Kayanan, Todd McFarlane, Gene Colan, Joe Staton, Tom Mandrake, Stephen R. Bissette, Judith Hunt, Sam Glanzman, Michael Esposito, Don Heck

Inkers: Dave Hunt, Dick Giordano, Vince Colletta (with DeZuniga), Alfredo Alcala, Akin & Garvey, Pablo Marcos, Bob Smith, Bruce Patterson, Steve Montana, Mike Machlan, Tom Mandrake, Tatjana Wood, Mike DeCarlo, Judith Hunt, Sam Glanzman, Michael Esposito, Don Heck
Colorists: Gene D'Angelo, Anthony Tollin, Carl Gafford, Nansi Hoolahan, Adrienne Roy, Jerry Serpe

Letterers: Ben Oda, John Costanza, David Cody Weiss, Duncan Andrews, John Workman, L. Lois Buhalis, Albert De Guzman, Gaspar, Helen Vesik
Plot: Wolfman/Wein/Greenberger

DC has begun a new reprint series called "DC Finest." Despite the name—which would seem to indicate some kind of selectivity—its aim to comprehensively reprint everything DC has ever published in various lines. One of those is the "Events" line, which reprints not just the headline event stories, but integrates them with their myriad tie-ins. Crisis on Infinite Earths has of course been reprinted many times, but never with all of the "Special Crisis Cross-overs." The core series is twelve issues long, but estimates are that its DC Finest reprinting will run four 500-page volumes! I've read Crisis a couple times before, so here I won't focus on the core story, but the various included stories.

A lot of the included issues are of Roy Thomas's Earth-Two titles: here we get issues #50-52 of the WWII-set All-Star Squadron and issues #18-19 of the present-day Infinity, Inc. (There's also Justice League of America #244, which is the second half of the story begun in Infinc #19, the last-ever JLA/JSA team-up.) Both of these titles were significantly affected by the Crisis and did a lot tying into it, so their inclusion here makes sense... though I know from past experience I will definitely be bored of A-SS's Shanghaied into Hyperspace! story by the end of it. Overall, though, no complaints; these are exactly the kind of stories that ought to be included in a book like this.

No one:
Absolutely no one:
Roy Thomas: My Crisis on Infinite Earths tie-in is going to be about Mister Mind crossing between universe because he loves listening to Charlie McCarthy on the radio so much!
from All-Star Squadron #51 (plot by Roy Thomas & Dann Thomas, script by Roy Thomas, art by Mike Clark & Vince Colletta)

We also get a bunch of one-off stories from various titles: Fury of Firestorm #41, Green Lantern #194, and Wonder Woman #327. The Firestorm one is fine, it basically just shows how Firestorm is recruited by Harbinger in more detail, which isn't particularly interesting but I guess the kind of thing you'd expect a Crisis Cross-over to do. The Green Lantern story is kind of complicated, as it's clearly very enmeshed in the ongoing stories of Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner, but I'm always happy to see some Joe Staton artwork, and I'm curious to see how it continues in later volumes. (There's a funny bit of continuity massaging; as John thinks to himself that he usually doesn't wear a mask anymore but he's going to put one on before journeying to the Monitor's satellite, presumably because George Pérez drew him with a mask.) The Wonder Woman story is clearly the wrapup of an ongoing story, and therefore pretty confusing on its own.

I'm always game for some Harbinger action, great visual design.
from The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Man #41 (script by Gerry Conway, art by Rafael Kayanan and Akin & Garvey)

There are a couple inclusions I didn't get. There weren't any Crisis ties in Detective Comics #555 that I detected, nor in The Losers Special, even though that does have the Crisis Cross-over branding on the cover.

Wait, did the pre-Crisis Blue Beetle have a wife!? (It's just a joke, right?)
from Green Lantern vol. 2 #194 (script by Steve Englehart, art by Joe Staton & Bruce Patterson) 

The real highlight of the book, though, are the Batman issues: we get a continuous six-part Batman story from Batman #389-91 and Detective #556-58. The Crisis connection is technically slight, in that there's just the red skies from the Crisis... but man these stories (from the team of Doug Moench and Tom Mandrake, somehow pumping out an issue every two weeks) are great! Jason Todd is Robin, but this is before Jim Starlin turned him into an obnoxious asshole; here he's a kid trying to find his way in rough world, bereft of strong parental figures to give him guidance. Like some of the other stories I've read from this era, we're clearly at a transitional point between the Silver Age aesthetic and the Frank Miller one; unlike those other stories, I thought this really worked. It's high melodrama, but it doesn't take itself too seriously; it's dark without being grim; it's not afraid to be goofy but we get solid psychological depth for all of the principal characters. Sure, the only Crisis element is that the skies are red... but it's so beautifully used, creating a funereal atmosphere. These stories are also included in a Batman "DC Finest," Red Skies, and after reading this, I'm sorely tempted to pick up that, because I'd love to see more Moench and Mandrake on Batman.

I very much appreciated the delving into Batman's very bad taste in bad women.
from Detective Comics vol. 1 #556 (script by Doug Moench, art by Gene Colan & Bob Smith)

My only quibble with this volume is the sequencing doesn't always make sense; Detective #558 ends with Batman hearing Joker has escaped, leading into Crisis #2... but for some reason the story is placed after Crisis #2. Similarly, I think the Wonder Woman issue is also in the wrong spot. On the whole, this isn't high art, or often, even medium art, but if the point of superhero comics is their sheer interconnectedness, the creation of a massive tapestry of events that becomes a pleasure in itself, then this book captures that exceedingly well. I hope that Part Two is solicited sooner rather than later! 

Power Girl Uncovered

Over the last three years, DC Comics has released a number of "Uncovered" one-shots, where they collect a selection of covers featuring a certain character (or group of characters) along with some kind of frame story: Catwoman Uncovered, Birds of Prey Uncovered, Wonder Woman Uncovered, and so on. I was intrigued by these; though I'm not a big "collect covers" guy, I can occasionally be enticed by a really solid cover. Looking through the collected covers on League of Comic Geeks, however, turned me off some of them, because most of these collections primarily seem to consist of covers from the last five years or so, when these characters have massive histories. Like, there have been lots of great Birds of Prey covers, but most of the covers in their one-shot seemed to come from the most recent incarnation of the team.

