• Final Crisis II
• Post-Final Crisis
• Final Crisis X-2
• Final Crisis Leopard
• Final Crisis Vista
• Son of Final Crisis
• Finaler Crisis
• Final Crisis Again
• Final Crisis: The Final Chapter

(List put together at the Ghirardelli ice cream shop late Saturday evening after three long days of Comic-Con.)

Potential spoilers ahead! Remember the grim-n-gritty period in the 1980s? The ultra-violent period in the 1990s? Remember when Superman was killed, Batman’s back was broken, and Wonder Woman was replaced? Remember when Green Lantern turned evil and tried to destroy the universe?

The dark tone that has pervaded the DCU since Identity Crisis is all about following those trends to their conclusion. Infinite Crisis isn’t just about dark events hitting the DCU, it’s about the DCU becoming its darkest.

The premise of IC seems to be that something has gone fundamentally wrong with the universe. It’s become corrupted. Like making a meal out of spoiled ingredients, things turn out wrong. And you get discord. You get heroes who are barely better than the villains they fight. You get conflicts that don’t make sense, because the universe itself is broken.

At least one character thinks that the original Crisis ended wrong. Instead of realigning the universe around Earth-1, it should have been realigned around Earth-2. This actually makes sense, in terms of the history of comics, since Earth-2 grew out of the first 15 years that DC published, and Earth-1 came much later.

So the stage is set. One group of heroes, led by Earth-2’s Superman—though I suspect Power Girl may take over at some point—wants to realign the universe. One group, led by Donna Troy, wants to repair it. Hmm, two multiverse refugees, on opposing sides. You can bet they’ll come into conflict, though you do have to wonder—which side is right? Is the modern DCU worth saving?

And would DC actually move to a model where Supes, Bats and Wonder Woman fought in World War II, and the modern heroes are their successors?

Verdict:

• Villains United: Fun adventure book with bad guys. Last-issue revelation was interesting. Cheshire is genuinely insane—I can believe this is the woman who nuked a small country just to prove she wasn’t bluffing.
• Day of Vengeance: 3-issue story stretched out to 6. Some nice character moments, but overall have to wonder what the point was.
• OMAC Project: Suspension of disbelief hung by neck until dead. And the worst part? The most important thing to happen in the series didn’t actually happen in the series.
• Rann/Thanagar War: Total mish-mash. Even knowing who most of the alien races were didn’t help me keep up with what side anyone was on. Someone remarked that this was like a 12-issue epic condensed (badly) into 6 issues, and that sounds about right.
• Donna Troy: I wanted to like this book. I really did. Donna Troy, George Perez/Phil Jimenez art, a direct sequel to a classic Titans story, and they all-but ignored John Byrne’s Dark Angel retcon-fest. But all the characterizations seemed off from the first page on. Even the art didn’t grab me. (The coloring didn’t help.) And while it’s interesting to take the idea that all her origins are true, the ending—particularly how Donna dealt with the Titans of Myth—really disturbed me. (While we’re at it, Donna doesn’t need her own moon for a headquarters.)
• Power Girl: Believe it or not, I didn’t read it for the cheesecake. Like Day of Vengeance there were some great character moments (PG and Jimmy Olsen sitting on top of the Daily Planet building while Jimmy ate lunch and tried not to stare, for instance). But I had a hard time believing this was the same Power Girl I’d read in Justice League Europe during the 1990s. (Yes, JLE was populated by caricatures of the leads—anyone who read that book and Flash should know that—but it became more serious near the end of the run.) And again, I thought that the story could have been told in half the space—even keeping the character moments. And even though I’d guessed PG’s true origin early on—or perhaps because of it—the finale felt like a let-down instead of a “Hell, yeah!” Maybe if they’d let her say “So that’s who I am!” instead of slinking back to her apartment as confused as ever, only to run into a “To be continued…” sign, it might have felt less like an Infinite Crisis setup piece and more like an origin story.

Verdict: One hit, two sorta OK, three turkeys.

On a related note, Warren Ellis’ arc on JLA Classified, which started strongly, is rapidly going downhill. The plot’s holding up, but the dialogue has gone from “Clever!” to “Okaaaay…” to “You have got to be kidding me.” J’onn’s rant last month about how we insist on calling his home planet “Mars” was one of those moments. (You know, I don’t normally refer to Japan as “Nihon,” or the capital of Russia as “Moskva,” but that doesn’t mean I’m calling them by the wrong name.) And I think Wally used the words “speed force” more times in 5 pages than he has in the last 5 years of his own book.

