by Marv Wolfman
CRISIS ON
INFINITE EARTHS
CRISIS ON
INFINITE EARTHS
BY MARV WOLFMAN
ibooks
new york
DISTRIBUTED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER
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Copyright © 2005 DC Comics. All rights reserved.
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CRISIS ON
INFINITE EARTHS
for
Julius Schwartz
Gardner Fox
&
John Broome
their dreams of other universes inspired generations to follow their own dreams
for
George Perez
who worked beside me to share that dream with others and most of all
for
Noel
for fulfilling all my dreams
Preface
From the Journal of Barry Allen
Earth-1
When I was a boy I had two loves: movies and comic books. My favorite movie was "The Adventures of Robin Hood," and my favorite comic was All-Flash. Each issue featured the incredible stories of the Flash, a super-hero who ran so fast you could barely see him. His secret identity was research scientist Jay Garrick and somehow he got his powers from inhaling the fumes of heavy water. Yeah. Tell me about it.
Even as a kid I knew enough about science to realize heavy water fumes couldn't give Jay a bad headache let alone amazing super-speed powers. But I also knew that like the similarly helmeted Roman god, Mercury, Jay was merely a character of myth, as real as a writer's imagination, and origins, whether born on Mount Olympus or drugged by impossible gases, weren't important.
I loved his stories and adventures. I loved his villains, but more than anything else, I loved pretending one day I could be him. After all, I knew I'd never fly like Superman, or find a magic ring capable of creating anything out of energy like Green Lantern, or even have an invisible plane like Wonder Woman. But I could run, and maybe, somehow, I could learn to run real fast.
Just like Jay Garrick. Just like the Flash.
It didn't matter to me then that he wasn't real.
Though, when I learned he was, for some inexplicable reason, I wasn't surprised.
Nor was I shocked when I became more like him than I had ever dreamed.
Marv Wolfman
As usual, I'm running ahead of myself. As I said, Jay Garrick was real. His origin? Well, heavy water was involved, but there was actually more to it than just that.
Jay was a living, breathing research scientist, and I knew it was his interest in science, related to me in those brightly colored pages, that inspired my own interests, even though Jay didn't live on the same Earth as I... Let me slow down and start over again.
Even before I learned there was something called a multiverse, I knew scientists theorized the existence of many alternate dimensions, each one separated by the slimmest of temporal vibrations.
If I existed on, let's call it Earth-1, then there could also be an Earth-2, an Earth-3, and so on.
There was almost no limit to the number of Earths that could theoretically exist. Some of these worlds may have developed parallel evolutions where there might be another Barry Allen, police scientist. But on another Earth, Barry Allen could just as well be a composer or an assembly line worker. On still other Earths, evolution may have spun off in a completely different fashion. The entity intended to be Barry Allen might be little more than a sentient slug, although I've been called that more than once in my life.
Finally, on some Earths, there might be moments of similarities even when there were also wild divergences.
That was how I saw my world, Earth-1, and Jay Garrick's world, Earth-2.
When a writer on Earth-1 dreamed the adventures of a super hero named the Flash, which he then turned into my favorite comic book, he had, unbeknownst to himself, tapped into the true history of Earth-2. Our Earths were similar, and yet very different. There were heroes named Superman on both worlds who came from a planet called Krypton. Although at birth one was named Kal-L and the other a similar Kal-El, once they landed on their respective Earths the infants both received the name Clark Kent.
There was also a Wonder Woman on both Earths who used the secret identity, Diana Prince. But at the same time there were two completely different Green Lanterns.
Mine, the one from Earth-1, received his power ring from a race of alien Guardians dedicated to preserving peace throughout the universe. Earth-2 's Green Lantern had a power ring with magical origins. Crisis on Infinite Earths
Similarities and differences. Neither better nor worse. Just different. Many Earths, many dimensions, all separate. Nobody knew how this developed, whether by chance or circumstance, but as long as the universes remained separate, nobody needed to worry.
