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Crisis se lit encore très bien aujourd'hui. Certes, on peut sourire sur la propension des héros et de leurs ennemis à raconter leur vie pendant les combats et l'utilisation un peu trop systématique de phrases à vocation dramatique : à chaque fin d'épisode, tout semble perdu, sauf l'espoir (et encore !). Mais la portée, l'ambition du projet ne peuvent que fasciner. Les cases regorgent, débordent presque de personnages, parfois anecdotiques, mais toujours représentés avec le plus grand soin : le sorcier d'Atlantis côtoie le chasseur du Néolithique, le G.I. aguerri, l'explorateur temporel, le touriste extraterrestre mais aussi et surtout les membres de la JLA, de la JSA, du Green Lantern Corps et d'autres héros plus ou moins solitaires. Un Superman aux tempes grises se bat aux côtés de son homologue plus jeune (qui n'a pas encore épousé sa Lois Lane) et d'un autre alter-ego encore plus jeune. On aperçoit des Flash dans des costumes différents, plusieurs Wonder Women. Et des Lex Luthor chevelus se retrouvent avec des chauves - et tous ne sont pas forcément les mauvais.

Wolfman prend son temps pour mettre en place la menace d'ampleur universelle et insiste sur la quasi-impossibilité de contrer des forces qui dépassent l'entendement, alternant des séquences où le vain héroïsme le dispute au désespoir : les encapés se battent au-delà de leurs limites et tentent de sauver ce qui peut l'être. Les faits d'armes sont nombreux, les hommages pleuvent mais ne sont que des gouttes dans l'océan de la dévastation cosmique. Et l'autre raison d'être de cette série se fait jour : non seulement il s'agissait de faire table rase de ces trop nombreux univers multiples, mais aussi de certains personnages. Les héros tombent, donc : avec dignité, un sens de l'honneur, du devoir et du sacrifice ostensiblement mis en avant, mais ils périssent. Pas le temps de les pleurer, il y a un univers à tenir.

Le rythme est soutenu et le profane se perdra parfois entre les différentes versions d'un même personnage, mais l'important est sauf : le script est suffisamment clair et intense pour captiver même ceux qui ne connaissaient pas Arion, Rip Hunter, Kole, Zatanna, Red Tornado, Darkseid ou les Teen Titans. De nombreuses passerelles sont dressées vers des séries annexes dans lesquelles certaines sous-intrigues seront résolues. Et surtout, définitivement (du moins, jusqu'à ce que DC estime le contraire), le monde DC ne sera plus jamais le même. ( )

The original gigantic crossover, but a little too all over the place for my tastes. It feels like wolf man was trying to hit every current add character, but rather than making it feel like a vast epic, it just feels like a grab bag of random characters, none of who, ever really make an impact. ( )

"Explain that to me, Harbinger! What happened to my life? I am flesh and blood... I exist... yet I don't exist."

This is a wild read. Originally intended as a sort of business move for DC Comics, who had by that time created so many different versions of characters on so many different Earths (for example, Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth 3, Earth X, Earth Prime, etc) that their DC Universe had become unwieldy, this comic was supposed to tidy things up and reset everything into one, congruent universe setting. I am not well versed in comics, however, so the effect of reading this book was kind of amazing. I encountered pages and pages of characters I just had to assume meant something to other people. After 100 or so pages of this, the effect was to totally destabilize all notions of centralized, unique "superheros."

The existence of this heterogeneity of superheros, some with other worldly powers, some without even that distinction, causes the reader to follow their collective abstraction, since none have the page space to truly stand out. You follow "superhero-ness" as it fights against the evil... wait for it... Anti-monitor. Awesome name, mostly because it drives an entire dialectical plot towards (strangely) Hegelian concepts.

The Monitor is a character who has functioned throughout the ages as a sort of uber-voyeur/arms dealer. He watches every superhero on every planet and collects data on them (and I gather at one point he was selling this data to villains for cash). One could very easily interpret this character as a stand in for the avid comic book reader, only taller. In this particular story, the main baddy is the Monitor's twin brother, established at the beginning of the Universe's creation yet set in an anti-matter sphere. He is the Anti-monitor and he wants to destroy everything. Insert dramatic music and postmodern irony here.

