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Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Crisis On Earth-Blog: Crisis Hardcover - 1998

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It's time for another Crisis...on Earth-Blog!

This time, the team-up wasn't my idea, but that of Shag Matthews, he of the FirestormFan blog. Today he is writing about the mind-bogglingly detailed wraparound cover to the Crisis on Infinite Earths hardcover, by George Perez and Alex Ross:
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Of course, with the approximately ten million characters depicted here, there's a good shot that any DC character you could think of is represented on here somewhere.

Shag thought it'd be fun for each of us (Speedforce, My Greatest Adventure, Idol-Head of Diabolu, Dispatches From The Arrowcave, Being Carter Hall, Plastic Man Platitudes, Mail It To Team-Up, Justice League Detroit
, and my own I Am The Phantom Stranger) to all pick the part(s) of the cover/poster that interest us the most and post about them on the same day. So here's where we can find Aquaman:
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...if you're going to have temporarily float in space due to some giant disaster, then floating with Mera and Dolphin is the way to do it!

Tula, aka Aquagirl, is hanging around, too:
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I wonder why she isn't in the same vicinity as Arthur, Mera, and Dolphin. Is it because she died in the Crisis, and George Perez (who did the layout and the pencils for this piece) was trying to symbolically portray that by having her separated from the rest of her AquaFamily?

I'm reading too much into this, aren't I?

Anyway, where's Aqualad? He must be around here somewhere. Oh, there he is, looking very sad:
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...considering the loss of Tula hit him the hardest, its a nice touch for Perez and Ross to have Garth looking like he's in mourning.

This cover/poster is truly the work of madmen--if there was one person in comics with the same interest in insane levels of detail the way George Perez had, its Alex Ross. Putting them together on one image was a stroke of obsessive-compulsive genius.


Thanks to Shag Matthews for including me in this multi-blog team-up!

7 comments:

Wings1295 said...

The cover is so great, even with so much going on. Love it!

Anonymous said...

That is one of the greatest pieces of comic art in existence. Aquaman doesn't looks so great, but Mera, Aqualad, and Tula all look fantastic.

Anonymous said...

Poor, poor Tula. She really shouldn't have gone out the way she did. She was a good character, and killing her in Crisis was a huge waste.

Anonymous said...

Benton Grey,
That's supposed to be the point of death in fiction. If they only killed off the stupid characters, it wouldn't make it "good."

I believe Paul Levitz called this "The Karate Kid Syndrome." Sometimes you *have* to give up one of the good ones. I think the deaths of Tula and Barry were very, VERY well-handled. (In fact, I am not reading current DC comics because Barry has come back. Until he or Dan Didio are gone, I read only non-DCU DC books)

mmmMan, compared to this Crisis, the recent Final Crisis sucked eggs.

Anonymous said...

Now, don't get me wrong, Crisis was an important book, and very well handled for the time. Tula's death carried weight in the small space it was given, and the effect on Aqualad was powerful, but I feel it was utterly unnecessary. Taken in context with the later state of the Aqua-family, it was wasteful. His supporting cast has been whittled away slowly in the last twenty years.

Luke said...

Tula may have died... but check out that butt! DAY-UM!

The Irredeemable Shag said...

Luke's got a point, that's a pretty nice shot of Tula. In fact, Mera and Dolphin look pretty great too! :)

I like how Perez placed Dolphin with Arthur and Mera. I realize this was done after the Peter David Aquaman series (so it wasn't a case of amazing precognition), but it was still a nice touch.


The Irredeemable Shag
http://firestormfan.com
http://onceuponageek.com