As I understand it, the original plan for the twelve issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths involved ten issues of story and two covering the history of the newly remade Earth.  Of course, Crisis eventually filled out those twelve issues, leaving the two-issue history for Marv Wolfman and George Perez to pick up a little while later. 

Instead of being a textbook, though, History of the DC Universe was a travelogue, filled with gorgeous artwork by Perez and inker Karl Kesel, and narrated by Crisis protagonist Harbinger using some of the most stilted, exposition-heavy dialogue Marv Wolfman must ever have written.  I think many of us would agree, that’s saying a lot.

As I write this, I’ve just spent the better part of an hour reading the four issues of World War III and 52 #50, in that order.  (I got the idea from Tales from the Longbox, and I think it helped a lot.)  I also read Graeme’s negative review over on Savage Critics, so my expectations were lowered accordingly. 

Basically, World War III is an often gruesome, sometimes incongruous primer to the One Year Later changes, tied together and narrated by J’Onn J’Onzz following his disastrous first encounter with Black Adam in a flashback to Week 45.  Like History of the DC Universe, it’s heavy on exposition and strains to pull a coherent plot out of a series of loosely connected events.  Unfortunately, it’s not blessed with George Perez and Karl Kesel, although the art is decent for the most part. 

It’s also not a substitute for 52 #50, which tells the story of the World War efficiently and economically.  In fact, without 52 #50, WW3 would seem even more pointless.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

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My first hint of WW3‘s patchwork nature came on page 7 of issue #1, in a little panel involving a couple of Atlanteans who … freak out when they fall into the water?  A lot of time is spent on the raising of San Diego and the price Aquaman pays, but “Thea” and her beau are never seen again, and their strange plight is never explained.  At least, my Aqua-illiterate eyes never picked them up again.  The rest of the first issue is like that to various degrees.  The Guardians of the Universe debate their involvement, but we never see them again — just Green Lanterns John Stewart and Guy Gardner later in the story, ineffectual in the climactic carnage.  It’s heavily impled that Black Adam is zipping all over the world, leveling cities and killing millions, but there’s no sense that he’s coming for anyone in particular, and so no mounting tension.  I know the point is that if he can be anywhere at any time, no one is safe.  Regardless, we readers have to be able to follow him, and the layouts don’t let us do that.  Along the same lines, Adam tears through air forces and navies that aren’t visually identified, making the reader work that much harder to keep track of what’s going on.

Competing with the Adam plot, naturally, are all the spare subplots that 52 didn’t have room to handle (and which apparently couldn’t wait to be resolved in the characters’ own books).  Jason Todd becomes Nightwing — or at least I guess he does, because a) that’s Jason on the cover, and b) he seems too brutal and thuggish to be Dick Grayson.  The story and art never spells that out, mind you, and I didn’t read the Bruce Jones Nightwing so I can’t say for sure how Dick was acting One Year Later.  I did read all of Firestorm, though, and I will say that the story of Firehawk and Firestorm’s first merge was filled with awkward dialogue, and added almost nothing to my enjoyment of that book.  It was tied into the main story, though, as Firestorm saves New York City from a falling aircraft carrier which Adam threw from the North Atlantic.  I don’t want to think about the physics of that.  My notes on issue #1 include “Kid Miracleman moments — really bad dialogue for JJ and Aquaman — bad [Crisis-style] Marv Wolfman.” 

On to issue #2, where on day 4, the war plot gets even shorter shrift.  Even with a shift in emphasis, though, some developments (like Donna Troy dressing in Wonder Woman gear) are covered only in passing.  Others just kind of happen.  Supergirl reappears from a space-warp, apparently as incorporeal duplicates.  One of them passes through J’Onn (who’s trying to get his head together in orbit), becomes solid again, and crashes in Metropolis where Power Girl picks her up.  Check that off the list, then.  My notes for this issue say “What’s this have to do w/ WW3?” with an arrow connecting “Supergirl” to that phrase.  Arrows also point there from scenes with Batgirl and Deathstroke, Harvey Dent fighting Killer Croc, Aquaman bargaining with sea-gods to save San Diego, and Booster Gold.  Booster turns out to be a particularly odd figure throughout all of this.  He pops in and out of the action, saying something like “not time yet” each time, and because it’s Booster, it’s kind of funny, but because it’s during a bloody battle, the humor seems inappropriate.

