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Infinite Crisis

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17:42 / 06.04.06

Twilight proposal. I read it ages ago, and thought there was some Batman, but a skim reveals nought.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

19:23 / 06.04.06

See I might well not feel as great about the issue in the morning, but my initial response to this one was a hearty HELL, YEAH! For me it worked an awful lot better than most of the previous issues, the Spectre bit being probably the only part that didn’t quite fit into the whole adrenaline rush of the rest of the issue, and the Klarion and Teekl cameo means I can kind of forgive that scene a lot more than I ought to. Other than that that I thought things ticked along nicely, with the issue being a pretty enjoyable splurge of old school superheroics, I especially enjoyed Johns writing Batman pretty much exact the same way Morrison did in JLA and exorcising the ghost of the crazy paranoid Bat, hopefully for good. Also enjoyed Superboy Prime, acting like Sally Sonic’s dream date right up to the end. I’m not convinced it didn’t have many of the same problems as the previous issues, and at the moment I’m not sure how it’ll hold up on further reading, but it was definitely an issue which was a real buzz on first read and I guess in being so it did exactly what in was meant to do.

The 8C OMAC special on the other hand was as far as I’m concerned a complete turd, doing absolutely nothing to move the IC plot forward, and failing miserably to stand as a story in it’s own right. Perhaps this shouldn’t necessarily have been a surprise after the main OMAC six issue series, but I’d somehow managed to convince myself that seeing as this was kind of a standalone issue that the Rucka who wrote Gotham Central would write this issue rather than the one who worked on the other OMAC issues……..

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

19:30 / 06.04.06

I heard there were last-minute changes to the final issues of IC - could this Superboy death (which wasn't mentioned or leaked by anyone at all until about 3 days ago, an astounding feat in comics these days) have been one of them? (It was mentioned in Batman and Teen Titans also, so it would have taken some coordiation) Or were the rumored last-minute changes mostly about the multiverse, as was previously speculated?

DiDio's claimed that there have been no significant changes to the last two issues. Except maybe to stuff that panel of Klarion in. I doubt Superboy's death was a sudden change of plans, as it looks like Jimenez spent two months drawing that second to last page. Spotting the rushed art is an easy game in 8C. You can tell, for instance, that the alterations made to #5 (which DiDio blamed for the issue's lateness) were in the bottom three panels of Lois' death page, showing Superman hearing Kal-L's "LOIS". That looked like a good example of an editor requesting that the paths from Point A (Supes on Earth 1) to Point B (Supes on Earth 2) be a bit more clearly stated, visually.

I'm quite sure that nothing of the nature of Johnston's speculation in LITG were altered. We're quite clearly dealing with a unified "New Earth" at this point.

miss wonderstarr

21:07 / 06.04.06

I think this is the funnest comic I've read in ages; the first in ages to really hit the buttons for me and make me feel like I did about superhero comics when I first started reading them. Back then, I'd have some scattered issues of someone's collection - a neighbour, a big boy up the street, a friend of my dad's - handed on to me, and I wouldn't understand half of the story but I'd pick up the names and piece together a sense of the powers, and above all I felt I was getting a glimpse into something truly glorious and huge, that this was a fully worked-out world with small-scale soap opera personal drama and cosmic scope on the same page.

I don't know how the Spectre stuff fits, or why this is the Ninth Age of magic, or why Star Sapphire's got those pink speech balloons, or whether any other comic has shown Superboy being imprisoned for years, or when Batman designed Brother Eye, or how this Wonder Girl relates to Wonder Woman.

And I've been reading DCU comics for about twenty-four years.

And it didn't matter.

Because I still got that feeling of riding a rollercoaster through a huge, spectacular multiverse where one panel can show fifty characters who might have their own decades of continuity or who might have been invented for this episode - where ludicrous fantasy and pseudo-science is given straight-faced explanations and every crazy world has a classification number.

