Crisis on Infinite Earths, or, "How did we get into this mess in the first place?"
What was the DC multiverse? Why do people care if it comes back or not? Why did it go away in the first place? With the conclusion of 52 revealing the larger effects of last year's Infinite Crisis, these questions are fairly relevant. To answer them, lets take a look back about 20 years ago, to 1985's landmark maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Notes:
CoIE or just plain Crisis == Crisis on Infinite Earths
IC == Infinite Crisis, including implications revealed only later in 52
I first read Crisis on Infinite Earths fairly soon after I started reading DC comics. I had read a fair amount of Batman and related material, and I more or less knew the difference between Golden and Silver age versions of characters such as the Flash and Green Lantern. But Crisis covers as many obscure corners of the DC multiverse as it possibly can, from characters like Dr. Occult (1st appearance: New Fun #6, October 1935) to new multiverse aspects (such as the world of the former Charlton Comics characters) that are introduced during the series itself. I read Crisis mostly because of its significance as the origin point of the then-current DC universe, and basically didn't worry too much when there were characters and situations I didn't understand.
The actual basic plot itself isn't all that confusing if you accept the concept of the multiverse to begin with: There are infinite parallel positive matter universes watched over by a humanoid being called the Monitor, and one antimatter universe where the Anti-Monitor has taken control (the concept of antimatter is horribly abused, which I'm going to ignore from this point on). The Anti-Monitor is causing positive matter universes to be destroyed by waves of antimatter, which allows his universe to expand to take their places which then increases his power at the expense of the Monitor. The heroes have to save as many positive matter worlds as they can (five, as it turns out: DC's two main universes, plus the universes containing characters purchased from Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics, and Charlton Comics), and basically get the space-time continuum sorted out after it gets seriously messed up along the way. You don't really need a detailed grasp of the history to understand that part.
This time around, I read Crisis from the perspective of a fan with plenty of pre-Crisis multiverse knowledge. In the intervening years I've read all of the JLA/JSA team-ups that introduce most of the main multiverse worlds, as well as some individual hero cross-universe team-ups and some series set on or featuring characters from Earth-S and Earth-X. But primarily, I've become a big fan of Earth-Two and have read just about everything from the mid-70's to mid-80's Earth-Two revival that I could find. And finally, I've read a good bit of Golden Age archive collections and picked up some low-grade Golden Age books from DC, Quality and Fawcett. As a result of all this plus reading quite a few regular old Earth-One pre-Crisis stories, when I started to read Crisis this time I had a much better feel for the histories and characters within each continuity. It wasn't the same as someone reading Crisis back in 1985 with no idea what was about to happen, but I had built up a much stronger attachment to the multiverse.
So, how was Crisis with all of this background knowledge added? Well, of course, it was fundamentally the same story. Crisis will always be monumentally important because not only was it one of the first company-wide crossover events, it is arguably the only one that has truly lived up to its hype of causing substantial and permanent change. It promised that "Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the DC Universe will never be the same!", and it delivered on that promise exactly.
The artwork has held up well. George Perez was one of the most respected artists of the time, and the perfect choice for this project. His ability to cram a tremendous number of characters onto a page (whether in an action scene or a big "everyone stands around and waits" picture) is amazing, and key to conveying the scale of the events. Perez was also a fan favorite, as he was the illustrator and co-plotter of DC's then-most popular book, New Teen Titans. There are many great images from Crisis, perhaps the most memorable being the cover to #7 featuring the death of Supergirl. Perez's ability to both produce detailed character portrayals and convey explosive action sequences is a major part of what makes Crisis an exciting read.
On the other hand, the writing (by Marv Wolfman, also of New Teen Titans fame, with Perez co-plotting #6-12) has not aged as gracefully. Some of that is simply due to changes in what's expected and accepted in superhero comic writing over the last 20 years. Emotions are frequently exaggerated, and far to often characters deliver expository information in awkward soliloquies. In general, the dialog is more than a bit overwrought. But even if you re-scripted the entire series over the existing artwork and plot/characterization framework, a number of flaws would remain.
The primary flaws in the plot are related to the three characters who essentially exist only as plot devices and were introduced in the first issue: Lyla Michaels (Harbinger), Pariah, and Alexander Luthor, Jr. of Earth-Three.
Lyla (who had been previously seen alongside the Monitor in various cameos leading up to Crisis) first becomes Harbinger in Crisis #1. She has the power to split herself into multiple copies that can travel across the different universes, act independently and then return to her, at which point she retains their memories. As the Monitor's assistant she has more knowledge of what's going on than anyone else after the Monitor's death early in the series. I'll come back to the problems she poses for the plot after explaining the other two characters.
