64 of 74 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Infinite Crisis is here...., October 20, 2006
This review is from: Infinite Crisis (DC Comics) (Hardcover)
I hated the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was too long, too convulated, the conversations bordered on cheesiness etc...the only redeeming factor in my opinion was that it cleaned out the multivese and set foundations for a more coherent continuity. Fast forward 20+ years and the Crisis has returned. This book has a lot going for it and has foundations based on many previous events. The plot is not simple but I will try my best to provide a synopsis.
After the original Crisis, the four surviving memebers were Superman and Lois Lane of Earth 2 (from The Golden Age type comics ); Superboy from Earth Prime (the Superboy from the early Superboy stories) and Alexander Luthor of Earth 3 (son of Lex Luthor who is actually a good guy amongst the CSA which has evil versions of the JLA, Owlman, Ultraman, etc). After surviving and playing pivotal roles in the original crisis, these folks have been on a self-imposed exile in "paradise" and have been watching Earth 1 (this is the Earth with our regular characters). But much to their disappointment, despite their sacrifices, the heroes of Earth 1 have lost their ways...i.e. Batman being mindwiped, JLA is disbanded, Superman can't lead, Wonder Woman kills Maxwell Lord, Batman's Brother I satellite turning on the superheros etc.). They decided to break out and return to Earth 1 to teach the Earth 1 heroes what it means to be heroes...at least that's what Earth 2 Superman wants. Superboy Prime simply misses his old world, his parents, his girl and wants to return home. The real culprit here is Alex Luthor who channels these emotions as a fuel to get what he wants....a perfect Earth.
We also find out that Alex has been impersonating the real Lex Luthor and creating the Society of Villains to round up heroes such as Powergirl, Black Adam, Martian Manhunter to fuel a tower he is building to restore the multiverse and then pick and choose the Earths he wants and combine them to form the perfect Earth.
That's as far as I am going to go with the synopsis, since I felt that this was the ultimate motivation for Infinite Crisis going off the ground.
There's many more stories going on. You have Superboy prime vs. everybody, Superman Earth 1 vs. Superman Earth 2, Supermen of both Earth 1 & 2 vs. Superboy Prime, Batman vs. Bother Eye, Alex Luthor takes on the Titans...it's basically an epic battle where every DC characters are thown into. There are also changes that occur as a result of the Crisis. The big three, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are taken back to their roots. I can go on but there's too much stuff and trust me that it's well worth the read.
The story is very well done. As someone who was not very familiar with the original Crisis, Geoff Johns does an excellent job of filling in new readers on the stuff that has gone on before. And he manages to tie up almost all the loose ends from The Omac Project, JLA: Crisis of Conscience, etc. This is not an easy task to do but Geoff manages to do it and excels at it.
And let's not forget the art. Phil Jimenez and George Perez are masters at drawing small panels featuring hordes of superheroes in action and they are pushed to the limit. I also love that the had Jerry Ordway for the Supermen vs. Superboy sequences. I have heard complaints with the art when it was originally issued in the monthly format but the editors went back and corrected and added a lot of new art work to make the story flow smoothly.
If you managed to read thorough all of this and are still here....go get this book. "Add to shopping cart" right now and read an excellent epic story with excellent art. Highly recommended.
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45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Only for the hardcore fans, February 3, 2007
This review is from: Infinite Crisis (DC Comics) (Hardcover)
Do you have a degree in the DC universe? If not, don't bother with this. I'm a fan of Batman, know a little about Superman, and have read all of Birds of Prey, the latest volume of Teen Titans, and a lot of the JLA from Morrison onwards, and I had a hard time following Crisis. That it's overflowing with minor DC characters who I didn't recognise and references to events that occurred decades ago are only two of the problems. From a storytelling perspective, it's a complete mess. There are so many different threads that not one has any real depth to it and all move slowly. And it's all a bit anti-climatic at the end. This was going to supposedly change the whole face of the DCU, but it hasn't really.
To illustrate how incomprehensible Crisis will be if you're not an avid DCU fan, take a look for those internet sites that trace all the comics that are related to Infinte Crisis. There's a huge number of titles that you need to read just to understand what's happening in the first issue of Infinte Crisis. All in all, not one for the casual fan.
