Kistler's Crisis Afterthoughts

This is part of my Crisis Files and refers to the crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE CONTINUITY

Let’s focus on the positive first. The Crisis was a great story with some serious scope to it and very exciting battles. It was a cool showcase for lots of characters, some of the dialogue was perfect, and the art was fantastic.

My major problem is that I think the story should have been a bit better planned. After the Crisis, there was an issue of All-Star Squadron in which an android named Mekanique was apparently holding back the effects of the Crisis. When she finally let them go, reality made its final adjustments and memories were altered so that even the heroes who were there at the dawn of time no longer remembered how the universe used to be.

This explained some anomalies between the last issue of the Crisis and what became Post-Crisis continuity. For instance, Lori Lemaris was killed in front of readers and was laid to rest in the last issue, but a few years later in the Superman comics it was revealed that she was alive and well.

So minor gaffs were explained away. But there was still the problem of poor planning. Such as the fact that, after the Crisis, Wonder Woman was rebooted as a new hero who'd never been around before. This elimated her history with the Justice League of America, meaning that Black Canary was not retconned to have been the first female member of the team instead.

More confusing though, Donna Troy was still said to have been a founding member of the Teen Titans years earlier. So now, Wonder Girl PRECEDED Wonder Woman. Also, Post-Crisis, Superman started his career as an adult and was never Superboy. But this meant that parts of the history of the Legion of Super-Heroes were now in question since they'd had many team-ups with Superboy.

I’m not putting this all at Wolfman's feet. He’s a fine writer and did a great job. I just think that DC should have given him more time and that the editors and writers should have all determined beforehand just whose history was going to be re-written and how. That way, issue #11 could have been a true introduction to the Post-Crisis universe. Instead, it shows us a unified Earth that is not what we see in the months afterwards.

Also, about a year or so after the Crisis was over, Wolfman and Perez put out the two-book History of the DC Universe, as recorded by Harbinger on her "Monitor Tapes" that were mentioned in the main series. It was exactly what it said, a chronological rundown of the history of the DC universe, showing how the unified Earth worked, what heroes appeared when, what aliens live where, etc.

Minor problem: just a year or so after it was published, a lot of it was rendered out of continuity. History of the DC Universe depicted Captain Atom with his classic Charlton Comics look, but when he was later reintroduced into Post-Crisis continuity he had a totally different look and a different history. Aquaman was depicted with his Silver Age origin, but a couple of years later, Keith Giffen changed the circumstances of his birth and upbringing.

I mentioned a few other problems I had with specific scenes in the series itself, such as so much time being spent on Blue Devil's rather inconsequential cameo whereas we don't get to see what the Green Lantern Corps was up to for most of the story (odd, considering they've had more experience with the anti-matter universe than anyone else). A major reason for this was because certain plans for certain characters were changed during the course of the series. Also, DC would sometimes tell Wolfman to insert something specific that he hadn't planned, leading to the strange rhythm and occasional inconsistencies.

Finally, while Wolfman did an excellent job in naming every character who showed up and giving a basic idea of who was associated with whom, the story still depended on a pretty decent knowledge of not only many of the characters but the histories of the different Earths. All of this, added together, makes the Crisis enjoyable but keeps it from being one of those fantastic works that you can put into the hand of a novice as proof of how comics can be great.

Twenty years later, Marv Wolfman published a novelization of Crisis on Infinite Earths. It is an excellent read and far more new-reader-friendly than the original comic series. I have several friends who read the novel and were able to follow it just fine, whereas they found the comic a bit overwhelming at times. What's more, with the benefit of hindsight and knowledge of storylines and characters that came later, Wolfman was able to add quite a lot into the story. To unify it and give it a less scattered, chaotic feel, Wolfman chose to have the book told from Barry Allen's point of view and it worked wonderfully.

Perhaps the biggest complaint from readers concerned Supergirl. She might not have been the most popular gal beforehand, with a funky headband and an origin that stretched credibility even in the DC universe, but most people agreed that her final battle and her death scene were sights to behold. Some have contended it was actually more dramatic and emotional than Barry Allen's sacrifice in the next issue. Yet while Barry is still remembered as the martyr of the Crisis, Kara was completely removed from continuity, so none of the heroes remember her heroic sacrifice because history says that she (or at least this version of her) never existed. Hell, DOVE’s death is remembered, but not the Pre-Crisis Supergirl's. And that’s tragic.

