How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis, Part 3: My Original Solution

No matter how much I enjoyed the story as a whole, to say I wasn't happy with the ending of Crisis on Infinite Earths would be an understatement. My favorite earth in the DC multiverse was gone, even though most if not all of its heroes survived. Writer Marv Wolfman refused to kill off the original Superman, so he, his wife Lois Lane, Superboy of Earth-Prime, and Alexander Luthor of Earth-Three were sent off to a paradise (that turned out to be not so much of a paradise, but I'll get to that in a later column). The Earth-Two Robin and Huntress died at the hands of the Shadow Demons. My beloved Justice Society of America truly were the losers as most of the remaining team members were sent into limbo to stave off Ragnarok for eternity.

As much of a fan of the Justice League of America as I was in the 1970s, its was the Justice Society of Earth-Two who were my favorites. As I stated previously, I looked forward to the annual JLA/JSA crossover each year after reading "The Creature in the Velvet Cage" in Justice League of America #113 in 1974. Team-ups with the heroes of Earth-S and the New Gods and the All-Star Squadron just made me love the annual tradition more. The revival of All-Star Comics made me even happier as I was introduced to a new generation of JSA members, including Power Girl, Star-Spangled Kid, and the Huntress. But Crisis took my favorite heroes away in the present and Roy Thomas' Young All-Stars didn't do much for those heroes in the past.

I had an idea, though, of how DC should have begun their new single universe, and I wasn't afraid to share it with DC. I am sure that Dick Giordano laughed at my ideas -- if he even read them, since DC didn't accept unsolicited proposals then. These are the things I remember of those ideas from 35 years ago:

1. Kal-L was rocketed to Earth from Krypton and landed in Smallville in 1917. He was found by John and Martha Kent and raised as their son Clark. Clark ended up in Metropolis in 1938 and soon made his first appearance as Superman. He worked at the Daily Star with Lois Lane under the editorship of George Taylor. Kal-L's cousin, Kara Zor-L, landed nearly 60 years later, having traveled in suspended animation. Clark had no career as Superboy.
2. Clark and Lois married and had a son, Clark, Jr., with the help of Dr. Fate, who encased Lois' womb with a magical charm that kept the boy from harming his mother in utero. Clark, Jr. spent summers in Smallville with his grandparents. He met Lana Lang during those summers. They attended college at Metropolis U, married, and had twins, Clark III, nicknamed Trey, and Leigh. Lana went into broadcast journalism at WGBS, while Clark worked for Perry White at the Daily Planet. White had worked at the Star in the 1950s and jumped to the Planet later.
3. Kara made her debut as Power Girl in 1975 or '76, met Wonder Woman on a JSA case and was helped in assuming the identity of Karen Starr.
4. Trey and Leigh would have been teens in the '80s. They would be the inspiration for the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th century. Leigh was to be a bit of a rebel, going behind her parents' backs to work on the GBS daytime drama, Secret Hearts, under the alias of Lynda Leigh. Trey and Leigh would also be the last of Kal-L's line to have full super-powers. As stated in a Legion story, after the third generation the powers passed on randomly after that.
5. Bruce Wayne became an orphan at age 10 in 1925; his brother, Thomas, Jr., was a baby. By the time Bruce debuted as Batman in 1939, he had studied acting and science and medicine and trained his body to be physical perfection. He took in eight-year-old orphan Dick Grayson in 1940 and met the love of his life, Selina Kyle, the same year.
6. Selina was the jewel thief known as the Catwoman. She fought Batman off and on for over a decade before giving up a life of crime and reforming. They married in 1955 and had a daughter, Helena, in 1957.
7. Thomas, Jr. grew up, studied medicine, and intended to practice medicine as his father had. But tragedy struck him and his wife, leaving their young son, named after Thomas, Jr.'s brother, an orphan. Bruce II was taken into his uncle's home. His discovery that the elder Bruce was Batman inspired young Bruce to decide to become an even better Batman. His uncle had failed in his goal to eradicate all crime, but he wouldn't. (This would explain why the second Batman was a bit darker in his methods, and also why Bruce II's cousin Helena calls him "Uncle" -- he's always been a bit of a brooding individual and seems much older than he is.)
8. Helena debuted as the Huntress in 1977, after her mother was blackmailed into committing one last crime. The original Batman retired with Selina's death.
9. There was to be a second Dick Grayson, who had a similar origin to the original Dick Grayson, and brought in by the first Dick Grayson to help "humanize" the second Batman.
10. Additional members of the Batman family included Batwoman, Bat-Girl (who would later take on the identity of The Silhouette), and the second Batgirl. Commissioner James Gordon would have been made younger for the original Batman's adventures. His son, James Jr., would have become commissioner after Bruce Wayne's death in 1978. James Jr.'s children are Tony and Barbara.
11. Princess Diana of the Amazons rescued Steve Trevor off the shores of Paradise Island. She won the contest to determine the champion who would return Trevor to the United States. She became the heroine known as Wonder Woman.
12. Diana rescued young Donna Troy from a burning building. Donna was taken to Paradise Island to live and train, though she would eventually return to the States and take on the identity of Wonder Girl.
13. Shortly after Donna was rescued, Diana discovered she was pregnant with Trevor's child (they had married years before, during the Justice Society's period of retirement, after she realized that the war on crime was never-ending). The child was named Lyta after her grandmother, Queen Hippolyta of the Amazons, and later became Fury of Infinity, Inc.
14. This one is kind of odd, but I also feel it was a genius idea: Green Arrow and Speedy were trapped in time with the other members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory, though each was in a different era. When they were rescued by the Justice League and Justice Society, Oliver Queen became a liberal out for social justice, and Roy Harper joined the Teen Titans for a while but struggled with being a teen out of time and turned to drugs for a short period.

