Crisis on Infinite Earths

The Crisis struck me 26 years late; it existed as one of those grand events (like the Great Depression, or World War Two, or the Cuban Missile Crisis) that people I knew experienced, but I did not. Yet I knew Crisis was big not just in its own story, but also with the other stories it inspired (like Secret Wars, Infinity Gauntlet, Civil War, etc.) and reading these later event books seemed to me like reading the Aeniad without having read either the Iliad or Odyssey.  For a first time reader[1] of Crisis on Infinite Earths, the story withstands two and dash of a decade as a great event book because it touches upon and fulfills many traits of a literary epic.

Penguin’s Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theories provides an appropriate working definition of “epic” that works well to illuminate some successful machinations of DC’s 80’s super hero opera:

“A lengthy narrative in which the action, characters, and language are on a heroic level and the style is exalted and even majestic,” some major characteristics of epic are:

1. a  setting remote in time and place
2. an objective, lofty, dignified style
3. a central incident or series of incidents dealing with legendary or traditional material
4. a  theme involving universal human problems
5. a towering hero of great stature
6. super human strength of body, character, mind
7. superhuman forces entering the action

Superhero comics share a procrustean bed with ancient heroic myths, the kind conveyed through epics (in the literary sense of the word). For the superhero comic book, crossovers are the medium’s adaptation of epics.

Crisis is epic.

Setting

Crisis stretches its tale across a variety of environments, not only with geographic locations but also through multiple times, and various dimensions. Within these times and dimensions characters struggle in space, mountains, cities, jungles, laboratories, space ships, etc. These settings not only cover the remoteness of time and place, but they link this distance to current times and dimensions.

Incident

The main focus for Crisis on Infinite Earths involves the Anti-Monitor attempting to replace our multiverse with his antimatter multiverse. Conceiving a larger event for an epic taxes even the neural workings of Brainiac.

Along with this main incident in the plot, the inspiration for this story lends its strength to increasing the power of this epic event at DC comics. The introduction Marv Wolfman included to the softcover collection of Crisis cites the impetus for the story coming from reading comics in the 60’s and his desire “to see a single story featuring all the DC super-heroes from the past, present, and future.” This desire, carried around for 25 years and undergoing plenty of permutations, became Crisis on Infinite Earths.  

Any literary epic worth its meter includes an invocation to the Muse (Homer did it, Apollonius did it, as did Ovid, Virgil, and even Milton). While Crisis doesn’t contain a call to pagan gods, it does carry an idea which accompanied a writer for over two decades. While the actual workings and implements of the Muse’s assistance continues to be argued, the interest Wolfman possessed to read a tale of all the DC heroes seems to equate (at least in some ways) to having the Muse breathe heavy into an ear.

Crisis happened to be the first grand scale publishing event that showed the way to the following events. This originality, this attempt to “make it new!”, gives an assessment of the work a power boost.  

Theme

One of the questions the Iliad attempts to address is why people do the things they do. Crisis uses an answer to this question as its theme, namely, to save the multiverse, cooperation is needed. 

Characters, both villains and heroes, set aside, some eagerly and others reluctantly, differences in an attempt to halt the Anti-Monitor’s plans. Cooperation for mutual benefit runs through the panels and pages that allows characters to remain true to their ideas, yet knowing what and when to compromise and relax those ideas. This reluctant teamwork stood as a welcome change to current stories where even members of the X-Men and Avengers can’t set aside differences with one another.

Heroes

Of all the traits of a literary epic, the presence of heroes remains the most obvious parallel with Crisis. All the main characters are super heroes.

And there are a lot of heroes. A lot. I remained totally unfamiliar with many of the characters in the DC universe, and the characters from Earth 1 or 3 or X and all the other planes of the multiverse remained elusive. Yet such ignorance on my part didn’t critically hinder the story. Like the references to Philoctetes in the Iliad, more information remains accessible if one has the desire, but not knowing this individual will not utterly destroy an understanding of the poem. The extended full cast of Crisis empowers the book and demonstrates the far reach of the Monitor’s plan.

Just as most people know the story of Odysseus without ever having read the Odyssey, so most comic book fans know Supergirl dies in Crisis. The deaths and returns of super heroes has become mundane, so not much effect was expected from Supergirl’s demise. Yet still, despite knowing what was coming, the death of Supergirl can affect readers. Wolfman’s use of this death lends it strength and purpose.

Doctor Light (a Japanese scientist whose lack of empathy would warm the core of a cyberman) witnesses Supergirl’s battle with the Anti-Monitor. Doctor Light’s character, upon witnessing the principled sacrifice and compassion of Supergirl, becomes more humane and less solipsistic. This death stood as an integral part of the story, rather than simply a death story to strengthen sales. Such moments, even if heavy handed, seem fitting events for heroes to experience and enact in an epic tale.  

Style

While lacking dactylic hexameters and unrhymed iambic pentameters, Crisis generates its lofty and dignified style through another means. The art’s depiction of cosmic events conveys the grandiose element that metered verse carried in textual works. Comic artists face a unique problem ancient rhapsodes didn’t have to consider. How best to depict events of an epic scale? How should cosmic machinations look? Perez handles his depictions masterfully. His space scenes present a sense of awe and wonder and power. Small tight panels seem the norm in the book, and the cosmic backgrounds strike with all the more power when they consume more space than the previous panels.

In the afterward to the soft cover edition, inker Dick Giorano starts off with “Whew. What a read, huh?” The large cast, the cosmic scale, the changes within characters, and the fate of not just the world, or the universe, but multiverses make Giorano’s “whew” appropriate. Crisis on Infinite Earths still stands as a great read. It’s epic.  

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[1] No expertise of Crisis is claimed here. I am a first-time reader stirred by this story and am attempting to articulate that stirring and discover the elements of the story that evoked this reaction. The devotion and accolades other readers awarded Crisis, especially Jonathan Woodward’s annotated Crisis (This guy really really likes, LOVES, Crisis on Infinite Earths… Gary Greenwoods also shares this love at The Annotated DC Project) await your discovery at the included links.