As for Crisis on Infinite Earths….. a little backstory first. I have to admit, I started off as a Marvel only guy. When I was much, much younger, my grandmother bought me G.I. Joe comics, and that was it. Then I graduated to Uncanny X-Men – the second Brood arc (issue #232ish, or somwhere in there) is where I jumped on. I stayed on (all the x-titles) until the early 90’s, at which point I a.) just couldn’t afford it anymore; b.) began to lose interest (mostly because girls didn’t read comics); c.) all of the above. I left comics pretty much altogether. Oh, and during this time, my DC reading was nil.

Fastforward to college and the years following. I began to get into comics again, but couldn’t justify spending the $2+ that it cost then to buy, so I began reading trades and graphic novels at the local bookstore. THIS is how I learned about the original Crisis. It made sense, sort of, to me – DC had this tremendous history that needed to be rectified with itself (a history that I was completely unaware of), and Crisis was the mechanism to do that. Within the DC universe, it was a huge event – characters that had been beloved were DYING, worlds that readers had grown up with were DYING, and everything was turned on its head. It was probably a great time to be a DC reader (I wouldn’t know) because of the whole uncertainty of it all. Add to that the fact that there was no World Wide Web where geeks like us were talking about comics all the time, and the apprehension, I would imagine, was amazing.

All of that being said, I think the following “Crises” have cheapened the whole concept of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Zero Hour, Infinite, and now Final (really, does *anyone* believe that will be the case?) have taken away the “big event” feel of the original Crisis, at least for me. When I first discovered Crisis, I was shocked at the things that I read – and then I found all the subsequent stuff, and its all just BLAH BLAH BLAH. Dated art and printing methods aside, I think that the original crisis is the best, hands down.

Years later – 2003, my now-wife and I moved into a condo and I unboxed all my trades and such, and she asked me which of the books I had I thought were worth her reading. I pitched Preacher, Y: The Last Man, Fearful Symmetry (can’t bring myself to call it Kraven’s Last Hunt), Daredevil Born Again, Marvels, and Kingdom Come, but she wanted to know what the slipcased hardcover was. I told her I thought Crisis would be a little overwhelming, but she wanted to take a shot. Now, again, bear in mind, my wife moderates a videogame board and was a big X-Files and Millenium fan, so sci-fi things aren’t entirely new to her… but apparently she found it easy to read. So… there’s that…