A crisis in a comic book can mean a lot of things.
Generally though, when you hear the word crisis as part of a title or plot in a story within
the panels, it’s hard to not assume that the narrative will have something to do with
a crossover or major story event that threatens to disrupt that universe’s continuity or
current status quo.
Today, we’re coming at your with our list of the top 10 superhero crises you won’t
believe exist.
More so because a lot of the circumstances surrounding them are shocking, baffling, or
are horribly redundant cries for help in sorting out a messy continuity.
So we’re going to focus on major events in the comic book world that acted as a major
crisis for super powered individuals and metahumans rather than personal crises (although if you
want a part two and wanna hear about Hank Pym and Booster Gold’s depleting mental
health, you let us know in those comments below!)
And yes, this list will be a little DC heavy, friends.
With that in mind, let’s jump in.
10 The Evolutionary War Let’s begin this list with some marvel numbers
that won’t make your head hurt with continuity confusion.
In 1988, Marvel tried something new that would later define how they would hash out extended
crossovers.
The Evolutionary War story event ran through most of the 1988 annuals; a format that would
be repeated by the publisher over the course of the next four years and act as a foundation
for how they published their crossovers in the decades to come.
The storyline behind it was a crisis indeed; the High Evolutionary, one of the world’s
premiere geneticists, had created Counter-Earth.
It would catch the interest of the Beyonders, who invaded and captured the planet to transform
it into a cosmic museum of curiosities.
The High Evolutionary goes mad and ends up attempting to commit suicide, but fails, and
the rest of the story event sees the High Evolutionary unleashing attacks across the
globe in order to guide the way of human evolution.
9 Infinity Wars Spoiler alert for this one since it’s fairly
recent and went down last year.
In 2018, there was an event called Infinity Countdown in which Pymtron (ultron wearing
hank pym’s skin, it was a whole thing) goes after the infinity gems that were re-created
when the multiverse was restored.
It was followed by a massive event titled Infinity Wars in which there was a cosmic
madness that occurred; everyone wanted to get their mitts on the stones, and a new foe
named Requiem, who turned out to be Gamora, manages to get em all.
That led to a spin off story called Infinity Warps, in which Gamora uses the stones to
reduce the universe’s life forms in half, which led to creative concotions the likes
of Solider Supreme, which was steve rogers and dr Stephen strange combined, both physically,
in abilities, and in character origins.
Eventually, our heroes come to, realize this isn’t right and that they’ve been trapped
inside the soul stone’s soul world, where a cosmic entity named Devondra is waiting
to feed.
And feeds on hank pym’s soul, of course, because dude can never catch a break, can
he?
8 Maximum Security The premise of Marvel’s Maximum Security
always feels wonderfully tongue and cheek to me, since it’s something that feels entirely
believable in the scope of the Marvel universe.
Running between 2000 and 2001, the story synopsis is this: Fed up with Earth’s interference
in intergalactic affairs, the starfaring alien community quarantines the Sol System and turns
Earth into a prison for the universe’s worst criminals.
So the first half of that is almost hilarious, because of course the extraterrestrial communities
outside of Earth would get fed up with how nosey Earth is.
The second half, the whole prison thing, is a little extreme.
Sure, quarantine us, but don’t punish us by tossing the worst of the worst down onto
our little blue planet, please.
May not have been a galactic crisis, but definitely a crisis on our home planet.
7 Infinity Gauntlet Infinity Gauntlet was a six issue comic released
in 1991 that was a major game changer.
It was so popular that it birthed two immediate sequels, and now, it’s largely responsible
for the vast success the Marvel Cinematic Universe is rooted in (or at least their recent
stories are rooted in, as far as narrative foundations go).
When Steve Englehart pitched then editor in chief Tom DeFalco the idea of Mistress Death
using Thanos to get revenge on her enemies, DeFalco, whose immediate reaction was whose
Thanos, fell in love with the idea, and proposed it play out in a summer crossover event, the
likes of Evolutionary War in terms of format.
Jim Starlin, Thanos’ creator, was then brought into the fray to write it, who turned Thanos
into a twisted anti-hero, purposely writing the characters to have multiple layers and
complexities throughout
the tale.
6 Crisis on Infinite Earths And now, my friends, we begin our journey
through the crises of the DC universe, which you know are all crises because they legit
have the word crisis in their titles.
And let’s start off this journey of bafflement with the Crisis that really jump started DC’s
infatuation with Crises, Crisis on Infinite Earths.
We should really get a counter going about how many times I say the word crisis in this
video.
Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first serialized 12 issue limited series from DC between 1985
and 1986.
It was also a massive cross over event, with a slew of tie ins.
So long story short, the plot follows villain Anti-Monitor attacks the DC multiverse with
the intention of completely destroying it, but luckily is thwarted despite the high death
count number, which included Barry Allen and the original Supergirl Kara Zor-El.
The conclusion of this event was even more monumental than the event itself; it created
a sinaular Earth in the place of the multiverse and resulted in the whole DC universe being
rebooted.
The first of many reboots.
5 Infinite Crisis Infinite Crisis was the sequel of sorts to
Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Published in 2005 and running through 2006, the limited series revisited characters, themes
and concepts depicted in its predecessor, but, most importantly, it addressed the existence
of DC’s multiverse.