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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Story, Great Art, Fantastic Edition., October 8, 2006
This review is from: Infinite Crisis (DC Comics) (Hardcover)
Having just reread this, I have to say it is one of the best 'event' books any publisher has done to date. It's a tremendously enjoyable and exciting story, very intense and very well crafted by Geoff Johns.
Before getting further into the story, I would also like to say this book shows how collections should be done. It is a very nice volume that actually addresses some of the problems and concerns from the original work. The book collects all seven issues of Crisis (each issue seperated by both the Jim Lee and George Perez covers,) but it also contains corrections and changes designed to make the story read better. Several pages have been added to flesh out certain sequences, a confusing sound effect has been removed from late in the book (greatly improving the scene it was in,) and dialogue was added in other places to better explain what is going on (as well as to explain the condition of a certain character.) Several other pages were redone to take advantage of the extra time the art team now has as compared to the time they had while under deadline -- the double page spread at the end of the book showing the remaining heroes being a notable example.
The volume also contains an introduction and a long (approximately ten page) interview with the writer, artist, and editor primarily responsible for the work discussing each issue, the importance of the events, what worked, and what didn't.
Finally, the cover itself (not the dust jacket, but the actual hardcover of the book) shows a glossy, wrap around, enlarged version of the art from the dust jacket, minus the text. Normally I don't care about such things, but in this case, it is a nice looking cover that shows this is a high quality product. The art is beautiful, and the cover looks really sharp.
All of the above, to me, is how a collection should be done. It shows that DC read the reviews of the original work (which was very well recieved) and made note of the few complaints people had, then actually addressed them when collecting the work together. It shows that they actually cared enough to put out the best product they could. The inclusion of the interview and the nice cover art just adds to the overall prestige of the story. With collections coming out as often as they do now, most of the time they are just exact reprints of the issues with no improvements, introductions, afterwords, interviews or anything -- this volume sets a better standard.
Again, I really applaud DC for making changes/additions to the story in order to address reader confusion or complaints and to improve this collection. None of the issues they addressed had overly damaged the story when it came out originally, but the changes do improve/polish the story and make it read more smoothly. I'm glad DC took advantage of the chance to make the changes, and hope that policy becomes the standard for these sorts of collections
As to the story itself -- it's a good, exciting, emotional story. The art is beautifull throughout, and the coloring is fantastic (really elevating the already good art.) The art also tells the story very well. It's a good read that's even better collected up in one volume (the story flows better without the month long wait between issues.) Overall it is well worth reading, a good fun ride from start to finish with some very stong moments. There are parts of the story that aren't as self contained as they could have been (relying on back story from the preceding crisis mini-series,) and characters that are shown early on that are never seen again (they aren't central to the story, but it would have been nice to see how things turned out for them as well.) And while the action of the main story line is intense and exciting, some of the later fight scenes (like the battle with the villians in metropolis, or the fight between the two Supermen) are very rushed. The reason for all these complaints, of course, is the length.
The book is a pretty solid 246 pages of story, but it should have been longer. In the interview section, Geoff Johns (the writer) mentions about three seperate times that he would have liked the book to be longer, and both the artist and editor mention it as well. Johns once mentions wishing they'd had twelve issues (as opposed to seven) and once says they could have filled a thousand pages if they'd had the option. From the stuff I would have liked to have seen fleshed out more, I think twelve issues would have been perfect, and I'm not sure why DC insisted on a seven issue series instead. It's a sequal to a twelve issues series. In the past, these universe changing stories often were twelve issue series (although suddenly seven seems more common.) The story is currently 246 pages, another fifty pages would probably have allowed Johns to flesh out most of the background action and character scenes he had to cut short, another one hundred would probably have allowed him to do all of that and also make the book more completely self contained. As it is, it's still quite good, but the length (and the consequences there of) are what turn this from five stars to four for me.
Overall a very good and entertaining book. You don't have to know DC lore to follow it, but you'll certainly get more out of it if you do.
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