DC Comics created the superhero back in the late ’30s, and helped popularize the concept, melding aspects of detective stories, pulp adventures, horror, and sci-fi. For a long time, the publisher was the one innovating, introducing aspects like the sidekick, the superteam, the supervillain team, and more. They started the Silver Age and introduced the multiverse. This last thing would become what they were known for in the ’60s and ’70s, but the rise of Marvel with their more realistic storytelling left them in the dust. The multiverse fell out of vogue, the House of Ideas created the event comic. DC had to evolve to survive. In 1985, they changed everything with an event comic that has gone down in the annals of comic history as the best ever.
Crisis on Infinite Earths, by Marv Wolfman, George Perez, and Jerry Ordway, took the idea of an “event comic” to its ultimate extent. Crisis was the first event that actually mattered, and its ending had major repercussions not just for DC, but for comics as a whole. It’s not perfect, but those imperfections are part of the reasons why it is the greatest event comic of all time in the eyes of many readers.
Crisis on Infinite Earths has its problems for DC, but that doesn’t change how amazing it was. Wolfman, Perez, Ordway, editor Dick Giordano, and a researcher hired specifically to read every DC comic ever worked for years to put together a story that would pay homage to every era of the publisher. It was a labor of love, and that love shines through on every page. These creators cared deeply about the company and its characters, and did their best to present a story that would enthrall readers for an entire year, all while building up a story with stakes that no one had ever seen before.
Reading Crisis for the first time is interesting. The book’s main plot progressed slowly, seemingly to have the heroes go to the different time periods that DC had told stories in, like the future of the Great Disaster, World War II, medieval times, and more. It doesn’t even get to the Anti-Monitor until several issues in. A lot of the story decisions were made to hit every era of the publisher. Superboy-Prime became hugely important in the years since, but he was only there because Superboy was an integral part of DC history. Barry Allen and Supergirl’s deaths were heart-wrenching, but they were there because they represented the end of the Silver Age, as they were the two characters that defined that era. Lady Quark was a mystifying addition to the book, only there to show the scope of the war against the Anti-Monitor, that even the universes we’ve never been to were in danger.
One of my favorite parts of the story that a lot of people don’t like as much is the villains war in Crisis on Infinite Earths #9. It answered the questions of what the villains would do in this kind of situation, and made for a fun issue. An argument can be made that the story didn’t need to be 12 issues, and that a lot of it can be cut. This is valid — a lot of the beginning, the villains war, and some characters interactions seem superfluous — but it all added up to give the story the kind of epic feel it needed. This was the biggest story in the history of comics, and all of the little things that some fans complain about make it special.
The Anti-Monitor is the most basic villain ever, basically a mustache-twirling (if he had one, he definitely would have twirled it) enemy who was evil for evil’s sake, but that’s what made him the best villain for the story. This was the ultimate battle of good versus evil, life versus death, and having a complex villain would have taken the focus away from that battle. One of the things I’ve always loved about Crisis is that all of the flaws add up to make it perfect. Every time something outlandish happens in the book or we get some strange character moments or a superfluous character shows up, it ends up adding to the tone of the story. The creative team threw everything at the wall, and were able to get it to all stick. Crisis never should have worked, and paradoxically, that’s why it did work.
Crisis birthed numerous sequel events, to the point that many fans are tired of the entire idea. However, one thing that they aren’t tired of is the story itself. It is the kind of story that never goes out of style, a perfect storm of words and art that created the biggest event in the history of comics. In the 40 years since it dropped, multiple events have tried to dethrone it from the top of the heap, but none of them can match it. Its flaws make it perfect, and the love that went into is apparent. Everyone involved loved DC as much as the readers do, and that makes all the difference.
Crisis is a dividing point for the comic industry. Not only did it change DC for years to come, but it showed publishers what an event comic could be. Every event published since owes a debt of gratitude to it. Read Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, which came out the year before, and then read Crisis. They’re completely different stories; one feels like the past, and one feels modern. It changed everything forever, and it will always be the greatest event comic of all time.
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