CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (Trade Paperback) (Dec 2000) DC Comics

Entry number 156 Date: 2005-01-28 22:00:32 (Pacific Time) Name: Eric C Dixon Comments: I remember one of the first comics I ever read was Crisis On Infinite Earths. While it took me several years before I understood why there were like 2 Supermen, 2 Flash, Two Green Lanterns...etc, I remember loving the art. Mr Perez, you are my absolute favorite artist. I can't express how much joy I have gotten from reading books drawn and written by you. Some of my favorites was the before mentioned Crisis, the 1986 Wonder Woman revival, and The Hulk - Future Imperfect. I thank you for bringing me such joy and inspiring me to persue my own art interests.

Dear Avengers Assemble,

It's pretty obvious what you guys wanna do here... Jumpstart the Avengers with a dynamic and a more popular group of characters. SuperHeroes who have long made names for themselves and that most of whom star in their own monthly books. Just like DC's JLA. Out of seven of it core members, six have their regular series. Whereas the Avengers only has three. But now, it's down to two. Namely Captain America and Iron Man. It's very unfortunate that even The Mighty Thor got cancelled. He and his Asgardian family will be missed...

As for the rest: Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Wasp, Hank Pym, Vision, WarBird, She-Hulk, WonderMan, Black Panther, Black Widow, Falcon, Hercules, Quasar, Namor, Sersi, Captain Britain, QuickSilver ... They're wonderful individuals. They look great as a whole. Apparently, they just don't have enough appeal to stand up on their own. Another problem I must state is the constant roster change. In times, strong members get replaced by second-raters (e.g. Dr. Druid, Gilgamesh). And these sucky players even have the nerve to call themselves Earth's Mightiest.

[ Read more Reader's Views ]

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED: INITIATION (Jul 2004)

Comics Continuum posted some screen shots of the first JLU Cartoon episode "Initiation", written by Stan Berkowitz and directed by Joaquim dos Santos. Among the characters show is Dr. Light II, which was created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez for CRISIS. Here is the original Pérez design: DR LIGHT II (1984), sketch design published in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS HC

MYTHOLOGY: THE DC COMICS ART OF ALEX ROSS (Nov 2003)

MYTHOLOGY: THE DC COMICS ART OF ALEX ROSS features a six-page section on Alex Ross's painting on George Pérez's CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS HC and CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS TPB, which was also printed in DC's largest poster to date: CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS POSTER (1999) and CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS LITHOGRAPH (1999).

Ross said he was 15 when he read CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS and thought it was everything that excited him in comic book. He also described what a pleasure it was for him to work with George Perez on the Crisis cover, despite the fact that it took him over 30 days to completely paint it.

The two pages that I thought was really cool is a character study of the two Supermen and a one-page close-up detail of Superman [I]'s face.

Cover scan from Amazon.com.

THE NEXT BIG THING
written by Andre Shell
published in TOYFARE: THE TOY MAGAZINE #74 (Oct 03)

What Stories Should Get Their Own DC Direct Figures?

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (Trade Paperback) (Dec 2000) DC Comics NEW TEEN TITANS: THE JUDAS CONTRACT (Mar 2003)

(excerpt)

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS
The grandfather of all comic book crossover events, the epic "Crisis" deserves its own line. We want to see the Monitor, Harbinger, and one of the most evil villains of all time: The Anti-Monitor. Of course, the line's highlights would be George Pérez-styled, highly articulated versions of the main DC characters in their classic costumes; we want Wonder Woman and Flash and Aquaman, and … well, everyone!

JUDAS CONTRACT
Considered by some as the definitive Teen Titans story, the controversial "Judas Contract" revolved around a family and betrayal. A highly articulated Deathstroke the Terminator would be the crown jewel of this line (they could even do a young Deathstroke repaint, with both eyes!), and figures of his agent Terra and his mute son Jericho, plus the original Nightwing, would round out it quite nicely.

Lying In The Gutters
Monday February 17, 2003
by Rich Johnston

(excerpt)

TAYLOR MADE

Tony Bedard then outed 'ettacandy' as ex-DC employee, Rick Taylor. Taylor was fired in the wake of the "Crisis" hardcover recall, which saw DC's most prominent Christmas item a few years ago recalled and reprinted after one panel in the book was repeated. After repeated criticism for that on the board, Rick went Krakatoa.