And so it went. There was a multiverse of Earths and heroes, some nearly identical to the other, most radically different. Jay and I were very different people yet we both became the Flash.
But, if you're wondering what was the biggest difference between Jay and me, it may be that by the time this is read, he will be retired, sunning himself on his lawn in Keystone City, while I will be long dead.
PART ONE
THE SUMMONING
He ran, faster than he ever had before, passing the speed of sound, even outracing the speed of light, becoming part of a Force so powerful it controlled him as much as he controlled it.
—The Monitor Tapes Pg. 311
One
The third time I watched myself die I sat back and enjoyed the show.
It's not as if one ever really gets used to watching themself die. But I had, through the multiple viewings, become detached from the actual event. Even though it was my flesh dissolving and my bones crumbling, it wasn't as if it was happening to me here and now.
I was watching my future, a future as certain as the past. And in that future I was Monty Python's dead parrot singing in that invisible choir. End of story. Done deal. Over and out. Chirp! Still, I can barely explain what went through my mind that very first time. Of course there was denial. The body? It had to be some other Flash from some other Earth. No way it was me.
But of course it was. I was alive and I was watching myself die like it was a movie trailer for my death, coming soon to a cemetery near you. How was it possible? Just an instant before I was with my wife, Iris. How could I have been there and then, in the next moment, gone? The well documented stages of denial: I saw. I refused to believe. Then I screamed. I cursed even though there was no one to hear me, but I cursed, which I didn't do often.
I ran away. I came back but my body was already gone, dissolved into nothingness, only my ring and my uniform, my tattered uniform, remained.
An
d all that happened in a singular. Frozen. Moment. Time stood still, but I was used to that. My internal clock regularly moved faster than imagination. Unless I concentrated and forced myself to slow down and live in the real world, everything around me moved in slow motion; all sounds deepened and stretched long, impossible to understand. Marv Wolfman
I stared at that empty place where I died less than a second before and I heard myself crying and laughing and chattering.
Then I broke free and ran away as fast as I could and this time I didn't come back.
That was my virgin death experience.
The second time I saw myself die was only marginally better. I still refused to believe what happened, but my brain was slowly grinding its way into gear. That was me who had died. Or who will die. Thought one: Since this was obviously taking place in the future, was it possible I could prevent it? Thought two: No. My future was set. You can't change the future. I was dead. Live with it. Thoughts three through six: What killed me? Was I the only one affected? Were there others? How could I help them?
As my body crumbled to ash, I again went into shock. I tried to fight my way out of it, but found that I couldn't. Instead, I sped up my metabolism and pushed my way through. Okay. I'm dead. Get over it. Do something about it.
Which is what I did.
The third time, this last time, I was finally able to separate myself from the experience. Barry Allen was a forensic scientist. I needed to study my death. Analyze it. Learn from it. Then use what I learned to help others. That's what I did as a scientist. That's what I do as a person. As my flesh disintegrated, I observed burn marks at the ragged edges. They weren't caused by fire. Assuming the power necessary to disintegrate flesh and bone, I decided I'd been attacked by some sort of energy blast. Unbelievable? No. Been there, I thought, though not exactly with this result. I've led a life others would call science fiction, and energy blasts, the good kind and the bad, were definitely part of it.
I thought about and quickly dismissed the usual suspects: Mirror Master? No way. He would turn me into plate glass if given the chance, but energy bolts? Not his M.O. The Pied Piper? He'd play a tune on his flute and force me to take a long run off a short pier. Captain Cold? He'd love to turn me into a Flashsicle. But burning me? Definitely not his style. I knew the Cheetah, if given the chance, would strangle the life out of Wonder Woman and the Joker would gladly put a bullet into Batman, but I'd always taken some sort of perverse pride knowing my rogue's gallery of foes seemed to possess a greater theatricality in orchestrating their attacks. Crisis on Infinite Earths
It never prevented me from stopping them as quickly as I could, but their ingeniously complex plans actually made my battles with them a little more interesting than taking on your common variety thug. This attack, however, was devoid of their usually demented elan, which proved to me none of them were responsible.
