When DC Finally Brought it All Together, Only to Let it Fall Apart

The goal of forming a cohesive universe with separate characters that still felt connected as part of a grander story began to come to fruition in 2004 for DC Comics.

Ironically, the singular voice of the DCU uttered its first words in a story titled Identity Crisis. Written by Brad Meltzer, it brought deeper characterization to lesser known figures, showed new sides to others, and ended with repercussions that profoundly impacted the DCU for years to come. But it was only the beginning.

The result of Identity Crisis was that the villains of the DCU formed a cohesive unit, and heroes lost trust in each other. These themes planted seeds that would blossom into Infinite Crisis, which is where DC really hit its stride.

Leading up to Infinite Crisis, the DC Universe was becoming an increasingly dark world. Ted Kord, the late Blue Beetle, was figuring out that perhaps various events were related, and was murdered for his troubles in the landmark Countdown to Infinite Crisis. Sprawling out of this one-shot were four miniseries, each with tie-ins to various ongoing titles.

Villains United, which developed the bad guys’ subplot from Identity Crisis; The OMAC Project, building on heroes’ mistrust for each other; The Rann-Thanagar War, which focused on the cosmic, deep-space element of the DCU, and Day of Vengeance, starring oft-ignored magic-based characters. These very different tales were all woven into the fabric of the DCU as a whole, and each led up to Infinite Crisis.

It was during this time when DC achieved perfection.

I remember picking up titles that I rarely read, just because they seemed important and the stories were really good. Unfortunately, immediately after Infinite Crisis, it all began to unravel.

DC knew they had struck gold, and they tried — really, they tried — to capitalize and keep the momentum going, but they bit off more than they could chew. Following Infinite Crisis, they pushed the whole universe ahead one year with many changes — some subtle, some drastic — and kicked off a daring weekly series called 52 to connect the dots.

52 was supposed to be the go-to book to learn about how the DC Universe got to where it was. It was to be the binding that held the universe together. Unfortunately, the writers of the weekly book got carried away with themselves and the editors did nothing to stop them. Ancillary characters became focal points, and the true core of the DCU went ignored. That is, until the last month or so, when DC suddenly had to achieve what it set out to do in the first place, which was catch the readers up to the fast-forwarded universe they were reading in every single other book.

This resulted in an additional mini-series (World War III) accompanying 52, and a series of forced moments written solely to give some semblance of an explanation for how things got to where they were, even though that’s what 52 was supposed to do in the first place over the course of a year. At the end of 52, we realized that the multiverse still existed, which was great, even though it had nothing to do with the rest of the weekly series.

This sloppy storytelling should have taught DC a lesson, but it didn’t, because fans like me bought up every issue. So instead of realizing that a year-long weekly series was too much to handle, DC launched a new one, known simply as Countdown. Halfway through this next year, the title of the book expanded to Countdown to Final Crisis, clearly showing that it was all going to come together, leading into another huge event.

Not so fast. In the end, Countdown — and the many, many related miniseries — not only had almost nothing to do with Final Crisis, it actually created continuity issues that directly contradicted what took place in the coming event. For example, the explorations of the multiverse, while fascinating, had no bearing on Final Crisis, and the Death of the New Gods miniseries ended up being ignored altogether, as Final Crisis was based on a premise that Death of the New Gods pretty much rendered impossible.

Then Final Crisis arrived, and with it, a myriad of tie-in issues. Unfortunately, most of the tie-ins were not written by Grant Morrison, who penned FC, and had little to nothing to do with the event itself. Here was DC’s chance to really put together an epic, and it did, but it came with a lot of excess baggage. Final Crisis, while coming off as messy at the time, when read all at once is a really good story. Unfortunately, as they did with the concurrent Batman RIP, DC built around a Morrison project without actually connecting to the project, as a way to sell more books. I would have been happy to shell out more money if it meant a richer story, but the only thing made richer by these tie-ins was DC Comics.

What started with such promise in Identity Crisis and developed into wonderful reading before and during Infinite Crisis, devolved into a frustrating, downright unprofessional editorial mess.

Let’s hope DC’s New 52 doesn’t suffer from the same old mistakes.