Pariah is a scientist from an unidentified Earth whose risky experiments resulted in the Anti-Monitor being able to start destroying the multiverse. He has been "cursed" to be teleported to each universe just before it is destroyed, and to witness its destruction without ever dying himself. Even allowing for how much that has to suck, he is quite possibly the most whiny and annoying character I've ever encountered. He spends a lot of time bemoaning his fate, begging to die, and proclaiming his helplessness in the face of destruction (although he does manage to save one person from a dying universe, but it apparently took him a long time to come up with that idea). His purpose seems to be to inform us of how dire the situation is by carrying on about it all the time, and to explain how things got started. The explanation could have been handled another way (similar to the explanation for the creation of the multiverse, it could have been told/discovered somehow without his needing to be around). And as for impressing the reader with the severity of the situation, I really think the basic set-up comes across quite clearly as a Very Bad Thing without some poor self-flagellating idiot getting histrionic about it. Perhaps if he were used more subtly he could have been more interesting, but I mostly find him to be an annoyance, and an unnecessary one at that.
Alexander Luthor, Jr. is the most interesting of the three. He comes from Earth-Three which had long been established as a sort of "reverse" Earth. There, Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring had formed the Crime Syndicate of America, while Lex Luthor, Sr. was that world's only superhero (any other Earth-One villain who may have been a hero having been killed by the CSA). As the heroes always win on Earth-One and Earth-Two, the villains always win on Earth-Three. As Earth-Three is consumed by antimatter, Luthor sends his infant child Alexander Jr. to Earth-One in an experimental dimension-traveling ship (the whole thing is strongly reminiscent of Superman's escape from the dying planet Krypton). The Monitor finds Alexander when he arrives and discovers that as a result of his trip between universes, the child is growing up very rapidly. Additionally, Alexander's body is composed of both matter and antimatter, which ends up giving him powers including the ability to make himself a gateway between various dimensions. Like Lyla, he was given particular knowledge about what was happening with the multiverse by the Monitor that proved valuable after the Monitor's death.
Of the three, Alexander is the most useful and necessary. While travel between universes has been done in various ways in the past, there are several points in the story where it would be difficult to provide a large number of characters with an escape route from battle without introducing some new machine that would be just as much of a plot device as Alexander. More importantly, Alexander's antimatter-based powers (and yeah, we're seriously ignoring laws of physics here) prove important in the final defeat of the Anti-Monitor. My main objection to him stems from the writers' use of him as an expository source when he just came into being a few hours earlier. Yes, he's conveying information given to him by the Monitor, but wouldn't it be more realistic to make him a more confused and uncertain hero? Its all well and good that the Monitor told him things about his abilities that prove useful, but for someone who was literally born yesterday, a bit more of a struggle to grasp what's going on around him and figure out what he needs to do and how to do it would have made him a more satisfying character. As it is, despite his importance to the plot he's very one-dimensional, and just kind of appears as needed to do his thing.
Pariah I already covered to some degree. Mostly, I'd prefer that he not exist. But besides being annoying, he has the same problem of one-dimensionality as Alexander. "Annoying histrionics" pretty much sums up his entire appearance in the series. He does have his moments of heroism (or at least tries), but given that his actions started this whole thing, it's disappointing that he doesn't really learn anything or work out any issues that help solve the problem. Even the revelations that what he did wasn't quite what he thought he did were just handed to him by the Anti-Monitor (who was doing a "classic" villain monologue/rant about his own greatness). The pull he feels towards sites of disaster and evil help the heroes find the Anti-Monitor at one point, but that's not enough use to justify an annoying character who possesses exactly one personality trait.
And finally we come back to Harbinger. Her character is actually ever-so-slightly more fleshed out than the others. She has genuine love for the Monitor who rescued her as a child and raised her, and feels terrible guilt for her role in his death (she was being controlled by the Anti-Monitor at the time). She shows the uncertainty you'd expect from a young woman who suddenly has to take center stage after being in the background for her whole life. But the problems with Harbinger are less from her personality and more from her role (and that of the Monitor) in the story. The vast multitudes of DC characters actually do very little to understand and solve the crisis, especially in the first half of the story. The explanations and instructions are simply dumped on them, first by the Monitor, and then by Harbinger (with assistance from Alexander Luthor) after his death. I find this to be tremendously unsatisfying.
Here we have a book which according to author Marv Wolfman was first conceived as a way to do the biggest team up of all. And while many characters do indeed "team up", there's hardly any interesting interaction among them in terms of diagnosing and solving the problems at hand. Mostly, they just banter and/or bicker whenever they all end up summoned to some location by Harbinger. To me, this is the big missed opportunity of Crisis on Infinite Earths. We could have seen various heroes figuring out pieces of the puzzle on their own Earths and then collaborating as the barriers between worlds broke down (or having that cross-dimensional role facilitated by characters somewhat like Harbinger and Alexander who have special knowledge of the multiverse). The villains could have been worked into the act as well- major players in the story like Earth-One's Lex Luthor and Braniac would certainly have been able to work out pieces as well as Batman or Captain Marvel or one of the new or newly important characters that the series is trying to promote. That would have given the readers insight into how the characters would interact in the new changed world, and been a better introduction to the less familiar characters. Many characters could have been briefly spotlighted as they contributed something for which they were specifically well-suited. There were indeed a number of scenes showing characters doing that sort of thing, but they tended to be minor happenings in large battles. It would have been better to use the wealth of characters to keep moving the plotlines along.
