review: Infinite Crisis #1-7 (2005-6)

Publisher: DC Comics
Writers: Geoff Johns
Artists: Phil Jimenez, Andy Lanning, and a ridiculous assortment of helpers.

Rating: 1/10

Comics Should be Good pretty well nailed it for me, so I'll just throw in a few more thoughts from the perspective of someone who is more of a comic book dabbler.

These big "cram everything into it" books are almost by necessity going to be confusing to the casual comic book reader. There's just too much going on and too little space to explain it. Either the book needs to be expanded or the story needs to be edited down. I don't need a full background on every character, but a bit of explanation about how and why they're doing something would be nice. Better yet, why does everything have to be crammed in here? What do we get out of seeing every character in the DC universe? It's a gimmick, and a confusing, tired one at that. Enough already. Build a series around a story, an actual event, not an editorial device.

But as mentioned in the CSBG review, this series was not at all interested in telling a story, so fleshing it out or narrowing the scope to make it readable probably never even crossed their radar. They just wanted to hit bullet points. It might as well have been a PowerPoint presentation.

But even then there's a problem. Namely, the bullet points should matter! Of course, part of what makes them matter is the accompanying story, which was absent here, but even when there is no story to tell (i.e. just a retcon), it should be worthwhile. After ripping reality apart, causing endless mayhem, and then smashing everything back together again, what do we get? Batman's parents' killer was caught! What the ?!?!? Why? What Earth-shattering stories can now be told that hinge on this revelation? There must be something. I mean, the guy who can crush worlds in his hands thought it important enough to mention this change, in the whole continuum of time, across infinite universes, amongst innumerable world-changing events, explicitly! It must be HUGE! I don't get it.

And don't get me started on the retirements of Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman. Talk about missing context and motivation. They might as well have not even mentioned it. Actually, I think that would have been better. Just let it play out in the individual titles. If anything, this hackneyed gimmick has just served to taint, for me, what otherwise might be good storylines in those books.

Utter crap. If you haven't already read it, and you were considering picking up a collected edition, do yourself a favor and just stay away. You won't have missed a thing.