The first crisis happened in 1984 when I was 8 years old. DC Comics had been publishing superhero comics since 1938 and their stories had become tangled in a mass of worlds and alternative timelines which they wanted to tame. Crisis on Infinite Earths was released to fix things. Countless worlds and realities were destroyed by the Anti-Monitor with one true timeline surviving. This was story as editorial function, simplifying 40-odd years of continuity.

My parent's divorce came the same year and had a similar impact. Whole parts of my childhood were retconned and rewritten. Happy memories were no longer real.

The problem with having a crisis once is that it makes another more likely. DC's editorial clean-slate-reboot left loose threads and these needed tidying away. A series of crises followed: Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis. A Final Crisis which was anything but. Flashpoint, Convergence, and Dark Crisis. There was a Rebirth and a Doomsday Clock, but none of it helped.

I went from divorce to depression to dropping out. Once you've had your first crisis, others follow, and you’re forever resetting your personal continuity in the hope that, this time, you get it right.

Background

I’ve written before about my love for superhero comics, and the disaster of DC continuity is fascinating. Crisis on Infinite Earths was a heavy-handed way to simplify things, and a large number of stories were relegated to not having happened (although as Alan Moore wrote in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, “they’re all imaginary stories”). Marvel’s continuity is equally messy, but they have blundered on, simply ignoring the bits that no longer work or quietly shifting the timelines for their characters1 (known as retcons - retroactive continuity).

DC continuity has never recovered from the Crisis on Infinite Earths. It’s a wound that the writers and editors can’t help going back to. I’m not sure how interested the children of 2025 are in fixing continuity that might pre-date their parents, but DC keeps having crises.

My own parents are still happily married.

Recommendations

One positive thing about DC’s twisted continuity is Grant Morrison's response. Fuelled by a cocktail of drugs, magic and visions, their 90s work investigated metaphysics through comic books. What happens if we treat these characters and their worlds as living beings?

For Morrison this involved experiments such as talking to Superman as research for the All-Star Superman series; they fused their own life with The Invisibles and nearly died in the process; and they became convinced that the DC Universe continuity was approaching the level of complexity required for self-awareness. Morrison tried to add the final touches needed to make this fictional universe into a living creature.

Morrison’s first two major US series were Doom Patrol and Animal Man. In the former, they took an old superhero team and unmoored them from the usual superhero touchstones, writing stories about alchemy, multiple-personality disorder, and surrealism2.

Animal Man starts as a pedestrian comic book about a hero fighting for animal rights. Then came issue five, The Coyote Gospel, one of the weirdest single issues ever made. It's a clever and wonderful story told in 24 pages. You can read it via collected editions, or there's El Sandifer's discussion (part one and part two).

Over a 26 issue arc, Animal Man becomes aware that he is a fictional character: that all the awful things that happen to him and his family are for the entertainment of an audience. He sets out on a quest to meet his writer and kill them. It's an ambitious story, and Morrison pulls it off.