Worlds will live. Worlds will die. The DC Universe will be the same again.

Crisis on Infinite Earths celebrates its 35th anniversary this month, so now seems as good a time as any to cover how one could get that granddaddy of all Big Two event comics from the longbox to the bookshelf. Crisis can be a complicated series to bind. The main maxiseries was only 12 issues, but 12 issues preceded by 38 comics featuring foreshadowing cameos (usually limited to a single page) by The Monitor and augmented by 48 contemporaneous tie-in comics.

Reading all those nearly 100 comics is in no way required to enjoy Crisis. But readers cite different combinations of those comics as their ‘definitive’ Crisis: just the maxiseries, the maxiseries and a few tie-ins, no maxiseries and just a few tie-ins, or the whole magilla?

What happens when Crisis‘ near-infinite content combinations meet comic binding’s unlimited possibilities?

Let’s find out!

(Unless otherwise noted, all artwork by George Pérez.)

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Comic companies aren’t known for soft-selling their products. But with this story, that ‘Worlds live . . .’ tagline wasn’t hyperbole; it was fact.

Written and drawn by the red-hot New Teen Titans team of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, Crisis on Infinite Earths did see worlds & heroes live and die (and die and die) as the DC multiverse fought to keep the Anti-Monitor from wiping out its entire existence.

Total annihilation was averted, but with a final body count far higher than anything fans had seen before. A lot of those killed were cannon-fodder Z-listers (did anyone really shed a tear over The Ten-Eyed Man?), true, but Kara Zor-El’s Supergirl and Barry Allen’s Flash also joined the choir invisible. Readers weren’t expecting staid and predictable DC Comics to be THIS merciless, but the publisher was on a mission.

DC had been playing second fiddle to Marvel for years at this point. 1985 was the company’s 50th anniversary and they were looking to change the perception that that history made their comics impenetrable to new readers. Charged with streamlining their superhero line, Crisis was DC’s boldest move to wrest fan attention away from the Marvel-ous competition, and it worked. This story is still an epoch marker for DC history that fans continue to revisit 35 years later.

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A FINITE NUMBER OF THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

1. Why A Crisis Was Necessary

Not all superhero universes are equal.

Marvel’s characters were part of a shared universe almost from the beginning. The Timely Comics roster of Captain America, Namor, and the android Human Torch weren’t created in the same setting but quickly found themselves crossing over with each other. By the early days of the official Marvel Universe, Kirby/Lee/Ditko et al. were explicitly putting characters like the FF and Spider-Man and Cap (again) in the same setting together. Having most of that setting built by a small group of creators under a single editor was crucial in limiting internal contradictions and inconsistencies. Keep that in mind.

DC’s ‘universe’ came less from a Big Bang and more from a patchwork quilt being made from superhero properties. Even DC Comics as we know it today originally started as two different publishers: National Allied Publications (with Superman & Batman) and All-American Publications (with Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, The Atom, and Hawkman) that merged in 1944 as National Comics Publications. On top of those characters and other in-house creations, DC’s roster expanded with the acquisition of the Quality Comics line (with Plastic Man and the Blackhawks) in 1956, the Captain Marvel line from Fawcett in late 1960’s and the Charlton Action Heroes in 1985. (The only Marvel equivalent I can think of is their acquisition of Neil Gaiman’s Angela character from Todd McFarlane Productions.)

It didn’t take long for those characters to team-up, but bringing those separate and often-contradictory worlds together took some work, especially once you had multiple versions of the same hero (The Flash’s Jay Garrick & Barry Allen, for example). The idea of multiple earths solved the logistics problem but not the confusion one. That would take the type of editorial cohesion that, frankly, was the opposite of DC’s confederacy-of-fiefdoms model. This laissez faire attitude led to years and years of instances like, to quote an example from the Crisis #1 foreword, Aquaman’s Atlantis not syncing up with Lori Lemaris’ Atlantis from Action Comics, and so on.

After 50 years, DC’s publishing line was due for a revamp.

2. The Cover That Launched A Thousand Imitations!

The cover for Crisis #7 has to be the series’ most iconic image. It also has to be one of the most homaged comic book covers of all time. Don’t believe me? Check out this page for (almost) all the decedents and antecedents of that cover.

Here’s what Pérez himself had to say about the cover’s resonance in his 2003 Modern Masters interview:

Well, it’s very flattering. That particular idea was inspired primarily from a Jack Kirby Thor cover. I had seen the John Byrne death of Phoenix cover, but it didn’t register at the time — it might have been subconscious. But later I looked at — I believe it was an old Lois Lane comic — Superman holding Lois Lane with a ring of characters at ground level in mourning, too. That one was eerie. That one I didn’t even remember having ever seen before. [Laughter] But it seems to be the closest in actual layout to what I did on the cover of Crisis #7. Unlike the death of Lois Lane, the death of Thor, and the death of Phoenix, there was no sense of finality to any of them — Phoenix at the time was supposed to. With Supergirl, this was meant to really kill the character and show that in this series anything can happen. That’s probably what people remember more. Of course, I probably put as many characters into that one cover as all those other covers combined, which I think is what a lot of people also remember.

