So Infinite Crisis is over...

[Starba]

I've been meaning to make a topic about this for awhile but never got around to it.

Who's read Infinite Crisis? What do you think? Frankly, I'm kind of disappointed, because rather than clean up continuity it made a situation where writers can just ignore it completely. The new rule is that everything that happened before Infinite Crisis still happened, unless the writer says otherwise. What? I don't know about anyone else, but in practice that seems just about as confusing as you can get. And even though the whole point was apparently to brighten up all the recent dark storylines, I'm not so sure putting goddamn Meltzer on the flagship title (and changing its name back to Justice League of America, no less) and reviving properties like Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters is really the right step in that direction. Also, who's really going to keep up with 52 once a week all year long if it's going to feature a lot of proven B characters? One book paying homage to Blue Beetle was nice. 52 comics featuring Booster Gold, though? I dunno...

Some One Year Later ideas I'm still optimistic about, like Secret Six and a revitalized Wonder Woman, but at the same time I'm starting to hope the whole goldie-oldie-American-flag-Brad-Meltzer's-antiquated-value-system thing is just a phase. After all, the average comic reader is 24, not 54, and not all of us are looking down our nose at the comics we grew up on.

Oh well. Here's hoping Batwoman turns out to be better than the characters her costume is modeled after...

[Patryn]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

Give me Zero Hour any day over Infinite Crisis. For one thing, Zero Hour was just as cosmic in scope and yet you didn't need to read seven billion books to understand it. If you read the five books of the mini-series you got maybe not the whole story, but definitely all the necessary story. The way these events should work is that the core mini should tell the story of the event in basically a just the facts ma'am way with a pre-chosen set of main characters, and then allow the individual books to fill in how the other characters fit in. Otherwise, with the cast of thousands these things have, you get bogged down in trying give everyone their due.

The one thing Infinite Crisis had going for it over Zero Hour was the deaths, but seeing as so many of them seemed to be deaths for the sake of wiping the board clean, I don't care about many of them. The only major death that made an impact on me was Superboy's, and I have a feeling that was more due to the lawsuit than anything else.

My other major problem with Infinite Crisis is that it seems to be wiping most of the modern age implements in order to bring the DC universe closer to the Silver Age, and I really liked the Modern Age. Give me Man of Steel over Birthright any day. I prefer Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern over Hal, I liked the idea of the Speed Force. I mean, DC is now saying that Matrix never existed in DC canon, so that means that if you can figure out how the Death and Return of Superman worked in the new DCU you're better than I am. I know that the History of DC feature in 52 is supposed to cover that ground, but given that the one bit I've read in 52 #2 was like 3 pages long, I doubt we're going to get any in-depth answer. I hated the idea of Hypertime, as I felt that it totally undermined Crisis on Infinite Earths, so I'm happy that's gone, so that's one for IC.

Honestly the whole thing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think greed took over DC, because they really could have condensed the whole thing way down. A lot of the tie-in books subplots could have been easily excised without major harm. I mean, I've read pretty much all the books relating to the space subplot and I still have no idea what the hell happened out there or how it made any impact in IC at all. You know you're dealing with bad writing when you have to cross-reference half a dozen books just to understand what's going on. Also, all the setups for new books felt stupid and tacked on. Zero Hour also had a good idea with that in releasing the zero books. If they really wanted to launch new books off this, why not just release a special zero book for it and show how it relates rather than bogging down the story and stealing pages that should have been dealt with in the main narrative. They really should have simply expanded the mini to 12 issues, ditched a few subplots and beefed up the characters moments.

Oh and my final problem with it was simply that it tarnished the final images of CoIE. I liked and appreciated how that mini gave the Golden Age Superman, the original Superman a happy ending with his Lois. Not to mention Superboy. IC took that away, and had him die a stupid death, and then made Superboy a mass murderer. Which would be interesting if Zero Hour didn't kind of pull the same trick with Hal Jordan, but a lot better. I mean, I understood what Hal was trying to do in Zero Hour. It was a complex problem because what he was doing wasn't necessarily evil. I'd get more into Hal and how bringing him back as Green Lantern and saying that he was simply possessed when he was Parallax is a diservice to the character, but I won't bore you.

