Infinite Crisis #1-7

Infinite Crisis #1-7

Originally released in 2005

Written by Geoff Johns

Art by Phil Jimenez (#1-7), George Perez (#3-4, 6-7), Ivan Reis (#4-7), Jerry Ordway (#5), Joe Bennett (#6-7)

With all of the advance reading (at least for the mini-series; I think I'll be fine with not reading individual tie-in issues from long-running series) completed, now seems like the time for me to finally read Infinite Crisis.  Whereas Crisis on Infinite Earths (the story that this is a sequel to, twenty years later) was twelve issues long, this is only seven; I'm not sure if that will make it easier to understand or harder to follow, as it could mean that the story is more straightforward or condensed and reliant on tie-ins to make sense of it. (comics have changed quite a lot in those twenty years)

Events pick up where the tie-in series left off, particularly the OMAC Project and the Rann-Thanagar War.  Funnily enough, the Infinite Crisis special that inspired me to read the other Infinite Crisis specials (the Villains United one) seems completely irrelevant to the story; by the time that Infinite Crisis starts, the attack by the army of supervillains (including Doomsday, who's being controlled by Doctor Psycho) has apparently been resolved off-screen - the Martian Manhunter was in the Justice League's moon base moments before it was destroyed.

Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman arrive at the scene, but the situation between them is awkward.  Batman views Diana as nothing more than a fugitive and a murderer, while acting as though Superman is ineffectual and claiming that the last time that he inspired people was when he died.  There's some distrust towards Bruce as well, given how he built a satellite to monitor the every move of his fellow heroes, which was hijacked.

The meeting is cut short by the arrival of Mongul, who came to see the destruction of the League's base for himself; while he's defeated, Bruce jumps to the conclusion that Diana is going to kill him, so fractures are growing between some of the core members of the Justice League - fractures that are noticed by observers from outside of the universe.

At the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC's endless multiverse was folded together into one universe, with most of the survivors (Power Girl, the Captain Marvel cast, characters from Charleton Comics like Blue Beetle and Peacemaker, heroes from Quality Comics like Plastic Man and Uncle Sam) being brought from their original universes into this new one.  Only four exceptions couldn't fit into this new universe and went to a heaven-like dimension - Alexander Luthor (the son of the heroic Lex Luthor from Earth-3), the Superman and Lois Lane from Earth-2 (the Earth of the Golden Age comics like Action Comics #1), and Superboy-Prime (a boy named Clark Kent from "our" world, Earth-Prime, who gained superpowers like his namesake).

They've seen post-Crisis DC from an outsider's perspective, how events got darker throughout the 90s and early 2000s, and with heroes turning against each other, killing, and going insane, they've come to one conclusion - they saved the wrong Earth. (Lois disagrees, but she's aged in real time to the point where she's dying, and Alexander Luthor has convinced Superman of Earth-2, or Kal-L, that restoring Earth-2 will save Lois's life)  This looks like a job for Superman.

The message of this series seems to be about the destructive power of nostalgia - how focusing only on how things were so much better when you were younger can blind you to new possibilities or keep you from considering how things have improved. Kal-L, while a tragic figure who's affected by grief and manipulated by Alexander, seems to be the face of that, as he thinks that everything was so much better in the simpler, black-and-white nature of Earth-2 and wants to return to that lost golden age.

To do that, Kal-L tracks down one of the survivors from his own Earth, Power Girl.  She has no memory of Earth-2, and Alexander can only speculate about the reason why, but meeting Lois Lane and touching her hand brings Power Girl's memories of her original home universe rushing back.

Despite this, she's still not sold on the plan, as it would overwrite the current Earth with Earth-2, effectively killing everyone.  Superboy-Prime insists it's for the best, given how dark the heroes have gotten, and that restoring Earth-2 is what's best for everyone.

Superboy-Prime's distaste of the current Earth is for slightly pettier reasons, though.  The current Superboy is Conner Kent, who's keeping out of the various crises due to a personal crisis of his own.  He recently discovered that he's a clone of Superman, but as pure Kryptonian clones are unstable (they seemingly turn into Bizarros), human DNA was needed to stabilize the process, and the human DNA that was used belongs to Lex Luthor. (Lex seemingly views himself as Conner's father)

Kara explores the base of the multiverse refugees and discovers a massive dimensional tuning fork, left over from Crisis on Infinite Earths.  This turning fork has beings who were originally from several Earths strapped to it, along with the corpse of the Anti-Monitor.

