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Volume 1, Number 159 June 2025 EDITOR EMERITUS Michael Eury

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Roger Ash PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks COVER ARTIST George Pérez (The art originally appeared as the cover to the Crisis Index. Scan courtesy of Heritage Auctions.)

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BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Roger Ash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

SPECIAL THANKS Kurt Busiek Gerry Conway Stephen Englehart Grand Comics Database Robert Greenberger Milton Griepp Karl Heitmueller Jr. Heritage Auctions Paul Levitz Brian Martin John Jackson Miller Donald Propsom Roy Thomas Mark Waid John Wells Marv Wolfman

OFF MY CHEST: Paul Levitz of How Crisis Came to Pass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 FLASHBACK: The Crisis Watcher’s Guide to the DC Multiverse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Explore the many worlds of DC FLASHBACK: Crisis at 40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 From concept to series and beyond Crisis Original Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 PRINCE STREET NEWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Darkseid walks into a bar…

PRO2PRO: Marv Wolfman and Robert Greenberger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 BACK IN PRINT: DC Celebrates Crisis on Infinite Earths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 FLASHBACK: The Importance of Direct Market Retailers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The unsung partner in the success of Crisis

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FIRST PRINTING

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 1

It’s hard for me to believe that we’re celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths. First, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. Second, that means it came out when I was 20. While chronologically true, I certainly don’t feel that old.

In this you’ll read about pre-Crisis DC, the epic series itself, and what has happened since.

The accounts are chock-full of behind-the-scenes stories from many of the people involved. I really don’t have anything to add to that here, so please allow me to share some personal memories.

I started collecting comics in 1978 and was a self-proclaimed Marvel Zombie. It wasn’t until I saw New Teen Titans on a spinner rack while grocery shopping with my mom that I bought a book from the Distinguished Competition, as Stan Lee used to call DC. And I liked it. A lot. With the help of a friend who was a DC fan, I started branching out and trying other DC comics. But even then, I was reading far more Marvel titles.

In 1984, Marvel blew my mind by publishing the first company wide crossover, Secret Wars. In this day and age where there have been many crossover events, you have to remember that Secret Wars was groundbreaking. Nothing of this scope had ever been done before. And the following year, DC gave us Crisis on Infinite Earths.

I’ve heard many arguments about which was the better series and, well, I see that as your personal opinion. Whichever you like best, more power to you. But for this Marvel Zombie, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Crisis. Even though I knew very little about DC’s multiple Earths, and after reading John Wells’ article in this issue I learned things I didn’t know before, the story really grabbed me.

Marv Wolfman’s writing drew me in and made me care about a lot of characters I knew very little about or hadn’t encountered before. It felt important. I was a fan of George Pérez’s art on Avengers and New Teen Titans, but his work on Crisis was next level.

It feels right to celebrate Crisis. Much of what was done in the series has been undone over the years, but that doesn’t change the impact of the series. Turn the page and begin your exploration.

I’ve read all this. You’re in for a treat.

It’s the final battle in Crisis #12. Original art courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com) TM & © DC Comics

2 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

oger Ash

TM & © DC Comics.

by R

Photo credit: Jesse Chieffo.

by P a u l

Levitz

Some context, before you go deep diving into Mystery, and replacing them with interesting new forty years ago. The newsstand era of American experiments aimed at older readers. It had even comic books was drawing to a close, and every- taken its two best-selling titles in the shops, Teen one involved could feel it. Long established com- Titans and Legion Of Super-Heroes, and relaunched panies that relied on it, like Harvey Comics, were them in fancier format. Swamp Thing had quit dwindling from twenty-odd Richie Rich the safe world of the Comics Code and the comics to…er…none. The marketnewsstands altogether. But there was place had moved to the smaller, clearly a long way to go. more concentrated modest number One aspect of the gap as of comic shops, perhaps 1/25th diagnosed by then-conventionalof the locations that had offered wisdom seems absurd now, in the comics only a few years before. era of Everything Everywhere At But the good news was, the Once. Marvel’s mythology seemed customers there were serious simpler, with a timeline extending about their comics, buying more back a mere twenty-off years as of them, more knowledgably, opposed to DC’s five decades, and and willing to support a better was set in a more or less consistent product. But the bad news (at single world. DC had resolved least for everyone else) was that its complex past with a series of paul levitz Marvel dominated sales in these parallel worlds, labeled Earth© Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. shops. Most of the store owners One, Two, Three…and on and on. had grown up feeling Marvel were by far the best Many people involved in the field creatively, or at comics, and X-Men had become the dominant retail, believed that the DC universe was just too franchise in the field. damn complicated, an untangleable canon full of DC was doing a lot to catch up. Behind debatable contradictions and unknowable details. the scenes, the company was offering deeper Healing that seemed like a necessary part of the discounts to pump funds into the new emerging catch-up plan. market and improve distribution. More visibly, it The solution wasn’t an entirely new idea. A was canceling titles that had thrived on the news- decade before, Gerry Conway had suggested stand for decades, like G.I. Combat and House of DC should have a ‘big bang’ and simply blow

(top) The incredible cover by George Pérez and Alex Ross for the Crisis on Infinite Earths collection. (inset) The coming of the Crisis is hinted at in DC Comics Presents #78 as Harbinger and the Monitor briefly appear.

TM & © DC Comics

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 3

A George Pérez recreation of the most famous Crisis cover, issue #7. (inset) The note that assured Supergirl’s death.

TM & © DC Comics. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).

up the multiple dimensions (the term multiverse hadn’t entered the conversation yet). But there was no appetite for the idea then: the newsstand was still limping along, the comic shops barely born, the average customer still assumed to be an unsophisticated ten- to twelve-year-old. And a lot of the staff had been with DC since the dawn of time, and weren’t anxious to see their life’s work discarded.

By 1985, that had all changed. The company was moving ahead in multiple directions, with challenging projects that would forever change the whole industry beginning to be assembled.

President & Publisher Jenette Kahn was settling into her role leading the DC team and was seeing significant results from the initiatives that had been put in place. There would be risks attendant to launching a project that would ultimately change everything, but there were also great rewards if it worked.

Dick Giordano was now leading the editorial department and was ready for the challenge.

DC had a long, fine history behind the word ‘Crisis.’ In fact, it was the word that arguably had gotten the company into this fine mess, with the original crossovers that linked the Golden Age DC Universe with the contemporary one, two decades before.

This would be the ‘Crisis’ to end all crises (oh, if only we had known!).

To make it magical, the top team in the company was drafted from Teen Titans: editor Len Wein, writer Marv Wolfman, and penciller George Pérez. All three had deep background as comic fans, passionate in their knowledge of the DC lore that they were about to blow up.

To make it serious, the changes had to be dramatic, and feel final. No major DC heroes had died since the final issue of Doom Patrol in 1968 (let’s not elevate the passing of Karate Kid a few months before in Legion to that stature). There needed to be casualties. And there would be.

I suspect somewhere in this BACK ISSUE will be the memo Jenette signed off on as a death warrant (Editor’s note: boy are you ever right, Paul; just look to your left!).

The ramifications of Crisis on Infinite Earths for DC, and ultimately, the whole field of American comics, were indeed serious. Many of the resulting series changes were viewed as healthy revitalizations, and were DC’s strongest commercial launches in a very, very long time.

Others were (and are) debated, with favored characters disappearing. And as our culture— and indeed our scientific theories—have evolved, eliminating a multiverse arguably feels unnecessary. But it felt like a good idea at the time.

And perhaps it couldn’t—and hasn’t—be done better. With four decades of massive company crossovers that have followed from DC and all its major competitors, there isn’t another one looked back on as fondly, considered as memorable, or perhaps executed with much passion as Marv and George put into those pages. It’s worth celebrating. So turn the pages, and jump into BACK ISSUE. Because if there were ever back issues worth talking about, this dozen hit the mark.

4 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

by J o

Earth-One. Earth-Two. Earth-Three. Earth-S. Earth-X. DC fans of a certain age can rattle off the major parallel worlds of the DC Universe. As a certain mini-series once declared, however, there were infinite Earths, and they were a far greater presence in the DC cosmology than even many longtime readers are aware. Join us now in a look back at some of the other alternate realities where history played out differently.

Note that the Earth numbers in quotes were not present in the originals. Most were coined by me in a feature for 2005’s Crisis On Infinite Earths: The Compendium. Some of my 2005 designations have since been reclaimed in DC’s Multiversity Guidebook and Dark Crisis: Big Bang. The numbers here have been updated to reflect them.

“Earth-59”: It was writer-editor Robert Kanigher who set things spinning in March 1955’s Wonder Woman #59 (illustrated by the H.G. Peter Studio). For the first time in DC history, a character traveled to a parallel world and met their counterpart. In this case, the alternate world twin was Princess Tara Terruna, an exact double of Wonder Woman and whose name translated to same. A “warp in time”

somehow linked the two’s physical movements before a lightning strike temporarily propelled WW into TT’s world.

“Earth-Three…?”: Kanigher and Peter returned to the concept in WW #89 (Feb. 1957), this time pitting Wonder Woman against the master of a parallel Earth “which, unlike yours, crime—not justice—triumphs!”

Bearded with pointed ears, the Vandal Savage lookalike seemed to be describing a world later known as Earth-Three.

“Earth-238”: Editor Mort Weisinger joined the parade with January 1958’s Action Comics #238, specifically in an Otto Binder/Jim Mooney tale where the 21st century’s Tommy Tomorrow of the Planeteers was thrust into a ghostly dimension that ultimately led him to an alternate Earth. Tommy discovered that everything there was the mirror reverse (including printed matter) of other Earths…and that events took place 24 hours after they did in his universe. Saving the life of his doppelganger, Tommy used the dimensional device to send himself back home.

hn Wells Rip Hunter, Booster Gold, and Daniel Carter observe the myriad of parallel Earths converging to form a new Multiverse in the conclusion of the mega-series 52 #52.

TM & © DC Comics.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 5

“Earth-258”: Kanigher and Peter were back for Wonder Woman #97 (Feb. 1958), where the Amazing Amazon embarked on a test run of a transporter than could propel its subject anywhere in space or time.

Responding to a distress call, Wonder Woman landed on a parallel Earth whose physical laws were different than her own and made a battle with the dictator Blunt more challenging.

“Earth-146”: In May 1961’s Superman #146 (by Jerry Siegel and Al Plastino), Superman was astonished that he’d seemingly overcome the immutable rule that time could not be changed. After preventing the sinking of Atlantis and the Lincoln assassination as well as evacuating the planet Krypton before it exploded, the Man of Steel finally realized he’d been shunted to another dimension and had changed the history of another Earth rather than his own.

“Earth-661”: Manifesting hitherto unknown mental abilities, Suicide Squad member Karin Grace began transmitting—through painted images—plans for an invasion from a parallel Earth in June 1961’s The Brave and the Bold #37 (by Bob Kanigher, Ross Andru, and Mike Esposito). Pushing her newfound powers to the limit, Karin teleported the Squad to the parallel universe dominated by super-intelligent dinosaurs. Discovering that the giants were being controlled by extraterrestrials, the Squad severed the link and dispersed the impending invasion before Karin teleported everyone home.

Earth-One and Earth-Two: With July 1961’s The Flash #123, editor Julius Schwartz joined the festvities with a seminal adventure by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino, and Joe Giella. Acting on fan interest in the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick and the fact that successor Barry Allen had been depicted as a comic book reader, the team devised a story where the younger Flash accidentally vibrated to a parallel Earth that was home to an older, married Jay Garrick.

A giddy Barry became fast friends with the elder Flash. Their reunions spiraled outward to embrace other 1940s heroes from the Justice Society of America—including annual team-ups with the modern Justice League—and explore other herofilled Earths in a growing multiverse.

Barry and Jay’s worlds were respectively dubbed “Earth-One” and “Earth-Two” in 1963’s Justice League of America #21. Properly, Jay and his elder teammates should have been the ones on Earth-One, but Schwartz and Fox were thinking in terms of where most of DC’s comics were taking place. The editor and writer followed their habit of referring to Jay and company’s home as that “second Earth.”

(top) When Wonder Women meet! Diana meets her Earth-59 doppelganger in Wonder Woman #59. (2nd row) Action Comics #238 lands Tommy Tomorrow in a literal mirror image of his universe. (3rd row left) Wonder Woman struggles with the laws of physics on the parallel Earth of Wonder Woman #97. (3rd row right) The Man of Steel meddles with the history of Earth-146 in Superman #146. (bottom) Great Spielberg’s Ghost!! The Suicide Squad must prevent an invasion from a dimension of super-intelligent dinosaurs in the bizarre The Brave and the Bold #37.

TM & © DC Comics.

6 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

(top) Temporal displacement teams Barry Allen with the Golden Age Flash, Jay Garrick, in The Flash #123.

(2nd row left) Lois Lane witnesses the demise of Earth 963’s Superman in Lois Lane #43. (2nd row right) It’s a wonderful life for Batman in World’s Finest #136.

(3rd row) The Crime Syndicate of Earth-Three in JLA #29. (bottom left) Superboy #116 glimpsed at a not-so different Earth-116. (bottom right) Hal Jordan’s nuptials are interrupted as he elopes to Earth-864 in Green Lantern #32.

TM & © DC Comics.

“Earth-962”: Before getting to that, though, September 1962’s JLA #15 (by Fox, Mike Sekowsky, and Bernard Sachs) introduced a world populated by stone-giants that was revealed to be “separated from Man-Earth by a single minute in time” until dual bombs were detonated on each world at the same time and place. With the dimensional balance upset, the two worlds began to merge in three locations. Working the crisis from each side of the barrier, the stone-giants and the Justice League—and specifically, Green Lantern—reset the degree of separation to one minute and prevented both planets from exploding.

“Earth-963”: Transported to a parallel Earth by an electric shock in June 1963’s Lois Lane #43 (by Leo Dorfman and Kurt Schaffenberger), Superman’s girlfriend became eyewitness to the deaths of Superman and his killer Lex Luthor. Upon learning that Atlantis had never sunk, Lois realized she was in an alternate reality before another electrical jolt sent her home.

“Earth-136”: Continuing the trend in July 1963’s World’s Finest #136 (by Bill Finger, Jim Mooney, and Sheldon Moldoff), a freak thunderstorm sent Batman to a world where he never existed. His panic mounting, the Caped Crusader was confronted by the facts Bruce Wayne was a Clark Kent lookalike who was secretly Superman, that reporter Lois Lane was known as Vicki Vale, and that the Joker was a law-abiding comedian named Freddy Forbes. Using his powers to recreate the storm, Superman was able to open the portal that sent Batman home.

“Earth-308”: In November 1963’s Action Comics #308 (drawn by Al Plastino), it was Superman’s turn to be transported by a freak lightning strike.

This alternate Earth was a mythological mash-up where Hercules and Goliath were the same person in the same orbit as Ben-Hur… and everyone in ancient Greece spoke English. After helping Herc perform six labors, Superman shielded shepherd boy Jason (a.k.a.

David) from a lightning strike and was teleported back home.

“Earths I, M, and R”: Just months after the first JLA/JSA team-up, the evil alien Despero tapped the Justice League’s powerhouse members to create the first designer Earths of the multiverse (January 1964’s JLA #26, by Fox, Sekowsky, and Sachs). Dominated by giant insects (I-Earth), marine life (M-Earth), and super-intelligent reptiles (R-Earth), the new worlds also held good-hearted beings who helped thwart the villain.

Among the questions hanging in the air: Did Despero really have enough power to create three inhabited planets from the ether? Perhaps he simply used his chronal energy to open portals to three existing parallel Earths. R-Earth, for one, could have been the reptilian world previously visited by the Suicide Squad in 1961’s B&B #37.

Earth-Three: JLA #29-30 (June-July 1964) introduced Earth-One and EarthTwo’s logical follow-up. Earth-Three was a world of reversals where Europe was discovered by an American named Columbus and won its independence from the USA in the Revolutionary War. And where President John Wilkes Booth was assassinated by actor Abe Lincoln. Evil triumphed over good on this Earth as exemplified by the Crime Syndicate of America: Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, and Power Ring (counterparts of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern). Over two issues, the bored CSA took on their JLA and JSA counterparts before being captured and imprisoned.

“Earth-116”: August 1964’s Superboy #116 (by Jerry Siegel and Al Plastino) demonstrated that not every parallel Earth had differences to write home about. In this one, an alternate Boy of Steel was catapulted to Earth-One and ultimately met his counterpart. The last page revealed that a seeming coloring error was in fact a point of distinction between the two heroes. The alternate Superboy had an “S” symbol whose yellow/red color scheme was reversed.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 7

(top left) The main divergence in Earth1064 seemed to be its spelling of “Metropolis” in Superboy #117. (bottom left) Superman mistakenly enlisted the aid of an evil alternate of Achilles, Samson, and Hercules from Earth-320 in Action Comics #320. (top right) Entrusted to safeguard a multiverse-traveling device, Batman and Superman instead propel themselves to Earth-148 where they are wanted criminals! From World’s Finest Comics #148. (bottom right) Lana Lang and Lois Lane both cared for a parallel-universe Super-Tot in Lois Lane #57.

TM & © DC Comics.

“Earth-864”: Wedding bells chimed for Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan and Carol Ferris in the opening pages of August 1964’s GL #32 (by Gardner Fox, Gil Kane, and Sid Greene). Just as the ceremony ended, however, a baffled Hal was transported back to Ferris Aircraft. Retracing his recent activities, GL discovered that he’d been exposed to Espian radiation during a recent adventure and that it caused him to mentally inhabit the body of a parallel twin. Traveling to the alternate world, he interrupted his counterpart’s honeymoon long enough for them to devise a solution to prevent him from possessing the other Hal’s body again.

By this point, the notion of multiple Earths was becoming prevalent enough for an editorial note to refer to Earth-Two’s Alan Scott and Earth-Three’s Power Ring. Likewise, October 1964’s Superboy #117 (by Jerry Siegel, Curt Swan, and George Klein) recalled the previous issue’s alternate Superboy and explained the parallel world concept in a tidy two panels.

“Earth-1064”: The latter found Earth-One’s Superboy bumped onto an alternate Earth by a solar event. Save for subtle details like the spellings of “Smallvile” and “Metropolus,” its history seemed to match his own…until an evil quintet of Legionnaires— estranged from the otherwise heroic team—flew into town.

“Earth-320”: Evil counterparts also played into November 1964’s Action Comics #320 (by Otto Binder and Al Plastino). Therein, an accident with a timeray caused Superman to accidentally pluck evil versions of Achilles, Hercules, and Samson from an alternate Earth’s past rather than his own.

The evil nature of the trio—and their additional powers—suggested their point of origin may have been Earth-Three. Within the story itself, Superman recalled the recent evil Legion episode

from Superboy #117, a tale that didn’t fit the Earth-Three model since that world had a heroic Boy of Steel.

“Earth-148”: Years after the Amazons did so, January 1965’s World’s Finest Comics #148 (by Edmond Hamilton, Curt Swan, and Sheldon Moldoff) revealed that an American scientist had created a device that could properly traverse the multiverse. Fearing its potential, late scientist Dr. Norbert had left instructions for Superman and Batman to keep it safe. Unaware of what the creation actually did, the heroes unwittingly activated it and were transported to a parallel Earth where Superman, Batman, and Robin were outlaws and Lex Luthor and Clayface were superheroes. Back on Earth-One, the heroes now had access to a surveillance unit that could monitor events on “Earth-148” (and perhaps other worlds).

This story represented the third variation of an evil twin Earth. In Superboy #117, select heroes from the baseline Earth-One were villains while JLA #29-30’s Earth-Three offered a world of historical reversals and a Crime Syndicate who used EarthOne’s foremost heroes merely as templates for original characters. WFC #148’s distinction was its straightforward flipping of Earth-One’s established heroes and villains. This Earth unofficially appeared three more times in pre-Crisis history, as detailed in the pages ahead.

“Earth-57”: A goofy lead story in March 1965’s Lois Lane #57 (by Leo Dorfman, John Forte, and Sheldon Moldoff) found Lois and Lana convinced that Superman had been temporarily regressed to infancy. While babysitting the Tot of Steel, each woman independently used a device to implant a posthypnotic suggestion that would compel him to propose marriage when he returned to adulthood. The effect did wear off, but this Superman was from a parallel Earth. Back home, he married Lois and Lana because bigamy was legal in its Metropolis.

8 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

“Earth-A”: June/July 1965’s JLA #37-38 (by Fox, Sekowsky, and Sachs) found the Earth-Two Justice Society’s goofball member Johnny Thunder wondering if he had a counterpart on Earth-One and commanded his magical Thunderbolt to find out. Sure enough, Johnny had a parallel world twin, but Earth-One’s Johnny was a crook who seized control of Thunderbolt for himself and ordered him to eliminate the Justice League by canceling out the members’ respective origins in the past. Things only got more chaotic once the Justice Society noticed what was happening on their sister world and the exasperated evil Johnny finally wished that the whole thing had never happened. Thunderbolt complied.

Strictly speaking, Thunderbolt had merely created an altered timeline and not a parallel world. Still, the EarthOne Johnny referred to it as “Earth-A—A for Alternate!”

Regardless, Earth-One had returned to normal by the end of JLA #38, with only Thunderbolt himself still aware of what had gone down.

Earth-X (the First): The Superman titles’ resident scientist Professor Potter— now based in a Mount Tipton laboratory—became the latest figure to create a device that could transport someone to alternate universes in April 1966’s Jimmy Olsen #93 (by Bill Finger and Pete Costanza for editor Mort Weisinger). Minutes after Potter warned Superman’s pal not to touch anything, the top of Mount Tipton was smoldering rubble and Jimmy was on Earth-X, home to bullfighter Perry White, Daily Planet editor Phineas Potter, World’s Fair administrator Clark Kent, and Clark’s assistant Lucy Lane (not to mention historical figures like former President Benedict Arnold). The world’s environment and other factors also endowed Jimmy with powers that he used as Steel-Man, dressed in an outfit that smushed together Superman and Batman’s costumes. Despite Jimmy having blown up his lab, Professor Potter graciously built another Dimension-Traveler and tracked him down. Jimmy grudgingly agreed to go home but only after defeating the evil LUTHAR League and its Joker-like leader (a.k.a—spoiler—Clark!).

This adventure was notable for featuring the first specifically named Earth outside of a Julius Schwartzedited title. Ironically, it was also the first name to be reassigned as Schwartz snatched it in 1973.

“Earth-148, Revisited”: Devising a mirror that exposed an alternate Earth in September 1967 (Flash #174, by John Broome, Carmine Infantino, and Sid Greene), the evil Sam (Mirror Master) Scudder discovered a counterpart of himself who fought a criminal Flash. That led to the wicked Barry Allen trying to swap places with his upstanding Earth-One twin. In theory, this was the same Earth that last appeared in World’s Finest #148. It may also have been the locale for January 1968’s Wonder Woman #175 (by Robert Kanigher, Irv Novick, and Mike Esposito).

Seriously injured and resentful of his girlfriend, Steve Trevor found himself targeted by the Wonder Woman of an alternate Earth who hoped to have him for herself.

Agreeing to a series of challenges on her counterpart’s version of Paradise Island, Earth-One’s Wonder Woman soon found herself at a disadvantage. Gradually regressing to childhood, she was no match for her evil twin and conceded defeat. Steve, however, had also turned into a child and had no interest in being a prize. Returning to Earth-One through “a strange cloud,” WW and Steve

(top) Earth-One’s Johnny Thunderbolt effectively undermines the Justice League of that Earth, this creating Earth-A in JLA #37. (bottom) Jimmy Olsen travels to Earth-X, then becomes that Earth’s hero Steelman in Jimmy Olsen #93.

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40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 9

(top left) Flash and Mirror Master of Earth-148 have reversed roles in The Flash #174. (bottom left) The Flash sees his own adventures in a funnybook in The Flash #179. (right) In Jimmy Olsen #117, the cub photographer is sold into slavery on a topsy-turvy Earth-117.

TM & © DC Comics.

returned to normal.

Although Wonder Woman speculated that the rejuvenation was a general side effect of the parallel dimension, it could just as easily have been specific to the magical Paradise Island alone. If that was the case, it’s possible that this was the established Earth of evil twins. It definitely recurred years later in 1979’s Super Friends #23, where the Justice League encountered the evil Barry Allen of Flash #174 along with Earth-One’s Mirror Master.

Earth-Prime: Catapulted across dimensions by an alien entity in March 1968’s Flash #179, the title character landed on an Earth where kids knew him only as a comic book character. In order to get back home, the Scarlet Speedster needed to build a replica of his Cosmic Treadmill and he needed the funding to buy parts. Arriving at the DC offices in New York, Barry Allen prevailed on the editor of his comic book for a loan. Julius Schwartz dismissed him as an unhinged fan until the stranger changed to the Flash at lightning speed. Bringing

the supplies back to his office, Schwartz watched in amazement as a comic book came to life and the Flash whisked himself back to Earth-One. If nothing else, the veteran editor mused, he’d get a good story out of it.

Illustrated by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, the adventure represented the first Flash script by Cary Bates, who returned as the book’s signature writer in the 1970s. Bates penned a follow-up for Flash #228 (1974) wherein he met Barry Allen and joined co-writer Elliot S. Maggin for a particularly bizarre 1975 JLA/JSA crossover in Justice League of America #123-124 that officially dubbed this so-called “real world” as Earth-Prime. A number of other stories set on “our” Earth followed, some implied and others expressly set on Earth-Prime.

“Earth-117”: November 1968’s Jimmy Olsen #117 (by Otto Binder and Pete Costanza) deposited its title character on the “Planet of the Capes.” In prehistoric times, it detailed, an alien race deposited a towering artifact on Earth that was honeycombed with entrances and eventually buried in desert sands.

