Watching the crossover event last night on TV and the recent discussions I read on the First Reactions post has inspired me to describe my earliest urge to look into the DC lineup.
I was a reader of the competitors with an emphasis on a certain friendly neighborhood arachnid. Had been for years. I didn’t stray to DC. Every time I tried, I was disappointed. They were too juvenile.
Then came Crisis on Infinite Earths. I was real tempted but I was a loyal reader and I skipped it. Plus, I had limited cash, being a kid. I had to make tough choices. I grew ever more disappointed in my decision as the months passed and you saw how big the event was becoming. There had never been anything like this in the comic book industry that I remembered. There was a huge campaign of posters, pamphlets, cards, etc. that were all over the comic book stores. And comic book stores were a new thing. At this time, my comic book store had just graduated from a kiosk in the center of the mall to an actual small store. Crisis on Infinite Earth stuff was everywhere. I watched longingly as each issue passed knowing it would be way too expensive to go back and try to get in on it.
Of course, the most important thing that made COIE a great success was what came after. The new comics started to appear. The writing revolution had begun. You start seeing within a year, maybe a year and a half, titles like Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Batman Year One. Booster Gold was created. Deadman was created. Suicide Squad was created along with Amanda Waller. TV Anchor and general super hero hater, G Gordon Godfrey was created. John Byrnes’ The Man of Steel. George Perez’s Wonder Woman. Alan Moore is already deep in his run of Swamp Thing and Spawn’s, Todd McFarlane is doing the art for Infinity, Inc.
This was a great time for DC. If you really want to know a good place to start reading DC’s past, it is here. To me, Crisis on Infinite Earths was The Big Bang that gave us the Modern Age of Comics.
Do you folks have any memories of COIE you would like to share?
I first experienced it through the Absolute edition, which provided extras giving you a pretty decent history of the run. It became my favorite event of all time. Jam packed, sometimes erratic, always compelling. So much material to cover.
I remember reading it when it first came out. It was definitely a “Holy bleep!!! I can’t believe they are doing this but they ain’t mucking about with it. They are serious about this.”
It was amazing and very stressful because everything was up for grabs about who was going to survive. Killing Supergirl and Barry meant no one was safe. After issues 7 & 8, it really became “Ok, what is the universe gonna look like after this is over. What will the aftermath be?”
Also conceptually, it was such a massive event on a scale I had never dreamed possible. I knew I was reading a big item in comics history. So there was a sense of “I get to experience this in real time.” I kinda felt bad for people who were gonna come into DC comics only post crisis. They wouldn’t get the visceral response that reading it as it unfolded in real time gave you.
That’s a fair comment.I was largely away from the superhero side of comics throughout the 80s. I still read comics but they were all based on something other than Superheroes. G.I. Joe. Indiana jones, James Bond, V (The Visitors are our Friends), and Star Trek. My first In-Universe DC book was Batman a few issues after the Death in the Family. So I was post-Crisis all the way. And since I was focused on Batman for the next year or two I never really felt the effects of the Crisis.
Crisis was an event that was essentially pre-history to me. I got that it was big and that big changes came about after it. (And to a guy who was just entering his twenties when he started getting immersed in the the larger DCU, I have to say I found many of the modern interpretations far more to my liking than what had been “standard” in “the old days”
If you like modern interpretations of Batman, it might be worth your while to check out the O’Neil/Adams run from the early 70s. You might be surprised at how truly modern they are. I’d argue they are the structural foundation for what Batmen was even in post crisis continuity.
I started DC with the Invasion crossover, so I missed Crisis proper. But at that time, back issues were cheap and plentiful.
I was blown away by the Invasion. The characters I knew were from the Superfriends and staring at covers. The sheer scope of Invasion, with an entire universe of well defined aliens and so many heroes; it was truly impressive.
Pretty quickly, I heard of Crisis in the letter columns and all the ads. But I remember there was still a lot of controversy around it. I assumed it was poorly written or something like that. So I avoided it for a long time.