The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.260 Hello, and welcome back to Comics Corner. I'm your host, Connor, joined again by Harry.

00:00:03.940 Hello.

00:00:04.400 And as promised last time, we are discussing Marv Wolfman and George Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths,

00:00:09.740 as you'll see with the fantastic backdrop behind us, with the looming anti-monitor right in the middle.

00:00:15.960 Now, for those who don't know, Crisis on Infinite Earths was the 12-part maxi-series that helped DC celebrate its 50th anniversary,

00:00:22.580 and was the means by which, in-universe, they used an annual event to condense all of their multiverse continuity

00:00:30.680 down to one single chronological Earth that has cohesiveness and makes a degree of sense.

00:00:37.000 There were still issues.

00:00:38.760 Yeah.

00:00:39.400 One of my questions was, how necessary was that to do that?

00:00:43.760 Before Crisis on Infinite Earths, how difficult and confusing was it actually to keep a track of the DC universe

00:00:52.420 if you were reading along with it?

00:00:53.960 Or was it basically as complicated as it would be to just keep up with all the different series

00:00:59.100 that they would have running afterwards anyway?

00:01:01.720 Okay, there's two different questions.

00:01:03.140 Oh, okay.

00:01:03.780 So, unbelievably complicated.

00:01:06.420 Oh, all right, okay.

00:01:07.240 Because, as we covered in our two-part history of comics, which you should watch, by the way,

00:01:11.140 remember that this was the same Batman who was fighting vampires and killing people in the 30s,

00:01:16.880 then palling around on the Zeranar Earth and fighting robots in the 40s, 50s,

00:01:22.760 and then somehow still the same age in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, despite going through two Robins

00:01:28.640 and a bunch of failed relationships.

00:01:30.440 Is this not how they explain it with the Earth-1 and Earth-2 Batman?

00:01:36.100 No.

00:01:36.380 The same way that, from what I could tell from reading this, Earth-2 Superman is the

00:01:42.480 Superman from the original action comics, and Earth-1 Superman is just the Superman in the

00:01:48.140 more recent series up to that point?

00:01:49.860 Kind of.

00:01:50.740 Not really.

00:01:51.760 That's the sort of invention in the 70s when they introduced the All-Star Brigade,

00:01:56.380 All-Star Squadron.

00:01:58.000 And then there's still some stuff that Batman will reference in Earth-1 continuity that should

00:02:02.640 be Earth-2, and then Earth-2 Batman has Dick Grayson grown up, who's now an adult Robin,

00:02:07.660 and a daughter who's Helena Wayne Huntress.

00:02:10.240 So what you're telling me is the writers had no clue.

00:02:13.020 They had zero idea.

00:02:14.120 They didn't know.

00:02:14.800 Now, the second part of your question is,

00:02:16.340 All right.

00:02:17.180 Was it as complicated as trying to keep up with what's happened since Crisis?

00:02:20.940 Yes.

00:02:22.140 Yes.

00:02:22.700 Because they bugged it up.

00:02:23.660 Because they kept doing Crises.

00:02:25.280 Well, yeah, I know.

00:02:26.060 So this led to Identity Crisis, which feels like it doesn't need the Crisis title.

00:02:33.000 It feels, if you're going to have it be a quadrilogy of Crisis titles, Identity Crisis

00:02:38.460 is very much the odd man out.

00:02:40.360 The quintilogy.

00:02:41.880 Zero hour crisis in time was 1944, because they realized, oh, bugger, we didn't stop time

00:02:46.700 travel, did we?

00:02:47.780 Oh, okay.

00:02:48.560 And there's like five Hawkmen at once.

00:02:50.100 All right.

00:02:50.440 Okay.

00:02:50.860 That muddies the waters even further.

00:02:53.160 But yeah, Identity Crisis is the odd man out, because it's not about some universe-quaking,

00:02:58.740 multidimensional space story.

00:03:00.940 It's a mystery series, which I, once again, you and I, who have made a bit of a habit on

00:03:07.640 this, of going, you know this beloved classic story that everybody has fond memories of?

00:03:12.320 Actually quite bad.

00:03:13.740 We turn around and go, you know the one everyone hates?

00:03:16.000 Great.

00:03:16.600 That's the best one so far.

00:03:18.760 But Infinite Crisis, I remember reading when I was a teenager.

00:03:23.160 And it was very confused.

00:03:25.760 Very, very confused.

00:03:27.180 And then I decided to follow up with Final Crisis, and even more confused.

00:03:31.880 And at that point, I was just like, I'm not going to bother trying to understand these

00:03:35.760 big maxi-series anymore.

