DC Comics has been through a lot of changes over the decades, which is fitting. Comics have changed, and the publisher has often been caught flat-footed by these changes. The company came around when comics were a different beast, mostly catering to younger readers, and they created a colorful multiverse of fantastical potential. The rise of Marvel would see realism win out (something that became quite prevalent in comics over the years), and they would eventually have to change their ways. This led to Crisis on Infinite Earths, a story that changed the DC Multiverse forever, and would lead to a singular, more realistic universe that made them more popular than before.
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As the 2000s began, DC was in a pretty good place compared to Marvel. They had weathered the tumults of the ’90s quite well and were looking forward to a bright feature. It was coming up on 20 years since Crisis, and a group of new writers and editors wanted to pay homage to what came before. So, the building blocks were laid for October 2005’s Infinite Crisis #1, a story that would tread the same ground as Crisis, but for the opposite reason. DC continuity was about to get weird again, and fans were treated to something amazing.
Infinite Crisis Was Everything Fans Could Want
It’s hard to describe what the build-up to Infinite Crisis was like, other than recounting the events and talking about how hype it was. I was there, buying more and more DC books every month, my pull ballooning to levels it hadn’t hit since I started paying for comics with money that I made myself. However, there was such momentum on the DC side of things, and you could see the craft that was being put it into the story. We didn’t know where it was going, but it was definitely going somewhere amazing.
The post-Crisis DC Universe had become a big tent for fans who wanted the classic heroes with just the right edge, a place where writing and planning were king. Infinite Crisis #1 is the perfect example of this. From the first page, readers are thrown into tumult and chaos, with mysterious narrators commenting on the terrible time our heroes were having. Writer Geoff Johns was taking on us a ride, one that saw the Trinity crumble and the Freedom Fighters die; we were shown the stakes of the story we were reading and it was spectacular. I can still remember turning those pages, my mind afire with what Phil Jimenez’s gorgeous pencils laid out for me. And then I got to the end.
There are a lot great endings to first issues in comics, but on that long ago Wednesday, nothing could beat Infinite Crisis #1. As a Crisis mark, getting to that last page, and seeing that the people talking were Earth-Two Superman and Lois Lane, Earth-Three’s Alexander Luthor, and Superboy-Prime was a wonderful shock, one which echoed across the comic industry. It was exciting, something we never thought we’d see. It was flawless, and it stands up today.
Infinite Crisis was a perfect experience. Nowadays, it’s easy to be jaded about event comics (thanks, Marvel), but back then they were just coming back into vogue and the book was everything they should be, much more exciting and important than House of M, which had released a few months earlier and was just starting to get really boring. The book just kept dropping huge moments on readers as things went on. We got to see events we never thought we’d see, and it set a new course for DC, one that the publisher has continued to this day.
Infinite Crisis Started a Road DC Is Still on Today
Infinite Crisis was the end of post-Crisis DC and a return to the old school. You can say what you want about the way story undid Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it was a huge turning point. Things became closer to the classic DC, while retaining a lot of the edge that had made the publisher so great. It was doing that thing that superhero comics do better than anything else — taking old ideas and making them new — and it’s a road that the publisher is still on. The grandeur of the original superhero multiverse was back, and it led in directions that would be both amazing and not so great (looking at you, New 52).
The time when Infinite Crisis was being published will always be my favorite time to be a comic fan. I was an adult, and had developed a love for DC that was all-encompassing. I relished going to the comic store every week to get the new issues (I bought two copies of each because George Perez and Jim Lee were both doing covers) and talk about them. It was such an exciting time, and no other book has come to close to it since. The collected edition was somehow even better, adding in deleted bits of art, coloring the massive double-page spread from Infinite Crisis #7, saw the chief architects of the story talking about how and why they the choices of the story were made. The book changed everything and showed the way to the future.
One can argue about whether DC dropped the ball in the years after Infinite Crisis, but that doesn’t change its impact. It’s a shining moment in the history of comics, when a publisher wanted to pay homage to the greatest story of all time, and did their best to put out a comic that could stand next to that older work in terms of quality and impact. It had some big boots to fill, but for this fan, it definitely did.
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