Infinite Crisis number 3!

Infinite Crisis review and Summary – issue 3

Okay, the summary issues should more or less be over, and the action should be starting right now. Let’s look in and find out.

Opening scene: The Society has all the water-breathing villains attacking San Diego/Sub Diego (Aquaman’s underwater town) while storms pummel the world. Aquaman is proving to Black Manta, Ocean Master and their cohorts that he is capable of being just as vicious as the beasts who just bit Neptune Perkins in half. He runs one of them through with a spear, before moving on to the other. (I have to admit – most of Aquaman’s comics have been a blind spot of mine, other than the portion that Peter David wrote, so I don’t recognize a lot of the characters here. I think the one he stabs with the spear is The Shark, an old Green Lantern foe, though it could be King Shark, who was a Superboy foe.)

Cut to Atlantis, where the Atlantean mages are trying to cast some kind of spell. Tempest (the former Aqualad-turned-Atlantean-sorceror), Dolphin (his wife), Lori Lemaris (a mermaid who is a one-time Superman love interest), Vulko (long-time Aquaman supporting character), and Koryak (Aquaman’s son) are all seen here. The Spectre, still out to crush magic, decides this is a bad idea and steps on the city. Yes. The whole city. There are undoubtedly some survivors, but it is still messy.

Next we see the battle between the OMACs and the Amazons of Paradise Island. The OMACs, serving as Brother Eye’s, well, eyes are broadcasting the battle back to the rest of the world. The Amazons unleash a variant on their “purple healing ray,” the “purple death ray.”

Batman is in contact with Brother Eye and is trying to convince it to stop, but Brother Eye has determined that “Wonder Woman and the Amazons pose a threat that must be exposed.” Batman insists that Brother Eye shut the OMACs down, seeing both Amazons and OMAC-controlled people dying in this battle. This is made more poignant if you have read “Trinity” where one of the main things that comes from the story for Batman is knowledge that there is a perfect Paradise on earth, in the form of Paradise Island (and no, not just because it is full of hot women). Batman then loses his temper, throwing his chair at his main monitor, and essentially having a breakdown, where he realizes that his methods are failing. Collapsing to his knees, he flashes back to the most traumatic times of his life, and he says “…I just wish I could start over.” At that moment, Superman appears to him. He says “Bruce… You can start over.” This Superman is, of course, Kal-L.

Next we see Power Girl reacquainting herself with Lois, and with her regained memories. Superboy-Prime confronts Power Girl about whether or not she is going to help with the re-creation of Earth-2 to save Lois, and fix things. Power Girl is not ready to commit, and Superboy loses his temper. Every time someone disagrees with this kid, he loses his temper. He expresses his jealousy towards Conner Kent, the current Superboy. He then gives Power Girl a copy of Lois’ journal to help convince her.

In El Paso, Texas, the Shadowpact, a team of mystically-based heroes, are collecting the pieces of the Rock of Eternity and trying to protect innocents from the fallout. The nature of the Rock of Eternity allows the explosion to appear to happen over Gotham, yet rain down shards all over the world. As they look on, a skyscraper begins to fall. None of them have the power to stop it, but suddenly, Superman is there. Kal-El. The Superman of this world. He fixes the skyscraper, and explains he has to go to California to save more lives. The Shadowpact say they think they have things covered, and Superman says to them, “Keep up the good work.” From Ragman’s reaction, it is clear – Superman is becoming a figure of inspiration again. Not far away, we see that a kid named Jaime picks up the Blue Beetle’s scarab.

At the center of the universe, not much happens, except Firestorm is hearing more voices in his head than he should be, and Animal Man is shooting lightning out of his face.

We see a moment of the Flash’s home life before it is interrupted by a broadcast of the carnage at Paradise Island, the newsman wondering if Wonder Woman’s preaching of peace has been a lie all along. The next news story is about super tornadoes in Kansas, and Flash runs out to be a Superhero. Even as the story changes to describe the tornado’s dissolving with a red blur and streak of lightning within them, Linda, his wife, is obviously scared for him in this time of great trouble.

Back to Kal-L and Batman. Batman seems to be considering Kal-L’s pitch. Kal-L finishes his pitch by telling Batman, the man who was mindwiped by his own teammates in the JLA and has since had them turn their backs on him for the actions he took as a result, “I will always stand at your side.”

Wonder Woman realizes that while the Amazons might win this battle, they do so at the cost of the war – that if they are seen as a violent threat, which Brother Eye has managed to arrange, that more armies will come. She suggests that the Amazons ask their gods to move them to another plane of existence, away from “man’s world.” The gods hear the prayers of the Amazons, and Wonder Woman leaves the island, saying her destiny is not on the island, but is instead to stay. The gods move the island elsewhere.