Discovering the monolith in the present, Professor Lang translated a warning that each cell would teleport its occupant to a parallel world. Jimmy Olsen became a victim of the relic and found himself on a world whose people wore metal-based garments and where cloth fabric was a rare luxury worn by its elite class as capes. Those without capes were sold into servitude, including the ill-fated Jimmy.

Lurking in the shadows was an alternate version of Jor-El, who had escaped his Krypton’s doom and was profiting off the caste system. Getting rid of Olsen with his Dimension Projector, Jor-El unwittingly sent the Daily Planet reporter back home.

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The story had previously established that wealthy citizens of the world also used Dimension-Projectors to get rid of threats.

Who and what else had been sent to Earth-One? Also undocumented was the fate of the alien monolith left in the desert.

Presumably, Superman brought it somewhere for safekeeping before anyone else was lost in the multiverse.

“Earth-383”: An exploding alien spacecraft sent Supergirl spiraling to a parallel Earth in June 1969’s Adventure Comics #383 (by Kanigher, Win Mortimer, and Murphy Anderson). There, she attended her own funeral, unseen by any mourners. The only exceptions were historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, Joan of Arc, and Sir Isaac Newton, each of whom was effectively performing their greatest hits—the Gettysburg Address, for instance—in the present. Back home after another accident, the Girl of Steel theorized that she’d been on a “negative world” where, “when a person dies on our Earth, his negative double on their world becomes a normal, positive being ... unseen by the negative people and mourned by them as dead.” Supergirl’s appearance there caused her counterpart to blip out of existence only to return after she left.

The implications of the concept are unnerving. How many untold billions of souls were trapped in a bizarre afterlife on the negative Earth after their positive Earth-One twins died?

perfect English, and a billboard-sized marriage license for Lois Lane and Clark Kent revealed Superman’s secret identity.

Professor Farlow Nurd’s attempt to create a second Earth instead altered the original. Flying into Earth’s orbit, the real Superman used the satellite World-Duplicator to restore Earth-One while sending its deranged counterpart to another dimension.

“Earth-399”: Abraham Lincoln was President for life. George Washington freed the slaves. And Superman died three times over, resurrected the first two times as a clone. Such were the details

Earth-Terra: In a two-parter in June/August 1969’s Lois Lane #94 and #96 (by Binder, Swan, and George Roussos), Earth-One’s Lois was suckered into using a magic mirror to trade places with her married counterpart on a parallel Earth called Terra. Alas, alternate Lois’ husband Superman was hot on her heels and Earth-One Lois was stuck raising their baby while the couple let their hair down. Pretending to be a bad mom, the baseline Lois convinced them to come back through the looking glass.

“Earth-387”: After an anti-Kryptonite serum turned Supergirl into a wolf-girl, the heroine lucked out when she met a parallel Earth counterpart. That Supergirl lived on an Earth full of wolf-people and her serum made her human. Swapping potions, each Girl of Steel restored their proper looks (October 1969’s Adventure Comics #387, by E. Nelson Bridwell and Kurt Schaffenberger).

“Earth-388”: March 1970’s Action Comics #388 (by Cary Bates, Curt Swan, and George Roussos) featured perhaps the craziest Earth of them all, one with white oceans, dayglo continents, and no internal logic whatsoever. Sgt. Rock was still fighting World War Two in March 1970, joined by Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers on the battlefield. Lex Luthor’s hair grew uncontrollably whenever he got excited, Bizarro spoke in

(top) Adventure Comics #383 saw Supergirl on a parallel Earth after her own death. (2nd row) Lois Lane of EarthTerra shows off her family in Lois Lane #94. (3rd row left) Supergirl finds herself in a hairy situation, and only the Supergirl of Earth-387 can get her out of in in Adventure Comics #387. (3rd row right) The cover to Action Comics #388 is every bit as crazy as the history of the parallel world depicted inside. (bottom) Superman begins to unravel the mystery of his trip to Earth-399 in Action Comics #399.

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40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 11

of a parallel world that the Earth-One Superman was accidentally pulled into by 24th century historians (April 1971’s Action Comics #399, by Leo Dorfman, Curt Swan, and Murphy Anderson). Afterwards, having survived the incident that was supposed to have killed him, the Man of Steel realized he’d been on an alternate Earth.

Earth-X (the Second): June/August 1973’s latest Justice League/Justice Society in JLA #107108 (by Len Wein, Dick Dillin, and Dick Giordano) was momentous in a couple respects. For one it established Transmatter Cubes in the teams’ respective headquarters, allowing them to teleport between Earths-One and -Two at will. Thanks to stowaway Red Tornado, the test run sent the heroes to an uncharted parallel Earth, one where Nazi Germany had won World War Two and a sextet of superheroes called the Freedom Fighters were waging futile battles of resistance. The FF—composed of heroes once published by Quality Comics—welcomed the visitors’ help in finally ending the long war.

Len Wein’s original name for this latest parallel world used the swastika symbol, something editor Julius Schwartz expressly forbid. Scratching the edges off the symbol, Schwartz declared the world “Earth-X” instead. The Freedom Fighters returned in late 1975, relocating to Earth-One for a FF comic book that ran fifteen issues into 1978. In 1984, Roy Thomas retroactively revealed in All-Star Squadron #31-35 that Earth-X’s heroes had first emigrated from Earth-Two but had little time to explore the idea. No one ever explained where the Quality heroes’ post-war stories took place.

“Earth-276”: The alternate Earth glimpsed in March 1974’s Superman #276 (by Elliot S. Maggin, Curt Swan, and Bob Oksner) grew out of a desire to have the Man of Steel fight his one-time sales rival Captain Marvel, whom DC had recently begun publishing under license in Shazam! In the absence of a true crossover, a surrogate named Captain Thunder (a.k.a. Willie Fawcett)—corrupted by the Monster League of Evil—was cast from his more fanciful world to Earth-One. An inevitable battle ensued but, employing both strength and compassion, Superman successfully broke the spell and sent Captain Thunder home to his proper parallel Earth.

Earth-S: Five months later, a more direct crossover took place in August 1974’s Shazam! #15 (by Denny O’Neil and Bob Oksner). After Lex Luthor tested his Magic Accumulator on a discarded comic book, he found himself in a cartoony wonderland of taking tigers and the world’s wickedest worm.

Exasperated by his encounter with Captain Marvel, Lex aimed the device at himself, retreating to Earth-One. The story made explicit what was already pretty apparent to most readers: The fanciful adventures of Captain Marvel took place on a different world than Superman and company’s more serious Earth-One. In 1976, JLA #135-137 officially decreed that Captain Marvel and the other former Fawcett Comics character were residents of Earth-S (for “Shazam!”). Superman and Captain Marvel finally met for real in JLA #137, kicking off a friendship that resulted in several parallel world visits during the next decade.

“Earth-265”: Barry and Iris Allen’s second honeymoon in June 1978 drew them into the orbit of visitors from a parallel Earth whose people evolved from cetaceans rather than primates (The Flash #265, by Cary Bates, Irv Novick, and Frank McLaughlin). Initially misinterpreting the group’s intentions, the Flash ultimately assured that they could pass along the immunizing qualities of a passing comet to Earth-One.

The Freedom Fighters of Earth-X spring off the page in Justice League of America #107. Superman was set up to battle the Captain Marvel cipher Captain Thunder in Superman #276.

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12 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

“Earth-270”: While testing an experimental plane, the Steve Trevor of a parallel reality burst through the dimensional barriers and crashed off the coast of Earth-One’s Paradise Island in May 1980’s Wonder Woman #270 (by Gerry Conway, Jose Delbo, and Vince Colletta). This dimension’s Trevor had died twice by this point and even the goddess Aphrodite didn’t know how to return this counterpart to his proper home. Instead, the deity decided to make him a home on this Earth in issue #271. Intricately meddling with the memories of anyone who ever knew the original Trevor, the goddess also made everyone forget that Wonder Woman had loved and lost him in the past…including WW herself. That created all sorts of problems down the road but those are outside the purview of this survey.

“Earth-500”: Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano delivered a particularly nice addition to the multiverse in December 1980’s Detective Comics #500. Approached by the supernatural Phantom Stranger, Batman was given the opportunity to travel to an alternate Earth where the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne had yet to take place. The Dark Knight accepted the offer without question, determined that the young Bruce Wayne of this world would never experience the same life-changing tragedy that he had. Coming along for the ride, Robin soon discovered that the alternate universe had neither a Paradise Island nor a Krypton— and thus no eventual Wonder Woman or Superman. Was it right, he privately mused, to sacrifice all the lives saved by Batman by preventing his creation? Brennert’s solution to this dilemma—and the clever touches along the way—made for an inspiring conclusion and one of the finest Batman stories ever.

“Earth-C+”: In the midst of a March 1981 meeting of Captain Marvel and Superman in DC Comics Presents #34 (by Roy Thomas, Rich Buckler, and Dick Giordano), the heroes were magically deposited in another dimension while two locals from that realm took their place on Earth. The couple happened to be cartoon rabbits named Hoppy and Millie, characters who starred in Fawcett’s Funny Animals during the 1940s. Even better, Hoppy could shout “Shazam” and become Marvel Bunny, a persona he used to kayo King Kull at the United Nations before everyone returned to their worlds of origin.

In the 1940s, Marvel Bunny never interacted with the rest of the Shazam-based heroes save for a single tale with Mary Marvel in 1948’s Marvel Family #28. In that story, Billy Batson traveled to Animalville to summon Hoppy, but DCCP #34 was the first to place Marvel Bunny in another dimension. He and Millie later met a bunch of other DC funny rabbits in Oz-Wonderland Wars #2 (1986), interacting with characters from worlds that Roy Thomas had named “Earth-C” and “Earth-C Minus.”

“Earth-377”: June 1981’s Superman Spectacular #1 (by Bob Rozakis, Paul Kupperberg, Adrian Gonzales, and Vince Colletta) teased the existence of an alternate Earth dominated by magic rather than science. Lex Luthor tried funneling some of that supernatural energy to Earth to help him overcome Superman. A year later, in August 1982’s Superman #377, Luthor’s partner Terra-Man actually traveled to that magicbased world, accessed through an interdimensional terminal. Joining forces with his twin from that world, Terra-Man lured Superman to the magical Earth in anticipation of a quick defeat. The Man of Steel wasn’t such easy prey, though, using enchanted objects and Zatannastyle backwards spells to thwart the twin Terra-Men. Earth-C and Earth-C-Minus: A preview in November 1981’s New Teen Titans #16 and the following month’s Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #1 formally declared that most of DC’s funny animal series dating back to the 1930s took place on their own distinct world: Earth-C (for cartoon). The series kicked off with a crossover that found Earth-One’s Superman discovering the impact Starro was having on his own world and that of the funny animals. (Credits on the two-part Zoo Crew debut included scripter

More multiverse madness: (top left) Lex Luthor in Shazam! #15; (2nd row left) worlds converge in Flash #265; (top right) the Amazons in Wonder Woman #270; (middle) Phantom Stranger and Batman in Detective Comics #500; (bottom) Captain Carrot arrives in New Teen Titans #16 preview.

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40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 13

(top left) Wonder Woman #293 sees The Adjudicator unleashes the Horseman of Death on an unsuspecting Earth-I. (right) One of many visions of alternate worlds shown in Legion of SuperHeroes #300. (bottom left) Blue Beetle and the Charlton heroes are recruited by Pariah in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7.

TM & © DC Comics.

Roy Thomas, pencilers Ross Andru [Superman] and Scott Shaw [everything else], and inker Bob Smith.)

A year after the funny animal superheroes premiered, the Zoo Crew discovered that there was another cartoon-based world out there in January/February 1983’s Captain Carrot #14-15 (by E. Nelson Bridwell, Scott Shaw, Rick Hoberg, Al Gordon, and Carol Lay). Earth-C-Minus was home to Just’a Lotta Animals, comical counterparts of the Justice League of America. During the two-parter, the assembled heroes made brief visits to several other worlds in the multiverse that were homes to characters strangely similar to the Disney mice and ducks, Krazy Kat, Pogo, and Tom & Jerry. They also met EarthTwo’s Justice Society, but Power Girl snorted, “I’m not working with a team of funny animals!”

“Earth-I”: The climax of an all-heroine trilogy in April 1982’s Wonder Woman #293 continued the tale of a cosmic entity called the Adjudicator who had already struck Earth-One, Two, and X. Next, he turned his attention to Earth-I (for immortality), where advances in health and science had led to a world where dying was almost unheard of. Consequently, the arrival of the Horseman of Death created psychic terror among those of Earth-I, traumatizing the Earth-One empath Raven and prompting her teammates Wonder Girl and Starfire to rush to the rescue thanks to a cosmic portal on Paradise Island. Paul Levitz plotted the story with script by Roy Thomas, pencils by Gene Colan, and inks by Frank McLaughlin.

“Earths-161, 341, 147, 202, 245, 269, and 355”: Along with the core Legion team of Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, and Larry Mahlstedt; guest-artists Kurt Schaffenberger; Howard Bender and Frank Giacoia; Curt Swan and Dan Adkins; Dave Cockrum; James Sherman; and Joe Staton and Dick Giordano contributed glimpses of several parallel Earths in March 1983’s Legion of Super-Heroes #300.

In the famed Time Institute, Brainiac Five had been summoned to check in on a longtime patient who was now experiencing surprising visions of roads not taken by the Legion.

In one, Superboy—on the cusp of manhood—resigned from the team, vowing to protect Earth exclusively with no more jaunts into time or space. Other increasingly bleak scenarios found many of the Legionnaires slain by Computo, mourning their dead as the Adult Legion, conscripted into an army fighting the Khunds with deadly force, living in a world stripped of magic in the aftermath of the Earthwar, and betrayed and killed by Blok and the Dark Man. The mystery patient was ultimately revealed as Douglas Nolan, the twin brother of Ferro Lad who had died defeating the Sun-Eater years earlier. Although initially skeptical of “the old alternate worlds theory” (despite involvement in a previous JLA/JSA crossover), Brainiac Five concluded that Douglas’ powerful brain was seeking a parallel Earth where he could merge with an alternate version of himself who lived a happy fulfilling existence. Pinpointing a reality where the Nolan twin joined the Legion as a second Ferro Lad, the long-suffering figure vanished from Earth-One and into a new life. (The larger point of the story had been to officially explain away the prophetic 1960s Adult Legion stories as glimpses of an alternate Earth rather than the set-in-stone future of the Earth-One team.)

Earth-Four: By 1985, DC had scheduled the multiverse for demolition, literally dissolving Earth-Three in January 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (by Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Mike DeCarlo). Before that happened, though, a few more realities were created just to die. In 1983, DC had purchased the Charlton Comics heroes with plans to introduce them in a weekly anthology set on Earth-One. Thus, when Harbinger recruited Blue Beetle for the Monitor’s first wave of defenders in Crisis #1, it was implied that he was an obscure hero from the same world as the JLA, et al. Belatedly, issue #6 (June 1985) revealed that he was actually from the

14 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

previously unknown Earth-Four and brought in the Beetle’s comrades Captain Atom, the Question, Peacemaker, Nightshade, and Judomaster.

Earth-Six: Meanwhile, Pariah—eternally cursed to teleport from one doomed reality to another—materialized on the hitherto uncharted Earth-Six in Crisis #4. This technologically advanced planet had global rulers who had ruled for generations. As of 1985, the planetary leaders were the nuclear-powered Lady Quark, her electricity-generating husband Lord Volt (Karak), and their plant-controlling daughter Princess Fern (Liana). Those abilities were irrelevant in the face of the crisis’ antimatter destruction and Pariah pulled Lady Quark away with him before she perished with the rest of her people.

“Earth-1915, Earth-X (maybe) and Earth-11”: August 1985’s Blue Devil #18 (by Dan Mishkin, Gary Cohn, Alan Kupperberg, and Rick Magyar) kept the roll call of doom rolling with its depiction of a world where the Great War of 1915 lasted thirteen years, creating great destruction but also spurring incredible scientific advances. Vignettes in issue #19 detailed Blue Devil’s journey back to Earth-One, with visits to other parallel Earths, including a variation on Earth-X, where Verner Bros. produced Nazi propaganda, and a gender-flipped reality where the female Jackie Verner replaced the male Jock.

Earth-12: One week after December 1985’s Crisis #12 closed the book on the DC multiverse, E. Nelson Bridwell, Joey Cavalieri, and Carol Lay’s The Oz-Wonderland War #3 (a last gasp for the Captain Carrot title) ended with a delightful surprise. Rodney (Captain Carrot) Rabbit had returned to his art studio on Earth-C only to be summoned by a strangely familiar quintet. It was the Inferior Five and they were asking for help in returning to Earth-Twelve.

Created by Bridwell for 1966’s Showcase #62, the Inferior Five was a group of second- generation heroes who didn’t quite instill the same confidence that their parents did. Featured in two more issues of Showcase and ten of their own title, the quintet lived on a demented variation of Earth-One that included many of DC’s major heroes, but it had never been explicitly identified as a parallel world or given a numerical designation until this issue.

Presumably, books like Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope also took place on Earth-Twelve.

Earth-D: Thirteen years after Crisis #12, another world was added to the maxi-series’ death-list in December 1998’s Legends of the DCU: Crisis On Infinite Earths #1 (by Marv Wolfman, Paul Ryan, and Bob McLeod).

Earth-D (for Diversity) depicted a world whose Justice Alliance reflected greater ethnic and racial range for traditionally white characters such as Superman, Barman, Wonder Woman, and the Flash. The flashback preceded the conclusion of Crisis #4, where all but five core parallel worlds were erased from existence.

Seemingly.

Also in December 1998, Mark Waid oversaw a sequel to 1996’s Kingdom Come, specifically several

one-shots bookended by a two-part mini-series.

Illustrated by Mike Zeck and John Beatty, the final pages of The Kingdom #2 revealed that the multiverse lived on as a vast array of alternate realities known collectively as Hypertime. Largely ignored by most creators, the prospect of a new multiverse emerged again in the aftermath of 2006’s Infinite Crisis #7 and the revelation in 52 #52 (2007) that the seemingly singular Earth was part of a group of (cough) 52 distinct iterations, These new revelations were explored and reassessed in the years that followed, most significantly in the Grant Morrison-directed Multiversity titles during 2014 and 2015. Everything coalesced on the last page of September 2022’s Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths #4 when the unlimited multiverse returned. In December’s Dark Crisis: Big Bang #1, Mark Waid took readers on a quick tour of some of those worlds via Barry (Flash) Allen and Kid Flash.

The one-shot concluded with a two-page text spread that offered a sampler list—with Earth numbers—of more of the new worlds, annotated to indicate comic books they had first appeared in. They ranged from recent virtual Elseworlds projects and Multiversity to Silver Age imaginary tales and some of the parallel worlds described earlier in this article. Even the classic Earth-One was included on the list under the new designation of “Earth-1958.”

“This is the multiverse,” Waid declared (through proxy Barry Allen). “We—all of us—have a door to a place without limits. Where there are no rules… just flying. Where anything and everything can happen whenever we step through that door…and just imagine.”

(top) Legends of the DCU: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 revisited and expanded upon the fateful Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline. (bottom) Barry Allen and Kid Flash continue to explore the multiverse in Dark Crisis: Big Bang #1.

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JOHN WELLS is a comics historian specializing in DC Comics.

He is the author of the TwoMorrows books American Comic Book Chronicles: 1960–1964 and 1965–1969, and co-author (with Keith Dallas) of the book Comic Book Explosion.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 15

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Blame Gary Thompson of Dearborn, “In the parallel worlds, you could undercut MI. His letter to the editor ran in Green what you were doing on Earth so that Lantern #143 (August 1981). There, he events on Earth didn’t matter so much. caught a continuity error, which got You’d have a tragedy or a death on series writer Marv Wolfman thinking.

Earth that could be reversed on When Marv and his GL editor, other worlds. And we felt strongly, Len Wein, first suggested what let us have one world where the became Crisis on Infinite Earths stakes really matter.” to Publisher Jenette Kahn, none Wolfman suggested to Jenette had an inkling of what was being that something be done to pare created. To Jenette, hired in 1976 to things back, reducing the continuity save a dying company, she found to something manageable. too many of the titles off-putting Legend has it that Jenette to potential new readers. There approved the idea on the spot jenette kahn was too much continuity, too without consulting newly appointCaricature by Neal Adams. much contradictory continuity, ed Executive Editor Dick Giordano and it made her head hurt. She told me in 2011, or her head of Business Affairs, Paul Levitz. Once

The amazing wraparound cover to Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 by George Pérez.

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40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 17

(top left) The Justice Society of America assembles in AllStar Comics #3. (top right) Bringing together a group of major characters from across the line to create the Justice League in Brave and the Bold #28 was a huge breakthrough. (bottom) The humble beginnings of the multiverse sprang from the legendary issue Flash #123.

TM & © DC Comics.

given the green light, Wolfman began thinking about it, using ideas he had harbored since he was a young teen devouring comics by the pound. But, there wasn’t a mandate, an approved project on the schedule, or another talent assigned. Heck, it didn’t even have an editor, although boyhood chums Wolfman and Wein could easily write and edit, a practice in vogue at the time. Both represented the generation of creators who were weaned on the Silver Age comics and fell in love with Stan Lee’s interconnected Marvel Universe, trying to instill the same ethos throughout their work at DC in the 1970s.

MEET…THE LIBRARIAN

Once Giordano and Levitz signed off on the idea, it slowly developed. Wolfman intended to start the mystery by seeding a new character, the Monitor, through the comics as he observed and cataloged the abilities of the heroes and villains. Based on the Librarian, a character he created at 15, Wolfman thought a slow tease would be fun. For the record, that first appearance was in New Teen Titans #21 (July 1982). Giordano hinted at this in his “Meanwhile…” columns beginning in late 1982. The title, History of the DC Universe was first mentioned in his June 1984 column.

It’s interesting to look at all the essays and dissertations that try to analyze the maxiseries that have flowed through the years (and there are quite a few). One of the most amusing for its wrongheaded conclusion is “Worlds Will Live, Worlds Will Die: Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Anxieties and Calamities of the ComicBook Event” by Sean Guynes for Inks’ Summer 2019 edition.

There, he pronounces, “Highlighting current concerns in comics and media studies, I argue that in addition to voicing late-Cold War anxieties about global capitalism and the generalized, easily marketable woes of postmodernity through the trope of a calamitous event of unprecedented proportions, Crisis also exhibited anxieties about franchising in the comic book and media industries in the 1980s. It is no coincidence that the so-called Dark Age of comics (c. 1985–2001) overlapped with unprecedented media deregulation and conglomeration in the US. At the same time, the production of saleable, media-portable IP became the driving force behind comic book companies’ 18 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

financial success. Crisis gave voice to both the cultural and economic anxieties of the comic book industry in the 1980s while inaugurating the event comic as a publishing tool for rebooting and revitalizing fictional universes. In the years since Crisis attempted to collapse the complexity of DC’s story worlds, comic-book companies have employed event comics in increasingly frantic measures, hoping in each case to restore some narrative order to their IP and to boost sales while also striving to produce stories and art that set them apart from competitors.”

Really, all Marv wanted to do was tell a story. Back then, no one used the term ‘IP’, and no one had any anxiety other than Jenette, who worried that Marvel had been eating DC’s lunch for a decade.

It wasn’t until January 3, 1983, that a memo went to Editorial, beginning to bring them into the brewing plan, asking for the Monitor to start appearing across the line, Internally, it was determined the event would be a dozen issues, the first 10 telling the main story and the final two outlining the new, permanent history of the new DC Universe.

At this time, George Pérez was coming off the ill-fated first attempt at a JLA/Avengers crossover and was looking for something huge to replace the pent-up energy that had been building up for that project. As a result, he was a natural fit for the new series and eagerly awaited word of when he could begin.

DC’S HODGE-PODGE CONTINUITY

DC was never designed for such interconnected storytelling. Back in the Golden Age, the comics originally produced by National Allied, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s company, were a self-contained mélange of genres and characters.

Even after Action Comics #1 arrived in 1938— ushering in the super-hero genre—the notion of the various costumed crimefighters interacting with one another never occurred to the creators and staff of the day.

In fact, when MC Gaines’ All-American Comics gave us All-Star Comics #3 and the Justice Society of America, it was just a clever way to promote backup characters from National and All-American who didn’t have their own self-titled comic books.

Once a member gained such a promotion, they left the team to make room for another backup feature.

Arguably, the first hint that the stories in All Star and the host title were in the same reality came from William Moulton Marston, who, in 1942’s Sensation Comics #11, featured the story “Mission to Planet Eros.” The Amazon Princess recalls events from the chapter “Shanghaied into Space,” which appeared a month earlier in All-Star Comics #13. This may be the first time a character was introduced in the team-up book that went on to appear in the character’s own comic.

(left) Justice League of America #22, the first Crisis story. (right) Wonder Girl Donna Troy’s origin began as Teen Titans writer Bob Haney’s misunderstanding of the character.

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(left) The multiverse expands with Earth-X in Justice League of America #107. (right) The futures of Kamandi and the Legion of Super-Heroes made for more branches in the multiverse.

Karate Kid #15.

TM & © DC Comics.

Sure, Superman, Batman, and Robin shared the cover of World’s Finest Comics, but those were promotional, much like the heroes’ cameos in two issues of All-Star. Even when Superman and Batman became best friends and teammates in World’s Finest (a brainstorm to address a reduction in page count), none of those adventures referenced anything that occurred in other books, and it was years before either of their rogues appeared in those pages.

National’s editorial offices were treated as individual fiefdoms with little in the way of crossovers of even the talent, let alone the characters.

That began to alter when The Brave and the Bold introduced the Justice League of America, pulling costumed champions from across the line regardless of editor.

Still, Lori Lemaris’ Atlantis in Mort Weisinger’s Superman titles looked nothing like the Atlantis Editor George Kashdan was using in Aquaman.