00:03:37.560 Infinite Crisis only makes sense if you read all the tie-ins, including Day of Vengeance,

00:03:42.440 and what's the other one?

00:03:43.860 Villains United, and all of this other ancillary stuff.

00:03:46.740 I assume as well, if you make sure to have paid minute attention to even the smallest

00:03:52.180 panels in Crisis on Infinite Earths, then you make sure to, like, maybe then you'll

00:03:58.200 understand it a bit better as well.

00:03:59.900 No, because it's kind of infamous for creating the Red Skies crossover, which I referenced

00:04:03.720 last time.

00:04:04.480 Oh, okay.

00:04:04.840 Which essentially means that when the sky turns red in Crisis on Infinite Earths, that

00:04:08.400 happens in all of the DC books, because almost every DC book got its continuity reset.

00:04:13.280 But some of the writers just didn't care.

00:04:14.660 Like, some of the writers said the characters would go, oh my god, the sky's turning red.

00:04:17.820 Anyway, back to Chasing the Penguin.

00:04:19.200 Like, that was it.

00:04:19.940 That was the extent of it.

00:04:20.180 Was that what Batman was up to?

00:04:21.480 Well, yeah, that's my other question, is that this was the big universe reset where they

00:04:25.700 take all of the multiverses and condense them down into a single universe with a single

00:04:29.920 continuity, but the story takes place in real time, and also the story was released issue

00:04:37.580 to issue over the course of almost a year.

00:04:40.160 What the hell was going on with all of the other stories in all of the other comic single

00:04:45.660 issues that were going on?

00:04:47.320 Did they just stop, or did they carry on?

00:04:50.860 How do you, like, if you're a writer and all of a sudden you just get it thrown on your

00:04:54.440 desk that, by the way, that we're resetting the entire universe next June, and you've got

00:04:59.460 plans for long-form stories that are going to carry on, you've been setting things up.

00:05:03.980 What do you do?

00:05:05.840 Leave your book, as Marv Wolfman soon found out, because a lot of writers and artists

00:05:10.020 weren't very happy with it.

00:05:11.340 Well, yeah, because that's the thing, is I opened this very nice Eagle Moss collection

00:05:15.660 edition of it.

00:05:16.280 Out of print?

00:05:17.160 Yes, and one of the first things it says is that Marv Wolfman, oh, he wanted to write

00:05:22.080 a story where it brings all of the characters together in one big story, and it doesn't

00:05:27.700 mention anything to do with the multiverse reset, restarting the continuity, or anything

00:05:32.780 like that.

00:05:33.040 It was originally called the History of the DC Universe, which was then the follow-up

00:05:35.900 two-parter series in 1987, which he did as a sequel, he reused the title for it.

00:05:42.320 Oh, okay.

00:05:42.760 So, and also that he spent like five years researching all of the characters in the DC Universe, so

00:05:49.840 he could make sure that everybody is fit into the story properly, and that everybody gets

00:05:54.380 their moment to shine.

00:05:55.140 And I've got to say, I had some major, this might just be because I read it all in one

00:05:59.720 day.

00:06:00.300 I had some major problems reading through this story, because it is a slog.

00:06:04.980 Okay, it does require like multiple read-throughs, I think, and to be steeped in continuity.

00:06:08.940 In terms of our reputation for controversial takes, I will say today, finally, after quite

00:06:16.340 a few months, we are discussing two books that I actually really like, particularly Legends.

00:06:19.680 I think Legends is great.

00:06:20.620 I, Legends, I'm going to agree with you.

00:06:23.660 I'm really, I'm really enjoying it.

00:06:26.820 Crisis?

00:06:28.280 I'm going to, I'm, we might have buttheads here a little bit, but let's carry on.

00:06:32.320 Let's carry on.

00:06:32.720 Okay, all right.

00:06:32.940 So to outline some of the context of Crisis.

00:06:34.760 So it's written by Marv Wolfman and co-plotted and penciled by George Perez, RIP.

00:06:39.680 Now, the pair began working at DC together because they relaunched Teen Titans with the

00:06:44.440 new Teen Titans in 1982.

00:06:47.220 I think that's the correct year, and I should get that right, because I absolutely love that

00:06:50.540 series.

00:06:51.380 And it's of note, because that became the top-selling DC book for multiple years.

00:06:55.100 When every other comic was selling like 60,000 to 90,000 copies a month, new Teen Titans

00:06:59.640 were selling between 200,000 and 400,000, and actually out-competing Uncanny X-Men, which

00:07:04.380 was the top-selling title at the time.

