Countdown to Crisis on Infinite Titles

Doom DeLuise mentioned it in his Countdown review this week, but nearly two years ago, Fin Fang Doom presented you dear Doomkopf readers with Crisis on Infinite Titles, his ambitious theory on the secret behind Infinite Crisis. Much of it turned out to be wrong, but in other ways, he was way ahead of his time.

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about that period leading up to Infinite Crisis, how much fun it was to speculate and piece together theories, how Final Crisis is just starting to reach that stage and how it’s not nearly as much fun as it was two years ago.

Fin Fang Doom has recently suggested he may revisit CoIT, which I think he should. But in the meantime, here is a selection of the Legion’s discussions that led up to FFD’s revelation of his theory. Assembled from message board conversations spanning September through November 2005, I present to you Countdown to Crisis on Infinite Titles. You’ll see how close we were in some ways, and how far off we were in others. We shall begin with one of those ridiculously wrong predictions:

Fin Fang Doom: I really don’t think DC’s going to bring back any pre-Crisis characters. It seems like such a step backward, and just plain unneccessary. They’re dealing with the implications of COIE over in JSA Classified to some extent, but to go so far as to bring back a character that was written out of history 20 years ago? I’d lose some respect for what otherwise been a great storyline if that was the case.

Jim Doom: Unless pre-crisis Lex is back after all, and he’s perhaps posing as post-crisis Lex?

I mean, what if pre-crisis Luthor is posing as post-crisis luthor? Unless I am mistaken, post-crisis luthor is pretty out-of-action due to recent events, so what if it’s pre-crisis luthor that is taking his place? I realize post-crisis luthor would only know so much, that’s why i wonder if pre-crisis luthor has assumed his position.

JD:So after the events of JLA #119, I think that pre-crisis Earth 2 Superman is going to be one of the main evildoers, with Earth 2 Luthor as Mockingbird. My theory is that he blames the Earth-1 heroes for the death of his world and others, so to him, they are selfish murderers of billions, perhaps driving him so far as to team up with Earth 2 Luthor to save their universe? The JLA teleporters recognize biosignatures and secret locations, which would make them susceptible to corruption by clones or alternate-reality beings.

FFD: Obviously, a Superman teleported to the Watchtower at the end of JLA 119. But I have a feeling it’s the post-IC one from the first Superman/Batman arc and not Earth 2 Superman. If Infinite Crisis has actually been building as long as they say it has, then future Superman’s attack in Superman/Batman could have been his first attempt to change the events leading up to IC, but maybe not his last.

FFD: Are they seriously bringing back the pre-Crisis universe now? DC, don’t blow this thing…

Jean-Claude Van Doom: I was wondering, what is DC going to do to explain the events of Donna Troy? Because, they said people could follow things with just the four lead-ins. That seems to be an utter sham at this point.

FFD: I’ve now come to accept, after re-reading Crisis on Infinite Earths, that the Superman that attacked Martian Manhunter in JLA 119 was Earth-2 Superman. It seemed very clear to me that Earth-2 Superman simply shifted into a parallel dimension, along with Alex Luthor and Earth-Prime Superboy, at the end of COIE #12 instead of being written out of existence. All of the heroes who fought the Anti-Monitor at the beginning of time survived on the new Earth, although most of the duplicates (like Earth-2 Hawkman, Wonder Woman and Robin) were promptly killed off.

However, no villains were in that battle at the beginning of time, so I still have a hard time accepting that Earth-2 Luthor has survived. Not only would he have been written out of existence when the new Earth was formed, but he was murdered by Braniac before any real battles began. I’ve got a feeling now that the two Luthors theory might be correct, although I think the second Luthor is Alex Luthor posing as his father.

JD: I’ve only read Villains United #6 so far, but for those of you who haven’t read it, I can only say that it makes total sense. Last night I was thinking about the first Superman / Batman arc, and realized that I was missing something completely obvious: at the end of the first Superman / Batman arc, Luthor was completely out of power, driven nuts and not the calm, cool, collected guy we’ve been seeing in Villains United. It doesn’t make sense for Luthor to be acting the way he’s been acting throughout this series.

So I was thinking Tuesday night, alternate-universe Luthor is the one we’ve been seeing all along, thinking it was our Luthor. So the tables are turned – the mystery guy we’ve been suspecting is from another dimension (or at least I’ve been expecting) is the disenfranchised, pissed-off Luthor from our world.

