This is topic Where Hatrack Gets Doc Through An Infinite Crisis in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


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Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
 
Alright, so I've read Infinity Crisis and Crisis of Conscience.

But looking at all these titles, I am so lost.

Where do I go from here?

I'm talking graphic novels--I could never manage to get all the individual issues.
 
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
 
Maybe I should have asked Hatrack about something less complicated, like doing Abramov's taxes.
 
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
 
Read the Earth X trilogy yet?

I know I harp on it. It is the most recent comic I've read in full.
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
I think you mean Infinite Crisis, no? And you can't have read it all yet, because only 5 of the 7 issues have come out.

You really need to do it like this:

That's so far. Identity Crisis pretty much started the ball rolling. It was followed by Countdown to Infinite Crisis, which fed into the four miniseries: Omac Project, Villians United, Rann-Thanagar War, and Day of Vengeance. Each of these four ran 6 issues, and each one is having a special one-shot (7th issue) during the Crisis.

Sacrifice is a four issue thing that takes place right in the middle of The OMAC Project, and you can't really read Omac Project without it.

There's going to have to be a Superman: This is Your Life thing, that includes at least the last 3 issues of the Superman titles prior to OYL, because those three take place in between punches of Infinite Crisis #5.

The Return of Donna Troy series was just like the four miniseries, except that it ran 4 issues, and it's critical to what's going on. I didn't list Crisis Intervention, which collects all the books with Donna recruiting her team to go and save the universe. I wasn't sure how important that was, since you see a lot of it in the other books.

And then... there's 52. Which hasn't started yet, but is going to be a weekly, going 52 issues in real time. All of the DC books have jumped a year ahead (that's OYL: One Year Later), and 52 will cover that missing year.

Might as well buy stock in Time-Warner...
 
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
 
I meant that I'd read Identity Crisis. That's what I get for always posting in the middle of the night.

StarLisa, you are my hero of the day.

Looks like I skipped ahead. Crisis of Conscience said it was the "Follow-up to Identity Crisis" so I thought it was next. Ah, well.

Looks like I got some reading to do . . .

Thanks again!
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
Well, it is the follow up. So is Rogues War, a Flash series that may be out in TPB as well. Those are two of the most immediate sequels. But the Omac project wouldn't have happened had it not been for what was revealed in Identity Crisis, and Day of Vengeance features Jean Loring in a big way.

And... if you liked Infinity Crisis, you must read this remix. (<--language warning)
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
What Lisa doesn't mention here is that, by and large, most of this output has been so far a colossal waste of paper. It's sucked pretty hard.
 
Posted by Fahim (Member # 5482) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
What Lisa doesn't mention here is that, by and large, most of this output has been so far a colossal waste of paper. It's sucked pretty hard.
Personally, I like how Infinite Crisis has gone so far - the last bits "Infinite Crisis #5" onwards - seems to drag a bit but still, it's much better than what's coming out of Marvel at the moment. Not that that's really an excuse [Razz]
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
What Lisa doesn't mention here is that, by and large, most of this output has been so far a colossal waste of paper. It's sucked pretty hard.
Um... sort of. I'm just fascinated seeing what they're doing and where they're going with this. I still have all 12 issues of the original Crisis. I hated what they did after that. They basically took something I'd loved and broke it. Badly. Never mind that they killed off my two favorite characters. I mean, one, maybe, but two, I figured they must have done it just for me...

Once the brouhaha is over, I'll probably only be getting the Vertigo books I was getting before, and maybe the two Supergirl titles, just because it's Supergirl. The only ones I'm actually excited to see every month are V: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Supergirl. Fables and Lucifer and Manhunter come in second. Everything else, well, when each issue of Infinite Crisis comes out, I glom onto that, and I'm reading other stuff just to keep up with what's happening in that (which is exactly what they're aiming for, I realize), but I'll be glad when it's done.

For the record, I still think they should have made Sue Dibny the new Spectre.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
They're canceling Lucifer, aren't they? I thought it was scheduled to end with #75.

(But I agree with you on the Spectre. *grin*)
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
Are they cancelling it? Not the end of the world (though with that book, you never know). I liked what they did with Elaine. By the time things came to a head, I was reading it mostly because her character intrigued me.

I understand that Y: The Last Man is only going up to #60. It was always intended to be a 5 year story. Which is good, in the sense that they'll be tying things up. But bad in the sense that it's one of my favorite titles in a long time.
 
Posted by Chris Kidd (Member # 2646) on :
 
Isn't "Infinity Crisis" a direct result of what happened during "Crisis on Infinite Earths" I may be wrong please let me know?

[Laugh] [Blushing] [Dont Know]
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
Chris, some people look at IC as a way of dealing with flaws that were caused by CoIE. There were issues that were left hanging. Alex, Superboy-Prime and Superman and Lois of Earth-2 were left in some kind of limbo, and there was no follow up. Powergirl, who had been introduced as the Earth-2 Supergirl (Kara Zor-L, Superman's cousin) got a new origin, since there'd never been an Earth-2. The constant recons were particularly hard on the Legion of Superheroes, which exists 1000 years in the future.

