Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities A Look Back: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12

I have often wondered whether the effects of the Anti-Life Equation would necessarily be harmful, or if that's just the consensus theory in the DCU. If one looks at life like it is brief, brutal, and unfulfilling...well, then...wouldn't Anti-Life appeal to impressionable sentients as the ultimate form of transcendence?

I know that we did see the actual results of the Anti-Life Equation in Final Crisis, but I don't consider that canon because, quite simply, I think Final Crisis was awful.

I do consider Swamp Thing #62 canon, because the concept that *Love* is a key factor of the Anti-Life Equation opens up a multitude of possibilities.

Hmmm...this isn't exactly on-topic anymore. Cosmic...wooooo…deep...

So...more CoIE?

Comments



Perez was channelling some Infantino for Barry’s “last” appearance.



To Wolfman’s sort of credit, he had Barry’s last scene worked out, rather than it just being a single plot point. But it hasn’t saved it from having some shaky foundations. Other Events don’t even have it this well planned.



Editorially mandated non-interference policy.



Not editorially mandated but a product of the plot. Bear in mind that the early Crisis plot had a Guardian be very proactive in the story. I much prefer that to them being the victims of Plot Convenience. Even more so as every subsequent Event followed this route.

Incidentally, in Powers the main character gets recruited to a GLC equivalent. The survival time for wearers of their galactic device is very short, as a nod to Events like this.



I figured Reep was working the monitors for the other. Poor Brainy just has to take care of everything else.



Zatanna was active at that point. I think she was absent because she’d already been successful in helping to defeat the Tornado storm. In order to keep this plot going, she couldn’t be allowed to succeed again.

Steel doesn’t really have the science knowledge to be able to contribute. His grandfather would have been the more sensible recruit. But that plot was still being played out in the JLD.

Firestorm is there because he has a connection to the Tornado Champion being combined with the Tornado Tyrant within the shell of Red Tornado. It’s from 192/193.

I think John is there because of the power of the ring to analyse Red Tornado. He is the resident Green Lantern, so it’s also good to see him interact with his peer group in the JLA.



There was a similar coolness in a bit of #200 between them and that’s what a bit of this dialogue reminds me of. As for the satellite reply, I think it’s a little dig because neither Wolman nor Perez had the faintest why the League had changed so much.



I think the Omega Me were on the slate for all getting killed off at one point. I’d not like to be in a crossover with them, if that happened.



I only knew of them from that Teen Titans storyline. I didn’t recognise any of these guys.



I forgot to mention that. It gave me a chuckle reading the issue.



It’s a good point about Event plotting. If you have a major character die in every issue, it has less of an impact. Here, we had two major ones in quick succession. Neither of them completely derailed the plans of the villain.



Yeah, both heroes dying so that AM has to delve once more into the ACME Device catalogue for the following month could have been better. There’s lots of tension within the issues themselves but, as is the nature of set pieces, they struggle to really work with the wider narrative.

…



Despite having built various versions of Crisis around the GLC, the plot form them seemed to loop on itself.



I do think that Darkseid and the Forth World would make for an excellent alternative to Crisis. But it wouldn’t be Crisis. And I agree with you that, had it gone through the various plot loops and holes as the actual Crisis did, then it would have been just as flawed. I think Kirby would have had to have been involved in the plotting of the thing, and that would have also resulted in a very, very different story. You couldn’t have him working on The Hunger Dogs and then sweep it all from under him.



Possibly not in its entirety, but it could certainly have been a lot better. It did need an editorial steer, just to keep on top of the logistics of the thing. Having your artist step in part way through is far from ideal. It’s lucky it was Perez, but it shouldn’t have reached that point. Giordano on editorial and inking duties would have been ideal.

For the sake of balance, considering how compromised nearly all of the subsequent Events were, this might be as good as it can get for DC.

I’d certainly consider this to be a definite possibility for the end of a Darkseid Crisis. He grasps that the solution to his equation must encompass all of creation, not only the single universe where he currently wars with Highfather.

In the end, he does collapse the multiverse into a single equation. But it’s not an anti-life he can control. It’s only the end of what was and the beginning of life in the new single universe beyond. The hand at the dawn of time is his, as it always has and always will be.

Orion’s hand will be the one to push him down this final path, fulfilling the prophecy of the New Gods as the Fifth World begins.

Shaky plot foundations don't really bother me that much as long as the story beats are exquisitely timed and explosively executed. See also: The Steve Epting Avengers.



FEH! John Broome would've done the entire story in just one issue of Green Lantern! Feh, I say!



Hmmm...Millennium, Zero Hour, just about everything from the past 16 years...point well taken.

Thank you, Thoth. What a relief -- I was starting to worry that I'd drifted into Cloudcuckooland.

Ah, Cloudcuckooland. It's not just a Lightning Seeds album you know.

HA HA HA HA

(Confidentially, I love that album.)

I've put up a Reworked for the Fourth World Crisis plot here

Thanks, Thoth. Will look at it during the next couple days.

Thoth, I apologize for not yet having read nor commented on your Alternate-Crisis thread in the Bits forum. I will get to it within the week, as soon as I take care of a whole bunch of stuff, including the loose ends of this very thread.

A few days ago, I'd promised brief, to-the-point reviews of CoIE issues 9 through 12. I then found myself having trouble coming up with anything to say about these issues that I hadn't already said in my reviews of the first 8 issues of CoIE. Then, out of the blue, it became clear to me just a couple hours ago:

I have little or nothing left to say...and neither, at the time, did Marv Wolfman and George Perez! LOL

Seriously, though, the final 4 issues of CoIE feel to me as though Wolfman and Perez reached a point where they still had character threads to tie up, but *little or no actual plot remaining* to provide a solid foundation! Thus, these issues give new meaning to the term "clusterfuck." There's a lot of Telling Rather Than Showing (especially in issue 9, where the bottom tier on almost every page is Harbinger dryly providing random odds and sods of info. There are also the characters who are now anomalous to this "New Coke/One Earth Only DCU Timeline," and as a Helena Wayne fan, those sequences are especially aggravating (adding insult to injury, Helena's death is treated as an afterthought!) There's also the later-to-be-infamous Superboy Prime, shoehorned in for a much smaller role than I had expected, given how, 20 years later, Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio basically adopted him as their pet "anti-hero" in Infinite Crisis and beyond!

And then, at last, there is the *one* final CoIE story bit that I actually find half-decent: when all seems lost (and after more Anti-Monitor fake-outs than you would see with the villain in a typical 80s slasher movie,) it is *Darkseid* who deals the kill-shot to the Anti-Monitor. Not sure how well it holds up to analysis (it takes the lesser of two near-omnipotent evils to destroy the greater evil, and nothing else can do it?) But as a story beat, it is as refereshing and satisfying in the moment as an ice-cold glass of soda (unless that soda is "New Coke" -- see what I did there?)

That my posts e'en crossed thine awareness is boon enough m'lady of Fanfic.


Although the comments will be welcome too. Having said that, and having read your post above, the goal was to replace the current story with the fourth world, rather than rewrite the story itself. Although there's a little of that going on too. Because, the plot holes.... big enough to hide a multiverse in... or a decent sized hypertime at least...