Crisis on Infinite Earths #10

January 1986

"Death At The Dawn Of Time!"

Marv Wolfman (writer and editor), George Pérez (pencils), Jerry Ordway (inks), Anthony Tollin (colors), John Costanza (letters), Len Wein and Robert Greenberger (editors), Jenette Kahn (editor-in-chief)

Psimon telepathically tortures Lex Luthor and brags that he will take over his and Brainiac's operation, but suddenly Brainiac appears in a new body and kills him. Brainiac explains to Lex that his consciousness exists within the entire satellite and so he's able to create new bodies when the old ones are destroyed. The superhero-supervillain war continues, but is interrupted by the Spectre, who speaks to the heroes and villains on all the earths simultaneously. The Spectre warns everyone that the Anti-Monitor is journeying back in time in order to destroy the Multiverse in its infancy. Everyone agrees to the Spectre's plan to stop him and the heroes are joined by the Superboy from Earth-Prime, one of the words destroyed by the anti-matter wave. The Lord of Time and the Time Trapper transport the supervillains back to Oa in Krona's time in order to stop his pivotal experiment, while a collaborative effort between Rip Hunter, Dr. Magnus, Kid Flash, and the Earth-2 Flash open a time portal to the beginning of the universe. Back in the present, Brainiac predicts that their chances of success and his odds of survival are very slim, so he shuts himself down in order to maximize his own chances of enduring.

Alexander Luthor and the heroes find that the Anti-Monitor has already arrived and has trapped Pariah. When Pariah blames himself for the Anti-Monitor's actions, he brags that he took advantage of Pariah's experiment in order to destroy Pariah's world and others. While the superheroes take on the Monitor, the supervillains attack the Oan capital, but are overcome by the Oans' telepathic abilities. The villains who do make it to Krona's lab are killed in a trap set by Krona, who assumes that they were hired by the other Oans to sabotage his research. At the dawn of time, the Anti-Monitor starts absorbing the superheroes' energies, raving that he was waiting for them because he needed their power. As the Anti-Monitor prepares to destroy the nascent Multiverse, the Spectre, his power boosted by various magic-users, tries to resist him. As Krona connects to the past, the Spectre screams again as everything vanishes into a white void.

What's Important?

Basically this is the last story to take place in pre-Crisis continuity and the "classic" DC Multiverse. After the last panel, the original Multiverse was erased from existence. With "Infinite Crisis" and "52" a new DC Multiverse, which resembles the old one in quite a few ways, has emerged, although technically it's not supposed to be the same.

Comments

There's not much to say about this issue that hasn't been said before, except it truly does capitalize on the epic potential of the series. Of course, you really don't get much more of a superhero epic feel than having two god-like beings wrestle each other in the middle of the birth of the universe. My one complaint is that the exoneration of Pariah is awkward and unnecessary, nor does Lady Quark suddenly deciding that he isn't culpable at all make much sense. Not only is it an abrupt cutting off of one of the very few character arcs in the series, but it leaves the question of why, if his experiment still awakened the Anti-Monitor and gave him the opportunity to start destroying the Multiverse, under Quark's logic he should be any less guilty than if he unintentionally triggered the destruction of his world?

Footnotes

Page 9, Panel 7 - The "Monitor files" that run at the bottom through the rest of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" are miscellaneous tie-ins to other series and sub-plots Wolfman intended to include but had to cut. Here the second Starman, Prince Gavyn, is seemingly killed, but in the 1990s "Starman" series it turns out he survived after all.

Page 13, Panel 4 - The "problem" Earth-2 Flash refers to in regards to Wally West is that, at the time, his powers were slowly killing him, which is why he quit the Teen Titans.

Panel 6 - This is Superboy-Prime, who should be well-known to present DC Comics readers. He first appeared in DC Comics Presents #87, a "Crisis" tie-in, but Earth-Prime was established much earlier in Flash #178. In the first few stories involving Earth-Prime, it was basically just a setting that allowed DC Comics writers to interact with characters in a tongue-in-cheek manner (my favorite is Justice League of America #124, where DC writer Carey Bates murders the entire Justice Society of America and has to be stopped by Elliott S! Magin), although later Earth-Prime was written as a world that had the potential for superheroes of its own but it "wasn't ready." Even though Earth-Prime was supposed to have been destroyed in the Crisis, a short sequence in "Infinite Crisis" strongly hinted that Earth-Prime not only still exists, but is in fact the world of the reader.

Page 10, Panel 22 - Quite a few characters do seem to die in this issue, but have actually survived, including the second Starman, the Earth-2 Hawkman, and the Immortal Man. However, the three villains killed here - Maaldor the Darklord, Sam Scudder the original Mirror Master, and the original Icicle - have politely remained dead.

Page 23, Panel 8 - So the giant hand holding the infant universe from previous scenes of Krona observing the birth of the universe isn't a Creator, as might be assumed, but actually the Anti-Monitor!