Anywho, to sum up, thumbs down on the whole thing. Frankly, it's tarnished my love of DC, and I was a total DC fan. Back at the end of my comic days (I'm only dabbling now), I didn't even read a single Marvel book. Nowadays, gimme Ultimate Marvel over DC any day.

[Starba]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

I dunno, I tried to read Ultimate Spider-Man, but that storyline CRAWLS. The entire first hardcover introduces, like, 2 major villains unless you count Kingpin. Yeesh.

[IRC]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

She speaking in tongues!!! I liked Ultimate Spiderman. Of course I don't buy individual issues just the volumes so maybe the pacing isn't an issue that way. But I'd rather deal with Dawson's Bugle than Ultimates: SVU or Queer Eye for the X-men Guy. Just who's responsible for making Wolverine a bad guy anyways.

I don't generally like the writing in comics. Some stuff is okay. I liked the one with Superman being all old and disillusioned. Kingdome Come. But for the most part there's too much crap with the continuity. Everything is willy nilly and just because some retard wants to do something stupid with a character and nobody is there to check him everyone else has to follow suit. That's how you get the X-men and the Transformers supposedly in the same universe. Some stuff is cool. Like Dark Beast. Some stuff is stupid. How many times has Jean Gray died and come back to life.

In the end it's a bunch of bullshit trying to keep continuity intact. DC's done two reboots now and did they really accomplish anything? That's why I just watch the movies and read about stuff on the internet rather than bothering with reading actual comic books. That and I'm not a geek.

[Loki]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

Well Crisis on Infinate Earths did a world of good to DC's continuity. Plus it ultimatly led to Morrison's great Animal Man run. Infinite Crisis... I echo your sentiments. It felt more like a marketing hoo-rah than anything interesting storywise. I knew it had hit it's peak when Blue Beatle died, and that was before it even really started.

[Marc M.]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

That costume is horrible.
DC should remove a couple hundred of their "characters" from continuity all together. But then I would have to give them a stern talkin' to for stealing my ideas.
A.D. DC FTW. But I am biased on this

[gray]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

zero hour stunk(i grew up reading my parents comics, so the golden and silver age characters are as dear to my heart as the "modern" age characters), and this(ic) stunk. crisis fixed alot of minor problems that you used to be able to ignore in the fantasy world of comics, and replaced them with a lot of major "he was here but now he's over here" problems. but their heart was in the right place, so i can't fault them for that.



i don't mind change, but for my money, dc isn't supposed to be all rape and murder all the time. i'd be interested to see if batman's writers could write a story for him that didn't revolve around a murder. heck, supermans writers probably couldn't either. so it dosn't bother me if they want to clean up a little. HOWEVER! i doubt they will. i imagine they're just trying to recapture the nostalgia factor after having dumped on it for so long. which probably won't work.

[Patryn]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

I didn't want DC to be all rape and murder. Yes, you had some dark stuff in the Rayner Green Lantern, but it wasn't all dark. And my favorite stuff was things like Morrison's JLA which was close to the Silver Age in spirit in that it was full of these big cosmic ideas that are just thrown out there, and the heroes were having fun (well, maybe not that FINAL story of his....but things like the Key story was just cool).

And I didn't really see Zero Hour as ushering in a dark age. The one bad thing that Zero Hour did was to shuffle the JSA off the board, but that seems to happen in cycles. Hell, it wasn't the first time they were shuffled off the board post-Crisis! You can also argue that Zero Hour brightened up the Legion!

If nothing else, I love Zero Hour for Green Lantern 0, the unofficial epilogue to the whole thing. That issue did a lot for Hal Jordan, I think, in advancing his character. It really showed that he wasn't really evil. It set him up to be a great character that was still trying to do good but in different ways, ways that would bring him in conflict with other heroes.

I suppose I'm just feeling the annoyance that a lot of DC fans felt after CoIE when they were suddenly told that all those stories they read never happened. Although it doesn't help that IC was a mess (I mean, if you hadn't read the Villians United IC tie-in, I have no idea how you'd understand IC 7 and why all the villians are suddenly attacking Metropolis...even then, that was swept under the rug in, what?, five pages?)