Before Kara can react to this, she's knocked unconscious by Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime, with Superboy-Prime being revealed to be the one who destroyed the Justice League headquarters and kidnapped Martian Manhunter.

When Power Girl wakes up, Alexander Luthor feels the need to explain his plan.  He intends to use this tuning fork to bring back not just Earth-2, but the entire multiverse, before mixing and matching different Earths together to create the perfect Earth and destroying the rest.  To this end, he enlisted the help of the Psycho Pirate (the only person outside of Alexander, Superboy-Prime, Kal-L, and Earth-2's Lois to remember the multiverse) so that he could get Eclipso's jewel to Jean Loring so that she could seduce the Spectre into destroying all magic, along with hijacking Brother Eye to help him find specific worlds.  Alex's hands are also the ones emerging from the giant portal near the Rann-Thanagar War, and Alex and Superboy-Prime have been sneaking out of their dimension (somehow) while Superman was distracted with Lois's ailing health (with Superboy-Prime rearranging planets to suit this plan, and Alex posing as Lex Luthor to get the Secret Society to kidnap the people that he needs).

Before Alex can put his plan into motion, he's agreed to let Superboy-Prime come face-to-face with Conner Kent so that Superboy-Prime can tell him off.  Superboy-Prime comes across as insanely self-centered here, as Conner has no idea who Superboy-Prime is and no way of knowing who he is. (so from Conner's perspective, some kid shows up dressed like Superman, telling him off and saying he's the "real" Superboy before attacking Conner)

The Teen Titans and Justice Society show up to help Conner, and Superboy-Prime accidentally kills two Titans in the process.  This could be explained as him not knowing how much to hold back, as to my knowledge, he's only ever been in a single fight and it was against the Anti-Monitor.  However, he insists that this universe is "corrupting" him somehow just by him being in it.  As the series goes on, he becomes less of a sympathetic figure and more like a whiny hypocrite, insisting that only his universe has heroes who are noble and brave, and therefore only his universe deserves to survive while every other one can burn. (meanwhile, he's the only hero from his universe, and he's willing to commit what might as well be omnicide)

Needless to say, there is a LOT going on in this series, and we're only about halfway through.  I didn't even touch on how Deathstroke used Chemo, a living chemical weapon, to destroy Bludhaven just because it's the city that Nightwing operates out of. (Chemo doesn't get much dialogue, but the two lines that it does have before exploding are unintentionally funny - its first line is "gg", like it's telling Bludhaven "good game", and moments before hitting the ground, it says "oop", like it accidentally tripped and fell right before exploding)

Thankfully, Nightwing wasn't in Bludhaven at the time, but the series keeps toying with the idea that he's going to die, to the point where Brother Eye taunts Batman about it when Nightwing is going up against Superboy-Prime later.  By my understanding, the head of DC at the time (Dan DiDio) REALLY hated Nightwing for some reason and wanted him killed off whenever he got the chance.  Given that he's the original Robin and one of the most beloved characters in- and out-of-universe, everyone else involved rebelled against that.

As various Flashes (including a cameo from Barry) trap Superboy-Prime by forcing him into the Speed Force, Alexander Luthor manages to pull reality apart enough to create a second Earth floating in space next to the original. (it doesn't seem like other planets are duplicated, just the Earth)

Kal-L takes his Lois to Earth-2, but despite a momentary improvement in her well-being, it's not enough and Lois passes away.  Alexander Luthor had been lying to Kal-L the entire time, knowing that she was going to die regardless of which Earth she was on; Kal-El (Earth 1's Superman) hears Kal-L mourn Lois and heads to Earth-2, where Kal-L doesn't take the arrival of the other Superman well, blaming the corrupting influence of Earth-1's universe for killing Lois.

Wonder Woman arrives, having been given a pep talk from her Earth-2 counterpart who ascended to be with the Greek gods in Mount Olympus during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Wonder Woman and Superman manage to convince Kal-L that what he's doing is wrong, though it's at this moment that Alex uses Kal-L for his plan.

Superman, the original Superman, is an intrinsic part of everything in the DC universe, and using Kal-L as a key, Alexander causes countless Earths to appear throughout the universe, beginning the restoration of the multiverse.