3. George Pérez HATED Crisis

Pérez may have loved that cover, but he absolutely hated issue #1. Or at least, how it was printed.

Both DC and Marvel were experimenting with Flexographic printing around this time as a way to save money and give their comics a more vibrant look over the traditional off-set printing methods. DC wanted Crisis to showoff this new technique, but the end result just showcased garishly bright colors, off-register printing errors, and a loss of fine linework detail that, given how much Pérez’s style relies on fine detail, made him less than thrilled about its use. From an interview in Amazing Heroes #96:

And of course — how could we forget? — the one thing that almost took me off the book was the flexograph printing in #1. I threatened to quit the book on the spot if issue #2 was as bad as the first one. But when I saw the first shot of Anthro on page one, I knew I was safe; that particular issue reproduced perfectly. I was never so happy to see regular comic book printing.

And it’s not hard to see why he’d be pissed:

Yes, the Crisis #1 page does have brighter colors, but the blacks are weak to the point of working against the narrative of pre-Big Bang creation’s darkness. The color application in general can turn out much spottier than traditional off-set printing, hence the blues dropping out in panel 3. The Crisis #11 page may not pop as much by comparison, but the blacks LOOK black and everything else is where it’s supposed to be. The white-text-on-black-background trick still has a hard time coming out correctly.

Relieved as he might have been to see issue #2, that regular comic book printing didn’t do him any favors eight months later for issue #10. That comic featured ‘The Monitor Tapes’, a 1/4-page story running along the bottom of the entire issue’s pages. Its artwork was screened from Pérez’s pencils and “a lot of the fine detail was broken up that way, and it was hard to see who was who.”

Both problems have been fixed in subsequent reprintings of Crisis.

4. Crisis wasn’t collected for 13 years after its release!

In this age of seeing a series’ collection solicited the same month as its final issue hits stands, it’s a particular headscratcher that this universe-defining maxiseries didn’t get a collected release until a slipcased hardcover edition on December 1998 — 13 years after the last issue was published!

Although sporting that awesome Pérez-pencilled, Alex Ross-painted dustjacket and featuring remastered color work by Tom McGraw, true to Crisis form, it had its own printing snafu. A panel from “The Monitor Tapes” was left out and another printed twice. Ooops. A corrected edition was rushed out, but a regular trade paperback release didn’t come out for another two years.

With those out of the way, DC has stepped up their Crisis collection game. The Absolute Edition (oversized & slipcased with a compendium volume of backmatter) came out in 2005, the first hardcover Deluxe Edition in 2015, and the subsequent tie-in Deluxe Editions a few years later leading up to the series’ 35th anniversary.

2019’s 14-volume hardcover box set is standard trim-size and includes 6 volumes of prior JLA/JSA ‘Crisis’ stories, a volumes for the maxiseries, 6 volumes of tie-ins, and a full volume of backmatter.

5. Avengers (Competitors) Assemble!

It’s worth taking a second to stop and think about the years of work that went into Crisis.

Marv Wolfman got the go-ahead for the series from editor Dick Giordano in 1981, whereupon Bob Greenberger is hired to essentially read and take notes on every DC comic published up to that point. He did such a thorough job it was decided to use this info as the basis for the eventual 26-issue Who’s Who release alongside Crisis.

The first memo from Wolfman out to DC editorial staff announcing the series & the need to incorporate Monitor appearances into their books is dated January 3, 1983, exactly two years before publication of Crisis #1.

DC editorial’s reaction to the Crisis mandates in general was mixed. Some loved the opportunity, others didn’t. One unnamed editor was so against the idea he sat through an entire in-person meeting in silent protest. Though this editor was not Roy Thomas, it very well could have been. As writer/editor of All-Star Squadron, Infinity Inc., and all-around Earth-2 mastermind, Crisis would basically wipe out his entire line of books. It would be hard to fault him if he took a scorched earth approach. But reading interviews and seeing memos of the time shows Thomas taking the high road and really trying to make things work for all parties involved. But it was not to be.

April 1984 sees Wolfman sending editors an series overview to give ideas where their books can tie into the series the following year. At this point, the book is called DC Universe: Crisis and slated for 10 issues with a 2-issue epilogue that would eventually turn into The History of the DC Universe. Wolfman fitting in as many editorially requested plot threads as possible pushes the issue count to 12, with the final issue double-sized.

