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Universal Crisis

After weeks of teasing, my Event Horizon column on Crisis on Infinite Earths has finally seen the light of day! It’s pretty big, which is appropriate given the subject matter. I follow the history of the comic book crossover and how it eventually led to the emergence of shared universes. The article also explores superhero metaphysics, the role of fandom in all these developments, and traces Crisis’ cultural influence. Here are the first couple of paragraphs:

Crisis on Infinite Earths (COIE), published April 1985 to March 1986 was one of the quintessential and most influential comic book series of the Event (What is the Event? Read the introduction here.). It is overshadowed by comics like Watchmen or The Dark Knight, but it is arguably more influential than both.

What is remarkable about COIE is not formal or narrative innovation, but an intensification and scope of the endeavor of super-hero comic books. It is more appropriate to speak of COIE as an endeavor rather than as a specific comic book, though it is that as well. It is more important and influential AS an endeavor than as a comic book narrative.

Check it out, it’s up now on The Comics Journal. And when you’re done with that, check out all the related Event Horizon posts here:

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The Omniversal Method

omniverse

I will continue teasing my upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths (COIE) article (part of my Event Horizon column) by dropping another interesting bit of comics history that had to be mostly left on the cutting room floor. Here’s the story of Omniverse magazine, a 70s fanzine founded by Mark Gruenwald. Gruenwald, for those who don’t know, was a Marvel editor and writer best remembered for creating the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (1982), his long run on Captain America (1985 to 1995), the Squadron Supreme mini-series (Sep 1985 – Aug 1986), and Quasar (1989–1994). But, what many don’t know, is Gruenwald’s interest in fictional continuity — especially in the Marvel and DC superhero universes — indeed he can be considered one of the foremost theoreticians of the concept. The story of Omniverse magazine is largely also Mark Gruenwald’s story.

A Universe Emerges

By the mid ’70s, a new generation of authors and cartoonists entered the comics bullpens. They had grown up reading superheroes. As fans, they brought with them a new level of understanding of the superhero universe. They understood the value of the comic book crossover as fans, as readers, and now as writers. What was once valuable in terms of sales (crossovers often produced temporary sales bumps, especially when lower selling titles featured a popular character as guests), now became valuable on a narrative and mythological level. To this new generation, the value did not reside in each character, it resided in the world of characters. Crossovers became more frequent and created valuable narrative connections between comics and characters. Fans were encouraged to read more titles, as not to miss out on what happened in other corners of the universe. The story they were reading in Fantastic Four might have origins in another one in The Avengers. Heroes and villains could help each other out in different books. A shared narrative universe emerged out of a series of loosely related titles.

The Journal of Fictional Reality

The Fan press understood this as well. One of the most interesting fan publications of that era is Omniverse: The Journal of Fictional Reality, edited by Mark Gruenwald. The first issue, from fall 1977, is a masterpiece of theoretical world building. In the editorial, Gruenwald lays out the case for reading Marvel and DC comics as coherent universes. The entire magazine is devoted to explicating, explaining, and justifying the connections between the various inconsistent realities of the Marvel & DC universes. It’s grueling metaphysics, building the ontological maps for the weird-reality of the two universes. The seeds of the massive crossovers of the Event were sown here. Even some of the graphics prefigure the visual identity of COIE.

Gruenwald defines “omniverse” as “the continuum of all universes, the space/time matrix that comprises all alternative realms of reality.” He also does not limit the omniverse to only comics, “In times to come, we hope to broaden our scope and place all forms of fiction under scrutiny. Til then, OMNIVERSE, will emphasize comic books over non-pictoral prose, due to the editors’ background in comicology.”

Reality Rating

One of the more fascinating items in Omniverse is its review column. Most fan press reviewed comics based on the quality of art or writing, but Omniverse had to be different. Its review column, “Case Studies” (Omniverse #1, p.19-23), rates comics on their ‘Reality Rating’. The Reality Rating rates comics based on their overall depiction of reality. The ratings go from A to D:

  1. Enhances continuity or illuminates some new facet of reality.
  2. Despite some minor oversights, solid in its depiction of reality.
  3. Major problems in its depiction of reality, but still explainable.
  4. Detrimental to the reader’s understanding of reality.

