Current music:	The Mekons, "Psycho Cupid"
Entry tags:	creator: george perez, creator: marv wolfman, event: crisis on infinite earths

I'll be honest, when I think of a comics event, there's really one thing that comes to mind.

You know what I'm talking about.



I'd heard the rumblings for months. Something fundamentally different was going to happen. I didn't put too much stock in it until I picked up the first issue, and was instantly shaken like I'd almost never been by a comic book before.





Holy fuck. This was serious shit. I knew about Earth-3. I knew the Crime Syndicate. I'd thrilled as I'd read them team up with Per Degaton in "Crisis on Earth-Prime!" (which is another mindfuck of a story for another day). For them to be killed off this quickly and impersonally, only a few pages into the story? I wasn't sure I could handle it. I liked my superheroes saving the day and living happily ever after. Not that the Syndicate were heroes, but I didn't want to see them die like that. I put the issue down and left the comic store. It'd be years before I read the whole thing.

Anyway, that's the impact it had. I'm assuming most people are familiar with the story, so I won't do too much recap here. Rather, I'll just pick out some of my favorite bits. I've got 37 pages of a 360pp trade; that should sneak me under the legality wire, right?

We start with Anthro, DC's then-requisite prehistoric superhero, blissfully unaware of the danger facing creation. Wolfman went very far out of his way to include every aspect of DC history.



Anthro, watch out for that...tree...



You know things are taking an ominous turn when the Joker sounds scared.



The Outsiders at work. Metamorpho can hold up a freaking collapsing building.





The heroes of the Old West meet.





Barbara's come a long, long way.



Gotta ding Wolfman here; he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of DC history throughout, but this is one place where he hit a bum note. John Constantine in a green sport jacket and blow-dried hair, talking like Jason Blood? Not bloody likely.



One of the most famous splash pages in comics history. Superman and Dawnstar look cozy.



You're going to have to look hard to find a better entrance than that. The Anti-Monitor may be the single most effective one-shot villian to date. I always suspected that he looked like Lou Reed under that mask.



The Anti-Monitor's lair, or, Perez outdoes himself.



The first time it became clear that things really would never be the same again.



Darkseid ain't even hating.



Oh, Brainy.



Morrow's motto must be "Never stop being a smug prick, even in the face of Armageddon."



The Flash has had enough of your shit.



Decision time.



Nobody'd be foolish enough to try and undermine this part of the story, would they?



The way the Flash's empty costume keeps spouting platitudes is ridiculous and insanely creepy at the same time, like a combination of narm and nightmare fuel. Crisis in a nutshell.





That Guy Gardner seems like a nice, earnest young man.



Ladies and gentlemen, your textbook for Badass Villianry 101. There are no words for how much I love the Crisis-era Brainiac. Totally logical, amoral, and ruthless. And incredibly cool-looking. Up there with the modern-day Joker for all-time scariest bad guy, in my opinion. And love how Luthor doesn't miss a beat.



The Joker's 80s personality is a curiosity. He's definitely dangerous, and far from the harmless nuisance of the 60s, but he's also not even close to the bloodthirsty psychotic that he is today. He basically comes off as a standard, albeit highly intelligent, amoral thug with a bit more flair and charisma than most. He still feels closer to Cesar Romero here, rather than Heath or even Nicholson.



In that case, why don't you talk about it some more?



Luthor's relationship with Brainiac fascinates me. It's obvious that he genuinely considers the robot a friend; I didn't scan it, but the look of distress on his face a few pages back when he thinks that Psimon blew Brainiac up is almost comic. Of course, Luthor permits himself few friends. But it's amazing that someone of his intelligence just doesn't get what Brainiac has become. On some level, he needs a friend and companion who is also his equal so badly that he won't let himself realize that Brainiac would dispose of him more easily than anything if it served his purposes. (He'd find this out for himself in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?", of course.)



Watching Cliff Steele casually contemplate cold-blooded murder is something of an oddity.



Buddy Baker and Lyta Hall; two people who have no idea what the universe has in store for them. You wonder if they've run into each other since.



Doctor Occult saves Princess Amethyst. The 80s were a wondrous time.



Don't feel bad, Lana. Objectivity is a dying concept. Let me tell you about a little man named Glenn Beck.



More nightmare narm.



He seems like a nice young man.



Darkseid decides that the end of everything ever is enough reason for him to bother to lift a finger. If he'd actually wanted to work, the Anti-Monitor would have been defeated by issue 1, page 5.



No narm here; the Anti-Monitor's disintegrating head is just plain spooky as fuck.



Not with a bang but with a Skrablamm! Seriously though, the very first hero gets to administer the final blow. Nobody can say that Wolfman didn't respect the history. And I'm sure there weren't any living creatures within that million-mile radius.



Call him Ishmael Hayden.

And that's it. Thanks for coming!