Crisis on Infinite Earths condensed the DC multiverse into one Earth, and then Infinite
Crisis was like nah, let’s re-expand it into a proper multiverse again and bring in
a bunch of characters from Earth 2 and oh look, there’s a bunch of pre crisis characters
kicking around doing stuff and yeah.
And it also included a lot of Superboy Prime punching people’s heads off and doing other
stupid stuff.
BUT it also had a ridiculous number of pre orders and was a top seller in the month of
its release.
4 Final Crisis Oh Final Crisis.
A cross over event named after the 7 issue mii-series by Grant Morrison (which had the
same title), it was described as ‘the day evil won’ in its promo materials.
Final Crisis had Barry Allen narrating and saw him returning during this 2008-2009 arc,
with the plot dealing with Darkseid’s schemes to overthrow reality, along with the deaths
and corruption of various characters.
Fun stuff.
Personally, my favourite part about it was DC’s obvious struggle to have this crisis
stand out; to help readers figure out what was what, they started putting a ‘sightings’
cover banner on the ‘important’ comics, which they defined as, I quote, “sign posts,
marking important storybeats and moments throughout the DC universe”.
But guess what friends?
Final crisis definitely wasn’t THE final crisis, because we’re about to get another
crisis courteous of DC.
So not only was Final Crisis not even that great, but it also doesn’t live up to its
name, which arguably cheapens it and makes it sad.
But more on that other crisis a little later in our list.
3 Identity Crisis So Identity Crisis is arguably a much smaller
crisis in terms of scale, but it was an important one nonetheless, and is often credited for
changing some of the behavioral traits of certain heroes.
Specifically, Bruce Wayne, and his ability to trust in his peers; Batman became known
for being paranoid in the years that followed as a result of the events of this story.
So, what exactly goes down in Identity Crisis?
A whole lot of terrible things, that’s what!
Sue Dibny is revealed to be murdered, and then revealed to have been raped, then Zatanna
and the justice league wipe everyones minds, Batman walks in and freaks out so they beat
him up and wipe his mind, then everyone realizes superman has super hearing and probably heard
the rape and then he cries a single manly tear and they all wonder if they’re bad
people, and then its revealed that a mind wipe happened in which the secret society
of super villains discovered the heroes identities, and then Zatanna erased the villains minds,
and BATMAN FIGURES IT ALL OUT AND IS FOREVER PARANOID.
2 Heroes in Crisis Heroes in Crisis came out in 2018 and ran
through 2019, and despite being called Crisis, it’s more of a murder mystery in the vein
of our last number rather than a multiverse shattering event, thankfully.
It’s more so a facility for mental health (and the mental health issues of superheroes
in particular), which is important and neat, but it’s also really inconsistent in terms
of how characters are portrayed.
Spoiler alert friends – Wally West ends up having a mental breakdown and kills a bunch
of characters, which is then blamed on Harley Quinn and Booster Gold because Wally runs
to the future, kills himself, and brings back his corpse in order to shed all onus.
Actually.
Regardless, the crisis title got some heat, with Jim Lee having to tweet out that the
rumours of this crisis storyline being another reboot were ridiculous, which is kind of hilarious
considering our next and final number-
1.
5G No, we’re not talking about your cell phone
service, we’re talking about DC’s latest attempt to reinvent their universe and ruin
things you love.
Sorry, harsh, we know, but considering that this list contains multiple references to
multiple universe resets, you can imagine some fans frustration.
So what is 5G?
Let’s backtrack for a hot second here – earlier this year, DC debuted a character named Tempus
Fuginaut.
Fuginaut?
Fuginaut.
Let’s go with that pronunciation – feel free to correct me in the comments friends.
Despite my mocking of Tempus’ name, the character was actually pretty dope; it’s
part of the Fuginauts, a race of cosmic beings whose soul purpose is to prevent intrusions
from other universes.
After the whole dark nights metal event where the evil demon Barbatos tried to invade the
regular multiverse, Tempus was like yo, no more of these shinanigeans, and decided to
stop the dimension hopping hero Sideways (who is basically spider-man but instead of web
slinging he opens and jumps through dimensions like villain Spot).
Anywho, now Tempus, in Tales of the Dark Multiberse Knightfall, has foreseen a new crisis event,
in which he literally states “a crisis is coming…perhaps the greatest yet.
And if the multiverse is to survive, it must be stronger.”
As of this recording, various different comic news sites have been reporting that this Crisis
will involve mainstays in the DC universe stepping down and passing off their mantles
to other characters in the DC universe (but new ones, so no, a Robin ain’t gonna be
Batman, or any existing character).
This is meant to help explain why heroes who debuted in the golden age have managed to
stick around for so long.
The DC timeline and its past will be split into 4 generations, the first defined by Wonder
Woman being the first public superhero in the DC universe, the second generation starting
with the appearance of Superman, the third starting with Crisis on Infinite Earths going
till Flashpoint, and the 4th generation being what we’re reading today, making 5G the
future 5th generation of what’s next.
Like, we get why you’re doing this DC, but do we really need something more to muddle
up the already messy history you boast?
There we have it friends!
Which of these would you classify as the biggest comic book crisis of all time?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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I’ll catch you all in the next video.