OK, this is cool as hell. Back in 1985, the year I started collecting comics (I stopped several years ago), DC Comics put out a 12-issue series called Crisis on Infinite Earths, which included pretty much every character in the 50-year history of DC Comics (we’re talking several hundred characters), killed off some major heroes, and redefined the DC Universe’s continuity.
When the series was released as a graphic novel several years later, Alex Ross painted a cover for it, based loosely on George Perez’s cover for issue #7. Alex Ross’s painting includes 562 characters — it’s an incredibly detailed mosaic, almost like a Renaissance piece. (Just look at the rows of people standing on the bottom — each of those is a specific character.)
Well, I just stumbled across the Crisis Character Finder, with which you can find the location of any character in the painting and identify characters you don’t know. You can get close-ups and move around. It’s just awesome.
And here’s a somewhat mind-blowing article on comic book universes and continuity.
I feel like a kid again.
I was enthralled with the Crisis in Infinite Earth Series. To this day, it is what comic books are about to me. I was very upset that they killed off SuperGirl and regressed Wonder Woman. Okay, I am a geek.
It’s funny. These came out right as I was starting to lose interest in comic books. The first two issues were the final nails in the coffin. I hated the idea of killing off some of the heroes that I liked.
Crash, my experience mirrored yours. I’d been drifting away from comics (and toward boys…) for a couple of years, and I remember “Crisis” being the end. Not that the series was bad, it just marked the end of an era for me. Ever since, every time I spend the odd half-hour at a comics rack seeing what my old DC and Marvel friends are up to, it seems like there’s yet another stab at rewriting history, and that seems to have started with “Crisis.”