Adventures in the DC Universe!

A couple of months ago I decided to broaden my horizons and wander into the scarily expansive world of DC comics. I knew that it would be no small feat to jump on at this point, what with the end of the Blackest Night event and the beginning of Brightest Day. So I did some background reading. Ok, I did a lot of background reading.

With some help over at DC Comics Database I thought I was set. I knew the characters (what I thought were the main ones, anyway). I knew where they came from. I knew their powers. Armed with this knowledge I launched myself into the DC Universe. I thought I would start off with something simple. Ease my way into it, you know? So I raided the local library and found a copy of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Wow! If I thought I knew nothing about DC before, I knew even less after reading the first few pages of COIE. But I soldiered on, regardless. When I encountered someone I didn’t know, I looked them up. This happened every few pages. Slowly I waded through to the end and emerged victorious. I had conquered one of DC’s biggest events and was wiser for it. Not only did i understand what happened but I wanted more, much more.

So I moved forward. A little research uncovered my next target, Infinite Crisis. This time I laid my hard earned dollars on the line and went right out and bought a copy. And I’m thankful that I did. After reading Infinite Crisis I was sold. Pandora’s Box was opened and I haven’t looked back since. I fell in love with Martian Manhunter and his bulbous head. His powers and history struck a chord in me that I have not felt since I was introduced to Nightcrawler.

Not only that but I understood completely what was going on. Admittedly I did need to freshen up on a few things, Blue Beetle and Spectre in particular, but the story flowed so smoothly from the pages that I swept through it in just a few days (I’m a slow reader). Since then I have read Infinite Crisis again and again and I see many more reads in the future.

So, where too from there? The answer was simple in my mind – Final Crisis. Filled with confidence from my enjoyment of Infinite Crisis (as well as a little influence from its shiny cover) I bought Final Crisis and raced home. As I read through my new purchase a single phrase kept popping into my head: What the hell?

What the hell was going on here? Compared to Final Crisis, COIE read like an ABC of the DC world. A is for Anti-Monitor. B is for Batman. Every page looked to me like a page of Ulysses, written in Latin, with the words smudged across the paper by a baby’s jam-covered fingers. Questions filled my brain at every turn as I found myself taking notes in an attempt to make sense of what I was seeing and that only seemed to make things worse.

So is Darkseid dead or what?

What was that place Superman went to?

Are there ‘Old Gods”?

Anti-Life Equation?

And what’s more my first love of the DC Universe, Martian Manhunter, is slaughtered in his first scene. I felt like someone had placed a nice bug juicy watermelon in front of me, then picked it up and smashed me over the head with it.

What had I gotten myself into? When I finally finished I slipped it back into its bag, sealed it off (tightly) and put it away. I thought I was getting somewhere. I thought I was making progress. Maybe I got ahead of myself and the big head that resulted in my somewhat easy comprehension of Infinite Crisis simply exploded under the pressure of Darseid’s influence. Or maybe I just didn’t ‘ease myself into it’ as much as I intended to. Either way I had learned my lesson that the knowledge of the DC Universe that I craved needed to be earned not taken. It would take much more than a bit of reading to open up those doors. But I am determined. Tomorrow I will try again with Batman. The day after, I’ll give Superman a go. And hopefully after a while I will finally understand and I will allow myself to dig my copy out and give Final Crisis another go.