Rating:  -
I know of a great companion piece in the form of a book entitled "The Adventures of Darkeye: Cyber Hunter" whose odd manner of having log-entries over chapters reads exactly like the script for a graphic novel, even though it is in the science fiction/high-tech and cyberpunk genre along with books like "Cryptonomicon", "Snow Crash", "Prey", and "Altered Carbon". Very fast-paced, incredibly visual, and very exciting due to its action-packed pages.
Rating:  -
Why DC has decided to re-release Crisis on Infinite Earths 16 years after its original release is a mystery. Perhaps because they want a bite out of the wallets of gullible folks like myself. By 1985 I had "grown out" of comics, but I did hear about the Crisis storyline and I was intrigued--certainly not enough to follow a series through a year of comic books (I was getting a doctorate and had no inclination for such frivolity!), but enough to remember it. When I saw Crisis at the bookstore recently I thought I'd indulge in a little nostalgia and see how the universe of DC changed. In particular I was interested in how the single dimensional characters so poorly drawn in such flat colors became the more complex, better drawn and imagined characters I occasionally glimpse today. For instance, when I was young, Aquaman was a clean shaven Bruce Jenner-type in a silly orange top and green trunks, but now he's Poseidon with a flowing beard, Cap'n Hook hand and bad attitude. I imagined this transformation started, at least, with the Crisis.
If you've read it, you are no doubt snickering at my naivete. For, sure enough, for all the hype, very little changed forever with Crisis. Certainly it was not the stage for which DC's heroes became more complex and more visually interesting. The most significant things it contains are the death of the Flash (but he gets replaced with another Flash in the same costume) and Supergirl. Sure, other superheroes and supervillains die, but most of them are characters we hadn't seen or cared about in decades anyway. And therein lies the first of the two enormous problems with Crisis--in an attempt to incorporate literally every DC hero to date, the plot is convoluted and the characters watered down so that we simply don't care about any of their fates. Bat Lash? The Human Bomb? Why? And oddly, The Blue Beetle gets what appears to be a major role for the first several episodes, then gets dropped like a hot potato bug. Imagine a movie about the end of the universe in which every major actor in Hollywood in the last 50 years gets a cameo and only a cameo, and you'll have some sense of the scope of the problem. Writer Marv Wolfman isn't up to the challenge, but in fairness I'm not sure anyone would be.
The second problem is that, in spite of the affection many reviewers here obviously have for artist George Perez, he's not really that good. Look carefully at the pictures--sure, there are an awful lot of superheroes crammed into every panel, but the perspective and anatomy are often flawed. Especially where an object comes in front of another figure, often the line of the background figure does not come out where it ought. And although one reviewer recommends judging this book by its cover, I disagree. The quality of work on the cover, with its shading, is far superior to anything contained within, and not at all reflective of the book itself. Likewise, the detail of the pictures and the quality of the color I find lacking. For example, horrible shadow creatures plague the various Earths repeatedly, but they look so silly they can't be taken seriously. Perhaps I'm asking too much from a comic, but I think that Crisis set itself up to be taken seriously. And certainly the artwork and storylines of Marvel comics even 10 or more years earlier was of much higher quality. Remember the short lived New Gods, done at DC but by Jack Kirby, longtime Marvel artist? In fact, those characters return here--in particular Darkseid has an important role--and they are some of the most visually interesting in the lot.
In short, Crisis on Infinite Earths is only worth purchasing (and look at the price--it ain't cheap!) if you've already read the story and simply can't live without it. If you missed it first time around, do yourself a favor and avoid this Crisis altogether.
Rating:  -
For a storyline that tore the ultra-complex DC Universe apart and streamlined it, Crisis On Infinite Earths is, in retrospect, an oddity in the DCU's overall history. It promised to fix the majority of the inconsistencies that had existed more or less comfortably in the DCU (as long as you didn't think about them too much). After 20 years or so, it appears to hold little relevance, however, as many of its "fixes" became undone or completely ignored, and many more contradictions have occured since. And even more so, did all of this really need to be done? I'm torn... honestly, I prefer inter-dimensional team-ups between Earths-1 and 2, but if not for COIE, then Kingdom Come wouldn't make much sense.
Even still, DC did the right thing by collecting it. It is certainly a classic story, and it was some ambitious and entertaining work for its time. I look at it more as a relic of the times than as gospel. Indeed, since its reprinting led to the publishing of the excellent Crisis On Multiple Earths volumes (which refreshed my memory of how much fun things used to be), I prefer to remain in the pre-Crisis years and view COIE as alternate history. Still, Wolfman does an admirable job of sorting through the various realities of the DCU and making some sense of them, even if his overall story is repetitive and is much longer than it needs to be. George Perez, while not my favorite artist, definitely does an amazing job of capturing the epic scope of the story. DC's getting Alex Ross and Perez to collaborate on the cover of the collection resulted in one of the most amazing pieces of comic art I've ever seen.
If the actual choice of reprinting COIE had any problems, it was definitely in the way DC marketed it. It was originally pushed on us as an expensive, slipcased, limited hardcover edition, and DC swore up and down that there would be no trade edition. Sure enough, along comes a trade at a fraction of the price about a year or so later. This one instance has negatively affected my opinion of DC's marketing practices ever since.
Rating:  -
I loved this series as a teen but these days while the story grabs me - it just does not do it as much now as it does then. History is the problem. Then it was watching the DCU change into a new form. Now nearly two decades later it is more of a relic than anything else.
However the George Perez art is still breath taking. While I don't love the story as a whole there are some wonderful bits to be read by Marv Wolfman that do entertain even today.
Rating: -
I know this is one of the most important episodes to occur in DC comics continuity. I know it is regarded as a high mark in episodic storytelling. I know that it's after effects are still resonating today. I know, I know, I know. BUT..!
I also know that this is convoluted story telling at best. I know that most of what takes place involves characters who, although obviously immensely important to long time comic die-hards and the publishers themselves, are quite unimportant and used so in the story. I know that this whole lumbering juggernaut can be summed up to the following points:
1.) 2 characters of note were killed (although as anyone who has read DC books lately can attest too, that means really does not mean much.)
2.) The Earths (insert combination of numbers and/or letters here) are being destroyed so that the struggle over which Superman came first and whether Batwoman actually existed in continuity can be finally resolved. It really works as a fan boy fantasy to be able to see a redundant argument taken up here and in such yawn inducing detail too.
3.) I know that some friends of mine shelled out big bucks for the incredibly expensive version of the book (under the guise that it would not be reprinted in a cheaper format) and what they got was a poor quality museum version and a book that WAS reprinted later anyway.
The plus side? It has a really nice cover. Perez does his usual great job and Wolfman obviously tries very hard to make sense of what has been asked of him. His efforts do show through, albeit occasionally, but in the end the idea was a poor one and no amount of good scripting can save a poor idea. My advice? Spend your $25 on Watchmen and you'll still have change for a nice snack to go with it.
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