"You see, this is the same cluelessness I got from the DC management and why I so appreciate the comments of Mr. Bedard (who by the way, hasn't had the balls to answer my personal emails. He's probably 'outing' some gay celebs or something. I can count on him answering me back publicly, I'm sure)

"Technically speaking, Crisis on Infinite Earth was literally in THOUSANDS of pieces of film. Because the artists drew THOUSANDS of surprints (all those wacky effects) and hundreds of drop out (all that snow), it took a production artist (thanks Nick Napolotano, you BUSTED YOUR ASS for scale) literally a year to reconstruct all the art.

"I was saddled with the worst sep house DC used at the time (because they were the cheapest, something I fought tooth and nail and got shot down on). I think we proof issues 1 at least 4 times and they STILL couldn't get it right."

"Then DC 'rolled the deadlines FORWARD' 16 weeks (by the way, the line editors were able to just keep being late) on me and my then-assistant (2 people produced 96 collected editions that year) and told us the book HAD TO SHIP ON TIME.

"We got to the issue where they reproduced from George (Perez)'s pencil and because it was letterpress on newsprint those pencilled panels looked like hell. George had Xeroxes which he gladly loaned us, but Gerry Ordway was not available to ink so we hired AL Vey (his assistant when Crisis was originally inked and a great guy. Hey AL!).

"We were pretty far into production by the so the sep house had to strip in those panels. They screwed up and stripped on panel in twice. We missed it when we proofed the book (getting past three sets of eyes) and it made it into print.

"If you wanted to call Crisis a reprint, go ahead. It was a giant assembly process that took over a year, was in THOUSANDS of pieces, had four months cut out of the schedule, got the worst sep house they had who was doing about 15 monthlies at the same time.

"So if you want to be pissed at me, oh clueless fanboy, knock yourself out.

"I got the shit end of the stick for busting you ass for you for over a year after hauling the monthlies out of the toilet for 9 years, too. Hardly fair. Sorry you didn't get your collected book on time. I'm sure you could've just gotten you Crisis book out of their plastic and reread them if you were that anxious.

"Any one who really knows what happen, feel free to chime in.

"You won't have to worry about hearing from me again.

"Go to hell."

#23 CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (UNCORRECTED) HARDCOVER

After some 20 years, DC finally got around to collecting its classic Crisis miniseries in a gorgeous - not to mention expensive - hardcover featuring an all-new George Perez and Alex Ross cover. And so, as is often the way in these things, somebody goofed, and one stupid little panel on page 280 was duplicated on page 281. Slight flaw, but with a $100 price tag, DC recalled all the copies and tipped-in a corrected page 281. Of course, some copies made it out and folks saved their flawed copies rather than vying for the corrected version. And yes, the uncorrected version is worth more than the corrected one. Go figure.

(Vu: MEMORABILIA's "30 Rarest Comics of All Time" top comics includes the ELSEWORLDS 80-PAGE GIANT #1 and the "Marvel's vaginal syringe" LEAGUE of EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN #5. Oh and your typical ACTION COMICS #1 and DETECTIVE COMICS #27.)

Letters. We’ve Got Letters!
By Marv Wolfman

(excerpt)

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (Trade Paperback) (Dec 2000) DC Comics

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS HC

from sackett@deskmedia.com
Do you see the Crisis on Infinite Earths as a successful experiment? Did the DC universe go in the direction you had envisioned? I tried to follow the DC universe for 3 years after Crisis... and I just couldn't take it anymore. The reset button kept being pushed.

Sackett, this is a very hard question to properly answer. I came up with the basic idea for Crisis because, in 1980, DC needed something to bring attention to itself. Unlike today where the sales of all comics are down, in 1980, Marvel was selling quite well but DC wasn't, with the main exception being George Perez and my New Teen Titans comic. In fact, Marvel zombies at the time would never even think of looking at a DC Comic as if it were covered with the pox or something. Something drastic needed to be done.

Unless you'd been following DC for any length of time, our continuity was difficult to wade through. It was my feeling that if we were going to draw Marvel readers to DC we needed to A: Do something big and flashy, and B: Make the DCU easier to follow. We needed a jumping on point.