And amid the grand absurdity and calamity, the focus shifted from cosmic scale to human detail - sweat on Batman's chin, the exchange between two black superheroes in a corridor during a galactic war - knowing nods to cliche and convention, like "brave and the bold" and "can I join your team-up?" - cameos from and cross-references to the encyclopaedic DC continuity from Klarion to Owlman.

And the unapologetic melodrama and gesture of it, the splash-page and pay-off line, with characters delivering punchlines along with punches: stuff that should be corny but comes across as kick-ass. "No more silly faces." "I am Mars' sole survivor. There is a reason for that." "Neither was I. ROUND TWO!"

D C Universe: fuck yeah!

miss wonderstarr

21:10 / 06.04.06

Twilight proposal. I read it ages ago, and thought there was some Batman, but a skim reveals nought.

I thought Batman played a key detective role in it.

miss wonderstarr

21:15 / 06.04.06

From Moore's proposal:

The Shadow
See The Batman.
In actual fact, these two crime-fighters have joined forces in a clandestine bid to rid the Earth of the oppressive and dominating superhero Houses forever, so that mankind can get on with its own destiny. We won't learn this until later in the series, although they play a big part in the ending. As an aside, are Tarzan and Doc Savage in the public domain yet? No big deal, but I'd really like a sort of secret council of the immortals: Batman, the Shadow, Doc Savage and Tarzan, all planning to start the revolution that will rid Earth of the super-people forever. Being basically more elemental forces than people, these characters have remained exactly the same, except they got tougher.

The idea of "families" chimes with Moore's "Houses", but I don't recall any Aztec Superman/Batman Elseworld.

21:31 / 06.04.06

The Aztek Superman comes from a "Legends of a Dead Earth" Annual (I'm not sure which one). In that Legends of a Dead Earth, the Aztek culture of the future becomes the template over the Superman family. The young Superboy is training to take the place of his father and there are problems with him taking the mantle.

The version of Batman looks curiously like the Bat-suit from another Batman/Superman elseworlds (I think it was Elseworld's finest) where two pulp adventures get embroiled with Aztek Mythology and take on different suits (Superman looking like pure Pulp Sci-Fi and Batman having his suit looking like a cross between Pulp-Crime and an Aztek God).

- Gary

BrianFitzgerald

03:17 / 07.04.06

Regarding the Aztec earth, I thought the fact that 154 + 462 = 616 (designation of Marvel's earth) was a nice little detail.

23:00 / 07.04.06

Over on the 7 Soldiers thread, somebody asked who the bunch at Stonehenge were. This list, based on info from the DC boards, seems accurate:

Page 1
Panel 1

Flying

Black Orchid
Star Sapphire
Deadman
Amethyst
Janissary
Zauriel

Standing on Stones

Lord Satanus
Freedom Beast
Ragman
Stanley & His Monster
(Son of) Vulcan
Etrigan

On the Ground

Four unknowns (tho one might be El Muerto)
Valda
Nightmaster
Two unknowns
Madame Xanadu & her apprentice
Zatanna
Phantom Stranger
Faust Blue Devil
Enchantress
Alice Cohen and Monolith
Jakeem Thunder & Rex the Wonder Dog
Possibly Baron Winter

Panels 2-5

Maya
Odd Man Black Orchid
Mister Twister
Tasmanian Devil?
Nightmaster
Valda
Swamp Thing
Unknown with a golden Bracelet

Panels 6-10

Faust
Blue Devil
Enchantress
Etrigan
Jakeem Thunder
Star Sapphire
Stanley & His Monster
Madame Xanadu
Phantom Stranger
Zatanna

Page 2

Top Row of Panel 2

Empress
Klarion & Teekl
Deadman
(Son of) Vulcan

Bottom Row of Panel 2

Witchfire
Ragman
Crispus Allen/Spectre

Panel 4

Monolith & Alice Cohen
Looker
Manitou Dawn

Page 3

Panel 1
Olympian.