Lori and Aquaman were quickly established as

living in different Atlantean cities whose people evolved in distinct ways (1960’s Adventure Comics #280). E. Nelson Bridwell named them Tritonis and Poseidonis in 1977. While Mort’s Legion of Super-Heroes depicted one 30 th century, other superhero titles had their own versions of the future.

Soon after, Editor Julius Schwartz and writer Gardner Fox borrowed from science fiction pulps and brought the notion of parallel worlds to comics. As we all know, “The Flash of Two Worlds” in 1961 began merging the characters from the Golden Age into the Silver Age. The sales success led them to craft “Crisis on Earth-Two,” the seminal JLA tale that brought the legendary teams together. And again, the sales spike led to annual summer crossovers for the next 20 years, all using “crisis” in their story titles.

By the time Wolfman, Wein, Mike Friedrich, Cary Bates, and Elliot Maggin made it to the ranks of working writers for National, they had all been enchanted by the casual cameos and crossovers from Marvel, whose success had eroded National’s sales. Bit by bit, continuity reared its head across the line. For example, when Wonder Woman gave up her powers to remain on Earth, writer Denny O’Neil had her resign from the JLA (it certainly helped that O’Neil wrote both titles).

But Earth-One subsequently gave us Earth-Two, Earth-Three, Earth-X, Earth-S, and others. Fans, similarly raised on continuity, reacted to all of this favorably, at least at first. Letters to the comics and in the pages of the amateur fanzines that had begun appearing throughout the 1960s all theorized about contradictions or made their own connections.

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Origins were told, retold, and altered over time.

Superboy was added in 1944, for one, and there were two separate origins apiece for Luthor and Speedy in the 1950s, while Robert Kanigher’s Wonder Woman origin changed William Moulton Marston’s initial version.

Wolfman and Wein were responsible for the first conscious modern day retcon by producing an origin for Wonder Girl, who was merely Diana as a teen in Robert Kanigher’s increasingly fanciful Wonder Woman stories but was mistaken as a separate character by writer Bob Haney when assigned to pair Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Wonder Girl for Teen Titans. Sadly, Donna Troy has been a continuity conundrum ever since.

In 1970, the King arrived at DC Comics. Jack Kirby brought with him the Fourth World, which he intended to be separate from the growing DC Universe. Instead, Publisher Carmine Infantino had Kirby start introducing these concepts in the pages of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, adding a layer of cosmic doings that didn’t match anything else in the evolving mythos. Later, when those titles were canceled, Kirby created Kamandi and, with issue #29, established it as part of the DCU when the Last Boy on Earth discovered an empty Superman uniform. Of course, his Earth After Disaster and the established future of the Legion didn’t add up, so things were growing convoluted. Kamandi #29 triggered an immediate response from Elliot S! Maggin, who revealed in Superman #295 that Kamandi and the Legion existed in parallel timelines, which was illustrated in the 1978 Kamandi/Karate Kid crossover played with that again.

(top) DC house ads teased the coming of the Monitor. (bottom) The first appearance of the Monitor from New Teen Titans #21. Readers had no idea how important this brief cameo would become.

TM & © DC Comics

THE GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES

As the planning progressed, management of the recently renamed DC Comics began to plan for the company’s 50th anniversary. Wolfman’s continuity compression event was pencilled in as the seminal event. To enable easy reference, Jenette eventually approved hiring Peter Sanderson, who always took a scholarly approach to his fannishness, to read everything published and take notes. By that time, the notion of a companion book, a who’s who encyclopedia of some sort, had marv wolfman come up in discussion. It would © Scott Edelman. generate some buzz and provide the company with its first real property catalog for licensing and international uses.

Sanderson finished his work in 1983, taking four times as long as estimated, according to Wolfman, and left staff, and the History of the DC Universe and Who’s Who were approved concepts, with some preliminary press mentions to prime the pump. At the same time, Marvel had a toy deal fall through, and the accompanying tie-in comic was resurrected as a maxiseries.

Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter took the major events, had his various titles reflect the changes, and ran with them as the 12-part Secret Wars rolled out (of all the changes, the alien black costume for Spider-Man is the only one to 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 21

The Crisis at its genesis. The title page for Crisis on Infinite Earths #1.

Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

remain). Similarly, Shooter thought a comic November 1973). Now, these heroes—Uncle Sam, with details about all the characters with stats the Ray, Black Condor, Human Bomb, Phantom like those on baseball cards would be useful. Lady, Doll Man—had their own adventures and The original Official Handbook of the Marvel backstories appended to the DC Universe.

Universe ran for 15 issues from 1982-84 and Finally, in the early 1980s, Paul Levitz acquired certainly influenced DC’s thinking. the Charlton Comics Action Heroes—Sarge Steel, Complicating some of the thinking Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, Nightshade, was that DC had, in the early 1970s, Judomaster—as a gift for Dick Giordano. licensed the Fawcett heroes, bringAfter an aborted attempt to feature ing Captain Marvel to the DC Unithem in DC’s first weekly comic, they verse, uncomfortably squeezed were handed to Marv to integrate into the less fanciful adventures into Crisis, eventually setting them of Superman. The other heroes— on their own parallel world.

Spy Smasher, Ibis, Bulletman, All told, this was nowhere near et. al.—made brief appearances as organic as the Marvel Universe in the early 1970s but were and presented both opportunities then off-limits until DC formally and challenges. acquired the library of characters Between 1981, when Jenette in 1991, shoehorning them first heard the pitch, and 1983, she in. And while DC acquired the asked for very little beyond, you len wein assets of Quality Comics in the know, offing the fastest man alive.

TM & © DC Comics.

1950s, they merely continued Every now and then, she off-handto publish Blackhawk and also revived Plastic edly commented to Dick or Marv that some Man in the 1960s to ensure no one else stole character’s costume looked fusty and needed the dormant name. Nelson Bridwell had been updating. Wein turned to newcomer Stephan reprinting stories of the Quality heroes in various DeStefano, best known today for the wonderful 100-Page Super-Spectaculars until Len Wein work he and Bob Rozakis did on ‘Mazing Man, for used that line’s heroes for “Crisis on Earth-X” new costume ideas, some of which were held off for Justice League of America #107-108 (October- until Who’s Who.

TM & © DC Comics.

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WORK BEGINS IN EARNEST

Late in 1983, Giordano received permission to hire an assistant editor to work with Wolfman and Wein on both projects, and on January 9, 1984, I joined the team. Interestingly, that same day Dick issued a memo to staff making it clear using the Monitor was not an optional choice. A February 24 memo clarified which titles needed to feature him and which ones, set outside the DCU, were exempt.

As most BI readers know, what followed was a frenzied few months of plotting, brainstorming, and, admittedly, some panicking. Getting the editors on board had its challenges, as did properly communicating the changes and need for crossovers to the creators.

Most weeks, Len, Marv, and I would sit in the conference room at 666 Fifth Avenue and begin slowly shaping the series. Where did the multiverse come from? What did the Monitor want? How were we going to collapse the multiverse? Who would live, who would die? By April 18, we had hammered out enough to know that there needed to be a reaction for every action, so if there was a Monitor, there needed to be his opposite. An Anti-Monitor. The name was always intended as a placeholder, but we all struggled to come up with a better alternative until we ran out of time.

In May, there was a three-day off-site editorial retreat, and one day was devoted to the Crisis and its implications for the entire line and internal continuity. Once again, Dick made it clear the Monitor had to make two appearances, and while most editors signed off, one disliked being told what to do with his title and stopped talking to everyone until we returned to Manhattan.

The weekly sessions were no longer needed, but it was clear more time was required. Marv stepped back from his part-time editorial role, handing Star Trek to Mike W. Barr to write/edit while keeping his Titans books and Crisis. That now meant I would go out to his Queens home and plot at length. There would be at least one day-long session at his home and then another intense session at a diner, where George joined us, bringing his thoughts.

Somewhere as spring turned to summer, it was clear to Dick that Len and Marv cowriting and coediting Crisis and Who’s Who was not feasible.

Given Len’s strengths with the continuity, it was decided he would be given the encyclopedia while Marv and George would continue on Crisis. I, of course, would work on both and make certain communication flowed both ways.

At this point, Roy Thomas began writing voluminous memos to share his thoughts on how best to integrate his Earth-Two heroes into the event.

Interestingly, Roy was fine with collapsing the multiverse and, while he disliked some of the final

The character Harbinger foretold of the coming Crisis for the DC Universe. George Pérez original art for the inside front cover of The History of the DC Universe #1. Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics

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george pérez © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons.

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decisions, was an excellent collaborator.

In early July, a contingent went out to California for the San Diego Comic-Con, and while there, Dick hosted a major meeting with Len, Marv, Roy, Gerry Conway, me, and others. The summary memo from July 3 ticked off numerous plot points and character bits that would be used in Crisis or be added to the individual comics. There were questions raised about characters such as Black Orchid and Ragman, while one idea had it that the Earth-One Jimmy Olsen meets his Earth-Two counterpart, and then both die doing something heroic.

Here, the notion of Wally West inheriting the mantle of The Flash was first documented.

The first issue was fully plotted, and George was finally free to get to work. He was given 25 pages, which was later expanded to a full 32, with issue #1 going ad-free, and therefore, he could boast a wraparound cover. Instantly, George’s workload expanded, and the race was on to get each issue done on time, knowing we would be extra-sized for at least issue #7 and probably at the end, too.

Marv finally began fleshing out the subsequent issues in enough detail to provide a complete overview to the editors in October. By then, the notion of the final two issues being the history had been abandoned, but not forgotten.

Along the way, I was dutifully assisting Len with his books, Marv on Titans and Mike on Star Trek. Dick handed me DC Challenge as my first

(opposite page) The Crime Syndicate of America watch their reality fall in Crisis #1, page 5. (top) Pérez and Giordano pack this double page spread from Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 full of detail. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (bottom) The Crisis expands in issue #3.

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(top) Comics Interview #26 featured a lengthy interview about (what else?) Crisis on Infinite Earths. (bottom) More amazing art from the Pérez/Giordano team from Crisis #3.

Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com) TM & © DC Comics.

real editorial assignment, and so I was being kept very busy. With Marv in Queens and me busier in the offices, the plotting discussions evolved into the more comfortable and familiar team for Marv and George, officially beginning with issue #5, but George was kibbitzing from #2 onward.

With issue #1 completed, it was time to figure out how to tie the other books into our events, and Marv outlined his thoughts in a November memo. Here, he invited editors to jump on board or, at a minimum, fully reflect the red skies, signaling cosmic danger, with the books coming out over the summer of 1985. A follow-up memo on Nov. 9 recapped who had responded and what would happen, The first issue came out on December 11, 1984, and the comics-reading world was never the same.

EARLY REACTIONS AND TIE-IN CHALLENGES

Creatively, the decision to publish Crisis and Who’s Who on the new flexographic printing presses at World Color Press was perhaps unwise. Originally designed for printing on wax milk cartons, not 30-pound newsprint, the process resulted in garish pages with some of the line art missing. Artist George Pérez was furious when he received his first look and threatened to quit if this was not rectified.

Of course it was.

That same month, Dan Mishkin began a series of memos that suggested things to do with the Red Tornado, T.O. Morrow’s android villain turned hero. The idea was to make him a heel again, with a new, darker outfit. While the plan never materialized, it showed how passionate some creators were to take full advantage of the coming changes.

Similarly, as soon as Steve Englehart replaced Len Wein as writer of Green Lantern, beginning with January 1985’s issue #188, he and Editor Andy Helfer were eager to use the Crisis to foment massive changes to the GL Corps, which included new uniforms for the team.

This was witnessed in Crisis #9, when Guy Gardner’s new outfit was introduced, and inker Jerry Ordway had to modify George’s pencilled pages.

Based on the letters and reviews in the zines, fans were suitably entertained, but we didn’t fully know the impact until convention season rolled around, and by then, we had five issues out.

Pérez was in his glory, using the Who’s Who research and his own collection for inspiration, ensuring as many characters were seen throughout the dozen issues as possible. Marv recalls telling George to put three heads and the merging words on the cover to issue #5, but when he turned in the finished art, there were 95 heads instead. All the major characters across 50 years, and more than a few minor players, could be found across the series. We had been asked by Roy Thomas to leave Arak out of the DCU, keeping him separate, which we agreed to, and then he created a different Arak for Infinity, Inc. The one notable exception was Hal Jordan, no longer a Green Lantern at the time, and that’s a shame.

George, inked by Dick Giordano, looked great once the book was printed on the proper press. But as Executive Editor, Dick was struggling with the denseness of the pages and even with assistants helping with backgrounds, it proved too much. When it was clear he needed to skip issue #4, to be inked by Mike DeCarlo, a permanent replacement was needed. Editorial Coordinator Pat Bastienne had been quietly recruiting Jerry Ordway to

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return to work at DC after he left over a page rate dispute. He had committed to eight issues of John Byrne’s Fantastic Four and thought the timing would work. Instead, Pat begged him to start earlier with issue #5. Atop all this, Jerry had agreed to illustrate a DC Comics Presents Annual for Schwartz.

His solution was to ask his Milwaukee studio mate Al Vey to step in to help with backgrounds, adding blacks, and erasing pages. Somehow, he convinced Schwartz to let him out of penciling the annual, which went to the late, lamented Ed Barreto. He and Vey would still ink it, which made for a pressure-packed few months. Somehow it all got done, and the Pérez/Ordway was actually superior to what Dick was able to bring to the work.

Readers agreed, voting them as best Penciller/ Inker at the 1986 Kirby Awards, presented at the San Diego Comic-Con. Marv couldn’t bring himself to kill the Golden Age Superman outright, who Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster contributed to the world’s popular culture. In a memo to Roy Thomas in February 1985, he outlined his thoughts that the original Superman, Lois Lane, and the Earth-Prime Superboy that Julie Schwartz was already working on would be sent away outside reality. Later, he would add EarthThree’s Alexander Luthor to the collection.

In the same memo, Marv lamented that after asking for cooperation for all of 1984, it wasn’t until issue #1 arrived that people woke up to the possibilities, giving him half the maxiseries to accommodate their requests. He also asked for help figuring out what to do with The Spectre, not quite seen fully as the wrath of God at this juncture, but “too powerful not include.”

In July, issue #7 hit the stands, and Supergirl’s

death garnered DC some rare mainstream press.

After all, she was just in a big-budget film a year earlier [see this issue’s Pro2Pro for more on this]. Fans were aghast but also thrilled that we delivered on our promises that major deaths were going to occur. The follow-up, the death of the Flash, really rocked the readers. How could Barry Allen, the first of the Silver Age era of heroes, be gone? Who could be next? This series, with its bold decisions and real consequences, has left an indelible mark on the comic book industry, and it’s all thanks to the readers who have been integral to this community.

Jenette Kahn told me in our interview, found in BI #57, “One of the things we decided with the series was that the stakes were going to be very real.

If we bumped off a character during the course of the Crisis, the character would remain dead, and we were able to honor that promise for a number of years. I understand that some of those characters have returned. [chuckles] But you know, for a

(left) The cover to issue #5 featured 95 heads. Count them all! (right) The original art for the cover of Crisis #6, featuring the Anti-Monitor.

Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 27

(left) The splash page from issue #6 by Pérez and Ordway. Original art courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (right) Crisis #7 gave us the death of Supergirl and the best remembered cover of the series. (opposite page) The death of the Flash from Crisis #8, as seen in Anthony Tolin’s production color guide. Original art and color guide courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics

long time, one of the most memorable, searing images was of Superman shrieking to the heavens as he held Supergirl in his— a dead Supergirl in his arms. I think that series told our readers that we meant business, that we were going to tell stories where there were real consequences, where things really mattered.”

Interestingly, Jenette asked for Supergirl to be killed while Paul Levitz lobbied to have her permanently relocated to the 30th century for his use in Legion of Super-Heroes but was overruled.

WRAPPING IT UP

By the summer of 1985, Marv and George were plotting how to wrap everything up and reset the DCU status quo for 1986 and beyond. Press had quoted management as saying these changes were permanent, so what did that mean?

First, while DC was busy growing its licensing department under Mary Moebus (now Edlin), little discussion was held about what the absence of these characters would mean to them. Such cross-department conversations hadn’t happened because no one—from Jenette down to the guys in the mailroom—had ever done something on this scale before.

So much focus has been on the familiar character deaths that the newly created characters got short shrift. Sure, Pariah was a whiner, but

Harbinger had interesting potential, as did Lady Quark, an older woman, royalty in her world, someone with powers that nearly rivaled Captain Atom or Firestorm. With Ted Grant (Wildcat)’s crippling, Roy gave the catsuit to Yolanda Montez for a revamped hero, similar to Marv keeping the name but totally reinventing Dr. Light as the scientist turned reluctant hero Kimiyo Hoshi. There was also Superboy from Earth-Prime, our world’s first superhero, and Alexander Luthor, the hero of EarthThree. And well, you all know what happened to Superboy-Prime. Not to miss out, Marv also created Kole for Titans, knowing she wouldn’t survive the cosmic cataclysm, a real surprise to readers.

While Marv and I kept everyone in Editorial informed on what was happening, Dick, Jenette, and Paul had spent 1985 planning ahead. Crisis was a chance to refresh the Big Three, and Jenette wanted to bring in the Big Guns. By then, Frank Miller had been wowing everyone with his Dark Knight, which was finally nearing completion and scheduled for an early 1986 launch. He was getting along so well with the process that he agreed when Jennette asked him to help reboot Batman. Sealing the deal was the return of Denny O’Neil to DC’s editorial ranks, hired to replace Len on the Bat-books. Miller and O’Neil got along well on the famed Daredevil run, so everyone hoped for repeat magic. [One fall-

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The power of the Spectre is on full display on this page from issue #10.

TM & © DC Comics

out from the Year One revamp was that both forgot about Barbara Gordon, requiring a hasty retcon from Barbara Kesel in Secret Origins #20.]

Superman proved tougher, and Jenette went out and recruited John Byrne away from Marvel.

He spent the second half of 1985 meeting and planning and getting excited. With three Superman titles to fill, it was agreed that Marv, who adored Superman above all other heroes, would write one of the titles. Jerry Ordway, who had been inking Byrne on the Fantastic Four, had earned drawing Marv’s book as his reward.

But what about Wonder Woman? No one had a real clue. As a result, the character was handed to Janice Race, who effectively held a bakeoff, receiving pitches from writers. Among them, Greg Potter, who made himself known with his Jemm, Son of Saturn maxiseries, came up with an approach that earned Jenete’s approval. George had heard about it, liked what he read, and signed

on to illustrate the new book. During all this, it was decided not to kill the Amazon but instead reduce her to the clay from which she was formed.

As the months passed, Greg was paired with Len for dialoguing, and Race left DC, so the book went to Karen Berger, with Jenette believing a female editor for Wonder Woman was long overdue.

That made 1985 a very exciting year to work at DC. But as the months wore on, the pressure of the production schedule and the scale of the story being told took its toll on Marv. Len had already left staff, relocated to California, and was once again a full-time writer. Six months later, Marv would follow, seeking a fresh start.

THE NEW STATUS QUO

Before he could leave, though, the aftermath needed to be addressed.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, different people had different notions about how to wrap things up. It was like shooting a film without the third act. No one was quite sure what to do, with Len arguing that everyone should remember the pre-Crisis reality and that they should be unwilling to let go of the past. Marv argued for a cleaner break: no one remembered the pre-Crisis multiverse, and all the titles restarted with a #1 in January 1986. Dick agreed to the former, not the latter, something he later came to regret.

Another thing Marv would have preferred was that all the fictional cities, save Gotham and Metropolis, be eliminated and the heroes set in real locations, but that notion didn’t go far.

This matter dragged into the fall as editors began planning their 1986 releases. These were to include some new titles, notably DC’s first issue of

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Blue Beetle from Len and Paris Cullins.

As Crisis #12 shipped, there was a collective sigh of relief. Twelve issues, three of them oversized, all shipped on time, set some records, made some noise, and accomplished what they set out to do.

Was it perfect? Far from it. Some mistakes cropped up. George drew the Matt Hagen amorphous Clayface, but it was mistakenly colored as the Titans villain Plasmus. Green Arrow of Earth-One was sometimes mistaken as his EarthTwo counterpart or even as his ward Speedy. Mento showed up in two different outfits. And so on.

In hindsight, Marv and I agree that we dropped the ball on post-Crisis planning. Editors were given instructions even vaguer than “make the skies red.” What did the collapse of the multiverse mean to several characters we decided to retain, such as Power Girl and the Huntress? Did this mean those who died during the Crisis never lived or could be recalled? What was the new continuity?

After taking over editing Who’s Who with issue #12, I directed the writers to reflect on those changes, which may have been an error, especially in issue #22, when we still had a Golden Age and Modern Age Superman. We were already talking about adding two issues to begin producing revised pages or additional ones for characters who somehow got missed.

Sometime in the latter months of 1985, Paul

Levitz attended one of our weekly editorial meetings and asked every editor to submit an idea for a 1986 crossover. The sales and buzz were too loud to ignore, and it was time to capitalize on this. Privately, editors grumbled, and already there was pushback to the notion of producing a book just for sales, not because there was a need to be filled. Dutifully, every staff editor submitted an idea, and copies were made, including one without a name attached.

Long-time readers know what happened next.

It was clearly the superior pitch, and it became Crisis on Captive Earth, a.k.a. Crisis of the Soul, but the editorial had little appetite for the project, and it foundered, never seeing the light of day.

Similarly, Paul, not Dick, held several meetings to address the status of certifying how things were to be in the new DCU. This led to the three-time trips per sentient being rule being developed, to be explored in my Time Masters miniseries.

Similarly, Neil Gaiman’s Books of Magic was envisioned as the guiding source for all things supernatural in the new universe. Dick’s laissezfaire attitude towards these matters meant editors could ignore them with impunity.

As for Power Girl, everyone liked her, so it was decided to keep her but give her a brand new origin. I admit to being a part of the cabal that decided to switch from Kryptonian science to

The series concludes in issue #12, but it’s hardly the end of the story.

Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com) TM & © DC Comics

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 31

(top) New heroes attempt to survive in a post-Crisis DC Universe in DC Comics Presents #94. (bottom left) Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli reboot Batman in issue #404. (bottom right) John Byrne flies to DC to relaunch Superman in Man of Steel #1.

TM & © DC Comics

the supernatural and make her Arion’s granddaughter.

Gerry Conway was going to figure out the details. He wound up bowing out, so the assignment went to Paul Kupperberg, first in an issue of Secret Origins and then her first miniseries. It took until 1990 to figure out The Huntress, with Joey Cavalieri making her a Gotham mobster’s daughter.

Unfortunately, the rest never got figured out, chartered, or communicated to everyone else. So, left to their own devices, they told stories and retold the past as they saw fit, and things started to get…complicated.

CRACKS IN THE CONTINUITY

The first real evidence of this was the need to create a Pocket Universe to allow Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes to exist, allowing Paul Levitz to kill the Teen of Steel in order to render a post-Crisis reality that met John Byrne’s dictate that Kal-El never donned the cape until he was an adult.

Slowly but surely, dead characters were brought back, ignoring the edict, so here was Chemo and even Maaldor the Dark Lord. New heroes with familiar names began to appear, such as Starman and, yes, Sandman.

More issues cropped up, and finally, KC Carlson and Dan Jurgen recognized that a soft reboot of sorts was needed. While Crisis of the Soul floundered, the need for annual company-wide crossovers to feed the bottom line remained, so Legends, Millennium,

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Invasion!, Armageddon 2001, etc., all fed the machine. Zero Hour, though, had a purpose and allowed things to be reordered. It was well-received and worked for the most part.

Even today, after so many other characters were revived in other events, some remain dead, such as Dove (Don Hall) and GL Tomar-Re. But, as Dick left, followed by Jenette and eventually Paul, the promise that the Crisis changes were permanent began to decay. Without them to enforce their word, a new generation of creators decided to play with reality, and before you knew it, the multiverse was back, followed soon after by Barry Allen. Bit by bit, the pre-Crisis reality reasserted itself. It was fondly recalled in stories, and whereas once the Psycho-Pirate was the only one to remember the before times, more and more people now knew of previous realities. In fact, Grant Morrison played with that, to brilliant effect, in the pages of Animal-Man #23-24 in 1990.

Secret Origins editor Mark Waid let Alan Brennert get away with an unnamed appearance of Kara Zor-El in Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2, blessed by having Giordano illustrate it.

In his thesis, “How to Cope with Crisis: Examining the Regressive State of Comics through DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths,” Devon Lamonte Keyes stated. “Crisis provides a strong example of comics’ fluctuating relationship with its own history. On one hand, Crisis is seemingly designed to push past its history by abandoning precedence established in the Golden and Silver Ages to create an entry point for readers of the Bronze Age who had neither the experience nor the time to sift through DC’s decades of publications. On the other, in its attempt to circumvent its history—largely by giving in-universe permission to ignore it entirely—the ‘history’ which arises after the events of Crisis remains largely influenced by the heroes and stories that came prior to it. Thus its history was not so much abandoned, or reinvented, as it was simply reset.”

The multiverse was repeatedly adjusted, expanded, or contracted, enveloped by Hypertime (introduced in The Kingdom #2, February 1999).

That in itself was a subset of what is now known as The Divine Continuum (Flashpoint Beyond #5, November 2022), which is not to be confused with the Omniverse (Lucifer #12, May 2001). And apparently, separating all these realities is the Bleed, a concept carried over from DC’s acquisition of WildStorm Studios, which subsequently melded their line of heroes and worlds into the sprawling DC continuity.

To Marv, Crisis was his assignment, and he did it to the best of his abilities. It took its toll, but he completed the work and thought that was that.

Not quite, as it turned out.

Before Marv and George could catch their breath, they launched into History of the DC Universe.