But one of the exceptions to this was the Power Girl Uncovered, which, though definitely tilted toward the most recent incarnation of the character, contained covers going back to her original solo feature in Showcase (see item #6 in the list below), some covers from Amanda Conner's run (see #47 below), and even a cover from Justice League Europe. So I went ahead and picked it up.

The conceit here is that Power Girl has "recently become aware of a bunch of unauthorized 'photos' that have been released to the public." She suggests to the reader that we "check them out together to see if any of them are worth signing"; there are five pages of frame, mostly featuring Power Girl talking to the reader, but also her cat pops up for a few pages and her roommate Omen (see #50 below). I'm guessing this was a contractual necessity or something, but mostly it served to remind me of how lame her current set-up is ("Paige" sucks, and you know it will get undone someday), though I did like Meghan Hetrick's art.

As you might imagine, there are some great covers and some mediocre ones; I particularly liked Otto Schmidt's Power Girl vol. 3 #1 (which shows off many if not all of her costumes over the years), Jae Lee's Batman/Superman #8 (even if Power Girl isn't very central to the composition), David Nakayama's Power Girl Special #1 (featuring Fire and Ice! I don't know why but I won't complain), Alex Ross's Justice Society of America vol. 3 #9, Amanda Conner's Power Girl vol. 2 #1, Sami Basri's Power Girl vol. 2 #13, Warren Louw's Power Girl vol. 2 #27, Will Jack's Action Comics vol. 1 #1053, Guillem March's Power Girl vol. 3 #3, Babs Tarr's Power Girl vol. 3 #3, and Dani Bonvillain's Power Girl vol. 3 #5. For all that the collection has a bit of recency bias, a lot of the recent covers are very good! Power Girl is one of my favorite superheroes (going back to my early days as a comics fan reading JLE), and these covers capture what makes female superheroes work: beauty and strength in equal measure.

I could have done without the comment over the Justice League Europe #49 cover by Ron Randall and Rick Burchett, which I think is legitimately great; I do like Power Girl's early 1990s outfit even if it is very of its time. (Maybe I'm biased because, again, JLE was one of the first comics I ever read.) There are some covers I legit didn't like, but I accept this is a matter of taste, and some of them are fairly iconic and/or well-regarded despite my personal preferences: Jim Lee and Sandra Hope's Infinite Crisis #2, Adam Hughes's JSA Classified #1, and George Pérez's Worlds' Finest #1 (alas, not even Pérez can make Power Girl's terrible New 52 costume work... and I think he even designed it himself?). And in terms of exclusions, surely it's a crime that we only get two Amanda Conner covers! I'm guessing this was on purpose (I think she's the only artist to even have multiple covers), but Conner and Power Girl are inseparable.

As for the issue's own cover, it had six variants; I liked the Dan Mora one a lot but ended up going for the Pete Woods one, which you can see above. 

Power Girl Uncovered originally appeared in one issue (Mar. 2024). It had dialogue by Brittany Holzherr, editing by Jillian Grant, art by Meghan Hetrick, and lettering & design by Darran Robinson.

This post is the fifty-fourth in an improbably long series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers Wesley Dodds: The Sandman. Previous installments are listed below:

The Prehistory of the Omega Men

I didn't know when I began reading DC's The Omega Men that it was a spin-off of previous comics, mostly those by Marv Wolfman; I was actually surprised when I realized that Teen Titans's Starfire was from the Vega system that is the setting for The Omega Men. So now, as part of my dive back into 1970s-80s DC space comics, I'm reading a collection of random stuff that tied into The Omega Men in some way. Two enemies of the Omega Men, the Citadel and the Spider Guild, both appeared in Green Lantern originally (issues #136 and 167, respectively), for example. The Omega Men appeared in a number of stories across Green Lantern, Action Comics, and The New Teen Titans before they got their own ongoing, and it's those I want to talk about today.

* * * 

In addition to the issues of Green Lantern cited below, I also read #136-39, 164, 167, 172, and 180-90. I was in general impressed by what I read of writer Marv Wolfman's run (which in full goes from #133 to 153); Wolfman is very adept as balancing ongoing plots with standalone stories in the way that I feel is ideal, and even though I was plunged right into the middle of several ongoing stories, I never failed to understand what was going on. Those old comics where the characters spend a page thinking about what's happened to them recently might look a little silly to us now, but that conceit sure is helpful!

The Omega-Men Saga! actually gives very terrestrial roots to what would become quite a cosmic concept. Carol Ferris has been deposed as head of Ferris Aircraft by her father, so Carol and Hal Jordan-- who have only recently rekindled their relationship-- go on a trip to Newfoundland to get away from it all. Writer Wolfman implies a lot of tent sex. Because Hal Jordan is dumb, they run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and when he uses his ring to get to the nearest town, they discover the whole thing is an illusion created by... the Omega Men! They're a group of resistance fighters from the Vega star system, who are masking themselves from the hunters of the Citadel, the evil empire that dominates their home system. Of course Green Lantern fights them, but when the Gordanian hunters arrive, they unite against their enemy. (Green Lantern previously fought the Gordanians in the 22nd and 58th centuries in Green Lantern #136-37.)

It's an okay story. With eight different Omega Men to incorporate (Primus, Kalista, Tigorr, Broot, Nimbus, Harpis, Demonia, and Auron) into what's really just two issues, none of them make much of an impression. Primus is the boss one, Kalista is the girl one, Demonia is the evil one, Auron is the god one, and that's basically it. And can I just say that Wolfman's naming is incredibly unimaginative? Primus is the leader, Tigorr is a tiger, Broot is a brute, Nimbus is a cloud, Harpis is a harpy, Demonia is a demon, and Auron is a light. Anyway, Joe Staton draws some good fights, the Gordanians are sent packing, and the Omega Men will stop hiding on Earth and go back into space to fight the Citadel.

* * * 

If this story (hardly a saga) had been their only appearance, I doubt anyone would remember them, but Marv Wolfman brought them back a year later, by which time he and Joe Staton were writing and drawing Action Comics. The end of The Omega-Men Saga! implied that the Omega Men were heading off into space, but apparently they actually didn't because they still had stuff to do. They need Green Lantern's help to finish fueling up their ship, only he's in space, so here they go ask Superman instead. However, we'vre right in the middle of an ongoing plot for Superman, where he's been split into two different people, each of which only has some of his powers, and one of which is lost in the medieval era. Just another Tuesday for Superman. So the Omega Men end up helping him and Lois (Wolfman is good at giving the female love interests stuff to do) fight some underground people who want to auction him off.

