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The Crisis Tapes 14 Talkback: Crisis on Infinite Earths #3, Part 1
Adam_Murdough
Posts: 506
Mysteries deepen and suspense heightens as the battle for the Monitor's towers spills over into World War II! Guest-starring the Flash (he's not QUITE dead!), Batman and the Outsiders, the New Teen Titans, the 'New' Brainiac, and a platoon of classic DC war heroes! Also in this episode, hear Peter's thoughts on the recent Flash/Supergirl TV crossover! (2:55:44)
Listen here.
Listen here.
Comments
Re: the origin of "Great Scott!": http://freakonomics.com/2011/09/08/who-first-said-great-scott-and-who-is-scott/
So if they had changed the name to reflect Action Comics like Wolfman suggested, would everything be AC Comics? I know one person who would have LOVED this...
James
A few random comments to add...
On the Supergirl/Flash team-up, it's very telling to see two characters who were basically jettisoned in 1985 are now in 2016 not only back but headliners of their own TV series.
This also reminds me of an article that CBR posted back in Sept. 2015:
robot6.comicbookresources.com/2015/09/artist-imagines-a-crisis-on-infinite-earths-between-dcs-decades-of-live-action-adaptations/
As for my own "Crisis Kid" story, I started collecting comics in 1976 with primarily Marvels, but eventually started getting the Justice League of America title, and then branched out to a few others, including the New Teen Titans and All-Star Squadron. The annual JLA/JSA team-ups were something special, and in spite of whether the individual storylines in the JLA title were all that good, from 1977 through 1985 I made the effort to search out the annual team-up stories. Crisis on Infinite Earths seemed like it was taking that core concept to the next level by having a multiversal crisis that impacted the entire suite of DC characters, and I found that fascinating. In fact, I recall very clearly feeling at the time this was the best comic book series I'd ever read, even better than the Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars which was still going on at the time. With the passage of time I can see more clearly the flaws of both stories, but I still hold COIE as among my favorite stories in comics 30+ years later. Upon reflection, I've come to understand that my love for the series is less about the supposed "need to clean up the DCU", because frankly I never found it too difficult to understand. It was more about...
(a) the idea I mentioned about this being like the ultimate expansion of a JLA/JSA team-up,
(b) it was being done by the team of Marv Wolfman and George Perez, and by that point I was just starting to recognize individual contributors to the stories, and how some were better, and some were worse. and
(c) it highlighted the parallel earths concept, which i also have an affinity for, and am glad to see back in the modern day DCU in spite of how it came back (i.e. my feelings about Infinite Crisis, etc. aren't quite as positive as with COIE, but that's more of a tangent for another time...perhaps if after you cover the main COIE series proper you find it appropriate to cover some of the offshoots that came later).
I liked your noting of how this series acted in a sense as a peek into the future of the DC characters, especially as with the Flash in issue 3. I can't think of another event crossover series that's taken this approach since COIE. Marvel's 1984 Secret Wars took a different approach by basically flashing their characters forward to after the event and then filling in the story of how the changes we saw took place (i.e. how Spider-Man got his new costume, how She-Hulk joined the FF, etc.). I like COIE's storytelling method better - it keeps the suspense higher imo.
One other comment on the topics you discussed in the issue -
Since I prefer an in-story explanation over the idea of Sgt. Rock making the "all-star" reference based on reading the comic book series, here's a feeble attempt to no-prize his comment - could it be an early example of the time space dilations that occur more intensely in later issues, so while the Earth they're on is clearly E-1, perhaps Sgt. Rock and Easy Company were either the Earth-2 versions {I know you mentioned on the podcast that you didn't think there was an E-2 Markovia, but it's never been explicitly stated that there isn't}, or what if they were the Earth- B versions - the ones specifically from the early Brave and the Bold mini's where Sgt. Rock teamed up with Batman, Wildcat, and others?
Anyway, thanks for another ~ 3 hours of fun...looking forward to issue 3, part 2, and beyond!
I never was aware that their was a "Losers" special.
When I was a kid I had only one friend who was into comics and he mostly read war comics, so we would go over each other's houses and read comics. He would read my horror comics and I read mostly the stories with "The Losers".
The send off they got in Crisis was a sad moment that has stuck with me and now I find out their is more to that story, I've got read that.
I Was thinking about crisis and new 52 this week. Will we one day have flashpoint kids or was COIE different? i'm sure people were annoyed by crisis rebooting things back then but were people feeling the same way about DC comics as they are today about new 52. Obivously content differs but for me Crisis seemed to still carry the universe forward (wally west becoming flash ) and while things changed in the history of characters it still 'felt' like we were getting the same characters after crisis . but with 52 we seemed to have gotten a brand new universe entirely.