I understand DC's decision that Superman was to now be the only Kryptonian in Post-Crisis continuity, but couldn't you have said he’s the only Kryptonian NOW because Kara, and the other Kryptonian survivors who were around Pre-Crisis, died during this massive crossover event? Wouldn’t that have added a lot more resonance to the Post-Crisis Superman, the fact that once he’d at least had a family member to share his life with but later, because of the Anti-Monitor, he was left as the sole survivor of his whole world, knowing he hadn't been able to protect his younger cousin?

Just my two cents.

And please, understand that these criticisms are in no way meant to say that this was a bad series or a bad story. It wasn't and still isn't. Entire universes were destroyed and many characters were killed. I’ve yet to find the comic crossover that matches the sheer scale and power of this one. Perhaps one day a writer will spit-polish the story and give us a Post-Crisis version of the events of the Crisis (I have my own version how that would be, which I may share someday if I have enough drinks in me).

IDEAS THAT NEVER MADE IT

Wolfman didn't want to make Barry Allen's death an irreversible thing, so he deliberately left an out for the character. Those time warps happening when Barry was running his last race? Wolfam put them there so they could do another Flash series later if they wanted, a series that would show Barry going through one of those warps, traveling into the future some time after his death during the Crisis. Now he would be a man living on borrowed time, desperate to do as much good as he could because at any given moment he knew he could be warped back into the past and forced to finish his race to save all reality.

Interestingly, a nearly identical idea was used years later when Marvel Comics seemingly brought back their character Captain Mar-Vell.

One thing that Wolfman had originally intended was that, when the story was finished, NO ONE WOULD REMEMBER THE CRISIS AT ALL.

Once history was rebooted at the end of issue 10, issues 11 and 12 would be Harbinger introducing readers to the basic history of the new reality and then the next month all DC titles would start from scratch with issue number 1. If you're readers of Ultimate Marvel, you can imagine that all of Marvel's titles would be dropped and then the next month starting with Ultimate Spider-Man #1 they'd recreate it all from scratch.

Not a bad idea and it certainly would have saved people from many of the continuity hiccups that happened later due to the fact that some books were restarted from ground zero and some weren't. Ah, well. Life happens.

POST-CRISIS VERSION OF THE CRISIS

When writer Geoff Johns did his acclaimed run on The Flash, he revealed that Barry Allen (thanks to some time travel adventures he had that we were previously unaware of) actually knew that he was fated to somehow die during the Crisis. Rather than try to avoid it, he'd decided he was fine with it, knowing he'd run a good race and that Wally West would take over for him.

In his series JLA: Incarnations, John Ostrander finally tried to give a definitive answer to a question many fans had asked: "how do the heroes remember the Crisis?"

The issue didn't cover the entire Crisis, but gave it presented new version of the scene when Harbinger, Alexander and Pariah called up everyone to the satellite and first explained what was going on. In this retcon, Harbinger explained to the heroes (who were now all from the same Earth and always had been) that the Anti-Monitor was transmitting anti-matter to different time eras, causing their universe to compress into one small span of time and which he would then destroy with his anti-matter cannon. The tuning fork towers were meant to protect the most sensitive time-zones.

The same issue recapped Barry Allen's death, adding that the Anti-Monitor had used Barry's speed energies to help power his cannon. The story also showed that in his last moments, Barry realized what Wally West had discovered long after the Crisis; that speedsters were connected by an extra-dimensional Speed Force.

In his novelization of the Crisis, Wolfman revealed that due to time warping around him before his death, Barry had actually been present for much more of the Crisis than anyone had realized, though his presence was usually imperceptible. Barry had been there, literally in spirit, when Kal-L was about to deliver the final blow on the Anti-Monitor and that he was able to grant the Earth-2 hero extra power, using energy gathered from the Speed Force itself. Barry also discovered in his final moments that Iris would indeed survive the Crisis and that he'd have a speedster grandson named Bart.

One final note. For years, readers constantly snickered about the fact that Wally West had gotten his powers by suffering the exact same accident his mentor had. During his run, Mark Waid implied that Barry himself was somehow responsible for this. In JLA: Incarnations, Ostrander strongly implied that at the moment of his death, Barry had reached back in time and granted his own powers to Wally. In the Crisis novelization, Wolfman confirmed it. When Barry is running and peering into the past, he reaches out to the image of a young Wally West. This causes his Speed Force energies to enter into the past and become the lightning bolt that hit Wally years ago, giving him his powers as Kid Flash. Thus, moments before his death, Barry actually ensured his own sidekick's creation years before.

Crazy, right? Stuff like this makes me wish they would do an animated Crisis film adaptation. So, you know, if you're reading this Warner Bros., I happen to have an screenplay based on the Crisis that I think could work. Just saying.

Hope you enjoyed this. Until next time, cheers!