Short Box: Crisis On Infinite Earths: Box Set

Crisis On Infinite Earths: Box Set

Release: Nov 06, 2019

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As much as I hate to say it – and as my aching back and joints can attest – Crisis on Infinite Earths turned 40 yesterday.

I eagerly anticipated its arrival – as well as that of its companion book, Who’s Who in the DC Universe – at the time, as I knew it was going to be something important, though I had no idea how important, and because I was finally going to learn what the deal was with the mysterious Monitor, who had been popping up in so many books for so long.

I also knew that with my inconsistent access to comics it was going to be a challenge to pick up all twelve issues.

I’d managed to pick up all twelve issues of a maxi-series, as they called them, on two prior occasions. Once from DC, with Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, and once from Marvel, who had beat their Distinguished Competition to the punch with a big “event” maxi-series involving a huge cast of characters a year prior with Secret Wars.

However, Crisis upped the ante by having the main maxi-series be a line-wide crossover, with almost every comic published by DC having at least one tie-in issue.

That made the challenge impossible, as it was hard enough for me to find every DC comic that was available at standard outlets like grocery store and any comics that were sold only on the direct market were completely out of reach for me.

I managed to collect all twelve issues of the main book – just barely, as I found the last issue by happenstance in an unlikely place – and got as many of the tie-ins as I could, but I missed out on a lot.

The first time I ever went to a comic shop, several months after Crisis ended, I picked up a couple I’d missed from the back issue bins, but I went for years with huge gaps, gaps I still have, at least in single issue form.

At some point I bought the two hardcover collections of all of the crossovers and I should have been content with that, but then I saw this and had to have.

In addition to collecting Crisis itself, this box set – with art on the box by Nicola Scott, Jerry Ordway, and, of course George Pérez – collects all of the tie-ins as well as the various multiversal crossovers that preceded the Crisis and some additional post-Crisis material.

I still have my original twelve issues, and I also have another set signed by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez that I bought to support Hero Initiative, as well as a deluxe hardcover collection of the maxi-series, and, as mentioned, the hardcover collection of tie-ins (one of them still in its plastic wrap).

Ultimately, I plan to sell those other copies (not the signed ones), as this is really all that I need.

As for the actual story contained in these volumes, well…worlds lived, worlds died, and the DC Universe was never the same again.

In some ways, that was good. Great, even. In others…well.

Crisis is something of a flawed masterpiece, one that falls short of achieving its original intended goal – a completely fresh start for the DC Universe – but it’s a masterpiece nonetheless, from the raw emotions of the heroes and villains, the universe-shattering stakes, the heartbreaking deaths, the dynamic action of the storytelling, and the pages that were filled to overflowing with virtually every character that had ever existed in DC’s then fifty-year history.

While there have been other – far too many – “event” comics since, there’s never been anything quite like the original Crisis, and this massive collection wrapped in gorgeous art from masters of the craft is, to me, the ideal form for it.

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