Instead, a lot of the explanations and solutions are simply dumped on them by new characters that are distressingly one-dimensional throughout the twelve issues of the series. This leaves the established characters to
A.) Stand around and gawk nearly helplessly as crazy stuff happens.
B.) Do minor crowd control / rescue activities (for heroes).
C.) Exploit the chaos (for villains).
D.) Toss off one-liners at each other in big group scenes.
E.) Do what the Monitor, Harbinger or Alexander Luthor (and in one case the Spectre, an actual significant existing character) tells them to do.
As it is, the closest thing we got to a real multiversal team-up was the meeting Harbinger, Alexander and Pariah had with Superman (Earth-One), Superman (Earth-Two), Captain Marvel (Earth-S), Uncle Sam (Earth-X), Blue Beetle II (Earth-Four) and Lady Quark (Earth-Six). And even still, that was really just so that the new characters could tell the old ones what was going on so they could go back and tell others on their Earths. The representatives of the various Earths hardly had any meaningful interaction amongst themselves at all.
An alternative way to structure things would have been to make Pariah, Harbinger and/or Alexander Luthor the true central protagonists of the story. In that model, the focus would have been on developing them as characters to the point where they can understand what is going on and fix it (save the world or correct their original mistakes, as appropriate). The existing cast of the multiverse would be employed mostly in a support capacity, with perhaps a few having more major roles. While I think there's a good story in that form, it wouldn't really have lived up to the potential of the Biggest Team-up Ever. So I really think that since these new characters couldn't be developed properly without taking over the story even more, their roles should have been minimized (and for some, possibly eliminated).
So, that's my take on the flaws of Crisis. Now what about the good parts? There were certainly good parts. It's such an audacious idea that if you're willing to roll with the dialog style and the plot device characters, it's pretty exhilarating. And while widespread character-developing team-ups didn't happen as much as I would have liked, several individual characters got some really good scenes.
The best, I would say, is the death of Supergirl (an Earth-One character first introduced in the 60's). She dies fighting the Anti-Monitor in the first really big battle between a large force of heroes and the real villain of the series. She does not entirely defeat him, but weakens him enough to delay his plans and allow the heroes to regroup and learn more. But most of all, the scene is well written, well paced, and satisfyingly heroic. The inclusion of the reactions of characters like her friend Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) and especially her cousin Superman at and after her funereal adds even more emotion to the scene. The extra-long issue gives the reader space to really reflect on her death, so the significance sinks in. Seeing as she was retconned out of existence (meaning no one even remembers she ever existed) in the post-Crisis world, its good that she got this good of a send-off.
Oddly, Wolfman and Perez chose to follow that with the death of the Earth-One Flash (Barry Allen) in the very next issue. I say oddly because while Barry's death was reasonably well done, it pales in comparison to Supergirl's fate the issue before. The Flash's death was equally heroic- in some ways more so because he did not make his decisions in the heat of battle. It was still a memorable part of the series, but I rather wish they could have pushed it back a bit to set it off from the one that immediately preceded it. And since Barry was trapped on the Anti-Monitor's world when he died, there was no immediate reflection on his passing, so the reader had to move on that much more quickly. Barry, at least, would be remembered in the post-Crisis world, so if one of the two had to get short shrift in Crisis itself then I must say that they made the right choice.
One of the most interesting sub-plots that isn't a character death is concerns the actions of several heroes who go out in Rip Hunter's time sphere after the remaining five universes collapse into one. They encounter the villain Brainiac in space, and when the Anti-Monitor sucks the unified Earth into his antimatter universe, they convince Brainiac to help them in the interest of preserving his own life. Brainiac's plan is to enlist Darkseid of the New Gods, who is one of the scariest and most powerful bad guys around. This is the kind of thing I would have liked to see driving the series overall. Different characters meet up and figure out things they can do to save the universe. As far as I can tell, no one told these guys to find Brainiac, or contact Darkseid or any of that. But it did end up having a key effect in the final battle.
And as for that final battle, well, it's a bit excessive, isn't it? Perhaps that's only suitable. But the Anti-Monitor gets knocked down and is apparently dead three times, only to jump up again screaming about how he will not be defeated, only to finally be destroyed the fourth time. Or, if you count Supergirl destroying his original physical shell several issues earlier, the fifth time. While I wouldn't want the last fight to be too easy, I definitely started rolling my eyes by the third go-round. But amidst all of that was some great material with the Superman of Earth-Two and Superboy of Earth-Prime deciding to stay behind in the antimatter universe to deliver the last blows to the Anti-Monitor because their worlds didn't exist anymore- in Superboy-Prime's case not at all, and while parts of Earth-Two survived, no one remembers the Earth-Two Superman as being part of it. And the scene where Alexander Luthor reveals that he saved the Lois Lane of Earth-Two (who had long since married her Clark Kent/Superman) was a wonderful conclusion, providing all four of them (Alexander, Superman-Two, Lois-Two, Superboy-Prime) an escape into a "paradise dimension" from the rapidly approaching blast wave from the Anti-Monitor's destruction. Of course, it also laid the groundwork for Infinite Crisis, 20 years later, but I'm sure that's not what Wolfman and Perez were thinking of at the time.