00:07:05.620 So they were battling Chris Claremont's like top spot on all of the comic selling charts.

00:07:09.200 Can you imagine if the comics industry was getting those kinds of numbers today?

00:07:13.180 Yeah, well, they could just not be gay race communists and actively insulting their readership.

00:07:16.220 Well, just to butt in very, very quickly, to interrupt, on that subject, I was in Manchester

00:07:21.340 over the weekend, and I went to, there are two comic book shops in Manchester.

00:07:26.200 They're both incredibly gay, but they're comic book shops. 0.92

00:07:29.260 So I put my head through.

00:07:30.780 One's Travelling Man, and one is Forbidden Planet.

00:07:34.280 And my God, you will notice when you go in there, the Western comics section in most

00:07:39.180 comic book shops these days, is A Shelf.

00:07:41.660 It's A Shelf.

00:07:43.560 Forbidden Planet there used to have an entire wall that was all of the latest Marvel and

00:07:48.400 DC omnibus that had been released.

00:07:50.920 And then loads of different shelves across the second half of the shop that were covered

00:07:54.920 in hard covers, trade paperbacks, and a big wall covered in all of the newest single issues.

00:08:00.060 That's gone.

00:08:01.140 Most of those walls are now covered in Funko Pops.

00:08:03.740 Oh boy, amazing.

00:08:05.260 There's two or three shelves with some Western comics, and Marvel and DC take up maybe a shelf

00:08:11.160 and a half, and the rest is Image and Dark Horse.

00:08:14.220 The rest of the shop is manga.

00:08:16.140 The rest of the shop is manga.

00:08:17.960 Same with Travelling Man. 1.00

00:08:19.120 They've got a wall where they've got two shelves that are split pretty finely with DC, Marvel,

00:08:26.040 Image, Dark Horse.

00:08:27.040 The entire rest of the shop is either models or manga.

00:08:29.820 Manga has overtaken it to such a ridiculous degree.

00:08:33.420 And I wonder if the gay boys running Travelling Man, it's got pride flags, it's got trans flags,

00:08:42.820 it's got non-binary flags in there.

00:08:44.720 They know what they're doing.

00:08:45.640 If they put all of these up, I wonder if they ever think to themselves, if they ponder

00:08:50.680 why it is that all of the manga, which doesn't include any of that rubbish, is outselling

00:08:55.880 all of the Western comics, which do include all of that.

00:08:58.660 Why aren't we stocking single issues of gay Batman anymore?

00:09:02.480 Why aren't we stocking single issues of Superman's gay son anymore?

00:09:07.200 Eh, anyway, pride flags.

00:09:09.000 Hans, are we the baddies?

00:09:10.640 Yeah.

00:09:11.260 Do these cross people's minds?

00:09:13.280 I really don't think so.

00:09:14.220 Or if it does, it's in a very mute way, because the entire project of pride is to suppress

00:09:19.560 the screaming conscience of the person adhering to it by making everyone around them affirm

00:09:23.040 themselves.

00:09:23.400 And it's really sad as well, because not that modern comics are anything of value, not

00:09:28.280 anything since 2018 has been all particularly of note, but after Crisis, a kind of reinvigoration

00:09:33.840 of the Golden Age happened with DC, because you had loads of great creators really impassioned

00:09:38.120 about the loss, but not forgotten continuity of the characters, came along to revitalize titles

00:09:43.420 like George Perez on Wonder Woman, Wolfman and Perez still on Teen Titans, John Byrne on Superman,

00:09:48.700 you had Batman Year One created by Frank Miller immediately after Crisis happened, so you

00:09:53.200 had some really great stories.

00:09:54.680 I love Year One.

00:09:56.160 That's one of my all-time favorite Batman stories, and I can go back to that every time

00:10:00.180 and go, yep, still as good as I remember.

00:10:01.940 Yeah, and that was the spirit of Crisis, which I think, even though there are some spotty moments

00:10:04.960 in its storytelling, especially considering it was meant to be 10 issues and they dragged

00:10:08.060 it out to 12.

00:10:09.460 Oh, it drags!

00:10:10.940 It doesn't let...

00:10:12.480 It has a bit of a Jason Voorhees of where he just won't stay down.

00:10:16.000 But anyway, but point being, there is a funny story about Marv Wolfman as well, so Marv

00:10:19.420 Wolfman has had a massive impact on the entire comics industry, because he accidentally

00:10:23.900 caused creators to start getting credited for comic books.

00:10:27.140 So, it's because of his surname, his very unorthodox surname, right?

