Infinite Crisis (DC Comics)

Four heroes trapped in limbo are about to reveal themselves--one is dying, one wants to save her and restore an entire world that vanished, and the other two seek unrivaled power--but when they concoct an earth-shattering plan, even the world's greatest superheroes may not be enough to stop them.

Grade 7 Up—Prior to DC Comics's revamp of its superhero universe in Infinite Crisis, a series of prelude miniseries were released to set up the larger conflicts that the central title would address. Despite the fact that each of these series—including Greg Rucka's The OMAC Project and Gail Simone's Villains United (both 2006)—ended abruptly and had a promised follow-up "special" yet to be published, they were collected in trade paperback. Unable to be included in the already-released trades or compiled with the massive Infinite Crisis collection, they appear in their semi-orphaned state in this book. The title is actually apt, but it doesn't make the effect any less jagged: the stories are clearly continuations of distant events, and they have only the most tenuous of internal connections. To use popular comic-universe terminology, they are a tangled mass of "continuity," helping to draw lines between other books, events, and situations. The varied artwork is quite good, and the stories are not without drama and effective moments, but this volume would be lost on casual readers; the characters are plentiful and the situations convoluted, as the massive cast of practically the entire superhero world shows up to be counted. As a supplement to collections that contain the previously mentioned titles, it would be welcome and quite useful, but it would be a mystifying morass if read on its own.—Benjamin Russell, Belmont High School, NH
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Every so often, the continuity of DC's interlocking comic books gets so convoluted and cluttered that the company clears the boards with an overarching story encompassing all its titles. The seven-issue Infinite Crisis, a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), is the latest such tale.A parallel-universe version of Superman, who was relegated to limbo at the end of Infinite Earths, escapes and attempts to replace the Earth that faithful readers have been watching for the past two decades with his own. The conflict that follows affects virtually every superhero in the DC universe, killing off extraneous characters and provoking the revamping of others. Infinite Crisis also aims to veer away from the dark, cynical tone that has infected the superhero genre of late. It skirts incomprehensibility, but so does much else in DC's recent output, and that is what Crisis addresses. The artwork, mostly by Phil Jimenez, creditably corrals a huge cast and keeps the myriad story lines going. Casual readers may be baffled, but for hard-core superhero fans, this is essential. Gordon Flagg
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