The binary relationships are set and blurred many times over in this novel: superheros decentralize into the collective, super villains fight to retain their Hegelian dialectical relationships with superhero counterparts, thus calling into question their defining motives, the worldly threat (the anti-monitor's desire to condense all reality into a single anti-matter universe, his own) not only ties indirectly to the comic book reader's identity but underscores a weird sort of "negation of the negation."

In short, 1) all concepts in the DC Universe (characters, settings, origins, etc) are shown to have an opposite and opposing side, 2) as the balance between these sides shifts gradually, then suddenly, gradual changes lead to major turning points, which tumble and shift the nature of reality, and 3) all of these turning points develop as a "negation of the negation" and the DC Universe as well as all its characters are changed forever. In this case, consolidated into a unified universe with separate and unique parts (i.e. only one Earth) among other ways.

I definitely do not recommend this to just anyone. You have to either totally be into the world of comics already (in which case, my reading of it will be as bizarre to you as this novel was for me) or willing to really brave out some strange ideas with a huge collection of characters whom you never even knew existed. I liked reading this but only because I loved how campy it was and I found it intellectually engaging (in my own way). ( )

"Explain that to me, Harbinger! What happened to my life? I am flesh and blood... I exist... yet I don't exist."

This is a wild read. Originally intended as a sort of business move for DC Comics, who had by that time created so many different versions of characters on so many different Earths (for example, Earth 1, Earth 2, Earth 3, Earth X, Earth Prime, etc) that their DC Universe had become unwieldy, this comic was supposed to tidy things up and reset everything into one, congruent universe setting. I am not well versed in comics, however, so the effect of reading this book was kind of amazing. I encountered pages and pages of characters I just had to assume meant something to other people. After 100 or so pages of this, the effect was to totally destabilize all notions of centralized, unique "superheros."

The existence of this heterogeneity of superheros, some with other worldly powers, some without even that distinction, causes the reader to follow their collective abstraction, since none have the page space to truly stand out. You follow "superhero-ness" as it fights against the evil... wait for it... Anti-monitor. Awesome name, mostly because it drives an entire dialectical plot towards (strangely) Hegelian concepts.

The Monitor is a character who has functioned throughout the ages as a sort of uber-voyeur/arms dealer. He watches every superhero on every planet and collects data on them (and I gather at one point he was selling this data to villains for cash). One could very easily interpret this character as a stand in for the avid comic book reader, only taller. In this particular story, the main baddy is the Monitor's twin brother, established at the beginning of the Universe's creation yet set in an anti-matter sphere. He is the Anti-monitor and he wants to destroy everything. Insert dramatic music and postmodern irony here.

The binary relationships are set and blurred many times over in this novel: superheros decentralize into the collective, super villains fight to retain their Hegelian dialectical relationships with superhero counterparts, thus calling into question their defining motives, the worldly threat (the anti-monitor's desire to condense all reality into a single anti-matter universe, his own) not only ties indirectly to the comic book reader's identity but underscores a weird sort of "negation of the negation."

In short, 1) all concepts in the DC Universe (characters, settings, origins, etc) are shown to have an opposite and opposing side, 2) as the balance between these sides shifts gradually, then suddenly, gradual changes lead to major turning points, which tumble and shift the nature of reality, and 3) all of these turning points develop as a "negation of the negation" and the DC Universe as well as all its characters are changed forever. In this case, consolidated into a unified universe with separate and unique parts (i.e. only one Earth) among other ways.

I definitely do not recommend this to just anyone. You have to either totally be into the world of comics already (in which case, my reading of it will be as bizarre to you as this novel was for me) or willing to really brave out some strange ideas with a huge collection of characters whom you never even knew existed. I liked reading this but only because I loved how campy it was and I found it intellectually engaging (in my own way). ( )