00:10:30.460 Due to the Comics Code Authority, which we spoke about in the History of Comics series,

00:10:34.160 depictions of things like vampires, ghosts, and werewolves were prohibited.

00:10:38.640 So, Jerry Conway, who worked at Marvel and DC in January 1970, was writing a story

00:10:44.120 for House of Secrets number 83, and he wanted the main character, Abel, so Cain and Abel

00:10:49.540 have House of Secrets, House of Mystery.

00:10:51.120 I think it's in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, if I'm correct.

00:10:53.940 It's been a while since I've read Sandman.

00:10:55.900 It's probably wise.

00:10:57.180 The narrator, Abel, wanted to say he heard a story from a wandering wolfman, because

00:11:03.300 they were going to talk about werewolves.

00:11:04.960 But instead, he put wolfman, spelling it with wolfman's name.

00:11:08.820 And so, to get away with it, he thought, I have to credit him for the story on the next

00:11:12.380 page.

00:11:13.080 So, it's written by Marvel wolfman, it's emblazoned on the page.

00:11:15.900 And every recreator in that book started going, hang on a minute, if he's getting a credit,

00:11:18.880 why don't I get credits?

00:11:20.080 And so, that became the default norm for most books to start crediting their writers, artists,

00:11:24.580 colorists, inkers, and editors.

00:11:26.080 So, in the older issues, would you just not get...

00:11:28.520 Because in this, for instance, or Legends, you get the little panel at the bottom of a

00:11:32.900 maybe of a splash page that says, written by, inked by, drawn by...

00:11:36.820 Was that just not in those older issues?

00:11:38.880 Often not in DC.

00:11:39.820 It was commonly in Marvel, because Stan Lee used to make up fantastic nicknames, like

00:11:44.400 Jack the King Kirby came from Stan Lee crediting his artists.

00:11:47.500 But in DC, it wasn't very common.

00:11:49.440 Lots of the issues just went uncredited.

00:11:51.000 Especially, think about the older Batman issues, whereas Batman was created by Bob

00:11:53.860 Kane, and nobody else.

00:11:55.140 Yeah, yeah, I suppose so.

00:11:56.720 I suppose that does explain it, because I have gone back through some old issues of comics

00:12:00.580 in the past, and been confused as, wait, who wrote this?

00:12:03.580 Who drew this?

00:12:04.420 What's going on?

00:12:05.180 I'm so confused.

00:12:06.140 Yeah, quite.

00:12:07.020 And I'm glad the creators now do get proper credit.

00:12:09.920 Yeah, absolutely.

00:12:10.340 Wolfman, Neil Adams have done great stuff.

00:12:12.320 And now, in the modern comic era, we know who to blame.

00:12:15.460 Quite.

00:12:15.840 Tom King.

00:12:16.760 So, it was announced at the New York Comic Convention in 1981, and as I said, it was

00:12:21.260 originally titled The History of the DC Universe, but it became Crisis on Infinite Earths to condense

00:12:24.900 the entire and confusing DC multiverse down to one cohesive continuity to give a new jumping

00:12:29.580 on point for brand new readers.

00:12:30.680 And it worked, because the John Byrne Man of Steel run, the Frank Miller's Batman run,

00:12:36.620 Wonder Woman, all saw the sales tick up, because they were much easier to get rid of. 0.91

00:12:40.160 And these are all now considered, when people look back on the 80s comic industry, as being

00:12:44.560 classics of their time, or at least certainly series that you have to check out.

00:12:52.220 Yes, they're the seminal, particular starting points for many of the characters, and they're

00:12:56.680 indistinct from continuity.

00:12:58.500 It wasn't the first crisis, though, and this is something that we mentioned before.

00:13:01.520 So, there were a few crises, they actually bore that name throughout DC history.

00:13:06.020 There was Flash of Two Worlds, so that was Flash 123, first time the multiverse was acknowledged,

00:13:11.100 Jay Garrick and Barry Allen meeting, and they were comic book characters in each other's

00:13:14.040 respective realities.

00:13:15.160 Then Justice League of America 21 and 22 was a crisis on Earth 1, which established that

00:13:19.120 Earth 2 had the Justice Society and Earth 1 had the Justice League.

00:13:22.780 There were annual crossovers between the JSA and the JLA after that, and then there was

00:13:26.640 Crisis on Earth Prime, not long before this, which united the Justice League, the Justice

00:13:30.460 Society of America, and the All-Star Squadron to fight, I think it was Earth 3's crime syndicate

00:13:35.540 and Podegaton of something like that.

