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INFINITE
CRISIS, OR INFINITE LET DOWN?
By Jack Razumich
Everyone reading this review should open up the latest
issue of Infinite Crisis. Go ahead, I'll wait. Do you hear
the crickets in the background? That, dear readers, is the
sound of no one caring.
With only
two issues remaining, Infinite Crisis is in danger of becoming
an infinite disappointment. The ginormous event that DC's
been leading up to since Identity Crisis has become boring
reading for one simple reason: nothing has happened. Much
like with most of these so-called world changing events, a
couple of minor characters have died. Yawn. They've brought
back the multiverse, again. While executed in a manner better
that the laughable attempt to do so with the Hypertime fiasco
(*shudder!*), there's still a genuine feeling of apathy towards
attempting once again to resurrect an idea that should have
been dead and buried twenty years ago. The closest thing to
an interesting event in this series so far was the revelation
at the end of the first issue of the final fate of the four
survivors of Crisis on Infinite Earths. This was, of course,
slightly tarnished by the later revelation that two of these
survivors somehow went insane in their paradise that responded
to their every single thought, but I guess it is possible
to have too much of a good thing. The only Crisis here seems
to be figuring out what on (the Infinite) Earth(s) DC is thinking.
The problems
with Infinite Crisis can be summed up with two simple phrases:
who cares? and why bother?
Taking
the second phrase first, you really do wonder why DC bothered.
The entire premise for this series is based on the idea that
the world-merging that happened at the end of Crisis on Infinite
Earths never permanently settled. This premise has three distinct
flaws. First, I have to assume that comic companies really
are trying to attract new readers; they usually do a sub-par
job, but I like to assume that they're at least trying. That
means that the new readers DC's trying to attract to its company
have never read Crisis on Infinite Earths and don't care.
One of the arguments for Crisis was that it was hard for a
new reader to pick up a DC book and understand what was going
on because of the need to understand fifty years of continuity.
While Infinite Crisis only requires the new reader to understand
twenty years of continuity, it needs to be asked how making
readers learn about an event that happened twenty years ago
is going to make him any more likely to read your books than
asking him to learn about things that happened fifty years
ago. Remember, when Crisis happened the concept of the multiverse
was a little over twenty years old, and at that time DC decided
that this was too confusing for new readers.
The second
flaw is that anyone who was reading comics about the time
that Crisis was originally coming out and is still reading
today has long since made their peace with the series. The
only monthly superhero comic that Crisis had a continuing
impact on was The Flash, and that was only because Barry Allen
died, and managed to, at least for right now, stay dead. Every
other book moved forward and never truly looked back, although
Superman tried several times with their various reincarnations
of Supergirl.
The third
flaw is the argument that with the twentieth anniversary of
Crisis coming up, DC needed to do something to commemorate
the event. The response to this flaw is a combination of the
responses to the first two flaws. The new readers don't care,
and I seriously doubt if any of the old readers care any more,
either. That means that DC is in the position of doing a story
that doesn't need to be done because they think that they
need to do so to commemorate a story that happened two decades
ago. That, my friends, is always the worst reason to tell
a story.
The first
phrase, who cares?, is much more difficult to answer, and
much more disappointing when you reach that answer.
There
are two distinct sets of camps among comic readers. The first
camp is the DC versus Marvel camp. The second and newer camp,
which often overlaps the first, is the Comics Should Be More
Realistic versus Comics Should Be Fun camp. In the DC versus
Marvel camp, supporters of DC have often said that DC is more
respectful and mindful of its continuity than Marvel. If that
argument is true, than what does Infinite Crisis say about
DC's mindset now? For good or ill, Crisis was a major, important
restructuring of the way DC wrote and published its comics,
and one of a handful of events in comics that had never been
directly retconned. Now, twenty years later, for no particular
reason, they've decided to undo a long-standing, important
piece of their own continuity. I realize that this argument
can be partially applied to Crisis as well, but the end result
of Crisis was that everyone was on one Earth as opposed to
several dozen. The only characters to die in Crisis were characters
that had direct counterparts on Earth-1, like Green Arrow
of Earth-2, minor characters, who are always cannon fodder
in these events, and Supergirl and the Flash, who at least
died valiant and heroic deaths; besides, from a writing standpoint,
if you want to write a story teaming-up Green Lantern and
Captain Marvel, it's a lot more convenient for one of the
characters to travel cross-country rather than cross-dimension.
