Crisis Tapes 22 Talkback: Crisis on Infinite Earths #5, Part 4

i_am_scifi

The Red Tornado gone haywire! The Freedom Fighters deployed! Wildcat down for the count! And the Anti-Monitor revealed! We close the book on issue #5 of the Crisis maxiseries in this episode. (3:00:05)

Listen here!

nweathington

Re: Uncle Sam’s “voice”, I used to think of him having more of a neutral Midwestern voice, but thinking about it now, I think he should have a New York accent, since the character is visually based on James Montgomery Flagg’s imagery and Flagg used himself as the model (see below), and Flagg was a New Yorker.

Ezri_El

Excellent as ever, gentlemen!

On to issue 6!

...and it totally made my week to have not one, but two shout-outs

nweathington

Re: my Mike DeCarlo speculation, I don’t think George would have complained about DeCarlo’s inking under normal circumstances, and I didn’t mean to imply that George may have hated the inking. I’ve never heard him criticize any of his inkers that way. I think it was, as you suggested @Peter, that George wanted an inker who could also draw well—a finisher, like you said—so he wouldn’t have to sweat every single detail while trying to keep up with deadlines. I think he just wanted a stronger safety net so he wouldn’t have to worry about the quality of the final artwork slipping. I should have made that clearer in my original post.

And going back to the cover artwork, it’s not like George changed any of the character designs in order to make them more discernible. The only real challenge there was in identifying which heads (or parts of heads) could be obscured and still be recognizable (i.e., Hawkman is the only character with a cowl like that, so we don’t need to see his face as long as those wings are clearly visible), and laying out the cover accordingly. I think the real magic that George brought to the table was his devotion to giving the characters a variety of facial structures, which helped make the heads more distinct from one another (and thereby more interesting), though not necessarily more name-identifiable.

BionicDave

Cheers to Peter and Adam, for yet another enthralling deep dive into Crisis on Infinite Earths #5 - the issue that keeps on giving!

ADAM: "She's the daughter of a boxer named 'Mauler' Montez, and he and Ted Grant were good friends for years, and he's actually like the godfather of young Yolanda, who had the misfortune of... well... her mother went to the wrong gynecologist... or obstetrician... OBGYN anyway, when she was pregnant... and it was Dr. Benjamin Love, who performed unnatural experiments on pregnant ladies so their children would be born with superpowers."
:joy: :joy: You know: THAT stale old story chestnut!

Peter gets a close second for his ruminations about the bathroom on the Monitor's satellite. LOL! I mean, think about the hilarious possibilities there, of all those disoriented heroes and villains with kooky costumes and powers having to share a very small space to answer the call of nature - with the fate of all existence on the line! I already have a tough time going under pressure, I doubt I'd go at all if Earth-Two's Green Arrow was yelling at me to hurry up :flushed:

P.S. If you haven't heard by now, a character created for a Crisis crossover issue makes a startling cameo in this month's Shazam #10 by Geoff Johns & Dale Eaglesham!

ChrisMurrin

I finally finished this today. Tremendous work.