The ratings are not concerned with how well the comics conform to OUR reality (the one we live in), but how well they conform to the fictional reality they are part of. Special praise is heaped on comics that expand the scope of that fictional reality. For example, What If #3 gets an ‘A’ “by virtue of its tighter terminology about parallel dimensions.” (Omniverse #1, p. 23). On the other hand, Thor Annual 5 gets a ‘C’ because it introduces an inconsistency with the Norse & Olympian Gods within the Marvel Universe. The story depicts the gods as needing the ‘belief of mortal men’ (p. 20) to exist, when in fact they have been previously depicted as independent other-dimensional beings without the need for ‘belief’ to sustain them.

The Reality of Reality

For much of their existence, comics stories for the most part existed in a kind of ‘situational comedy’ vacuum. Sure, there was some continuity, but for the most part, when an adventure ended, the world ‘reset’. The consequences of previous issues rarely had an impact on subsequent issues. Often, they introduced contradictions instead. For example, it might be written by someone less familiar with that particular character’s mythos, or simply because it was an interesting use of the character. Tight continuity, or consistent history of the character (the one exception being the origin story), had no value for a long time. The idea of a major character dying, and remain dead, for example, was still shocking at the time. It was a frequent trope to kill a character, only to resurrect them again later via some implausible deus-ex-machina plot device.

But once creators take continuity and ‘reality’ of the fictional world seriously, it’s a short distance to say, Watchmen (which imagines what our ‘real’ world would be like once you add superheroes, with all the dark subtext and unintended consequences laid bare). Much of the innovation in comics of the 80s was simply creators taking fictional words seriously (however absurd they may be) and telling the stories that resulted from that seriousness.

Seeds of Crisis

Reading Omniverse, there’s a palpable sense of the theoretical case that Wolfman made for COIE. Omniverse is perhaps the most sophisticated explication of the various narrative complexities of the DC and Marvel universes. If this is what ended up in print, one can imagine the various theoretical constructions that circulated among the fandom in the years prior.

When writing about COIE, many of the concerns cited by Marv Wolfman as ‘problems to be solved’ in DCU continuity (multiple versions Atlantis, inconsistent futures, multiple Earths), are already present and explicated in Omniverse. For example:

  1. The various manifestations of Atlantis are discussed, and possible explanations for the inconsistencies are explored.
  2. The inconsistent future(s) inside of the DCU are enumerated. For example, Kamandi’s nightmarish apocalyptic future does not match up with Legion of Superheroes’ bright technological near-utopia of the 30th Century.
  3. There is a lengthy explication of the various multiversal, interdimensional, and time travels of The Flash. Many of these stories were key to COIE.

Omniverse shows these ideas and concerns were already advanced and present in the fandom, and among the writers who would eventually be given keys to the DC and Marvel universes.

Crisis Identity

Another eerie premonition of COIE is visual. It is the graphic for the Flash article (“Reality Spotlight on The Flash” p. 24-28, art credited to Dennis Jensen, whose work I’ve never encountered elsewhere). The graphic depicts the Flash of two Worlds. The Flash from Earth-1 and Earth-2. Behind them there is a line-art graphic of four Earths, overlapping each other as if to suggest the multi-vibrational nature of the many Earths. This graphic treatment would become the logo for COIE. Perhaps there’s an earlier version of this graphical treatment? Maybe my readers know? Still, it is an interesting artifact that predates COIE by 8 years.

No Prize

DC & Marvel encouraged the fandom to make these kinds of investigations. The letters pages in most comic books were a hotbed of reader discussions on the many narrative ‘complexities’ haunting both universes. Marvel made this into a virtue, by instituting the No Prize. Marvel editors awarded a No Prize to readers who came up with the best explanations for odd inconsistencies found in their stories. In effect, the letters pages blended with the fictional worlds, and some of the explanations could, and maybe should be considered canon.

