by Scott Tipton
COMICS 101
November 2, 2005
YOU CAN’T TELL ONE SUPERMAN FROM ANOTHER WITHOUT A PROGRAM: INFINITE CRISIS EXPLANATIONS
SPOILER WARNING: In the spirit of fairness, in the light of the big fuss I made about no one spoiling INFINITE CRISIS for me (which no one did, by the way – good work, folks), I feel compelled to give a word of warning, that this week’s column will be discussing the big revelation in the final pages of INFINITE CRISIS #1, so if you haven’t read it yet, and you intend to, you should probably stop reading now. Everyone still here? Then let’s get started…
“I don’t get it. Who are the old Superman and the other Superboy?”
As always, my e-mail box provides the pulse beat of the comics-reading community, as based on my correspondence apparently masses of younger comics fans got to the end of INFINITE CRISIS #1 and said “Huh?”
While I’m sure that Geoff Johns and Phil Jimenez will fill in some of the backstory in the next issue, I thought I’d take this opportunity to provide you impatient types with a little primer on Kal-L and company. Admittedly, you longtime COMICS 101 readers might find this to be a bit of a retread of some previously covered ground, but hey, everyone can use a refresher course from time to time, right? And for those of you who would like to get a bit more fleshed-out explanation of what we’re about to discuss, you can just click here and here.
Anyway, to set the stage a bit: recent months have left the DC Universe in turmoil. The events of IDENTITY CRISIS revealed that members of the Justice League had mindwiped a number of supervillains and practically lobotomized Dr. Light in order to protect their families, and then mindwiped fellow Leaguer Batman in order to keep their secret. Following that, in COUNTDOWN TO INFINITE CRISIS, longtime Justice Leaguer Blue Beetle began investigating a grand information-gathering initiative designed to surveil and potentially destroy Earth’s superhuman community, only to discover the man behind it: Beetle’s onetime friend and former JLI administrator Maxwell Lord, who had gained control of Brother Eye, a global spysatellite launched by an increasingly suspicious Batman in the wake of his mindwiping by the League. Lord also used the Brother Eye technology to create the OMACs, a near endless army of cyborg warriors that can be used to attack Earth’s superhumans. Although Beetle managed to delete Lord’s information database, he was captured by OMAC, and when he refused to join up with Lord’s organization, he was shot in the head, murdered.
In the months since then, things have gone from bad to worse in the DCU, with the interplanetary empires of Rann and Thanagar warring in deep space in THE RANN/THANAGAR WAR miniseries…
…while DC’s sorcerers and magic-users have been contending with the Spectre (left without direction since his separation from the newly resurrected Hal Jordan) and Eclipso (now utilizing the body of IDENTITY CRISIS murderer Jean Loring as a host), who managed at the end of the DAY OF VENGEANCE miniseries to destroy the Rock of Eternity and the wizard Shazam, source of Captain Marvel’s power.
At the same time, most of the DCU’s supervillains have been united in a cabal under the control of Lex Luthor and his council, with the exception of six rogue villains who’ve been fighting for their lives in Gail Simone’s excellent VILLAINS UNITED miniseries.
In the pages of JLA, the League’s sins have come back to haunt them, with the return of the mindwiped League enemies revealing the League’s mind-altering actions to all the members, resulting in the disbanding of the fractious, shattered Justice League.
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At the same time, Maxwell Lord’s increasing exercise of his mind-controlling powers and his OMAC armies in THE OMAC PROJECT resulted in the death of another former Leaguer, Rocket Red, and culminated in Lord’s mental control of Superman, hypnotizing him into believing he was facing three of his deadliest enemies, when in fact he was brutally beating Batman, who barely survived with his life. At the last, Wonder Woman realizes that Lord is controlling Superman, and manages to rope Lord with her lasso of truth, forcing him to confess that the only way to prevent Lord from continuing to control Superman is to kill him. Faced with the decision of killing Lord or risking his continued use of Superman as an unstoppable weapon, Wonder Woman makes her choice and snaps Lord’s neck, killing him. Unfortunately, Brother Eye executes Lord’s contingency protocol, broadcasting the footage of Wonder Woman murdering a seemingly helpless human around the world, engendering widespread mistrust and suspicion of the superheroes. Wonder Woman’s decision to kill Lord creates a bitter divide between Superman, Batman and her, while Superman and Batman remain on uneasy terms after Batman’s near death at Superman’s hands.
And meanwhile, in the pages of JSA and JSA CLASSIFIED, Power Girl’s powers have been wildly out of control, coming along with memory lapses that have left Kara confused and despondent. And finally, the previously-thought-dead Titan Donna Troy (the former Wonder Girl), returns to life in the pages of the DC SPECIAL miniseries, and is given a brief glimpse into a past that never was, the multiverse that existed before the events of the landmark 1986 maxiseries CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.
Which is where we are at the beginning of INFINITE CRISIS #1. Whew.
Before we continue, a bit of credit where it’s due: I was a bit suspicious of this whole project when it was first announced, particularly since it was deemed necessary to kick it off by killing off one of my favorite characters, the Blue Beetle, and was done so in a manner both gratuitous and a little stupid; a death unworthy of the character. However, from an editorial standpoint, the build-up to INFINITE CRISIS has been nearly flawlessly executed, with the various miniseries and crossovers each working well as a narrative independently, while creating as a whole a genuine sense of anxiety and nervous anticipation for what’s to come. Of those series, one or two have been merely okay, a couple have been pretty good, and one in particular, VILLAINS UNITED, has been outstanding. And now that I see what all the darkness has been leading up to, I’m willing to accept it a little more.