And then there's that great epilogue with the Psycho-Pirate, who is now completely insane but the only one who truly remembers the multiverse. And if you haven't seen Grant Morrison's Animal Man, which among other things follows-up on that, you owe it to yourself to pick up the trade paperbacks.
So, with all that said, what's the impact? Was it successful or not? Reading Crisis on Infinite Earths now, having read a good bit of pre-Crisis material from several Earths, there's a sense of both loss and excitement. Complaints with plot or lack of character development aside, there's an undeniable energy, largely propelled by the art but also by the basic framework of the story, that really makes you want to see what happens next now that there's this new slate to work with. At the same time, I mourn the loss of characters like the Earth-Two Huntress (who I've read a lot more of than the Earth-One Supergirl). Yes, there's a character called "Huntress" in the post-Crisis world, but she's Helena Bertinelli, and while she's a good character in her own right, she's really not all that much like the original Helena Wayne. I imagine the fans of Supergirl (who was more widely known) felt much the same way. (Interestingly, Supergirl's Earth-Two counterpart Power Girl survived, despite her backstory as the Earth-Two Superman's cousin having been completely deleted. While Power Girl was a unique enough character to warrant this, it made things insanely complicated for a long time).
On the other hand, one thing I love about the post-Crisis DCU is that there's such a tremendous history there. There's a solid tradition of superheroes from before World War II up to the present, with a few of the originals still around today. That sort of legacy was only apparent before in special cross-universe team-ups. And while Earth-Two was building its own legacy with new characters and teams, it was still clearly the "alternate" Earth compared to most of what DC fans were reading. The JSA went through a period of hibernation right after Crisis (literally exiled to another plane of existence for several years), but eventually were revived and once again have a successful long-running major book. I think the DCU would be poorer without easy regular interaction among the Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S and Earth-X characters. Captain Marvel and his related characters (Earth-S) provides an interesting contrast to many of the heroes that originated from the DCU. Black Adam, in particular, has become one of the most fascinating and morally complex characters during his runs in JSA and 52. Many of the Quality Comics characters from Earth-X have not fared as well, but Plastic Man's run in JLA alone makes up for that (although I think he'd appeared on Earth-One before). And the recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini-series shows that there's plenty of good life left in the Quality Comics line-up. Rumor has it we'll be seeing more of them, and I hope that's true. And then there's Earth-Four, which gave us classic characters like Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) and The Question (Vic Sage). Perhaps they were never the headliners, but they filled some pretty great niches around the DCU over the years. It's too bad those two are both dead in the post-IC "New Earth", but...
That brings us back to where we started, which was talking about the results of Infinite Crisis and 52, and why anyone would want to "bring back" the multiverse. Because now we have an Earth-Four again, which has a living Vic Sage and probably a living Ted Kord (the Blue Beetle we've seen there is Dan Garrett, the first to use that name- Ted was the second). And now we have an Earth-Two with a Helena Wayne Huntress and its own JSA lineup. And apparently they realize that their Power Girl and Superman disappeared during some sort of Crisis. Presumably they noticed Lois being gone as well, but only the superheroes made the newspaper headlines.
So why bring these worlds back? It looks like they're not back exactly as they were before, but its been long enough that they'd benefit from some updating anyway, and this is a perfect excuse to do it. The reason seems likely to be that with all the possibilities out there, just one universe is too much of a restriction. DC has used concepts like Elseworlds (which are not part of continuity), and Hypertime (which is like but isn't really the multiverse, in a way that was never entirely clear because DC editorial seemed to regret bringing up the idea almost as soon as it happened), but neither has really satisfied fans. And I suspect there are two reasons for this:
1. Many fans, both older fans who started reading pre-Crisis as well as younger fans who have gotten to know and love the older material, are too attached to the stories to be happy with the idea that they never happened.
2. Comic book fans love continuity. It really shouldn't matter that Elseworlds tales are "out of continuity" while the multiverse worlds were "in continuity" (but then weren't post-Crisis/pre-IC), but it does. The relationship from one part of continuity to another can be as convoluted as one wants, but fans are going to be much happier if they can say "yes, that thing happened 'for real', and you could get to it from the main DC by plot device X".
So 20 years later, the multiverse is back, but the post-Crisis universe (as tweaked by Zero Hour: Crisis in Time and Infinite Crisis) remains as well. We now have (we hope) the best of all worlds- a world in which nearly all of the history of DC Comics and the companies it has absorbed is accessible, and worlds in which variations past, present and future can be explored.