The two 48-page Prestige Format books were the first attempt to present the post-Crisis history.

I had been dutifully maintaining an internal working timeline since I joined the staff, and now, this became the research for Marv, as he consulted with editors to determine if key moments or characters should be included or omitted. Obviously,

he knew the basics after writing Crisis, but now it was time to make certain everyone was on the same page. (Marv was in California by now, writing New Teen Titans and Adventures of Superman, and he was somewhat scattered, so every now and then, he asked me to send a fresh copy of the timeline. Remember, this was at the edge of email, so it meant copying and shipping the material overnight. At one point, sensing a pattern, I made two copies, One I shipped overnight, the other I sent first class so the next copy would arrive before he needed it.)

One interesting moment came when it was time to establish when Hex, the futuristic take on Jonah Hex, was set. Writer Michael Fleisher hadn’t considered it, continuity not being a concern of his at all. He threw out a century, and I went to consult the timeline, and it didn’t fit, so we worked it out in the end, but he was mildly annoyed at the process. In a memo to Paul Levitz from May 1985,

(top) Wonder Woman receives a stunning reboot care of George Pérez in Wonder Woman #1. (bottom left) The new rules of time travel emerge in Time Masters. (bottom right) A “new” Power Girl emerges post-Crisis.

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(top) The two-issue History of the DC Universe attempted to explain the new reality post-Crisis. (bottom) Reality was “fixed” again in the Zero Hour event.

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I asked for some thoughts, and he suggested the late 28th century when World War 6 would occur. It was settled for a period far earlier.

With Editor Mike Gold overseeing and me backstopping, History arrived in 1987, so it reflected the arrival of new characters and teams, such as the reconstituted Justice League and my beloved Suicide Squad.

This was first collected under a lovely Bill Sienkiewicz cover in 1988, then was subsequently folded into reprint editions of Crisis.

Within months of Crisis #12 hitting the newsstands, people were trying to assess its impact. With some hyperbole, Hilary Goldstein at IGN said that the maxiseries saved the company, ignoring the other publications that were making noise and money, from Camelot 3000 to Ronin. Less charitable was Comic Alliance’s Chris Sims, who said it was “a textbook definition of style over substance.”

Years later, Marv reflected with 13th Dimension’s Dan Greenfield, telling him, “Well, I never thought Crisis would be remembered. I seriously didn’t. I thought Crisis was the road map to where we…

Because part of the pitch on Crisis was from January 1985 to December 1985. That whole 50th anniversary year. And then, in January of 1986, we were supposed to start every book new, with a new #1.

I fought for that for so long! And Dick Giordano, who was the editor-in-chief at the time, in his autobiography said that the only mistake he made was not doing that. He said the only reason he didn’t do it was he didn’t think he had enough good talent actually to re-create every book from scratch.

“My view was that I believe every generation deserves the characters to be redone for them to some degree. I’m a Baby Boomer. When Showcase #4 came out with the Flash, the first appearance of the Barry Allen Flash, I had no idea there ever was a previous Flash! I was born at a point when, by the time I could read a comic book, all those books were gone, and people didn’t talk about them. There was no fandom. There was nothing, so I had no idea there was a previous… there was a Justice Society.

I had no idea there was a different Flash. In that Showcase story, Barry is reading a copy of Flash Comics. Obviously, he was a big fan, but I thought that was just a funny joke. No knowledge that 34 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

(top left) Sheldon Mayer’s Black Orchid got a comprehensive reboot from Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and Karen Berger in Black Orchid #1. (top right) Green Arrow gets a new look from creator Mike Grell. (bottom) Wally West takes on the mantle of the Flash.

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these characters existed, so for me, the new Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman were the first time these characters appeared, but they were written for my generation.

They weren’t magic anymore. They were science-based and all of that sort of stuff.

“I do believe that every generation should have it.

Otherwise, Green Lantern would be powerless against somebody who had a pencil because he was powerless against wood, the original character. Or, as they said on The Big Bang Theory, ‘You mean I can defeat both the old Green Lantern and the new Green Lantern with a No. 2 pencil?’ since it was yellow.

“To me, those types of arbitrary gimmicks are ridiculous, and each generation gets smarter because they get a little bit older and they want something a little bit better. So, I do believe that characters should be rebuilt and restructured, but not every couple of years. It took 50 years to do one and it should have been at least 25 years. Every 25 years from that point on. But I do agree with the concept, yes.”

RESETTING THE DCU

Work was proceeding on the Big Three reboots at DC, so 1986 was a resetting year. As Marv and Len noted in interviews, writers had to specifically reference or retell a pre-Crisis event before it could be considered part of the new canon, giving them and their editors some agency over their characters. Places had to be found for the newly arrived Charlton heroes, with DC Comics Presents used to introduce Captain Atom while the title also established Lady Quark, Pariah, and Harbinger as residents of the new post-Crisis Earth.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 35

The three volumes collecting the Crisis crossovers.

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Julie Schwartz, though, was told to play out the string on the Superman titles until the John Byrne books were set on the schedule. On the one hand, it gave us some “meh” stories, and on the other, it also allowed him to hire Alan Moore for the memorable two-part farewell, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” and Steve Gerber for the final DCCP. Despite Wally West putting on Barry’s crimson and gold outfit, he only appeared in the Titans’ book for now, letting The Flash title rest for a bit. Still, becoming the third hero to use the name created a true sense of legacy, one of the hallmarks of DC’s continuity compared to other companies.

On the other hand, poor Roy Thomas couldn’t find a comfortable way to work with the All-Star Squadron, now deprived of Wonder Woman and other doppelgangers. He was promised a graphic novel send-off for the JSA, but Last Days of the JSA wound up being just an oversized comic that didn’t make the intended splash. Similarly, his attempts at relaunching Captain Marvel foundered until a lackluster miniseries arrived as a tie-in to Legends. Such was his dissatisfaction that he wound up leaving DC soon after.

Incoming editor Mike Gold brought with him some of his First Comics cronies, and John Ostrander, free from Legends duty, pitched a wild revamp of Hawkman that didn’t actually clarify his new role in the DCU, whereas Mike Grell was lauded for his fresh take on Green Arrow in The Longbow Hunters. Off in a corner, Karen Berger had recruited young British writer Neil Gaiman, who had an interesting new interpretation for Black Orchid, Sheldon Mayer’s last creation for DC. Between that and Moore’s Swamp Thing, Berger was developing something new.

The Crisis continued to resonate in unexpected ways. First, other companies saw the sales charts and recognized they could do the same. One company after another did company-wide crossovers, whether they made sense or not. Marvel went everyone better by creating crossovers for sets of their titles, notably the various mutant books, giving us memorable storylines such as “Mutant Massacre.”

CRISIS GETS META

The Crisis influenced a generation of readers who grew up to work in the field, much as the work of Julie Schwartz and Stan Lee inspired a generation.

Among them was Marc Guggenheim, who went into comics and television, ultimately honoring Crisis on the CW. Then there was Geoff Johns, who started his career working for Superman director Richard Donner and came to write for DC around 2000, ultimately joining staff, bridging comics, television, and film.

With co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee, Johns oversaw massive crossovers building off the Crisis title. First came Infinite Crisis (October 2005-June 2006), written by Johns and illustrated

by Phil Jimenez, George Pérez, Ivan Reis, and Jerry Ordway. Kal-L, Alexander Luthor, and SuperboyPrime escaped from the pocket dimension Wolfman left them in. The multiverse was restored by the 36 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

miniseries’ end, and the prime Earth was reset (allowing continuity tweaks).

Final Crisis (May 2008-January 2009) promised, “Heroes die. Legends live forever.” Writer Grant Morrison partnered with J.G. Jones and Carlos Pacheco for this event, which saw Darkseid once again come to Earth in search of the Anti-Life Equation. By the series’ end, Barry Allen had returned from the dead, but it seemed the New God’s Omega Beam killed Batman (he got better).

Things settled down until 2022 when Joshua Williamson unleashed the Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths (April-December 2022). Pariah is back and has taken the Justice Leaguers off the board, letting Prime Earth believe they are dead while Darkseid ravages the multiverse. This moved things into a soft reset known as Dawn of DC, which lasted for two years. The Titans became the premier superhero team while Amanda Waller began her plot to discredit all metahumans and take them down once and for all.

In her dissertation, Life, The Multiverse, and Everything: How Crisis on Infinite Earths Changed DC Comics, Kate Simonsen wrote, “Since many of these changes, such as the death of a popular or iconic character, cannot be sustained long term, the success, and influence of Crisis on Infinite Earths led to the erosion of the very elements that made it shocking. Entire worlds can be destroyed, but super-readers eventually suspect that no change is ever permanent and, as more iconic characters are revived or rebooted, death is no longer meaningful.

“In fulfilling its tagline that ‘Worlds will live, worlds will die, and nothing will ever be the same,’ Crisis on Infinite Earths formed a template for many of the crossovers that followed it, spawning three decades of ‘near-constant turbulence’ created by ‘stories that crossover with scores of ongoing series and may change the fundamental premises of some of them for as much as a few months’ (Wolk, 103).

Crisis on Infinite Earths created the expectation that each crossover will result in numerous deaths and alter the structure or history of the DC Universe.

Since many of these changes, such as the death of a popular or iconic character, cannot be sustained long-term, the success and influence of Crisis on Infinite Earths led to the erosion of the very elements that made it shocking. Entire worlds can be destroyed, but dedicated readers have every reason to assume that the world will return at some point and that no death is ever permanent.”

In 1999, Mike Carlin called Marv and asked if he had one more Crisis story in him. For Legends of the DCU: Crisis on Infinite Earth #1, Marv and penciller Paul Ryan gave us the heretofore unseen Earth-D and its champions, the Justice Force, a multicultural version of the JLA (a Black Kryptonian, a Native American Green Arrow, a Brazilian Green Lantern, etc.). He cleverly found a place to fit this between Crisis #4-5. [A similar retelling of Crisis events can also be seen in JLA: Incarnations #5 (2001).]

And that was it.

Until Grant Morrison resurrected Superman (US President Calvin Ellis) for the Final Crisis. That hero, now residing on Earth-23, has been around regularly ever since.

And that was really it.

COLLECTING THE CRISIS

Even though DC began collecting their stories into book form for the bookstore market, some of the line art from Crisis #9 was missing.

The images needed to be recreated, which was deemed too costly and time-consuming. That all changed under Group Editor Marty Pasko and Collected Editions Editor Rick Taylor. They began the process, and it took time, but it was done.

Finally, in 1998, the collection arrived. There was even an autographed slipcased special edition from Dynamic Forces that included a 21” x 32” poster version of the cover, with all trade dress except for the series logo removed. The retail poster collaboration from George Pérez and Alex Ross was used for the cover.

DC signed a deal with Byron Preiss’ iBooks for a series of novels featuring DC’s properties.

Editor Paul Kupperberg asked Marv to come back one more time, this time to novelize the

(top left) Infinite Crisis #1 kicked off the first of three sequels to Crisis. (top right) It may be called Final Crisis, but there’s still more to come. (bottom) Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths is the final sequel. For now.

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maxiseries. That 2007 novel, with its all-new Alex Ross cover, was well-received and gave Marv a chance to focus more on characterization and less cosmic whoopie.

In case anyone missed it, Crisis #1 was reprinted in 2000 as part of the company’s Millennium Edition program, and I got to write the first of what has become many text pieces associated with the project.

Of course, once the book was collected, it remained in print, with the softcover edition released in 2001. According to the Grand Comics Database, it lasted 14 printings, so it’s the series that keeps on giving. A 35th-anniversary edition replaced this one in 2018, which is the one currently available until the inevitable 40 th anniversary replaces it in 2025. The 35th edition is when History of the DC Universe began being included.

Tying in with this was the three-volume Crisis on Infinite Earths Companion Deluxe Edition, collecting the crossovers, in which I had the pleasure of consulting on the contents and writing contextual essays and a timeline. Those came out and quickly went out of print, which is a shame if you ask me because the next time much of these stories became available was in the mammoth 14-volume boxset.

In 2002, I rejoined DC as a Senior Editor in the Collected Editions department, now under Design Director Georg Brewer. As we began to expand the Absolute edition program, Crisis became a natural, and of course, I was asked to assemble it. With the assignment in hand, I went down to the Editorial Administration file room and went to a specific cabinet where I secreted the folder with all my saved notes, memos, sketches, and ephemera from the project. Even in 1984, I knew this was a special event and needed to preserve the documentation for future reference.

Once I showed George what I had, we agreed that this would be a special event: a two-volume book with the maxiseries in one and the extra material, plus additional essays, in a second volume. With the Legal Department’s clearance, we would be able to include the Independent Comics Group’s Crisis Index, covers from the various fanzines, and then I commissioned new articles from ace researcher John Wells to help put things into context. I took all my saved documents and crafted a detailed narrative to trace from the letter to the editor to the publication. This was truly a labor of love and I believe it was well received and it certainly sold. Bits and pieces from the Compendium have appeared in various incarnations, but its sum total has yet to appear anywhere, which is a shame for fans of the story or new to DC. During my time in Collected Editions, the JLA-JSA crossovers were being collected for the first time. My dear departed companion Dale Crain did the first one and then handed it to me, and I ran the next few before leaving in 2006. Someone hit on the bright idea to take all six of those collections, the three Crisis Companions, the History, and the Crisis itself, and turn them into a unified box set of 14 hardcovers. Nicola Scott did a masterful job with the new box wraparound art. This mammoth collectible came out in November 2019 and is, of course, out of print.

The original $500 was too pricey for many (and I had to buy one!), and I see it going for well over $650 in the used marketplace.

The final volume, Behind the Crisis, repurposed much of my Absolute narrative and all of John Wells’ essays. It outdid me by including the Monitor appearances from across the line in 1983-84, along with the lengthy conversation with Marv, Len, and myself from Comics Interview #26, and the Crisis preview from Amazing Heroes #66, which was mostly prepared by their ace writer Mark Waid, and then the all-Crisis issue #91, with Waid making one of his final pre-DC appearances.

In April 2024, DC began reprinting the maxiseries in facsimile editions, and it’s certainly odd and familiar to flip through them as they originally appeared, complete with the original colors, not the remastered colors that some fans disliked.

And that was it.

(top) Marv Wolfman pens an untold tale of the Crisis. (bottom) Wolfman adapted the series into a well-received novel.

TM & © DC Comics

38 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

Crisis in Multiple Back Issues We’ve covered various aspects of the titles mentioned here previously, so to get the full picture, we kindly refer you to the following: Back Issue #9, 68; Crisis of the Soul Back Issue 10, 12; Batman: Year One Back Issue 34; Pro2Pro with Michael Eury, Dick Giordano, and Bastienne Back Issue 33; Power Girl Back Issue #67; Time Masters

Back Issue #109, 126; Superman reboot Back Issue #32; Who’s Who: Pro2Pro: Bob Greenberger, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman Back Issue #113; The Huntress reboot Back Issue 147; Wonder Woman reboot

CRISIS IN THE MEDIA

Well, that is until Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim launched Arrow on the CW in 2013. Its success led to a second series, The Flash, and in his first episode, there’s a 2024 newspaper headline saying, “Flash Missing, Vanishes in Crisis,” a wink to the comics. Series star Grant Gustin, aware of the maxiseries, thought Guggenheim wanted to build events to where they could tell their version. He told SyFy Wire in 2018, “Obviously, we’d have to go, I think, 10 years to reach that, so there’s a possibility for sure. It’ll be fun to get there.”

It took a year.

Maybe even less, since the various CW series producers admitted work in the 2018-19 season was sowing seeds for the Crisis. Like the comics, the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) was seen in the season finales of The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow. The following fall, Starling City on their Earth-Two was destroyed in Arrow, similar to the destruction of Earth-Three as the opening act of DC’s Crisis. Then, in December 2019 and January 2020, one episode each of Arrow, Flash, Supergirl, Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Black Lightning let the story unfold. For television viewers, it was thrilling to see the heroes and their supporting players crossover and interact while everyone had to stop the Anit-Monitor (Garrett) from destroying all reality. Towards the end, a montage of clips from various DC television series was included, suggesting they were all parallel universes of a TV continuity.

There was even a tease for the forthcoming Stargirl series. Burt Ward kicked things off with a cameo, including a “Holy” comment. Tom Welling and Erica Durance filmed a new scene set in their Smallville world while Tom Ellis’s Lucifer met John Constantine (Matt Ryan) in a moment set before the Lucifer show.

Perhaps the fans’ favorite cameo came during Legends as Marv and George were seen on screen, a terrific homage.

Marv was asked by DC to write Crisis on Infinite Earths Giant, which he co-wrote with Guggenheim, with art from Tom Derenick, Trevor Scott, John Kalisz, Andy Owens, Tom Grummett, and Danny Miki. Material

Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition collected the 12-issue series, three Crisis Companions, the History of the DC Universe, and a multiverse of extras.

TM & © DC Comics

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(left) The CW’s DC Universe culminated in its verion of a Crisis. (right) Even DC’s animated universe experienced a three-part Crisis.

TM & © DC Comics

from Crisis on Infinite Earths and DC Universe: Legacies #6 (December 2010), by Len Wein, Scott Kolins, Jerry Ordway, and George Pérez.

And that was it.

Until 2024, when Warner Home Entertainment released three direct-to-video animated films adapting Crisis, set in their animated continuity. For the special feature, Marv, Jerry, and I were all interviewed, exploring the comic book origins of the events depicted on screen.

Shane Romanchick at Collider noted, “Crossover events weren’t that huge when Crisis was released, but the success of it led both DC and Marvel to rethink how their most popular characters teamed up in the future. For DC, there was a different ‘Crisis Event’ every few years, like Identity Crisis, Final Crisis, and Heroes in Crisis, that would send ripple effects throughout the universe. That being said, despite the multiverse eventually returning, nothing has been quite as devastating as Infinite Earths.

“That’s why it’s fitting that the final set of films in DC’s animated universe, starting with 2020’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow, will be based on this world-ending story. While Infinite Earth’s most popular adaptation was in CW’s Arrowverse, the recent string of DC animated films have been some of their best. James Gunn’s focus on the animated projects leading into his new live-action universe may have ended the current continuity, but nevertheless, the ‘Tomorrowverse’ is going out with an explosive bang.”

And then that was it.

CRISIS AT 40

Well, until now. Marv and I are here, revisiting the Crisis for its 40th. No doubt DC will celebrate it in their own way, no doubt tapping Marv for something.

Simensen’s dissertation went on to say, “Whether or not Crisis on Infinite Earths simplified continuity or brought permanent change to the DC Universe, it changed how continuity errors or confusing storylines could be fixed. Crisis on Infinite Earths appealed to super-readers not just because of the number of characters and settings it included but because it

showed how characters’ histories were changed rather than asking super-readers to simply forget or ignore the old multiverse.

Post-Crisis, this strategy became expected; super-readers would not accept (or creators assumed they would not accept) any changes to characters or the story world that were not shown or explained during some universe changing crisis. Crisis on Infinite Earths created the template for every successful crossover that followed it—a Flash should die (or at least appear to), existence itself should be threatened, and crowds of superheroes should gather to face it (even though some of them will die just to make things more interesting). What separates Crisis on Infinite Earths from its descendants is not just the fact that it was the first to do these things, but that it was a story its writer wanted to do. In his introduction to the collected edition of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Marv Wolfman refers to it as ‘not just a job, but a calling; the story I wanted to write ever since I was a kid reading comic books…’.”

I was reading Archie & Friends, All-Action (May 2023) for Ringo Awards consideration and was surprised to find “Crisis on the Riverdale Earths,” a story from Bill Grolliner, the Fab K-Brosi, and Bob Smith. Jack Morelli imitated Todd Klein’s logo for the title treatment, and the story featured all the iterations of Archie Andrews through the years (i.e. Little Archie, New Little Archie, Life with Archie) in a fun little 10-pager, that continues to show the original Crisis’ enduring impact on comics creators and readers.

Someone quipped during the writing of this article in the summer of 2024 that once this hoopla is done, we can begin talking about what to do for the 50th. Will enough have been established in James Gunn’s new cinematic universe for him to attempt his own iteration? Will the comics feature more events using the ‘crisis’ moniker? Will Marv, Jerry, and I have anything new to say by then? What I do know is that this seminal event in DC’s publishing history has had an outsized impact on comics and related media, far exceeding anything we ever imagined when the weekly lunch meetings (featuring sandwiches from the now-long-gone Pastrami & Things) saw three people try and figure out how to make worlds live, and worlds die, forever changing the DC Universe.

40 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

CRISIS ORIGINAL ART GALLERY

We can’t get enough of the original art pages from Crisis, and we bet you can’t either!

Original Pérez art from Crisis #3, page 21. All art in this gallery is courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 41

Villains were on the chopping block every bit as much as the heroes during Crisis on Infinite Earths. There’s one less Luthor after issue #9, page 4. (opposite page) Crisis #11, page 7 set the scene for the Golden Age Superman’s swan song. (following page) Let’s not forget Crisis’ companion title, History of the DC Universe! Pérez’s original art for issue #1, page 2 is a firm reminder of why he was selected for the maxiseries Crisis on Infinite Earths!

TM & © DC Comics

42 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 43

44 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

THE RETRO COMICS EXPERIENCE!

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SPIDER-ROGUES ISSUE! Villain histories of Dr. Octopus, Lizard, Kingpin, Spidey’s mob foes, the Jackal and Carrion, Tarantula, Puma, plus the rehabilitation of Sandman!

Featuring the work of ANDRU, SAL BUSCEMA, CONWAY, DeFALCO, GIL KANE, McFARLANE, MILLER, POLLARD, JOHN ROMITA JR. & SR., STERN, THOMAS, WEIN, WOLFMAN, and more!

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Plus: Challengers of the Unknown in the Bronze Age, JEPH LOEB interview about his Challs and DD projects with TIM SALE, Sinestro and Mr. Fear histories, superheroes with disabilities, and... Who Is Hal Jordan? Featuring CONWAY, ENGLEHART, McKENZIE, ROZAKIS, STATON, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, & more! GENE COLAN cover!

Great Hera, it’s the 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF BACK ISSUE, featuring a tribute to the late, great GEORGE PÉREZ! Wonder Woman: The George Pérez Years, Pérez’s 20 Greatest Hits of the Bronze Age, Pérez’s fanzine days, a Pérez remembrance by MARV WOLFMAN, a Wonder Woman interview with MINDY NEWELL, and more!

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by Pérez!

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BACK ISSUE #151

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DC SUPER-STARS OF SPACE! Adam Strange in the Bronze Age (with RICHARD BRUNING & ANDY KUBERT), From Beyond the Unknown, the Fabulous World of Krypton, Vartox, a Mongul history, the Omega Men, and more! Featuring CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, DAN JURGENS, CURT SWAN, PETER J. TOMASI, MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Cover by CARMINE INFANTINO & MURPHY ANDERSON!

’80s INDIE HEROES: The American, Aztec Ace, Dynamo Joe, Evangeline, Journey, Megaton Man, Trekker, Whisper, and Zot! Featuring CHUCK DIXON, PHIL FOGLIO, STEVEN GRANT, RICH LARSON, SCOTT McCLOUD, WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS, DOUG MOENCH, RON RANDALL, DON SIMPSON, MARK VERHEIDEN, CHRIS WARNER & more superstar creators. Cover

by NORM BREYFOGLE!

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES! A who’s who of artists of NEIL GAIMAN’s The Sandman plus a GAIMAN interview, Sandman Mystery Theatre’s MATT WAGNER and STEVEN T. SEAGLE, Dr. Strange’s nemesis Nightmare, Marvel’s Sleepwalker, Casper’s horse Nightmare, with SHELLY BOND, BOB BUDIANSKY, STEVE ENGLEHART, ALISA KWITNEY, and others! KELLEY JONES cover.

MARVELMANIA ISSUE! SAL BUSCEMA’s Avengers, FABIAN NICIEZA’s Captain America, and KURT BUSIEK and ALEX ROSS’s Marvels turns 30! Plus: Marvelmania International, Marvel Age, Marvel Classics, PAUL KUPPERBERG’s Marvel Novels, and Marvel Value Stamps.

Featuring JACK KIRBY, KEVIN MAGUIRE, ROY THOMAS, and more! SAL BUSCEMA cover.

BIG BABY ISSUE! X-Babies, the last days of Sugar and Spike, FF’s Franklin Richards, Superbaby vs. Luthor, Dennis the Menace Bonus Magazine, Baby Snoots, Marvel and Harvey kid humor comics, & more! With ARTHUR ADAMS, CARY BATES, JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, SCOTT LOBDELL, SHELDON MAYER, CURT SWAN, ROY THOMAS, and other grownup creators. Cover by ARTHUR ADAMS.

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BRONZE AGE NOT-READY-FORPRIMETIME DC HEROES! Black Canary, Elongated Man, Lilith, Metamorpho, Nubia, Odd Man, Ultraa of Earth-Prime, Vartox, and Jimmy Olsen as Mr. Action! Plus: Jason’s Quest! Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE DITKO, BOB HANEY, DENNY O’NEIL, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MARK WAID, and more ready-for-primetime talent. Retro cover by NICK CARDY.

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40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 47

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by R

obert Greenberger

marv wolfman © Facebook.

robert greenberger

Two versions of the infamous death list.

TM & © DC Comics

The seeds for Crisis on Infinite Earths were planted years before the first issue arrived. And along the way, the marketing tagline—”Worlds Will Live, Worlds Will Die”—had been coined. But, the question became, who would actually survive the condensation from a multiverse to a universe? Some of it would be dictated by management and the individual editors. Still, there were other concerns in play, from licensing deals to media interest (after all, Super Friends was still on the air, and Kenner was just releasing their Super Powers line of action figures).

