In the next installment of DC’s Tales From The Dark Multiverse, the focus will be on a Dark Earth that is about to go through its own Infinite Crisis. In my humble opinion, the DC Universe of 2005-2006 in which Infinite Crisis was originally published was an amazing set of stories and continuity. So this is a title that quickly piqued my interest and honestly looks like it will have quite the challenge of taking events that started with the death of Ted Kord and go all the way to the conclusion of Infinite Crisis itself. So let’s take a dive into the issue and see what waits!
Right off the bat, let me mention that I have a bias towards Ted Kord as he is my favorite Blue Beetle. I remember reading Countdown to Infinite Crisis and I knew what was going to happen as the spotlight was just on Ted a bit too much, so to see the change with Ted Kord and Max Lord in this issue was just revenge. Aaron Lopresti does a great job of giving us a two page spread that touches all the finer points of Infinite Crisis and he even recreates the panel of Max killing Ted — so right off the bat, the art is killer.
James Tynion IV shines very nicely as well in this issue, as he manages to have Ted do the unthinkable in order to survive; the first domino to fall that changes everything. James weaves everything together very nicely and changes not just the Countdown issue, but also the four lead-in mini-series: The OMAC Project, Rann-Thanagar War, Day of Vengeance, and Villains United. This “Elseworld” inspired me to want to go back and reread this event to see how tightly knitted James made his story. I really enjoyed the way that he wrote this from Ted Kord’s perspective as it was a nice callback to the Countdown issue with the inner monologue.
The creative group on this issue did such a great job in keeping with the continuity of the ’05-’06 DC Universe that this issue honestly could’ve come out right after Infinite Crisis ended, just like how Marvel usually does with a What If of one of their major events. So a major shoutout to James, Aaron, and Editor Alex Antone for making this such a great revisit to that time in the DCU. I have to say this one is my favorite of the Dark Multiverse tales that have been released so far.
Do yourself a favor and pick this issue up, as James Tynion IV creates a tale that shows the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as Ted Kord can tell you. Artist Aaron Lopresti is no slouch, either — his style is perfect and he does a great job of recreating key moments from Infinite Crisis and also creating heartbreaking moments for this Tale. Look at the characters that he has in the backgrounds and you’ll see some long missing DCU characters, like Doctor Midnite (Pieter Cross). The only thing that could’ve made this better was instead of DC Comics releasing a Dollar Comics edition of Infinite Crisis #1, they could have released a copy of Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1 so you could see the split point between the two stories.
Do yourself a favor this week and read this issue, twice!
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