Wednesday, June 8, 2022

Comic Book Lucky Dip: Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis

Welcome back to the comic book lucky dip where I pick one of my thousands of comics at random and review it without explaining the backstory or context to the story. And well, chosen at random this week is a one-shot issue. Tales From the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis. And this is a perfect fit for this format as it’s a one-shot issue so the story is self-contained but also a major misfit because it’s a retelling of an old(er) event comic and per the rules of this format, I must not make reference to it at all [watch me fail at that]

On writing duties we have James Tynion IV who is a decent writer of many books I’ve enjoyed, and a few that I didn’t. On pencils it’s Aaron Lopresti, I hadn’t seen much of his work before but from what I can tell, he never seems to stick around. Might just be bad luck, or fill-in jobs. Matt Ryan is on Inks, not the guy who plays Constantine.

So we open with our narrator Tempus Fuginaut, you might remember him from Sideways [this is not a continuity reference, but a review reference] who tells us about the Dark Multiverse, where the darkest versions of reality come to life. He describes how once a huge number of worlds were condensed into a single Earth in the first crisis, but then outside of reality the seeds of a new one were being sowed. Alexander Luthor Junior manipulated everyone and with the help of Superboy Prime recovered the materials to rewrite the multiverse and used every trick at his disposal to keep the heroes off their trail.

But he pans back to a moment before the crisis, when Ted Kord had uncovered Max Lod’s takeover of Checkmate and of Batman’s Brother Eye Satellite and caught in a bullet in the head for it. But what if he survived? What if instead of telling Kord to ‘go to hell’ when offered a position at Checkmate he feigned interest, enough to get an advantage to strike back at Maxwell Lord and kill him.

Brother Eye is about to enact its plan anyway, but Ted asks Brother Eye to search for him, as he can save the world in a better way, and with the help of the Black Knight Sacha Bordeau, they convince Brother Eye to side with them. Super-man of pre-crisis looks on this with renewed optimism.

Two Weeks Later, Booster Gold confronts Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman about how they’ve done nothing to find Ted Kord since he’s been missing. Booster was blown up and unconscious or something.

Sacha Bordeau as it happens was a mole in Checkmate for Batman and calls him for a meeting. Ted began his leadership of checkmate by discovering the secret society of supervillains run by Lex Luthor, he uses Brother eye to expose them. He then uncovers a rival group looking to take them down, the Secret Six, no id on their leader, Mockingbird but it’s a matter of time. He also manages to stop Jean Loring getting her hands on the Eclipso.

Then he does some more digging and finds out about the issues in the magical world, and heads to the Wizard at the Rock of Eternity that he can get to somehow and asks about dealing with the Spectre before he becomes out of control. Then he uses a his OMAC sentinels and a stray zeta beam to broker an intergalactic peace deal averting a war between Rann and Thanagar.

Batman is concerned that this is too much power for anyone to have and we find out that Ted Kord was there the entire time, fully aware that Sacha was a mole for Batman and wanting to convince Batman that what he was doing was the right thing, or failing that telling him to piss off.

Later it’s Booster who pays him a visit, with honestly much the same concerns that Batman had, not helped when Ted admits he killed Maxwell Lord. Ted offers Booster a part of it all, but Booster flies away.

Checkmate head to an arctic base they believe to be the source of the Mockingbird signal where they find bodies of several of the Society of Supervillains, and the source of the Mockingbird signal, Lex Luthor. Except then Lex Luthor approaches alive, of course this is Alexander Luthor of Earth-3 and he has help with Superboy Prime. He shows Ted his giant anti-monitor tower and explains his plan to wipe the Earth clean and replace it with a better ‘perfect’ Earth. He tells Ted that he was the one who gave OMAC sentience.

Ted decides to offer a place in Checkmate, Luthor laughs it off, but it wasn’t Luthor he was asking, but Superboy Prime. And Superboy Prime realises he has a point, whilst Luthor has been busy leading a society of supervillains, Ted has been actually helping the world. With that Luthor prepares a kryptonite ray gun that… must avoid talking about the original material… Superman and Lois of Earth-One arrive having heard noises and are ultimately killed by Luthor, angering Prime enough to fry him to death.

Remorseful of the part he played in this, Superboy Prime joins up with Ted Kord and they begin moving the tower to use for their own purposes. Back at base, Ted has Brother Eye link up with the multiversal tower and scan the multiverse for the greatest treat to the safety of Earth, Brother Eye’s answer is superheroes, heaven forbid it be the super-villains, though I guess with the society dead, there aren’t that many left. Either way Brother Eye explains that the safest Earths in the multiverse are the ones without costumed vigilantes.

Ted has a plan ready, as Superboy Prime is looking at the original Superboy on Kent Farm. Ted calls him, he has a target to take out and is to round up all the young heroes of Earth. An explosion occurs at the JLA watchtower, J’onn is gone without a trace, the teleporter was activated moments before the explosion so they know someone did it, Batman has a black box which ghosted all the security footage which should identify the attacker.

Batman is sure that Ted Kord is involved, and that they should have acted against him sooner, though Wonder Woman does not believe him at this stage. Superman can hear screaming in Kansas as Connor Kent Superboy is tossed in front of Titans Tower in San Francisco by Superboy Prime.

Ted has Brother Eye give him a full suit and goes toe-to-tow with the Trinity on the Moon. He’s able to get both of them, and convert them to OMACs. Superboy Prime has reverted to type and as attacking the Titans, moaning that they made him the Bad Guy. But Ted had apparently planned for that and converts him to an OMAC too, with more OMACs coming the Titans are eventually overwhelmed. The plan is to convert all heroes to OMACs with as few casualties as possible. Booster tries to talk him down, but when that doesn’t work he’s ready to kill his best friend to avert a crisis, sensing the threat, Brother eye reacts first and kills him.

Brother Eye convinces Ted to continue and now the safety gloves are off, he authorises Lethal Force in his OMACs and heroes begin dropping out of the sky left and right.

So that Tales of the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis and it’s a very difficult story to judge without going into the context of the original story. It’s very much banking on you having read it to understand all the references and details of the story, that being said you do get a recap of said event in the opening pages so you can read it as an individual issue without getting too lost, though you might not catch all the references because Infinite Crisis had a lot of moving parts.

OK, the one thing I did quite like was the art, some of the facial expressions look a bit weird but it was nicely detailed. Tynion also had a decent grasp on the characters and focusing on Ted made since given his role in things. Tynion did a decent job of showing how Ted initially found great success but the power went to his head, along with the manipulation of Brother Eye leading to where we are.

Superboy Prime is annoying but that’s true to type so…

OK, I’m gonna have to talk about the context of the original infinite crisis now, there’s a lot of references for fans, including panels recreated, dialogue and all but making less sense in this context. And how Superboy Prime took down Black Adam is anyone’s guess.

I rate Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Infinite Crisis 3.5/5 Stars

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