Countdown to Infinite Crisis

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“Underwhelmed� pretty much sums up my response to Countdown to Infinite Crisis, the lead-in to Infinite Crisis, which DC Comics is billing as its biggest publishing event of the year. What a contrast to its precursor, Crisis on Infinite Earths, published exactly 20 years ago, a series that captured my imagination like few others.

Nineteen eighty-five was the year I started reading and collecting comics seriously. One of the first titles I bought was Crisis On Infinite Earths, a twelve-issue “maxi-series� that was essentially a massive housecleaning effort on the part of DC. As writer Marv Wolfman explained in his introduction to the series, over the previous 50 years the DC universe had burgeoned into a sprawling nightmare. During the early days of comics when each title was basically a world unto itself, writers and editors felt no obligation to make their world consistent with anything else going on in the DC universe. Therefore, says Wolfman, “editor A may have created an Atlantis for their comics while editor B may have created a very different Atlantis for theirs.�
This wasn’t really an issue until DC decided to start teaming up various characters, to give their titles “a touch of reality,� as Wolfman puts it. The problem was, even though characters like Superman and Aquaman both lived on Earth, their worlds often bore no resemblance to one another. Thus, writing such a story became somewhat of a dilemma, a “crisis,� if you will. Which world to choose? Earth 1? Earth 2? Earth X? Earth S? Bizarro World? To make matters worse, writers had also developed two versions of Superman, Batman, Flash, Wonder Woman—you name it. Never mind the readers, even DC’s writers were becoming confused about who lived where, when, and why. Obviously, something had to be done. So, over a period of four years, Wolfman, Len Wein, and others concocted a plan to simplify, clarify, change, and improve the DC Universe. The result was Crisis On Infinite Earths.

But Crisis… was much more than a clean-up job. It was also turned out to be an enthralling, epic tale that spanned time, space, and various dimensions. Universes collided and were destroyed. New characters were introduced, and classic characters were killed, reborn or transformed into something totally different. Reverberations from this series were felt for years to come as many of DC’s top line heroes—Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern—were utterly transformed. As a fourteen-year-old just getting into comics, I was absolutely enchanted by the series. I’ve re-read it several times since then, and I can assure you that hormones had nothing to do with my reaction to it. Crisis… really was—and is—that good.

Which brings us back to Countdown… Oddly enough, the very first title I ever bought as a collector was issue no. 1 of Blue Beetle—the second, Blue Beetle, that is, Ted Kord. So imagine my surprise when, after basically not reading DC Comics for the past fifteen years, I see him on the cover of Countdown…—and it doesn’t look like he’s doing very well. I wasn’t ten pages into the 80-page behemoth before I ran into yet another of my early faves, Booster Gold. He is down on his luck as well. But perhaps both he and Blue Beetle would have a chance to redeem themselves.

As it turns out, Kord has discovered that something big is about to go down—something that could threaten every spandex-clad hero in the universe. For starters, someone has stolen a large shipment of Kryptonite from one of Kord’s warehouses. Presumably the same person has also amassed a wealth of data on every superhero in existence, including their secret identities and a detailed analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. This doesn’t look good. But due to past indiscretions, Blue Beetle has a difficult time getting anyone to sound the alarm. Thus, it falls primarily upon him and Booster to get to the bottom of the things. Along the way though, Booster is taken out of commission. And by the time Blue Beetle realizes what is going on and who is behind it, it’s too late for him to warn anyone.

After writing this summary, I have to admit that this is not really a bad set-up for the series to come. One sub-standard hero is eliminated, another one is given a second chance at life, and a plot is revealed that could place Earth and the entire universe in jeopardy. But it definitely isn’t the most innovative comic I’ve read over the past twenty years either. For starters, from the cover onwards, the storyline was almost one hundred percent predictable. We all know what’s going to happen to Blue Beetle. It’s just a matter of how and when. And as for the premise that someone is plotting to wipe out all costumed heroes (or at least the meta-humans), didn’t we already see that in yet another 1980s comic classic, The Watchmen? No, the set-up wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t great. And I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t cut it, especially if this is supposed to be the lead-in to DC’s biggest event of the year—and, more importantly, my first serious foray back into comics in over a decade. Initially, I thought I had chosen exactly the right moment to get back into comic collecting. It looked like all of my old favorites had become new again. But instead, what I see happening is a continuation of the very thing that caused me to give up comic collecting in the first place: the triumph of money over art, the sense that comic book publishers were more interested in peddling product than creating truly great stories.

In case you think I’m just caught in a “they don’t make them like they used to� 1980s time warp, consider this: From this point onward, the storyline kicked off by Countdown… spins off into (count ‘em) four mini-series, all of which build up to the actual Infinite Crisis series (and its various spin-offs and cross-overs), which comes out this fall. (Are you beginning to smell a rat here?) These mini-series are: The OMAC Project, which focuses on the plot to kill earth’s superheroes, Day of Vengeance, which focuses on DC’s magic-based characters, Villains United, which needs no explanation, and the Rann-Thanagar War, in which Adam Strange, Hawkman, and other interplanetary heroes are the primary characters. Prior to reading Countdown…, I was tempted to sample all four mini-series, not wanting to miss any of the epic story to come. Now I feel more like a fish that has nibbled a bit of the bait but decided he isn’t really hungry after all. That said, I probably will check out the first issue of Infinite Crisis when it finally arrives. But my expectations aren’t nearly what they were.

As for spiritual connections in this issue, the pickings are fairly slim. I felt sorry for my old pal Blue Beetle as he sought to overcome his former comrades’ resentment and convince them that he wasn’t just crying wolf. Seeing Booster Gold reduced to stealing three hundred dollars for a plane ticket was also difficult to watch. But it was a good reminder that even though we are heroes today, one wrong choice can bring us crashing down faster than Superman can change his clothes. No matter how talented or powerful we are on the outside, ultimately it is who we are—our character—that will determine how high we fly or how low we fall. The good news is, just because we fall does not mean we can’t get back up again. This is a matter of character as well, of choices. Like Booster Gold and Blue Beetle, even if no one else believes in us, we can retrace our steps back to the path of virtue, and sooner or later it will lead us up and out of the mire. Let’s just hope the folks at DC haven’t lost sight of the path of virtue just yet either. After all, Countdown… doesn’t have to be the beginning of a fall. It could actually be that first step up out of the muck.

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