At the dawn of time, what should have been a single universe fractured into many – a positive-matter multiverse and an anti-matter universe. Across the multiverse, heroes and villains rose, especially on an infinite number of parallel Earths. But the personification of the anti-matter universe, the Anti-Monitor, intends to expand his empire and destroy the multiverse. His counterpart, the Monitor, has a plan to save a small segment of the multiverse and reunite the fragments into a positive matter universe strong enough to withstand the Anti-Monitor’s onslaught. But he must call upon hundreds of superpowered beings from across half a dozen universes, and some of Earth’s greatest heroes will not survive the battle.

Indulge me in a little bit of history, because with Crisis on Infinite Earths, context is key. In 1985, DC decided to do a massive reboot of its entire superhero continuity, streamlining what had been a collection of parallel universes into one single timeline. Many stories were erased from continuity, many characters were outright deleted, and many others were radically changed. Crisis set the stage for John Byrne’s Man of Steel, Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, and George Perez’s Wonder Woman, just to name three major examples. The characters of Superboy and Supergirl were eliminated from DC history; the Silver Age Flash was replaced by his teenaged sidekick; Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were no longer considered to have fought bad guys during World War II or been a part of the Justice Society of America. When I started collecting comics in 1989, this new status quo had been in place for a few years, and some longtime readers were still trying to adjust. So you could find debates about Crisis in letter columns and even on the BBS-based message boards I frequented at the time. I picked up the 12 issues of the series from the back issue boxes at my local comic store, back when that was still the primary means to read older stories.

And I remember not having the faintest idea what was going on, but liking it. There were dozens of characters in the first issue alone, many of which I had never heard, several of which didn’t resemble any portrayal I was familiar with, and it was clear that there was some Serious Stuff Going Down. Regardless of the continuity repercussions, there was a fun, throwing-the-kitchen-sink vibe to the whole thing. And the book looked great – penciled by George Perez at what I consider the high point of his career (not that he is any slouch today), I don’t think anyone else could handle the scope of the cast or story. The young Superman of Earth-1 and the middle-aged Superman of Earth-2 have numerous scenes together, and Perez manages to give each character a distinctive look and facial expressions. (Perez mentioned that when he drew the two Superman together, he imagined John Williams' theme playing for the Earth-1 character and the theme to George Reeves' adventures playing for the Earth-2 version. And you know what, I can kind of see that now when I look at the drawings.)

Now, somewhere around fifteen years after I read it the first time, I’ve absorbed a lot more information about the pre-Crisis DC multiverse. I’ve seen many of the changes wrought by Crisis undone – there’s a Supergirl in DC continuity again, and there have been at least two attempts to restore a multiverse/parallel world structure, including last year’s sequel Infinite Crisis. So I took another look at Crisis, this time in DC’s oversized Absolute format. (There’s also a standard-sized softcover edition of the story itself.) And the book looks great. Perez’s art really shines in the oversized format, where all his detail can shine. The paper quality is great, and Tom McCraw did a fantastic job recreating the old color separations to give the book a look that’s appropriate to the era, but not hamstrung by technology – most of the colors are pretty flat, but they’re deep and printed with a high resolution.

The story itself . . . well, I’m not sure it holds up so well. After the initial Holy Cow factor wears off, the story sort of lunges forward – the multiverse almost gets destroyed numerous times, the Anti-Monitor almost dies over and over again. As a monthly serial, this probably worked pretty well, in that each attack and counter-attack raise suspense and get you coming back for the next episode. (To say nothing of checking out the other crossovers.) But in one sitting, it becomes something of a slog. The chapters that give some space to the deaths of Supergirl and Barry Allen (the Silver Age Flash) are two exceptions, since the emphasis on individual characters takes the focus off the plot repetitions and moves it to the emotional impact of seeing iconic characters meet their end. Marv Wolfman does this kind of character material well when he’s on top of his game, and he was for those issues. And all of this said – I prefer where Wolfman appeared to leave some of the key characters at the end of his story to where other writers put them 20 years later.

In addition to the slipcase (which features a Perez drawing painted by Alex Ross, originally used in 1998 as the dust jacket for the first-ever reprinting of Crisis) and the oversized hardcover format, the Absolute edition features a second hardcover volume, the Crisis Compendium. There’s a reprint of a rather exhaustive index of character appearances and crossovers, along with a few text pieces that appeared in the original Crisis issues and other DC books leading up the event. New content includes essays that discuss the effect that the Crisis had on DC’s books, but I think that most of the people willing to pay for this deluxe format already know a lot of that material. The most interesting elements to me were the memos between various DC writers and editors, as Wolfman tried to get everyone on board for the crossover. You get hints of the resistance he faced, which led DC to fumble the ball somewhat in maintaining the coherence of the post-Crisis universe (and which probably explains why so many of those pre-Crisis elements have worked their way back into the continuity). I felt kind of bad for Roy Thomas, a longtime writer-editor with a fondness for World War II-era superheroes. He had carved a niche for himself writing stories set in DC’s Earth-2, where DC’s Golden Age stories and characters were said to take place. And now the Crisis was basically destroying Earth-2, and taking away much of his books’ reason for being. The compendium features numerous memos where he tries to preserve as much of those characters as he can, but by the end it’s clear he knows it’s a losing battle.

Unless you’re an art junkie, specifically a Perez art junkie, I’d probably look to the softcover to get my Crisis fix. If you do, keep the Excedrin and/or a scorecard handy – and remember that the headache is part of the fun.

Reviewed by Dave Thomer
theLogBook.com assistant editor

This item is available in theLogBook.com Store.

• Year: 2005
• Writers: Marv Wolfman and George Perez
• Penciller: George Perez
• Inker: Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, Jerry Ordway
• Genre: graphic superhero science fiction
• Publisher: DC Comics
• Pages: 464 pages (2 volumes)