At least, up to the number 52.
Notes:
CoIE or just plain Crisis == Crisis on Infinite Earths
IC == Infinite Crisis, including implications revealed only later in 52
I first read Crisis on Infinite Earths fairly soon after I started reading DC comics. I had read a fair amount of Batman and related material, and I more or less knew the difference between Golden and Silver age versions of characters such as the Flash and Green Lantern. But Crisis covers as many obscure corners of the DC multiverse as it possibly can, from characters like Dr. Occult (1st appearance: New Fun #6, October 1935) to new multiverse aspects (such as the world of the former Charlton Comics characters) that are introduced during the series itself. I read Crisis mostly because of its significance as the origin point of the then-current DC universe, and basically didn't worry too much when there were characters and situations I didn't understand.
The actual basic plot itself isn't all that confusing if you accept the concept of the multiverse to begin with: There are infinite parallel positive matter universes watched over by a humanoid being called the Monitor, and one antimatter universe where the Anti-Monitor has taken control (the concept of antimatter is horribly abused, which I'm going to ignore from this point on). The Anti-Monitor is causing positive matter universes to be destroyed by waves of antimatter, which allows his universe to expand to take their places which then increases his power at the expense of the Monitor. The heroes have to save as many positive matter worlds as they can (five, as it turns out: DC's two main universes, plus the universes containing characters purchased from Fawcett Comics, Quality Comics, and Charlton Comics), and basically get the space-time continuum sorted out after it gets seriously messed up along the way. You don't really need a detailed grasp of the history to understand that part.
This time around, I read Crisis from the perspective of a fan with plenty of pre-Crisis multiverse knowledge. In the intervening years I've read all of the JLA/JSA team-ups that introduce most of the main multiverse worlds, as well as some individual hero cross-universe team-ups and some series set on or featuring characters from Earth-S and Earth-X. But primarily, I've become a big fan of Earth-Two and have read just about everything from the mid-70's to mid-80's Earth-Two revival that I could find. And finally, I've read a good bit of Golden Age archive collections and picked up some low-grade Golden Age books from DC, Quality and Fawcett. As a result of all this plus reading quite a few regular old Earth-One pre-Crisis stories, when I started to read Crisis this time I had a much better feel for the histories and characters within each continuity. It wasn't the same as someone reading Crisis back in 1985 with no idea what was about to happen, but I had built up a much stronger attachment to the multiverse.
So, how was Crisis with all of this background knowledge added? Well, of course, it was fundamentally the same story. Crisis will always be monumentally important because not only was it one of the first company-wide crossover events, it is arguably the only one that has truly lived up to its hype of causing substantial and permanent change. It promised that "Worlds will live. Worlds will die. And the DC Universe will never be the same!", and it delivered on that promise exactly.
The artwork has held up well. George Perez was one of the most respected artists of the time, and the perfect choice for this project. His ability to cram a tremendous number of characters onto a page (whether in an action scene or a big "everyone stands around and waits" picture) is amazing, and key to conveying the scale of the events. Perez was also a fan favorite, as he was the illustrator and co-plotter of DC's then-most popular book, New Teen Titans. There are many great images from Crisis, perhaps the most memorable being the cover to #7 featuring the death of Supergirl. Perez's ability to both produce detailed character portrayals and convey explosive action sequences is a major part of what makes Crisis an exciting read.
On the other hand, the writing (by Marv Wolfman, also of New Teen Titans fame, with Perez co-plotting #6-12) has not aged as gracefully. Some of that is simply due to changes in what's expected and accepted in superhero comic writing over the last 20 years. Emotions are frequently exaggerated, and far to often characters deliver expository information in awkward soliloquies. In general, the dialog is more than a bit overwrought. But even if you re-scripted the entire series over the existing artwork and plot/characterization framework, a number of flaws would remain.
The primary flaws in the plot are related to the three characters who essentially exist only as plot devices and were introduced in the first issue: Lyla Michaels (Harbinger), Pariah, and Alexander Luthor, Jr. of Earth-Three.
Lyla (who had been previously seen alongside the Monitor in various cameos leading up to Crisis) first becomes Harbinger in Crisis #1. She has the power to split herself into multiple copies that can travel across the different universes, act independently and then return to her, at which point she retains their memories. As the Monitor's assistant she has more knowledge of what's going on than anyone else after the Monitor's death early in the series. I'll come back to the problems she poses for the plot after explaining the other two characters.