Not all of the Omega Men appear in this story, but the beginning of The Starfire Saga is also perfunctory. Some fighting, blah blah blah. Like with the holographic village in Green Lantern, the Omega Men seem to have a level of power not really consistent with what we see in the later ongoing Omega Men series by Roger Slifer and company; here, Kalista can use sorcery to summon someone on the opposite side of the Earth! It's hard to imagine the Omega Men leaving Vega at all, actually, based on the ongoing. (There definitely were some retcons when the Omega Men were made into their own thing.) The Superman stuff here was honestly more interesting than the Omega Men stuff. Which I guess makes sense; it's Superman's series after all!

However, at the end of its second issue, Superman takes the Omega Men to the Justice League satellite, where he provides them with the fuel they seek... only to be interrupted by the New Teen Titans barely reaching the satellite, as they nearly asphyxiate in space. The Starfire Saga continues from there in the pages of The New Teen Titans, which fill in how they ended up in this predicament: they were trying to rescue Starfire from being kidnapped by her sister Blackfire, who works for the Citadel. (Starfire and Blackfire's backstory was depicted by the recent Tales of the New Teen Titans #4, where we got our first glimpse of the key Vegan world of Okaara.)

The Omega Men have to go to Vega anyway, and hate the Citadel already, so they let the Titans accompany them in what leads to a series of pitched battles, as the Citadel tries to steal the Vegan god X'Hal. Some of the Titans stay on Okaara to defend the planet, while others go to the Citadel itself to rescue Starfire.

It's all exciting stuff. Marv Wolfman and George Pérez were at the top of their game in the 1980s. These are cosmic battles and personal foibles as only they can tell it, and even though I've scarcely read any of The New Teen Titans, they made me want to start collecting some expensive omnibus volumes. The Omega Men are still kind of just there, except for Demonia who is so evil that it seems improbable the rest would put up with her.

These stories do succeed in making you want the Omega Men get their own series, though, because of the worldbuilding. We see several planets in the Vega system, each with some kind of cool cosmic imagery, like the crystal interior of Okaara, or the asteroid fortress moons of the Citadel. You finish the story wanting to see more of this incredible world, and the best stories from the Omega Men ongoing would do just that. The only thing not to like is that the gorilla-like Citadelians are written as so stupid it beggars belief they could manage an interplanetary empire. (And Marv Wolfman doesn't seem to know the difference between a solar system, a galaxy, and a universe.)

* * * 

The last Omega Men story before they got their own spin-off was a two-issue return to Green Lantern. It's a simple story: Green Lantern is captured by some old enemies, the Headmen, who have really big heads. Listen, not every concept can be a winner. The Headmen seek to demonstrate their fitness to join the Citadel Empire by executing a Lantern. (The Citadel is much more expansionist in these precursor stories than it would be in the actual Omega Men series; I don't remember them ever trying to expand beyond Vega in those.) The Omega Men intercept the transmission between the Headmen and the Citadel, and go and rescue Green Lantern to repay their old debt. That's basically it, though it's a decent story; like Staton and Pérez, Pollard is a strong artist.

Its final issue came out in Feb. 1983, and The Omega Men began in Apr. 1983, so it seems likely this story was intended to directly set up the ongoing; it clarifies what would become a key part of the Omega Men mythos, that the Green Lanterns are forbidden by treaty from interfering with the Vega system. I found it weird, though, that the book doesn't actually mention that the Omega Men are about to get their own series. Shouldn't the new book get some explicit advertising?

* * * 

A collected edition of much of this material was solicited by DC a few years ago, but never released. I'm glad, then, that I tracked these issues down, and I look forward to someday rereading The Omega Men with this context in mind.

The Omega-Men Saga! originally appeared in issues #141-44 of Green Lantern vol. 2 (June-Sept. 1981). The story was written by Marv Wolfman, illustrated by Joe Staton, lettered by John Costanza (#141) and Ben Oda (#142-44), colored by Carl Gafford (#141-43) and A. Tollin (#144), and edited by Len Wein (#141-42) and Cary Burkett (#143-44).

The Starfire Saga originally appeared in Action Comics vol. 1 #535-36 (Sept.-Oct. 1982), The New Teen Titans vol. 1 #23-25 (Sept.-Nov. 1982), and The New Teen Titans Annual  vol.  1 #1 (1982). The story was plotted by Marv Wolfman (#535-36, #23-25, Annual #1) and George Pérez (#23-25, Annual #1); scripted by Marv Wolfman (#535, #23-25, Annual #1) and Paul Kupperberg (#536); illustrated/pencilled by Joe Staton (#535-36) and George Pérez (#23-25, Annual #1); embellished/inked by Pablo Marcos (#535), Sal Trapani (#536), and Romeo Tanghal (#23-25, Annual #1); lettered by Todd Klein (#535, #24) and Ben Oda (#536, #23, 25, Annual #1); colored by Gene D'Angelo (#535-36) and Carl Gafford (#23-25, Annual #1); and edited by Julius Schwartz (#535-36) and Len Wein (#23-25, Annual #1).

"Head Trip!" and "…And They Shall Crush the Headmen!" originally appeared in issues #160-61 of Green Lantern vol. 2 (Jan.-Feb. 1983). The story was written by Mike W. Barr, pencilled by Keith Pollard, embellished by Sam de la Rosa (#160) and Pablo Marcos (#161), lettered by Todd Klein (#160) and Ben Oda (#161), colored by Tom Ziuko (#160) and Anthony Tollin (#161), and edited by Ernie Colón. 