Prophecy

In an interesting aside, Gruenwald quotes Paul Levitz article from Amazing Worlds of DC Comics #12 (August 1976 p.8):

“The pivotal time will be October 1986… and in that month, the future of the world will be decided. Either the path of the Great Disaster will be taken, and civilization will fall, or the path of sanity will prevail and the Legion of Super-Heroes will emerge triumphant a thousand years later…”

COIE series ended in April 1986. Did Paul Levitz miss the mark in his prophecy? Did DC miss an opportunity to build on this metafictional prediction? However, if we consider the omniversal nature of comic book fiction, we should turn to another event that happened in October 1986: Marvel launched the New Universe… The New Universe was a new fictional superhero universe that was exactly like our real-world until the ‘White Event’. The White Event was a point of divergence; a diversifal, in the parlance of omniversal theory. The White Event is the moment when the New Universe, began to diverge from ours, and superheroes become possible… One of the main architects behind the new Marvel initiative was Mark Gruenwald… ‘nuff said.

The premise and execution of Omniverse were a bit bonkers, but they also pointed to a way of looking at comics beyond simple, fannish enjoyment. Omniverse should be seen as an interesting and important moment in the development of comics criticism, which at that time was undergoing a renaissance.

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Infinite Hyperobjects: Crisis on Infinite Earths

crisis on infinite earths crop

The upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths (COIE) article that will appear in my TCJ column ended up with a lot of extra material that didn’t make the cut. In the process of writing the article, I generated many concepts and ideas, and thousands of words that don’t quite fit the article. A lot of this stuff is interesting on its own and deserves to be aired. I plan on following up on these ideas in the future. I already posted about Atari Force, the odd precursor to COIE. And a few days ago I wrote about George Perez’s maximalist aesthetic.

Infinite Hyperobjects

One of the first frameworks I tried to use to think about COIE was the concept of hyperobject developed by philosopher Timothy Morton. The massive size of the narrative DC Universe (and the Marvel Universe (MU), which cannot be left out of the discussion) and its enormous influence and its emanations into general culture (via film, TV, toys, games, etc.) seemed tailor made for a concept like hyperobject.

In The Ecological Thought, Morton developed the concept of hyperobjects to describe objects that are so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend spatiotemporal specificity, such as global warming, styrofoam, and radioactive plutonium.[3] 

COIE was a massive event that grappled with the metaphysics of the even more massive DCU. The title alone evokes parallels to global warming. A planetary crisis but multiplied infinitely. Maybe looking at DCU through the lens of hyperobjects could be useful.

What is a Hyperobject?

Timothy Morton enumerates five characteristics of hyperobjects:

  1. Viscous: Hyperobjects adhere to any other object they touch, no matter how hard an object tries to resist. In this way, hyperobjects overrule ironic distance, meaning that the more an object tries to resist a hyperobject, the more glued to the hyperobject it becomes.[29]
  2. Molten: Hyperobjects are so massive that they refute the idea that spacetime is fixed, concrete, and consistent.[30]
  3. Nonlocal: Hyperobjects are massively distributed in time and space to the extent that their totality cannot be realized in any particular local manifestation. For example, global warming is a hyperobject that impacts meteorological conditions, such as tornado formation. According to Morton, though, objects don’t feel global warming, but instead, experience tornadoes as they cause damage in specific places. Thus, nonlocality describes the manner in which a hyperobject becomes more substantial than the local manifestations they produce.
  4. Phased: Hyperobjects occupy a higher-dimensional space than other entities can normally perceive. Thus, hyperobjects appear to come and go in three-dimensional space but would appear differently if an observer could have a higher multidimensional view.[32]
  5. Interobjective: Hyperobjects are formed by relations between more than one object. Consequently, objects are only able to perceive to the imprint, or “footprint,” of a hyperobject upon other objects, revealed as information. For example, global warming is formed by interactions between the Sun, fossil fuels, and carbon dioxide, among other objects. Yet, global warming is made apparent through emissions levels, temperature changes, and ocean levels, making it seem as if global warming is a product of scientific models, rather than an object that predated its own measurement. – from Wikipedia

Let’s see if the Marvel or DC universe fit into Morton’s definition.

