The History of Every Crisis in DC Comics

[Music] hello welcome to comic tropes I'm your host Chris well this month the CW is doing an adaptation of the DC Comics story crisis on Infinite Earths it's going to be a five-part event and it's pretty exciting because crisis on Infinite Earths is a huge epic story where entire parallel realities are being destroyed but it didn't come out of nowhere and in fact this 1985 series which was 12 issues long and completely rebooted DC Comics history at the time was built on a story that actually started back in 1963 today I'm going to talk to you about the history of crisis where crisis has led into modern day and some of the key creators who've been behind these stories let's do it to tell this story we need to go back to 1956 when DC released showcase number four it was written by Robert Canada and illustrated by carmine infantino featured the superhero speedster the flash but this was a new version of the character most of DC's big heroes have been invented in the 40s but superheroes became less popular right after world war ii when tastes turned towards crime horror westerns and romance but 1956 DC decided to update several of their superheroes starting with the flash this new version was named Barry Allen whereas the original was a man named Jay Garrick who had been created by writer Gardner Fox but Fox loved his creation and in 1961 he was the writer of the Silver Age era flash series he wrote the story flash of two worlds in issue 123 it featured Barry Allen accidentally vibrating his body such that he crossed into another universe where he meets befriends and teams up with Jay Garrick the story had two effects one had established the jay garrick did exist but he didn't live in the same universe as Barry Allen he lived in a parallel world called Earth - and on top of that this story was a hit so DC began bringing back more and more of its Golden Age characters and had them exist in earth too but beyond that Gardner Fox had even bigger ambitions in the August 1963 issue of Justice League of America writer Gardner Fox began the two-part story crisis on earth one which was concluded the following issue with crisis on earth - in the story six super villains figure out how to cross the dimensional barriers and eventually trap the Justice League of America in their headquarters the league uses a crystal ball that was a souvenir from a previous battle and mentally reach out to the Justice Society of America the Golden Age superheroes who inhabit earth - with their help the super heroes team up and defeat the villains the story was a big success so the following year Gardner had the team's team up again to battle the crime syndicate of America five villainous versions of the heroes from Earth three and so it came to pass that every year there was a team-up story they would cross over the superheroes from multiple worlds not every crossover had the word crisis in the title but many did and they've been collected into trade paperbacks called crisis on multiple earths one story introduces earth a an alternate version of earth one changed by the all-powerful Thunderbolt - retro actively erased several Justice League members and transfer their powers to criminals it's eventually reverted to earth one in 1973 writer Len Wein introduced the first new parallel earth since earth 3 a fan of the Golden Age comics wien introduced earth X a version of Earth where America never ended world war two so it's still going on the world is defended by the freedom fighters various Golden Age superheroes who are tricked into battling the Justice League and Justice Society before everyone teams up to defeat the Nazis these annual events continued until 1985 when DC decided to read buuut their continuity and clean up all the parallel universes that story was told over 12 issues written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Perez they were tasked with involving every character DC owned and having the story makes sense Wolfman argued that the DC didn't feel unified like Marvel Comics did he wanted to bring everything together into one cohesive universe the story involves a villain called the anti-monitor who was made of antimatter a scientist on a parallel earth named pariah seeks to discover the creation of his universe and unwittingly allows anti-monitor to learn of other worlds anti-monitor sets out to destroy every universe in the main universe a noble being called the monitor recruits Lyla Michaels as his assistant who he names Harbinger and she enters parallel worlds to recruit heroes by the end various heroes including the Justice League Justice Society freedom fighters and the newly acquired super heroes from Fawcett comics like Captain Marvel and from Charlton like Blue Beetle all teamed up to defeat the anti-monitor and the story ended with the universes merged together along the way many heroes were killed off including Supergirl and the Barry Allen version of the flash while they both came back they were both gone for decades in the comics crisis on Infinite Earths was a huge undertaking and kudos to Wolfman and Perez for pulling it off just amazing I've got an episode about Marv Wolfman as a writer that goes into a little bit more detail about stuff that he's done that has worked well but did the CW always plan ahead to adapt crisis on Infinite Earths well there are some signs that they did an early episode of the flash has a newspaper that a villain from the future is brought back and it shows that a crisis will occur but there were also some more subtle decisions for instance on the flash they've introduced many parallel versions of a scientist named Harrison wells and Harrison wells or a version of him will be playing pariah in the crisis series there is a character on arrow Lyla Michaels who is the wife of arrows sidekick Diggle now Lyla Michaels she doesn't have any super powers on the TV show she's a spy she works with Argus but at the same time they didn't choose that name Lyla Michaels out of a hat at random did they so maybe they were thinking ahead all along the after-effects of crisis were Swift Superman was rebooted by John Byrne and Batman had an acclaimed flashback story called Batman year one by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli