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News: IGN's Absolute Crisis Review |
Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Absolute Edition Review
The best $100 you may ever spend on comics.
by Hilary Goldstein
January 6, 2006 - Forget "The Dark Knight" or "Man of Steel," the most powerful word to any DC fan is "Crisis." That is solely thanks to the incredible 1985 year-long maxiseries by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. Crisis on Infinite Earths wasn't the first Crisis in the DCU, but it became the single defining event in the long history of the publishing giant. Crisis took 50 years of continuity, nearly a half-dozen different universes and hundreds of characters, squeezed them all together and came out with one shiny new playground that has existed for the past two decades.
CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS: ABSOLUTE EDITION (Nov 2005)
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a crucial turning point for DC Comics. Originally a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the company, it became a savior. Since the late '60s, the industry had become dominated by Marvel Comics. DC was getting it's ass kicked week after week by the early '80s it seemed inevitable that the company would slowly waste away, bit by bit, for the next decade. Instead, Marv Wolfman had the bold idea to cleanse the burdens of 50 years of continuity, with an event unlike any seen before.
The Absolute Edition contains the entire maxi-series, all twelve issues, along with an insightful 96-page compendium. While you'll get the notable Crisis tale, you won't get any of the lead-up or fallout. The Crisis didn't just start with issue #1. As with DC's new Infinite Crisis event, the seeds were planted long in advance. One of the key figures in Infinite Earths, the Monitor, began showing up in DC books a couple of years before the maxi-series. And once the Crisis ended, DC spent the next several years slowly reintroducing and revamping it's characters. It was a long, arduous process that, along with several other key titles, helped put DC back on the map.
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