Pariah is a scientist from an unidentified Earth whose risky experiments resulted in the Anti-Monitor being able to start destroying the multiverse. He has been "cursed" to be teleported to each universe just before it is destroyed, and to witness its destruction without ever dying himself. Even allowing for how much that has to suck, he is quite possibly the most whiny and annoying character I've ever encountered. He spends a lot of time bemoaning his fate, begging to die, and proclaiming his helplessness in the face of destruction (although he does manage to save one person from a dying universe, but it apparently took him a long time to come up with that idea). His purpose seems to be to inform us of how dire the situation is by carrying on about it all the time, and to explain how things got started. The explanation could have been handled another way (similar to the explanation for the creation of the multiverse, it could have been told/discovered somehow without his needing to be around). And as for impressing the reader with the severity of the situation, I really think the basic set-up comes across quite clearly as a Very Bad Thing without some poor self-flagellating idiot getting histrionic about it. Perhaps if he were used more subtly he could have been more interesting, but I mostly find him to be an annoyance, and an unnecessary one at that.
Alexander Luthor, Jr. is the most interesting of the three. He comes from Earth-Three which had long been established as a sort of "reverse" Earth. There, Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman, Johnny Quick and Power Ring had formed the Crime Syndicate of America, while Lex Luthor, Sr. was that world's only superhero (any other Earth-One villain who may have been a hero having been killed by the CSA). As the heroes always win on Earth-One and Earth-Two, the villains always win on Earth-Three. As Earth-Three is consumed by antimatter, Luthor sends his infant child Alexander Jr. to Earth-One in an experimental dimension-traveling ship (the whole thing is strongly reminiscent of Superman's escape from the dying planet Krypton). The Monitor finds Alexander when he arrives and discovers that as a result of his trip between universes, the child is growing up very rapidly. Additionally, Alexander's body is composed of both matter and antimatter, which ends up giving him powers including the ability to make himself a gateway between various dimensions. Like Lyla, he was given particular knowledge about what was happening with the multiverse by the Monitor that proved valuable after the Monitor's death.
Of the three, Alexander is the most useful and necessary. While travel between universes has been done in various ways in the past, there are several points in the story where it would be difficult to provide a large number of characters with an escape route from battle without introducing some new machine that would be just as much of a plot device as Alexander. More importantly, Alexander's antimatter-based powers (and yeah, we're seriously ignoring laws of physics here) prove important in the final defeat of the Anti-Monitor. My main objection to him stems from the writers' use of him as an expository source when he just came into being a few hours earlier. Yes, he's conveying information given to him by the Monitor, but wouldn't it be more realistic to make him a more confused and uncertain hero? Its all well and good that the Monitor told him things about his abilities that prove useful, but for someone who was literally born yesterday, a bit more of a struggle to grasp what's going on around him and figure out what he needs to do and how to do it would have made him a more satisfying character. As it is, despite his importance to the plot he's very one-dimensional, and just kind of appears as needed to do his thing.
Pariah I already covered to some degree. Mostly, I'd prefer that he not exist. But besides being annoying, he has the same problem of one-dimensionality as Alexander. "Annoying histrionics" pretty much sums up his entire appearance in the series. He does have his moments of heroism (or at least tries), but given that his actions started this whole thing, it's disappointing that he doesn't really learn anything or work out any issues that help solve the problem. Even the revelations that what he did wasn't quite what he thought he did were just handed to him by the Anti-Monitor (who was doing a "classic" villain monologue/rant about his own greatness). The pull he feels towards sites of disaster and evil help the heroes find the Anti-Monitor at one point, but that's not enough use to justify an annoying character who possesses exactly one personality trait.
And finally we come back to Harbinger. Her character is actually ever-so-slightly more fleshed out than the others. She has genuine love for the Monitor who rescued her as a child and raised her, and feels terrible guilt for her role in his death (she was being controlled by the Anti-Monitor at the time). She shows the uncertainty you'd expect from a young woman who suddenly has to take center stage after being in the background for her whole life. But the problems with Harbinger are less from her personality and more from her role (and that of the Monitor) in the story. The vast multitudes of DC characters actually do very little to understand and solve the crisis, especially in the first half of the story. The explanations and instructions are simply dumped on them, first by the Monitor, and then by Harbinger (with assistance from Alexander Luthor) after his death. I find this to be tremendously unsatisfying.
Here we have a book which according to author Marv Wolfman was first conceived as a way to do the biggest team up of all. And while many characters do indeed "team up", there's hardly any interesting interaction among them in terms of diagnosing and solving the problems at hand. Mostly, they just banter and/or bicker whenever they all end up summoned to some location by Harbinger. To me, this is the big missed opportunity of Crisis on Infinite Earths. We could have seen various heroes figuring out pieces of the puzzle on their own Earths and then collaborating as the barriers between worlds broke down (or having that cross-dimensional role facilitated by characters somewhat like Harbinger and Alexander who have special knowledge of the multiverse). The villains could have been worked into the act as well- major players in the story like Earth-One's Lex Luthor and Braniac would certainly have been able to work out pieces as well as Batman or Captain Marvel or one of the new or newly important characters that the series is trying to promote. That would have given the readers insight into how the characters would interact in the new changed world, and been a better introduction to the less familiar characters. Many characters could have been briefly spotlighted as they contributed something for which they were specifically well-suited. There were indeed a number of scenes showing characters doing that sort of thing, but they tended to be minor happenings in large battles. It would have been better to use the wealth of characters to keep moving the plotlines along.