00:13:37.580 So, were the crises not only universe-wide crossovers, but also consistently attempts to streamline

00:13:44.360 and clarify things in the continuity?

00:13:46.620 They were more like annual fun team-ups across one or two titles.

00:13:51.040 So you'd have two issues of Justice League, two issues of Justice Society, and you'd read

00:13:55.520 one, then the other, run one, then the other.

00:13:57.300 It would run for two months, and it would be a once-a-year fun thing.

00:14:00.640 It wasn't, let's kill half the DC universe at once, which, ambitious, I'll certainly give

00:14:06.740 them that.

00:14:07.440 And then DC Comics Presents 78, which Wolfman wrote, was a lead straight into Crisis on

00:14:13.020 Infinite Earths.

00:14:13.880 He also wrote DC Comics Presents Annual 1, sorry, I think he only wrote the annual, which

00:14:18.780 was Crisis on 3 Earths, which had all of the Supermen teaming up, as they do here, because

00:14:24.300 you've now got Earth 2 Superman, Earth 1 Superman, and Alexander Luther Jr. from Earth 3.

00:14:29.240 So, you've got a lot of characters to juggle with the same names as well, which makes this

00:14:32.600 quite confusing to read the first time.

00:14:34.140 I do think the art helps differentiate it, the way that Earth 2 Superman, just having

00:14:39.060 him be a little bit bulkier, with the white strips of hair around his ears, helps to differentiate.

00:14:45.060 So George Perez did a good job in visually differentiating the characters.

00:14:49.400 Wolfman and Perez were experts at team books, and so he could create a very crowded scene

00:14:53.580 or splash page with 50 heroes there, and you could easily pick out which one is which.

00:14:58.480 And you could probably name them all if you had sufficient level of continuity knowledge.

00:15:01.880 You have the encyclopedic knowledge that Wolfman, apparently according to this intro, made sure

00:15:07.500 that he had before going into it.

00:15:09.480 I certainly will credit him with that.

00:15:11.120 Now, leading up to this as well, he'd created the character of the Monitor, who's the central

00:15:15.300 power broker on the side of the heroes, but through the last few years of DC, he was financing

00:15:20.840 all of the villains, so it got quite confusing.

00:15:23.620 And he first conceived the Monitor, Wolfman said when he'd written this, about 18 years ago,

00:15:28.320 and he called him the Librarian, because he didn't have a very good sense of names.

00:15:31.880 He said, and he wanted someone to finance all the villains, but then it's revealed, per

00:15:36.280 a conversation between Monitor and Harbinger in the comic, that he was doing so to test

00:15:39.860 which heroes and which villains were optimum to put together as a team to defeat his counterpart,

00:15:44.600 the Anti-Monitor, when he knew inevitably he would return and try and destroy the multiverse.

00:15:48.540 But Monitor had shown up in things like New Teen Titans 21, which is his first debut, which

00:15:52.680 Wolfman and Perez both wrote.

00:15:54.360 They roped him into a few Green Lantern issues, 173 through 178, and then Batman the Outsiders,

00:15:59.220 14 and 15, where behind the scenes he's pulling the strings and making life difficult for the

00:16:04.140 heroes.

00:16:04.620 But it's some sort of crucible to ensure that the people he has on side are adequate to

00:16:09.140 fight them.

00:16:10.180 And the deaths this produces, among them, there's quite a few, but some of the notable ones

00:16:14.640 are, of course, the Anti-Monitor, destroyed by Earth 2 Superman, but then resurrected in

00:16:19.100 Blackest Night, and also Sinestro Core War by Green Lantern.

00:16:23.900 There's something on Geoff Johns later.

00:16:25.400 This is the guy you want to bring back to life.

00:16:27.640 I'm sure it makes sense in the story, question mark.

00:16:31.360 Basically, because the Anti-Monitor controls the Anti-Matter universe, in order to get Yellow 0.88

00:16:36.080 Lantern rings, Sinestro needed the Thunderers who work for the Anti-Monitor. 1.00

00:16:40.960 So he resurrected the Anti-Monitor to command their loyalty and folded him into the Sinestro

00:16:44.740 Core War.

00:16:45.260 But then he gets killed again, but then Necron of the Black Lanterns brings him back and

00:16:49.720 uses his body as a Black Lantern power battery.

00:16:54.060 Yeah, I'm sorry.

00:16:55.720 I don't blame you.

00:16:56.760 Geoff Johns Green Lantern is a good run, though.