“Obviously, he’s a ta’veren!” Katie said. I laughed for a second, but then remembered an interview I’d read about Infinite Crisis. It actually fits.

Ta’veren is a term from Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time that refers to a person who forms a focal point for history (or, from another perspective, destiny). Threads of probability bend around them, and the unlikely becomes likely. Babylon 5 referred to the concept as a nexus. “You turn one way, and the whole world has a tendency to go the same way.”

Well, just before Infinite Crisis #1 hit the stands, Newsarama did an interview with Dan DiDio:

NRAMA: …Back towards the build-up a little – a seed that has been sown and is fully bearing fruit now – when Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman aren’t on the same page…can you explain a little of the ripple effects and resultant instability of the DCU? Are there specific events that can be pointed to because the three weren’t standing strong, that allowed the villains of Infinite Crisis to gain a foothold where they wouldn’t have had one, previously?

DD: That’s a big “wait and see” since it’s a big part of the story.

NRAMA: Do the three realize that they are the root of the current instability?

DD: At the start of the story, no. They do not realize how much their problems are affecting the heroes around them.

This aspect of the story forms a key scene in issue #1, in which the DC Trinity are standing in the ruins of the JLA’s watchtower and arguing over who and what is at fault. Yes, the three most important characters in DCs pantheon, not trying to battle the chaos besetting the world, but arguing. And the world sinks further into madness.

It seems that in some ways Infinite Crisis, like The Wheel of Time, is about a trio of ta’veren facing the end of the world.

Back in 1985, when Crisis on Infinite Earths was first published, I was reading these ongoing DC books on a regular basis:

• The New Teen Titans
• Tales of the Teen Titans

That was it. I was also reading Groo the Wanderer and Transformers.

In 2005, with Infinite Crisis arriving, I am reading these ongoing DC books on a regular basis:

• Teen Titans
• The Flash

The more things change…

There were times in the early 1990s that I was reading 5-10 books a month, all DC. New Titans, Flash, Starman, Hawk and Dove, Justice League Europe, L.E.G.I.O.N., Darkstars. I even read Legion of Super-Heroes during the “five years later” period.

So what happened?

Well, thinking about it, most of those books were strongest while I was in high school. And, more importantly, most of the books I’m reading these days are fantasy or horror, not super-heroes. Most of the super-hero books I do read are cross-genre books. Astro City is told from the ordinary guy’s point of view. Noble Causes is a super-hero soap opera. Planetary is metafiction about the past century’s adventure stories. Supreme Power is a cynical look at how the “real world” might deal with the sudden appearance of super-powered beings. Powers is about cops dealing with powered-up heroes and villains.

That leaves Flash, Teen Titans and Astonishing X-Men. Flash and Teen Titans because I’m a long-term fan, and Astonishing because of Joss Whedon. (Seriously, I’ve only bought one other X-book in the 21 years I’ve been reading comics: The X-Men/New Teen Titans crossover.)

DC and Marvel mainly publish mainstream super-hero books. Anything else either gets published under another label (like Vertigo or Wildstorm) or has to look elsewhere to get printed. End result: very little of what I want to read gets published with a DC logo on it.

Tamaran’s story unfolded during the 1980s in The New Teen Titans and The Omega Men (which featured Kory’s brother). Koriand’r returned home to help stop a civil war, but then her sister wrested the throne from their father. Komand’r (a.k.a. Blackfire) surprised everyone by becoming a much better—and fairer—ruler than anyone expected. Eventually Kory returned home to stay.

As The New Titans wound its way to a close in 1996, the story returned to Tamaran, now embroiled in a new war—one which ultimately destroyed the planet. The survivors settled on an uninhabited world to rebuild, dubbing it New Tamaran. (New Teen Titans #126-230, 1996)

Then things got nasty.

Just a few months after the final issue of The New Titans, DC published a prologue to the year’s big crossover, The Final Night. The sun-eater, before setting its sights on Earth, destroyed New Tamaran utterly, with no time for an evacuation. Starfire, exiled just hours before by her suddenly-evil-again sister, was believed the only survivor.