Pérez starts drawing issue #1 in July 1984, initially with Giordano inking. That lasts another 2 issues until his editing schedule makes the additional workload impossible. Giordano assistant Mike DeCarlo fills in on issue #4 before Jerry Ordway, Pérez’s preferred choice, starts on issue #5 and continues through the rest of the series.

Crisis was meant to celebrate DC Comics’ 50th anniversary by publishing all 12 issues in the 12 months of 1985. Just for giggles, here are the actual onsale dates for the maxiseries (courtesy of Mike Amazing World of DC Comics):

Issue 1 – January 3rd
Issue 2 – February 7th
Issue 3 – March 7th
Issue 4 – April 4th
Issue 5 – May 9th
Issue 6 – June 6th
Issue 7 – July 4th
Issue 8 – August 1st
Issue 9 – August 29th
Issue 10 – October 3rd
Issue 11 – October 31st
Issue 12 – December 19th

(They killed Supergirl on the 4th of July? Damn, that’s cold . . .)

Thirteen issues worth of pages (issue #12 was double-sized, remember?) plus covers, drawing every character in the DC universe in Pérez-ian detail. And not just regular Pérez detail, but Pérez-looking-to-prove-a-point detail. All that work, from Pérez to Ordway to letterer John Constanza to colorist Adrienne Roy to Wolfman to all the folks at DC, on schedule.

Mic. Drop.

6. Marv Wolfman wanted to reboot the post-Crisis DCU ‘New 52’-style

As successful as Crisis was, the message of it being the beginning of a new DC Universe would have been felt even stronger if the entire line had been rebooted with #1 issues after the last issue of the maxiseries dropped. Not just Superman and Wonder Woman and Justice League of America, but Action Comics, Detective Comics, Batman . . . the whole lot of them.

Turns out, Wolfman pushed for that very thing. Giordano shot him down because he thought editorial pushback would be too great. He would later go on to call that decision the biggest mistake of his career.

Even books that did get big relaunches after Crisis didn’t do so nearly as close to the maxiseries’ end as they would today. It is interesting to look back and see just how diffused that post-Crisis rollout was, especially for coming out of such a ‘jumping on point’ project.

Keeping in mind Crisis #12 hit stands in December 1985, here are the onsale dates for some of the higher profile books:

Superman #1 (October 1986)
Batman #404 (November 1986)
Wonder Woman #1 (February 1987)
The Flash #1 (March 1987)

There are many reasons for this, of course. Talent availability and contract negotiations don’t always follow a set timetable; Wonder Woman wasn’t set to reappear until after the Legends miniseries, which didn’t wrap up until January 1987; and so on.

So say what you will about The New 52, it accomplished something even Crisis couldn’t do: a line-wide reboot.

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CRISIS ON . . . YOUR BOOKSHELF!

In terms of making the actual book or books, a Crisis bind is straightforward.

Oversewn or glue binding should be fine; since these comics generally used fairly large gutters, gutter loss incurred should be negligible.

Given how jarring the first issue’s original printing was and how poorly parts of issue #10 reproduced in its original presentation, some binders prefer using a stripped Crisis trade paperback over the original comics. In that case, oversewn binding should be used as it holds the trade’s glossier paper stock better than glue binding over the long run.

The REAL key to keeping your sanity for a Crisis bind is deciding what kind of reading experience you want from the end result BEFORE you get started. Are you aiming for a complete collection of EVERY Crisis beat and permutation? Or do you just want an all-killer-no-filler one-book Crisis read?

Each of these approaches have their ups and downs:

• The completist approach will end up costing more money (either buying the material or binding more volumes to encompass it all) but might be simpler in the long run because you can avoid content-mapping headaches.
  
• The curated approach flips that dynamic; less upfront cost but more time and mental energy sifting through and selecting specific content from the masses available.

Let’s revisit what a ‘complete’ edition of Crisis most likely means:

• 38 pre-Crisis Monitor appearance comics. (Usually no more than a 1-page appearance per issue)
  
• The 12-issue Crisis on Infinite Earths maxiseries.
  
• 48 contemporaneous Crisis tie-in comics.

As if a hundred comics wasn’t already a lot to pick through, here are a few more comics and comic-related publications worth considering:

These contemporaneous fanzines included substantive interviews with the creative team or significant pre- or post-event wrapup & annotations. Some of the annotation material has been put online by this point (such as Jonathan Woodward’s excellent Crisis archive).

While published by ICG Publications instead DC Comics proper, these issues are EXCELLENT Crisis resources. Complete with issue synopses, chronologies, character appearances, portions of their contents have made their way into the backmatter of subsequent official Crisis releases. Having the complete material formatted and available separately like this is a boon to binders.