With the help of the new Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes), Booster Gold (who went back to his own time so he could brush up on historical records and try to prevent anything like the death of Ted Kord), and an assorted group of other heroes, Batman heads to space to shut down Brother Eye, while Conner, Nightwing, and Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark, Conner's girlfriend) track down the Superboy that attacked Conner, and by extension, discover the plot to remake the universe.

Conner's group frees the various heroes and villains who were strapped to the dimensional tuning fork, including Black Adam.  Psycho-Pirate is still present; he keeps getting dragged into multiversal crisis events even though he's completely out of his league and his standards for what qualifies as a reward keep getting lower and lower.  In Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti-Monitor says he'll give the Psycho-Pirate a whole world to manipulate the emotions of, while in Infinite Crisis, he's on-board because once the plan is done, Alexander Luthor will let him... have his way with Power Girl.  Nobody mourns when Black Adam kills him.

Superboy-Prime returns with a new set of armour inspired by the Anti-Monitor that constantly feeds him the energy from yellow sunlight. (he's also inexplicably immune to magic; no explanation is given for either of these developments)  He claims that the Flashes imprisoned him near a red sun that drains Kryptonians' powers, but he escaped somehow. (again, how he got away isn't explained)  He tells Alex that, rather than trying to mash various Earths together to make the perfect Earth, he should just find Earth-Prime (which, again, is basically our Earth), since in Prime's mind, that's the perfect Earth.

Martian Manhunter gets a nice moment facing off with Superboy-Prime, and there's a good bit of character development where Batman lets go of his paranoia and trusts Hal Jordan (who he's distrusted since the whole Parallax incident where Hal tried to remake the universe, if not earlier) to save him from a self-destructing Brother Eye.

Before Alex can pick the Earth that he wants, Conner smashes Superboy-Prime through the tuning fork, blowing it up and causing all of the Earths to condense into one New Earth. (I'm not sure if this is meant to be a hard reboot, like Crisis on Infinite Earths and the New 52 where history is completely changed, or a soft reboot like Zero Hour where only a few small details and continuity errors are fixed while everything is pretty much the same as it was before)

However, this comes at a cost, as Conner dies from his injuries just as the two Supermen, Batman, Green Lantern (Hal), and Wonder Woman arrive, with Cassie mourning over his body.  If the intent was originally to kill Nightwing, and Conner's death was a last-second change, it worked out well in the long run.  Conner started out this storyline as indecisive, questioning his entire identity due to the revelations about Lex's involvement in his creation, only to prove himself to be a true hero by saving the multiverse. (as, if the multiverse expanded too much, it would become unstable and everything would be destroyed)

At this point, I've reached issue 7, the final issue.  There has been a LOT going on, but it feels more manageable than Crisis on Infinite Earths did; it likely helps that the stories between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis are more accessible and I'm more familiar with them as a result. (though even then, it definitely helps that I've read Crisis On Infinite Earths, the four mini-series leading up to Infinite Crisis, Green Lantern Rebirth, Zero Hour, Identity Crisis, and likely other series; if I hadn't read those and just jumped into Infinite Crisis, I feel like I would be EXTREMELY confused)

It's here where the mass break-out and Dr. Psycho controlling Doomsday happens, so I guess I read the Villains United tie-in too early.  Still, not much is done with the idea of Dr. Psycho's mind controlling the actions of a Superman killer like Doomsday, as Doomsday behaves like his normal berserk self.

Alexander Luthor takes a break from his plan to provide exposition about the changes that were made in the transition to New Earth, such as Wonder Woman being a founding Justice League member now when she wasn't one post-Crisis due to her being new to the outside world.  Superboy-Prime doesn't care about any of that; he just wants his Earth back.

For some reason, everyone at the dimensional tuning fork is teleported into the middle of the Metropolis battle, allowing the two Supermen to turn the tide in the heroes' favour.

Alexander Luthor proves to be as much of a hypocrite as Superboy-Prime - Lois was like a mother to both of them, but Alex knew she would die and let it happen because he views himself as "the only hero in a world full of villains." (again, he was basically committing omnicide)

Superboy-Prime is attacked by an older Bart Allen, who is now wearing Barry's outfit and acting as the Flash. (I'm guessing this was covered in a Flash issue released around that time)  Superboy-Prime apparently has Flash-phobia after being dragged through the Speed Force, with Bart's arrival leaving him a stuttering mess.