Panel 3
Jennifer Morgan behind Zatanna and Phantom Stranger

Panel 10
La Salamanca, from an Argentine superteam (but she looks a LOT like Isis)

miss wonderstarr

23:08 / 07.04.06

So has Black Orchid actually appeared anywhere in recentish continuity except the (short-lived?) Vertigo series that picked up on the Gaiman/McKean book? Is she "magic"? (It was all retconned that she, Woodrue/Floronic Man, Swamp Thing et al -- including Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy? -- were part of the "Green", wasn't it?) but that's an elemental force, not magic.

23:37 / 07.04.06

The only other place I remember seeing her was in a Vertigo mini called "Mythos: The Final Tour". This may be the first time she's appeared in the mainstream DCU

Phex: Dorset Doom

01:25 / 08.04.06

She was hanging around the bar when the Shadowpact met up, hoping to avoid the Spectre. I think she even had a line or two. Oh, and way back (not sure when), she was in the 'J L of A' crossover thing, in the 'Justice League of Amazons' issue.

02:12 / 08.04.06

Thanks for the correction. I skipped that particular crossover.

miss wonderstarr

07:39 / 08.04.06

Thanks from me too. I would say she'd been wasted as a character, but I don't feel she had much character to waste. Taking my other question to the Surgery.

09:13 / 08.04.06

I'm intrigued that no one has talked yet about what this 'New Earth' represents - my original assumption was that it was Earth Prime + the heroes who were around the tower with Alex with the explosion went off - ie. literally only Supermen / Wonder Woman & Cassie and Batman and Nightwing and that all the other heroes had been lost (temporarily), but then I couldn't work out how Wonder Woman and the Supermen had got there since last time I looked they were on Earth 2.

Is this a qualitatively New Earth? Is it a temporary new earth before they fight to get our recent earth back again? What are the qualities of this particular new planet. What have I bloody missed?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

11:43 / 08.04.06

I lot of people are taking those shards you see on that page as indicative of the "corrected" qualities of the "New Earth". Apparently Wonder Woman was never in the original JLA and now is/was? And Joe Chill had been written out of continuity at one point as the killer of the Wayneses and is now back in? I know nothing about this sort of minutia but apparently all answers lie within that floaty glass.

12:12 / 08.04.06

Tom: My guess is that this "New Earth" is just that. The new single Earth created by the reshuffling Alex did.

Y&B: Yeah, post-Crisis, WW didn't appear on the scene until Legends, which meant she wasn't around for the JLA's founding. And Joe Chill was retconned out of history with Zero Hour, as part of Denny O'Neill's rather draconian rewrite of Bat-history. Other changes he made were "Batman was never in the League", and the "Batman is an urban legend" idea.

12:39 / 09.04.06

Yeah... but... Am I the only one actually curious about the nature of the New Earth? I mean - obviously you can only speculate, but still - I mean, presumably many of the other Earths which had heroes on were destroyed? Have whole swathes of characters suddenly disappeared from the planet? Do we think DC are seriously going to recreate their entire continuity again, even twenty years on from Crisis? My assumption is that they wouldn't do that - that the new universe twenty years on now has some heft to it, some depth of ideas and the continuity hasn't got too ridiculous yet, and that its only major failing is that it has some big continuity gaps caused by a major rewriting. I know there have been a couple of retcons since Crisis, but it seems unlikely that they'd seriously push the idea (again) that the past we knew has now dramatically changed forever. So my thinking is that whatever this new Earth represents, it's somehow temporary? Which means that they could do extraordinary things with it. How many episodes are left of 8C anyway?

13:45 / 09.04.06

There's only one issue of 8C left, and I doubt there'll be a lot of subtle plot development

Don't forget tht there's supposed to be a "History of the DCU" backup in 52. My guess is that this is sort of a "stealth reboot". They aren't going to start from scratch, but they are going to include a lot of the backstory wiped out by Crisis/Zero Hour.

For example, I would expect something like "20 years ago, Thomas & Martha Wayne are shot dead by a mugger named Joe Chill." For the last 10 years of real-world comics history, that wasn't true.

It is now.

14:34 / 09.04.06

What has been true!?