The first two of these titles are not quite official. The cover of Green Lantern #143 calls the issue "THE SHATTERING CONCLUSION OF THE OMEGA-MEN SAGA!" while the lettercol of New Teen Titans refers to the story begun in Action Comics as "the Starfire saga" on occasion. There is no overarching title given to Green Lantern #160-61.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Gotham, Part XXXII: DC Comics Classics Library: Batman: A Death in the Family

Comic hardcover, 271 pages
Published 2009 (contents: 1988-89)
Borrowed from the library
Read January 2016

DC Comics Classics Library: Batman: A Death in the Family

Writers: Jim Starlin, Marv Wolfman
Layouts and Co-Plotter: George Pérez
Pencillers: Jim Aparo, Tom Grummett
Inkers: Mike DeCarlo, Bob McLeod

Year Twelve, November - Year Thirteen, June
One of the results of the continuity-driven nature of superhero comics is that there are a number of comics known better for what happened in them than how it happened. A Death in the Family is one of those stories. Chronicling the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd (who's only been in the role for two years, poor fellow), A Death in the Family is just not a good story. It lurches along weirdly and depends on coincidence way too much, and even for a superhero comic, it's contrived: the idea that Iran would appoint the Joker its UN ambassador is untenable, a completely bizarre merging of comic goofiness with real-world politics that is tonally misjudged.

But let's start at the beginning with this one. A Death in the Family seems to have been originally designed as a six-issue story but released as a four-part one, as its first and second issues both consist of two 22-page chapters. The first has Jason acting particularly like a jerk, and Batman benching him as a result. Their relationship hasn't particularly been consistent in the Jason stories I've read: Jason is very bloodthirsty in the the beginning of Second Chances, pretty chummy with Batman later on in the same book (except for learning that Batman hid who killed his father from him), and they got along perfectly in Ten Nights of the Beast and The Cult. But now Jason is a jerk again, and Batman doesn't handle it well at all.

Your hero, ladies and gentlemen!; or, Don't you think kids who are little bit snotty deserve to be brutally murdered?
from Batman vol. 1 #426 (script by Jim Starlin, art by Jim Aparo & Mike DeCarlo)

I really don't get why this approach was taken. A character's last story should show them at their best, to make you really regret it when they're gone; for all their flaws, later DC shock killings like Identity Crisis and Countdown to Infinite Crisis got this exactly right, sending Sue Dibny and Blue Beetle out on career highs. This story should show Jason Todd as his heroic best as Robin. But A Death in the Family, bizarrely, wants to make you glad he's dead.

Batman discovers that the Joker is trying to sell a cruise missile to terrorists in Lebanon at the exact same time Jason realizes that the woman he thought was his mother actually isn't, and that a woman who might be his birth mother is-- completely coincidentally-- also in Lebanon. So while Batman shuns his runaway sidekick to chase the Joker (apparently there's no one Batman can ask for help; if only he wasn't always such a jerk to Nightwing), the two end up in the same place anyway and team up.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XLV: Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2009 (contents: 2008-09) 
Acquired and read June 2015

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds

​

Writer: Geoff Johns

Penciller: George Pérez
Inker: Scott Koblish
Letterer: Nick Napolitano

This story's connections to the main Final Crisis are tenuous at best: basically it serves to explain how Superman ends up in the 31st century, which he returns from after a month-long absence near the end of Final Crisis. What he was up to in the meantime was helping the Legion of Super-Heroes battle Superboy of Earth-Prime, in what must be the only good Superboy-Prime story: Superboy is portrayed as a cynical, obnoxious fanboy that hates the very optimism that the Legion represents. Geoff Johns likes to tell stories that don't show why someone is awesome, but constantly tell you they are, and Legion of 3 Worlds definitely does that for the Legion, but in this case, he makes it work, and it's fun to see the "reboot" and "threeboot" versions of the Legion united with this "deboot" version of the original, even if the focus is squarely on the original Legion. (Of the other two versions of the Legion, really only their versions of Brainiac 5 get any focus.)

The future is kind of stupid.
from Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1

A couple complaints, though: Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes mentioned a case called "Legion of the 3 Worlds," which turns out to not be this one, but an unseen past one that sounds incredibly complicated, but for some reason this adventure we've never seen has continuity ramification for the one we're reading. Huh? The other is that two different issues end with the restoration to life of... Teen Titans! Characters from a completely different series who have nothing to do with this one. It's a little weird (though getting back the clone Superboy of Earth-Zero is a nice touch, given it was Superboy-Prime who killed him in Infinite Crisis.)

Brainiac 5 vs Brainiac 5 vs Brainiac 5 at the meeting of three Legions!
from Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #2

But overall, this is a fun, crowd-pleasing book. The complicated planning of Brainiac 5 is always a delight, and getting three Brainiacs makes it even better. I wanted more Saturn Girl, though! It doesn't have the character depth of Legion heights like The Great Darkness Saga or Legion Lost, but it does have the undefeatable storytelling skills of George Pérez, the master of the page with over a dozen panels as well as the two-page spread. Pérez knows how the punctuate the big moments, and when to let them breathe-- and of course a book about three different Legions is perfect for his infamous ability to cram in a bajillion characters.

Next Week: Time for some Revelations!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XXIV: Infinite Crisis

Comic trade paperback, 248 pages
Published 2006 (contents: 2005-06)
Borrowed from the library
Read June 2014

Infinite Crisis

Writer: Geoff Johns

Pencillers: Phil Jimenez, George Pérez, Jerry Ordway, Ivan Reis
Inkers: Andy Lanning, Oclair Albert, Marlo Alquiza, Marc Campos, Wayne Faucher, Drew Geraci, Jerry Ordway, Jimmy Palmiotti, Sean Parsons, George Pérez, Norm Rapmund, Ivan Reis, Lary Stucker, Art Thibert
Colorists: Jeromy Cox, Guy Major, Rod Reis, Tanya & Richard Horie
Letterers: Nick J. Napolitano, Rob Leigh

(Nothing quite inspires confidence like seeing that it took fifteen artists to draw a seven-issue miniseries.)

Infinite Crisis is a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, twenty years on, in addition to being mired in the then-current DC continuity. In some ways, it feels very much like an attempt to replicate the success of its predecessor: there are beats here straight out of that story, down to a Flash sacrificing himself to (temporarily) beat the villain by running superfast, ending with some continuity alterations, and a completely gratuitous attack by every villain. But it doesn't quite work as well, and I'm hard-pressed to explain why, as most of what it does is what the original does. But what worked in the hands of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez doesn't always come across when done by Geoff Johns and Phil Jimenez.