With Alexander's plans ruined, Superboy-Prime becomes the main threat of the event, intending to fly through Oa (the homeworld of the Guardians of the Universe) at light speed.  He believes this will create a new Big Bang, destroying everything and restarting the universe with only him left alive; whether or not this is true, he has to be stopped.

Whatever happened to Superboy-Prime as a result of the Flashes, it's definitely affected his psyche for the worse.  He's insisting that he was imprisoned for "trying to do the right thing" while murdering at least three Green Lanterns on his way to destroy the entire universe.

Alexander Luthor, seemingly out of frustration for his plans being ruined, tries to kill Batman, but Nightwing jumps in the way of the blast.  With Alexander Luthor insisting that they're not so different and Batman just wasn't thinking large enough, Batman picks up a gun and points it at Alex's head, uncharacteristically pulling the trigger. (and seemingly demonstrating that anyone can be pushed to the point that Wonder Woman was pushed to; in Wonder Woman's case, Maxwell Lord was tied up with the Lasso of Truth when he said that the only way to remove his mind control over Superman was to kill him, and Batman didn't even need that much to try and kill Alexander)

The Supermen of Earth-1 and Earth-2 fly Superboy-Prime through the red sun that Krypton once orbited, destroying Superboy-Prime's armour and sapping all of them of their powers.  The main universe's Superman is at a disadvantage; whereas Superboy-Prime and Kal-L are immune to the Kryptonite of this universe because they're from different universes, that doesn't apply to the main Superman, though he tries to get through to Superboy-Prime that being Superman or Superboy isn't about your costume or your powers.

As a result of the battle, Kal-L is dying, which feels like a punch to the gut both from a historical perspective (he's the original Superman) and from Power Girl's perspective (she just got her memories back, found the versions of Superman and Lois from her home universe, and lost both Superman and Lois within the span of a few hours).

The aftermath has some visual callbacks to Crisis on Infinite Earths; whatever the Flashes did to imprison Superboy-Prime, it apparently destroyed the Speed Force, leading to Jay Garrick being declared the Fastest Man Alive in panels that resemble Wally taking up the Flash mantle at the end of Crisis.

Alexander Luthor survived, and is plotting to redo his plan and fix his mistakes.  However, when putting together his Secret Society, he left out the Joker for being too much of a wildcard.  The Joker took that personally, and Lex took it personally when Alex called him stupid, so Lex has the Joker unceremoniously murder Alex in a back alley.

The Trinity meet again, but under much better circumstances compared to the start of the story, with the three of them getting along once more. Clark has been rendered powerless thanks to the fight, while Bruce and Diana intend to travel the world, reconnect with their roots, and find themselves, with Bruce taking Tim and Dick with him.  This leads to the series 52, focusing on lesser-known characters during a point in time where DC's three biggest heroes are out of commission for a year (or 52 weeks).

For the most part, the series ends on an optimistic note.  The three main heroes of the DC universe are out of commission for a while, but they can rest easy knowing that the universe is in good hands. (though Black Adam and Lobo are also included for some reason)

Also, Superboy-Prime (who's imprisoned by fifty Green Lanterns around a red sun) goes all dark and edgy, carving a Superman logo into his chest to seemingly demonstrate that he learned absolutely nothing from Superman's earlier speech and that he still seems to think that he's the only one who deserves to be Superman.

I've said it before, but there was a lot going on in this series; I checked out of curiosity to see how long my summary/thoughts were, and it's about nine pages.  Still, it felt easier to follow than Crisis on Infinite Earths did, and despite quite a few characters dying abruptly and without much focus (I probably couldn't name any of them aside from Conner and Alexander Luthor), it didn't feel as mean-spirited as Zero Hour did. (okay, MAYBE the treatment of Superboy-Prime is mean-spirited, with him coming across as an extended stand-in for whiny fanboys complaining about how comics used to be so much better)  It has a message that still seems relevant today, and for the most part, it's well-written, with my only complaint being that the exposition about what changed in New Earth was inserted in an extremely clunky manner that took me out of the story.  Also, the art was amazing, doing an excellent job at capturing the chaos of this multiverse mash-up. (and as you can tell by the "Art by" section, the amount of artists kept increasing as the series went on)  It requires a lot of background reading, but I think it's a tough call between this and Final Crisis for my favourite Crisis event.