The Bum’s Rush #18

Crisis In Da Hizouse (Part One)

Infinite Crisis from DC Comics.

House of M from Marvel Comics.

Their respective companies are touting both as the biggest comics event of the year. And maybe they’re both right. Each series is heavily supported and are being pushed hard by their parent publisher’s. Both have some of biggest talents from those publishers working on them. And both come prepackaged with the promise of huge and far-reaching consequences playing out into 2006 and beyond.

So far both of these series, including their various tie-ins, lead-ins and spin-offs have garnered big successes for Marvel and DC. If they live up to their hype and the stories that spin out of each series are well liked then they will probably be considered even more successful. But with both companies hinging the future of their respective comic book universes upon these books, there’s also the potential for disaster. And already there have been more than a few missteps.

First up, DC’s upcoming Infinite Crisis mini-series. This has to be one of the most hotly anticipated books from a mainstream publisher in years. It’s had over a years worth of buildup from last year’s smash hit mini-series Identity Crisis to the 80 page Countdown to Infinite Crisis and the four mini-series that spun out of that book (Day of Vengeance, The OMAC Project, The Rann/Thanagar War and Villains United), not to mention the hints and teases scattered throughout various ongoing titles.

I’m personally looking forward to this one quite a bit. The series hasn’t even debuted yet (it’s slated for an October release) and already it’s dramatically affected the world in which characters like Superman, Green Lantern and The Flash live. Mainstay characters like the Atom, Max Lord, the Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, The Spectre, Jack Drake (father of the current Robin) and more have disappeared, retired, turned evil or died. The Justice League has been shaken to its very core by disturbing secrets from its past. And perhaps most importantly, the relationship between DC’s holy trinity (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) has become strained to the breaking point. Certainly things can only get worse before they get better and I’m looking forward to being there for the ride.

But what about the missteps? For one, perhaps the story has become too connected and intertwined within the ongoing series that makeup the core of the DC Universe? At first I was excited by the prospect of a more interconnected and coherent universe of comics and characters, but as time goes by I see things happening in the books I read that almost make me feel like I’m missing out. As if you really do have to read almost every single DC comic to get the bigger picture. And who has the money for that? Concurrent with this problem is the seemingly random “tie-in” issues of various ongoing books, most of which have tenuous connections at best to the Infinite Crisis prequels (Day of Vengeance, The OMAC Project, The Rann/Thanagar War and Villains United) that they supposedly tie into. Hopefully DC can avoid making their books too interconnected otherwise they run the risk of alienating several readers.

Second is that lack of consistency in the art on the four Infinite Crisis prequels. Each of these books has a regular artist and each book has had at least one issue in which a fill-in artist has been brought aboard to help keep the book shipping on a regular schedule. It seems more that a little embarrassing and unprofessional, however unavoidable it may have been, that each of the four most important mini-series of the summer had artists that couldn’t maintain even a 6-month schedule on a finite book.

And last, and probably the biggest of the missteps made leading up to the debut of Infinite Crisis, is the handling of the prequel book, The OMAC Project, particularly, what occurred between issues 3 and 4. The cliffhanger in the third issue was dazzling to be sure and had me eagerly anticipated the fourth issue of the series. However, at the bottom of the last page was a message, informing reader that in order to fully understand the next issue they HAD to read Superman #219, Action Comics #829, Adventures of Superman #642 and Wonder Woman #219, each a part of a storyline called “Sacrifice”. And you really did have to read them. If you were to skip those issues and go directly from OMAC issue 3 to OMAC issue 4 you would be completely lost. That just seems like a terrible idea, forcing a reader to go outside of a contained mini-series in order to follow the story of that mini-series. Not to mention the fact that the entire “Sacrifice” story could have been done in a single issue but was stretched out across four issues of four separate comics in order to sell more books. DC has apparently already apologized for this gross error, but it seems to me that the entire situation was blatantly avoidable and therefore any apology comes across as mere damage control.

But still, these missteps, while a little aggravating, haven’t killed my enthusiasm for what I think will be a very entertaining book. I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens in Infinite Crisis and even more excited about what will happen in my favorite comic book universe following the conclusion of the mini-series. Though I’ve chosen to talk about the faults that have popped here and there, the good stuff far outweighs the bad and the creative energy popping around this event is something you can almost feel when reading the comics. Let’s just hope there aren’t too many more errors on the scale of the Omac/Sacrifice debacle. Comic fans will only put up with so much abuse before they simply stop caring. Unless it’s the X-Men. But let’s talk about that next week huh?

Quick Bits

1. V for Vendetta has been pushed back from November 4th to March 17th, 2006. Producers say that the delay is to accommodate the movies post-production. But a delay of five months? Seems a little excessive. There’s some speculation that the delay is related to the recent London bombings. The original V for Vendetta comic book featured the title character V bombing parts of London. Of course there’s another reason they could be delaying the movie. It sucks.
2. Saw a little footage from Superman Returns. Brought a tear to my eye, so it did.
3. I’m really looking forward to the Garth Ennis/Clayton Crain
   Ghost Rider comic … but man that logo is freaking awful. Who designs this crap? (Click image to see full size in a new window)
4. Got a chance to see the trailer for the new Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock …, Snatch) movie, Revolver. Looks like he’s back to form. Yay!
5. Over on Corey Lewis’ website you can catch a look at the cover to his new 72-page comic Peng, which will ship in September from Oni Press. Rey also mentions that orders on the book have been pretty low. His last book Sharknife was great and Peng looks to be just as great, if not better! So get out there and order a copy of Peng right now! Tell a friend to do the same! And if you don’t know where to go to order a copy of the book try the Comic Shop Locator or contact Mr. Lewis at his website.
6. I am so onboard for the new ongoing Thing series written by Dan Slott!
    

NEXT WEEK: Crisis in Da Hizzouse Part Two, where I tackle House of M.

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