The Crisis of the DC Crossovers: Part 1

The Anti-Monitor

I haven’t posted in a while as I was forced to cancel my internet access in order to make a big move from the city to the mountains. Although it was a huge pain and logistics is not one of my strongest points, one good thing did come of it; It gave me the opportunity to organize, catalog, and basically dive deep into my huge collection of comics. Paper cuts aside, it was a fun swim!

This collection goes back to 1985, which is when I started collecting. One the first bookshelf is Crisis on Infinite Earths. Going through the rest of the shelves it was interesting to step back and have a look at the publication history over the past twenty-four years and see how DC Comics has handled crossovers. Millenium, Legends, Armageddon, Bloodlines, Zero Hour, Our Worlds At War, War Of The Gods, Genesis, Knightfall/Quest/(s)End, Death of Superman, Joker’s Last Laugh, Day of Judgement, Invasion, Eclipso, Underworld Unleashed, Final Night, DC One Million, Identity Crisis, Contagion, Legacy, No Man’s Land, Millenium Giants, Breakdowns, Fugitive/Murderer etc etc. The list goes on and on and on.

And on.

Now crossovers are a dirty word in some parts. Often you will hear complaints about being “forced to buy” some titles in order to gain the full story. With the new announcement that Blackest Night now runs into many November books before jumping back to another three connected minis in December, the same outcry appears. On one side we have the argument that stories should be self-contained and not bleed over into the rest of the books. On the other side we have another argument that the books in the regular DC Universe should reflect what is going on in the current big event or crossover story. It appears DC Comics cannot win by appeasing all fans and never will.

DC Comics appeared to address the former argument in the way they presented Final Crisis as opposed to Infinite Crisis. For those who didn’t read them, let’s have a look at the two.

Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis were both seven issue mini series, both ran into delays and both had tie-in books. Where the big Difference between them lay is the number and frequency of the tie-in books.

Infinite Crisis #1

Infinite Crisis bled into many DC books, month after month, not to mention the fact that there were four six-issue minis, four related one-shots, a Secret Files, fifty-nine (!!!!) crossover books, one six-issue and one three-issue “aftermath” title and the original Countdown to Infinite Crisis one-shot. Unless I’m way off (my mathematics is on par with logistics ie crap), this is a total of 105 books over seventeen months. In my honest opinion, although the story was interesting, a great nod to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths and a good read in itself, this kind of haphazard approach to the telling of the story ultimately left a bitter taste in my mouth. There was just too much happening, it was taking too long, there were too many fingers in the pie and ultimately it was more of a relief for it to be over. That said, I did enjoy the story lines.

Final Crisis #1

As for Final Crisis, its publication schedule was (in my opinion), an attempt to address the complaints raised by the schedule of Infinite Crisis. Advertised as self-contained, it ran a seven-issue mini with two related tie-in minis (Legion of Three Worlds and Revelations) and three one-shots (Submit, Resist and Secret Files). There was also the essential Superman Beyond two-parter. We also have four follow-up minis (Run, Dance, Escape and Ink). Including the follow-ups, Final Crisis clocked in at forty-six issues. Now although I didn’t appreciate the story itself (freezing people into ice cubes, Superman wins by karaoke, Hawkman and Hawkgirl die oh wait oops no we decided to change it), I did appreciate the attempt to make it possible to be read much more easily than Infinite Crisis.

There was a catch with Final Crisis, however. Although many may have already blocked it from their minds it really began with Countdown, later renamed Countdown to Final Crisis. A year-long weekly story, it also had its own minis attached. Countdown to Mystery was eight issues, as was Countdown to Adventure. Captain Carrot was three issues, Lord Havok was six, Arena was four and the Search for Ray Palmer was five. Also quite necessary (although not technically branded as a crossover) was the eight issue Death of the New Gods. Further tie-ins in the regular monthly titles total eleven. I would also count Amazons Attack but have decided to pretend it never existed. That’s a hundred and four issues in total for a story that led into a forty six issue story.

Phew. That was exhausting. Looking at the books side by side on my shelf I can only imagine how exhausting it was for the writers, editors and artists. The problem that I see is that I find myself not bothering to reread these stories because it is simply too much. Nothing flows the way a story should, plots are left dangling while the books show what is happening to the other eleventy squillion DC characters, normally in an attempt to raise the sales of other books by slapping a tie-in on the cover. As a long-term comic reader I enjoy my monthlies and am very loyal to them but the sheer volume and attempted scope of these stories has now reached ridiculous levels.

This has already gone on way longer than intended but I still want to look at the older crossovers and how they compare, both publication history and story. I’ll go back and have a look at the different ways DC Comics have handled the crossovers through the nineties (don’t worry, only some of them and I won’t touch War Crimes with a ten-foot pole or I’ll go mad) and the current decade. By the way, have we decided on a name for this decade finally?

In the meantime, what were your thoughts on Final Crisis and Infinite Crisis and how the stories were released? For that matter, what do you think about DC’s publication of the Blackest Night so far?