By the time Robert Greenberger joined the project in January 1984, co-editors Marv Wolfman and Len Wein had been mulling over the question and had been given one directive by President and Publisher Jenette Kahn. (Keeping reading...)

Over the next few months, the Secret Death List had been crafted and even circulated internally. Copies of the two versions can be found in the Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths Compendium.

Obviously, some were spared, and others were killed when the

twelve issues saw print.

Marv and Bob chatted via video in February 2024 to recount the thinking from 40 years ago. Obviously, time blurs some specific memories, but they recount very specific conversations.

The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

MARV WOLFMAN: I don’t think we’ve seen each other in person in a long time.

ROBERT GREENBERGER: It’s been a while. Yeah, probably hasn’t been Terrificon in 2017.

So, going back 40-plus years, let me start. Have you watched the animated adaptation?

WOLFMAN: Normally, I don’t watch or read things I used to work on after I leave. But yes, I saw this one and liked how they fleshed out the original. Starting the story before where we did helps new readers get into what is a huge movie. Good job.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 49

GREENBERGER: I liked it well enough in the context of the animated continuity. I appreciate them reaching out to Jerry and me to participate in the extra stuff so that the comics are well-represented.

WOLFMAN: Glad they spoke to you. Your help on Crisis was invaluable. I was totally swamped being the writer and editor and you took a ton of the day to day off my shoulders.

GREENBERGER: So, let me ask. When you pitched the idea to Jenette that we collapse the universes, did you really expect there to be so much death and carnage?

WOLFMAN: I didn’t really invest a lot of pre-writing time thinking about that part at the beginning. The story itself was bigger than we’d ever seen in comics before, so I wanted that to be done right before we concerned ourselves with the deaths. But when I pitched Crisis to Jenette, I knew the deaths had to be permanent or the series simply wouldn’t work. She agreed and then told me the Flash had to die. We knew there would be deaths, but I seriously think if you went over the 12 issues carefully, except for the billions of planets and Supergirl and Flash, we probably didn’t kill as many characters as you think. I didn’t want to kill Flash but I now think his death turned out to be very important and probably gave Crisis the gravitas it has.

GREENBERGER: I didn’t know that particular point.

WOLFMAN: He was an icon and the beginning of the Silver Age and I hesitated to kill him, but Jenette wanted it and in killing the Flash we definitely showed we were serious about taking DC to the next level.

GREENBERGER: Okay, I fully understand that. By killing the Flash dramatically, it was gonna be beginning some brand-new age, but I guess the more practical reality was the book wasn’t selling. It was certainly running out of steam with the “Trial of the Flash” serial.

[See Back Issue #28 for the court transcripts.]

All right, so she started with the Flash and by the time I came on board in January ‘84 had you and Len figured out other characters you wanted to eliminate or was that all organic as we started meeting?

WOLFMAN: Len, at the outset, was against killing anyone. Most of the editors were against it, too. These were the characters we grew up reading as kids. But we got our copies for free while today’s readers weren’t buying them. We had to do something drastic.

The deaths had to be consequential to have meaning to the readers.

GREENBERGER: [Executive Editor] Dick [Giordano] wisely split the projects between you two. You and I would work on the Crisis while [Len] and I would tackle Who’s Who. [The actual reassignment was in June 1984.]

WOLFMAN: It really worked out for the best that way.

Len loved the DC characters and being in charge of Who’s Who was right up his alley.

Who’s Who was produced in conjunction with Crisis. (top) Who’s Who issue #1. (middle) Barry Allen and Jay Garrick shared the cover of issue #8. (bottom) Who’s Who #22 celebrated Supergirl and the Golden Age Superman.

TM & © DC Comics

50 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

GREENBERGER: Where was Paul [Levitz, then-Vice President – Operations] in the mix on the deaths?

WOLFMAN: I don’t think as a writer he was necessarily in favor of wholesale slaughter of the characters. But from a business standpoint, he understood and worked to make it possible.

GREENBERGER: When we asked editors for characters to sacrifice on the page, that certainly explains why he gave us Kid Psycho.

According to the records that I kept at the time, it was May ‘84, when Dick called Julie [Schwartz] and Cary Bates into his office to break the news that both Supergirl and Flash would be killed.

There had been a lot of time when Jenette held off giving us the okay on Supergirl.

WOLFMAN: There had initially been a lot of hope for the Supergirl film, but we felt there were a lot of problems with the script. In 1983, during production, she and I were going to take the Concorde to England to meet with the producers to try and fix the script. At the last moment that got canceled and I was really disappointed because it would have been so cool to fly on the Concorde. First class.

At any rate, we did get the okay to kill her and we were determined that if she was going to die it would have to be special. She truly had to die a hero.

[As Bob remembers, the note was scribbled by Dick and slipped to Jenette at a meeting to force her to make a decision.]

WOLFMAN: I don’t remember anything about the Atom being on the list or being spared. It’s been so long, Bob. And as for Arion, I barely knew the character. Maybe his title was still selling well enough.

GREENBERGER: Okay. I believe this was the Ray Plamer Atom since Roy Thomas hadn’t offered up the Earth-Two one. It might have been a reaction to the Sword of the Atom miniseries and what was done with him.

WOLFMAN: I really can’t recall.

GREENBERGER: And I can’t recall who or why Red Tornado was spared other than he could always be rebuilt. Later that led to Dan Mishkin’s pitch to turn him evil, although that went nowhere either.

What I find interesting is we also had a bunch of supporting characters, long-lasting ones like Tom Kalmaku A.K.A. Pieface, and Morgan Edge, and they somehow got spared too.

Supergirl and Batgirl have a heart to heart in Crisis #4.

TM & © DC Comics.

GREENBERGER: In the end, that made sense because, after all, the goal was to take everything back to the basics. In this case, Superman without a cousin made the most sense. On top of that, literally nobody was buying her book, no matter who we put on it.

WOLFMAN: Right. Jenette was looking to reboot the main heroes—Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman—while we were producing Crisis. We had no idea what that was going to be like but at that point no Supergirl made sense. Of course, somewhere down the line, I think we all knew she would be brought back, but maybe after a decade or two, and we’d be able to make her a much stronger character than she had been. And hopefully a Supergirl the readers would truly embrace.

GREENBERGER: So again, I’m looking at my typewritten notes that we repented in the Absolute Crisis Companion…

WOLFMAN: Which is a beautiful book.

GREENBERGER: You’re kind. The thing is that even in 1984, when we were writing all of these memos, I saved everything, knowing in my heart we needed to maintain records on this one project.

I kept my files on nothing else.

WOLFMAN: I never kept files on my books.

GREENBERGER: So, I’m looking at the list that we concocted, and some of the ones we wanted to kill off, like Mirror Master and Zatara and the first Doctor Light, we managed to get rid of them.

And then there’s a bunch where I think that’s your handwriting, we decided to spare the Atom and Red Tornado. Maybe it was Dick.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 51

WOLFMAN: They were easy to add to the list but inconsequential enough. Readers had to see significant heroes and villains die to accept the enormity of the story and its repercussions. Killing Pieface wasn’t going to accomplish that.

Ultraman, Alexander Luthor, and Lois face their ultimate demise in Crisis #1.

Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

GREENBERGER: I see in my handwriting on a second death list where we added the EarthTwo Sandman and Robin. I guess that must have come out of conversations with Roy. [At a June 1984 meeting in San Diego, Roy and Gerry Conway were brought into the active discussions and, as keeper of Earth-Two’s population, we left it to Roy to designate who would be sacrificed.]

Roy tried to be as good a soldier as possible, considering he hated everything we were doing. It was completely against what made DC appealing to him.

WOLFMAN: Just as we had to show this across the multiverse.

GREENBERGER: I suppose we had to kill the Crime Syndicate, right?

WOLFMAN: They were the Justice League. By opening with their evil versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman going up against the anti-matter wave, the readers quickly understood the stakes. Essentially by killing the Crime Syndicate we showed the readers that the AntiMonitor was powerful enough to kill our Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, too.

GREENBERGER: It was very dramatic to open up issue number one with Earth-Three and killing them, because they were certainly long-lasting characters.

They spoke to the scope of the Multiverse and a very early stage in the Silver Age. I’m trying to remember. I think you came up with that idea as we were plotting out that very first issue before George became a part of the plotting sessions.

And then I’m thinking how we ended up picking to kill the Losers, the ultimate sad luck cases.

WOLFMAN: With a name like that, they had to die. Joking. Maybe not.

GREENBERGER: They were the natural choice and I actually think we got a good script out of [Robert] Kanigher for that [The Losers Special]. He had them going off into the mist because that worked for a war book but when we did it, they went out the cosmic way. So, it was a way to satisfy both sets of readers.

Also on The Hit List I notice was Batgirl and I also see in my notes that we decided to retire her instead and I guess that was again clearing the Batman decks.

WOLFMAN: That sequence with Batgirl and Supergirl in issue #4, to me, was the essence of the entire Crisis story, what it meant to be a hero. To not give up.

GREENBERGER: Yep. George did a wonderful job with their body language. Yeah, it’s funny you mention that because I just used that sequence with my college students to talk about dialogue and character. How much got packed into one page.

WOLFMAN: Retiring her made more sense.

GREENBERGER: I know Len had not been using her that much in the Batman and Detective titles and would talk of getting Batman back to his beginnings, so it made sense to sideline her one way or the other.

WOLFMAN: I like the character and didn’t want to see her die.

GREENBERGER: You really bookended that exchange by having Batgirl give the eulogy in issue 11.

Looking at the list, I think we were having fun by putting Beppo the Super Monkey on it, but then somebody crossed him off.

I suspect Nathaniel Dusk was saved because I think [Don] McGregor had a piece of him.

One thing that we never really talk about, and this is a really good opportunity for you to expand on. We never talked about the fact that you created Kole just to kill her. And you built

52 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

Kole soars into battle with the Titans in New Teen Titans #13, but not for long.

TM & © DC Comics.

her up in the Titans. Everyone thought she was gonna be this new character, and then boom! You want to talk about your thinking there creatively?

WOLFMAN: I did create Kole to die, but I needed to make sure that despite the fact that she was a new character, I wanted readers to feel like they’ve known her for a long time and cared for her. I tried to do the same with all the other characters we eliminated. These people needed to feel real, needed to make you care about them. Even if a character was created seven panels ago in the pages of Crisis, we needed to make their deaths important. We wanted you to feel for all the characters, to show new readers that DC characters were flesh and blood.

GREENBERGER: It was certainly jarring to the fans to get connected to her and then watch her die. She was certainly a creative curveball no one saw coming. And you’re right; we couldn’t kill any of the other core Titans at the time, and Dove was already in our plans, although he didn’t make the list.

Separating him from his brother was a good dramatic cue, setting things up to see what Hawk would be like without his counterbalance.

WOLFMAN: Killing Dove would make Hawk a better character.

Even better than if we had killed Hawk and left Dove alive.

There’s more growth and story possibilities in Hawk alone than in Dove alone. Least I think so.

GREENBERGER: Each death had to have some gravitas to it for fans of the specific series, and they had to be characters people recognized. It’s one thing to kill off the Bug-Eyed Bandit, who I know Len really wanted to get rid of, but no one was really going to care.

WOLFMAN: We and the editors could have some fun, but all deaths had to be consequential deaths. Having Supergirl and Flash go in back-to-back issues really cemented that notion.

GREENBERGER: At the end, we were left with a couple of problem characters that it took quite a while to figure out what to do with. I mean, obviously, you have the Huntress who couldn’t exist in the revamped Universe because her parents are gone. It took a while before Joey Cavalieri came up with his take on her being the daughter of the mobster and gave her a whole new background.

And then there was Power Girl, who until recently, was always sticking out like a sore thumb. Do you remember why we didn’t just kill her if she was going to be that problematical?

WOLFMAN: No, I can’t recall. It’s hard enough remembering things I did do than things I didn’t. Sorry.

GREENBERGER: Bear with me here, we had the big meeting at San Diego with Roy and Gerry because they couldn’t be part of any of the New York meetings. You may recall we sat in a big meeting room with Dick, Patty [Bastienne], Roy and Gerry, you, me, I think George and Len. We had talked about Power Girl rather than tying her to Superman’s legacy because that wouldn’t work anymore. I think it was there we decided to stick her in with Arion and Gerry would work with that. He then bowed out, and I ended up doing it with Paul Kupperberg. I guess we like the character enough to keep her.

Do you remember if George contributed any characters to eliminate?

WOLFMAN: No, I can’t remember him suggesting anyone.

His goal was to draw every DC character who had ever lived.

Even if only for a panel. And he did it spectacularly.

GREENBERGER: Let’s jump ahead. How did it feel to watch some of these deaths get undone over the next couple of decades?

WOLFMAN: They weren’t my characters. I never expected them to be permanently gone. I was just one creator out of fifty years of creators, with more to follow, each with their own ideas.

But I am glad it took over a decade before they came back.

That made it work even more.

GREENBERGER: Right. We were promised that the deaths would stay dead as long as Dick, Jenette, and Paul were there.

Those characters all came back after they left.

WOLFMAN: I appreciate that it took something like twenty years before Barry Allen came back.

GREENBERGER: Yeah, I mean look, he was dead longer than the gap between Jay Garrick and Barry Allen.

WOLFMAN: That’s a good point.

GREENBERGER: So yeah, that makes sense.

Given everything that had happened and you’ve talked about this and I’ve written about this, you really wanted to start everything over with new number ones the month after issue #12.

Dick more or less had cold feet about it.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 53

54 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

WOLFMAN: Yeah. He even wrote about it in his biography [actually penned by ye ed Michael Eury] where he regretted not giving in to the restart idea. His view was that DC didn’t have enough top talent to correctly reboot every character. I’d like to think DC had the talent and all we needed to do was unleash them to do their best.

GREENBERGER: Do you think some of these character deaths would have lasted longer had we started over? Maybe we wouldn’t have needed Zero Hour or an Infinite Crisis.

WOLFMAN: I think so. If we were to create, say, a brandnew Green Lantern idea, the way they created Hal Jordan to replace Alan Scott, we perhaps would have waited even longer to bring back Hal. Or Barry or whoever.

GREENBERGER: Some historians have recently dredged up an Amazing Heroes Preview Special where you and Len were creating a new Flash.

[Their new Flash was going to be S.T.A.R. Labs technician MacKenzie Ryan, with energy manipulation powers instead of superspeed. He was a married man with several children. He was namechecked during a phone conversation with S.T.A.R. director Jenette Klyburn in The New Teen Titans #19 (written

by Marv Wolfman), which gave his daughter’s name as Jamie.

The Bates version never got that far.]

What’s interesting is that Cary was also given the green light to develop a replacement Flash. Do you have any recollection of what happened?

WOLFMAN: Aside from remembering that we had come up with a new character who would be called Flash, and that his power wouldn’t be super speed, I’m sorry to say I don’t remember anything else about him. I was so burned out and wound up moving to California during producing Crisis. At any rate, I was happy to see that Wally West becoming the new Flash was the way they went. It was better that Wally West picked up the legacy and ran with it.

GREENBERGER: When you were adapting all of this for the novelization, you kept Barry as the focal point. So, you got to write his death all over again. Did that give you a different opportunity to write some of these other character deaths?

WOLFMAN: The novel let me explore those deaths in ways we couldn’t in the comic. And it let me really explore Barry’s love for Iris. I really loved the book and wish it could be re-released for readers who didn’t even know it existed. When Byron Preiss, the original publisher died, the book got lost and only a limited number of copies were ever released.

GREENBERGER: It’s interesting that the romance between Barry and Iris became the focal point to the animated adaptation. In the comics, it was really about the original Superman and Lois Lane. I remember, you were adamant you weren’t going to kill that Superman.

WOLFMAN: There was no way I was killing Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman. From the outset, I was determined to find a way to spare them and finally came up with sending them to limbo with Earth-Three’s Lex Luthor and Julie’s EarthPrime Superboy. It took these icons and gave them a fitting send-off without actually having them die.

GREENBERGER: You were pretty vocal about it, as I recall, and no one argued with you.

WOLFMAN: I wouldn’t think so.

GREENBERGER: And that’s it. We’ve covered the Death List and then some.

WOLFMAN: It was good to talk to you again. Stay well.

(opposite page) George Pérez’s cover for the Crisis Index honored the fallen. Courtesy of Heritage (www.ha.com). (this page) Barry Allen battles to the death in Crisis #8.

TM & © DC Comics.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 55

by A

l e x G a l e r, D C C o m i c s Collected Editions editor Since April 2024, DC has published remastered facsimile editions of the landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths, with each issue of the 12-issue series available monthly at participating comic book shops. As part of its DC Finest line of paperback collected editions, the publisher will release DC Finest: Events: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part One this September at participating comic book shops, booksellers, and mass market retailers. This will be the first of a four-volume series (500 pages each) collecting the entire event (including every crossover title) in reading order for the first time. In 2026, DC will release a brand-new, remastered Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths. Working with Crisis on Infinite Earths and Superman artist Jerry Ordway, DC has sourced his entire collection of original artwork from the series, as well as working with fans worldwide to source existing art from Crisis on Infinite Earths. This scanning effort will be used in DC’s full remastering of the series with original colors, featured in both the DC Finest: Events: Crisis on Infinite Earths line and Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths. The new Absolute edition will also feature new essays, and never-before printed material.

These beautiful scans of original art from Jerry Ordway’s collection have us excited for DC’s upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths Absolute Edition.

TM & © DC Comics

56 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

by R o g e r

Ash

No matter how good a comic may be, it needs to find its intended audience to succeed. In the case of Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC had an unofficial partner in the growing Direct Market. Comic shop owners and their clientele were the perfect audience for Crisis.

According to Milton Griepp, founder of ICv2 and co-founder of Capital City Distribution, “Crisis required comic stores to work. The main thing being that you really needed all 12 issues to understand what was happening, and potentially the tie-in issues. Getting all the issues wasn’t really the strength of newsstand distribution. That was more scattershot.

“Also, DC had been in the Direct Market long enough to understand the customers there. This was written with them in mind; people that really understood the DC characters and the worlds that their stories were in. That wouldn’t have been the case as much with the casual reader.”

Even before the series debuted, the buzz was positive.

“My memory is that there was a lot of excitement around the start of this series,” says Donald Propsom of Westfield Comics. “There had been a number of mini-series previously and Marvel was in the midst of their maxi-series Secret Wars which was successful, but DC had struggled with getting their first maxi-series, Camelot 3000, out in a timely manner.

The creative team of the series, along with the concept of Crisis (hearkening back to the EarthOne/Earth-Two team-ups that had milton griepp been popular for 20 years), gave it via ICv2. a lot of potential.

“My strongest memory of Crisis on Infinite Earths was the eagerness we had in getting the boxes of copies from Capital City Distribution back to the warehouse and opening them up so we could look at and read the first issue. Some of the excitement turned to disappointment when we saw what awful things the Flexographic printing process did to that first issue.”

Printing aside, the buzz remained positive, and readers eagerly followed along, resulting in strong sales. This gave DC the hit that they were hoping for. The best-selling monthly comic at the time was Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men, and Crisis was getting similar sales. As far as we can tell.

According to John Jackson Miller’s Comichron web site (comichron.com), “It was still very early days for comic sales reporting by Direct Market distributors in 1985. Capital City Distribution did monthly reports with order index numbers, but if

The DC Universe will never be the same!

A house ad promoting Crisis. Note the early version of the title used in the ad.

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DC supported Crisis on Infinite Earths with house ads throughout the run of the series.

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“There are sort of rolling relaunches of Superman, Diamond Comic Distributors reported anything at all, we haven’t found it.” That means that all the Wonder Woman, and Flash that happen over an sales information we have about Crisis is only from extended period—Year One is a soft restart in a Capital, with nothing from Diamond or newsstand sense. Those of course are lucrative for DC, but it’s the creators rather than the Crisis that were the sales. These are educated guesses. driving forces behind several of them.

For March 1985 titles, Crisis #4 was DC’s “I guess you can say that by making best seller and came in just behind the Legends series possible, it helps Uncanny X-Men #195, with both new fans understand the comics by lagging behind Secret Wars II #1. presenting them with shorter, new How did the success of Crisis imcharacter histories—but again pact the business of comics? That’s the timing of all the changes was a tricky question to answer and, spread out so as to make the full in part, it depends on who you ask. impact unclear.”

“I think Crisis on Infinite Earths Griepp has similar views to Miller. helped usher in an avalanche of tie“Crisis was part of a wave of comics ins across comic lines that ultimately written for teen and adult readers. made comics more confusing for I don’t think you can isolate its the casual comic book fan and impact outside of all those other raised the bar for entry for a new john jackson miller things that were going on. Watchfan,” says Propsom.

Photo by Fourthords. men and Dark Knight were both in Miller explains the complexity of the question of what impact Crisis had on the ’86, which was an incredible year overall. It was part of that creative explosion in the mid ‘80s that business of comics.

“Other than prompting bits of DC to be was only possible because comic stores existed.” relaunched over time, not much directly. It wasn’t anything close to a New 52-style relaunch where The author thanks Milton Griepp, John Jackson Miller, and the sales change can be tracked from a single day. Donald Propsom for their input.

58 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

by B

rian Martin

The giant overarching series that incorporates numerous crossovers... the savior or the bane of the comic industry? Whatever your opinion of these series, this issue of BI celebrates the granddaddy of them all. And in order to cover it completely, we need to examine all of those crossovers, books that either reflected events in the main series, or spun off from them and created new stories within that framework. So get set to examine some series that you would not normally concern yourself with.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to buy any more comics than usual, you can just continue reading this article and leave the driving to us. (Before we begin, a quick note. The Official Crisis Crossover Index was published by Eclipse in July of 1986. It will be referenced a few times in this article when the question of why some crossovers were certified as such, and some were not. Hopefully this will become clear as we move along.)

A STUDY IN SCARLET

The official Crisis crossover banner did not appear on any DC title until books dated September 1985, the month Crisis #6 came out. The choices for these initial issues may have seemed arbitrary, but when you look back, in retrospect they make perfect sense.

The Losers Special may have seemed an obvious yet not obvious choice. This loose conglomerate of old DC war characters had a long run in Our Fighting Forces stretching from issue #138(Oct/Nov 1969) to #181(Sept/Oct. 1978). Significantly for our purposes, they were the first casualties of DC characters who had starred in their own series, being killed by the AntiMonitor’s shadow demons in Crisis #3. Written by Robert Kanigher, with pencils by Judith Hunt and Sam Glanzman and inks by Mike Esposito, the Special strangely gave a different version of the group’s demise than the cited issue of Crisis. robert greenberger Frequent BI contributor Robert Greenberger (so frequent he is in this very issue!) wrote an afterward in that very special and tells us, “Murray Boltinoff was edging towards retirement, but at every editorial meeting, he eagerly made suggestions and wanted to be, ahem, a good soldier.

“When brainstorming ideas for tie-ins, we felt we owed it to the war titles to give them a place in the event. Len (Wein) and Murray discussed the needs and how Marv and George would kill the Losers, as was only natural given their hard-luck lives. However, it was a war book for war readers, so Murray and Bob Kanigher produced the story that honored that line. It was a narrative cheat but appropriate to the 50th anniversary celebration.”

Wonder Woman, however, was a more conventional subject for a crossover. It was not until Crisis Even as far as Crisis crossovers go, there was a lot going on in #12 that we were to realize just now significant All-Star Squadron #50. a role the series would play in the characters evolution, but as a member of the DC big three, TM & © DC Comics.

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(top) The Losers Special served as a fitting goodbye for the war heroes. (bottom) Sarge and Captain Storm give their all on this page from The Losers Special. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

she was entitled to a spotlight. Issue #327 of her title occurred within the midst of a continuing plot line crafted by writer Mindy Newell and artist Don Heck that pitted the amazing Amazon against the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca.

The story does not crossover with Crisis very much, the main point of intersection being Diana having issues due to red skies and storms at the story’s commencement, then wondering about the ramifications of the same crimson clouds at tale’s end. This sort of crossover would become a much-discussed aspect of the legitimacy of these sorts of books. You’ll see at least a few more with this being the only thread connecting them to COIE as we proceed.

One of two series that was to be affected the most directly by the events taking place in the parent series began to examine the ramifications with its eighteenth issue. This would be the currently set Earth-Two series Infinity Inc. Written by Roy Thomas who at the time also held the title of ‘Earth-Two editor’, and drawn by future superstar Todd McFarlane and inker Pablo Marcos, this series was also in the midst of a continuing story, in this case the titular group’s first battle with the villainous ensemble known as Helix.

This issue’s crossover point highlighted the other way that many creators handled their Crisis bannered incursions. In Crisis #1, Harbinger gathers the initial grouping of fifteen heroes who are meant to assist the Monitor. That issue does not show her recruitment of every one of them however. One of those not featured was Obsidian from Infinity Inc., and this issue shows her recruiting him and spiriting him away.

CROSS THAT OFF YOUR LIST

With books dated October 1985, the long tentacles of the series began to reach out and affect more and more books in the DCU. Among the books with what might be termed a tangential connection was Blue Devil #17. Written by BD’s creators Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn with Alan Kupperberg and Mark Farmer illustrating, at the end of the main plot of the issue, Green Lantern John Stewart shows up to recruit the book’s star to assist in the rehabilitation of the damaged Red Tornado. This crossover is significant in that, although this scene was repeated in Crisis itself, it would not occur until next month’s issue of the parent series.

Over in Roy Thomas’s neck of the woods, the 19th issue of Infinity Inc., created by the same team as the previous issue with the exception of having Steve Montano as inker, the connection to the main series is a little more subtle, with characters mentioning Obsidian’s disappearance and a corner of the eye sighting of Harbinger. Oh, and of course the obligatory appearance of the red skies.