JD: The Spectre is out of control because he doesn’t have a human host. There’s one man who is who he is and means what he means because he’s only a man, and he’s a man who’s driven by vengeance and he’s a man rumored to be out of the picture at the end of Infinite Crisis.

Furthermore, I’ve been led to believe that nothing in the art of big DC moments happens on accident.

Think about that – the one-man war on criminals as the super-powered Spectre. We know (or at least I think we do) they’re working toward another human host for the Spectre, there are heavy rumors that Batman is going away, and when Tim Drake returned to our earth a year in the future, he saw Bruce Wayne’s grave. That made the Arkham theory unlikely, but if he’s the Spectre, he would have a grave.

Also, Batman’s been saying a lot lately about how he’s only a man, he doesn’t have powers, he has to be prepared for the powers going bad, etc. What a turn would that be if suddenly he had the Spectre’s role?

FFD: Someone has to become the Spectre’s host body, that’s for sure. And Bruce Wayne sounds like about the most interesting choice they could make. The thing is, you know DC’s not going to have someone besides Bruce be Batman for an extended period of time. So eventually Bruce will be returned to life, and Spectre will be once again without a host. Maybe the Batsignal thing is a red herring.

JD: I guess I’m not convinced they won’t dethrone Bruce for an extended period of time. All the signs point toward the big 3 being replaced by their juniors. In fact, Bruce becoming The Spectre is really the only way I can see them bumping off Bruce for that extended period of time, because he’s still around in a sense. People can still get a fix of that attitude, which would be much more palatable than just removing him completely. If they keep him dead for 10 years like they did Hal Jordan, I’d consider that worth doing.

FFD: The question is, would The Spectre star in some or all of the Batman titles, or would whoever takes over the cape and cowl (my hope would be Dick Grayson, as Tim Drake’s still a bit young to be Batman)? You can’t have someone who’s not Batman be the star of Batman, but he could certainly star in Detective Comics. If the Bruce Spectre didn’t star in one of the Batman titles, would he get his own series? I think they tried that with Hal and nobody cared.

And the point you made about the big three being replaced really makes the generations aspect to Perez’s cover make sense. But I just don’t see Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent and Diana staying out of the spotlight for any extended period of time. Maybe they’ll give up their mantles at the end of issue 4, and then reclaim them by the end of Infinite Crisis (the 1-year jump takes place after either 4 or 5), and *52 will show the story of what they did once they retired and why they needed to un-retire.

JCVD: Another thought. I just read CoIE. Anybody else check it out recently? Anyway, it became very obvious that the multiverse was coming back (as in, if I’d read it before, it would’ve been obvious early on).

Doom DeLuise: The cover art for the next issue has me excited, though, seeing Supes from Earth-2 extending his hand to Batman. And, since, in Earth-2, Bruce Wayne’s already dead, I guess…well, SHIT, I don’t know SHIT about SHIT. Batman’s dead in Earth-2, right? So maybe Tim Drake’s trip to the future grave was just the future grave in Earth-2. Man, this multiverse stuff is confusing. Somebody clear this garbage up for me.

JD: Also, I might be reading too much into it, or maybe just reading it wrong, but did anyone else think that JLA #122 hinted that Supergirl was the villain who destroyed the moonbase?

FFD: I assume you’re referring to the ghost of J’onn saying to dawn “The one I warned you about is near!” I actually don’t remember what J’onn warned Dawn about, but when I read it, I assumed he was referring the Key, who was down on street level at the time. I should go back and check out the last few issues again.

JD: I forget what that term is that refers to the literary device that is something to divert your attention away from the real thing. I took the Key to be one of those things. Like J’onn says “the bad one is coming,” and you’re thinking The Key, but Supergirl shows up immediately. So it got me thinking, maybe The Key is just the thing that keeps them busy, but the greater danger alluded to by J’onn is actually Supergirl.

It has been said that the major players in Crisis will be major players this time. If Supergirl is evil somehow, it better be done well, considering how short she’s been around. But I could see it proving Batman’s point about her growing up too fast, or needing to monitor her longer, and all the other stuff he was warning about when she first appeared.

