INFINITE 'CRISIS'
How will the DC Comics universe adjust to its own war without end?
Spying on one's own. Illegal - even immoral - preemptive strikes. Self-appointed protectors overstepping their authority. Powerful people manipulating events behind the scenes. Strange bedfellows uniting for purposes both noble and diabolical.
Nope, I'm not talking about the actual bizarro world of the war on terror, but the monumental crisis - Infinite Crisis, to be exact - currently shattering the comic-book universe of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and hundreds of other DC Comics superheroes, not to mention their countless costumed nemeses. Aimed at (once again) remaking the company's vast pen-and-ink firmament, this massively hyped seven-issue miniseries by writer Geoff Johns and artist Phil Jimenez is - except for all the people in colorful outfits wielding metahuman powers (and/or nifty gadgets) - breathtakingly relevant to our own perpetual nonfiction crisis. The story echoes our real-life epic drama, with its slippery moral slopes (torture, extra-legal surveillance), clashes over how much muscle one superpower should flex in the world, questions of whose agenda we're really following, and, most crucially, whether we'll ever win ... not to mention what we stand to lose.
The fictional Crisis all started, more or less, with the August 2004 debut of Identity Crisis, another massively hyped seven-part miniseries, penned by best-selling mystery author Brad Meltzer. In that story, superhero supergroup the Justice League of America investigates the murder of Sue Dibny, wife of the Elongated Man and den mother of sorts to the JLA. Her death forces a core group of Leaguers to relive a painful, secret memory: the rape of Sue by the villain Dr. Light, who, when caught in the act, gleefully proclaims he's discovered the heroes' "weakness" - i.e., their loved ones - and vows to attack not just Sue again but also the others' family and friends. Horrified at the prospect, and unwilling to let Light loose or lock him up with other evildoers, lest he spread the word, the heroes magically make Light forget his actions, hoping to neutralize the threat (never mind getting justice for Sue Dibny, but that's another column). Unfortunately, Batman walks in while they're wiping Light's mind, so they have to erase his memory too.
Talk about a slippery slope.
Eventually, Batman remembers what happened. And, boy, is he mad. But does he confront those responsible? Oh, no. As revealed in yet another miniseries, The OMAC Project, he just creates his own, even bigger, even more terrible secret. Deciding it's high time to answer that musical question, "Who watches the watchmen?," he builds a global satellite surveillance system dubbed Brother Eye, which keeps tabs on all the heroes, all the time. But another phase of the crisis begins when the head of a government spy group subverts Brother Eye for his own nefarious purposes. A man deeply suspicious of metahumans, despite his own psychic powers, Maxwell Lord is insane ... but he's motivated, at least on the surface, by something like good intentions: The world is becoming too dependent on superheroes, he believes, and humanity needs to handle its own problems.
These events unfolded alongside numerous other fronts of the crisis involving every freakin' DC hero and villain from every corner of a sprawling universe packed with meta-beings, in a dizzying array of "Countdown to Infinite Crisis" miniseries, many of which were already published in graphic-novel form by the time Infinite Crisis actually kicked off, in October. Sue Dibny's demise was just the beginning of a purge that's obliterated both the righteous and the profane - and we're not even halfway through the main tale.
Indeed, there hasn't been such death and destruction - not to mention such a protracted and breathless commercial buildup - since ... well, since the last time DC destroyed and rebuilt its superhero universe. That was 20 years ago, in 1985, when writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez tore up the canon in the year-long Crisis on Infinite Earths (which spread to the rest of DC's titles, just as this Crisis has). Their task was to streamline the many different "versions" of Earth created during DC's first half-century - the '40s-era "Golden Age" heroes lived on "Earth-Two," for example, while the '60s "Silver Age" heroes resided on "Earth-One," with, literally, infinite variations including our own superhero-less planet (Earth-Prime). Crisis on Infinite Earths resolved the dilemma via a suitably cosmic calamity that collapsed all of these Earths into one planet with a single timeline. The major characters' origins were retold, only a handful of players who survived the crisis even remembered it, and soon the DC universe was back in fighting shape.
Except, things were never quite the same. This new Earth was darker, crazier. The Joker killed Robin. Green Lantern went insane and committed mass murder. Superman died (but he got better). And the world's greatest heroes took unilateral action against one of their own out of panic and fear, then tried to justify their behavior by pointing to a greater threat.
Luckily for the DC universe, there's a simple explanation. The current Crisis has reminded us that the Golden Age Superman escaped oblivion in the previous Crisis (thanks to an act of mercy too complicated to explain here); now this gray-templed champion observes, from his own little extradimensional bubble, "We saved the wrong Earth." Oops.
Whoa. Max Lord was crazy, but he was kind of right. No wonder the average people of this Crisis's Earth display a growing suspicion of their heroes. (Or maybe it was seeing Wonder Woman on TV, snapping Lord's neck like a candy cane. She had her reasons, but still.) Apparently, they are not who they appear to be. Is this Earth, then, a world where fear, rather than hope, would ultimately rule? That seems so much like our own world, a place where fear is often the social, political, even moral currency of choice. The earlier Crisis was largely about overcoming fear; the presence now of a villain who remembers that calamity, the emotion-manipulating Psycho Pirate, hints at the psychological underpinnings of this tale, that the outcome will hinge on how the heroes - the real heroes, perhaps - handle their own fears.
The last Crisis was all about sacrifice and selfless deeds - by heroes from the mightiest to the silliest. Countless numbers gave up their lives without hesitation, to accomplish a greater good. But these modern heroes, the mightiest in particular, seem subtly corrupted somehow - perhaps not by power, but by terror and a need to control it. They've increasingly taken upon themselves the decisions they once left up to the world's conventional leaders, or at least to a real consensus among their own ranks.
It does reflect our times, but Infinite Crisis isn't some thinly veiled antiwar polemic - it's entertainment, designed to clean DC's house, and, of course, to boost its bottom line with endless spinoffs and aftermath tales to come. Indeed, it has complexities (beyond the headache-inducing array of costumes) that suggest a measured reading of these strange days: the Earth-Two Superman storyline reminds us, for example, that it's not always easy to tell good from evil, that even this "wrong" Earth is the product of noble intentions gone awry. He resolves, as issue No. 3 hit the stands this week, to bring back the "right" Earth ... again, for the greater good. Would that it were so simple for us here on Earth-Prime.
But is it really ever as simple as hitting the reset button? Does achieving the greater good always require responding to a threat in a crucial split second? Or is it something much harder to effect, calling for restraint as much as force, as well as for an understanding of why some lines should not be crossed, whatever the seemingly righteous justification? Because once you cross a line - invade countries on false pretenses, detain innocents indefinitely, argue that some prisoners are more torture-able than others - you can never go back.
Or, as Green Arrow tells the Flash in Identity Crisis, "In case you didn't notice - in some battles - both sides lose."
Published: 12/22/2005
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