00:16:58.680 So Dove, Dawn Hall dies, is replaced by Dawn, who's the female Hall eventually. 0.88

00:17:04.160 Matt Hagen's Clayface dies, which makes it really confusing for Batman continuity.

00:17:08.600 One thing that I did pick up, there's about four or five pages dedicated to, and then it's

00:17:13.680 dropped, is that Wildcat becomes paralyzed from the waist down, and then Latoya Montez, 0.95

00:17:22.220 I think her name is.

00:17:23.240 Yolanda, I think it is.

00:17:23.960 Yolanda, yeah.

00:17:25.560 American black woman name. 0.87

00:17:27.500 She's Hispanic. 1.00

00:17:28.580 Still.

00:17:30.340 Becomes Wildcat instead, and an issue ends on that, like it's some big reveal, like it's

00:17:35.760 a big cliffhanger.

00:17:36.660 She's going to be so important.

00:17:37.620 And then she shows up in maybe two or three more panels in the rest of the story.

00:17:40.780 Yeah, she gets killed off in 1994 in an obscure book, because if you've played the Telltale

00:17:44.380 games, you know when you make the wrong decision in the top right-hand corner of the screen

00:17:47.160 that says, and everyone disliked that?

00:17:49.200 That was basically the attitude to crippling Ted Grant and then replacing him with Yolanda,

00:17:53.940 because nobody cared for that legacy character.

00:17:55.660 It wasn't a good decision.

00:17:57.620 One legacy character people didn't like is actually Wally West, because he takes over

00:18:01.240 The Flash, because Barry Allen dies.

00:18:03.160 He dies.

00:18:03.840 He does not disappear into the Speed Force.

00:18:05.320 Grant fucking Morrison, okay?

00:18:06.880 Because that was the retcon in Final Crisis.

00:18:08.500 In this, you see him disintegrate into a skeleton, and he loses his costume.

00:18:12.600 And then in Final Crisis, Barry pops out the Speed Force, fully clothed, like, Wally, take

00:18:16.420 my hand.

00:18:17.380 No, you were dead.

00:18:18.340 Wolfman said you were dead in an interview he did last year.

00:18:21.260 Ridiculous.

00:18:21.920 No, not having it.

00:18:23.100 And then Huntress, the crime syndicate, Julia, Alfred's daughter disappears, Soul of R, Super

00:18:29.140 Girl of Earth, one.

00:18:30.420 Alfred had a daughter?

00:18:31.880 Yeah, Julia Pennyworth, yes.

00:18:32.940 Oh, I didn't even know that.

00:18:34.040 Pre-Crisis Batman continuity.

00:18:34.960 All of these people get eliminated by Christ on Infinite.

00:18:36.840 And that's, you can kind of see the necessity to condense it down a little bit.

00:18:41.060 Also, Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Captain Atom, and a bunch of other characters

00:18:44.960 were rewritten and reincorporated into the DC Universe, with Wonder Woman now showing up

00:18:49.140 midway through DC's history.

00:18:53.060 Contentious decision to do so, but there you go.

00:18:55.420 Also, I've got to say, I was under the impression, I read this when I was a teenager, so I'd forgotten

00:19:00.520 most of the story of it and how it led into the rest of the DC Universe continuity-wise

00:19:06.040 going forward.

00:19:07.460 I was given the impression, certainly by Grant Morrison's Animal Man run, which we covered

00:19:12.380 last time, and from my own impressions of the other series that we'd looked at that

00:19:16.780 related to post-Crisis DC, that all of the characters, except for Psycho Pirate, didn't

00:19:23.740 remember the events of Crisis.

00:19:26.180 But at the end of this, it seems that the characters who were involved at the Dawn of

00:19:30.240 Time incident, where they go to confront the Anti-Monitor at the Dawn of Time, everybody,

00:19:35.700 and there was quite a few, probably about a hundred, if not slightly more, heroes who went

00:19:40.060 to confront him, all of them have memories of the pre-Crisis multiversal continuity, which

00:19:47.820 is why Earth-2 Superman and Earth-1 Superman can meet up and discuss how they remember it,

00:19:53.920 and Jay Garrick, they can go to visit him, and he remembers it, but his wife doesn't remember

00:19:58.200 it.

00:19:58.920 But I was under the impression that all of their memories were reset, except for Psycho Pirate.

00:20:04.020 So is that just a part of this plot that was kind of discarded?

00:20:07.540 Because at the beginning of Legends, Wally West references the events of Crisis.

00:20:13.340 So the continuity, I'm confused.

00:20:16.760 Valid point.