The most important event contained in this issue, at least from the perspective of we Silver and Bronze Age fans, is the fact that it is part one of what was billed as The Last JLA-Justice Society team-up. (My eyes still tear up a bit just typing that). An annual summer tradition since Justice League of America #21-22 (August-September 1963) the team up of the two Earths’ premier super teams was eagerly awaited by many fans. Of course, since Crisis was going to do away with the multiple Earths concept, it would necessarily put the kibosh on this interdimensional get together. We did say this was part one. The concluding chapter would appear next month in the Justice League title. Please do not skip ahead, we’ll get there in due time.

Roy Thomas’s other Earth-Two set title entered the party this month. All-Star Squadron has been referred to by Mr. Thomas as his favorite series he ever wrote. Set during WW2, the book encompassed most of the heroes under DC’s purview during that time, even ones they purchased 60 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

(top) It’s the beginning of the end with the final JLA/JSA crossover in Infinity Inc. #19. (bottom left) The final Kara Zor-el story before her death. (bottom right) The concluding chapter of the final JLA/JSA crossover.

TM & © DC Comics.

after the fact. As such, there were always going to be retroactive changes that would have to be puzzled out, though as things progressed, they would cause many more headaches than at first anticipated. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves again.

Issue #50 of All-Star Squadron (have to be careful with its abbreviation) was, of course, an extra-large issue to celebrate the anniversary. Thomas had a few significant events of his own to depict there, but as with the Infinity Inc. issues, he went the extra mile to connect with Crisis. Illustrating this anniversary issue were pencillers Mike Clark and Arvell Jones, teaming up with inkers Vince Colleta and Tony DeZuniga.

Issues of Squadron had previously retold Golden Age Justice Society stories, fitting them within the timeframe of this series. Thomas set out to do the same thing with this issue, beginning a retelling of All-Star Comics #13 (Oct-Nov 1942) “Shanghaied Into Space”. He utilized the Crisis connection by depicting Harbinger arriving to recruit Firebrand, again a scene from Crisis #1. Her arrival throws rockets containing various JSA members into different dimensions. Back in 1942 a lot less was known about the planets in our solar system, and they were all shown having atmospheres and inhabitants. This solution allows Thomas to remain faithful to the original tale, yet update it scientifically.

The issue also has the aforementioned recruitment, extrapolating on it by having a few of Firebrand’s fellow All-Stars witness the event and attempt a rescue. We are also shown a further thread from the JSA tale, and even given a tie-in to the JLA/JSA story mentioned above. Sorry we can’t supply all the details, there was a LOT of stuff going on at this point!

DC Comics Presents #86 features a Superman/ Supergirl team up with crazy weather, a replay of the Batgirl/Supergirl chat from Crisis #4, and ends off with Kara having an ‘ominous feeling.’ Rick Hoberg and Dave Hunt are the illustrators of this Paul Kupperberg penned peril pitting the Kryptonian cousins against Supergirl foe Blackstarr. The story has historical significance, as it is chronologically the last story Kara Zor-el would appear in before her demise in the tale unfolding in Crisis.

The writer of Crisis was not spared having to include crossovers in his regular books. New Teen Titans #13, written by Marv Wolfman, with Eduardo Barrett and Romeo Tanghal illustrating, did not shirk its duty. Besides giving a detailed account of Harbinger’s recruitment of Cyborg, it also included a capsule summation of the events of the first six issues of Crisis!

Last but certainly not least that month, was a Vega tale encapsulated with Omega Men #31. Todd Klein wrote a piece that Ernie Colon and Bill Collins illustrated, showing a few of the Omega Men entering a tear in the fabric of space and time, and telling us to follow them into Crisis #8, as well as another comic which would be one of the stranger crossovers that Crisis would generate.

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WISH YOU WERE HERE (THOUGH I DIDN’T MEAN ALL AT ONCE!)

robot body of the Red Tornado in Crisis #8. This event leads directly into the properly bannered JLA Annual #3. No footnote As November-dated books rolled around, the crossover machine directing the reader here appears in Crisis though. This crossramped up to full speed. Detractors of the series sometimes over is a bit of a conundrum as references in the annual, as well consider issue #9 of Crisis to exist for no other purpose than to as the events depicted that lead to Red Tornado’s destruction, plug or set up the many tie-ins released at that time. The cross- differ from those of the parent series.

In the book, Dan Mishkin teams with artists Rick Hoberg and over concept of course has since been used almost ad nauseam to entice fans to buy significant numbers of comics they would Mike Gustovich to unfold the tale of the League’s resident not normally, but this series was the template, so it was sure android’s transformation into an environmental force bent on to show some growing pains. That being said, the comics we defending the planet Earth.

That month’s issue of the regular Justice League of are concerned with illustrate just how far ranging an event America title, #244, features the conclusion of the last like this would be in the real universe, and most JLA/JSA team-up. Written by Gerry Conway with art of them have narratives that legitimately connect

by Joe Staton and Mike Machlan, it completes the to Crisis, or at least directly continue on from tale begun in Infinity Inc. #19 and ties up some events in the main book that lead into or coinloose ends. In a nod to just how involved things cide with them. had become, the Next Issue blurb at the end Blue Devil #18 has a lead-in event to Crisis mentions how various plot threads would be as Dan Cassidy follows T. O. Morrow into a wrapped up in three other books besides next dimensional warp that takes him to this issue’s month’s JLA. This slightly convoluted path was meeting with the Omega Men. The story by not always warmly received by creators. When Gary Cohn, Dan Mishkin, Alan Kupperberg queried by BI regarding his feeling about these and Rick Magyar is a true crossover as both crossovers, Gerry Conway remarked, “I don’t books characters play a large part in the recall too much about those crossover stonarrative. Additionally, both Omega Men gerry conway ries—I remember so little I had to be reminded #31(mentioned previously), and this issue are I’d written them at all. They were an intrusion footnoted in Crisis so that readers know where into the flow of the series I was working on, and in some cases to proceed to find out what happened.

This was not always the case. The event that preceded the led to so much change in the status quo that I wished the projwarp that Blue Devil plunged through is the explosion of the ect never happened.”

The other series Conway was writing at the time that featured crossovers was The Fury of Firestorm. The 41st issue of that title was illustrated by Rafael Kayanan, Ian Akin, and Brian Garvey, and was another expanded account of Harbinger’s recruitment of one of the heroes present in Crisis #1.

Mr. Conway’s comment acts as a nice segue into that month’s Roy Thomas-written books as the comment about the change in status quo was felt in those books more than anywhere else.

Squadron #51, drawn by the firm of Clark, Jones and Colleta from #50, mainly uses Harbinger’s disruption of the dimensional barriers to shuffle a few characters around, facilitating the plot lines that would run over the next few issues.

The twentieth issue of Infinity, meanwhile, had Mike Hernandez filling in on most of the pages for penciller McFarlane, while Steve Montano remained the inker. Red skies and storms drive the plot of the comic, but the main thrust is the introduction of two more JSA legacy characters. “Dr. Midnight and the new Hourman,” begins Mr. Thomas himself, “they were partly based, I think, on ideas Dann (Roy’s wife and frequent co-plotter), Jerry Ordway, Mike Machlan, and I had kicked around at the beginning [of the series] but passed over in favor of other characters, since their powers weren’t as impressive compared to those of Jade, etc.”

The month’s issue of Teen Titans was by the same creative team as #14, and is one of those issues that, despite boasting the Crossover banner, other than featuring some red skies, bad weather, and a couple of characters mentioning the crisis, doesn’t really seem to have any connection to the overarching series. Go figure.

Wonder Woman #328 is again by Newell and Heck with Pablo Marcos lending a hand as they craft a tale in which the Anti-Monitor’s shadow creatures attack Paradise Island. This is

Despite being a Crisis crossover, events surrounding the Red Tornado in JLA Annual #3 contradicted with the parent book. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

62 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

We get our own Superboy, and his future is very important. (right) A hero returns in Green Lantern #194.

TM & © DC Comics.

one crossover where major events in Crisis actually drive the plot of the issue.

DC Comics Presents #87 by Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan, and Al Williamson seemed at the time to be a quaint little nod to DC history, including Earth-Prime in the Crisis. For those not in the know, Earth-Prime was the designation for the Earth we all live on within DC’s multiverse.

This story gives us our own Superboy! He was not destined to stick around on our planet long (does anyone remember any reports about a flying teenager on the news in 1985?), but referred to as Superboy-Prime ever since, he transitioned to Crisis with a footnote referencing this comic in Crisis #10, and became a fairly major player in subsequent DCU crossovers including Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and many other storylines.

Reinforcing the Crisis connection at the time, Superman is assaulted at story’s end, and the narrative is continued in next month’s issue of his own title.

Green Lantern joined the party with issue #194 crafted by Stephen Englehart, Joe Staton, and Bruce Patterson. Beginning on the cover, the issue again expands on a Harbinger recruitment drive and presents events from Crisis #1 from the perspective of the book’s titular character. Maybe the most significant contribution the title made to DC history began to unfold at the issue’s end. We’ll keep you in suspense for just a little longer as the crux of the matter is explored in GL’s next issue, also a crossover.

DEEP IN A HOLE IN CRISIS

Okay, so as not to keep you waiting too long, we’ll begin our examination of the December ‘85 dated crossovers with Green Lantern #195. Crisis #9 leads off with two pages in which the Guardians return Guy Gardner to the ranks of the Corps and send him off on a mission which, duly footnoted, leads into this issue. Again, this comic gives a more detailed account of the event, while not repeating the same exact scenes or dialog. We end with Guy sent off on a mission just as the Crisis scene ended, and this mission continues in subsequent issues, though not all of them are bannered.

A scene from Crisis #3 is reprised here, appropriate since it centered on the current GL at the time, John Stewart. Given the close connections presented in the book, BI asked Mr. Englehart how immersed in Crisis he became. “I had just taken over GL when Crisis was announced. We were all asked to make the sky red, and maybe we were asked to have Harbinger show up (I don’t remember). In any event, I did both. It’s part of being on a team so you just roll with it - and I decided, on my own, to join in the fun by plotting GL to continue to fit alongside Crisis.”

We are not giving away too much here in saying that Guy’s mission for the Guardians involved an assault on the anti-matter planet Qward’s moon, which happens to be the Anti-Monitor’s base. But, Mr. Englehart, what was up with that Guy Gardner fellow? “As for Guy, that was separate from Crisis. I had John Stewart and I had Hal Jordan, and was told that of course Hal would eventually take back the ring, as he always had before.

“But I thought, why does John have to get dumped, as he always had before? Why couldn’t I have two GL’s once Hal suited up again? And that made me think of the third GL, who had been turned into a vegetable and forgotten for about ten years. [Author’s note, Guy’s trip on the turnip truck began with an event in GL #116 (May 1979).] Obviously I had no use for a vegetable, so Joe Staton and I created a different Guy Gardner and completely erased the first one, using his brain damage as an excuse.”

When it came to the sequence in Crisis #8 involving Guy, Steve says, “Yep, my idea, and I talked with Marv about the Guardians. On a company-wide project, people talk at every intersection.”

We all know just how popular this version of Guy was to become in subsequent years, so just remember, he originated in a Crisis crossover.

A few paragraphs back it was mentioned that Teen Titans #14 had a crossover banner, but did not really cross over to any extent. Crisis #8 references that book and points readers to issue #15, a non-bannered book. I guess when you are writing and editing both books you have a bit of carte blanche.

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(left) Guy Gardner is back in Green Lantern #195. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) More fun from Roy Thomas.

TM & © DC Comics.

While we are dealing with tangential non- art by McFarlane, Montano, and DeZuniga that bannered crossovers (and before we get too recounts some of the heroes being spirited away many more complicated words in there), we to the massive gathering in Crisis #5, while those should mention Omega Men #33. Though left behind combat aspects of the time mentioned in the index of crossovers, shifting the Crisis is causing. it really only features one panel that That month also saw that year’s mentions the characters meeting Infinity Inc. Annual, #1 in fact.

Blue Devil in his book.

Illustrated by multiple artists, the DC Comics Presents #88 was Crisis connection in this tome the last issue of that title to be an consisted mainly of Obsidian official crossover (but not the last making a dramatic return from his to be mentioned in that index, read trip to the first few issues of Crisis. on) and Stephen Englehart teamed Thirdly, the All-Star Squadron with Keith Giffen and Karl Kesel to for the month continued showcasteam Superman with the Creeper ing heroes displaced in #50’s to battle an end of the world Harbinger incursion, to the point fanatic given extra powers by of having one group attacked by roy thomas a demon and extra ammunition shadow demons. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. by the Crisis. (BI #157, the Keith Issue #414 of Superman continGiffen issue, gave us some thoughts from Mr. Kesel ues over from DCCP #87 as mentioned, carrying regarding the art in this comic.) over the same creative team as well. The majority Roy Thomas made three contributions to the of the tale consists of a struggle against the crossover count this month. Infinity Inc. #21 has Superman Revenge Squad, a Silver Age concept if there ever was one. Crisis-wise, the issue ends with Superman returning the body of Supergirl to her Kryptonian parents on New Krypton, an event obliquely foreshadowed at the end of Crisis #7.

Finally, over in Conway’s Corner, though he may not have enjoyed the crossovers, Mr. Conway made a valiant effort. With the same artistic team as issue #41, Firestorm #42 does not even have the title character anywhere in the book! Instead, flame head’s girlfriend Firehawk is in the spotlight as she accompanies Wonder Girl on a quest to locate WG’s husband in a New York City thrown into time-tossed turmoil by the Crisis. This allows

64 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

(top left) Firestorm doesn’t even appear in his own issue in this crossover. (bottom left) Even the Legion gets involved in Crisis. (right) Wait!

Supergirl was married?

TM & © DC Comics.

the duo to team up with Tomahawk and Dan Hunter, stars of their own DC comic from 1950-1972. This story is given a leadin and footnoted in Crisis #9.

Conway’s other book that month, Justice League of America #245, was not so lucky. In Crisis #9, JLA member Steel is sent, ‘to a place from which you will never return’ by Teen Titans foe Warp. No mention of where is offered, nor is there a footnote to lead us to the issue of JLA. Luke McDonnell and Mike Machlan illustrate the issue in question, wherein we find a story of Steel in the future battling frequent Justice League adversary the Lord of Time. Steel recalls fighting villains and then being hit by something as he references Crisis. The Time Lord (or is that title already taken?) posits that he ‘stumbled through a time warp’.

With all that was going on in Crisis that’s as good a possibility as any, and it is the only one we get. By story’s end, Steel is offered a trip back to the correct time period. He is back at the beginning of next issue, none the worse for wear, but he has just arrived back and does reference his trip.

TRAIN KEPT ROLLIN’

With the January 1986 dated books, the crossovers slowed down considerably. Only four books that month featured the Crisis Crossover banner.

Two books that did not however, are referenced in that Index and considered at least tangential crossovers. Swamp

Thing #44 mostly shows red skies and has John Constantine and Steve Dayton briefly meet Batman, while in Detective Comics #558, the Darknight Detective experiences bad weather and red skies, ending the issue with a phone call that leads him to his confrontation with the Joker back in Crisis #2.

Official wise, Legion of Super-Heroes #18 was the only issue of the title to feature the crossover banner, though a little later we’ll discuss another issue that could have qualified. Greg Laroque and Larry Mahlstedt illustrate an aspect of the Crisis that could have received a lot more attention. When you have titles taking place in various time periods, how does an allencompassing Crisis affect them? Since there had been a long existing relationship between the Legion’s Brainiac 5 and Supergirl, the latter’s demise in Crisis had to be addressed.

Thankfully, there was an item in the Legion book that helped explain this. Since both time travel and the concept of parallel worlds had long been staples in the DCU, the Legion book had established that this possible future had developed a device called a Time Beacon that allowed travelers to return to their home timeline. The device is used to show how the Crisis’s effects had been held in check and led to the conflict with the villain of the piece, the chronologically based Infinite Man. By story’s end the I Man is defeated, and the repercussions of the Crisis were set to roll over the Legion’s time period.

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(left) Wonder Woman ended, for the time being, with issue #329. (right) Wonder Woman battles on this page from issue #329. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com).

TM & © DC Comics.

The story’s scribe, Paul Levitz, when asked the same character except for the name and color about his Crisis experience indicated that he of her costume.” This new Wildcat would have her had, “Not much specific memory, other than it debut on the last page of Crisis #6. was a mandate from Dick (Giordano) and I tried Over in the Infinity title (no relation to the to follow through. The Supergirl death was Infinite Man in that Legion comic by the way), obviously the most important and comthe first eleven pages are given over to plicated factor.” detailing some of the inter-character Roy Thomas continued his deep reactions that took place within the dive into the Crisis sandbox with massive gathering of super-humanity All-Star #53 and Infinity #22. Utilizfrom Crisis #5. The balance of the ing artists who had contributed to story continues the new Hourman his previous crossovers, the former and Dr. Mid-Night’s time-tossed title again features red skies and adventure from the previous stormy weather, but has the adInfinity Inc. issue. dition of six pages that expand The final crossover of the month upon events from Crisis #5, one of featured a tale which was a little which was the crippling of Golden unexpected by a lot of fans.

Age hero Wildcat. That event was Superman #415, crafted by Cary not very traumatic for Thomas as Bates, Curt Swan, and Al Williampaul levitz he tells BI, “I frankly don’t recall son, told the story of ‘Supergirl’s © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. much about that sequence, but it Secret Marriage’. After her passing, made sense. Wildcat, who I always enjoyed when Superman discovers an intruder in his Fortress of he was a backup hero in Sensation Comics in the Solitude—an intruder who, it turns out had been 1940s, to me, he just didn’t bring much to the married to Supergirl for a few days a couple JSA table.” Adding to his willingness to sideline of years previous, while she was suffering from the character was a development that went back amnesia. The return of her senses led her to a couple of years. “The new Wildcat had been in forget her new husband and marriage and leave mind since the very beginning of Infinity Inc., for and return to Earth. It took him until now to be which an early ad highlighted ‘La Garra’, who was able to track her down.

66 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

THE END OF AN ERA

Wonder Woman had been published continuously by DC since issue #1 appeared dated Summer 1942. That series was to end and the character was, well, de-created is the best way to describe it, as in Crisis #12 she was returned to her original state from before her birth. DC would of course recreate the character and relaunch her with a new #1 dated November 1986. From a crossover perspective, Gerry Conway was brought in to team up with artist Don Heck to give the original series a send-off with an oversized #329. Paradise Island still reels from the shadow demons that attacked last issue. Now we find the Anti-Monitor has allied with Hades to conquer the island and then Mount Olympus. It all comes out okay in the end, and Diana and Steve Trevor are even given a happy ending. Though much like the Flash at the end of his series, this happiness was soon to be shattered in Crisis.

Roy Thomas and his regular artists continued to play nice in his titles, #23 of Infinity Inc and #54 of All-Star. In the former we are given another look at Wildcat’s debut from Crisis #6, while time disturbances set up a plot for next time.

Over in the other book, Thomas continued to create legitimate crossovers, showing red skies and storms of course, but also showing scenes from Crisis, updating us on characters affected by those events, and in this issue, showing Firebrand taking charge of a group of time tossed heroes who would feature in the tale told in the succeeding issue.

The final crossover of the month is given a lead-in via a footnote in Crisis #11. Amethyst was a title with not a lot of connection to the DCU until this moment and the crossover issue #13. In Crisis, shadow demons attack Amethyst and Dr. Fate leaves to transport her back to her own world. Keith Giffen, Robert Loren Fleming, Ernie Colon, and Karl Kesel are the people behind the crossover which reveals Amethyst to be a Lord of Order, linking the character to the larger DCU.

ONE WORLD IN HARMONY

Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 appeared with a cover date of March 1986, and marked the last flurry of crossover issues. But surprisingly not the last comics to be bannered as such.

Roy Thomas continued to soldier along as Infinity Inc. #24, the last issue to sport the crossover banner followed the same template as most of the previous issues with the initial few pages showing the characters involved in the Crisis, while the rest played out the main plot.

All-Star #55 picked up where last issue ended and featured Firebrand leading a group of DC’s heroes from past time periods into battle against the forces of the Ultra-Humanite. That wasn’t the only time tossed thing about the story though. “My first suggestion of such a story had been in an early 1960s letter to JLA editor Julius Schwartz,” reveals Thomas. “After that, it lay dormant for a little over twenty years until Crisis and Squadron #55.”

Alan Moore’s legendary run on Swamp Thing had its only official Crisis crossover with issue #46. In another nod to Crisis #5, artists Stephen Bissette and John Totleben illustrate five pages of Moore’s unique take on Swampy interacting with other DCU characters.

Green Lantern #198 was a giant size issue that had a lot to do with Crisis as Sinestro recruits John Stewart to try to head off Guy Gardner on that mission the Guardians sent him on in Crisis. Mayhem ensues, of course. Fittingly, a scene is presented where the cosmos shakes, and the heroes realize the Crisis has ended.

Before we let Mr. Englehart go, BI asked him, since he was on the outside looking in with Crisis, how he handled being the prime architect of a multi-crossover series, in this case the weekly and more intricately meshed Millennium in 1987. “The deal with Crisis had been, turn the sky red and maybe use Harbinger. That was asked of everybody, who were free to do their own books their own way once they did that.

“When we did Millennium, I asked everyone to pick one of their characters, any one, prominent or not, and make them a secret Manhunter - otherwise they could do what they wanted. Most people did that as part of being a DC writer, on the team, and some had a lot of fun with it. For those who played along, I made sure to listen to their feedback while constructing my story, and made several tweaks to help them out. I view these things as a chance to do something big with everyone collaborating, so I was as collaborating as I could be.”

A month after Crisis #12, All-Star #56 sported the banner. It is certainly a bit of an outlier since only a back-up tale featuring a displaced JSAer and a few panels with crimson skies seem to have any connection.

And that was it for Crisis crossovers. Kind of.

(top) Amethyst joins the DCU in Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld #13. (bottom) Even Swamp Thing got in on the fun in his book.

TM & © DC Comics.

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(left) The powerful cover to Legion of Super-Heroes #16. (right) The heroes mourn their dead in Last Days of the Justice Society #1 special.

TM & © DC Comics.

WHEN IS A CROSSOVER NOT A CROSSOVER

Curiously, there were some comics released during the run of Crisis, and shortly before and after, that could legitimately have been billed as crossovers yet were not.

Two months before Crisis began, DC Comics Presents #78 (Feb ‘85) has a last page that shows the Monitor, and gives him dialog and a bottom page caption that lead directly into Crisis #1.

Superman #413 (Nov. ‘85) is the final chapter of a trilogy by writer Cary Bates and artists Curt Swan and Al Williamson pitting Supes against Lex Luthor. At the tale’s end, the antagonist is sucked into a powerful vortex that takes him to the meeting of super villains that occurs in Crisis #6. Though this development is even footnoted in the issue of Crisis, no Crossover banner adorns the cover.

That same month, Paul Levitz wrote the story in Legion of Super-Heroes #16 that Steve Lightle and Bob Smith illustrated.

A number of pages of the issue and the cover are dedicated to Brainiac 5’s reaction to the death of Supergirl. But again, there is no banner.

Infinity Inc. #25 is not a crossover, but does contain numerous instances of characters referring to how their lives have been affected by the Crisis.

Two later issues of DC Comics Presents have Crisis connections. Issue #95 has a note stating the story took place during Crisis, which probably has more to do with the timing of its creation, but #94 (June ‘86), teams Superman up with Harbinger, Pariah, and Lady Quark, three characters created for Crisis.

Robert Greenberger, Barbara Randall, Tom Mandrake, and Don Heck create the narrative which is the three guest stars’ first appearance since Crisis ended. Though DC may have had high hopes for the trio, except for Lady Quark spending an extended period with the L.E.G.I.O.N. group, none of them became major players in the DCU. All-Star Squadron #60 also deserves mention as at the story’s end we find that the character Mekanique had been

holding back the adjustments Crisis made to the heroes active on Earth-Two during WWII. Specifically, Superman, Wonder Wonder, Aquaman, and the Dynamic Duo were now no longer considered part of the DCU back then. As we mentioned earlier, Roy Thomas’s titles dealt these and other drastic changes due to Crisis. He has detailed how the situation changed in other sources, but reiterated for BI that, “Early on, to garner my support and cooperation, I was promised that I’d be able to continue the All-Star Squadron after Crisis ended, whether off in some pocket universe somewhere or whatever. Then, in the midst of things, DC suddenly abrogated that agreement. I should stress that I’ve no reason to believe that Marv Wolfman and/or George Pérez were part of that betrayal.”

Those changes were carried even further by Thomas and DC as April 1986 saw the publication of the Last Days of the Justice Society Special that used Crisis and other events to at least temporarily remove the JSA from continuity. Two months later, Infinity Inc. #30 showed the title characters’ reaction to that event.

Most of the issues mentioned here are included in that Official Crisis Crossover Index.

And that about does it for crossovers, official and otherwise. Things went back to the new normal in the DCU. For a little while anyway. At least until the next crossover that is.

The writer would like to thank Gerry Conway, Stephen Englehart, Bob Greenberger, Paul Levitz, and Roy Thomas for their memories used in this article.

Brian Martin lives in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, and though his life sometimes feels like a crisis, his crossovers with friends and family, as well as the world of comics, always gets him through.

68 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

by J o h n

Wells

When parallel worlds collide! (top left) Batman: Two-Face Strikes Twice #2. (top right) Silver Age: Teen Titans and (middle left) Silver Age: 80-Page Giant, both a part of DC’s 2000 Silver Age event. (middle right) DC Comics: Superman, a tribute event to legendary editor Julius Schwartz. (bottom left) DC Retroactive: Green Lantern - The 1980s. (bottom right) Convergence: Wonder Woman.

TM & © DC Comics.