As I look upon the ideas that I remember, I notice that Batman had a lot of history repeating (maybe I had Two-Face on my mind?). I don't remember how I dealt with the villains like the Joker or Penguin or Luthor who, in the DC multiverse, had doppelgangers on Earth-One and Earth-Two. I do seem to remember that Silver St. Cloud was a new Catwoman, a heroine from the outset who put on the costume after discovering that Bruce II was Batman.

I still think this idea has merit. Of course, John Byrne created three fantastic Generations series that took a similar yet vastly different path with the whole idea of legacy. And my solution has evolved a bit over the years.

Next up: How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis: Zero Hour and Beyond

How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis, Part 2: The Crisis!

I'll admit it. I was excited about Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I read every bit of news I could lay my hands on in the months leading up to the January 1985 launch. There was a lot of speculation about which worlds would live (Spoiler: only one, though I believe at one point Earth-One and Earth-Two were both supposed to survive -- one for the modern heroes and one for the golden age heroes) and which worlds would die (all the rest). The Comics Buyer's Guide and Amazing Heroes were great sources of new information as it was released. For a guy who looked forward to the annual JLA/JSA crossover, Crisis promised to be that and more!

Crisis on Infinite Earths #1
Art by George Perez, ©1985, 2020 DC

January 3, 1985, finally arrived and the Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 hit the stands. I had to wait until later in the month to get my shipment of comics since I lived in a small rural town, about seventy miles away from the closest comics shop. From the opening captions, "In the beginning there was only one, a single black infinitude, so cold and dark for so very long that even the burning light was imperceptible. But the light grew and the infinitude shuddered, and the darkness finally . . . screamed, as much in pain as in relief. For in that instant a multiverse was born. A multiverse of worlds vibrating and replicating . . . and a multiverse that should have been one, became many." (Marv Wolfman, Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, 1/3/1985, p. 1)

The main protagonists of that first issue were the Monitor and his assistant Lyla, and the twelve heroes they summoned to help save the multiverse. Those first twelve heroes were:

• Superman of Earth-Two, representing the Justice Society of America
• Firebrand of Earth-Two, representing the All-Star Squadron
• Obsidian of Earth-Two, representing Infinity, Inc.
• Psycho-Pirate of Earth-Two
• Firestorm of Earth-One, representing the Justice League of America (pre-Detroit era)
• Green Lantern John Stewart of Earth-One, representing the Green Lantern Corps
• Cyborg of Earth-One, representing the New Teen Titans
• Geo-Force of Earth-One, representing the Outsiders
• Dawnstar of Earth-One, representing the Legion of Super-Heroes
• Psimon of Earth-One, a member of the Fearsome Five
• Killer Frost of Earth-One
• Blue Beetle of Earth-Four
• Arion, Lord of Atlantis
• Solovar of Gorilla City
• Doctor Polaris

From the outset, with the loss of Earth-Three and the Crime Syndicate, who were needed for the Monitor's plans, the stakes were raised. Even though the Crime Syndicate appeared rarely since their first appearance in 1964's Justice League of America #29, readers knew that DC was serious about cleaning house. By the time the final issue of the maxi-series was released on December 19, 1985, every reader had been taken on a journey that introduced new earths and new heroes but also had its share of losses. By the time the curtain closed, only one earth remained.

DC had made some hard choices. The plans moving forward were to make Superman the sole survivor of Krypton again, so Supergirl was sacrificed -- and died a hero's death. But what about Power Girl, the cousin of the Earth-Two Superman? Well, her origin changed, became more mystical and tied to the legend that was Arion, Lord of Atlantis. Another casualty of the Crisis was the Huntress, daughter of the Earth-Two Batman and Catwoman. She survived because she was at the dawn of time with the other heroes when the new universe was born, but her parents never existed on this new earth. It was perhaps best that she and her "brother," the Earth-Two Robin perished.

There were also plans for Wonder Woman, so the Earth-Two version retired to Olympus with her husband, Steve Trevor, and the Earth-One Amazon was devolved into the clay from which she was formed. A new Princess Diana made her entrance to Patriarch's World a short time later as part of DC's Legends event.

Despite some solid work from writer Marv Wolfman and artists George Perez, Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, and Jerry Ordway, DC's Crisis was like the road to hell: paved with good intentions. Cracks began appearing almost immediately and within a couple years, DC faced continuity gaffes with the original Captain Marvel, Hawkman, Wonder Girl, and more.

Next: How I Would Have Solved DC's Big Crisis: My Original Solution