Part of my difficulty with Infinite Crisis is that the character threads are muddled and unclear. Supposedly (you can see them on the cover) this story is about the trinity of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman, but that doesn't always come across. A theme of the Countdown to Infinite Crisis materials was Batman's lack of trust, and this is maybe the most successful of the strands: Batman has a conversation with the Superman of Earth-Two about their much more congenial relationship, and by the end of the story, he's recruited a gang of superheroes to help him out, including Green Arrow. Another theme of Countdown was Wonder Woman's willingness to kill, but that's addressed incredibly poorly here. First off, Batman and Superman still fail to account for the fact that the situation in The OMAC Project was perfectly constructed to make killing her only option; neither of them could have done better. Secondly, there's not really a reason or development that would lead to her stepping back on that philosophy here; just all of a sudden she's like, no, I could never do that again! Finally, Sacrifice set up this notion that Superman was so powerful he was starting to scare himself. Not even mentioned in Infinite Crisis.

Interestingly, this story uses the same notion that Marv Wolfman seeded in his own return visits to the original Crisis (see especially the 2005 novelization): that the New Earth that came into existence at the end of the Crisis was fundamentally darker, with heroes who were less heroic. But it's kind of unclear why or to what end this thread is introduced, because this story is just as guilty of it as any other: the Superboy of Earth-Prime kills minor characters by punching their heads off! I mean, seriously, I don't want to read that. If this story's violence is just as gratuitous as all the others', it's impossible to take its critiques seriously.

I hate the propensity of these crossovers to kill off minor characters to prove the situation is serious. The Phantom Lady introduced in Action Comics Weekly is killed, for example; she wasn't my favorite, but she was fun enough. But each of these characters probably is someone's favorite. I think the reason it bothers me is the feeling they're being killed off because they supposedly aren't anyone's favorite. I'm okay with the Flash being killed off because I know the creators probably like him, and it's an actual sacrifice for them to build up their stakes by killing their character. But killing a character you know the writer thinks is worthless doesn't build the stakes; killing off Phantom Lady doesn't make me think Geoff Johns will do in anyone important.

Some of my problems are down to choppiness-- the sacrifice of Barry Allen has a whole issue in the original Crisis. That of Wally West is a quick, sudden moment here. That made me care about Barry despite knowing nothing about him; I like Wally and this did nothing for me. Or the giant villain attack on Metropolis has little time devoted to it (it's more clearly explicated in the Infinite Crisis Companion) and thus comes across as super-random: all of a sudden it's happening, all of a sudden it's not. And when Alexander Luthor mentions how the continuity's changed: ugh, just ugh. It's the most forced, unnatural thing you could imagine. And so pointless.  The original Crisis was a bit navel-gazing, sure, but it cleared the decks of a cumbersome storytelling mechanism. This just introduces some changes for the sake of it, like Zero Hour did.

Perhaps the fatal weakness are the villains. The Superman of Earth-Two is only meant to be a temporary villain, but even then it's kind of hard to believe that he would act the way he does, at least for as long as he does. The Superboy of Earth-Prime is too much of a spoiled brat: that kind of villain is never interesting. And why does Alexander Luthor want to make a perfect world? I'm not honestly very sure. I did like the explanations of how all the Countdown miniseries tied together, though I felt like The OMAC Project tie-in was the least successful. (what did Alexander gain from making Brother Eye sentient or creating the OMAC army or, especially, giving control to Maxwell Lord?) But it especially nicely builds off the goings-on in Villains United and Rann-Thanagar War. The best villain is, of course, our Lex Luthor: no one ever gets the upper hand on him for long, not even his son from an alternate Earth.

The moments this book works best are the ones it slows down and is about something for minute. Batman's conversation with the Superman of Earth-Two. Booster Gold's desperate attempts to save the past in the name of Blue Beetle. The Wonder Woman of Earth-Two leaving Olympus to talk to New Earth's Wonder Woman. Power Girl discovering she does have a meaningful past. The emphasis on Nightwing as the world's most moral man. The trinity chatting before they split up on their various journeys. The assemblage of heroes who will watch the world while they're gone (including ones from Seven Soldiers).

And, I'll admit, I loved that Luthor's vibrational fork was built out of the corpse of the Anti-Monitor.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part XII: History of the DC Universe

Trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2002 (contents: 1986)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2013

History of the DC Universe

Writer: Marv Wolfman
Penciller: George Pérez
Inker: Karl Kesel
Colorist: Tom Ziuko

History of the DC Universe spins out of Crisis on Infinite Earths; the book here is meant to be written by Harbinger following the death of the Monitor. Even though it was published before Legends concluded, it clearly takes place between Legends and Millennium; indeed, in an early part of Millennium we see Harbinger load this history into a pod to launch it into space, her work complete. It's not exactly a comic book, more a picture book.

A lot of this history was superseded by changes DC made after Crisis on Infinite Earths, in Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, and the like, and obviously after Flashpoint it's all completely "wrong". Still, it holds up for the same reason it's not very interesting: there are so few pages that everything is covered in the most cursory detail. It was probably illuminating immediately after the Crisis, but there's not enough information to make it interesting now, or even in 2002 when this collected edition was published.

What does work-- and will always work-- is the glorious George Pérez artwork. You get to see the man draw every hero in the DC universe (again) here, unfettered by panels, and it is fantastic. There's barely a page in here I wouldn't want as a poster or print. The two-page spread representing the Crisis on Infinite Earths is in particular amazing. I wish it had actually happened in the Crisis!

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part X: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 6

Comic trade paperback, 207 pages
Published 2013 (contents: 1981-82)
Borrowed from the library
Read August 2013

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 6

Writers: Gerry Conway, Roy Thomas
Artists: George Pérez, Romeo Tanghal, John Beatty, Keith Pollard, Don Heck, Sal Trapani, Adrian Gonzales, Jerry Ordway
Letterers: Ben Oda, Phil Felix, John Costanza
Colorists: Carl Gafford, Gene D'Angelo

By rights, I should have read this between Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 5 and Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition, but the Interlibrary Loan Office had some trouble in sourcing it, and rather than delay reading what came after, I plowed on ahead. But I'm glad I was able to come back to this: Gerry Conway turns out to probably be my favorite writer of these volumes, able to mix solid character work with great plots that actually have time and space to unfold.