Viscosity

DC & Marvel have viscosity. Object stick to the DC / Marvel universe hyperobjects. For example, both companies have absorbed other companies and their respective ‘universes.’ No matter how long they try to ‘keep them separated,’ inevitably Charlton heroes, New Universe heroes, Fawcett heroes, etc. end up getting sucked into the voracious universes. Even more interestingly, in the ’70s and ’80s, there was a series of official and unofficial crossovers between these two universes. That means, that technically Superman exists in the same fictional universe as Spider-Man. Given enough time, it’s possible to imagine a massive media conglomerate owning both universes, and bringing them together into one super-massive multiverse. Disney’s plan for 2050?

Another way DCU and MU demonstrate viscosity is in their effects on readers. The two universes are ever-expanding and sticky virtual worlds that can be inhabited by the fans to a disturbing degree.

Molten Lava

Both universes operate on a multidimensional level and consistently break and violate the contiguity of their fictional spacetime continuums. This may or may not be by design. But, the continual inconsistencies that creep into the universes need constant vigilance, reboots, etc. A good example of that is Ed Piskor’s X-Men Grand Design. Piskor sutures decades of X-Men continuity — originally written and drawn by many different contributors — as if it was a single-story all along. The comic retelling functions like a history book, creating a unified narrative out of disparate historical events.

Both universes have lasted for decades and have produced an enormous amount of artifacts.

Nonlocality

Within their internal narrative logic, both universes are massively distributed in space and time. Both universes encompass universes (multi-verses even) and timelines stretch billions of years into the past and present. Reading a single Marvel or DC title never gets you even close to the totality of those universes. Beyond internal nonlocality, it is also nonlocal in the real world. The characters and concepts have spilled out into other media, books, TV, Film. Most recently Marvel Studios succeeded (before DC again) in porting the shared universe into film.

Picking up a single DCU or MU artifact, a neophyte is aware of a larger context, but the enormity of it eludes even the hardcore fans.

Phased

Both universes are phased and higher dimensional. They have this quality in both, their physical manifestation (as comic book made of paper) and in the fictional universe that emerges from their pages. We lack the perceptual apparatus to comprehend them in totality. We can only experience it one comic book, one TV show, or film at a time.

Additionally, we are largely unaware of the hidden forces behind the scenes, corporate decision, editorial mandates, moods of writers and artists, etc. all of which have effects on the universe we actually see.

Interobjective

This is maybe the clearest parallel. Each comic book, TV show, film, etc. is a footprint of something larger. Each one contains breadcrumbs in the narrative that can lead us to other corners. Crossover titles deliberately intensify narratives to reveal more of the universe. Seeing Wolverine appear in a Spider-Man title gives us a small glimpse of the massive X-Men comics continuity. Which itself is largely invisible, though interwoven with, the continuity of the Avengers, or The Punisher.

How to Manage a Universe?

COIE is perhaps the only comic book that attempted to map and manage a hyperobject as vast as the DCU. In fact, paradoxically, it’s an attempt to manage… to de-hyperobject the DCU at the narrative level… in order to expand the hyperobject on the commercial and cultural level.

If you’re someone interested in comics as a medium either as a reader, or as a professional, the DCU and MU, were something that would confront you whether you wanted it or not. You may consciously avoid it, or just have no interest in it, but almost any conversation around comics would have to contend with DCU or MU. These two behemoths nearly consumed comics as a medium.

Infinite Terror

“Hyperobjects invoke a terror beyond the sublime… A massive cathedral dome, the mystery of a stone circle, have nothing on the sheer existence of hyperobjects.” Morton’s description evokes Lovecraftian cthuloid entities.

In an interview, Dan Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World, David Boring), recounted many moments of mounting horror when a stranger on an airplane asks him what he does. Once he’d answer that he made comic books, inevitably the immediate follow-up questions would be, “Which superhero do you draw?”

Ultimately, I’m not sure if DCU or MU qualify as hyperobjects, though they share some qualities. They may however be emanations of a much more vast hyperobject… the massive industrial-entertainment complex that generates hyper-immersive fictional narratives inhabited by billions on this planet. It consumes massive resources and functions as an ideological safety valve for capital. These infinite worlds are multiplying rapidly around us as we hurtle through the yawning cold universe to our ultimate final crisis.

