Crisis on Infinite Earths

[Darkseid Is]

Anyone else consider this an intimidating book? I have friends that are into comics and read current stuff and a few of them have said Crisis is too much. They don't understand it or aren't familiar with enough of the characters.

I have friends who read comics every month and they ask me about the important comics series of the past. I say Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Batman Year One or All Star Superman. The people who have read those books really enjoy them. The people who read Crisis act as if it was written in a different language. Do you have to have an extensive knowledge of DC characters and the backstory of the actual story to understand and enjoy the book?

[Jon Clark]

The story had one purpose- take the DC Universe of 1985 and simplify it. So anyone who started reading after 1986 won't really be familiar with the world where Crisis occurred (unless they read back issues).

If you are used to the JSA and JLA being part of the same history- you may have trouble keeping track of which hero comes from which Earth. Some of the characters who vanished sine 1985 (Blue Devil, Firebrand, Obsidian, Kole) might not mean anything to a modern reader. Even the two major deaths in Crisis lose much of their impact, now that these characters have returned unscathed to modern comics.

What Crisis accomplished is historic, but the actual story itself not so much. It's like Knowing that the American Revolution or the US Civil War were important for what they did, but that doesn't make the actual battles any more interesting than those of any other war.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I have never read Crisis on Infinite Earths in its entirety and I am the biggest DC Continuity Nerd I know. It's not that the story is daunting, it's more that the writing feels pretty dated by today's standards, it's so long and there are so many better comics out there to read.

The art, however, is well worth pouring over...

[dancj]

Back when I read it, it was my first big introduction to the DCU. There's nothing problematic in that respect. Marv Wolfman gives you everything you need to know about the characters (which isn't much) in the story.

As Bored said though, the writing is dated. Last time I read it I did find it a bit of a slog because of this. I loved it on my previous reads though - when I was less averse to dated writing.

[CaptCleghorn]

There was nothing like seeing each issue come out and calling your comic fan friends and going "didja see the latest latest Crisis? Can you believe they..." It wasn't designed as a trade. It was a serial series of issues. I don't know how to bestow that feeling onto more recent comic fans.

It was HUGE. Major characters died. $#!+ happened that wasn't undone. Wally's taking up the mantle was a symbolic note that things were different and it was a new age for DC. Plus you know who got a happy ending. It may be daunting with the Perez plethora of costumed characters, but the internet can help you.

It rocked, even if it doesn't fit into 21st century storytelling methodology well.

[MajorHoy]

CoIE isn't "an intimidating book".

However, Final Crisis is a different story.

[Jim Kelly]

I remember when THE COMIC READER No. 200 (April 1982) came out with their wraparound cover featuring--at the time--obscure characters. I had quite the time identifying all of them. I can only find a scan of the front cover, but there were many more characters on the back--



*Comicvine gives who's who:
https://comicvine.gamespot.com/the-c...0/4000-697380/

There were other things like that to challenge the comic fan back in the day, so CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS was the same sort of game, spread over twelve months. And it was a lot of fun. Not too challenging, since many of the characters were well-known at the time.

I guess it depends on the person and how much you really want to figure it all out. With the internet, it shouldn't be too hard.

*edit: well, not everyone, but enough to make a start.

[CaptCleghorn]

As many obscure characters as COIE had, Kingdom Come was worse as known characters were changed and new ones were added further confusing the reader.

[Kaijudo]

I loved it then and I still do. Crisis was my intro to a good portion of the DCU that hadn't been used in other media and I absolutely devoured the knowledge. DC was doing Who's Who around the same time, which only furthered my interest, and then some other company published an Appendix of Crisis and who all of the appearing characters were and their histories (some of which haven't been seen since, like the Image from Charlton Comics). It was like comics nirvana for me.

[MRP]

If you need help, you can always track down these two things (though I am sure all the info is likely readily available on the web now, there wasn't an internet when these were published shortly after the maxi-series wrapped up)





I came in halfway through Crisis during high school (I think #9 was the first I bought and read) and had been mostly a Marvel kid (I probably had 10-12 Marvel comics for every DC comic I owned as a kid), so Crisis ended up being my major introduction to DC beyond what I knew from cartoons and tv shows. I ended up getting the entire series soon after and I was hooked on DC pretty much up through Zero Hour when I cut back on all mainstream comics pretty hard and only read a handful of mainstream Marvel or DC books (though was still getting a lot of Vertigo stuff).

-M

[BohemiaDrinker]

I've read it when I was about seven years old, knew almost no characters in it (or about the Multiverse) and understood it just fine.

So, I'll go with "no".

[Buried Alien]

It's not a difficult story to follow. It is, however, impossible to recapture its original impact from its original 1985-1986 release, especially if you don't have any nostalgic personal attachment to the DCU before 1985. For those who were regular DC readers before 1985, COIE was a farewell to the DC of our youth. For better or worse, COIE did live up to its hype line that nothing would ever be the same again.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[married guy]

I didn't find it intimidating at all.
As others have already mentioned, the dialogue hasn't aged well, but Perez's artwork is still pure joy on a page.

[Lee Stone]

I think the idea that it's soooo epic and hard to get into is actually more intimidating than the actual story.

I had only been reading comics for about three years when COIE came out. Many of the characters in it I had never seen before.
I had the ones I was familiar with (the JLA, the Outsiders and the Titans) to help me make it through.
DC did give the big stars prominent roles. And the Legion of Doom villains and the ones from the Super Powers toy line were featured, giving some more familiarity to new readers back then.

The story itself is just a lot to read because it's not padded out like today's comics. Today, COIE would take two or three years to tell. The writing was much more compact and condensed back then.
And in the '80s, everything was thoroughly explained, leaving readers with a better understanding of what's going on.

I think COIE would be easier for modern readers to grasp than an event of today would be for a reader in 2049.

[superduperman]

I will say it's aged better than some of the early TT stuff he wrote. THAT was dated! That having been said, I read it after the trade came out but already had a huge interest in the pre-Crisis multiverse so I knew who most of the characters were. And the ones I didn't, I didn't worry about. I really don't need to know the history of Anthro the cave boy to enjoy the story. The story revolved mostly around Earth 1 and Earth 2 and having been a big fan of Earth 2, I either already knew most of the characters or had a loose idea of who they were. I didn't know who Obsidian was, for instance, but seeing him interact with Superman in the first issue told me he was from Earth 2. Ditto Firebrand. I also didn't know Power Girl was the Earth 2 equivalent of Supergirl but seeing her use heat vision and interact with Earth 2 Superman cleared things up pretty quickly. You have to kind of come into it knowing that you're not going to know who all the characters are. But at least have a basic understanding of what the plot is. Figuring out the older Superman is the Earth 2 version is pretty easy to put together.