Speaking of bloody, the war heats up in issue #3, which covers Days 5 and 6.  The Teen Titans get the worst of Adam here, losing members Young Frankenstein (seriously?) and Terra (thought she’d died again already) in Mortal Kombat style.  Checkmate and Amanda Waller are also in the spotlight, meaning that writer John Ostrander gets to handle his old Suicide Squad heroes Amanda Waller and Bronze Tiger again.  Those pages are the highlight of the issue, because they seem to fulfill the book’s mission of using the war for OYL advancement.  Naturally, Ostrander has a good handle on the characters.  (Ostrander also wrote the ’90s Martian Manhunter series, but he’s not as good with J’Onn.)  Sasha Bordeaux mentions that Checkmate “should have killed Black Adam when we had him,” but for the life of me I can’t remember when that was.  Maybe when the “Suicide Squad” attacked the Black Marvels a while back?

In any event, on Day 6, when Adam literally rips into Raven’s soul-self, I thought WW3 had jumped its particular shark.  Kid Miracleman was scary because only a few other beings on the planet could have handled him.  Black Adam is scary because he’s probably as powerful as Superman, and Superman (and Wonder Woman) aren’t around at the moment.  There’s also the argument that Superman would hold back against Adam.  (A random bit of dialogue specifically mentions that Wonder Woman probably wouldn’t.)  However, when Adam literally rips into Raven’s soul-self, my disbelief is no longer suspended.  Marvels are powerful, to be sure, but Black Adam in WW3 is nigh-omnipotent, and there are just some things he shouldn’t be able to do.  In the first issue, his rage is so powerful it overwhelms J’Onn’s mental shields and drives him screaming into orbit.  I might have bought that, and I would have bought his being too mad for Raven’s own mental powers to handle, but her soul-self doesn’t seem solid enough for Adam to affect. 

It doesn’t help the heroes to have as their common plan the Ray Stantz “GET HER!” move from the first few minutes of Ghostbusters.  Not only does Adam evoke the spirit of Kid Miracleman, but he’s Superboy-Prime all over again:  an unstoppable force which apparently dulls any kind of strategic thought. 

That brings us to issue #4, featuring the immortal line “The time has come for an ending!”  (Let me hear you say “LO!”)  As it happens, though, there is no ending, at least not to the Black Adam story.  Instead, the point of World War 3 turns out to be the ultimate transformation of J’Onn J’Onzz from well-adjusted Martian refugee to dispassionate alien powerhouse.  Oh, and a page worth of the Monitors telling us things can still get worse.

Thankfully, 52 #50 imposes some order on all the chaos of WW3‘s four issues.  The big companies always say this, but I do think you could enjoy 52 #50 without reading WW3.  The Booster appearances are also a lot less disruptive in 52, and the Black Adam story gets its proper end. 

World War III could have been a whole lot better, both as a One Year Later gap-filler and as a standalone Black Adam story.  I understand DC not wanting to duplicate too much of 52 in WW3, and vice versa, but WW3 suffered by lacking the spine 52 #50 provided.  Indeed, instead of filling its four issues with mismatched subplot maintenance and random fights, World War III could have spent a little more time on organization, and brought together all of 52‘s wayward heroes in a coordinated attempt to stop Black Adam.  WW3 has no scenes of Mr. Terrific strategizing, none of the Flash or a Green Lantern gathering information, and no discussions about the best and most effective ways to take down a “god gone mad.”  It’s no excuse to say “that’s why Brad Meltzer has the JLA ‘wargaming’ Amazo fights,” or to note that the JLA wasn’t around.  That just makes the heroes of the Justice Society and Teen Titans look bad by comparison, and they shouldn’t. 

52 is about everyone but the Big Three finally rising to the occasion.  Therefore, World War III should have been a showcase for what the heroes had learned in the 50 weeks since Superboy-Prime, and I’m sorry to say it’s not.  While the architects of 52 squeezed a fine issue out of their finite resources, the creative teams behind World War III didn’t take a similar approach, and the result is shapeless and unsatisfying.  For something advertised as a critical part of achieving 52‘s goals, World War III is probably the most dispensable part of the entire project.

 

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