Christmas Comes Early

And sometimes, so do birthdays.

It's my birthday in about three or four weeks but my wife has already bought and let me have my present - the Absolute Edition of Crisis On Infinite Earths!

God damn it's a beautiful looking pair of books. The collected series looks as good as the trade paperback that I bought when it was released though I've done little more than skim through it at the moment. Most of my attention has been on the Compendium, the second book that throws a lot more light on how Crisis came about and how it affected other titles being published at the time.

Poor old Roy Thomas and his All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc titles seemed to have suffered the harshest blows with the Earth-Two versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman being ret-conned out following the Crisis and altering his stories set in the Golden Age. That's kind of ironic as, from the memos reprinted in the Compendium, it seems Roy Thomas was eager to help out with Crisis as much as possible as long as he got to keep control over the Earth-Two/Golden Age heroes' fate.

It's a fascinating read not only for someone interested in Crisis as a story but also the way DC worked at the time - not only the editorial mandates that came down or the "like it or lump it" approach to many of the story's ramifications but also the sense of community that the editors and writers shared, the swapping of ideas and willingness (on the whole) to work together.

I'm off to carry on reading!