First off, sorry for being gone so long. Had a death in the family and things got a bit busy in life, but I'm going to try to post more than I recently have. With that out of the way...
THE CRISIS STARTS TOMORROW
What Crisis you might be asking? Well, people that have followed this thread at CG would know what I am talking about. For those not in the loop, welcome to another hobby of mine in addition to games, TV shows, movies, etc.: the land of comic books.
20 years ago DC had the Crisis on Infinite Earths, quite possibly the best mini-series of all time in comicdom. Flash (Barry Allen) and Supergirl died, characters on other Earths (long story, but as DC picked up other comic companies like Fawcett they created new worlds where those characters lived and the Golden Age superheroes like Batman and Superman were relegated to Earth-2 and given older looks) were eliminated and we were left with the DC universe of today.
Well, not exactly. You see, DC left some continuity problems (the biggest of which was Hawkman and the Legion of Super Heroes which has had lots of continuity problems throughout its life) after Crisis and they tried to fix them with another event series, Zero Hour where Hal Jordan went evil and took some heroes to the beginning of the universe in order to re-write everything. Hal failed and he ended up redeeming himself years later. Even after Zero Hour there were still continuity problems though, so Mark Waid created Hypertime where any character would go on their way through time, but the stories could deviate from one Earth to another Earth that is running at the same time in parallel...at least that's how I remember Hypertime being, to be honest I had quit reading comics at that point.
Now 20 years later DC unloads Infinite Crisis #1 on us tomorrow, the first of a seven part mini-series. For those that read Identity Crisis (which centered around the death of Susan Dibny and what the Satellite-era JLA did to Dr. Light and other people including Batman) last year and read the Countdown to Infinite Crisis story, those were just preludes to this. In fact, DC has said that the seeds of Infinite Crisis have been planted over the last two years. I find that hard to believe since I can't fathom a group of writers getting together and thinking that far ahead. It works for those 12-part stories contained in one book where there is just the same creative team, but this is a group of writers trying to keep something on the back burner for a prolonged period of time.
Early words (read: rumors) are that Batman is going to see a big change after the mini-series is done. In fact, word is that he isn't going to be the hardass he has been since Crisis 20 years ago. Superman and Wonder Woman are bound to be affected as well since it has been said this whole thing centers around that Trinity. Currently outside of Batman/Superman the three don't trust each other. Wonder Woman killed Max Lord in order to stop him from controlling Superman; Superman beat Batman pretty bad while under the influence of Max and Batman's whole paranoia has alienated everyone (he holds the key to defeat every hero in the world and is behind the OMAC project that is currently going after every hero and villian, although a lot were destroyed via OMAC Project #6).
After Crisis, the DC universe (minus a few titles like Legion of Super Heroes) will jump ahead a year and those year's events will be told in the comic 52 that comes out weekly. Both ideas are very ballsy for DC and the rumors are flying all over the place about the year jump. Dick Grayson taking over the Batman mantle, Bart Allen becoming Flash (Wally dying in IC), etc. Of course, they are all rumors and we won't know until it happens. What we do know is that characters are going to die in Infinite Crisis much like characters died in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Chances are at least one key character will die (2 did in CoIE).
So, if you've been interested in comics in the past and remember CoIE you may want to pick up the trade paperback Prelude to Infinite Crisis which should catch you up somewhat for the mini-series. DC is either going to fly or crash on this...can lightning strike twice?