Review: Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 by Roy Thomas et al.

DC's JLA/JSA / Earth-One/Earth-Two crossovers were an annual tradition from 1963 to 1985; several years ago, I read the Crisis on Multiple Earths trade paperbacks which collect them in their entirety... except that in classic DC fashion, they stopped publishing them when just one volume more would have collected them all! As I neared the 1985 crossover in my reading of Infinity, Inc., I realized that I ought to bung in the two before it and thus get the experience of what that nonexistent volume 7 would have been like...

Unfortunately, they're not the series's best work, even allowing for the fact that I was never particularly wowed by most JLA/JSA crossovers to begin with. Each one has the germ of a good idea, but it isn't really realized. I really enjoyed reading part one of Crisis in the Thunderbolt Dimension!, where Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt goes berserk and begins attacking the heroes of Earth-One in the midst of the annual JLA/JSA team-up. The writers do a pretty fun pastiche of how these things usually go; as it often is, the best part is when the members of the two super-teams are just chilling on the JLA satellite before things begin to go south, as we get to see (for example) Firestorm moon over Power Girl. Part one is credited to both Roy Thomas and Gerry Conway, but I would guess that they plotted it together and Conway wrote the actual script; Conway was responsible for what were in my opinion the best of these crossovers (see volumes 5 and 6).

You wouldn't need the credits, however, to know that part two is entirely the work of Roy Thomas, because everyone immediately begins speaking in continuity and exact dates, telling each other things they already know and/or don't need to know.

• "It's Sargon the Sorcerer-- another who was born on our Earth and later migrated to this one."
• "I left the world of my birth for this one, in 1950."
• "Before you wandered onto the scene in 1947, Black Canary."
• "And who took his place in spring of '48? A certain wig-wearing wonder we all know-- called the Black Canary!"
• "The Wizard's idea, I'd guess. He's the one who dreamed up that 'patriotic crimes' caper in the late 40's, remember." "I don't-- because I was retired back then."

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #219
(script by Roy Thomas & Gerry Conway, art by Chuck Patton & Romeo Tanghal)

It's not just the dialogue, though; the entire story is constructed around explaining how Black Canary could have debuted in the 1940s but still be young enough in the 1980s to date Green Arrow (and was still drawn the same) while most of the other JSA members had aged. This is an okay thing to explain, but the actual explanation is so convoluted it beggars belief. Apparently, Dinah (Black Canary) and her husband Larry had a daughter also named Dinah, but she was cursed with a sonic scream, so she was transported into the thunderbolt dimension, where she aged normally but was comatose, and Dinah and Larry had their memories wiped of her! Like, what!? But wait, there's more when Larry died and Dinah moved from Earth-Two to Earth-One, Dinah began to die of radiation poisoning, so Superman detoured into the thunderbolt dimension and switched the consciousnesses of the mother and the daughter, so the mother has actually been in her daughter's body since 1969, as the daughter remains trapped, comatose, in her mother's radiation-ravaged body in another dimension! Only Dinah had no idea this happened to her. So much for informed consent! What is all this? It's terrible. Like, c'mon Roy, just say she got zapped with a youth spell. (Indeed, during his run on All-Star Squadron, Thomas would establish that many JSA members had had their aging slowed.) It's a terrible idea, and it makes for a terrible story. There may have been some JSA-related downsides to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, but one of its upsides was the new generational history for Black Canary that was developed.

from Justice League of America vol. 1 #232
(script by Kurt Busiek, art by Alan Kupperberg)

I felt that Family Crisis! started strong, with narration from an unknown narrator testing some of the heroes of Earths-One and -Two during their annual team-up. The whole thing is about a scientist whose mind gets taken over by an alien conqueror, but also his family was involved. Part two devolves into a pretty generic punch-up, though, and the family thread never really takes off, unfortunately.