[gray]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

i don't think zero hour ushered in the dark ages. what we have now is just the swing of the late 80s and 90s tword "darker, edgier" characters taken too far.


it happens. things swing tword the popular and then are pushed too far, the fans react, then they swing back, and are usually once again pushed too far.

i still like comics. it's just when they start going too far to one side or the other, i become more selective about the ones i pick up.



and, also, superboy will be back. THEY ALWAYS COME BACK!

[Starba]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

Hmm. I haven't read Zero Hour yet because I keep hearing that all of the continuity changes it made were either pointless or ignored, but if it's a good story I might go for it.

Aside from the whole Infinite Crisis hooplah, I've actually been going back and reading some of the less-connected titles like Firestorm and Green Lantern. I haven't read all of Firestorm yet, but I'm liking it a lot. I have a strong feeling it'll be cancelled not far in the future, though, even if it survived when Manhunter didn't. Yes, it's pretty obvious that Jason Rusch is the black, early Spider-Man of the DCU, but, hey, DC needs a Spider-Man. And an African American hero who isn't necessarily either perfect beyond reason or the paragon of all that is blackness. Rusch is a well-rounded character who deals with real problems in a human way, and I like that about him.

Green Lantern I'm also impressed with. My only annoyance so far has been the fact that Johns is definitely not in touch with his human characters, especially "Cowgirl" (it doesn't take someone from the Great Plains to know you don't say "y'all" to one person). Other than that, I like how Green Lantern's conservative everyman roots makes him kind of a black sheep in the whole DC community. Outside of Batman, who else would be able to get away with a "Only people who do something wrong have to worry about Big Brother" without being forced to apologize for it? We know Johns doesn't agree (he worked closely with Rucka throughout the whole Infinite Crisis/OMAC Project thing after all), and he knows we probably don't agree, but rather than stuff that particular moral down our throats, he just lets it slide as part of his hero's character. Yes, Parallax taking away any and all real responsibility on Hal's part was kind of lame, but if you ignore all that, GL's not a bad book.

I also sucked up my reservations and went back to read "Under the Hood" over in Batman. I haven't read the annual yet, but the story was pretty decent, even if it covered some pretty well-trod territory in Batman-land. Batman's whole spiel about torturing the Joker for months was pretty fanboish and out of character (i.e. classic Winnick), but I'll let that slide because Black Mask and Red Hood were just so darn fun.

[Patryn]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

and, also, superboy will be back. THEY ALWAYS COME BACK!

I dunno. A lot of people think he was taken off the board because of the lawsuit and the fact that if DC continued using the character they'd have to pay royalties to Jerry Siegel's widow and son. A lot of people don't think it's a coincidence that within a couple months of them losing the lawsuit Superboy was killed off.

He may come back, but it may be years. At the same time I can see them keeping him off the board.

As for Zero Hour, I liked the story but it's not anything you should work hard to track down, and it is accurate that at this point all the changes it instituted are now gone. Then again, it didn't really make a lot of HUGE changes, it just tweaked things here and there. The only truly major thing it changed was the Legion and that's now gone for the new IC Legion. The only reason to pick it up would be to see IMO how these big cosmic stories can be easily understood and do not need to be needlessly complicated.

[Magus]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

I'm with IRC. Is any of this stuff collected in volumes? I cannot be bothered by these universe-changing storylines. Do they ever change anything? Is the writing not silly?

Individual stories like Arkham Asylum or the Bendis run of Daredevil or something or other, and the Bruce Timm/Paul Dini DC animated universe is the only continuity I can care about.

[Starba]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

Almost all stories, if they sell well or have a strong enough fanbase, are eventually collected in volumes. Infinite Crisis will be out in September, I think.

[gray]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

anyone reading civil war? anyone?



so far it seems to be less "take our universe out behind the woodshed and beat it with a tire iron" than i.c. was. don't much care for killing off almost all of the new warriors though.

[Patryn]

Re: So Infinite Crisis is over...

I've read Civil War 1 (it's the only one out so far, right?) and thus far I'm liking it better than IC. Don't get me wrong, it's also got EVENT FOR EVENT'S SAKE! written all over it, but at least I could actually follow what was going on in it. I can see cast bloat happening, though.