To each their own, but I feel these comics dealing with or reflecting on the Crisis after-the-fact are worth including:

• The Last Days of the Justice Society – Starts off just after the end of the maxiseries with the funeral of Earth-2 Robin & Huntress, who were killed in the Crisis. The rest of the special showcases the adventure that takes the JSA off the DC map until Armageddon 2001.
  
• The History of the DC Universe #1-2 – Prestige Format illustrated prose miniseries by Wolfman & Pérez laying out the new Earth’s timeline.
  
• Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Essentially Crisis #4.5 (barring one big continuity goof). Written by Wolfman and drawn by Paul Ryan 20 years after the original maxiseries, this shows the fate of Earth-D, whose mightiest heroes are also the most racially diverse in the multiverse.
  
• Animal Man (v1988) #23-24 – Crisis ends with only the Psycho-Pirate remembering pre-Crisis DC as he’s locked away in Arkham Asylum. Grant Morrison picks up that thread and runs with it in the way only 80’s Morrison can.
  
• The Flash (v1987) #149-150 – During the ‘Chain Lightning’ storyline, Wally teams up with Barry for a pre-Crisis adventure, only for Barry to get killed in the process. But if he’s dead, who’s going to blow up that anti-matter cannon from issue #8 and save every one of us?
  
• Starman Annual #1 – One of the stories in this issue focuses on the tragic fate of Prince Gavyn, expanding on his cameo from issue #10.
  
• JLA: Incarnations #5 – The main story showing JLA Detroit (Commander Steel, Gypsy, Vibe, Vixen, and Martian Manhunter) stepping up to the challenge of the Crisis is surprisingly good, but the real gem here is the Ostrander/Breyfogle strip focusing on Barry’s last moments against the anti-matter cannon.
  
• Christmas With The Super-Heroes #2 – Deadman gets a little Christmas visit from a Superghost of Crisis Past.

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THE COMPLETIST APPROACH

Whew! That brings the issue count close to 120 comics. How many books do you think it would take to include all those comics?

Volume 1: Pre-Crisis Monitor, Part 1

Volume 2: Pre-Crisis Monitor, Part 2

The Pre-Crisis Monitor appearances can fit into two books if you decide to leave the comics intact. Stripping the pages out is certainly a possibility, in which case these two books would be reduced to around 30 pages that can be added to the beginning of the next volume.

Volume 3: Crisis, Part 1

Volume 4: Crisis, Part 2

Volume 5: Crisis, Part 3

Volume 6: Crisis, Part 4

The Crisis maxiseries and all contemporaneous tie-ins can fit in four volumes. I’ve opted to thread the tie-in issues throughout the 12 Crisis issues, but you can just as easily arrange them as one book for the maxiseries and three for the tie-ins. Again, this map precludes leaving the tie-in issues intact.

Volume 7: Aftermath

The remaining post-Crisis and supplemental material can fit in one volume. Though it’s tempting to move the Legends of the DC Universe oneshot to its chronological place in Volume 4, I would avoid doing so spoils a big reveal in the following Crisis issue.

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THE CURATED APPROACH

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS

Written by: Marv Wolfman, Grant Morrison, John Ostrander, Mark Waid, James Robinson

Drawn by: George Pérez, Chas Troug, Paul Ryan, Paul Pelletier, Bret Blevins, Val Semeiks, Norm Breyfogle, Dick Giordano

Inked by: Jerry Ordway, George Pérez, Doug Hazlewood, Vince Russell, Bob McLeod, Bret Blevins, Prentis Rollins, Kevin Conrad, Joe Rubinstein, Dick Giordano

Colored by: Adrienne Roy, Tom McCraw, Tatjana Wood, John Kalisz, Kevin Somers

Lettered by: John Costanza, Ken Lopez, Gaspar Saladino, Bill Oakley, Steve Haynie

Cover by: George Pérez

Published by: DC Comics

Collecting:

• Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12
• The History of the DC Universe #1-2
• Animal Man (v1988) #23-24
• Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths
• The Flash (v1987) #149-150
• Starman Annual #1
• JLA: Incarnations #5
• Christmas With The Super-Heroes #2

Technical Details:

• Anthology release
• Hardcover
• 11.2″ x 7.3″
• 70# matte paper stock
• Sewn-binding free from spine

Back Matter:

• The Official Crisis on Infinite Earths Index
• The Official Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Index
• Comics Interview (David Anthony Kraft’s) #25
• Amazing Heroes #61, 96

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That’s All, Folks!

That’s it for this month’s column! Shelf Bound comes out the third Tuesday of every month, meaning the next column will go up on January 21st.

I hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve seen so far. While I have ideas for future binds and binding-related content, I really want to hear from you! Let me know what you thought of this bind! What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Give me some ideas about comics you think are shelf-worthy!

Shoot me an email about any of the above or more at greg@multiversitycomics.com or follow me on Twitter at @gregmatiasevich and let’s have some fun!