Newsarama has a preview image, drawn by J.G. Jones, for FINAL CRISIS. May 2008. Yes, May 2008 (when Countdown ends I think). I knew this was coming -- they said at the New York Comic Con that Countdown was a countdown to the next big DC event. But I did not realize they were calling it a Crisis. Given how long it takes to have a Crisis -- months of the core miniseries, all the lead-ups and ramifications -- I think it will be Crisis all the time from now on. Identity Crisis leads to Road to Infinite Crisis leads to Infinite Crisis leads to Infinite Crisis: Aftermath leads to 52 leads to One Year Later leads to Countdown leads to Final Crisis leads to 365 (DC's new daily comic book) leads to road to post-Final Super Crisis 2 leads to Final Super Crisis 2 leads to a year in which every superhero's head just explodes on a monthly basis (quarterly for the All Star Titles). At Marvel Road to Civil War leads to Civil War leads to Planet Hulk leads to The Initiative leads to World War Hulk leads to the announced third act of the Hulk Story leads to One More Day leads to everyone in the Marvel Universe dies of throat cancer on a monthly basis.
Someone needs to write a penetrating cultural/comics essay (not me) on how people used to have wars like World War Two, but then the idea of war became a constant thing -- the War on Drugs, the War on Terror -- with no real end in site: more of a climate than an event; the constant terror keeps everyone buying things (is that the theory?). Then the comic book companies followed suit, and for the same reasons.
What if, rather than a series of crises it's all just one big Crisis.
ReplyDeleteI mean, there's basically a single line between Identity Crisis and Countdown, In the future we could be calling it all "one big crisis"
What if we wake up and it's really 1985 again and the first issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths just hit the stands?
ReplyDeleteThat would explain everything to me.
lol
I don't care about Crossovers at all, but I hope they at least have the decency to call the last Countdown issue, "The Final Countdown."
ReplyDeleteThat might not make me buy the book, but it would make me smile.
Geoff: Whatever paper it is you're calling for, I'm pretty sure that Zizek has written it.
ReplyDeleteI'm switching to trades as soon as the current story arcs I'm reading are over, but even that can be frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait for the Exploding Heads Premiere Hardcover; $24.99 for six flippin' issues.
The teaser image itself - "Heroes Die, Legends Live Forever" - seems to suggest a complete reboot that would leave only those five characters. Kind of a line-wide Ultimate universe. That strikes me as equal parts bold, and just as misguided as every other Crisis reboot DC has tried. It also reminds me of how the original Crisis was followed by Zero Hour in attempt to "clean it up", only with a nine year gap brought down to two.
ReplyDeleteIf that IS what it means, even if they're not announcing it as such, how odd is it to advertise something that's basically saying "any comics you buy from us in the next year don't really count"? "Come back in a year, we'll have all this crap fixed then, promise." Has this really been the plan since Identity Crisis? Two or three years of world-building/correcting is a fake-out for the REAL world-building/correcting event? What's going on at DC?
http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=news&id=11089
ReplyDeleteInteresting theory/idea over at CHUD.com. I actually think that would be kind of lovely.