In the pages of INFINITE CRISIS #1, we watch as things go from bad to worse in the DC Universe, with Donna Troy assembling a team of heroes to face an unnamed threat in deep space, while the Green Lantern Corps struggle to manage the chaos wrought by the Rann-Thanagar War. At the same time, the Teen Titans struggle against an army of demons (similar to the creatures invading Gotham City), Nightwing is faced with thousands of OMAC warriors, the Freedom Fighters are brutally slaughtered by Lex Luthor’s Secret Society, while Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman squabble over moral absolutes on the moon, in the wreckage of the JLA Watchtower.
And watching all of this unfold from a mysterious vantage point are four mysterious figures, debating whether or not to get involved themselves, before one of them finally declares “We’ve given them a gift they’ve thrown away. We sacrificed everything for them,” and begins smashing away at an unseen barrier…
…until finally breaking through, revealing two Supermen, one elderly and one teenaged, along with a sixtyish Lois Lane and a redhaired man in gleaming golden armor. Who are these guys? They’re the Superman and Lois of Earth-2, the Superboy of Earth-Prime, and the Alexander Luthor of Earth-3.
Yes, that’s right: it looks like the multiple earths are back.
A quick recap: to settle the issue of why DC’s WW II-created characters hadn’t aged by the 1960s, as well as to settle the conundrum of characters with the same name (e.g., the Flash of the 1940s and the Flash introduced in 1957), in the early ‘60s DC editor Julius Schwartz introduced the notion of “parallel Earths.” To wit: as explained in the pages of FLASH and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, separated by a vibratory barrier were two parallel universes: The universe containing Earth-1 was populated by the modern, 1960s-era Superman, Batman and the Justice League, while the universe containing Earth-2 was home to the older version of the heroes that had been around since the 1940s, such as Green Lantern Alan Scott, Flash Jay Garrick, and the Justice Society (as well as older versions of Superman, Batman, etc.). The idea was a hit with the readers, and teamups between the heroes of the two Earths became an annual summer tradition.
As the idea caught on, it began to be more frequently used and expanded, sometimes for new ideas, like the “evil” versions of the JLA from Earth-3, the Crime Syndicate, and sometimes to create homes for new stables of characters purchased by DC from defunct publishers, like Quality’s Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters on Earth-X, Fawcett’s Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family on Earth-S, and Charlton’s Blue Beetle and company on Earth-4. By 1985, it was decided that DC’s cornucopia of parallel Earths were too confusing, and so the five primary Earths, 1, 2, 4, X and S, and their universes, were combined into a single universe and Earth in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. With the unification came some confusion, as some of the surviving characters were duplicates that should not have existed if their Earth had never been around, folks like the Superman, Robin and Huntress of Earth-2.
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While Robin and Huntress were killed off in the final days of the CRISIS, The problem of the Earth-2 Superman, the first and original Superman, remained. Here’s how it was left.
Among the characters left without a home Earth or a history near the end of CRISIS was Alexander Luthor of Earth-3. Alexander, the sole survivor of Earth-3, destroyed in the Crisis, was the son of Alexiei Luthor, Earth-3’s sole superhero, and reporter Lois Lane. Alexander was spared thanks to his father’s genius, as Alexei sent the infant Alexander to Earth-1 before his own world was consumed. As a result of the journey, not only did Alexander age at an accelerated rate, he also gained the ability to create a passageway between the parallel Earths, a power that served him well in helping defeat the Anti-Monitor, the cosmic tyrant plotting to destroy all creation.
Another planetary orphan was the Superboy of Earth-Prime. This was an interesting wrinkle, in that for years, Earth-Prime had been described as the Earth that we, the readers, lived on, which would allow Flash to visit with DC editorial types like Julius Schwartz. In an issue of DC COMICS PRESENTS that appeared just as CRISIS was beginning, it was revealed that Earth-Prime had a Superboy, who had come from his universe’s Krypton, and this Superboy returned with Superman to Earth-1 just before Earth-Prime was destroyed. Yes, in the CRISIS, even the Earth that we the readers supposedly live on wasn’t spared.
Finally, there was Kal-L himself (note the different spelling), the Superman of Earth-2 – the original Superman of 1938 in whose footsteps every superhero followed. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s, Kal-L appeared infrequently in books like ALL-STAR COMICS and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA as a member of the Justice Society, where his relationship with his cousin Kara, Earth-2’s Power Girl, was often the focus. Since on Earth-2 Kara arrived from Krypton fully grown and much later in Superman’s life, their relationship, though still close, was much more contentious. Kal-L also appeared in SUPERMAN FAMILY in the “Mr. and Mrs. Superman” feature, which told stories of Clark’s married life, happily married to Lois Lane Kent, and also featured stories of his day job as editor of the Daily Star (replacing George Taylor, the Earth-2 analogue to Perry White).
Kal-L found himself lost emotionally once the multiverse was united: since he had been at the dawn of time (it’s a long story) when the universes united, he remained in existence, but his entire life, including his beloved wife Lois, was gone, having never existed. Kal-L soldiered on and was instrumental in defeating the Anti-Monitor, at the last deciding to stay behind in the Anti-Monitor’s negative universe (along with the Superboy of Earth-Prime) to make certain he was destroyed. However, Alexander Luthor had a surprise: before the Earths were united, he had saved Lois Lane Kent, taking her to “a place inside him…that was so beautiful.” Alexander again opens a portal to that mysterious place for Kal-L, Lois, Superboy and himself, where “there will be no fear…only peace…everlasting peace.”
Apparently it’s peace no more for the original, true Superman, as he’s returned to today’s dysfunctional DC Universe to put things right. And all I have to say is, it’s about time.
Scott Tipton is also excited that this might mean that Power Girl will finally get her real origin back. If you have questions about Crises infinite or otherwise, send them to stipton99x@moviepoopshoot.com.
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