sales increased overall and crisis on Infinite Earths is considered one of the most ambitious and successful crossovers in superhero comics almost a decade later DC tried to recapture that success with mixed results after crisis on Infinite Earths there were some lingering continuity errors Superman was never Superboy so the future set Legion of super-heroes book needed to retcon why they formed since Superboy was their original inspiration Hawkman didn't get his own comic book series until 1989 and there was confusion over whether the character was the original Golden Age version or an alien spy so writer Dan Jergens teamed up with artist Jerry Ordway for zero-hour crisis and time the goal was to correct lingering timeline issues the story featured the former Green Lantern Hal Jordan going mad with power he have lost his entire city in the death and return of Superman story and it caused him to become the villain parallax who intended to remake time the way he wanted it the superheroes defeated him but it just wasn't as epic as crisis on Infinite Earths more sequels came in 2005 7 issue series by writer Geoff Johns followed the events of crisis on Infinite Earths directly the story was called Infinite Crisis and we learned that the Superman of Earth 2 the Lex Luthor of earth 3 and Superboy from the original universe all survived the collapse of the multiverse and survived in a pocket dimension watching the events of the main DC Universe they decide things have become too dark and aimed to fix things eventually Superboy loses his mind and begins killing everyone so the super heroes team up and imprison him it's an interesting story that does have something to say it features the Golden Age superheroes looking at the admittedly darker current iterations and passing judgment at the same time those original versions ultimately end up becoming the villains so I guess that is to say that the current versions are better after all maybe they're more nuanced I think something gets lost there that it's it's close to saying something about the characters it doesn't quite nail the execution that said plot wise there were big repercussions the story features the universe is starting to diverge again or the universe starting to diverge into multiple universes before being collapsed again back into one and that became the second hard reboot of DC Comics continuity they called it the new 52 and there was still one more crisis left to form a trilogy in 2008 Final Crisis started coming out it was a seven issue series by Grant Morrison and JJ Jones with some other artists helping out in this story the villainous God Darkseid discovers the anti-life equation and threatens all of reality he destroys everything except Superman who builds a wish machine and sings Darkseid to death saving everything if you have a better explanation of Final Crisis please let me know in the comments down below the word crisis carries a lot of weight in the DC Comics there have been some stories that are important big events but aren't necessarily universe-threatening that also use the word crisis like identity crisis and heroes in crisis wait a minute this is a crisis this isn't the right universe to be wearing I'm so sorry I think the annual crossover stories in the Silver Age Justice League of America comics are a blast and crisis on Infinite Earths is terrific although it would not be a great place to start reading about DC superheroes it's got great art and a lot of fanservice I would caution DC to be very protective over using crisis in their titles because I'm not sure identity crisis or final crisis quite justified using it and they risk diluting part of their brand that said DC has the oldest superheroes and unlike their competitor Marvel Comics they've actually been willing to do reboots of their entire stories and start fresh and that is a bit of a calculated risk when you own proven moneymakers like Batman and Superman overall I think that crisis means something special in DC Comics and most of the time it's a really fun adventure I think that DC should be very careful about how they use it in the future I hope that this upcoming TV adaptation of crisis on Infinite Earths is at least fun it looks like they've brought in a whole range of actors who have played superheroes in other TV shows you know they're bringing in of course like the flash from the 1990 show they've got Constantine who was on an NBC show they've got Brandon Roth reprising Superman after he was in the movie Superman Returns I'm pretty sure they got Burt Ward from the 1960s Batman live-action TV show I know they got Kevin Conroy who has voiced Batman probably pretty much the definitive voice of Batman in Batman the Animated Series and he's going to be playing the Kingdom Come version of Bruce Wayne this is exciting to see some of that stunt casting there's gonna be a bunch of different supermen there's gonna be bat woman they're bringing in black lightning from one of their shows it's really exciting and cool to see all of these different properties merged together in a story that actually needs them I hope it's fun I can promise you that if you've read any DC superhero comics in the past their crisis on Infinite Earths and crisis on multiple earth stories are super super fun it's definitely something I enjoy I just the need to do this quick video to talk about that history I love comic book history this is some of it but just a quick weird episode I don't have any fan art or anything to show you and I am now about to leave for Japan so the next episode you get from me will probably just be a light sort of funny episode while I edit a video that I'm gonna shoot over there in Japan so expect that one coming pretty soon hopefully that's something pretty special until then keep reading comics

Channel: ComicTropes

Views: 84,105

Keywords: comic books, comic tropes, crisis on infinite earths, dc comics, crisis on earth one, crisis on earth x, crisis on earth a, crisis on multiple earths, identity crisis, infinite crisis, final crisis, heroes in crisis, the flash, gardner fox, marv wolfman, geoff johns, dan jurgens, zero hour, crisis in time, grant morrison, cw

Id: iLJGvv8omLc

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 30 2019