Rank the crisises...crisisis...crisis

[Hcmarvel]

Please delete thread - somehow accidentally posted twice

[Hcmarvel]

With Death Metal now completed we can do another one of these: Which of the Crisis Events is your favorite? What would you rank them? Why?

1. Crisis on Infinite Earths
2. Zero Hour
3. Infinite Crisis
4. Final Crisis
5. Flashpoint
6. Convergence (Wikipedia puts this as a Crisis...not sure I agree but whatever)
7. DC Metal
8. DC Death Metal

Honorable Mention:

A) Identity Crisis
B) Heroes in Crisis

Some thoughts:

- I know most people will probably go with Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I acknowledge its supremacy in terms of being first, most impactful, and perhaps the most cohesive, but I've just never warmed to it. As someone who only really enjoys Post-Crisis DC Comics, I have never been able to get into Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's obviously the "best" one of these but its far from my favorite.

- I have soft spot for Zero Hour as it was one of my first DC trade paperbacks back in the 90s. Unfortunately it isn't that good. The changes it made were never super clear, the central conflict doesn't really emerge until the very last issue, and it never feels epic the way a follow up to the original Crisis should. I do enjoy villain Hal Jordan though.

- I'm a much bigger fan of the books directly surrounding Infinite Crisis than the mini itself. Villains United? Rann/Thanagar War? 52? One Year Later stuff? All really great. Infinite Crisis itself is good, not fantastic, imho. Superboy Prime isn't a favorite of mine. But still, Infinite Crisis is good, and it was a really exciting time to be reading DC books.

- When Final Crisis was being released I really did not like it. I found it confusing, and unfocused, and filled with the worst kind of Morrisonisms. But every time I revisit it I like it more. It reads really well as a collected edition, with the Batman and Superman Beyond issues thrown in, and once you know where its going, it's a very satisfying story. I think Final Crisis does a lot of the things DC Death Metal was trying to do, but far better.

- Flashpoint works okay as an Age of Apocalypse-esque alternate reality story. But its too short given the massive effect it ended up having on the publishing line, the tie-ins are bad outside of the excellent Azzarello/Risso Batman mini, and, as always, Barry Allen sucks and nothing should ever center around him. He's the worst.

- I honestly didn't read enough of Convergence to have an opinion on it. Who even wrote it? Who is Jeff King? It did bring us back the real Superman and Jon Kent so we have to give it some credit.

- DC Metal - The least "Crisis-y" of any of these events possibly. I cannot think of any major change this had on the universe. But its considered a Crisis so there you go. I like DC Metal. It's not a favorite, but its fun, and the art rules, and it doesn't take itself super seriously which I appreciate.

- Whereas DC Death Metal was a mess. Again Capullo's art is fantastic, but I found the whole story incredibly anticlimactic, the meta angle which I usually appreciate fell flat on its face with this series I think, and the first 5 issues of the series were especially blah.


Identity Crisis - Such a well written, beautifully drawn, mess. There are lines of dialogue, narration, art work, character insight, that just work amazingly. I bet if Meltzer was given a really strong editorial hand guiding him, he could write one of the all time DC stories...Identity Crisis aint it. As a mystery it fails, as a superhero story it fails, as a darkening of the line it fails. The rape stuff is just awful and has aged terribly. Still, that Deathstroke fight is amazing and again, little moments throughout the book work so well that it's a hard book to totally dismiss.

Heroes in Crisis on the other hand is a flat out disaster. I'm not even as big on the art as most people as I fight Mann's art overly static and sexualized. To paraphrase Roger Ebert: I hate hate hate hate hate hate this book.


My ranking would be:

Final Crisis
Infinite Crisis
Crisis On Infinite Earths
Identity Crisis
DC Metal
Zero Hour
Flashpoint
DC Death Metal
Convergence
Heroes in Crisis

[John Venus]

Final Crisis. Simply because of how bonkers the whole thing was.

[Dr. Poison]

Crisis on Infinite Earths is still #1 to me with Infinite Crisis being my #2.

[caj]

COIE was the first time I actually cried reading a comic book - the death of Supergirl and then Flash. It was very well done in both writing and art.

[Noodle]

My ranking:

1. Infinite Crisis
2. Zero Hour
3. COIE
4. Flashpoint
5. Identity Crisis
6. Heroes in Crisis
7. Convergence
8. Final Crisis
9. Death Metal
10 Metal

If you're going off of impact and what happened, Crisis on Infinite Earths would be first. But I just felt Infinite Crisis and Zero Hour read and flowed better.

[Lightning Rider]

Infinite Crisis for me. It was my first big event as a reader and I liked all the different elements in it.

Identity Crisis is a close second because I love how they make one person's death feel more frightening and disasterous than any existential threat, and the League feels like a family with history.

COIE is objectively more significant and impressive, but the best bits of it are spread out in a mammth narrative.

Final Crisis was really cool, but I feel like I'd appreciate it more on re-read.

Most of the rest are cool concepts without the best execution.

[MajorHoy]

* Crisis on Earth-One! / Crisis on Earth-Two! <Justice League of America #21-22, 1963>
* Crisis on Earth-Three! <Justice League of America #29-30, 1964>
* Crisis on Earth-X! <Justice League of America #107-108, 1973>
* Crisis in Eternity! / Crisis on Earth-S! <Justice League of America #135-137, 1976>
* Targets on Two Worlds / Countdown to Crisis! / Crisis in Limbo! <Justice League of America #195-197, 1981>
* Crisis on Earth-Prime! <Justice League of America #207-209 and All-Star Squadron #14-15, 1982>

[The Cheat]

Final Crisis was my introduction to the DC universe. So that.

[James Hunter]

It will be a controversial opinion but I actually preferred INFINITE CRISIS to CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (although I dO love CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS). In fairness it was where I got most invested into the DCU.

[Stick Figure]

Can’t comment on most of these but a friend recommended I read COIE. I borrowed his collected edition and couldn’t finish an issue. The writing was so bad. I get it’s significance but storytelling was dramatically different. Plus, it seemed like every other page was a new character. I thumbed through it and the art was pretty good. Way too hard to read coming at it years later.

[SiegePerilous02]

Final Crisis. Simply because of how bonkers the whole thing was.

This is the main reason why Final Crisis is the only Crisis I like. Even as someone who has grown to love Morrison, parts of this got too weird for me. But it still had stuff I liked.

The rest of them are pretty bad. The original COIE at least had great artwork, but the story and worse its legacy is really bad

[MajorHoy]

Can’t comment on most of these but a friend recommended I read COIE. I borrowed his collected edition and couldn’t finish an issue. The writing was so bad. I get it’s significance but storytelling was dramatically different. Plus, it seemed like every other page was a new character. I thumbed through it and the art was pretty good. Way too hard to read coming at it years later.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was fantastic read when it originally was published, and unlike Infinite Crisis, the deaths of characters in general was more dignified.

But, yeah, I can see how people who first came to it many years later aren't as impressed. Comics changed by then. The style comic books are written in has changed (back then, writers weren't writing for eventual tpb collections), and many of the older characters involved in the story probably have less meaning to 21st Century readers.

But, damn! was it a game-changer back then!

[Batman Begins 2005]

Top three:

1. Final Crisis.
2. Flashpoint.
3. Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Worst, Heroes in Crisis.

[Batman Begins 2005]

I'm a big Grant Morrison fanboy.