A Good Comics Re-Read: DC Comics' INFINITE CRISIS (and supporting Trades)

Infinite Crisis Main story trade

Dc Comics has has had the best storylines that involve the multiverse (many Earths where things occur differently on each Earth). The first was "Crisis on Infinite Earths" in 1985. The second was "Infinite Crisis" in 2005-2006, and I enjoyed reading it again over the work furlough. It features Superman of Earth 1, Earth 2, and Earth Prime, and a Lex Luthor from Earth 3, who winds up being the puppetmaster to make a more "perfect Earth." He uses the Superboy of Earth Prime to create chaos in the universe and create chaos on Earth as well as on another solar system. What's interesting is that you have to get to one of the last chapters of the main series to understand Luthor of Earth 3 has made all of the things happen.

Off-shoot storylines that tie in include "Villains United," "Day of Vengeance" (where the Spectre tried to destroy all magic and route it to Luthor's purposes, "The Rann-Thanagar War," "The OMAC Project" and "Superman Infinite Crisis" (which I got as a present - and that explains what the Superman and Lois Lane of Earth-2 were doing in limbo before getting out). The "Infinite Crisis Companion" contains the followup stories to the off-shoot books.
   It's an amazing collection of comics, and classics! Read them all!- Rob

Infinite Crisis Companion

Superman Infinite Crisis

ABOUT THE BOOK: "Infinite Crisis" is a 2005–2006 comic book storyline published by DC Comics, consisting of an eponymous, seven-issue comic book limited series written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Phil Jimenez, George Pérez, Ivan Reis, and Jerry Ordway, and a number of tie-in books. The main miniseries debuted in October 2005, and each issue was released with two variant covers: one by Pérez, and one by Jim Lee and Sandra Hope.

The series storyline was a sequel to DC's 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths, which "rebooted" much of the DC continuity in an effort to fix 50 years of contradictory character history. It revisited characters and concepts from that earlier Crisis, including the existence of DC's Multiverse. Some of the characters featured were alternate versions of comic icons such as an alternate Superman named Kal-L, who came from a parallel universe called Earth-Two. A major theme was the nature of heroism, contrasting the often dark and conflicted modern-day heroes with memories of "lighter" and ostensibly more noble and collegial heroes of American comic books' earlier days.