Next, green-eyed battle-suited Lex Luthor watches as the Society, led by blue-eyed, business suited Lex turns on Black Adam. There are some serious heavy hitters sent to take him down – Amazo, the android with the powers of the entire JLA, the General, a military man in the body of the powerful and indestructible Shaggy Man, Gorilla Grodd, the super-strong and savage master of the mind who has fought Flash on many occasions, Silver Banshee, who has gone toe-to-toe with Superman, and someone who I do not recognize named Sudden Death. The more physical among even this crowd aren’t having much luck against Black Adam (the dude is hard core), but Psycho Pirate is there, and intends to use his power to mollify Adam. Luthor’s gloating is interrupted by the other Lex, green eyed and wearing a battle suit. The presence of the other Lex so close makes it hard for green eyes to think, and it degenerates to a fight. A blast of the battle suit that makes Lex able to play with Superman doesn’t even ruffle blue-eyes’ suit. He returns the favor with a dark energy blast.

Back to Kal-L and Batman. Kal-L tries to give Bruce an easy way out. He says that none of this is Batman’s fault, but Batman insists that it is his fault. Batman asks what will happen to all the people of his world if Kal-L is successful, and Kal says they’ll be replaced, but with better people. Bruce asks about Dick Grayson. If he is better on Earth-2. Superman has to admit that he is not. Batman expected that answer – after all how could Dick be any better than he is? Saying he believes that Kal-L can reshape the world, and cannot let him do that, he confronts Batman with the Kryptonite ring that Kal-El gave him. Kal-L explains that the Kryptonite being from a different reality has no effect on him, and says that he ring is a symbol of all that is wrong in this world. That it represents the flawed relationships that the heroes have in this world that will destroy it if it is allowed to. He then flies off, seeming to truly regret Batman’s decision.

The two Luthors continue their battle. Green eyes acts unpredictably – he destroys the computers masking blue eyes’ appearance. It turns out that blue eyes, the leader of the Society, is Alex Luthor. At this point, we se the hands of a Super type tear open Lex’s battle armor like a crab’s shell, and Alex gives the order to “erase him.” A blast of heat vision threatens to do just that, but Lex teleports away. The Super type wants to go find him, but Alex says no. “Not until the tower is ready.”

Power Girl finishes reading Lois’ journal with tears in her eyes. She goes to find Alex and Superboy-Prime, to try and convince them that if they work with the heroes of this earth, maybe they can find a win-win solution. At the same time, interspersed, we see Batman reviewing the last moments during which anyone saw the Martian Manhunter, his computers having finally finished downloading and recovering the information on the black box from the Watchtower. At the same moment, Power Girl sees the tower, topped by the corpse of the Anti-Monitor, and goes to see if the Martian Manhunter is okay, and Batman sees that it is a Super-type who surprised the Manhunter. Power Girl is knocked unconscious even as Batman watches the same fate visited on the Manhunter in both cases, it is revealed to be Superboy-Prime, acting on the orders of Alex Luthor.

Okay, so at the end of the first issue, it looked like Kal-L could be the hero of the piece. At the end of the second issue, it looked like he could be the villain of the piece, and at the end of this issue, it looks like he is a well-intentioned foil.

I’m not sure how I feel about this issue. I am not sure if I like the idea of Alex Luthor being the villain. I certainly like it more than Kal-L being the villain, though, so I will let it go.

The problem with these comics so far is that with so much story to tell, there haven’t been enough moments for action. This one is the same. We see some scenes involving a little action between the Luthors, but that is more of a beating than a fight, and it is there just to reveal that the Lex Luthor behind the Society is in fact Alex. The fights between the OMACs and the Amazons are one-panel affairs, not doing the Amazon fighting style justice. The exception to this is the beating of the Freedom Fighters, and it is one of the moments that stands out. The scene here with the Shadowpact and Superman would have benefited from being longer. I think showing the Shadowpact struggling heroically, but gradually being overwhelmed, only to have the collapsing skyscraper be the proverbial last straw would have been more effective. I’m sure there simply wasn’t space, but the “nick of time” save thing didn’t have much impact because we only saw the nick of time, without seeing the build up to it, and being invested in the situation. Maybe this needed to be a twelve-issue series, with about the same number of pages total devoted to the main story, but more used to develop interest and investment in the other things going on. Maybe that would have been too much, but I would have loved to see more than one panel of Black Adam’s fight against the most powerful the Society had to offer. I would have loved to see the Freedom Fighters in issue #1 beat down some of the less-powerful members of the Society with teamwork and style to find the location of the warehouse where they eventually got decimated.

I really do hope to see more straight-ahead action in further installments, and more time to make me care about what is happening to those less directly involved in the story line.

Other major plot points in this issue: Batman finally admits he isn’t perfect, and takes responsibility for his mistakes. Superman inspires hope and wonder in other heroes. Wonder Woman chooses to avoid battle rather than straight ahead destroy those who oppose her. The Society starts showing cracks. Superboy-Prime is shown to a jealous punk very much under Alex Luthor’s control, and is shown to have no problem with the ends justifying the means.