Customer Reviews
AMAZING ARTWORK, INCOHERENT STORY - By: Red Queen, 19 Aug 2008 
What will strike readers of this comic is the bright, colourful artwork full of exciting action & mind numbing detail. Every character, & there are hundreds, looks amazing. There are also full page panels scattered throughout the comic that are a nice addition.
Even though the artwork cannot be faulted, it isin places a victim of its own ambition with most of the pages filled with action & chaos that at times can be hard to read. The quality of the artwork is amazing, however because so much is going on, it can be difficult to discern what is happening. This isn't helped by the fact that most if not all the artwork goes right to the edge of the binding.
This makes reading some of the pages more difficult as you cannot see or at times read what is happening at the edge of the panels. It's more of a problem with the double page panels where a large central part of the image cannot be seen. This problem doesn't affect all the images & the comic is still readable & enjoyable. However it is a shame that some of the amazing images are cropped by the central binding.
The Artwork, barring a few nigles cant be faulted, however the story isn't perfect & is what lets this comic down. There are many characters that make a very brief appearance & serve only as a means to push the story forward. Even though the story is for the most part enjoyable, it suffers from a lack of direction. Many characters appear & disappear; situations unfold & resolve themselves without any explanation as to why. Parts of the story are at times muddled with no clear focus which is a shame as there are some great ideas.
Overall this comic is not perfect. However the artwork is stunning, full of rich bright colours & amazing detail. Yes, the central binding dose interfere with some of the panels, which is a shame, but no great loss. The story might not be the best, at times it doesn't even make sense. That said this is a great comic with some great ideas.
Crisis & adventure on a universal scale - By: T. R. Alexander, 06 Apr 2008 
The Infinite Crisis event is the sequel to DC's epic `Crisis on Infinite Earths' & the eventsin this book affect every corner of the DC Universe. After the events of the various `Countdown to Infinite Crisis' stories the Universe isin chaos with interstellar war raging, OMAC robots rampaging across the globe, The Spectre continues his crusade against all magic & the worlds villains are uniting into a single force. The events that follow cause death & destruction on a massive scale causing forgotten heroes to return, to stop the chaos.
Although I am still relatively new to the DC Universe, even I had heard of the `Crisis on Infinite Earths' & although I have yet to read that storyline the events that transpired at that time are clearly & concisely explained here so that even people with little knowledge of the history of these events shouldn't feel lost. I did find the storyline itself slightly confusingin places but despite this I found the plot thoroughly absorbing. The artwork presented here is beautifully realised with some truly breathtaking images, especially those showing dozens of characters & the mass battles raging around the Universe. Although probably not the greatest graphic novel that I have read the `Infinite Crisis' is such an ambitious project produced so well that I cannot help but like it.
Good, but not without a lot of suffering. - By: JC, 22 Mar 2008 
Crisis on Infinite Earths is a massive, epic & very slow going piece of work - it has more endings & more 'final battles' than the Lord of the Rings films, but each & every character is introduced, shown, has a backstory etc. Most of the charactersin Infinite Crisis have no such luxeries, with Batman, Superman & Wonder Woman falling out over the OMAC crisis, self-pitying & general paranoia. What was started with Identity Crisis was followed up with the Countdown to Infinite Crisis novels & personally I think all of those (esp Identity Crisis) are much better than this, the final stage.
To me, it just seems to be far too rushed, too muchin the way of self-pitying & there seems to be too much on one page. I don't like having to squint at a panel - if IC was going to go straight to 'Absolute' status, I think that I would have enjoyed this a lot more. Jim Lee's artwork for the covers is just astonishing as ever, but some of the in-book work could have been a lot better, although there's some art there that harks back to the Marv Wolfman Adventures of Superman days. There's also a lot of gaps between plots as well, & some parts aren't given significance that they needed.
I'll this give this a 'must try harder' score. Story's okay, the plot gaps aren't, art's okay - ranging from 'all right' to 'good'. But I still expected something more, especially with how DC had putin so much effort with the prequels.
An epic superhero yarn for our times - By: M. Jackson, 20 Mar 2007 If you want your superhero comics to be big, epic & hard hitting then this is for you. Geoff Johns has crafted a fine sequel to the original 1986 crisis, that is both emotionally involving & action packed. After months of excellent lead-ins & tie-ins we finally get to see the climax of eventsin the DC universe that have been brewing since the controversial, yet compelling Identity Crisis. Multiple story threads are tightly brought together & brought to a tidy conclusion, that doesn't fail to deliver. This book is a success both as a one off comic book event & as an attempt to rationalize & tidy up DC continuity. The key theme of redemption, even at a great cost, for the tarnished heros of the DC universe is carried offin a moving & powerful way, bringing a timely reminder of what it should mean to be a real hero. The art through out (as one has come to expect from modern comics) is superb, a right balance between realism & fantasy.
Anyone who read the first Crisis 20 years ago, or who has a remote interestin the DC heroes should check this out (and possibly some of the related titles, OMAC project, Identity crisis, Villains united & power girl to name a few).
Leave well enough alone... - By: James E. Rodehaver, 20 Nov 2006 
Geoff Johns has helped mightily to restore order, sanity, & mythos to the core of the DC Universe's super hero figures. He has given us back Hal Jordan, the JSA, Hawkman & the Flash's Rogies Gallery. He helped make the latter comic book, The Flash, relevant again. His finger prints are all over some of the best comic storylines of the last five years. Traversing the length & breadth of the DC Universe, he has cut the Gordian Knots plaguing poor continuity of some of our most epic & beloved heroes. Yet,in taking on the sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, he has taken a step too far. This book positions itself as an editorial on the state of superhero-comics-ethics. Heroes operate more as feckless vigilantes & less as value-driven crime-fighters. In the increasingly dark storylines, heroes seem to have forgotten where they came from & why they fight injustice. There are so many themes & examples of this degeneration of super-heroes that it would seem that Geoff Johns has positioned himself well to write a meaningful follow up story to the seminal comics crossover event: Crisis on Infinite Earths. He fails to do so. Unfortunately, Johns has written a crudely complex action-oriented event that fails to deliver on the promise of its staging & build up. Whereas he set the table to write a multi-dimensional meditation on the state of the modern men-in-tights format, he a furious, action-film style mess that reinforces the gratuitous death & mayhem that he seemingly set out to debunk & deflate. Despite its strong initial chapter's focus on character, continuity, & consequence, the book's latter chapters reveal a thin plotline designed to justify another shake up of the DC universe. In the euphamism of the original crisis, World's live, world's die & this story left me caring nary a moment. Heroes die, heroes are reborn. None of it makes the slightest bit of sense. It is not done with style or with grace. In the end, the demise of Wally West's Flash or Ted Kord's Blue Beetle or the Earth 2 Superman leave me wondering why this was needed or necessary. Sadly, the reason is commercialism. Wally West was not central to the plot of the story, but his book still needed to sell. Blue Beetle had become a joke & it is tougher to redeem a hero than to re-boot him. One might expect a different outcome from an author like Johns, who has made redeeming heroes his specialty.