The first story here isn't the greatest, but it's not the worst either: "Targets of Two Worlds"/"Countdown to Crisis!"/"Crisis in Limbo!" features the Ultra-Humanite (now in a gorilla body, apparently long after I last saw him in The Superman Chronicles, Volume One) putting together a new Secret Society of Super-Villains in order to take on ten superheros on Earths-One and -Two, the removal of which will apparently set off an historical chain reaction that will remove all superheroes from one of the two Earths. Why? Science, apparently. This results in one of those formulaic stories where (like in some of the Gardner Fox ones) we see villains take on heroes in turn. It's okay, but where it gets kinda fun is when the Ultra-Humanite cheats half of the villains out on their due and they turn on each other. I don't know why he does it-- it seems like a whole planet ought to be enough to split between ten villains-- but I liked the change of perspective, and the final throwdown in a delight. There's some George Pérez art here, but he's not well-served by John Beatty on inks, who obscures Pérez's trademark detail work.

The real fun of this volume is the five-part "Crisis on Earth-Prime!", which weaves between Justice League of America (set on 1980s Earth-One) and All-Star Squadron (set on 1940s Earth-Two), and also manages to work in Earth-Prime in the 1960s and 1980s and the villains of Earth-Three! It's a blast, and I read the whole thing nearly straight through because I was enjoying it so much. Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas give us a twisting, turning time travel tale, with three different groups of heroes bouncing backwards and forwards through time and dimensions to stop Per Degaton from destroying one Earth (our Earth, actually, the one of the readers!) and conquering another. For once, the time travel logic actually holds up for the most part, and with five issues, the story has time to breathe and not feel like a blob of incident.

There are five heroes apiece from the Justice League, Justice Society, and All-Star Squadron present, and Conway and Thomas prevent them from becoming indistinct; each gets character-appropriate dialogue and actions. (This seems like faint praise, but in the Gardner Fox era, you could have often switched the heroes' word balloon tails around, and I doubt anyone would have noticed.) The Crime Syndicate of Earth-Three even felt more like actual characters than they have in the past. Firestorm's attempts to make it with Power Girl were amusing, and I even felt sorry for Per Degaton at the story's end.

There's even some brief philosophizing here-- Per Degaton (seriously, he's supposed to be an ordinary guy from 1947, how did he get such a weird name?) uses nuclear warheads from the Cuban Missile Crisis in his plan, and the characters of both the 1980s and the 1940s comment on the amazing destructive power this presents-- including President Roosevelt himself. Small moments, perhaps, but nice ones that stop the story from being just another slugfest. This is the last Crisis on Multiple Earths volume (for now, hopefully; one more will collect all the existent Earth-One and -Two crossover stories), and it's nice to see the series end on a high note.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part VIII: Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition

Comic hardcover, n.pag.
Published 2005 (contents: 1985)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2013

Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition

Writer: Marv Wolfman
Penciller: George Pérez
Inkers: Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, Jerry Ordway
Colorists: Anthony Tollin, Tom Ziuko, Carl Gafford
Color Reconstruction and Enhancement: Tom McCraw
Letterer: John Costanza

I've read Crisis on Infinite Earths twice before, I think (see a lengthy review here), but this is my first time reading the absolute edition, and also my first time reading in in context-- I've just come off reading seven volumes of Crisis on Multiple Earths (unfortunately, not eight; I had to skip the latest one because it came out too recently to get hold of via interlibrary loan). That context, to my surprise, really did add something beyond the fact that I recognized many more of the characters this time out: when Earth-3 bit the dust in the first chapter, I knew what  their deaths meant, and the demise of Ultraman was surprisingly touching.

Looking over my old review, though, I must say I have little to add, other than that the earlier chapters dragged for me more than they did last time-- man, is it clear that Wolfman did not know how to stretch this story out to twelve issues. And the later chapters are stuffed with continuity gubbins. On the other hand, the larger size shows that delicious Pérez artwork off even better than before-- man, can he do layouts like no other. There is some absolutely killer page design here. And to think he was working from dialogue-less plots!

Now that I've read more, it's a little odd how the timeline changes happen here. Once Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-4, Earth-S, and Earth-X are all integrated, no one's history seems to have really changed: Captain Marvel is still around, Supergirl still existed, &c. It's only later, apparently, that they were wiped from continuity. Poor guys-- one imagines a desparate Captain Marvel watching his family slowly wiped from existence, one by one, as the way is paved for Roy Thomas's Shazam! The New Beginning. Or that one day, Superman wakes up and discovers no one remembers Supergirl... and then the next day wakes up and he doesn't remember her, either.

I do have a new favorite moment. When Brainiac and the Earth-1 Lex Luthor create their time-filling alliance of evil, the Earth-2 Luthor is offended that he wasn't picked. Brainiac just disintegrates Luthor-2, which made me laugh, but what nails the whole thing is the way Luthor-1 doesn't even really react. He gives a small smile, says, "Good," and is on with the business of plotting multiversal domination. I love you, Lex.

"...THE DARKNESS IS ALIVE!" is still one of the most chilling things I have read, though.

Faster than a DC Bullet: Project Crisis!, Part VII: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 5

Comic trade paperback, 173 pages
Published 2010 (contents: 1978-80)
Borrowed from the library
Read July 2013

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 5

Writer: Gerry Conway
Pencillers: Dick Dillin, George Pérez
Inker: Frank McLaughlin
Letterers: Ben Oda, Todd Klein

I had been burning out on these collections, but volume 5 turned out to be the most successful one in a while. The first story here ("Crisis from Yesterday!"/"Crisis from Tomorrow!") is maybe not great-- more heroes fighting each other under mind control (seriously this is the dullest thing ever, stop writing it), but any story that gives a principal role to the Elongated Man is a story that gains my appreciation to some extent. The Huntress, too, which makes this some of my first real experience of the Earth-2 Huntress.

I did quite like "The Murderer Among Us: Crisis above Earth-One!"/"I Accuse...", which forgoes the usual throwdowns for a murder mystery aboard the JLA satellite during the joint JLA/JSA meeting. It's a fun idea, and it lets the personalities of the characters come to the fore more than they're usually able to in these stories.

The best story here, though, is "Crisis on New Genesis, or Where Have All the New Gods Gone?"/"Crisis between Two Earths, or Apokolips Now!"/"Crisis on Apokolips, or Darkseid Rising!" (yeah, really). It maybe is your standard throwdown, but with three issues, the story actually breathes a bit, and the characters' personalities actually do come through. Of course, it involves Darkseid and the New Gods, who are awesome, and I enjoy almost anything that plays with those concepts by default. It's perhaps a standard superhero story, but it's one well told; there's some great stuff in particular with the children in the underground resistance on Apokolips.

