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The Crisis....bum bum baaaaaaaaaa
12 years ago
From the Desk of Jack the Gorilla....
Okay after hearing numerous arguments and picking up an old index of comics, I decided to re-read "Crisis on Infinite Earths" from 1985. People either seem to hate it or love it. After a vigorous Re-reading (the last time I read it was 2005) I have come to the conclusion....
IT IS STILL AWESOME.
People often tell me " Crisis ruined everything" I can see their point to an extent.
To me I see Crisis as the greatest celebration of Comic history and the SIlver age. Every character makes an appearance, it crossed over with every title. It even had lasting changes on the DC universe. (Barry stayed dead 20 years!)
The story was epic, everyone had a chance to shine and I loved the silver age to begin with and was sorry to see this as the final nail in it's coffin. Remember the 80s was a weird dichotomy super gritty watchemen, batman and xmen to one side, light hearted blue devil, wally the wizard, etc to the other. With a few titles straddling the middle. (Amethyst I'm looking at you!)
But looking back, DC has done some stupid stuff to try and recapture that spirit and clean up convoluted back stories that took the original crisis decades to build up to. (Poor power girl, heat vision / no heat vision, kryptonian, psycokinetic, descendant of arion an an atlantean....we don't talk about this one)
Final Night and Zero hour did well to kill titles that were waning and tidy up some points.
It was final Crisis that was a pale immitation. It was a neat story but lacked the lasting impression that it was on a universal scale. If you didn't read it, you really wouldn't have noticed by reading other titles. (Also, saving Ted Kord should avert this whole mess....just saying) But afterward you just had some changes like Batman, Super-man and Wonderwoman taking a year off.
Big changes, but not permanant or that important. This was corrected with the ambitious 52, which depicted that year weekly, touching on how the world coped with out the trinity and set up for the cancellation of poor selling books and made a spring board for the new blue beetle (I hate jime), and the new Booster Gold and Power girl titles (Both Freaking Sweet)
And things went well until....
Flashpoint.
(God I hated flashpoint, coincidentially if Barry Allen Stayed dead from 1985 this would have been averted....)
Flash goes back in time, alters the world to a very horrible one, finds his mistake, changes it back and brings about "THE NEW 52"
Once again DC did house cleaning, But in 1985 when DC relaunched characters, they kept the core of them the same, gave difinitive answers to questions and had a mixed bag of response.... (Super-man, now definitely born on earth and eligible to be president thanks to Byrne. Wonder Woman under Perez is still phenominal)
The NEW 52 brought up the scariest word in the fanboy lexicon; RE IMAGINING" Once again the universe was rebooted, except Green Lantern titles escaped this fate due to the phenominal success of Geoff Jones' long run on it with the war of light etc.
But all of our heroes were gutted, and 'reimagined' with new embellished costumes. Super-man...okay more armory....Wonder woman....less primary shades red white blue....Flash,...funky line thingies.... then it gets worse. Not to mention the lack of previously established villains, just a few biggies and a whole bunch of new yutzes I couldn't care about.
They publish a whole glut of bat crap but squash JLI and Amethyst (who hadn't seen a title since 91)
Green Arrow and Power Girl were so radically different I had to give up on two characters I've loved. They made Alan Scott gay to appeal to us gay bois. Fine, want to appeal to us, create a non-sterotypical gay guy hero. Don't take a classic, with kids who we've grown to love and change his identity on us!
Grrrr. Okay, nerd anger fading.
I see the similarities between New 52 and Crisis, but I feel the execution in 85 was handled much better, served it's purpose and stayed true to the predicessor characters. Personalities were tweaked, not sent through the meat grinder!
Just had to get this all out, hope this wasn't the wrong forum... love you guys.
IT IS STILL AWESOME.
People often tell me " Crisis ruined everything" I can see their point to an extent.
To me I see Crisis as the greatest celebration of Comic history and the SIlver age. Every character makes an appearance, it crossed over with every title. It even had lasting changes on the DC universe. (Barry stayed dead 20 years!)
The story was epic, everyone had a chance to shine and I loved the silver age to begin with and was sorry to see this as the final nail in it's coffin. Remember the 80s was a weird dichotomy super gritty watchemen, batman and xmen to one side, light hearted blue devil, wally the wizard, etc to the other. With a few titles straddling the middle. (Amethyst I'm looking at you!)
But looking back, DC has done some stupid stuff to try and recapture that spirit and clean up convoluted back stories that took the original crisis decades to build up to. (Poor power girl, heat vision / no heat vision, kryptonian, psycokinetic, descendant of arion an an atlantean....we don't talk about this one)
Final Night and Zero hour did well to kill titles that were waning and tidy up some points.