Fast forward a few years. Starfire talked the Titans into helping repel an invasion by the Gordanians, but it quickly became clear that it was the Tamaraneans who were invading the homeworld of their former conquerors. The Titans’ Tempest (formerly Aqualad) found a diplomatic solution and convinced the Gordanians to share the world of Karna with the displaced Tamaraneans—as long as Koriand’r took her place as ruler. (The Titans #16-18, 2000)

So of course, the following year’s big crossover event, Our Worlds At War, starts off with what? Karna being destroyed by Imperiex. (Our Worlds At War Secret Files, 2001). Starfire returned to Earth, a queen without a people.

The Tamaraneans have had three worlds destroyed out from under them in the last ten years (closer to two or three in story time). The rag-tag survivors may number as low as the hundreds or thousands by now.

I’ve seriously come to the conclusion that, if DC needs to destroy a recognizable planet in order to establish a threat that’s headed toward Earth, they’ll pick the latest planet the Tamaraneans have settled on.

(Maybe they should hook up with Pariah.)

So now we’ve got two “event” series taking place in space: The Rann-Thanagar War and The Return of Donna Troy. There appear to be two groups of Tamaranean survivors involved. One has fallen under the thrall of the original Titans of Greek mythology. (Troia’s origin established that they had been exiled into space when Zeus took over.) They’re off conquering planets for the Titans under the belief that they’re protecting the universe from Rann and Thanagar. The other, led by an inexplicably-resurrected Blackfire, has allied themselves with Thanagar with the intent to betray them at the last minute and take Rann for themselves.

If they succeed, you can bet on Rann getting destroyed a few months later in Infinite Crisis.

Otherworld (Vertigo). I picked this up on the strength of Phil Jimenez and part of the concept. A group of people from present-day Earth get dragged into an extra-dimensional war—which, of course, has been done before. After issue #2, I’m still not entirely sure what’s going on, beyond the basics. We’re still figuring out who gets transformed how, and as for what’s actually going on in the other world, I think we’re going to have to find out along with the leads. (Heck, I’m still trying to figure out which character is narrating the whole thing.) I’m hoping things will become clearer with #3.

The Atheist (Image/Desperado). A skeptic paranormal investigator (nicknamed the Atheist by his colleagues) comes up against the one case he can’t debunk: the dead are returning and taking possession of the living. In some ways this reminds me a bit of Simon Spectre and Frank Ironwine, the two Apparat books inspired by Doc Savage and the detective pulps. Definitely continuing with this one.

Beyond Avalon (Image/Desperado). King Arthur’s daughter takes up a sword and leaves the island of Avalon to see what’s out there. #1 was just interesting enough to get me to buy #2. But I haven’t actually read #2 yet.

Mnemovore (Vertigo). The concept of this one intrigued me enough I had a dream about it a few nights ago. (Appropriately, I can’t remember much of it.) The main character, injured in a snowboarding accident, has amnesia…but something is causing everyone around her to lose memories as well. Something alive, that Kaley encounters at the end of the first issue. Another one I’m definitely following.

Countdown to Infinite Crisis (DC). I have to admit I had very low expectations for the latest big event book. But the 80-page giant was actually quite good. Three of the four spinoff minis are out now, and they’ve been hit or miss. On one hand, I like the idea that each series focuses on a different corner of the DC universe—Day of Vengeance for the magical characters, Rann/Thanagar War for the sci-fi, The OMAC Project for the superhero/thriller types and Villains United for…well, you can probably guess. On the other hand, at 6 issues apiece plus the 4-issue Return of Donna Troy, that’s already 29 books, plus however many issues Infinite Crisis itself will be. This is all for the 20^th anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was only 12 issues! And, frankly, the “Which one will lead to Infinite Crisis? Buy them all and find out!” gimmick offends me.

Anyway, I liked the first issue of The OMAC Project, Day of Vengeance #1 left me just curious enough to pick up #2, and Villains United didn’t intrigue me much at all.

Rising Stars: Voices of the Dead. Now that JMS and Top Cow have resolved their dispute and finished Rising Stars, the publisher can start releasing Fiona Avery’s spinoff minis again. First out of the gate is this one, focusing on Lionel Zerb, who talks to the dead. Unfortunately I can’t help but wonder what happened to Rising Stars: Untouchable, the mini about telekinetic assassin Laurel Darkhaven announced two years ago. My impression was that it was done, or at least completely written, with publishing held up by the dispute. I’ll have to reread VotD without that question in my head. (Strangely, I can’t find anything about either series at Top Cow’s website)