00:20:18.240 Basically, he had intended for all of the heroes from the Dawn of Time to remember the continuity

00:20:22.300 from before, so they could retain some of their friendships and relationships.

00:20:26.300 But then in some of the reboots that is forgotten, for example, Batman and Superman get reintroduced,

00:20:29.940 and for the next few years of continuity, they act like they've only just met, rather than

00:20:32.920 be friends for a decade or so.

00:20:34.520 But that was more of a fault of the people following up this series.

00:20:37.820 Definitely.

00:20:38.380 Animal Man was not part of the heroes that were at the Dawn of Time, I believe.

00:20:42.140 So that's why the contradictions start breaking his continuity, and that's why Grant Morrison

00:20:46.440 wanted to play with that, because he's part of a group of heroes, along with Dolphin and

00:20:50.740 Adam Strange, who encountered Brainiac later on, and helped involve Darkseid in this.

00:20:54.380 So I think he was outside of that hero, but they didn't get invited to the party.

00:20:57.620 None of the villains remember, except for Psycho Pirate, and none of the civilians who are on

00:21:01.580 the new Earth, remember, aside from Psycho Pirate.

00:21:03.720 But then this is inconsistently played with.

00:21:05.720 Sometimes the spouses of superheroes will reference the crisis, as if they know of it

00:21:09.840 firsthand, but not that they were told of it secondhand.

00:21:12.760 So because characters get chopped and changed between writers and editorial teams, these

00:21:17.080 details get forgotten.

00:21:18.260 Essentially, it was intended to be a consistent streamlining.

00:21:21.840 Didn't always pan out that way, because creatives do cock up pretty often. 1.00

00:21:26.060 The other interesting thing that this does as well, folds all the Charlton characters into

00:21:29.040 the mainline DC universe, much to the shit-eating grin of Alan Moore, who was about to use them

00:21:33.560 and kill them all off in Watchmen.

00:21:35.080 Hence, he had to make all of their analogues.

00:21:37.540 And that's why when all the Charlton characters come along, you see, for example, the Question

00:21:40.740 and Blue Beetle flying around in the bug.

00:21:42.380 That looks exactly like Night Owl and Rorschach.

00:21:45.400 It's because they were going to be used together.

00:21:47.420 And Alan Moore was like, well, thank you for scuppering all those plans.

00:21:50.820 I guess I've got to be creative for once and invent brand new characters to then immediately

00:21:55.060 defile.

00:21:55.920 I hate Watchmen.

00:21:56.760 We'll explain why in another time.

00:21:58.600 Also, the reason that we're covering it, it's not just because I enjoy these, is because

00:22:02.540 for once I thought I'd do a wholesome series of comics.

00:22:05.260 And there's an underlying late-stage Cold War conservatism and a very strong strain of

00:22:10.700 Christianity and existentialism in both of these, particularly legends.

00:22:14.740 And so, good to nail down that ethic.

00:22:18.020 So, I'll start with issue one.

00:22:19.520 As you said, this story is situated in a specific place and time.

00:22:22.800 It says explicitly, I think it's the first couple of pages, that it takes place in July

00:22:26.620 1985.

00:22:27.760 Now, for continuity nerds like me, that's great.

00:22:30.260 Because that means you can date almost exactly when Batman became Batman, when Superman became

00:22:33.940 Superman.

00:22:34.640 So, by my count, Frank Miller's Year One and John Burns' The Man of Steel retroactively now

00:22:39.720 take place in 1975.

00:22:41.400 And I say this because Dick Grayson becomes Robin in about year three or four of Batman's

00:22:47.240 history in Dark Victory.

00:22:48.540 And he becomes Robin at age 13.

00:22:50.920 And Dick Grayson from Earth 2 in this visits, I believe it's a grave, and then he realizes

00:22:57.100 that Nightwing in this universe, he goes by Nightwing, Dick Grayson, is 19.

00:23:02.660 So, that's got to be a six-year gap at least that Robin was Robin until he led up to Nightwing.

00:23:06.540 So, there's got to be six years deducted from 1984, 1985.

00:23:09.880 So, that means that 1975 is the start point when Batman and Superman arrive on scene for

00:23:13.860 the first time.

00:23:14.640 So, that gives a specific date.

00:23:16.400 And I know that's really petty, but I really like that.

00:23:18.720 Okay.

00:23:19.080 So, it opens with Pariah, who's a guy who accidentally believes that he engineered the collapse of

00:23:24.960 his own world by experimenting with antimatter because he was a great scientist.

00:23:27.920 And then he was trying to look into the multiverse, and he thinks he unleashed the antimatter.