It was final Crisis that was a pale immitation. It was a neat story but lacked the lasting impression that it was on a universal scale. If you didn't read it, you really wouldn't have noticed by reading other titles. (Also, saving Ted Kord should avert this whole mess....just saying) But afterward you just had some changes like Batman, Super-man and Wonderwoman taking a year off.
Big changes, but not permanant or that important. This was corrected with the ambitious 52, which depicted that year weekly, touching on how the world coped with out the trinity and set up for the cancellation of poor selling books and made a spring board for the new blue beetle (I hate jime), and the new Booster Gold and Power girl titles (Both Freaking Sweet)
And things went well until....
Flashpoint.
(God I hated flashpoint, coincidentially if Barry Allen Stayed dead from 1985 this would have been averted....)
Flash goes back in time, alters the world to a very horrible one, finds his mistake, changes it back and brings about "THE NEW 52"
Once again DC did house cleaning, But in 1985 when DC relaunched characters, they kept the core of them the same, gave difinitive answers to questions and had a mixed bag of response.... (Super-man, now definitely born on earth and eligible to be president thanks to Byrne. Wonder Woman under Perez is still phenominal)
The NEW 52 brought up the scariest word in the fanboy lexicon; RE IMAGINING" Once again the universe was rebooted, except Green Lantern titles escaped this fate due to the phenominal success of Geoff Jones' long run on it with the war of light etc.
But all of our heroes were gutted, and 'reimagined' with new embellished costumes. Super-man...okay more armory....Wonder woman....less primary shades red white blue....Flash,...funky line thingies.... then it gets worse. Not to mention the lack of previously established villains, just a few biggies and a whole bunch of new yutzes I couldn't care about.
They publish a whole glut of bat crap but squash JLI and Amethyst (who hadn't seen a title since 91)
Green Arrow and Power Girl were so radically different I had to give up on two characters I've loved. They made Alan Scott gay to appeal to us gay bois. Fine, want to appeal to us, create a non-sterotypical gay guy hero. Don't take a classic, with kids who we've grown to love and change his identity on us!
Grrrr. Okay, nerd anger fading.
I see the similarities between New 52 and Crisis, but I feel the execution in 85 was handled much better, served it's purpose and stayed true to the predicessor characters. Personalities were tweaked, not sent through the meat grinder!
Just had to get this all out, hope this wasn't the wrong forum... love you guys.
Archie
~jonouchi
I feel your pain, sir. All of it.
GorillaJack
~gorillajack
OP
The most pain came from losing the best incarnation of super girl. All the ones that came after were either pale imitations, forms that writers tried to make 'hip' or too angst-y! (I'm looking at you new 52!)
NastyBoar
~nastyboar
Wanna know what gives me nerd rage? The cancelled frigging Hellblazer to get John Constantine into the New52 Verse... a place he definately does NOT belong in! Though, gotta admit I like the new Wonder Woman. After Perez no one seemed to know what to do with the character but now she's running a pretty smooth show and *gasp* I like her a lot as Zeus daughter fits right in with greek myth.
GorillaJack
~gorillajack
OP
I love wonder woman's art and look in New 52 and really liked her in Justice League, but I feel they miss that classic balance of compassion and gentleness that made the 80s soooo good. I like a lot of modern WW. I've never been one for Constantine one way or another, although he was in mainstream continuity since the 80s. (Crisis, Swamp-thing) etc. However I don't like him paired up in the house of mystery, and I certainly hate the bum deal he passed on to Amethyst. (Why did they cancel that book, why not some of the glut of bat-crap we have!)
NastyBoar
~nastyboar
Yeah, true. I could do with less Batcrap too. Amethyst should have been given a chance. It's a shame they cancelled the book. as for the bum deal... well that's Constantine for ya. He's an asshole that way. Constantine is imho just an awesome bastard, at leaste the Vertigo version. He's so totally not a hero and that's incredibly refreshing. That and I really like the "working class" magician angle. WW totally floored me last issue. Damn, I didn't see that one coming. Though, the hints were all there and, man, this is going to lead into a very eventful future for her. I never thought I'd say this but ... I'm excited what they are going to do with her new status quo.
Meanbeard
~meanbeard
Oh I agree with you. I always loved it. Yes, it make many changes, some of them I didn't like, but the story itself was just great.
GorillaJack
~gorillajack
OP
I agree. But I do like that it tied in 'earth s and earth 4' which then allowed DC to publish Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and do more with captain Marvel. My favorite part may just be that it touched just about every character.
Meanbeard
~meanbeard
Yes, that is the good part. No one was left untouched by the changes. When all is said and done over it, it was one of the best done series DC came up with.