Undoing an event that collapsed an unmanageable system into
a manageable one seems much more disrespectful from a company
that supposedly cares about its continuity.
A much
more glaring event than the return of the multiverse to smash
DC's claims of continuity respectability is the return of
Jason Todd, the second Robin. A Death in the Family was a
major event in the life of the Batman, right up there with
the death of his parents. That pivotal moment in the life
of Batman was undone by Judd Winnick, who simply wanted Jason
Todd back. I really liked Jason's Robin, too, but frankly
that's at least as insulting (if not more so) as the recent
revelation in Amazing Spider-Man that Gwen Stacy seduced Norman
Osborn and had a pair of twins from him shortly before he
chucked her off of a bridge. Frankly, I think that in the
last few years DC's lost any ability to claim that they're
respectful of their continuity.
The second
camp, the Realistic Comics versus Fun Comics camp should also
have a problem with this story. The Realistic Comics camp
expects changes to be permanent when they happen; they also
want more realistic representations of the characters, such
as in later issues of Geoff Johns' run on The Flash, where
the Rogues, who had formerly been jewel thieves with gimmicks,
suddenly were slaughtering FBI agents in a search for Captain
Boomerang's dead body, but that's an article unto itself.
Contrary to popular belief, the Fun Comics camp doesn't want
comics to stay static, they just want the books to not take
themselves so seriously; after all, you don't read a book
about a guy who got powers from a radioactive spider bite
for realism, you read it for the escapism. Much like their
friends in the Realistic camp, these fans also expect major
changes to be permanent. And if you think that any of the
changes out of Infinite Crisis are permanent, just check out
the most recent issue of JSA, the first of the "One Year Later"
issues. The entire Justice Society's on one Earth, the same
Earth that the Justice League is on, meaning that the multiverse
once again will be on its way out following a miniseries with
the word "Crisis" in its title; the only difference is that
this time it was the same Crisis that brought it back. So
much for permanent change.
So who
cares about the events in Infinite Crisis? The answer is no
one. The Realistic Comics group doesn't care because none
of the changes are permanent. The Fun Comics group doesn't
care for the same reasons. The poor DC Is Better Than Marvel
people are simply pulling their hair out trying to figure
out what their beloved publisher is thinking.
The more
chilling question in the wake of the series is why should
anyone care about what happens in comics at all anymore? Much
has been said about the revolving door of death in comics,
and it should serve as a cautionary tale to publishers and
writers. Why should a fan spend three or more dollars for
a monthly pamphlet of barely twenty-two pages and care about
what happens to the star of the book if they know that anything
approaching a major event in the character's life will simply
be erased in another few years. Events like Infinite Crisis
seem to tell the reader to not worry about what's happening
to your hero, because someone else will come along later and
return things to the status quo. If that's the policy that
the companies are going to adopt, it would be better to simply
not attempt these world-changing events because they alienate
long-time fans for short-term gains, and there's no guarantee
that those same fans return once the status quo has been restored.
I have
heard a rumor that the end result of Infinite Crisis is that
DC will go back to not being such an unnecessarily dark and
grim place. If this is true, I will admit that this story
was worth it; I look forward to some day sharing my hobby
of comics with my own children, which is something I wouldn't
be able to do with today's superhero books. I also wish DC
the best of luck with their "One Year Later" experiment. Since
they've gone out of their way to make the books inaccessible
to younger readers lately, I hope that they actually are able
to attract new readers with this "jump on" point, although
I still feel that it'll provide a better "jump off" point
for people who have been buying on inertia. But my biggest
fear is that the next Crisis to face the heroes of the DCU
will be trying to figure out where all of their readers have
gone.
Jack
Razumich worked in a comic shop for many, many years.
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