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This is an epilogue to the Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's 'narrated' by Harbinger and boy oh boy does it pack a whole lot of stuff into two issues. It starts at the Big Bang and goes all the way up to the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And then 'Into the future' at least the future that was seen in the 80s/90s.

It has a ton of DC characters in it, although I disagree with the statement that it has all of them. Still, it had a lot of the characters that are lesser known and I learned a lot about these characters.

The art was okay. I like Perez art, but he's not my favorite by a long shot. And Marv Wolfman isn't one of my favorite writers, but again, I thought it was a well-written couple of issues even if it did wax just a little too philosophical on the whole 'where do heroes come from' issue. That was a little too much for me. ( )

History of the DC Universe spins out of Crisis on Infinite Earths; the book here is meant to be written by Harbinger following the death of the Monitor. Even though it was published before Legends concluded, it clearly takes place between Legends and Millennium; indeed, in an early part of Millennium we see Harbinger load this history into a pod to launch it into space, her work complete. It's not exactly a comic book, more a picture book.

A lot of this history was superseded by changes DC made after Crisis on Infinite Earths, in Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, and the like, and obviously after Flashpoint it's all completely "wrong". Still, it holds up for the same reason it's not very interesting: there are so few pages that everything is covered in the most cursory detail. It was probably illuminating immediately after the Crisis, but there's not enough information to make it interesting now, or even in 2002 when this collected edition was published.

What does work-- and will always work-- is the glorious George Pérez artwork. You get to see the man draw every hero in the DC universe (again) here, unfettered by panels, and it is fantastic. There's barely a page in here I wouldn't want as a poster or print. The two-page spread representing the Crisis on Infinite Earths is in particular amazing. I wish it had actually happened in the Crisis!

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