The last JLA-JSA team-up actually took place during Crisis on Infinite Earths. As JLA-JSA crossovers go, there's not much to it; the JSA barely features in favor of Infinity, Inc., but Infinity, Inc. barely matter to the story: it clearly slots into and partially resolves an ongoing story in Justice League of America. There's not much to it outside of that. In the first part, some aspects of Infinity, Inc.'s recent "Helix" three-parter (#16-18) are tied up, and then Commander Steel (also a star of All-Star Squadron, just forty years younger) comes to ask Infinity, Inc.'s help against what he claims is a bunch of renegades using the name of the JLA. They travel to Earth-One and fight the JLA (now in its "Detroit" phase). Then in part two, the JLA goes to the wrecked satellite to use its transmatter to get help from the JSA, and everyone whales on Commander Steel-- who doesn't like how his grandson Steel or the new JLA have turned out-- together. (Commander Steel is aided by Mekanique, the robot from the future who would also bedevil the All-Star Squadron.)

It's mostly a couple fights. The most effective part is the segment where the JLA drift through the wreckage of their old satellite headquarters, which is atmospherically written by Conway and atmospherically pencilled by the ever dependable Joe Staton.

I look forward to reading this story in its JLA context when I get around to reading my Justice League: The Detroit Era Omnibus in its entirety, but as the final JLA/JSA team-up, it's a whimper. The JSA are barely in it, and I feel like there was some mileage in teaming the upstarts in Infinity, Inc. up with the upstart new version of the Justice League, but Thomas and Conway get nothing out of it; they barely interact meaningfully. How would these two group of youngsters remake an old tradition?

I'm glad I read these, but I feel like the last few JLA/JSA team-ups were victims of the concept's success. Because the concept had been so popular, it had spawned ongoing Earth-Two stories in All-Star and Infinity, Inc.-- but that meant those series were carrying the weight of Earth-Two, resulting in the last few crossovers being largely inconsequential side shows that couldn't do much of note.

Crisis in the Thunderbolt Dimension! originally appeared in issues #219-20 of Justice League of America vol. 1 (Oct.-Nov. 1983). The story was written by Roy Thomas (#219-20) & Gerry Conway (#219), pencilled by Chuck Patton, inked by Romeo Tanghal (#219-20) & Pablo Marcos (#220), lettered by John Costanza (#219) and Cody (#220), colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Len Wein.

Family Crisis! originally appeared in issues #231-32 of Justice League of America vol. 1 (Oct.-Nov. 1984). The story was written by Kurt Busiek, illustrated by Alan Kupperberg, lettered by Ben Oda, colored by Gene D'Angelo, and edited by Alan Gold.

The Last JLA–Justice Society Team-Up! originally appeared in Infinity, Inc. vol. 1 #19 (Oct. 1985) and Justice League of America vol. 1 #244 (Nov. 1985). The story was written by Roy Thomas (#19) and Gerry Conway (#244), pencilled by Todd McFarlane (#19) and Joe Staton (#244), inked by Steve Montana (#19) and Mike Machlan (#244), co-plotted by Dann Thomas (#19), colored by Anthony Tollin (#19) & Adrienne Roy (#19) and Gene D'Angelo (#244), lettered by Cody (#19) and Albert De Guzman (#244), and edited by Roy Thomas (#19) and Alan Gold (#244).

This post is the ninth in a series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers issues #11-53 of Infinity, Inc. Previous installments are listed below:

1. All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)
2. The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)
3. All-Star Squadron (1981-87)
4. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)
5. Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)
6. Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)
7. America vs. the Justice Society (1985)
8. Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)
   

Faster than a DC Bullet, Issue #17: Superman: Secret Identity

Comic trade paperback, 206 pages
Published 2004 (contents: 2004)
Borrowed from a friend
Read January 2010

Superman: Secret Identity

Writer: Kurt Busiek

Artist, Colorist: Stuart Immonen
Letterer: Todd Klein

DC Universe Timeline: N/A
Real World Timeline: 1990-2050?

