Quite the anti-climax. Much like the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Infinite Crisis went on a little too long. Unfortunately, even with the not-so-great issues of the original, we got George Perez art. With its successor, we simply get some blah storytelling with a few neat moments here and there.
First, the good. Robin’s reaction to Superboy’s body was subtle and moving. More was said in three small panels than in most of the comic. It felt real. Then we start getting the pointless deaths and whatnot that are the life’s blood of these crossovers. Ooooh, look, Judomaster gets “Bane’d” and Amazo gets beheaded. Whee. Wait, sorry, I was supposed to be pointing out the good.
The Green Lantern Corps comes off as a real police force: putting themselves in harm’s way to prevent Superboy-Prime from destroying Oa. Having various power rings scanning for replacements was a nice touch. The super fight between the Superman and Superboy was rather brutal, as it should have been, I suppose. And the epilogue in Gotham was a perfect capper to the story.
Now, the bad. Well, for one, the good Superboy accomplished nothing by dying. Sure, he destroyed the plot device tuning fork, but realize that just about everyone who was hooked up to the fork could have done that: Power Girl, Black Adam, Breach, Martian Manhunter. And Superboy-Prime survived the attack, as well. Along the same lines, the Earth Two Superman’s death also accomplished little. It seemed more like cleaning up a mess than a suitable send off the the greatest hero.
There’s also, as mentioned previously, a lot of pointless deaths. Breach apparently explodes, taking Looker out with him, put opening the way for Captain Atom to return (presumably from the Wildstorm universe). Azrael is also possibly killed or injured, as are many others. But little thought seems to have gone into those scenes. It reminded me of the wall falling on the Earth Two Huntress and Robin back in the first Crisis: senseless deaths.
So the whole seven issue shebang was basically a non-starter: nothing revolutionary happened, except that all the heroes presumably now understand what the original Crisis was. Hell, the could have done that in one issue and without the Psycho Pirate’s face being smashed in.
I enjoyed many of the previous issues of Infinite Crisis, hoping that it would lead to something interesting in the end. It failed in that regard. Also, it left the entire “Donna Troy in Space” party out of the picture: what were they doing? Why weren’t they in this issue at all? What was the point?
Something has been nagging at me, though. It almost seems like Nightwing was also supposed to die in this series. It would make sense from a thematic point: having the proteges of both Superman and Batman die would have had some resonance. It also would explain why the One Year Later Nightwing comic is so bad: perhaps at the last moment, they had to rewrite the stories. Perhaps Jason Todd was supposed to become the only Nightwing OYL. I don’t know.
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Responses to “Infinite Crisis #7”
As soon as I finished IC#7 my first thought was: “Is that all?” Such a let-down; a few “ooo, cool” moments sprinkled throughout, but in the end, it all felt like nothing but sound and fury, signifying pretty much nothing. It’s not enough to ruin the whole series for me, like many people have said, but after all that build-up, I was hoping for something . . . more.
Here’s hoping 52 gives us a more satisfying ride.
May 8th, 2006 at 9:57 pm |