DC Finest: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part Two by Marv Wolfman, Roy Thomas, Alan Moore, George Pérez, et al.

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

Collection published: 2026
Contents originally published: 1985-99
Acquired: August 2026
Read: September 2026

Writers: Paul Kupperburg, Roy Thomas with Dann Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Alan Moore, Mindy Newell, Gerry Conway, Cary Bates, Tony Isabella & Alan Gold

Pencillers: Rick Hoberg, Todd McFarlane with Mike Hernandez & Ron Harris, Eduardo Barreto, Stephen Bissette, Stan Woch, Don Heck with Pablo Marcos, Paul Ryan, George Pérez, Mike Clark, Mike Harris, Arvell Jones, Tim Burgard, Curt Swan, Richard Howell

Inkers: Dave Hunt, Steve Montano, Romeo Tanghal, Tony DeZuniga, Randall, John Totleben, Alfredo Alcala, Don Heck & Pablo Marcos, Bob McLeod, Jerry Ordway, Vince Colletta, Tim Burgard, Al Williamson, Murphy Anderson, Dick Giordano & Richard Howell
Letterers: Gaspar, David Cody Weiss, Bob Lappan, John Costanza, Helen Vesik, Güsto
Colorists: Gene D'Angelo, Adrienne Roy, Tony Tollin, Tatjana Wood, Shelly Eiber, Nansi Hoolahan, Tom McCraw, Carl Gafford

The original Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries was twelve issues long; this DC Finest compilation, the second of fourth, collects just one issue! Other than issue #5, the book is filled with tie-ins. This is presumably because the editors have attempted to create a reading order here, and at this point where at the point of Crisis where what's mostly going on is big storms. It is very easy to set tie-ins during this point in time, because you just have to say "big storms are happening" and then do your own story, so many writers obviously took that approach.

Still, my complaint would be that more than a couple issues ought to have been placed elsewhere. The two New Teen Titans issues included here explicitly overlap with events as late as Crisis #9, so I don't know why they're in this volume; the second of the two Wonder Woman issues clearly goes at a point where the heroes know about the Anti-Monitor, which hasn't happened as of Crisis #5.

In this issue, Clark Kent seems to be gainfully employed as a reporter, even though later in the book, we find out he's been fired.
from DC Comics Presents #86 (script by Paul Kupperberg, art by Rick Hoberg & Dave Hunt)

Other than that, though, the sequencing struck me as being fairly well done. Unlike other tie-in writers, who just went, "ooh there are storms," Roy Thomas was very careful about showing how his issues overlapped and dovetailed with Crisis, and the issues of All-Star Squadron and Infinity, Inc. included here all either lead into, overlap with, or follow on from Crisis #5, and their placement here reflects that; similarly, Swamp Thing #46 and Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 are placed in relationship to Crisis #5. (I appreciate the inclusion of the Legends of the DCU issue, which was actually published thirteen years later; DC Finest is a mostly publication order endeavor, but they are willing to bend from that occasionally when it makes sense.) There are still some unavoidable problems—for example, in Superman #413, Superman is suffering from an issue he was not seen to be experiencing in DC Comics Presents #86—but I suspect there's no way around this!

This invasion seems to happen off-panel between issues even though #329 seems to pick up right from #328.
from Wonder Woman vol. 1 #329 (script by Gerry Conway, art by Don Heck)

Anyway, how are the actual stories? As you might guess of a random hodgepodge of tie-in issues, they're very much a mixed bag. I'll review them by clusters of character and theme here.

The answer is a bit cheesy, but in the way that a good Superman story ought to be cheesy.
from Superman vol. 1 #413 (script by Cary Bates, art by Curt Swan & Al Williamson)

There are three Superman-centric issues: DC Comics Presents #86 (a Supergirl team-up), Superman #413, and DCCP #95 (a Hawkman team-up). The first of these is fine; decent team-up superheroics, though nothing special. The second, though, is a proper great Superman story, and I really enjoyed it. Lex Luthor is causing Superman to hallucinate; this has causes Clark to be fired from his job because he's reported on things that haven't actually happen. Here it goes so far that Lex is able to convince Superman the Earth has been destroyed. Yet Superman is still able to triumph thanks to really thoughtful twist by writer Cary Bates that shows he really understands the character. It has little to do with the Crisis except that Lex disappears in a weird vortex (leading into Crisis #6 according to a footnote), but I was glad to get to read it because I liked it so much. On the other hand, I thought DCCP #95 was wretched. It's much more of a Hawkman story than a Superman one, and it ends so suddenly I thought I'd skipped a page.