Instead, a lot of the explanations and solutions are simply dumped on them by new characters that are distressingly one-dimensional throughout the twelve issues of the series. This leaves the established characters to
A.) Stand around and gawk nearly helplessly as crazy stuff happens.
B.) Do minor crowd control / rescue activities (for heroes).
C.) Exploit the chaos (for villains).
D.) Toss off one-liners at each other in big group scenes.
E.) Do what the Monitor, Harbinger or Alexander Luthor (and in one case the Spectre, an actual significant existing character) tells them to do.
As it is, the closest thing we got to a real multiversal team-up was the meeting Harbinger, Alexander and Pariah had with Superman (Earth-One), Superman (Earth-Two), Captain Marvel (Earth-S), Uncle Sam (Earth-X), Blue Beetle II (Earth-Four) and Lady Quark (Earth-Six). And even still, that was really just so that the new characters could tell the old ones what was going on so they could go back and tell others on their Earths. The representatives of the various Earths hardly had any meaningful interaction amongst themselves at all.
An alternative way to structure things would have been to make Pariah, Harbinger and/or Alexander Luthor the true central protagonists of the story. In that model, the focus would have been on developing them as characters to the point where they can understand what is going on and fix it (save the world or correct their original mistakes, as appropriate). The existing cast of the multiverse would be employed mostly in a support capacity, with perhaps a few having more major roles. While I think there's a good story in that form, it wouldn't really have lived up to the potential of the Biggest Team-up Ever. So I really think that since these new characters couldn't be developed properly without taking over the story even more, their roles should have been minimized (and for some, possibly eliminated).
So, that's my take on the flaws of Crisis. Now what about the good parts? There were certainly good parts. It's such an audacious idea that if you're willing to roll with the dialog style and the plot device characters, it's pretty exhilarating. And while widespread character-developing team-ups didn't happen as much as I would have liked, several individual characters got some really good scenes.
The best, I would say, is the death of Supergirl (an Earth-One character first introduced in the 60's). She dies fighting the Anti-Monitor in the first really big battle between a large force of heroes and the real villain of the series. She does not entirely defeat him, but weakens him enough to delay his plans and allow the heroes to regroup and learn more. But most of all, the scene is well written, well paced, and satisfyingly heroic. The inclusion of the reactions of characters like her friend Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) and especially her cousin Superman at and after her funereal adds even more emotion to the scene. The extra-long issue gives the reader space to really reflect on her death, so the significance sinks in. Seeing as she was retconned out of existence (meaning no one even remembers she ever existed) in the post-Crisis world, its good that she got this good of a send-off.
Oddly, Wolfman and Perez chose to follow that with the death of the Earth-One Flash (Barry Allen) in the very next issue. I say oddly because while Barry's death was reasonably well done, it pales in comparison to Supergirl's fate the issue before. The Flash's death was equally heroic- in some ways more so because he did not make his decisions in the heat of battle. It was still a memorable part of the series, but I rather wish they could have pushed it back a bit to set it off from the one that immediately preceded it. And since Barry was trapped on the Anti-Monitor's world when he died, there was no immediate reflection on his passing, so the reader had to move on that much more quickly. Barry, at least, would be remembered in the post-Crisis world, so if one of the two had to get short shrift in Crisis itself then I must say that they made the right choice.
One of the most interesting sub-plots that isn't a character death is concerns the actions of several heroes who go out in Rip Hunter's time sphere after the remaining five universes collapse into one. They encounter the villain Brainiac in space, and when the Anti-Monitor sucks the unified Earth into his antimatter universe, they convince Brainiac to help them in the interest of preserving his own life. Brainiac's plan is to enlist Darkseid of the New Gods, who is one of the scariest and most powerful bad guys around. This is the kind of thing I would have liked to see driving the series overall. Different characters meet up and figure out things they can do to save the universe. As far as I can tell, no one told these guys to find Brainiac, or contact Darkseid or any of that. But it did end up having a key effect in the final battle.
And as for that final battle, well, it's a bit excessive, isn't it? Perhaps that's only suitable. But the Anti-Monitor gets knocked down and is apparently dead three times, only to jump up again screaming about how he will not be defeated, only to finally be destroyed the fourth time. Or, if you count Supergirl destroying his original physical shell several issues earlier, the fifth time. While I wouldn't want the last fight to be too easy, I definitely started rolling my eyes by the third go-round. But amidst all of that was some great material with the Superman of Earth-Two and Superboy of Earth-Prime deciding to stay behind in the antimatter universe to deliver the last blows to the Anti-Monitor because their worlds didn't exist anymore- in Superboy-Prime's case not at all, and while parts of Earth-Two survived, no one remembers the Earth-Two Superman as being part of it. And the scene where Alexander Luthor reveals that he saved the Lois Lane of Earth-Two (who had long since married her Clark Kent/Superman) was a wonderful conclusion, providing all four of them (Alexander, Superman-Two, Lois-Two, Superboy-Prime) an escape into a "paradise dimension" from the rapidly approaching blast wave from the Anti-Monitor's destruction. Of course, it also laid the groundwork for Infinite Crisis, 20 years later, but I'm sure that's not what Wolfman and Perez were thinking of at the time.