Conway gets Darkseid, too.  He's resurrected in this story, having apparently been dead, and he observes: "My brief 'death' has given me a new perspective on life, gentlemen. As I floated in the spiritual limbo where Desaad's uni-cannon blast propelled me, I came to treasure the memory of living things... the soft glow of the sun at dawn, the gentle waft of a breeze across one's brow, even the scent of a flower in bloom. Yes, even a god may be affected by his own 'death.'" Darkseid then pauses for a moment, and smells a flower in his hand. "I shall never forgive myself for such weakness! Never!" he shouts, crushing the flower. Perfect.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXVI: The Brave and the Bold: The Book of Destiny

Comic trade paperback, 156 pages
Published 2008 (contents: 2007-08)
Borrowed from the library
Read October 2012

The Brave and the Bold: The Book of Destiny

Writer: Mark Waid

Pencillers: George Pérez, Jerry Ordway
Inkers: Bob Wiacek, Scott Koblish

Colorist: Tom Smith
Letterer: Rob Leigh

The connections to The Sandman are even more tenuous in the second volume of The Brave and the Bold than in the first, though this is a direct sequel to The Lords of Luck. The Challengers of the Unknown spend much of the book puzzling over the Book of Destiny, but Destiny of the Endless does not actually appear.

What we get are a number of superhero teamups, as usual: Power Girl and Wonder Woman, the Flash and the Doom Patrol, Superman and the Silent Knight, and so on. They're good, but there's a spark in The Lords of Luck that's not quite present here. Is it that the connections between the stories here feel a little more forced? The Lords of Luck managed to balance the needs of done-in-one stories with an overall arc, whereas The Book of Destiny feels like a series of one-shots jammed together with an arbitrary villain. The fact that although the Challengers are the focus, they never really pop as characters (all I could remember was that "Red" was the redhead and June was the woman), which undermines the story somewhat, especially the final issue.

Still, if you focus on the individual stories and the artwork (George Pérez is joined in this volume by the almost-as-good Jerry Ordway), you have here a fun set of superhero stories. I might not ever know why what's-his-face was travelling through time and space, but I got to watch the Boy Commandos team up with the Blackhawks, and that's good enough for me.

Faster than a DC Bullet: The Sandman Spin-Offs, Part XXIV: The Brave and the Bold: The Lords of Luck

Comic hardcover, 152 pages
Published 2007 (contents: 2007)
Borrowed from the library
Read October 2012

The Brave and the Bold: The Lords of Luck

Writer: Mark Waid

Penciller: George Pérez
Inkers: Bob Wiacek, Scott Koblish

Colorist: Tom Smith
Letterer: Rob Leigh

The first volume of the 2000s revival of The Brave and the Bold has some tenuous ties to Gaiman's Sandman: Destiny of the Endless appears here (though he was the one Endless who had been established before Gaiman came along). Destiny has subsequently appeared in his own spin-off, gotten a story of his own in Endless Nights, and even popped up in Lucifer.

Before I get to Destiny's role, though, I want to talk about The Lords of Luck as a whole. It's fun. It's amazingly fun. I wouldn't say that all superhero comics should be all fun all the time, but given their subject matter, there's often a surprising lack of the stuff. Well, not here: Mark Waid manages to give us a story that takes in the length and breadth of the DC universe, showing off just how awesome it is in almost all regards. The old Brave and the Bold comics was, I believe, one-and-done superhero team-ups; Waid hits the perfect middleground between that and the sprawling six-plus-part stories of the modern day by making The Lords of Luck a succession of team-ups that are all one story, meaning characters come and go from the story in rapidfire fashion. But Waid's a smart writer, and I was rarely confused, unlike with the deep levels of referencing going on in JSA: Mixed Signals.

We start with a team-up between Batman and Green Lantern, who discover that something powerful is after two weapons, and they split up to pursue each weapon. Green Lantern and Supergirl head to a casino planet following one. This is my first exposure to the 2000s Supergirl after Jeph Loeb's mediocre introduction of her, and (perhaps obviously) Waid writes her a heckuva a lot better; she's smart but seventeen, and wins you over even when she does stupid stuff. Then we get Batman teaming up with Blue Beetle, Supergirl teaming up with Lobo(!), and Batman teaming up with the Legion of Super-Heroes (!!).

Each of these is more awesome than the last. I always enjoy a bit of Lobo, and the banter between him and Supergirl never stops being entertaining. Even better, though, is watching Batman one-up the Legion of Super-Heroes; one should never give Batman a flight ring, apparently. I was laughing all the way through. It's a very real love letter to the DC universe and all the marvelous strangeness it contains. This is how you use continuity to your advantage. It helps that Waid treats his characters like people with personalities, not datapoints with histories.

It helps even more that Waid is paired with the legendary George Pérez on art.  Pérez's art is always great; he has storytelling skills that are rarely matched in modern comics. His pages are dense and eventful in the best way, and his splash pages have real impact. His characters are as fun-looking as the story, and he even manages to restrict himself to just one Supergirl panty-shot. (Sigh.)

Destiny himself is not exactly the imperturbable Endless we usually see; here, he's distracted and amnesiac, having given up control of the Book of Destiny that contains all history. He seems a little less inscrutable when he talks to Lobo and Supergirl as opposed to Dream and Lucifer, but watching Lobo drive his motorcycle through Destiny's garden is worth the price of admission.

The Brave and the Bold is kind of comic I'd wish I'd read when I was a kid, and that I hope my kids will read one day. I'm going to read the next volume because it too has some Sandman connections, but I'm looking forward even more to my eventual readthrough of the whole series. Cool stuff.

