Crisis on Infinite Earths

[phantom1592]

I go with yes.

I was a big fan of some of those imaginary tales and the alternate earths... but I never had exposure to ALLLLL of them. The story was simple enough. the plot was no issue... but most of the teams that they broke up into... Had a LOT of unknowns that I felt diminished the overall product for me. For example....




A green lantern (the wrong one), Firestorm and a Superman were the only ones I knew on that team. Frankly in the 30 years of reading since then I still don't care about the rest... though Obsidian I know more now, but still not a fan. Same with this shot.





They really dug deep to get some obscure characters in there, and a lot of the time it wasn't like Infinite Crisis... where everyone ever was in the background... COIE broke them into specific teams and put the spotlight on them.

So yeah... I could see where people would be intimidated by that. That's not to say they couldn't and shouldn't read it anyway. It rewrote the DC landscape and is a historical fascination. It's hard to be a Flash (either) fan and NOT read it... but the fact that it's been undone a dozen times now does make it less of a 'required reading'.

The amount of C and D list characters thrown into the spotlight just to get erased... meant nothing to me. It was a swansong for a lot of worlds and characters and something that fans of those characters found meaningful... but to a new fan, not so much.

[WonderScott]

I was the exact opposite of the friends of the OP.

Crisis on Infinite Earths made me excited about the DC multiverse and wanting to learn about and sort out all the different characters therein.

[Vampire Savior]

Do I feel it's intimidating?

Yes.
Because I often look at it and feel an urge to read it again. The art is beautiful and epic. However, I always realize that to read it again... I would actually have to read it again, and I didn't enjoy it the first time. I believe it's about 360 pages, and it doesn't make you care about any of the characters, or about anything that is happening, even if it does feel epic. Without being a follower of DC at that particular time, with that particular status quo, the story doesn't have a lot of meaning, and I don't think it's a good enough story to stand on its own without that. Even the villain, despite being super powerful, keeps getting beat by the heroes and ends up seeming a bit silly. He has to keep coming up with silly plans because they keep getting foiled by the heroes, and the plans come across as more and more desperate. First a bunch towers. Then a big gun. Then going back to the beginning of time. Then I think he just says "eff it" and just tries to go beast mode on everything. (EDIT: Oh that's right. He just unleashes shadow demons everywhere)

I'm sure the series must have been explosive at the time of its publication, but as a story, I don't think it's particularly enjoyable.

[caj]

I read it monthly as it was coming out. I really don't have a desire to read it again.

I thought it was unnecessarily too long. I understand that it was an opportunity to showcase every comic that was on the stands at the time. Crossovers could lead to increase of sales. But there were way too many characters and way too many issues.

I will say that the deaths of Supergirl and Flash brought me to tears when I read them both (issues #7 & 8). That's the first time I ever cried over a comic.

By issue #12, I found myself not really caring anymore. Wonder Woman being wiped out of existence was the final straw.

[Jim Kelly]

But when it was coming out, I didn't know what the final plan was going to be for the DC comics. I knew something was going to change but not what and how. So each issue had me guessing where it was all going to go. Would everything be destroyed? Could a few Earths survive? Were all the characters going to move to one Earth? And I'm not sure when Marv Wolfman began writing the series that he knew where he was going to end up by the end. I think some things were up in the air as the book was coming out, so they had to incorporate new ideas into each issue. The final stages seem to be different resolutions that were discussed but then rejected until we end up in issue 12 with a reboot of sorts but not a complete reboot--and even that final issue wasn't the final word on how the DC Universe would end up.

[The_Lurk]

The COIE book itself no. I recently started the COIE - Companion Vol. 1, which collects about 500 pages of tie in issues. That IMO is. It kind of requires you to have the COIE book next to it for cross-referencing. Looks a tiny bit like one is studying and having to refresh memory with the other book all the time.

[Captain Smith]

It was a great story. One can argue about whether eliminating the multiverse was a good idea. It did lead to the many revisions and some rather idiotic conceptualizations of the multiverse in later 'events'.

The mess of 52 comes to mind and that still flops around, even on TV.

[Lightning Rider]

It can be, but it's still worth the read.