And then there's that great epilogue with the Psycho-Pirate, who is now completely insane but the only one who truly remembers the multiverse. And if you haven't seen Grant Morrison's Animal Man, which among other things follows-up on that, you owe it to yourself to pick up the trade paperbacks.
So, with all that said, what's the impact? Was it successful or not? Reading Crisis on Infinite Earths now, having read a good bit of pre-Crisis material from several Earths, there's a sense of both loss and excitement. Complaints with plot or lack of character development aside, there's an undeniable energy, largely propelled by the art but also by the basic framework of the story, that really makes you want to see what happens next now that there's this new slate to work with. At the same time, I mourn the loss of characters like the Earth-Two Huntress (who I've read a lot more of than the Earth-One Supergirl). Yes, there's a character called "Huntress" in the post-Crisis world, but she's Helena Bertinelli, and while she's a good character in her own right, she's really not all that much like the original Helena Wayne. I imagine the fans of Supergirl (who was more widely known) felt much the same way. (Interestingly, Supergirl's Earth-Two counterpart Power Girl survived, despite her backstory as the Earth-Two Superman's cousin having been completely deleted. While Power Girl was a unique enough character to warrant this, it made things insanely complicated for a long time).
On the other hand, one thing I love about the post-Crisis DCU is that there's such a tremendous history there. There's a solid tradition of superheroes from before World War II up to the present, with a few of the originals still around today. That sort of legacy was only apparent before in special cross-universe team-ups. And while Earth-Two was building its own legacy with new characters and teams, it was still clearly the "alternate" Earth compared to most of what DC fans were reading. The JSA went through a period of hibernation right after Crisis (literally exiled to another plane of existence for several years), but eventually were revived and once again have a successful long-running major book. I think the DCU would be poorer without easy regular interaction among the Earth-One, Earth-Two, Earth-Four, Earth-S and Earth-X characters. Captain Marvel and his related characters (Earth-S) provides an interesting contrast to many of the heroes that originated from the DCU. Black Adam, in particular, has become one of the most fascinating and morally complex characters during his runs in JSA and 52. Many of the Quality Comics characters from Earth-X have not fared as well, but Plastic Man's run in JLA alone makes up for that (although I think he'd appeared on Earth-One before). And the recent Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters mini-series shows that there's plenty of good life left in the Quality Comics line-up. Rumor has it we'll be seeing more of them, and I hope that's true. And then there's Earth-Four, which gave us classic characters like Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) and The Question (Vic Sage). Perhaps they were never the headliners, but they filled some pretty great niches around the DCU over the years. It's too bad those two are both dead in the post-IC "New Earth", but...
That brings us back to where we started, which was talking about the results of Infinite Crisis and 52, and why anyone would want to "bring back" the multiverse. Because now we have an Earth-Four again, which has a living Vic Sage and probably a living Ted Kord (the Blue Beetle we've seen there is Dan Garrett, the first to use that name- Ted was the second). And now we have an Earth-Two with a Helena Wayne Huntress and its own JSA lineup. And apparently they realize that their Power Girl and Superman disappeared during some sort of Crisis. Presumably they noticed Lois being gone as well, but only the superheroes made the newspaper headlines.
So why bring these worlds back? It looks like they're not back exactly as they were before, but its been long enough that they'd benefit from some updating anyway, and this is a perfect excuse to do it. The reason seems likely to be that with all the possibilities out there, just one universe is too much of a restriction. DC has used concepts like Elseworlds (which are not part of continuity), and Hypertime (which is like but isn't really the multiverse, in a way that was never entirely clear because DC editorial seemed to regret bringing up the idea almost as soon as it happened), but neither has really satisfied fans. And I suspect there are two reasons for this:
1. Many fans, both older fans who started reading pre-Crisis as well as younger fans who have gotten to know and love the older material, are too attached to the stories to be happy with the idea that they never happened.
2. Comic book fans love continuity. It really shouldn't matter that Elseworlds tales are "out of continuity" while the multiverse worlds were "in continuity" (but then weren't post-Crisis/pre-IC), but it does. The relationship from one part of continuity to another can be as convoluted as one wants, but fans are going to be much happier if they can say "yes, that thing happened 'for real', and you could get to it from the main DC by plot device X".
So 20 years later, the multiverse is back, but the post-Crisis universe (as tweaked by Zero Hour: Crisis in Time and Infinite Crisis) remains as well. We now have (we hope) the best of all worlds- a world in which nearly all of the history of DC Comics and the companies it has absorbed is accessible, and worlds in which variations past, present and future can be explored.
At least, up to the number 52.