00:23:32.460 He's been damned to be the kind of herald of the Antimonitor's arrival, similar to like 1.00

00:23:37.840 Silver Surfer and Galactus.

00:23:39.600 And he shows up as Earth 3 has been destroyed by a big white wave of light, the antimatter

00:23:43.860 wave that's been sent by the Antimonitor.

00:23:45.720 He's been put in this role by the Monitor as a means of recompense for his scientific

00:23:52.240 hubris.

00:23:53.140 And he sees that the crime syndicate are being killed, and that they're infighting, and that

00:23:58.600 Alexander Luther Sr. and his wife, Lois Lane, send their son, Alexander Luther,

00:24:02.440 off to Earth 1 so that he can survive and herald a warning to the heroes there so they can

00:24:08.560 save their Earth.

00:24:09.160 Very reminiscent of the original Superman story of Lara and Jor-El sending their son

00:24:14.240 off from Krypton to Earth as Krypton's about to explode.

00:24:17.340 So, the Monitor sends out Lila, who's a woman that he rescued when she was an orphan at sea.

00:24:22.600 I can't remember the exact...

00:24:24.040 Yeah, she was in some kind of shipwreck, she was holding onto a piece of driftwood, and

00:24:29.220 he scooped her up and looked after her.

00:24:32.260 Yes, quite.

00:24:32.900 He turns her into Harbinger, and he has her go around and collect the various heroes that 0.75

00:24:37.500 he's been training up by financing their villains and putting them through a crucible, and even

00:24:41.140 recruit some villains in there.

00:24:43.100 I think he uses Psycho Pirate to convince Killer Frost to stop fighting Firestorm and actually

00:24:48.080 fall in love with them in a sense.

00:24:49.280 And in typical Wolfman and Perez fashion, as per New Teen Titans, there's a lot of innuendo

00:24:52.920 in this book.

00:24:53.940 Yeah, well, that was something I was wondering about.

00:24:56.600 Well, one, it's not just Psycho Pirate, it's also Simon.

00:24:59.760 Yes.

00:25:00.120 P-S-I-M-O-N. 1.00

00:25:02.540 Of the first and five, yes.

00:25:03.520 Yes, but Psycho Pirate is only recruited after it's shown that Harbinger has been possessed

00:25:10.180 by either the Anti-Monitor or one of the Shadows, the Thunderers, of the Anti-Monitor.

00:25:15.600 And then, obviously, Psycho Pirate is kidnapped by the Anti-Monitor and brought on side so that

00:25:20.380 he can try and control people's emotions.

00:25:22.040 So, later on in the story, you get the crowds of people trying to run into the Anti-Matter

00:25:27.060 waves so that they will just erase themselves out of existence.

00:25:30.600 So, I thought, because she was already on her way to get, what's it, an Aryan? 0.99

00:25:35.360 Yes, the Atlantean sorcerer.

00:25:36.780 And then she turns around to go get Psycho Pirate. 1.00

00:25:39.260 So, I was wondering, was it that the Anti-Monitor was actually the one after Psycho Pirate and

00:25:44.560 Monitor just went along with it because it kind of folded into his plans anyway?

00:25:48.820 I wouldn't be shocked.

00:25:49.940 I think he would probably have allowed...

00:25:52.800 Because the Monitor allows...

00:25:54.800 That makes sense.

00:25:56.220 The Monitor allows Anti-Monitor to do quite a few things because the Anti-Monitor says explicitly

00:26:01.060 that he recruited Psycho Pirate.

00:26:03.440 He could have gotten a few other people who can manipulate emotions, but it seems that

00:26:07.180 Psycho Pirate being, one, vulnerable because he was in prison, which made him easy to recruit,

00:26:12.520 and two, just a weak and pathetic, easily manipulated person seemed to be the best one for the job.

00:26:18.360 Yeah, and I think he would have allowed a little bit of leeway with risk regarding that because

00:26:22.100 he knew that he was going to be killed anyway because his essence had to power the tuning

00:26:27.760 forks that brought the Earths together.

00:26:30.700 Very loose cosmology going on here, but I think your reading of that is right.

00:26:34.620 Yeah, let's not try and take any of the science mumbo-jumbo talk in these kinds of series seriously.

00:26:43.280 Yeah, quite.

00:26:43.920 You've just got to understand that there is an internal logic to it.

00:26:46.960 So combining with the protons to create anti-matter, what's going on?

00:26:53.300 Yeah, quite.

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PREVIEW： Comics Corner #13 ｜ Crisis on Infinite Earths

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