As the red skies returned to blue, a new day dawned in the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths DC Universe and a great jumping-on point was promised to every standoffish fan who’d made theirs Marvel or was intimidated by the publisher’s long history. The problem with jumping-on points, of course, is that they’re also an ideal time to leap off. For some longtime readers, dumping the decades-long mythologies of, say, Superman or Wonder Woman, in favor of a clean slate was a bridge too far.

Many old-time fans will tell you today that their DC collections stop at the end of 1985.

To be fair, though, most DC characters in 1986 simply carried on as if nothing had happened. Even Batman, despite extensive revisions in “Year One” and “Year Two” and a new origin for Jason Todd, largely retained everything in his Earth-One canon. As the years went on, things got messier, and more characters had their histories diverge from the pre-Crisis world order. Although big chunks of Earth-One (and Two) history were retained in the main canon right up to the scorched earth “New 52” reboot, the DC Universe of 1986-2011 evolved into an elaborate patchwork with an identity of its own rather than merely Earth-One with a few rebuilt properties.

From 1986 to 2025, only one thing has been constant.

There have always been lapsed fans proclaiming that if only DC went back to the old continuity or brought back the old writers or the old artists, they’d all come rushing back with money in their hands. Forgive me if I don’t believe most of them.

One is reminded of writer-editor Robert Kanigher’s response to detractors of his very eccentric 1960s Wonder Woman run. He decided to return to the basic status quo and look of the original 1940s series, complete with having Ross Andru and Mike Esposito subvert their style to recreate the look of original artist H.G. Peter. The result was pretty ugly, with heavilyaccented cheekbones and stiff-poses. However antiquated Peter may have been even in the 1940s, his own style had authenticity and poor Ross and Mike couldn’t recreate that. Readers—most of them, anyway—hated the “great step backward” and Kanigher soon backed off (other than a brief period in 1973 when he once again recycled old scripts).

“Even twenty years later, it felt wrong,” Kurt Busiek observed to BACK ISSUE, “and thirty years later it read like self-parody. And he was homaging his own earlier work.” Busiek was, incidentally, a collaborator on a vastly superior tribute to the Golden Age Amazing Amazon.

As detailed in BI #147, he joined plotter/artist Trina Robbins on 1986’s lovely Legend of Wonder Woman #1-4, a scheduling placeholder bridging the gap between the cancellation of the original series and the launch of George Pérez’s reboot.

In the early years after Crisis, there were other occasional efforts that recreated both the style and substance of DC stories from bygone days. Mike W. Barr had a particular knack for doing so. In a variation on a story he and Dave Gibbons did for 1983’s The Brave and the Bold #200, Barr penned Two-Face Strikes Twice (1993). Half of each of the two issues was done in the style of a classic 1940s/1950s Bat-adventure, complete with Joe Staton doing a fine approximation of the “Bob Kane” house style. Flipping each issue, readers found a darker, painted sequel.

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Flashback stories still appeared frequently in the DC Universe, although usually written for post-Crisis continuity. Occasionally, though, a one-off here or there went the extra mile for nostalgia. A tale in 1990’s Flash Special #1—written by Gerard Jones and inked by Joe Rubinstein—evoked the look of a 1960s Carmine Infantino adventure…because Infantino himself had been drafted to pencil it. A cute short in 1997’s Flash Secret Files and Origins #1 (by Brian Augustyn, Craig Rousseau, and Jose Marzan, Jr.) pretended to be a lost Flash story from 1949 where Jay Garrick met Max Mercury.

In 1998, Superman editor Joey Cavalieri went things one better by devoting three full months of issues (Action Comics #745747; Adventures of Superman #558-560; Superman #136-138; Superman: The Man of Steel #8082) to stories seemingly set in different periods of the Man of Steel’s publishing history. Along with the late 1930s, the 1960s, and the mid-1970s, one take was inspired by the short-lived “Superman of 2965” stories of the mid-1960s.

The intent was to pay homage to Superman during his 60 th anniversary leading to the revelation that cosmic villain Dominus was messing with reality. The fantasy lead-in stories were meant to be fun and sometimes tongue-in-cheek, not accurate representations of the eras being played with. The characterization and visuals of the cast in Action’s faux 1970s, for instance, were noticeably off model and Adventures’ alternate Silver Age had the decompressed pacing of a Lee/Kirby Marvel comic rather than a tightly wound 1960s Superman tale.

Mark Waid aspired to be much more on-target with a May 2000 event called Silver Age. Although adhering to post-Crisis continuity, it aimed to approximate 1960s DC comics as close as humanly possible. In between two extra-length bookend titles, various oneshots propelled a plot in which the Justice League and a group of classic villains were body-swapped. As a bonus in the wrap-up 80-Page Giant, a selection of rarities appeared, including a new—and convincing— 1960s style Wonder Girl and Super-Turtle features.

“I’d pitched it back during that period where DC had a ‘skip-week event’ every quarter,” Waid told American Comic Book Chronicles editor Keith Dallas in a 2022 interview (published in BI for the first time).

(top left) Joe Staton’s nifty “Bob Kane” style for Batman: Two-Face Strikes Twice #1. (top right) A mock cover on the interior of The Flash Secret Origins #2 told you this story was from DC’s Silver Age. (bottom) Silver Age legend Carmine Infantino returned to give The Flash Special #1 some Silver Age flair. (inset) Superman: The Man of Steel #80 felt like the Fleischer Superman.

TM & © DC Comics.

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DC’s Silver Age event brought back Silver Age titles and creators. (top left) Silver Age #1, cover

by Brian Bolland. (top right) Jim Aparo and Bill Sienkiewicz’s cover to Silver Age: The Brave and the Bold #1. (middle left) Silver Age: Dial H for Hero by Jim Mooney and Karl Kesel. (middle right) Ramona Fradon and Kevin Nowlan provided the cover for Silver Age: Doom Patrol. (bottom left) Silver Age: Green Lantern #1’s dynamic Gil Kane/Kevin Nowlan cover. (bottom right) Dick Giordano provided the cover to Silver Age: Showcase #1.

TM & © DC Comics.

“Rather than spread out the monthlies in a month with five weeks, DC would instead devote that week to some special project. Silver Age played to all my loves and strengths. No one at the company was superexcited about doing it, but it filled a fifth-week need.

“I threw myself all-in, outlining a beginning and end and choosing the titles that would fill the ‘middle’ of the event and giving the writers one-paragraph synopses that would guide them without tying their hands too tightly.

“I was bound and determined as best I could to make these comics look as much as possible like they came from 1967. To that end, I helped production source the period-accurate logos, and I myself created and typeset the Direct Currents pages to ensure that they’d be perfectly styled in the exact right typeface and voice. The one place production let me down was forgetting that interior logos for Flash and Green Lantern in the Silver Age were not the same as the cover logos, but no one ever noticed.

“It was editor Dan Raspler’s idea to give the covers to Silver Age artists,” a collection of greats that included Nick Cardy, Ramona Fradon, Gil Kane, and others. Jim Aparo penciled the Brave and Bold cover with B&B’s longtime (and long-retired) writer tapped for the interior script.

“I had to write and/or rewrite over half of it, maybe more,” Waid confided in me in a June 2000 e-mail.

“Bob Haney, God bless him, just didn’t get the basic plot I gave him and foundered badly, poor guy. So, a lot of it was me doing my best Haney, channeling his voice as best I could.” Rather than embarrass the veteran creator, Waid made sure Haney was listed as the lone scripter, revealing the truth only now.

“I myself staked out the Robby Reed/Martian Manhunter team-up,” Waid told Keith Dallas, “as Robby was and remains my absolute favorite DC C-lister—almost completely because he and I could have been twins at his age. The story was driven almost exclusively by my desire to once and for all define which letters were on the H-Dial, since we knew of only H-E-R-O, H-E-R-O-I-N-E, and V-I-L-L-A-I-N. That’s only nine, but there were ten letters on that dial.

I’d always hated the ‘Dial H’ story of the 1980s claiming that Robby once dialed ‘SPLIT,’ which doesn’t work with those letters, but I reasoned that if ‘D’ were the tenth letter, he could have dialed ‘DIVIDE,’ and that’s head-canon that I’m standing by until I die.”

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(left) “Mystery of the Black Bat” from Batman #600 saw James Tucker nailing the “Dick Sprang” style of artwork. (right) In the same issue, Stefano Gaudiano evoked the backup tales of the 1960s Detective Comics in “Joker Tips His Hat!”.

TM & © DC Comics.

“The finale in the 80-page end book is still one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. Not only is it structurally sound, it’s part two of my love-letter to Robby Reed, and yes, I do have plans in World’s Finest to finally answer the question posed in the last panel about how Robby helped the JLA one last time.”

“As far as the back matter to the 80-pager goes, that was also a blast. I chose and sourced the old unpublished material, having stumbled across it in the DC library. I have no idea where we got usable stats on the Batman story. And I couldn’t tell you if you waterboarded me why I chose to do a Kanigher-esque Wonder Woman story with Ty Templeton, though I assume it was because while the event had strong overtones of Fox, Broome, and Weisinger, Kanigher was under-represented, and I knew Ty could do a killer Ross Andru imitation.”

“To this day, I think the storyline holds together incredibly well,” Waid declared, “and I still can’t believe DC’s never reprinted it given the talent involved—Mark Millar, Kurt Busiek, and so forth.”

Millar’s contribution was a JLA script that focused on the evil perpetrated by the villains in the heroes’ bodies. One of the few false notes in the entire 12-issue event—along with Geoff Johns’ characterization of Blackhawk as a womanizing

drunk in Showcase—was the conclusion of that episode. That’s when the bad guys stood over a shattered bottle city and stomped its tiny inhabitants to death.

It was indicative of the creator-owned projects Millar was later famed for but tonally at odds with the vibe of Silver Age DC comic books. “Neal Adams was interested in doing the Justice League cover,” Waid revealed to Keith Dallas, “but turned it down after he read the script, which he disliked intensely for its cynicism.”

Those details aside, the collective project was a virtual love letter to 1960s DC, from characters to trade dress to plot and tone. It was almost exactly what lapsed fans had been asking for…and yet Silver Age was deemed a flop. “I couldn’t understand the virulent attitude about the whole stunt from some corners who kept screaming that ‘we just didn’t get the Silver Age,’” Waid told me privately in June 2000. “I finally realized I was once more dealing with the same problem I had with JLA: Year One critics: they’re working strictly off rose-colored memory.”

After that, it was back to the periodic back-ofbook treats, including a pair of Ed Brubaker-scripted shorts in the back of Batman #600 (2002). “Mystery of the Black Bat” found artist James Tucker doing

72 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

a nice impersonation of 1950s Dick Sprang while Stefano Gaudiano evoked the late-1960s Batgirl and Robin solo strips in “Joker Tips His Hat.” Following the passing of legendary editor Julius Schwartz in February 2004, another full-on tribute to pre-Crisis DC was quickly added to the schedule and on sale in July. Schwartz had sometimes had his covers drawn first—to ensure an exciting image—and had stories written to match them.

The concept with the eight DC Comics Presents tribute comics was to take classic Schwartz-era covers and have new stories written about them.

There were two tales per issue, one scripted by a former Schwartz writer (Cary Bates, Elliot S. Maggin, etc.) and the other by the post-Crisis generation (Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, etc.). Surviving artists like Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella were also invited to participate.

Strictly speaking, most of the stories weren’t particularly retro but most were agreeable. Mark Waid and Dan Jurgens’ tale in the Atom one-shot, though, could have fit in with the Earth-One canon just fine. The same could be said for Kurt Busiek and Walter Simonson’s tale in DCCP: Hawkman. Indeed, Kurt touched base with a DC expert before publication (cough it was me cough) to make sure the details were authentic.

Several of the tales included guest-appearances

by Schwartz himself, playing off the vintage stories where DC heroes met their editor on the supposed “real world” of Earth-Prime. Seven years later, another such crossover found the late 1970s Justice League doing so again, this time to rescue Adam Strange after he’d been displaced on the world where they were all just comic book characters.

Scripted by Cary Bates (with art by Gordon Purcell, Andy Smith, and José Marzán Jr.), the story was part of DC Retroactive, a set of eighteen one-shots (spanning July-September 2011) meant to pay tribute to half-a-dozen cornerstone DC features before company continuity did a hard reset with the New 52 initiative.

Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, the Justice League of America, Superman, and Wonder Woman appeared in three issues apiece, reflecting the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s status quo of each feature in new stories that were paired with a period reprint and era-appropriate logos on the cover. Writers were strictly limited to individuals who worked on those titles during those decades, including Bates, Mike W. Barr, Gerry Conway, Denny O’Neil, Martin Pasko, and Len Wein. Artist selection was trickier although most of the 1990s editions were all able to reunite writers with illustrators they once worked with. The Green Lantern trilogy was the only one to snag an original penciler from each decade: Mike Grell, Joe Staton, and Darryl Banks.

Given the variety of creators, the quality varied but most were solid entertainment. Significantly, most stories made no attempt to physically look like the comics of the day outside of the stylistic similarities of the seasoned creators to their earlier work. In terms of fidelity to the old continuity, a few glitches spilled through—Adam Strange wasn’t traveling by Zeta-Beam (per Bates’ JLA story) and Queen Hippolyta (in the 1970s WW issue) wasn’t a brunette—but the episodes largely fit their era.

Len Wein deliberately wrote stories that didn’t fit, instead taking the opportunity to render roads not taken. Before leaving Batman in 1980, he had laid the groundwork for a new Terrible Trio, one of whom would be unmasked as Lucius Fox’s son Tim. His successor Marv Wolfman took Tim in a different direction, but Len returned to his idea for the Retroactive issue. Similarly, his 1980s issue of Green Lantern featured a different account of John Stewart’s unmasking as GL than the version that his successor Steve Englehart penned in 1985.

Meanwhile, Marv Wolfman used his 1980s Superman issue to write a story that could never have run during that era. A sequel of sorts to a tale the writer penned for 1980’s Superman #352, it was also a literal Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover!

Disguised as the immortal Destiny, Harbinger confronted the Man of Steel with all manner of horrors further down the DC timeline, from Knightfall to Identity Crisis to Amazons Attack

(top left) DC Comics Presents: The Atom, cover by Brian Bolland. (top right) Alex Ross’ cover to DCCP: The Flash. (bottom left) DCCP: Hawkman cover by José Luis GarcíaLópez/Kevin Nowlan. (bottom right) García-López’s DCCP: Justice League cover.

TM & © DC Comics.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 73

DC Retroactive: Batman (top row left) 1970s and (top row 2nd) 1980s. (top row 3rd) DC Retroactive: Flash 1970s. (top row right) DC Retroactive: Green Lantern 1970s. (bottom row left) DC Retroactive: JLA 1970s. (bottom row 2nd) DC Retroactive: Superman 1980s. DC Retroactive: Wonder Woman (bottom 3rd) 1970s and (bottom right) 1980s.

TM & © DC Comics.

to Blackest Night…not to mention the imminent deaths of Supergirl and the Flash. The visions shook Superman, but his resolve stood strong.

The dawn of 1985’s Crisis was revisited again in Convergence, a sprawling 48-issue event published during April and May 2015. The project was motivated in part by an anticipated disruption in DC’s publishing schedule during its cross-country corporate move to Los Angeles. Preempting the regular line with short-term comics for two months filled the gap neatly.

The premise of Convergence was that Brainiac had gained access to many of the parallel Earths affected by previous crises in time, plucked and domed a representative city from each of them, and dropped them all on a planet outside of time and space. A notable plot contrivance had heroes from across the country coincidentally all visiting given cities at the moment they were stolen away.

Much of what followed involved Brainiac pitting the heroes of different cities against each other before the climax reset everything and returned everyone to the timelines they came from.

The core eight issues of Convergence were augmented by 20 two-part mini-series that focused on specific characters and Earths from DC history.

Earth-One and Earth-Two, for instance, each had heroes pulled from the period just as Crisis on

Infinite Earths was beginning. Unfortunately, neither they nor the other eras—ranging from pre-Zero Hour to pre-New 52—were particularly on model.

Earth-One’s Lucius Fox, for example, was presented in Convergence: Adventures of Superman #1 as a tech genius, a retcon not in evidence until 21st century stories. Meanwhile, Convergence #3 ignored the fact that Earth-One’s Kandor—home of most of Krypton’s last survivors—had been freed from its bottled prison six years prior to Crisis…and then killed off all its inhabitants.

Earth-Two’s Crimson Avenger, who’d died several years prior to Crisis, was alive and well in Convergence: World’s Finest #1-2. Elsewhere, EarthTwo’s adult Robin was clad in his Silver Age costume rather than his Bronze Age outfit in Convergence: Detective Comics #1-2. In the same two-parter, the Huntress was wildly off-model, trying to execute a Russian variant of Superman with the justification that “Dad [a.k.a. Batman] would have been willing to make an exception” to his code against killing.

Conversely, Jeff Parker and Evan Shaner’s Convergence: Shazam! #1-2 not only stayed true to the details of the Marvel Family’s pre-Crisis Earth-S but delivered a superb story in the process. And, to be fair, there was a lot of great writing and art amidst the event. The stories just weren’t convincing as continuations of Earth-Two, Earth-One, et al.

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Too much time had passed and there was too little interest in getting the finer points right.

With its inclusion of so many diverse periods, Convergence was also a reminder of the fractured state of fandom. There were readers who loved Golden/ Silver Age DC but disliked Bronze. And those who drew a line in the sand after Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 and rejected everything published thereafter. The fans who loved the familial expansion of DC’s major properties in the 1990s with a plethora of new young legacy heroes but rejected the darkening that proliferated after Identity Crisis in the early 2000s. And the devoted readers who came aboard in the 21st century and resented the New 52 reboot. It isn’t possible to satisfy them all.

Remarkably, Mark Waid and Dan Mora’s ongoing Batman/Superman: World’s Finest (launched in 2022) has defied the odds, winning widespread fan acclaim for its stories set in a “classic era” analogous to DC’s Silver Age. It isn’t literally Earth-One continuity but the sunnier spirit of the times is there, its details updated to reflect the fluid DC Universe and the 21st century in general.

In a February 2024 interview with Chris Coplan at aiptcomics.com, Waid noted the challenges inherent in using characters like other-dimensional imps in an arc for WF #26-29. “The tricky needle to thread there,” Waid explained, “is you can’t make Bat-Mite and [Mister] Mxyzptlk serious because that’s not what they are. So, you have to retain the fun of those characters. But at the same time, we don’t publish comics from 1965 anymore, and you can’t make Superman and Batman look like complete goofballs.”

Elsewhere, in 2022’s Dark Crisis: Big Bang #1, Waid revealed that the classic Earth-One existed once more in the recreated multiverse. In the revised cosmology, it was reclassified as Earth-1958. To date, it has been untouched by current DC writers.

“There are times I’ve thought it’d be a dream project to write and/or edit a series called Earth One,” Kurt Busiek told BACK ISSUE, “a Dollar Comics-format book that went back to the pre-Crisis continuity for an ongoing anthology of stories featuring the heroes of those days. But even when thinking of that, my thoughts turn to both ways to make it feel more modern and what to change—which continuities to pick up as Earth-One left them, which to pick up earlier, which to rethink. And, of course, the artists of those days are unavailable, and modern artists would play things differently.

“So, it might hearken back to those days, but it wouldn’t feel like them, not entirely. And while some readers would be on board with the changes, others

(top left) Convergence #2 variant cover by Jae Lee. (top right) Convergence: Adventures of Superman #1 cover by Mikel Janín. (middle left) Bret Blevins’ cover to Convergence: Blue Beetle #1. (middle right) Convergence: The New Teen Titans #1, cover by Nicola Scott. (bottom left) Evan “Doc” Shaner’s Convergence: Shazam! #1 cover. (bottom right) Convergence: World’s Finest #1 by Aaron Lopresti.

TM & © DC Comics.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 75

(left) Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite round up the most powerful magic users in the multiverse to battle Doom-Mite in this Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #29 page. Script by Mark Waid, art by Dan Mora. (right) Mora’s cover to Batman/ Superman: WF #13.

TM & © DC Comics.

would dislike them—and others might have wanted different changes. The past may be golden through the eyes of nostalgia, but everyone’s idea of gold is a little different, so a nostalgic project will delight and dismay readers dependent on how close it comes to their particular nirvana.

“Yeah, things can’t return to the way they were before 1986, because it’s not 1986 anymore and even if you tried to do it, it wouldn’t work.”

“I often think of [former DC mythology expert E.] Nelson [Bridwell] these days,” Mark Waid told me in an October 21, 2022 e-mail, “and how much his head would explode at what DC continuity has turned into—especially since fans seize on every last little detail now. (I’m thinking of the panel in my WF #8 where Supergirl made an icy comment about how Superman could put Boy Thunder into an orphanage—I put that in because it’s a good joke and thought I could slide on it because it doesn’t directly state that we’re reverting

back to 1959 continuity—and yet, to dozens of fans on Twitter, they’re so grateful I’ve ‘restored’ Kara’s history! Heck, I wouldn’t do that if I could— I think we can all agree that Superman sticking her in an orphanage didn’t age well, and now that the Kents never died, it wouldn’t make any sense at all to do that.)”

“It’s not just about the continuity, it’s about the people,” Busiek added. “If, in 1988, Elliot S. Maggin, Curt Swan, and Murphy Anderson wrote a Superman mini-series set in the new continuity with Julie Schwartz editing it, it wouldn’t matter if it took place in a new continuity, because it’d feel like the kind of story you got in the old one.

And if, today, you set a story in the old continuity and had Brian Bendis and Olivier Coipel do it with Chris Conroy editing it, that’s a pretty-damn-cool creative team, but it wouldn’t feel like the old days because those guys aren’t from the old days and they do things differently.

“Even if you put together a team of people who were alive and working in 1983, those people are over 40 years older and don’t write or draw the same as they used to, just as Curt Swan didn’t draw the same in 1950 as he did in 1990. He’s recognizably the same artist, but his approach has changed over the years.

“And during the Bronze Age, all the creators of the time were just doing stories, moving forward, trying to capture the next thing; they weren’t looking back and trying to recapture the old days. When you try to go backward, you wind up doing pastiche, not trying to do your best in your own voice.

“Whatever you do today, it’s not going to feel the same as it did back in whatever era you’re trying to recapture. All the more so if the way you’re trying to recapture it is through restoring old

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continuity. If you try to restore the spirit of the older day, you might capture something—it won’t be the same, but it might still thrill and delight people who liked that spirit the first time around. Of course, fewer of them are around these days, too.”

Indeed, former Comic Reader editor Mike Tiefenbacher observed to BACK ISSUE that one can’t assume that readers “who abandoned DC postCrisis kept up at all with current comics and would even know that these one-to-several month events were happening. If you didn’t follow the news in the pre-online era, you found out about these ‘test run’ events only after the fact. So, there’s absolutely no way they could ever be depended upon to support any reversion to the pre-Crisis DC style.

“The problem today is that, unless you became fans of the Silver Age comics in the ‘70s, the first-gen audience has died off or long since been completely retired from caring about today’s DC releases. You might create the absolutely perfect resurrection of the Golden/Silver Age of my youth and not only be unable to find that audience exists in enough size to make a difference to their sales, but you’d also find it impossible to convince a majority of that shrinking audience that the second coming had been accomplished.

Cynical seniors will never return even if they’re aware of any of these attempts. That sweet spot when it might have worked ended before DC tried their fourth of fifth Crisis event 25 years ago.”

“Online,” Kurt Busiek continues, “people will gladly tell you that they’d line up for a new book that brings back what they like about an earlier era, but if you do, it probably won’t sell as well as you’d expect from that enthusiastic online reaction.

Part of that is because it’s easy to say you’ll buy something, but whether you will or not remains to be seen. Maybe the art isn’t to your taste, or the lettering, or maybe you didn’t hear about it actually happening, or maybe you had enough other things to buy and your budget only goes that far.

“Plus, people online are an imperfect reflection of the actual buying market—they can get really excited about things the general audience doesn’t really care about, and really insistent about including or avoiding things the general audience turns out not to care much about either.

“And when we do get a ‘throwback’ series or line, like the affectionate homages of Big Bang Comics or the attempt to recapture ‘80s audience that the Future Comics line tried, it doesn’t sell anywhere near as well as the fans of that material would suggest. Maybe they think it’s not the same without the actual characters, but it wouldn’t be the same with them, either.

“I’ve rarely tried to pastiche the old days. My Silver Age: Green Lantern special [2000] was something like that, but even there I was looking back to the John Broome/Gil Kane era and Brent Anderson was looking back to the Denny O’Neil/Neal Adams era, and we were working from someone else’s plot outline to boot. It was fun, but it would have been hard to do on a monthly basis and the strain would show.

“Astro City and Untold Tales of Spider-Man both played with older eras, but in modern ways. We didn’t try to seem like comics that could have come out back then; we’re just informed by those

comics as we tell stories for a modern audience in modern ways.

“I think there are guys out there who could do a more spot-on pastiche than I could, but even then, you’d rather see those guys write and draw from their hearts, taking what they love about past eras and moving forward, than you would for them to try to capture the past in amber.

“You can build on the past. But you can’t recapture it. If you try, you’re shutting down the part of creation that helped those guys in the past build what they built anyway. They were moving forward, and that’s how all the stuff they did happened. I love a lot of comics of the past and will use material from them when I can. But I don’t want to go back. I want to take that stuff forward.”

Forty years after Crisis on Infinite Earths, there is no going home again. But in the right hands, it’s still possible to revisit the spirit of what made those bygones ages golden, silver, and bronze.

Darwyn Cooke’s artwork beautifully evoked the Golden Age in the Doctor Fate story from JSA All-Stars #3.

TM & © DC Comics.