FFD: I haven’t read anything about Supergirl since her return other than the issue of JLA where she was in Themyscara and the latest Superman issue where she said goodbye to Superman, so I really don’t know anything about the character. Was there any allusion in the past that she might be evil? I guess since she’s so new, she really doesn’t have a long track record of being not evil, so I’m just taking the fact that she’s heroic for granted. The Key could very well be a red herring.

I think I’d be much happier with Supergirl being the S-symbol hero that blew up the Watchtower than if there was a fourth Superman running around. And if Supergirl’s evil, that should make things very interesting for Donna Troy and compant out on New Chronus.

JD: ahh, red herring, thank you sir.

Basically, when Supergirl comes to Earth, Superman is so ridiculously excited to not be alone (as in the only one of his kind) that he really lets his guard down with her. Batman’s opinion is to really check her out first and treat her with extreme skepticism, because Superman’s eagerness to accept her shows just how effectively she could be used as a weapon.

I’d imagine Jeph Loeb would be upset at using her that way (because I think he used Superman and Batman’s reactions as ways to exemplify their differences and not much more), but if she does end up being bad, maybe that could be a nice “screw you” to Loeb for signing exclusively to Marvel (although I also figure these plans had to be laid out quite awhile ago, so who knows).

On the other hand, while I think it seems cheap to bring her back the way they did and then turn her right away, a lot of my feelings are based upon Loeb’s foreword to the Superman / Batman TPB, which is silly of me. If the Crisis planners wanted her to be an important figure and wanted to bring her back, it’s not like Loeb is going to give that away in his foreword. “Yeah, I thought Supergirl was pretty cool, so it worked out well that we needed to bring her back so she could turn on the League in a year or so. Here you go.”

Yeah, so my issues with her turning evil (or at least being used destructively, without necessarily having to be consciously evil) are pretty dumb.

FFD: including normal Superman, Earth-2 Superman, Earth-Prime-Superboy, and future Superman (from Batman/Superman), there’s possibly four Supermen (five if you count the robot that mans the Fortress of Solitude, six if you count Connor Kent, the modern Superboy) running around the DCU. I have a feeling that future Superman is stuck in the future, and the one time he came to present day was a last ditch effort to stop something bad from happening. Of course, that was the same story arc where the upcoming Crisis was first mentioned, so it’s entirely possible he’s destined to reappear, and he came back in time again to blow up the Watchtower.

If that’s the case, though, there’s just way too many goddamn Supermen running around.

JCVD: If that’s not the case, there’s just way too many goddamn Supermen running around. Sheesh.

FFD: I actually got the Superman/Batman: Supergirl trade on Monday, and I just finished part 4, and I’ll be damned if the “Supergirl is evil” theory doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Maybe some of Darkseid’s brainwashing remained after (I assume) she was released in the last 2 parts of the story. That could mean that Darkseid is the real mastermind behind Infinite Crisis. The other Luthor (the sane one) could be an animate, like the Doomsday army in the Supergirl story. The big hole in Rann/Thanagar War could be the armies of Apokolips coming through a giant boom-tube. In fact, the War could have been strating by an Apokoliptian, as a way to weaken both the Rann and Thanagar armies (along with a few others) to a point where Apokolips could show up and take over with pretty much no resistance. The crazy Luthor recruited Parademon for the Six because he needed someone with knowledge of Darkseid’s troops…maybe crazy Luthor know something we readers don’t.

It all seems perfect. Step 1, plant a mole in the heroes’ ranks. Step 2, break up the JLA, Earth’s main line of defense. Step 3, start an intergalactic war, tying up the GLC and eliminating even more allies of the Earth’s heroes. Step 4, amass an army of supervillains to fight on your behalf. Step 5, destroy the magical world so everything is thrown into chaos and big guns like Zatanna, Dr. Fate and the Phantom Stranger are preoccupied. Step 6, provide a red-herring out in space, cutting the super-population of earth drastically. Step 7, break apart the trust between Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (coincidentally, the three heroes who opposed him in the Supergirl story). Step 8, arrive on Earth and take over.

Of course, that doesn’t really work out the why, or the whole OMAC thing (assuming the dissolution of the big 3 was the only point to that, step 7 would explain it). And that makes the return of Earth-2 Superman & Company was the unforseeable event that will lead to Darkseid’s downfall.

I think I’m going to post my pseudo-theory on the blog…

And the rest is history.