I did as good a job as I could and, based on the sales jump the rest of the DCU experienced, I'd have to say it was a success. That fans and professionals alike voted it the second best comic book story of the 20th Century still boggles my mind. I wouldn't have put it in the top 100, let alone the 2nd (The Galactus/Silver Surfer trilogy justly came in number one). That the $100.00 hardcover book DC issued a year or so back and the paperback reprint that followed it sold out completely, indicates that we did the job we intended to do.

But something happened after we were done. The Crisis in a sense gave a sort of perverse permission to make wholesale changes, often without thinking about the domino effect that would occur. It's my contention that before you can be a comic book writer that you need to set up dominoes in one of those long, winding, circular, mobius-strip like tracks and begin the process of knocking down the first domino. Only then do you fully realize that something you start at point A directly affects point Z and everything between. If you don't think about the ramifications of what you start, you'll suffer for it later.

[ Read more We've Got Letters (Aug 11) ]

DC Publishes Slipcased Crisis on Infinite Earths

DC Comics is releasing a mammoth slipcased hardcover edition which collects the 1985 maxiseries that redefined DC's original universe, Crisis on Infinite Earths. The book features a wraparound illustration of more than 500 characters -- painted by Alex Ross over pencils by original Crisis artist George Perez. The book's interior is the result of a restoration effort unparallelled in the history of comics.

"The best way to think of this is book is as 'Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Special Edition,'" Jim Spivey, Associate Editor said. "While no new story pages have been added, we have taken great care to make sure mistakes and inconsistencies have been corrected, taking full advantage of current technology to do it."

Since the original Crisisused a special printing process that has long since been outmoded, every page had to be reconstructed from the original four-color film. The painstaking process included multiple corrections for scratches, art that had dropped out, typos, and other mistakes and inconsistencies. "Many of the pages needed to have their surprints (color special effects) entirely redone," Spivey said, adding "each of the 342 pages was then re-coded and color-separated using state-of-the-art computer separation techniques and effects, fixing errors and even clarifying some story points (on instructions from series writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez) as needed."

Included with the hardcover in the foil-stamped slipcase is a 22" x 34" poster-sized reproduction, without type save the logo, of the cover to Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (death of Supergirl). The 368-page Crisis on Infinite Earths slipcased hardcover can be ordered now from ComicSource for expected delivery in December.

Extremely expensive and limited. It comes in a slipcase to hold the book, a sturdy and metallic box to keep the George Perez/Alex Ross duskjacket nice and safe, and enough room to hold a folded poster of the "Death of Supergirl". There were some printing errors that went out to the general public before it came to DC's attention (see Crisis On Infinite Earths Printing Error) so those variants exist, but it is rare (and also not really worth it, as who wants printing errors?).

Although, it is a nice reprinted material (including all new digital re-coloring), the printed ink doesn't look that good (or fine). It looks botchy and less detailed. The highly publicized "inked" on "The Monitor Tapes" looks really bad with ink. I prefer the pencil printing to be honest.

The other nice bonus is all the original gorgeous George Perez covers are reprinted along with character designs, including the female Dr. Light (pencils only), Harbinger, the Monitor, and Pariah (all of which have appeared the first couple of issue of Crisis comic book, except for the new Dr. Light). There are some relevant drawings of the Monitor, Alexander Luthor, and Lady Quark, which are taken from various Who's Who entries.

Despite the darker inks and cost, it is really a nice collection to have on one book (even if you own all the maxi-series). It is perhaps the most important story and artwork ever printed. Well worth owning - that is if you can find someone selling it. I have seen it sold for as much as $200, so $99.95 might be a bargain after all.

excerpt)

Due to a printing error, most reorders and advance reorders of the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS HARDCOVER WITH SLIPCASE (SEP98 0138) are being held back from release to allow time for the error (a misprinted page) to be corrected. A new item code has been assigned for all further activity: SEP98 8476.

In December, DC Comics collects the 1985 maxiseries that redefined comics' original universe-CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS-in a mammoth slipcased hardcover edition (SEP98 0138). While the jacket illustration-a stunning wraparound featuring more than 500 characters-painted by Alex Ross (KINGDOM COME) over pencils by original CRISIS artist George Perez, is a stunning selling point, the book's interior is more than a match for the cover, the result of a restoration effort unparallelled in the history of comics.