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 77

Send your comments to: Email: rogerash@hotmail.com (subject: BACK ISSUE) Postal mail: Roger Ash, Editor • BACK ISSUE 2715 Birchwood Pass Apt. 7 • Cross Plains, WI 53528

Find BACK ISSUE on

SOME COMMENTS FROM MR. THOMAS

Your issue on “Haunted” Bronze Age comics was fine and welcome. Between issues like this, and now Peter Normanton’s new TwoMorrows mag Cryptology, I’m spared feeling too guilty because I don’t have that much about horror comics in Alter Ego... even though the mag’s title and mission, from Jerry Bails in 1961 onward, has been defined by genre as much as anything.

However, since I try to call attention to any errors I spot in TwoMorrows mags (including my own), that’s what historians, including comics historians, do, I have to point out a couple of misstatements in Michael Kronenberg’s basically fine article on Marvel’s late-Silver-Age-launched mystery comics. I can’t argue with the fact that the magazine basically failed, although I’ve always felt that much of the reason was that, by then, Marvel’s orientation (which means Stan’s, as much as anything) was primarily on character-driven books, not on one-off short stories. Stan, of course, didn’t have time or inclination to oversee those books carefully, although he had obviously displayed considerable talent in that area in the first half of the 1950s. I could possibly have picked up the slack, but I wasn’t all that sympathetic to those mags myself, although of course I wanted to see them succeed. Perhaps the best thing Stan could have done would have been to place one person (Archie Goodwin would have been a likely choice, as ex-editor of Creepy, Eerie, et al.) in charge of them. That would’ve been welcome to me, too, since I had to work hard assigning most of those stories to writers and artists. The best thing that came out of that experiment, really, was the luck that that was the time when, due to excess inventory, DC left guys like Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, and several others without work, so that they drifted in and could first write mystery stories, then graduate to the super-heroes.

Of course, we fared better with horror comics of a sort in the early ‘70s, with the black-&-whites, although most of those mags were at least partly lead-character-oriented, like Dracula Lives!, Zombie, and even the others after Frankenstein’s Monster, Morbius, and others were piped aboard.

And of course, while he had every right to do what he did as editor, Stan would have been better advised leaving Jim Steranko’s stuff alone and just trying to do MORE of it.

My main criticism of the #155 piece is a bit of misinformation (unintentional, I’m sure) with regard to how Marvel came to do Conan The Barbarian. I did NOT “approach Stan Lee about acquiring the rights to Howard’s Conan character,” which is said to have led to my writing my important memo to Martin Goodman about our licensing a sword-&-sorcery hero. Rather, as the article correctly reports up front, the readers were writing in about our licensing some s&s character (and not nearly all the letters referred to Conan

specifically, as I’ve made plain in various places). It was after some of that that Stan called me in and said that, because of the strong reader feeling, perhaps we should (as they asked) license some s&s character from the popular paperbacks of the day. There was little or no talk between us at that time about Conan per se. Stan “asked” me to write a memo (it became two or three pages) to the publisher laying out why we should license some s&s character... again, I’m sure the name “Conan” wasn’t mentioned in that memo. After Goodman approved and instructed us to offer up to $150 per issue for such rights, Stan and I had a second discussion, and this time names like Conan, Kull, and Thongor, possibly others, were mentioned. I felt Conan was more likely to be out of our financial reach (though I’m not sure I said that to Stan), but anyway Stan liked both the names Thongor and Kull (in that order) better than the softer-sound (to him) name Conan... and I had read at least one Thongor novel and had met author Lin Carter, who I knew was a comics fan of sorts and lived in NYC... so that’s the one we went after. Only after Lin’s agent (not Lin himself, who’d have gone for the deal immediately) stalled for months, hoping for 10% of more than $150 per issue, did I suddenly and impulsively, after stumbling across the name and address of Glenn Lord, “literary agent for the Howard estate” in a just-released Conan paperback (Conan of Cimmeria), and then I went after Conan--probably without bothering to tell Stan, who just wanted SOMETHING done after several months. I’ve told that story a number of times, but Michael K. apparently got it a bit sideways.

The “hero” Starr the Slayer in Chamber Of Darkness #4 wasn’t intended to be Conan...probably closer to Thongor, or else I wouldn’t have made his creator “Len Carson,” a New Yorker.

Barry, of course, was chosen, as I’ve often said, because Goodman told Stan we had to use a cheaper artist, making John Buscema and even Gil Kane “unavailable.” Barry at that time had what amounted to, I think, Marvel’s starting rate for penciling, or something very close to it... which worked out to his benefit, and mine, and Marvel’s, since he did such an excellent job. But Barry is twice wrong thinking it was Stan who was “against putting an important artist on a book that was probably going to tank.” First off, as I said, it was Goodman, not Stan, who made the financially based decision on what kind of artist we could use... and there was no thought at that stage that Conan The Barbarian was likely to “tank,” or else we would never have gone to the time, trouble, and expense in the first place of doing the book.

While Michael K. doesn’t seem to know it, and it hardly matters, it was my idea--not Stan’s or anyone else’s--to get the rights to do those several H.P. Lovecraft stories... as well as other, related ones by Robert E. Howard and Robert Bloch and John Jakes. Much of Lovecraft doesn’t adapt ideally to comics, however; you can’t illustrate a multi-syllabled adjective. But, working with Tom Palmer and Barry and Johnny Craig was a sincere attempt to do the best we could under the circumstances.

— Roy Thomas

TO SCARE, OR NOT TO SCARE?

How funny that DC’s early ‘70s Sinister Boudoir of Forbidden Negligees covers looked positively quaint compared to the later Elvira cleavage offerings. And even they were tame, gore-wise, contrasted to Eerie Publications. Couldn’t believe that cover shown. Were they nostalgic for another Senate investigation?

When you opted to print five other even-rougher covers in the gutter, how appropriate.

Horror was not a genre I was much into. First, it’s a downer and treats graphic injuries as entertainment. Secondly, it was a mixture of artists; each with just a minor portion of the issue.

78 • BACK ISSUE • 40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths

All characters © their respective copyright holders.

BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows.

TM & © DC Comics.

When it was Bernie Wrightson doing Swamp Thing, the full book, terrific. That I read. When the artistic roster was also a mystery, a teaming of diverse talents, I was less inclined to sample, much less buy.

So, am I writing for my money back? No. I found plenty of interest.

I liked the coverage of the short-lived Tower of Shadows and Chamber of Darkness. Why buy them if I wasn’t much into monsters? Because I liked many of the artists who contributed. Certainly, Jim Steranko’s story was as intriguing then as it remains fifty-plus years later. Even his original cover was cooler than what was used. Hopefully, you can give him more of a spotlight again, soon.

Enthusiasm for the Thomas/Smith barbarian story, too, paving the way for Conan shortly thereafter.

I wish you would have gone into far more detail about what the Wally Wood stories were about. Missed those.

The one examination I found sad was Jack Kirby being hassled and delayed with his contribution. Why such contention on a short story? Again, if his tale was so unsatisfactory, write one, in detail, for him to illustrate. Then, it’s not fully rendered before others pick it apart.

How was Jack so unacceptable at the end of his Marvel run? He had Thor stories revised and interrupted. His Thor covers were subject to change and replacement (#s 167, 169, 170 and 175). His FF/Janus story was rejected, subject to extreme tampering later. And, here, even a short story, without continuing characters, was deemed unacceptable.

Were they intentionally looking to give Jack a reason, more than usual, to pack his bags and labor elsewhere?

DC’s Mystery titles, like sheep in wolves’ clothing, sugarcoated terror without using the word. Supernatural elements but nothing too threatening or graphic.

If they were, initially, especially good sellers, it could be that editor Joe Orlando knew how to make the books tempting to readers. He had endangered children on the covers, a proven EC staple. Now, if he only had them cover-threatened by gorillas, a DC good luck charm, maybe they would have been outright best sellers?

Some of the covers shown were excellent. Adams, Kaluta, and Wrightson all did superlative work. Trouble is, the cover is a fine sales tool to tempt a browser. But what’s inside, if anything, to reward him or her? All first-class work or reprints and unused inventory?

In that sense, the mystery books, like romance and Western books before them, were sometimes used as a training ground. Fine, for a practitioner learning his craft, but not always ideal for the buyer.

The lack of regular artists and even consistent editors didn’t help.

One thing I loved was seeing what a difference a decent logo makes on the cover. Tales of the Unexpected went from fake 3-D lettering, to a V-shape to the much more appropriately pleasing mysterious lettering.

On the other hand, House of Secrets #140 had so many tiny conflicting typefaces, it was overkill.

Favorite covers shown?

Wrightson’s House of Secrets #92 with the lady combing her hair just now aware of her ominous admirer.

Adams’ House of Mystery #175 featuring kids dangerously leaning off a high roof, before the gargoyles can even strike.

Most startling revelation I’d not heard previously? The late ‘60s newsflash/unsubstantiated rumor that Steve Ditko would be doing a “Dr. Strange-type,” as the lead, for Adventures into the Unknown. Never came to pass.

But was it something seriously considered or just wishful editorial thinking?

Anyway, an interesting issue for all the familiar and beloved artists doing some additional work in the genre.

— Joe Frank Next issue: Swimsuits, softball, vacations – it must be our Summer Fun issue!

(Which sounds great as I’m writing this in early January.) Featuring Marvel’s Superhero Swimsuit Editions and a Betty and Veronica swimsuit gallery!

Plus: DC’s Strange Sports Stories and Champion Sports, the DC/Marvel softball rivalry, San Diego Comic-Con history, the Impossible Man Summer Vacation Specials, DC Slurpee cups, DC/Whitman variants, and more! Featuring CARY BATES, DAN DECARLO, ADAM HUGHES, JIM LEE, AARON LOPRESTI, ELLIOT S. MAGGIN, BOB ROZAKIS, SCOTT SHAW!, BRIAN STELFREEZE, and more! 1989 Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman swimsuit pinup cover by Jackson Guice.

Don’t ask – just BI it!

Roger Ash, editor-in-chief

40th Anniversary of Crisis on Infinite Earths • BACK ISSUE • 79

UPDATE #1

TwoMorrows 2025 www.twomorrows.com • store@twomorrows.com

MARSHALL ROGERS

BRIGHTEST DAYS & DARKEST KNIGHTS

by JEFF MESSER and DEWEY CASSELL From underdog to icon, MARSHALL ROGERS helped redefine Batman for generations, inspiring readers and up-and-coming artists alike. Initially savaged by editors at DC Comics, his style was uniquely complex with vast and angular architectural design anchoring his storytelling, and it immediately caught on with fans for his depictions of the Darknight Detective, Hugo Strange, The Joker, Silver St. Cloud, Dr. Strange, Cap’n Quick and a Foozle, and more. Now, Rogers’ story is told by friends, collaborators, and family members, delving deep into a complicated and conflicted man and his art, as we feature inker TERRY AUSTIN, friend and fellow artist MICHAEL NETZER, DAN GREENFIELD’s extensive interview with writer STEVE ENGLEHART (conducted for 13thDimension.com), and others recounting their time and camaraderie with Rogers, alongside an in-depth interview with MARSHALL HIMSELF, and a wealth of art both familiar and rarely seen. Written by JEFF MESSER and DEWEY CASSELL (authors of the Eisner Award-nominated Mike Grell: Life Is Drawing Without An Eraser), this book shines a light on the fan-favorite artist’s brightest moments and darkest days. Featuring a new cover collaboration by MARSHALL ROGERS and TERRY AUSTIN! (144-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $37.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-130-1 • SHIPS JULY 2025!

AMERICAN MOVIE COMIC BOOKS All characters and properties TM & © their respective owners.

(1930s–1970s)

From the Silver Screen to the Printed Page, by PETER BOSCH

In AMERICAN MOVIE COMIC BOOKS (1930s-1970s), author PETER BOSCH continues his remarkable history of Hollywood’s ongoing love affair with comic books. The sequel to AMERICAN TV COMIC BOOKS, this new book looks at hundreds of Tinseltown’s motion pictures that made the jump from the silver screen to the comics page, starting from the days of CHARLIE CHAPLIN and continuing through to the wonders of STEVEN SPIELBERG. Along with comics story pages from the industry’s greatest talents—including JACK KIRBY, RUSS MANNING, AL WILLIAMSON, FRANK FRAZETTA, ALEX TOTH, DAN SPIEGLE, WALLACE WOOD, STEVE DITKO, JOHN BUSCEMA, GEORGE PÉREZ, and WALTER SIMONSON (to name just a few!)—you will discover full-color photo covers, posters, original art, and much more! It’s the ultimate reference for films from the Thirties to the Seventies that were adapted to comics, including The Wizard of Oz, Ben-Hur, Around the World in 80 Days, Disney’s cinema classics and animated movies, Yellow Submarine, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Alien, The Planet of the Apes series, and many others. Don’t miss this blockbuster, perfect for anyone who enjoys movies and comics alike!

(192-page FULL-COLOR SOFTCOVER) $34.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-129-5 • SHIPS AUGUST 2025!

FUTURISTIC

by MARK VOGER

ROCKETS, ROBOTS AND RAYGUNS OF SPACE AGE POP CULTURE Blast off to the SPACE AGE, when the future was always bright! FUTURISTIC is a FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER about a time of limitless possibilities... and anxieties. It covers all aspects of 1950s and ’60s pop culture from the “duck and cover” era of the Cold War, the Space Race, the UFO Craze, and the 1969 moon landing. Read about the movies (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers), TV shows (Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, The Jetsons), and collectibles (robots, rockets, comic books, TV tie-ins) that had us looking to the stars. Also featured are interviews with such comic book creators as WILLIAM GAINES, JOE ORLANDO, JULIUS SCHWARTZ, ROBERT KANIGHER, ROSS ANDRU, MIKE ESPOSITO, and LARRY LIEBER about their sci-fi work, plus recollections from sci-fi movie stars (KEVIN McCARTHY, PETER GRAVES, LINDA HARRISON), TV cast members (from shows including Lost in Space, Star Trek, and The Invaders), and others. A graphically immersive experience written and designed by MARK VOGER (Monster Mash, Zowie!), FUTURISTIC is a time trip to a future that never exactly came to pass, but lives on vividly in our imaginations!

(192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $49.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-127-1 • SHIPS OCTOBER 2025!

FIRST COMICS COMPANION

by RICHARD ARNDT & JON B. COOKE

The FIRST COMICS COMPANION is the only book dedicated to the history of Chicago’s groundbreaking independent comics publisher, which took on the Big Two by storm between 1983–91. From a modest promotional comic hawking theater subscriptions, First soon blossomed into an ambitious, aggressive imprint with achievements that included adapting the fabled sci-fi play WARP; reviving beloved ’70s Charlton hero E-MAN; luring MIKE GRELL over from Pacific Comics to continue STARSLAYER and launch JON SABLE, FREELANCE; and releasing one of the ’80s greatest comic book series, AMERICAN FLAGG! by HOWARD CHAYKIN. Soon followed ELRIC, GRIMJACK, NEXUS, SHATTER, DREADSTAR, LONE WOLF AND CUB, super-hero ALTER EGO, and a resurrection of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED. Featuring the recollections of founders MIKE GOLD, JOE STATON, and dozens more, this book continues RICHARD J. ARNDT and JON B. COOKE’s exhaustive “carpet-bombing” approach to documenting comics history in fascinating detail—first, last, and always, THE definitive account! Featuring new CHAYKIN cover art!

(160-page FULL-COLOR SOFTCOVER) $34.95 • (Digital Edition) $15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-128-8 SHIPS NOVEMBER 2025!

CRYPTOLOGY #2

CRYPTOLOGY #3

CRYPTOLOGY #4

CRYPTOLOGY #5

CRYPTOLOGY #6

ROGER HILL’s conversation with diabolical DON HECK, severed hand films, pre-Code comic book terrors, the otherworldly horrors of Hammer’s Quatermass, a Killer “B” movie classic, plus horror-inspired covers of the Shadow’s own comic book, and more!

Start the ghoul-year with retro-horror done right by FORSHAW, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, RICHARD HAND, VON SHOLLY, and editor PETER NORMANTON.

See MARS ATTACKS banned cards, model kits, comics, and a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! Also, the chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN, terrifying puppets from film, and more comic books they’d prefer you forget! Plus, more Hammer Time, JUSTIN MARRIOT on obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, another Killer “B” film, and more to satiate your sinister side!

Get ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Spend Hammer Time with the “Brides of Dracula”, and 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, chill to pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS, see a Killer “B” movie, and more

by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

SKULL & BONES ISSUE! Ghost Rider from comics to movies, skeleton covers from Atlas Digests and pre-Code horror comics, HY FLEISHMAN’s 1950s skeleton covers and stories, Disney’s skeletons, ’70s Pirates of the Caribbean models and Last Gasp’s Skull Comics, the films of William Castle, and Killer B films: House on Haunted Hill, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, plus our Hammertime section!

ZOMBIE ISSUE! The films White Zombie and I Walked With A Zombie, GEORGE ROMERO and LUCIO FULCI’s zombie apocalypses, zombie pre-Code comics, BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s undead creations, horror comics of Brazil, the contributions of black stars of classic horror cinema, Hammer’s The Plague of Zombies, Fantaco’s Night of the Living Dead, France’s Revenant, and more!

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BRICKJOURNAL #90

ALTER EGO #193

ALTER EGO #194

ALTER EGO #195

ALTER EGO #196

THE BIG ISSUE! We get on board MARK STAFFA’s giant (working!) steam engine, and show PAUL HETHERINGTON’s colossal LEGO creations, including the biggest version of It’s A Small World you’ll see outside of Disneyland! Plus BRICKNERD, BANTHA BRICKS: Fans of LEGO Star Wars, step-by-step “You Can Build It” instructions

by CHRISTOPHER DECK, and Minifigure Customization with JARED K. BURKS!

An abridgment of EDDY ZENO’s “Drawn to Greatness” book, showcasing Superman artists who followed JOE SHUSTER: WAYNE BORING, PAUL CASSIDY, FRED RAY, JACK BURNLEY, WIN MORTIMER, and others. With appreciations by ORDWAY, KUPPERBERG, ISABELLA, JURGENS, WAID, MACCHIO, NEARY, NOWLAN, EURY, THOMAS, and more! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

ROY THOMAS celebrates 60 years in comics! Career-spanning interview by ALEX GRAND, e-mails to Roy from STAN LEE, the history of Wolverine’s creation, RT’s 1960s fan-letters to JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and his top dozen stories compiled by JOHN CIMINO! With art by BUSCEMA, KANE, ADAMS, WINDSOR-SMITH, COLAN, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and cover by TONY GRAY!

NEAL ADAMS REVISITED! Interviews by ALEX GRAND and BILL FIELD, as well as EMILIO SOLTERA—and an overview of Neal’s merchandising art for Marvel and DC Comics and in other fields, conducted by JAMES ROSEN! Plus Adams art, as inked

by PALMER, GIORDANO, VERPOORTEN, ROUSSOS, SINNOTT, DEZUNIGA, and others! With FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

Concluding our presentation of EDDY ZENO’s book on the early SUPERMAN artists from ALTER EGO #193—with a focus on style-setting WAYNE BORING and classic cover illustrator WINSLOW MORTIMER! Featuring a fabulous, previously unprinted cover by BORING! Also: FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more! Edited by ROY THOMAS.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $10.95 (Digital Edition) $4.99 • Summer 2025

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #38 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #39 KIRBY COLLECTOR #93

KIRBY COLLECTOR #94

KIRBY COLLECTOR #95

RICK VEITCH discusses his career from undergrounds and the Kubert School; the ’80s with 1941, Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal; to Swamp Thing, The One, Brat Pack, and Maximortal! Plus TOM VEITCH’s history of ’70s underground horror comix, part one of a look at cartoonist ERROL McCARTHY, the story behind Studio Zero— the ’70s collective of artists STARLIN, BRUNNER, WEISS, and others, and more!

THOMAS YEATES career-spanning interview about the Kubert School, Swamp Thing, Eclipse Comics, and adventure strips Zorro, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant! GREG POTTER discusses his ’70s Warren horror comics and ’80s reboot of Wonder Woman with GEORGE PÉREZ, WARREN KREMER is celebrated by MARK ARNOLD, plus part one of a look at the work of STEVE WILLIS, part two of ERROL McCARTHY, and more!

SUPPORTING PLAYERS! Almost-major villains like Kanto the Assassin and Diablo, Rodney Rumpkin, Mr. Little, the Falcon, Randu Singh, and others take center stage!

Plus: 1970 interview with Jack by SHEL DORF, MARK EVANIER’s 2024 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con, neverreprinted Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, and more! Unused Mister Miracle cover inked by MIKE ROYER!

SPACE RACES! Jack’s depictions of cosmic gods and life on other planets, including: how Ego, Tana Nile, and the Recorder took Thor to strange new worlds, OMAC’s space age future, time travelers in Kirby’s work, favorite Kirby sci-fi tropes in his stories, plus: a 1967 LEE/KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, never-reprinted Simon & Kirby story, robotic pencil art gallery, cover inked by TERRY AUSTIN!

MADNESS! Kirby’s most deranged work: Dingbats, Goody Rickels, Destroyer Duck, the Goozlebobber, Not Brand Echh, and wild animation concepts! Plus, a 1980s Kirby interview by JAMES VAN HISE, a look at Jack’s psychedelic coloring, Kirby’s depictions of Dr. Strange, Forever People art gallery, MARK EVANIER, a crazy 1950s Simon & Kirby story, behind an unused Machine Man cover inked by STEVE LEIALOHA!

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New from TwoMorrows!

TwoMorrows needs your help!

DIAMOND COMIC DISTRIBUTORS FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY IN JANUARY without paying for our December and January magazines and books, leaving us with enormous losses— and we still have to pay the expenses on those items, and keep producing new ones. Until payments from our new distributors begin in the Fall, we’re staying afloat with WEBSTORE SALES.

RETROFAN #38

RETROFAN #39

RETROFAN #40

RETROFAN #41

Can your mind stand the shocking truth of… ED WOOD CAST CONFESSIONS? Plus: Ideal Toys’ Zeroids, television Tarzan RON ELY, Planters® Peanuts’ Mr. Peanut, CHARLES ADDAMS, TV’s The Fugitive, the forgotten 1981 Spider-Man cartoon, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, ED CATTO, and MARK VOGER.

Here comes TV’s Dennis the Menace, with stars JAY NORTH, GLORIA HENRY, and JEANNIE RUSSELL! Plus: Hogan’s Heroes turns 60, TV Western Have Gun–Will Travel, Big Little Books, The Incredible Hulk in animation, MICKY DOLENZ as Circus Boy, and more! Featuring columns by ED CATTO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER.

We kick off with TV’s original Kung Fu starring DAVID CARRADINE, a NANCY DREW history, Disney animator FLOYD NORMAN, TOM CORBETT: SPACE CADET, collectible ’60s and ’70s cereal premiums, in search of SAM GOODY, and more! Featuring columns and contributions by HERBIE J PILATO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER, and editor ED CATTO!

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Also, ask your local comics shop to change their orders from Diamond to LUNAR DISTRIBUTION, our new distributor. We’ve had to adjust our release dates for the remainder of 2025 while we wait for orders from our new distributor, so you may see some products ship earlier or later than originally scheduled.

We should be back to normal by end of Fall 2025; thanks for your patience!

All characters TM & © their respective owners.

Tune in to Saturday morning super-heroes Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Mod Squad, Hanna-Barbera cartoonists, Jesus Christ Superstar, Mr. Potato Head, ‘Old Yeller” actress BEVERLY WASHBURN, Flying Nun collectibles, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Every new order (print or digital) and subscription will help TwoMorrows get through this, and emerge even stronger for 2026. Please download our NEW 74-PAGE 2025 CATALOG and order something if you can: https://shorturl.at/gA9Fv

BACK ISSUE #161

BACK ISSUE #162

BACK ISSUE #163

BACK ISSUE #164

MUTANT MAYHEM ISSUE! BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’s Weapon X Wolverine, the romance of Havok and Polaris, Rogue and Nightcrawler limited series, Brood and Arcade villain histories, “Mutant Massacre” crossover, and more! With JON BOGDANOVE, JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, DAVE COCKRUM, LOUISE SIMONSON, MIKE WIERINGO, and more!

WINDSOR-SMITH cover.

BACK ISSUE GOES MAD! Things get crazy this issue as we cover Madman, Batman: Mad Love, MAD superhero movie parodies, the Mad Hatter, Madballs, and more! Featuring the work of MICHAEL ALLRED, BRUCE TIMM, PAUL DINI, GERRY CONWAY, DOUG MOENCH, MIKE W. BARR, JEPH LOEB, and others. Madman cover by MICHAEL ALLRED! Edited by ROGER ASH.

MONKEYING AROUND! Featuring simian favorites including Gorilla Grodd, GorillaMan, King Kong, Angel and the Ape, and more monkey business. With the work of CARMINE INFANTINO, JOHN BROOME, CARY BATES, GERRY CONWAY, MARK WAID, STEVE ENGLEHART, SAL BUSCEMA, DON SIMPSON, PHIL FOGLIO, HOWARD CHAYKIN, PHILIP BOND, and others.

Gorilla Grodd cover by ARTHUR ADAMS!

ALIEN INVASION ISSUE! Starro the Conqueror, Aliens, Predator, Alien Legion, D.R. and Quinch, and more! Featuring the work of DAVID MICHELINIE, GERRY CONWAY, BART SEARS, MARK VERHEIDEN, MARK A. NELSON, CHRIS WARNER, RANDY STRADLEY, CARL POTTS, FRANK CIROCCO, LARRY STROMAN, CHUCK DIXON, ALAN DAVIS, and others. Cover by BRIAN BOLLAND!

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BACK ISSUE #160

SUMMER FUN ISSUE! Marvel’s Superhero Swimsuit Editions, Betty and Veronica swimsuit gallery, DC’s Strange Sports Stories, the DC/Marvel softball rivalry, San Diego Comic-Con history, Impossible Man Summer Vacation Specials, DC Slurpee cups, DC/Whitman variants, and more!

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