Don’t look at the future. We drew something awful on it.

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Elizabeth Sandifer

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

4 Comments

  1. Matt Marshall
    April 30, 2015 @ 12:12 am

    Countdowns are never satisfying at the end when it comes to event comics, are they?

    Desperately trying to think of an example here. I did actually enjoy the countdown miniseries leading up to Infinite Crisis far, far more than the actual event. I thought it was a brilliant idea and its a shame that sort of thing isn't done more (a seeming 'here are several toyboxes, choose which one you want your book to play in')

    Reply

  2. Tom
    April 30, 2015 @ 1:43 am

    I was really suckered into Infinite Crisis on the basis of those – four dovetailing plotlines, all seeming fairly high-stakes – how will they all come together? Oh, OK, not very well. There you go, then.

    Secret Invasion had an excellent build-up – that's the peak of Bendis' Avengers run, I think. The actual event was badly paced and turned out to be another bloody countdown.

    Reply

  3. Tom
    April 30, 2015 @ 1:47 am

    If you count Infinity, and you should, it's an 83 issue prelude. It's possible that Secret Wars will be a satisfying closing act to a 91 issue storyline, of course. (But in order to be that it would probably have to make less sense to new readers.)

    Reply

  4. Sean Daugherty
    April 30, 2015 @ 7:18 am

    I really didn't get the impression that Morrison was trying to change superhero comics with The Multiversity #2. It was an unashamed "event" comic in the tradition of Crisis on Infinite Earths, not his previous Ultra Comics. Of course, being Grant Morrison, it was still a bit weirder than anything most other mainstream comics would dare put out, but, for him, this was pretty traditional.

    It was also deeply enmeshed in DC Comics lore. And not even modern DC Comics lore: this was all pretty solidly pre-2011 continuity. The revelation of the Empty Hand is a long-term reference, roughly equivalent to having the Macra show up in the tunnels in "Gridlock."

    And I think, in hindsight, this was all very much the point. This is Convergence, Grant Morrison style. It's a celebration of the various different styles and approaches taken by DC in its decades-long history. The point wasn't to push comics writing into new territory so much as it was to explore the oft-neglected nooks and crannies of a shared universe. It was about having the Marvel Family defeat an eldritch abomination by being their usual bright and sunny selves. It was about Captain Carrot's running around trying to find his body against the backdrop of a fight against a corrupted god.

    I think it succeeded spectacularly at that, and I like the implication of the ending, that Morrison has deliberately (and, one would hope, with the blessing of DC's editors) left the door open for future stories of this sort.

    Reply

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