To answer your question, I'd have to say "yes and no". It's a sequel, for certain. And there's a chain of causation that goes back to CoIE. But it's not that simple.
 
Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
 
I really like the idea of 52. A lot of the continuity problems in shared-world titles seem to come from the variable real-time/comics-time speeds across different titles at different times. I like the idea of getting a week of story-time each week, at least in theory.

--Enigmatic
 
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
 
Lisa, that's true, but DC has been dealing with the continuity disasters from Crisis for decades now. There's already been one previous attempt to handle it--I don't recall the title at the moment, but it was the Green Lantern/Parallax business that had all the Hal Jordan fans riled. My personal take is that DC should get over it already--but then I'm not a DC fan. If that's what their readers want, fine with me.
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
It kind of is. I see the main difference between Marvel and DC as being that DC is more Homeric. The heros are gods, darned near. Everything is iconic. You don't really have that over at Marvel. Sometimes that's good, but it's a matter of taste.

For those of us who are into the iconic and the bigger than life, questions of continuity seem to matter more.

And what you're referring to was Zero Hour. Which was actually a reaction both to CoIE and to the whole Death of Superman arc, in which Hal's entire city was destroyed and all the people in it killed. Except that it seems Hal wasn't Parallax after all. He was just possessed by Parallax, which was the entity imprisoned in the main power battery on Oa which caused the yellow impurity. Don't get me started.

And then there was the whole Hypertime thing, which lasted a year or so. It's been a rough 20 years, and I hope this latest brouhaha will help.
 
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
 
starLisa, I agree about the gods thing.

That's a large part of why I'm attracted to DC over Marvel. I look for my entertainment to be, not escapist, but to be something more than what I could do in my ordinary life. The more the issues become stuff that I could experience myself, the less interested I am. (If I wanted to know about the heartbreak of a bad realationship, I would just start treating my wife worse!).

So my interest in a given bit of fiction is usually inversely proportional to my ability to enact it myself.

My wife, on the other hand, wants her fiction to be grounded in reality. "But that could never happen!" is actually a complaint for her, as hard as I concieve that to be.

The Marvel universe is a nice compromise for us.

But for me, I like playing with the impossibly powerful kids.

****

As for Infinite Crisis, I'm still making my way through the stories starLisa outlined.

I was emotionally moved by Identity Crisis. I know that seems to make me some kind of freak in this thread, but while every other kid I knew was reading X-Men, I was reading the Justice League Whatever titles that all of this stuff seems to be building on. Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Ralph and Sue, Guy, Max Lord--these folks were my Wolverine, Cyclops, and Jean.

That said, I have zero interest in the Rann-Thanagar War. Hawkman and his whole planet are unbelievably dull to me. The only time it was ever done well was in Cosmic Oddessy, and basically all they did in that was die.

Oh, and you weren't kidding about sacrifice happening right in the middle of Omac Project. Since I'm (What did they call it in the other thread? Byrne-stealing?) them and reading them in Barnes & Noble, I'm limited to what the store supply has, so I'm kind of reading some stuff out of order . . .
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
They're canceling Lucifer, aren't they? I thought it was scheduled to end with #75.
I asked the guy at Comix Revolution whether he'd heard anything about Lucifer having an end point, and he said he hadn't. But then, he also hasn't heard that Y: The Last Man is intended to end after issue 60, and I read that in an interview with the book's creator. So I don't know.
 
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
 
Byrne-stealing? What's that term from?

I also disliked the Rann-Thanagar thing. I used to read Adam Strange periodically, and I did go and read the 8-issue Adam Strange miniseries that leads into Rann-Thanagar (which I accidentally left off the list I gave you), but the Hawk-folk bore me to tears.

DC's space stuff and Bat stuff don't really interest me that much. I liked Batman pre-Dark Knight. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think that Dark Knight was amazing. But it was... dark. And the darkened Batman that they went to afterwards just isn't my thing. I remember the Imaginary Stories with Clark Jr. and Bruce Jr. Those were cool. But most of the time, I want to just slap Mr. Wayne in the face and ask him if he thinks he's the only person on Earth who has ever suffered.
 
Posted by docmagik (Member # 1131) on :
 
So what's the verdict on 52?

What about Final Crisis so far?

Anything there worth reading?
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Doc, it would have been easier to just read Marvel's Civil War series if you wanted something convoluted that wouldn't wind up actually going anywhere.
 
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Chris Kidd:
Isn't "Infinity Crisis" a direct result of what happened during "Crisis on Infinite Earths" I may be wrong please let me know?

[Laugh] [Blushing] [Dont Know]
Sounds like Noein
 


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