16:04 / 09.04.06

They were shot, the Waynes, but juust by somebody. Unsolved. Because, apparently, there's a theory that if Batman could solve his parents' murder, he'd just stop batting about town in his blue and greys. Which is very... there are psychological extrapolations you get from people deeply immersed in (only) comics you'd be hard pressed to find in the outside world.

16:41 / 09.04.06

That's basically the logic, yes. "Batman fights crime because he can never solve the mystery that's really important".

It's pretty much part and parcel of the theory that Bats is psychologically damaged. Hence the downplaying of Bruce Wayne, the obsessive behavior, the inability to form emotional attachments. All things that have made him, essentially, a Bat-hole.

19:48 / 10.04.06

I find myself wondering how the Wonder Woman story arc (that began in her monthly book, with her killing Max Lord and going on trial or at least being held by the World Court at the Hague) will continue at the end of IC. Or if that will be something more for 52? Because we still need to see what the world does with Diana, who they watched kill a man on national TV and they don't know yet that Max Lord was eeeeevil.

01:13 / 15.04.06

So what do we think is different about Ye Olde Supes in "new Earth," since some of the shards show him crying or something (maybe that's him crying over dead Supergirl in the first Crisis, but that would mean no change from "Old" Earth). And are they hinting that Superboy will now be part of the official Superman canon?

01:37 / 15.04.06

The big changes appear to be the return of Superboy to continuity, and the classic Phantom Zone villains, include General Zod.

15:32 / 03.05.06

so the last issue of IC really comes out today? Really truly? Seems shockingly on-time if this is the case....

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

15:38 / 03.05.06

Not without massive cost, though. Some of the most damaging fill-in art in the series. Highly unfortunate. But, happily, there is a lot of Mogo.

16:22 / 03.05.06

It is indeed out, and the last two-page spread is going to intrigue a LOT of people.

22:32 / 03.05.06

Speaking of that spread...

O.M.A.C., Supergirl, some woman in a green cloak, Ragman, Lobo?, Natasha Steel, John Henry Steel, Catwoman, Blue Devil, Starfire, Adam Strange, Phantom Stranger, Hawkman, Huntress, Human Bomb, Zatanna, Sentinel Green Laantern, Booster Gold, Vixen, Catman?, Power Girl, Stargirl, The Question, Black Adam?, Phantom Lady, Creeper, Blue Beetle, some dude in a star-covered costume with white bottts and gloves, Jay Garrick Flash, Kay Spencer Manhunter, Doll Man, S.T.R.I.P.E., Ray, Black Canary, Hour Man, Sand with a cross on his chest, Dr. Mid-Nite colored in all black, Hawkgirl

Wonder Girl, Robin, Mary Marvel, Cap Marvel, some new white Marvel with a hood, Metamorpho, Speedy, Nightwing, Bulleteer, Shining Knight, Frankenstein, Cyborg, Elasti-Girl, Nightmaster, Detective Chimp, Martian Manhunter in a new costume, Ion Green Lantern, John Stewart Green Lantern, Guy Gardner Green Lantern, Hal Jordan Green Lantern, Sasha Bordeaux?, Black Condor with a mohawk, Mr. Terrific, Klarion, Johnny Thunder and the Thunderbolt, Grace, the new Captain Boomerang, Ravager, some woman in a gray coat, The Metal Men, Mayor Green Arrow, Robotman, Wally West Flash, Beast Boy, some woman with a bird symbol, headdress and cape?, Captain Atom, Manhattan Gurdian, new Atom, new Aquaman, Firestorm, new Batwoman?, Red Tornado, and Uncle Sam

Where's Troia?

22:36 / 03.05.06

Here's my list for that page:

Row 1: Omac, Supergirl, unknown, Ragman, Batman, WW, Superman, Wonder Girl, Robin, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel (II?), Speedy, Metamorpho.

Row 2: Black Adam, Natasha-Steel, Lobo, Catwoman, Blue Devil, Detective Chimp, Nightmaster, Elastic-Girl, Cyborg, Nightwing, Bulleteer, Shazam?, Captain Boomerand II, Ravager III.