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Notes on Comic Book Maximalism

crisis on infinite earths by george perez

Maximalist Aesthetics

Maximalism, in modern art, is usually seen as a reaction to minimalism (a post-WW II current in modern art). The art world tends to be very solipsistic and looks at its movements on a fairly narrow spectrum. I want to use the term a little more broadly. I want to think about maximalist aesthetics as a more general tendency in art, and specifically comics. There is a minimalist aesthetic as well, but that’s beyond this little post. I’ll develop that another time.

I’m in the process of writing about Crisis on Infinite Earths (COIE) for my Event Horizon column, and I wanted to classify George Pérez’s art in some way. He is famous for drawing comics stuffed to the gills with lots of characters and detail. He takes pride in this. According to Rob Clough, once on a comics panel, he said, “why use three lines when you can use TEN!”

George Pérez

His drawings are not what distinguishes his approach from others. Pérez draws his figures and backgrounds squarely in line with comics realism, an approach, which, in the American context, is traceable back to Neal Adams. This style is more realistic (realism here is relative to older approaches like Wayne Boring, it’s still a mannered realism) figure rendering, finer inking, focus on light and shadow, and how they add depth to the figure. One day I’ll have to unpack this more. In any case, Pérez’s basic style owes much to this approach.

Where Pérez differs from the pack is in how he approaches the comic book page. He draws a large quantity of detail in each panel. But, he also has a tendency to layout the page in a very dense manner. In COIE especially, each page has a lot of panels. 10-12-15 panels per page are not uncommon, sometimes more. Overall, Pérez approaches art and layout in a hyper-detailed and dense way. His layouts are complex, imaginative, and despite the density and enormous amount of detail, very clear. He’s is a maximalist in form and content.

Maximalism: A Definition

To summarize, here are some qualities of maximalism in comics:

  1. Quantity: large amount overwhelming detail: Geof Darrow, Hard Boiled.
  2. Depth: a lot of secondary details, jokes, etc. scattered in the panels that may or may not related to the main narrative: Will Elder, Mad Magazine.
  3. Density: of information or layout: George Pérez on COIE.
  4. Scope: massive narrative length, scope, breadth of influences: Dave Sim, Cerebus (this definition developed by Tim Callahan). 

Many other examples exist out there. The maximalist tendency is present in comics from the beginning and can be traced from Windsor McCay, to Jack Kirby (especially his later work), to S. Clay Wilson, to Gary Panter, to contemporary practitioners like James Stokoe. The above should be seen as an exhaustive definition, rather as notes towards one. Let me know if you have ideas or suggestions on extending or improving this definition.

Oh and check out this Twitter thread on Maximalism for additional suggestions and ideas:

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Atari Force 1-13

atari force 05

S-F Heroes

Atari Force is a title I admired from afar. I always loved the Jose Garcia Lopez art, and the fact that it was Science Fiction (S-F). With Gerry Conway writing, it always looked like it’d be a solid title by two creators at the top of their game. I had a few random issues, but I never read any.

After acquiring issues 1-13 in a quarter bin not too long ago, I finally got around to reading them. It’s written by Gerry Conway (one of the great Bronze Age comics writers whose credits are too numerous to list), most of the art by José Luis Garcia-Lopez, with a few fill-in issues drawn by Ross Andru (and inked by Lopez), and Eduardo Barretto. The lettering was done by Bob Lappan—a delightful surprise—as he is one of my favorite letterers. Colors by Tom Ziuko.

I’m also currently re-reading and researching Crisis on Infinite Earths for another TCJ Event Horizon column (more on Even Horizon here). As I read through Atari Force, it became clear there were some interesting similarities to DC’s huge event series that came out only a few months later.

Art & Type

Lopez’s art is crisp and light. He makes that classic bronze-era comic-book realism look so easy. His choreography of fights is always complicated but clear. He’s able to take difficult movements and postures and render them with a grounded lightness. He never skimps on environments either.

José Luis Garcia-Lopez deep action. Fresh title type by Lappan!

Bob Lappan’s sound effects typography reaches sublime and absurd heights. Quirky, bizarre, odd, and awesome. Is there any other mainstream letterer that takes this much pleasure in rendering sound effects?