Faster than a DC Bullet, Issue #6: Crisis on Infinite Earths

Comic trade paperback, ~368 pages
Published 2000 (contents: 1985-86)
Borrowed from a friend
Read October 2008

Crisis on Infinite Earths

Writer: Marv Wolfman

Penciller: George Pérez
Inkers: Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, Jerry Ordway
Colorists: Anthony Tollin, Tom Ziuko, Carl Gafford
Color Reconstruction: Tom McCraw
Letterer: John Costanza

DC Universe Timeline: Six Years Ago
Real World Timeline: July 1985

(We've vaulted straight over the early careers of the modern superheroes-- it's been seven years since Superman For All Seasons and The Superman Chronicles, six years since The Long Halloween. It also happens to be the MONTH I WAS BORN. Coincidence that a multiverse-shaking event happened at that very moment? I sincerely doubt it. Though, going by DC Universe time, it's 1991 and I'm only six years old right now. Or maybe my body was infused with antimatter and I grew at a fantastically accelerated rate. In any case, I must be posting this on Usenet.)

It's a well-known fact that by the 1980s, the continuity of the DC Universe-- sorry, Multiverse-- was in such a state that students of Russian hermeneutics were rejecting it as too confusing. But Marv Wolfman was a man with a plan: destroy it and replace it with something even more bizarre and inexplicable. The vehicle for this transformation was Crisis on Infinite Earths, an twelve-issue miniseries that would change the state of comics forever, subjecting us to poorly thought out crossovers on a regular basis for the next 25 years and beyond, I'm sure. Actually, I've never read any of the other "crises", but my perusal of Internet bulletin boards has confirmed that I'm supposed to hate them.

Actually, I find it bizarrely hard to pass judgment on Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's not so much a work of art as a fact of life. It's not something you can judge, it just is. It's known for what it did, not how it did it. Because even if it had done it all poorly, it still would have been as famous and influential as it is today.

But I don't think it did do it poorly. Sure, it's melodramatic as possible sometimes, but it's a comic book crossover dealing with the collapse of an infinite number of universes, what do you expect? Most of the time, it's just plain fun-- Marv Wolfman has an encyclopedic knowledge of DC characters and continuity, and that shines through here in the ridiculous number of characters who appear in this comic. In fact, he knows so many obscure characters, it frequently becomes a problem-- when the Monitor assembles his team to defend his vibrational forks (whatever), he brings together Superman, Blue Beetle, Dawnstar, Green Lantern, Psimon, Geo-Force, Cyborg, Obsidian, Firebrand, Firestorm, Killer Frost, Psycho Pirate, Doctor Polaris, and a giant gorilla. Who the heck are these people? Obviously I known Superman and the other heavy hitters, but Geo-Force? Firebrand? Doctor Polaris, the Master of Magnetism? I don't think anyone yearning for a crossover of DC's infinite characters was ever clamoring for a Psimon/Doctor Polaris teamup.

The other problem is that when you've got a threat that's big enough to bring all these people together... it's a threat too big for them to actually handle. The protagonists in this story are little more than tools for the Monitor, who is privy to a plot that is never really fully revealed, jerking our heroes from point to point, having them run contrived little tasks, such as guarding his vibrational cutlery. Often, threats are contrived just to spice things up, such as when Lex Luthor, never to be outdone, decides that he's going to take over four Earths at once with the help of every supervillain ever, prompting a protracted battle to fill page space while the heroes fight back.

The deficiency of our own heroes in such cosmic occurrences is really shown fully in "Death at the Dawn of Time", when our heroes stand around watching the Spectre do all of the work that it takes to defeat the Anti-Monitor. Well, one of the times-- the Anti-Monitor comes back from the dead about three times after this, sometimes a mere page after his most recent demise. I was so happy when the Superman of Earth-2 punched him so hard that he exploded. Though why this should have killed him when the power of Darkseid could not, I have no idea.

I guess these are just the natural problems of writing a crossover this big. And most of the time, Wolfman is solid enough to keep you from realizing that the main characters aren't actually doing much other than looking at the oh-so-slow moving walls of antimatter. There's certainly a lot to like here, too. One of the biggest deals that of course happens in this book is that Supergirl is killed off. (Which is convenient, since she doesn't exist in the new continuity at the story's end. Indeed, all of the characters who don't exist in the new timeline are killed off at some point, all of them just happening to get in the way of one of the Anti-Monitor's blasts.) This didn't really affect me a whole lot when I read the story for the first time-- I knew it was going to happen (it's on the cover, for crying out loud), and I've never been attached to the Silver Age Supergirl.

But what did get me was the death of the Flash-- I had no idea! And it's such a great death, too. Despite everything that's happened to him, to his world, he just keeps on running and running and running, doing his best to stop the Anti-Monitor from making a giant cannon or whatever the heck it is, running so hard and so fast that he dissolves. How freaking awesome is that? I was genuinely moved the first time I read the book. Barry Allen, I'll miss you. Even if I've never read another story featuring you.

The other weird thing, but mostly in retrospect, is all the sideplots that were obviously setups for what was going to happen in other comic books. What's all that nonsense about the Red Tornado, anyway? And the blue dude with the horns meeting those guys in space? And you know I'm never going to pick up New Teen Titans #15 to read about Starfire's wedding plans. As for the new Wildcat? Who the crap cares?

I've been remiss-- all this time and I've yet to mention George Pérez's artwork. Because that, more than anything else, is what sells this story. I find it amazing that the man could pump out work of this caliber on a monthly basis-- and some of the issues are double-sized! The level of detail is extraordinary. Some of his panels feature Every Character Ever-- and all of them are recognizable! Well, recognizable to someone much more well-versed in DC minutia than myself. And as for his layouts... some of these pages feature more than a dozen panels! All of them clear and distinct. A Pérez comic does not waste space. He chooses his full-page panels carefully. The destruction of entire universe can sometimes be one panel out of many-- when he does a two-page spread, you know it's important! I wish I could say more about his artwork, but I don't know a thing about artwork, and the best I could do would be to say "It's awesome" again and again. (Oh, I really dig the black-and-white extracts from "The Monitor Tapes" at the bottom of the pages of "Death at the Dawn of Time!" Obviously Pérez was a master of any color scheme.)

Great Rao, this review has been all over the place. But I think that's appropriate for a story like Crisis on Infinite Earths, one so big it could scarcely be contained or summed up in an effective manner, thanks to Marv Wolfman's encyclopedic knowledge and cosmic plotting and George Pérez's masterful artwork and incredible layouts. One can only hope that like Crisis, the legacy of this review will live on... forever! Or at least the next 25 years of Faster than a DC Bullet.

Note that this originally appeared on my old LiveJournal and included pictures back then. Sadly, the pictures are lost in the mists of the Internet.