DC Comics Crisis Reading Order?
- Thread starter Mysterion
- Start date
Right. Crisis Infinite Earths was the first one back in 1985. Then starting in 2004 there was a whole connected cycle of them: Identity Crisis - 4 mini series leading into Infinite Crisis - Infinite Crisis - 52 - Countdown to Final Crisis - Final Crisis. Personally I loved Infinite Crisis and the lead-in to it, but was seriously disappointed with Countdown and Final Crisis.
What about Zero Hour?
Zero Hour took place a few years before the whole current crop of Crises. It was supposed to be another continuity fix like the original Crisis but apparently the changes were unpopular and subsequently ignored or something. I haven't read it, myself. But it doesn't really have a direct relation to the whole Crisis / Infinite / Final meta story.
I suggest you read Identity Crisis otherwise Infinite Crisis will make even less sense and...
...Batman suddenly hates everyone else.
While I agree it doesn't have anything to do with the current state of things, it was a pretty straight forward story. Just Hal as the villain trying to remake the universe in his image.
But, again, it suffered from the same problem as...well...every Crisis...instead of LITERALLY restarting the Universe, they just said they did and kept going, rather than starting everything at a number 1...
Yeah... my favorite way to summarize Zero Hour is, "We made everything different. Now we'll carry on exactly as we were."
The thing about the big comic events is that a reader has to have some prior emotional investment in the characters for any of the major changes to have an impact. Just reading Crisis on Infinite Earths, the shock of losing Flash is not as pronounced as it would be if one read Flash or Justice League books as well.
I have read a few of these events. I think - Crisis on Infinite Earths, Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis.
Of these I would really recommend the first two - the first for being the first such "event" (btw "crossovers with parallel universes" have been done before in DC - there are several "Crisis" events prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths. But this was the big earth-changing one )
I really liked Identity Crisis because it affected a character that I didn't necessarily know and did so in an involving manner (I could feel the tragedy while reading it). Some of the others end up taking a hero and making him behave in an inexplicably evil manner - which may or may not go down well with you.
Of these I would really recommend the first two - the first for being the first such "event" (btw "crossovers with parallel universes" have been done before in DC - there are several "Crisis" events prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths. But this was the big earth-changing one )
I really liked Identity Crisis because it affected a character that I didn't necessarily know and did so in an involving manner (I could feel the tragedy while reading it). Some of the others end up taking a hero and making him behave in an inexplicably evil manner - which may or may not go down well with you.
Infinite Crisis was good but needed 12 issues. Also, I kind of wish they'd just let
Alex win, or at least give some lip-service to the consequences of stopping him. To paraphrase Alan Moore, all they did was succeed in preventing him from saving the world.
Final Crisis also has some tie ins that ran at the same time, while not absolutely essential, do help make more sense the over all picture. Of those, you can probably get away with just reading the two issues of Superman Beyond and the five or so issues of Revelations. Or ...
...you could also skip Final Crisis altogether as it wasn't that good, and seems has no long lasting impact on the wider DCU that I can see.
...you could also skip Final Crisis altogether as it wasn't that good, and seems has no long lasting impact on the wider DCU that I can see.
^Verily. FC is really just Grant Morrison recycling, badly, the New God elements from a story from his JLA run. Strangely, it was really fun the first time around, when it was called Rock of Ages...
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