Stylized directional SFX in perspective
Imaginatively stylized SFX. Note the rivets in CLANK!

Star Wars

The narrative follows the Star Wars formula. A collection of ‘broken’ individuals has to come together as a team to defend the Multiverse against the Dark Destroyer, a Darth Vader-like menacing figure. A lot of Star Wars-like tropes abound. Alien planets, bounty hunters, an ‘force’ that seems to be undermining the lives of the heroes, etc.

The Dark Destroyer. Nice type on the bottom!

Multiverse Is the Place

One interesting aside is the use of the Multiverse as one of the driving engines of the story. In Atari Force, Humans have gained the ability to travel between universes, and one of the characters inherits the ability when exposed in the womb. Conway uses the idea as part of the universe… the multiverse increasingly became an important concept at both Marvel & DC. At DC it was at the core of the mythos since “Flash of Two Worlds” (Flash #123) established parallel Earth-2… and would become a key concept to revamp the DC line during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event.

There are other curious correspondences to Crisis on Infinite Earths. SPOILER WARNING: For example, it turns out that The Dark Destroyer is a double of the leader of Atari Force, Martin Champion. They are almost mirror images from disparate parts of the Multiverse. Destroyer’s goal is to annihilate Martin’s universe via an Anti-Matter bomb. These are obvious parallels to Monitor and Anti-Monitor and the matter vs. ant-matter struggle that propels the story of Crisis. Conway was one of the early architects of the multiverse concept that became increasingly deployed by both Marvel and DC throughout the 70’s and 80’s. As early as in 1972, Conway and writers Steve Englehart and Len Wein crafted an unofficial metafictional crossover spanning titles from both companies.

Gorgeous color and color hold art.

S-F Teams

The 80’s were a good decade for ‘S-F hero team’ comics. They seemed to multiply everywhere. Besides Atari Force, there was also Omega Men and The Wanderers. I suppose the popularity of the S-F tinged Legion of Superheroes had something to do with it, as well as the popularity of Star Wars and S-F cinema. Marvel (via Epic) had Dreadstar and Alien Legion. Inside of the Marvel Universe were the Swashbucklers and Guardians of the Galaxy (though their heyday would come later). On the indie side there was Nexus and American Flagg! could be included, at least for its S-F nature, though it was much more ambitious thematically and artistically than most of the others. I’m sure I’m blanking on others.

Comics are for Kids

Atari is very much aimed at young readers, but in an interesting way. There are characters like Babe and Hukka which are very much aimed at very young readers. Babe is literally a big baby (albeit very powerful one) and speaks with a limited vocabulary. Babe’s spotlight issue (#?) takes full advantage of this by limiting the words and action. Babe and Hukka riff off each other as they bumble and help revenge against (and genocide!!!) an invading force. Future issues feature Hukka back-up stories that use limited vocabulary, pantomime, onomatopoeia, and Bob Lappan’s lettering mastery, to maximum effect.

Babe & Hukka antics

All this is paired with a more traditional comic book fare: heroic characters, adult situations — but told from the POV of young adults, interesting S-F concepts like the Multiverse, villains with mysterious motivations, etc. The younger readers can come for the ‘baby’ characters, but grow with the rest of the book as they master new skills and language. This is pretty rare in comics and books these days. This kind of formula is more often deployed in blockbuster movies, which are designed to appeal to the ‘family’ audience. Comics have become a much more niche product catering to specific demographics. It’s rare these days that the family would read comics together.

Atari logo incorporated into the physical environment… and more great type!

Branded to Oblivion

The story is only loosely based on the Atari Force video game (and accompanying comics). It takes the concepts into uncharted new territory. Visually, it’s designed to capitalize on the Atari brand name. It’s jarring to see a comic book that was effectively a big Atari branding exercise. On every page some form of the Atari logo appears; as a patch, as a word, as a costume design flourish, etc.

Still, the creators don’t hold back. The characters are well rounded and interesting, the story is fun and propulsive, and the art is beautifully realized. It’s a pleasure to see top talent at the height of their powers. It’s a gorgeous comic book. It’s worth seeking this out in the original comic books… since it’ll probably never get reprinted due to licensing issues.

Ross Andru splash page

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