Imagine your parents' surname was "Kent", you were born in Kansas, and they gave you the first name "Clark". Wouldn't that be terrible? But then imagine that one day you discovered that you really were Superman. That is the premise of Secret Identity, which follows this boy named Clark up into adulthood. I'd known the fundamentals of the premise, but not much more, before reading it-- enough to know it took him up until he was old enough to hold a newspaper job, at least, but I didn't know quite how far along the story went. 206 pages to cover a man's entire life. The book is narrated by Clark, in the form of extracts from a typed diary he keeps and doesn't share with anyone.

Given Superman action figures he doesn't particularly enjoy by his family and the constant butt of jokes from his cruel classmates, Clark is pretty much a typical teenager until he discovers he can fly. It's a magnificent moment, as you might imagine, and he soon discovers he has all Superman's powers: super-strength, x-ray vision, super-hearing, laser eyes, super-breath, and so on. He spends the rest of the book figuring out what he ought to do with these powers: should he used them for good? Should he go public? Should he hide them from everyone he knows? In the end, events convince him that he can't afford to go public-- the risk is too great.

In the first chapter, when Clark is still in high school, his powers are pretty obviously a metaphor for the need all teenagers feel to hide themselves and fit in with others, yet at the same time be recognized for who one really is. There's a girl Clark wants to impress, of course. But dare he go out on that limb? Of course he doesn't, but he gains some small recognition from her all the same. The end of the chapter, though, introduces this notion that there are darker forces at work: there are people out there who want what Clark is. Only he himself doesn't know who he is-- where did he come from? He's not adopted, so how did he gain these powers?

At first, I was tepid about these plots. Surely the point of the story was how did a boy deal with these things? Explaining where they came from, or introducing a group of evil folks trying to take advantage of him seemed like it would just derail that. That wasn't going to be the interesting part. It's like in Ken Grimwood's Replay-- the powers the main characters have can never be explained because any answer would be boring. But as the story unfolded, I realized that I was wrong: just as Clark's powers stand for the true identities we all carry within us and reveal only to a few others, the government officials trying to uncover him stand for the forces of the world constantly trying to push us out into the world where everyone sees us. It's interesting to have a story that argues we ought to keep parts of ourselves hidden from the world, whereas most fiction tells us "to be who we really are" but it works here-- and truth be told, it's how things actually work in the real world.

Unfortunately, Busiek seems really worried that the reader can't figure out this subtext on their own, and there's a few panels where this is ham-handedly narrated by Clark. "THIS IS WHAT THE STORY MEANS." Ugh. Thank you, I am capable of interpreting literature myself.

Clark's friends delight in setting him up on dates with women named "Lois" and "Lana" (and even "Cat Grant"), but one of these dates introduces him to the woman he eventually marries, one Lois Chaudhari. (Though I was amused by this element, I found it hard to buy the story's claim that Lois was constantly set up on dates with men named Clark-- is "Lois" really so uncommon?) It's a very real romance, and the moment where Clark reveals his secret identity to her is fantastic.

Stuart Immomen's art is a little odd. It's often glorious, especially in his big wide vistas and such, but often times his faces look a little stiff-- and stuck on an emotion that doesn't actually fit with the dialogue depicted. But his action shots are great, as is his use of color. It would be a very different and somewhat inferior book with a different artist on the case. Possibly the best sequence is when Clark is captured by the government and makes his escape: there's no dialogue, no narration, yet it's utterly harrowing.

As I said, Secret Identity covers quite a span of time, the last chapter taking place when Clark and Lois's own daughters are grown. Some aspects of this I found improbable, but the last few pages of the story, as he goes on one last mission, declares his retirement, and celebrates Christmas... well, I think I must have had something in my eye while reading it, because the alternative is untenable for me. The emotion that Busiek and Immonen drew together at the end was potent and powerful.

This is a fantastic story, told fantastically well. I think the appeal of Superman is that he's an ordinary person, just with superpowers-- he'd be trying to do good even if he wasn't from Krypton, and this story drives that idea home. People often complain (wrongly, I think, but also understandably) that Superman is hard to relate to, but this Superman certainly isn't. He really is just like you or me or anyone else you know. He could be you or me or anyone else you know. After all, don't we we all have secret identities?

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.