I don't know who these guys are but I'm sure they're real people.
from The New Teen Titans vol. 2 #13 (script by Marv Wolfman, art by Eduardo Barreto & Romeo Tanghal)

The New Teen Titans issues here are, as I said, misplaced; they are also very much invested in the ongoing drama of that series and thus pretty hard to follow on their own. My favorite part was when Cyborg gets into a fight and smashes into the offices of DC Comics, where we see artist Eduardo Barreto being berated for turning in his pages late! 

There's just something weird about seeing the Alan Moore universe collide with the Marv Wolfman universe.
from Swamp Thing vol. 2 #46 (script by Alan Moore, art by Stephen Bissette & John Totleben)

The three Swamp Thing issues are dense and complicated, of course, being by Alan Moore, and I suspect I wasn't in the right mindset to appreciate them; they'd probably read much better in a Swamp Thing collection than they do here. The second doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with the Crisis, but the first and third do, and I suppose it would be weird to skip over the middle one. I was surprised how much the third issue was very much interested in and responding to the details of the Crisis; post-Vertigo, this kind of series would have a clear aesthetic division from the DC universe, but that hasn't happened yet. I was also surprised that Alan Moore is not only credited, he gets his name on the collection cover! Over at Marvel and Doctor Who Magazine, they're only crediting his work-for-hire material to "The Original Writer" and pretending his stories spontaneously generated themselves.

And they all lived happily ever after... until Wonder Woman was regressed to primordial goo and her entire history erased.
from Wonder Woman vol. 1 #329 (script by Gerry Conway, art by Don Heck)

Like New Teen Titans, the Wonder Woman issues are hard to read without the original context; there are a lot of recurring characters to keep track of. There's also a weird thing where an entire invasion of the underworld by the Anti-Monitor happens between issues, but the second issue kind of acts like you already know about this. But I did like that this put a button on the pre-Crisis Wonder Woman, resolving her conflicts with her mother and even marrying her off to Steve Trevor!

Caleb Mozzocco should have included this one on his list!
from Infinity, Inc. vol 1 #22 (script by Roy & Dann Thomas, art by Mike Clark & Tony DeZuniga)

I am a fan of both All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc., Roy Thomas's two 1980s Earth-Two series, but I struggled with a lot of the issues included here. Some of the Infinity, Inc. issues work fairly well when they are about character drama, particularly the secret histories of Alan Scott, Jade, and Obsidian; there's also some decent stuff about Rick Tyler, the new Hourman, and Beth Chapel, the new Doctor Midnight. (Geoff Johns would go on to use Rick in JSA volume 1 and Justice Society of America volume 3, and he would also appear in JSA Classified and JSA All-Stars, but of course Beth would be killed off and replaced by a white man.) But it's also pretty clear that even though he was working very hard to tie into Crisis, Thomas struggled to give the characters interesting things to do: there are a lot of very boring, very generic fights, particularly in the All-Star issues, and the Shanghaied into Hyperspace! interludes are particularly dull. Although it's one of these Roy Thomas issues that has one of my favorite tiny details in the whole book, a quick meeting between Elongated Man and Plastic Man that occurs in the background.

Every time Marv revisits the Crisis, he metafictionally complains about how comics have gotten too grim.
from Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (script by Marv Wolfman, art by Paul Ryan & Bob McLeod)

Finally we have the two actual Crisis issues: the original's #5 and the Legends of the DCU tie-in. The latter I had read before, and it is pretty decent. Paul Ryan and Bob McLeod do a good George Pérez pastiche, and it's interesting to see a late 1990's DC sensibility applied to the mid-1980s. (The "Earth-D" focused on here is much more diverse.) Crisis #5 itself is pretty forgettable; lots of exposition and then some pointless fights. 

Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper by Mindy Newell, J. J. Birch, and Michael Bair

Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper

Collection published: 1992
Contents published: 1989
Acquired and read: March 2023

Writer: Mindy Newell

Penciller: J. J. Birch

Inker: Michael Bair

Letterer: Agustin Mas

Colorist: Adrienne Roy

My journey through the Justice Society and related comics will never come to an end, because I continually find other stuff to add to it. When I read JSA Classified, the story where Wildcat goes to Gotham and bumps into Catwoman indicated there was a history between these two characters... one I knew nothing about! So I did some research and that brought me to this collection, which contains the four-issue Catwoman vol. 1 miniseries from 1989.

This is basically "Catwoman: Year One" in all but name. It runs in parallel to Batman: Year One, showing how Selina Kyle decided to become Catwoman after being inspired by Batman, and how being Catwoman let her escape from her life as a prostitute and rescue both her fellow prostitute and ward, Holly Robinson, and her sister, who is now a nun named Sister Magdalene.

The Wildcat content is pretty small. Basically, Selina bumps into Flannery, a cop in the vice department who advises she protect herself from her abusive pimp and recommends a guy named Ted to her. Ted appears a bit in the first two issues, training Selina in how to fight and teaching her how to use her whip. Honestly, he comes across as a bit sleazy but ultimately well-intentioned. And then that's it; he doesn't appear in issues #3 or 4, though it's one of those issues where we finally learn his last name is "Grant" and thus that he's the JSA's Wildcat. In the then-current post-Crisis timeline, this would be many decades after the JSA had to retire from superheroics because of Congressional interference, and a couple years before their first encounter with the new JLA would bring them back into action. So I guess for those forty years, Ted Grant just worked in some sleazy gyms... which, you know, I buy. I will have to see if future stories featuring Ted and Selina make more explicit use of Ted's identity as Wildcat.

Ted Grant: always a charmer.
from Catwoman vol. 1 #1

Other than that, this is a solid story, albeit one very much of its time. That's not a criticism per se, but this is definitely right out of the gritty-but-without-being-gruesome Batman aesthetic birthed by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli in Year One and continued into other stories of the time like Shaman, Venom, and Night Cries; it's little surprise to see that it was edited by Denny O'Neil, because it was a vibe he was cultivating all over the place at the time. If you like that vibe, it's one of its more effective examples. Writer Mindy Newell effectively takes what could be kind of an awful twist on Selina from Year One (making her into a prostitute) and uses that to launch a character who feels like a meaningful person. I appreciated the fleshing out of her supporting cast with both Holly and Magdalene; giving Catwoman two people she's working on behalf of stops her from feeling like an out-and-out villain. (Holly Robinson will go on to have big role in Catwoman vol. 3, as I recall, but I'm not sure what becomes of Sister Magdalene in future stories.)

The story gets Selina from her fetish-y outfit from Batman: Year One into this more sedate grey one.
from Catwoman vol. 1 #3

J. J. Birch and Michael Bair are strong artists, capturing the Year One aesthetic without feeling derivative, and there's some great coloring from the ever-capable Adrienne Roy. I really like 1980s coloring, and this book's noir stylings are particularly suited for it.

I really liked the relationship between the sisters, two people broken by their upbringing trying to find a refuge in the world.
from Catwoman vol. 1 #4

My edition is from 1992; I would guess it was collected (in this case by Warner Books, not by DC itself) in order to have a Catwoman-related product in bookstores when Batman Returns came out. Since then, DC seems to have let it go out of print... which is weird, given DC's love of having "Year One" collections. Thirty years later, why haven't they rereleased this as Catwoman: Year One with a more legible cover? (Possibly throw in the uncollected Catwoman: Year 2 as well! But more on that next time.)

This post is forty-first in an ever-expanding series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment is a supplement covering Catwoman: Year 2. Previous installments are listed below: