Rather, it was Marv Wolfman, the man who wrote the original comic series over twenty years ago. My feelings on Crisis is that it was average. It has its moments and the art is very nice, but it’s very boring most of the time and centers around some mostly mediocre characters. Still, it’s one of the first major epics of comic book storytelling and an important part of comic history.

You might think that having Wolfman adapt his own comic could only be a good thing. Who knows more about what was going on in Crisis than the man who wrote it? Sadly, this isn’t the case. The novelization of Crisis comes off like it’s being retold by a guy who read it once twenty years ago, but keeps getting it confused with how much he loves Barry Allen.

If you’ve read the original comic, you might be wondering what I mean by that. The Flash only got captured, died blowing up that machine and then inspired Wally West to take up the mantle. As important as the story is to him, he’s only a supporting character at best (which could also be said for Supergirl’s role).

Here, Flash is our narrator most of the time. It keeps switching back between him and usual Graphic Audio narrator Richard Rohan. Given the choice between the two, the third party narrator is far better because you can hear about what’s going on without having to hear Barry’s commentary. It’s like regular narration, but with the added “nobody could see me!” and “I wish there was something I could do to stop it!”

What am I yammering about? You see, Flash appears to be seeing the past, present and future at the same time. Sort of. While having him do the Dr. Manhattan thing would be decent enough, it’s more that he’s bouncing back and forth in time for no real reason, which includes visiting the same spot twice or thrice and having other time-traveling versions of himself there. What’s going on is that by being tortured by the Anti-Monitor, he’s having some kind of out-of-body-and-out-of-time experience. That’s really the best way I can explain it.

The Wolfman novel has three stages to it. The first third of the book falls under “boring as watching grass fuck”. Let me tell you, the comic itself started in the most fantastic way possible for such a story. We got to see the destruction of Earth-3. Not only do we see that this is such a threat that a form of the Justice League – the Crime Syndicate in this case – is wiped out easily, but that this threat is so evil and ominous that Ultraman dies in a way that’s borderline noble.

What do we get instead? About a half hour of Flash doing a monologue about all the different worlds and his relationship with Iris. The whole status quo in the comics where Professor Zoom murdered Iris and Flash murdered Zoom in retaliation is ignored here. For the entirety of the story, Flash’s mindset involving Iris is nothing more than, “I really hope Iris is safe somehow!” Once we finally get past all that boring introduction, we move on to Earth-3!

It isn’t as awesome as it should be. Instead of the nihilistic feeling of dread that comes from the Crime Syndicate failing to save their universe, we just get Lex Luthor and his pregnant wife Lois Lane talking about those red skies. Then a mysterious voice tells Lex to save his unborn son.

The CD set is six discs, clocking in at about 7 hours. This is half as long as both the Infinite Crisis and 52 adaptations. I bring that up because it takes nearly two of the discs to finish off the first issue. That should tell you the pacing issues we’re to expect on this.

Once we move forward, things start to finally get interesting. A lot of the meat of the first few issues are tossed to the side and occasionally mentioned in passing. Flash will briefly mention how Psycho-Pirate has forced Killer Frost to fall in love with Firestorm. Most of the chosen heroes vs. shadow demon fights are merely seen on a monitor.

Before I forget, I have to mention this one ridiculous moment from where the Monitor himself talks to the chosen heroes. Some of them ask the questions involving plotholes that anyone reading the story would have wondered regardless. Why did he pick guys like Blue Beetle and Solivar when he could have just brought in an army of Supermen and Wonder Women? If there are only five universes left undestroyed out of a near infinite, why the hell did it take him so long to do something about it? How are these questions answered? Lyla screaming, “HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THE MONITOR?!”

But like I said, the audio book gets better midway through. This is because of all the central characters, who finally get a chance to shine. Let it be said that Crisis on Infinite Earths was a breeding ground for boring characters who mostly went on to do a big pile of nothing. There are moments here and there that give the characters some strength. A big example is Monitor and Lyla.

In the comic, Lyla was so generic it hurt. The novel gives her relationship with the Monitor more background. When he tells her how much he loves her in his posthumous video recording, you can actually respect the emotion in the scene. A lot of this has to do with her voice actress, Elisabeth Demery, who does a wonderful job. Between Lyla and the Monitor, you get this feeling that they both knew that they were just pawns of fate, walking an already-determined path, but the family bond they felt for each other made up for their feelings of being used.

Alexander Luthor only gets a few scenes to shine in, but he’s nice to have around during those scant moments. Though brilliant and fully adult physically, he has a very easy-going and childlike quality to him. As he tells it, the Monitor used some kind of technology to educate him on all of the five surviving Earth’s cultures and languages in the few days of his existence. There’s a part where he’s setting himself up for self-sacrifice as part of the Monitor’s plan, but he doesn’t mind in the slightest, as he hasn’t been alive long enough to be attached to life.

Pariah is a fun guy to listen to. His overly dramatic rantings are exactly what you’d expect from reading the comic. It still doesn’t sit well with me that they never explain just why he is forced to watch each and every Earth crumble firsthand, only to survive and be tossed into the next dying world. At first you get the idea that it’s his penance for unleashing Anti-Monitor on the multiverse, only it’s revealed later on that he is essentially blameless. So… why exactly is he being punished then? Why is he forced to watch trillions of people die over the course of eons? That question is only answered by the Anti-Monitor with a hearty laugh that appears to be him changing the subject. If he was given immortality as a punishment/reward from Anti-Monitor, that would make sense. It would show off how much of an evil bitch he is. There’s some later dialogue with the Monitor that suggests that Pariah is merely playing a part in God’s plan. Wow. Way to be a bigger asshole than you were with the Job incident, God.

Lady Quark… hoo boy. She sounds like you’d expect, with her deep, mature female voice. That’s all well and good. The problem is how pointless she ultimately is. She’s introduced and her world is destroyed so that she can go on for the rest of the story, seething at Pariah for being the cause of her family’s death. She has Phantom of Krankor Syndrome, where she keeps wanting to kill Pariah, even though it’s stated and shown again and again that it isn’t possible. Then when Pariah’s name is cleared, she realizes that she was mistaken. Who cares? It’s not like it would have made any difference!

The Monitor is played by Mort Shelby, who sounds like a caring, overgrown grandfather who’s on his last legs. He certainly sounds friendly. One cool bit with him is how throughout the story, it’s insinuated that he’s able to see or sense Flash watching him. Meanwhile, the same guy is voicing the Anti-Monitor, who comes off sounding like Darth Vader after somebody dented his brand new Camaro. Hearing Anti-Monitor talk is always a treat, especially when paired with his top henchman.

Psycho-Pirate makes everything worthwhile. Voiced by Christopher Walker, Psycho-Pirate brings life to every scene he’s in. He’s like an extremely nervous Joker, with the knowledge that everything he says and does will have dire consequences on his mortality, only if he says and does nothing, it’ll only be worse. It’s really turned me onto how fun the character can be.

They keep referring to him as “Psycho-Pirate of Earth-1”. Don’t know what that’s about.

Unfortunately, they removed a couple of his key scenes. One being his introduction, where he refuses to join Lyla because he knows what being the Psycho-Pirate will do to him. Then they removed his final scene. What?! Come on! That was one of the smoothest scenes in the comic! The idea that despite everything being wrapped up, Psycho-Pirate still knows about the multiple Earths is the best final page cliffhanger of any event comic. Think about it. Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps War and Secret Invasion all end with a final page revelation that outright states what the heroes will be up against sometime in the near future. Not CoiE. There’s something ominous about Psycho-Pirate’s rantings, but we can’t exactly pin down what kind of threat it’s going to lead to.

The story continues to move forward and we get the Supergirl death sequence, which is rather nicely done. Though all the Dr. Light II character development is thrown right out of the window. She’s merely there for a couple scenes and that’s it. Which reminds me, there’s a scene where Wonder Woman argues with her mother over whether or not the amazons should help fight the Anti-Monitor, which is itself pointless, since Wonder Woman only gets a couple more lines and does nothing of note. She doesn’t even get killed like in the comic.

Flash’s phantom travels through the story’s history catches up to the present and he escapes captivity because he and the other versions of himself who have visited this point in time multiple times in their travels all vibrate together. I have no idea what I just typed.

Flash dies at the end of the fifth disc. That means that the last third of the comic’s story – four issues – is retold over the course of an hour. It took them about two discs for the first issue and one disc for the last four. Let me remind you, the last four issues was where it got exciting.

The entire subplot about Brainiac and Lex Luthor putting together a villain army is done away with. Brainiac doesn’t even get a single appearance. Everything involving Darkseid and the heroes who seek him out is gone. After Flash “dies”, he merely exists as energy and informs the heroes that the Anti-Monitor is hanging out in the dawn of time. We get a very rushed form of the rest of the story, leading up to Earth-2 Superman vs. the Anti-Monitor in the Anti-Matter Universe.

I said before that the story is split into three parts. The first part is where everything’s boring. The second part is where everything gets interesting. This third part, even when you ignore Marv Wolfman’s blatant rushjob, is flat out bonkers in how much it bugs me.

Now, you have to remember that while the Graphic Audio book is recent, the novel itself came out in 2005. It came out around the time of the Infinite Crisis comic series, which is a direct sequel to CoiE. It would make sense to maybe try and link the two. For instance, Geoff Johns recently did a storyline that retold Hal Jordan’s origin, but found ways to link it to both Rage of the Red Lanterns and Blackest Night. Wolfman could have easily tossed in a scene or line that would have foreshadowed Infinite Crisis.

Could have.

He goes the opposite direction. He goes out of his way to prevent any links between Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis. Alexander Luthor doesn’t remain in the Anti-Matter Universe with Earth-2 Superman. Instead, once the portal closes, he presumably returns to Earth-1 and is never heard from again.

Earth-2 Superman dies fighting the Anti-Monitor and meets up with Earth-2 Lois in Heaven.

And Superboy Prime? Not even a single mention of Superboy Prime.

All those characters like Alexander Luthor, Lyla, Pariah and Lady Quark do very, very little for the last part of the story. The last stretch of the story is more of Wolfman’s whacking off to how awesome Barry Allen is. You might be saying, “Hey, come on! That’s not fair! You shouldn’t hate on the guy just because he made Flash narrator most of the time!”

In the original comic, Flash’s only moment of usefulness was to beat up Psycho-Pirate, force him to turn Anti-Monitor’s army against him, then die while destroying Anti-Monitor’s universe-killing gizmo. Wolfman decided that that wasn’t nearly enough. Over the course of this revised story, Flash’s phantom self has a bunch of ill-defined powers that only appear one each time for the sake of plot device.

- When the Monitor’s chosen heroes and villains fight the shadow demons, Flash momentarily takes over Solivar’s body and fights through him.

- When Psycho-Pirate has all the heroes trying to kill each other, they’re saved from the mind control by Flash running through all their bodies. They don’t even try to give this any attempt at an explanation.

- At the dawn of time, you have Anti-Monitor with all the powers of the fallen heroes vs. the Spectre with all the powers of the mystic heroes. That was good enough for the Spectre in the comic. This time, he’s losing the fight. Flash realizes that he’s pure energy now, so he runs circles around the mystics, giving them more power to feed to the Spectre and therefore winning the battle.

- Earth-2 Superman is no longer tough enough to defeat a weakened Anti-Monitor. In this version of the story, Flash is pulled into Heaven, where he discovers that everyone who no longer existed thanks to the Earths merging is now in the afterlife. He’s able to absorb the strength of the Crime Syndicate and all the others killed by the Anti-Monitor before reappearing in the Anti-Matter Universe, jumping into Earth-2 Superman’s body and killing the Anti-Monitor with one punch. The resulting explosion sends both Flash and Earth-2 Superman to Heaven.

- He still isn’t done yet! Flash is pulled back in time to meet with the Monitor, where they shoot the shit about fate. Flash goes back in time again to Earth-3, revealing that he’s the one who warned Lex Luthor about how he had to save Alexander. Earth-3, which no longer exists in the timeline! It doesn’t make sense! I think my nose is bleeding from listening to this!

Finally, Flash is allowed his reward for being so awesome and saving the universe all by himself. He gets to see the future, where Wally is the Flash, Iris is still alive and Bart Allen is apparently voiced by a 3-year-old. As a ghost, he kisses Iris on the cheek and is finally allowed into the afterlife.

Hoo boy. That was an ordeal. The boys at Graphic Audio really tried their hardest with this one and it’s rare to find a genuinely awful moment of voice acting, but trying to make the Crisis on Infinite Earths novel into a good audio book is like making lemons into lemonade when you found the lemons buried in George Wendt’s asscrack.

And now, let’s listen to some choice audio clips.

First off, Earth-3 Lex Luthor is the densest man in the multiverse.

Life sucks for Pariah.

Some Ted Kord voice-acting.

Kamandi meets Solivar

Lyla becomes Harbinger and goes to kill the Monitor

Alexander Luthor uses technology to its fullest

Psycho-Pirate’s freaked out

Psycho-Pirate goes into a creepy monologue about how loyal he is to Anti-Monitor

Anti-Monitor and Psycho-Pirate talk about their favorite bands, chicks who have broken their hearts, the Matrix…

Psycho-Pirate loses it yet again, including his nervous laugh

Sgt. Rock teams up with Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters

The Death of Supergirl

The Death of Flash

Earth-2 Superman vs. Anti-Monitor

Hey, you know what would be great? Get the Anti-Monitor to do a recording for a Lewis Black audio book. That would rule!

Related posts

• Infinite Crisis: The Graphic Audio (7)
• Instant Replay: Blitzkrieg (3)
• Hey, Superman! Where’s the Beef? (4)
• Deadshot’s Tophat and Other Beginnings: Cr to De (6)
• DC Solicitations, November 2006 (0)

Hm. Already, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be more of the same. Infinite Crisis and 52 are very different. Infinite Crisis was seven slightly-longer-than-usual issues, condensed. For the novelization, they had to add in bits from other comics from that time to pad out the story. The Graphic Audio experiment took an average story and transformed it into something pretty good. In fact, reader Illvillainy, who picked up the CD set based on my review, had this to say:

Granted my imagination had me envisioning Doug Mahnke doing, say 12 issues, of gorgeous art while listening to the CDs but going back to read IC afterwards and seeing 7 rushed and badly paced issues of Phil Jimenez trying to be George Perez with scrunched up layout and one page splashes was severely disappointing. The audiobook wasn’t perfect but it made me like the idea of IC a hell of a lot more.

52 is another beast entirely. The quality was far superior on all fronts and due to lasting 52 issues, the story was more decompressed. Well, maybe “decompressed” isn’t the best word for 52. It’s just that there were so many subplots going on that if you were reading it for one of them specifically, you could go at least a month without an update. I cared about all of them to at least some extent, so I was cool with it. Though, really, I was mostly in it for Booster’s storyline.

But what is 52 about, really? How do you describe the story other than saying that it’s a year without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman? Infinite Crisis, despite the million different things going on, could be written off as “The DC Trinity and their sidekicks vs. the outsider survivors of Crisis on Infinite Earths.” There wasn’t one thread holding all the 52 plots together. Let’s look at the pieces of the puzzle:

- Booster Gold vs. Mr. Mind
- Renee Montoya vs. Intergang
- Black Adam vs. the world
- Animal Man vs. Lady Styx
- Doc Magnus vs. Egg-Fu
- Steel vs. Lex Luthor
- Elongated Man vs. Felix Faust
- Random other stuff like the Trinity re-discovering themselves, Firestorm’s new JLA, the Chinese superheroes doing stuff, and Red Tornado being a piece of junk

That’s a lot to take in and you’re probably already wondering, “How can they possibly fit all 52 issues of that into twelve hours of audio?” The answer is that they didn’t. Rather, they cut out a lot of the comic and focused on only a few of the subplots. See the above list? Compare that to what’s covered in Cox’s adaptation:

- Booster Gold vs. Mr. Mind
- Renee Montoya vs. Intergang
- Black Adam vs. the world

That’s it. The space guys, Ralph Dibny, Luthor, Magnus, Batman, etc. are ignored. Unfortunately, this includes the new JLA, meaning that I never did get to hear voice acting for Ambush Bug. Nuts. This also means a lack of crossover scenes. Looking back, that seems to only cover Booster Gold bits. In other words, there’s no sign of the scenes where he talks to Ralph Dibny, his team-up with Wonder Girl, his instances of open disdain for Lex Luthor, being yelled at by Fire for not caring about the heroes in space, dealing with Doc Magnus, and so on.

An interesting thing is that they do have a variation of the scene where Luthor insists that Supernova is Superman, only instead of Luthor, it’s Bruno Manheim in a more private setting. Rather than just be the top villain in the Question/Montoya subplot, they try to make Manheim a bigger threat by giving him some kind of presence in each storyline. They even use him instead of Egg-Fu for the Oolong Island scenes. It does work out in the sense that the story has a more solid conflict. Put the three stories together and you get a loose feeling of “heroes vs. Intergang”. Mr. Mind’s mutation is at least linked to the Intergang thread enough to make it work.

I actually went back to the comic and counted how many pages were covered in the Graphic Audio. While I’m probably off a page or two, I got about 480 pages across all 52 issues. That means that this version of the story covers the about 22 issues of material.

I don’t know if it was intentional, but cutting it down does really help push the theme. This is a year without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman told through three major plots. Each plot involves stand-ins for the Trinity. On one hand you have the science fiction superheroes flying through Metropolis. Then you have the gritty detective becoming a masked vigilante to save Gotham from a major criminal threat. Finally, there’s the story of gods trying to protect and coexist with humanity. It’s very cut and dry.

There are thirty-one voice actors, which is a bit surprising. Granted, it’s a couple less than Infinite Crisis, but that audio book had a ton of characters. 52 keeps it simple in comparison. Most of the stories don’t branch out too far from their core characters. Dry narrator Richard Rohan makes his return.

It might be easier if I just cover this story-to-story. Let’s start with Montoya.

The Montoya subplot is easily the most literal of the three. I suppose this is both because of Manheim’s enhanced role and the fact that the only story Montoya crosses over into is Black Adam’s. Thinking back, the only major bit I recall missing is when Montoya and the Question are arrested and have to escape jail. Here, they simply just escape capture altogether.

In terms of voice acting, Montoya’s fine. She sounds like a 30-something woman who’s had one too many bad days. That’s all well and good. Bruno Manheim comes across as a Godfather reject who’s trying his hardest to sound eloquent. It’s especially entertaining when he reads from the Crime Bible. Batwoman comes across as bitchy with the, “I don’t have time for this shit,” tone to her voice. There’s the laid-back Nightwing and Richard Dragon, who left so little of an impression that I can’t remember a thing about him.

The real star in this story is Vic Sage/Question. We all know and love Jeffery Combs’ portrayal of the Question on Justice League Unlimited, where he played a more family friendly Rorschach, but Question in 52 is a different kind of guy. He’s a total smartass. Either you love what he has to say or you want to punch him. His voice actor nails it.

What really makes him exceptional is the scene in the story where Vic is succumbing to his cancer and wanders through Kate’s home rambling from memories of his old solo series. It’s hard to read in print and it’s harder when you have to hear him. It’s a fantastic effort.

Cox goes a little overboard on the Montoya/Kane scenes. Nothing wrong with pointing out how they still have a thing for each other after all these years, but damn. Whenever they get angry and passionate at each other, the narration becomes borderline trashy for way too long. I do NOT need to hear Richard Rohan saying this stuff.

Next is the Black Adam storyline. Getting through this one is such a downer. They scale down on the part of the plot where Black Adam is putting together allies to police the world. It’s there and all, but the stuff with the Great Ten, Hal Jordan and Power Girl are missing. Also missing is Terra-Man. Black Adam still does his vicious demonstration in America, but he instead tears apart the surviving Intergang member that tried to offer him Adrianna Tomaz.

Black Adam’s voice seems better here than it was in Infinite Crisis. I’m not sure if I think that way because the voice actor got better, I got used to it or I’m affected by the better accents coming from Isis and Osiris. He sounds less vampire-y, at the very least.

Sobek’s voice makes it difficult for all the right reasons. His voice is so trusting that in the back of your mind, you want to believe that this time things will be different. This time Sobek will not turn out to be an evil Horseman of Apokalips. But there’s also that feeling of dread, like when you want to warn a movie character not to walk through a door when you know a killer is on the other side. Osiris comes off as so likeable and pure that you wince upon realizing that his days are literally numbered.

The other Horsemen also rule. They sound absolutely evil. Especially War, who sounds like a demon speaking to you through a McDonald’s drive-thru speaker.

The mad scientists on Oolong Island are a mixed bag. Dr. Sivana is absolutely perfect. From now on, that’s the exact voice I’ll hear whenever I read a comic with him in it. They try to mix it up with as many stock mad scientist voices as they could, though I do dig how one of them talks just like the nerd character from Robot Chicken. T.O. Morrow sounds like an old man at a country club, which I wasn’t down with. The biggest buzzkill is Ira Quimby, also known as IQ.

I can’t believe DC’s dropped the ball on IQ. The fact that you’re probably wondering, “Who the hell is IQ?” verifies that. Quimby is the Oolong scientist who, during Black Adam’s attempt to destroy them all, rallied all the other scientists to put aside their fears, work together and take down this bully for the sake of nerds everywhere. It was such an unexpected scene, but played out great.

Then… nothing. Quimby was able to lead a bunch of powerless scientists to physically defeat a threat so large that weeks later, all of Earth’s heroes found themselves having to resort to magical manipulation in order to put him away. By all accounts, that should make him A-list. From what I’ve seen, he only showed up briefly in Suicide Squad after that.

Anyway, Quimby’s voice here sounds less like a mad scientist and more like a cheesy caricature of a superhero. You know, the Dudley Do-Right voice. I wasn’t feeling it.

The filler from the World War III miniseries is missing, but it’s not like we need to see the death of Young Frankenstein. Sure, it scales back Black Adam’s rampage, but the dude already murdered a country’s entire population with his bare hands. He and Kid Miracleman should get together and make a game out of that.

Interesting enough, there’s one scene that’s added into the story. When the JSA breaks into Oolong Island to retrieve Black Adam, Greg Cox had written an entire sequence of the JSA vs. the Science Squad. It works out, since it gives closure to the Black Adam beatdown from earlier. While the scientists were able to hold it together to beat the Egyptian Marvel, their plans fall apart going after an entire team of superheroes. Dr. Cyclops tries using a black light gun to blind Dr. Midnite, which of course has no effect on him. Bug Baron sends a swarm of robot wasps at Mr. Terrific, but since Terrific is invisible to technology, the wasps just fly past him. Dr. Tyme zips Hourman forward in time to the point that his powers have worn off. Despite being powerless, Hourman is still able to lay out Tyme with one punch. It’s all great fun.

Though one thing that totally messed with my head was when Power Girl responded to an attack with something along the lines of, “My last bikini wax hurt more than that!” Now, here’s the thing. I know it’s messed up to think about a fictional character’s lady business, even if it’s a character whose claim to fame is having a giant rack. I get that. That doesn’t stop that line from causing havoc on my brain. Maybe it’s just me, but the scientific applications of Kryptonian genital grooming is up there with the “three sea shells” from Demolition Man.

Last is Booster Gold’s storyline. Though a lot of his scenes from the comic are tossed away, they do include a scene of Supernova looking through Dr. Sivana’s lab, as a way to foreshadow Mr. Mind’s metamorphosis. This also includes the newspaper clippings of missing scientists used in the missing Magnus/Morrow meeting scene.

Unfortunately, one of the best moments from Booster’s arc gets removed. That scene where he meets Blue Beetle for the “first” time is gone. That sucks. Instead, he just uses the stolen 52 seconds to steal that weapon from Steel back during the Black Adam rampage.

Another big change is that the Mr. Mind reveal doesn’t take place in T.O. Morrow’s hideout. Considering Red Tornado is a non-factor in the audio book, there’s no reason. Instead, to tie things together better, Booster’s confrontation happens before all the spectators at the World War III memorial. As everyone is confused at Booster being alive, Bruce Wayne smirks and says quietly, “Ah, time travel. Of course.”

As for the voices? There’s nothing special with Daniel Carter or Rip Hunter, though Rip’s scrambled chrono dialogue is really well done. Booster Gold retains his voice from Infinite Crisis, where he sounds much like Keanu Reeves. That’s pretty inspired when you think about it. What other kind of voice can you give a guy that makes him sound like an idiot no matter how serious he’s trying to act?

Supernova has a distortion to his voice that hides his true identity. You can’t hear the Keanu part of Booster’s voice, but if you listen to it closely enough at times, you can hear the same vocal patterns. It’s a nice touch.

The real king here is Skeets. In the beginning he sounds like the Billy West portrayal on Justice League Unlimited. He’s got the same chipper, smart-ass style to him. As time goes on, he loses the humor in his voice and becomes very cold and emotionless, segueing into his betrayal of Daniel. Then he becomes more and more vicious, vocally, like when he slaughters Waverider. He makes the transition into Mr. Mind, who has a similar high-pitched voice. After becoming a monster butterfly, the voice sounds downright demonic.

I enjoyed the set, but it did have some stuff working against it. I suppose that when I think about what made 52 great, I have a cornucopia of moments in mind from the different storylines. Like I said earlier, there are 22 issues worth of content here, which means 30 issues worth of casualties. They had to do it, no doubt, but it still stings.

Is it worth getting? I guess that depends not on how much you liked the series, but how much you liked those three specific storylines.

Now let’s take a look at some samples.

This Booster Gold clip is brought to us by Soder Cola!

Black Adam casually crushes a dude’s head with one hand.

Black Adam tears a bad guy in half at a press conference.

Question scares the crap out of Renee in a car.

Black Adam flies in on some hot lesbian action.

The death of Booster Gold.

The Question wants to see if Osiris’ new powers are catching.

Some F-List superheroes chatting it up at Booster’s funeral.

Vic Sage’s delusional flashbacks.

Rip Hunter’s incoherent speech.

The death of Vic Sage.

Oh, Sobek!

Oh, shit! Sobek!

The Horseman of War.

The Horseman of Pestilence.

The Horseman of Death.

Ira Quimby rallies the Science Squad in his ridiculous voice.

Evil Skeets reveals his true form!

Mr. Mind gets his just desserts.

So what’s next on the Graphic Audio agenda? From what I’ve been able to find, they’re going to be releasing a Countdown to Final Crisis adaptation this December. I’m going to go strangle children and piss on nuns because Lord knows that enduring that is going to be my penance.

Related posts

• The Price of Gold Declines: Supernova Speculation (1)
• Reign of the Supernovas: A Real Mystery in Real Time (16)
• My God, It’s Full of Stars! (1)
• Infinite Crisis: The Graphic Audio (7)
• Weekly reviews – 02/14/08 (4)

Anyway, during my breaks of playing Mega Man 9 while cursing in extreme fury every ten seconds, I’ve been working on my write-up of the 52 Graphic Audio. Just wondering, are there any requests for samples? Keep in mind that unfortunately, due to constraints, the only stories covered are Booster’s, Montoya’s and Black Adam’s.

Related posts

• 52: The Graphic Audio (3)
• Infinite Crisis: The Graphic Audio (7)
• Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Graphic Audio (6)

Sometime after, author Greg Cox wrote a novelization of Infinite Crisis. Such an odd concept, isn’t it? A novelization of a comic book? It’s like the literary version of hearing a country singer covering a rock group’s hit song. I guess I shouldn’t talk, since years back, before I was even into comics in the first place, I read the novelization of Knightfall. Plus there’s the whole movie novelization thing I do for the sake of getting site hits.

I didn’t read Cox’s take on Infinite Crisis, but through chance, I discovered an interesting piece relating to it. A company called Graphic Audio had done a book on CD version of his take. That’s right, an audio book based on a book based on a graphic novel. What an insane concept. Too curious, I ordered the two sets and spent a couple weeks listening through them. Yes, weeks. The entire story is told with twelve discs over the course of thirteen hours. Thirteen hours to tell the story of seven issues.

Well, that’s not fair. It’s more than just the seven issues. Cox chose to cherry-pick tie-in issues to help pad out the story to differing success. This includes the end of Crisis of Conscience where Superboy Prime attacks Martian Manhunter, the Spectre vs. Shazam fight from the end of Day of Vengeance, the part of Gotham Central where Crispus Allen got killed, an issue of Aquaman and parts of the Rann/Thanagar War Special.

Strangely, very little of the lead-in specials are used. I suppose a lot of that stuff isn’t really important to the overall story, especially the Villains United Special. On the other hand, the absence of the Day of Vengeance Special and the climactic fight between Dr. Fate and Spectre, bringing forth the new age of magic, probably could have helped. Without it, we have Spectre crush Atlantis, talk to Shazam’s ghost for a bit, then without any story segue, he’s sucked into Crispus Allen’s chest and it continues from there with no explanation. When you look at it, the whole Spectre subplot was the event’s biggest weak link. Other than give him a new host and status quo, the Spectre was just there. Even his role in Alexander Luthor’s plan is easily forgettable.

There is something very cool about the Spectre, though. For most of the story, he’s depicted with a raspy, wicked voice as he goes around killing anyone magic-related. Upon joining with Crispus, his voice becomes noticeably deeper and authoritative. There’s a lisp in there too, but other than that, it’s aces.

That’s the selling point of this whole experiment. It isn’t just the narrator (Richard Rohan) talking us through the story. There is voice acting, much like an old radio show. Lots of voice acting. Remember, this is Infinite Crisis. Think back to that comic and try to recall how many speaking roles there were. Nearly everyone in the active DC Universe gets at least a line here or there. There has to be two hundred of them, at least. Part of the fun is waiting to hear how one of your favorites is going to come across.

And they’re good! For the most part, the voices are really great. It isn’t like they just had four people trying to pull a Trey Parker job, having guys like Superman and Blue Devil sound almost exactly the same. No, they go all out. I’m talking about thirty-six voice actors!

Some of it takes a little getting used to just because of how the animated worlds have already embedded ideas of what guys like Superman and Batman should sound like. Superman’s voice is older than what we’re used to. It has a leader quality that the cartoons lacked, but it does sound a little like Orson Wells. Batman lacks the bass of Kevin Conroy, but has a whisper carried so that you feel like you trust his judgment. It’s a bit like what Christian Bale was going for, only not as deep and done right this time. Wonder Woman sounds about right, though without the glibness of her animated counterpart. Joker, small as his role is, comes across as a really decent Mark Hamill impression. Doomsday doesn’t get any actual lines other than growls, but retains what seems like the exact same laugh as he had in the SNES Death and Return of Superman game.

That’s not important, though. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are old news. We’ve heard them talk many times before. This audio story is about hearing those who don’t regularly get a chance to speak outside of the word bubbles. Some characters who will never appear on an animated series. Guys like Shift, Conner Kent, Zoom, Prometheus and Enchantress.

Alexander Luthor has the smarter-than-thou voice that convinces you when he tells Lex Luthor that he’s mentally inferior. Earth 2 Superman has a kind, but grizzled voice that sounds enough like his younger counterpart, but you can still easily tell who is who during a conversation. Psycho Pirate is more theatrical and over-the-top, adding a lot of emotion to his lines. Then there is Superboy Prime.

Oh my God. If ever there was a selling point, it’s Superboy Prime. He’s so perfect here. So perfect. The moment you hear him talk, you can’t wait for him to show his true colors and go on a whiny killing spree. He sounds an awful lot like Fry from Futurama and it works so well. In fact, go find an issue of Infinite Crisis right now. Stop reading this for a moment and look at any given scene with Prime in it. Now imagine his delivery with Fry’s voice. Does that not put a smile on your face?

This thing made me realize just how much I love Superboy Prime. He’s overused at the moment, but whenever he shows up, good times are guaranteed. Even in Countdown he at least turned the comic from bad to awesomely bad for a few issues. I don’t get why people have such venom for the character, unless they really think that his pre-Crisis self was the bee’s knees for some reason.

Regular Superboy? Not so good here. It seems like one voice actor is playing both Superboys (they don’t actually tell you who voices who), but he tries altering his delivery to separate the two. So while Superboy Prime is excitable and enthusiastic, Conner is near emotionless and apathetic with a slight southern accent. The guy had a good selection of quotes in the story, but they all fall flat because he’s trying to sound too cool for school. The only instances of him showing a pulse are when he’s confronted with Superboy Prime, making their scenes extra confusing, as they suddenly sound exactly alike.

When I told hermanos my plans to listen to this thing, he had qualms due to a preview he heard of the 52 set, which I’ll be reviewing later. The preview features Black Adam and his attempt at an Egyptian accent sounds a little more Romanian to the point that I can’t help but imagine him selling chocolate cereal with ghost-shaped marshmallows.

The only other voice that grinded my gears was Barry Allen, during that important Speed Force scene with Kid Flash. I expected something less mundane and Ben Steinian from a guy whose bread and butter is being really fast and active. I imagine him as sounding more like George Lowe, now that I think about it.

The music is pretty sweet. It’s used sparingly for scenes that need it and is effective in pushing the action. A lot of time there will be an orchestra playing, like in the Amazons vs. OMACs fight. When Earth 2 Superman starts punching his way to Earth 1, we hear a sound-alike of the John Williams Superman score. Immediately after that, we’re treated to a sitcom-style background theme as Animal Man banters with his wife. When the multiple Earths are flying around space and we see into them, the Legion of Superheroes world gets a cool techno theme.

Hey, there’s a complaint right there. They give us stretched out scenes based on those panels of the Legion world, the Tangent world and the Fawcett world, but nothing with the cowboy world and the Bizarro Earth with all the inhabitants happily strangling each other in the chaos. I feel gypped. Even worse is that they removed my favorite moment from the story. After Superman tells his Earth 2 counterpart that a perfect world wouldn’t need a Superman, he doesn’t have that saddened moment of reflection where he says, “It… The perfect Earth… It’s… My God… It’s not mine. It never was…” That was such a golden moment, but instead he just realizes that, oh, hey, that wasn’t the world Alexander was looking for and flies off.

Of the few things they dropped, there were some good choices. Like that piece of the conclusion where the Tangent Green Lantern’s lantern washes up ashore and, more importantly, that laughable part where Breach explodes and becomes Captain Atom. Plus, being that this is mainly only the core series, there’s absolutely zero mention of the Superboy Prime continuity punches. Thank God for that.

I’m guessing the novel was written while DC was in the midst of fixing up Infinite Crisis for the hardcover trade, as several of the dialogue changes are factored in. This include’s Bane’s monologue about breaking people that he says while killing Apollo Creed Judo Master.

Listening to the story and absorbing it again after all the hype and initial reviews have ended, you get a better feel for what worked and what went wrong. First, there was the exposition. This miniseries involved lead-ins from five other miniseries and a handful of other comics while being a sequel to a complicated-to-explain limited series from 20 years ago. The opening of the first CD, where Martian Manhunter thinks back to all the crazy shit going on all over the universe, takes about 20 minutes just to explain the OMACs, the united villains, the war in space, the Spectre’s anti-magic rampage, Wonder Woman murdering Max Lord and Blue Beetle’s death. To give you an idea of how much time that ate, that one disc only had that stuff and the first seven pages of the first issue, ending with the death of Ratcatcher.

In other words, it took some getting used to. The first couple discs are a little boring and just exposition after exposition. It picks up around the time when Aquaman tries to defend Sub-Diego from the Secret Society. It’s the length of all of this that pinpoints the second big problem with the miniseries as a whole: it was so damn compressed. Geoff Johns was trying to tell twelve issues worth of story in only seven. Everything appears so rushed and packed in. It’s filled with lots of cool stuff going on for only a panel and doesn’t give you any time to actually enjoy it.

That’s why I really enjoyed the Graphic Audio version of the story. While long, it’s told at a reasonable pace. It showed me that getting past the editorial mandates, Infinite Crisis really isn’t a bad story. It’s a little goofy at points, but it does a good job at putting the entire DC Universe to good use to give us an epic. If you liked the series to begin with, I’d recommend this easily. If you’re a fan of radio plays and love comics, go for it. Otherwise, I’d say try it out only if you’re in for the novelty of hearing what Detective Chimp sounds like. The acting and depictions have far more quality than I would have ever guessed.

Enjoy some choice snippets from the story, some of them reader requests.

First, here’s how awesome the OMACs sound.

Kyle Rayner having a conversation with Vril Dox.

The Spectre without a host arguing with Captain Marvel.

Zoom will make you into a better hero!

The Human Bomb taking on Dr. Polaris and then Bizarro.

The infamous “Batburn“.

Superboy Prime visits Superboy and tries to tell him off.

Superboy ALMOST says “motherfucker”!

Everybody’s favorite: Kid Flash vs. Superboy Prime.

I was asked to include the most laughable piece of dialogue. I’d say that would be Earth 2 Superman hamming it like crazy after Lois dies. Though the ending is pretty cool.

Haha! I never really cared about Tawky Tawny, but I have no doubt that this is the perfect voice for him.

The new Blue Beetle deals with his talking Scarab.

The Spectre has a host now and his first act of business is dealing with Star Sapphire. Or should I say, the Thpectre!

Black Adam gets his revenge on the Psycho Pirate.

Bane breaks Judo Master and Prometheus kills off Peacemaker.

To give hermanos some closure, here is Major Disaster’s barely-on-panel death.

Guy Gardner vs. Superboy Prime. AWWWWW CRY ME A RIVER!

Hal Jordan speaks with Mogo. To my surprise, Mogo does not have a penis.

That’s it for now. Next up is 52. Can’t wait for Ambush Bug’s cameo. Then in December, the Graphic Audio retelling of Countdown to Final Crisis is due for release. God help me.

Related posts

• Comics vs. Cartoons: A Look at Diniverse Designs (5)
• Ruining the Moment: Volume 2 (2)
• Reign of the Supernovas: A Real Mystery in Real Time (16)
• Deadshot’s Tophat and Other Beginnings: Be to Bl (5)
• The Price of Gold Declines: Supernova Speculation (1)