Row 3: Question, Jon Irons-Steel, Starfire, Adam Strange, Phantom Stranger, Martian Manhunter, Frankenstein, Klarion, Shining Knight, Grace?, Red Tornado

Row 4: Power Girl, Huntress, Hawkman, Ion, Mister Terrific II, JJ Thunder (& bolt), Jade Canary?, Red Tornado, Platinum & Tin

Row 5: Stargirl, Catman, Alan Scott, Human Bomb II, Zatanna, John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Raven? Green Arrow, and the rest of the Metal Men.

Row 6: Wildcat, Starman?, Vixen, Booster Gold, Ray III?, Black Canary, Hawkgirl, Black Condor III, Sasha Bordeaux, Hal Jordan, Flash IV, Robotman

Row 7: Phantom Lady III, Blue Beetle III, Creeper, Flash I, Manhunter (Kate), Unknown, Sand?, STRIPE, Doll Man, Hourman II, Aquaman II, Captain Atom, Manhattan Guardian, Atom III, Firestorm, Batwoman, and Uncle Sam.

15:59 / 04.05.06

Spoilery Spoiler Stuff Ahead:

Is it me, or was the Boy who won't be Superman's ending more effective when it was the Boy who won't be (called) Marvel and had four issues of him to make up for it?

Nice, blunt Joker, there and such a shame Superboy's all boohoohaha I yam da EVIL! and such. Not hardcore at all, no.

Had a harder time with things happening in the gap between this and the penultimate, that previous issue-interims, especially the Spectre deal. Our DCU Defenders, the Seven Soldiers, are easily now fitted into continuity for those who panic about such things, with the reality rewrite and all.

And, so sad, Wonder Woman breaks her sword and gives up on the kill-yer-problem method, despite it more or less working out for her. Was the actual logic and progress of that done somewhere else? Cause it wasn't in this mini, or the JLA arc, or the arc where she did in the secretly not reformed psychic psycho Lord.

Jay's stepping up again, is kinda nice, even though he is in no way the 'fastest man alive' now, since Bart's faster, Superman's faster, and probably even Wonder Woman or Aquaman or Impala or someone (I don't know who Impala is, but there is one, and they sound fast, just like Kirby's talkative explodo boy, Bombast sounded like he should be a talkative splodey fellow).

These were like the Cliff Notes for the story, illustrated, unfortunately.

16:06 / 04.05.06

Bart's not faster, since he lost his speed. Supes doesn't count, and the others are all women.

16:36 / 04.05.06

Re: that last spread, I made the Shazam family as Cap Jr. having switched to Cap Sr.'s red outfit (a bit of a bummer IMO, as I love the sheer Las Vegasy garishness of his traditional blue tights/red cape/gold trim/Elvis hairdo presentation), while Cap Sr. himself seems to have ascended to some sort of more purely magical status with the groovy white hooded outfit and energy streaming from his eyes, no doubt the end result of his upcoming miniseries.

I also couldn't help noticing that only six of the seven soldiers appear, the missing soldier being Mr. Miracle, which has certain obvious implications for the resolution of that series.

16:41 / 04.05.06

I'd find it horribly satisfying and amusing if Mr. Miracle escapes death half a dozen times in his mini, gets cocky, then dies and is interred deep, deep in the dirt. 'Invisibles' to 'The Filth' in microcosm. And that 'down in the dirt' chanting bit, again, which would be nice.

16:42 / 04.05.06

I'm mad they brought back Captain Atom. Did he even have fans?

Instead of having Breach turn into CA, why not just have all youor Cap Atom versions working for the govt? That way you get somee flexibility and a potential new legacy... We've got Red, Blue, and Gold DC families, a Shazam Family, multiple Kara Zor-Els, multiple Flashes, multiple Green Arrows, zillions of Green Lanterns, and more on the way, a Blue Beetle Legacy, the beginning of a Zatara one... I just think Breach should get a second look. Both he and Enginehead should get a second look.

Ah, screw it. I just thought his outfit was cool.

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