I wasn't getting anywhere. I knew how I died, so, for the present, I put aside the who.
My next question was: where did I die?
That was when I realized the world surrounding me was out of focus. There was light and color, but everything was swirling around me like I was inside a kaleidoscope.
Images blurred past faster than even I could see, and it wasn't just the world that was moving.
I was running faster than sound, faster than light, faster than I'd ever attempted before, and I didn't even know it.
I wasn't on Earth. I wasn't in space. I was in some place I'd never been.
I also accepted that I was very calm, as if I belonged here. Although I knew I would soon be dead, at this precise moment I still existed. I wasn't in heaven and my calmness belied any possibility of this being hell. So, where was here? And how did I get here?
Suddenly, I remembered.
The wall of white energy.
Two
Iwant to talk about Iris.
She was a reporter, I was a policeman. We met over the death of a mobster; she was hunting for a juicy murder story, but I ruled his death a mundane suicide. She distrusted cops; we existed to make her job difficult. I disliked reporters; they cared less for facts than for headlines. We were natural enemies.
She glared at me. "Look, I need one picture. Just say yes and I'll be out of your crew cut in thirty seconds." Her eyes lit up with righteous indignation as she planned to the last detail how to kill me if I turned her down.
"When we're done." I was, as always, polite and professional. "No photographers will be allowed in until then."
"My deadline's in five minutes." She wasn't going anywhere.
"It's going to be another hour. Trust me, he'll still be dead."
"C'mon...."
I needed to do my work without interruption. "Officer, please move these people behind the tape."
"Dammit. You are the most obnoxious, conceited..." I was in love with her five seconds after we met.
It was obvious she was beautiful, which was in no way a turn-off, but there was a fierce intelligence behind her bright hazel-green eyes as well as a deep, wicked gleam that told me this was a woman who enjoyed her life. Iris had a cutting, dirty sense of humor and was easily the only woman who ever made me laugh. It's not that she told jokes per se, she just saw the world in a peculiar skewed way that... tickled me.
The myth of the science geek with his nose permanently buried in a Crisis on Infinite Earths
book, test tube in hand, who couldn't get a date even if he paid for one didn't hold true for me. I'd dated a number of beautiful girls both in high school and college, but Iris was the kind of beautiful I couldn't get out of my mind. Not that I let her know that on our first date. Or the second. Or maybe never enough. I tend not to let my emotions show all that often. That's one of those science geek myths that is true. I don't know anyone who can explain why one falls in love. We certainly shared a few interests, especially movies and music, but we rarely had the same opinions. Politics? Opposite ends of the spectrum. Art? I was into impressionism. She could talk for hours about dada and I still wouldn't get it. She was a reporter who had extensively traveled the world while I was pretty much a homebody stuck in Central City and generally pleased to be there.
I was fairly quiet while Iris, well, quiet wasn't one of those adjectives that readily came to mind. Though we were obviously drawn to each other, it shouldn't, by all rights, have worked out.
If I have any regrets it's that we dated for far too long. Why hadn't I proposed to her after that first picnic lunch? Or during dinner the next night or any time over the next few years? There were so many opportunities and I wasted them all.
What was I waiting for?
The answer should have been obvious. As fast as I am now, that's how slow I used to be. Slow, as in methodical. Take your time, Barry. Be sure before you make a move. Double-check your findings. Then check them all over again.
A necessity in science. A preposterous waste of precious time in life. What would we have been like if we'd gotten married before the lightning shattered those bottles, spraying me with a catalogue of chemicals, turning me into some kind of speed-freak?
Would we have had kids? How old would they be today? Would our lives have been gingerbread, picket-fence normal or would we have been touring the world always in search of a new adventure? I could easily see myself at her side, going wherever the new story was, meeting sultans and pirates and....
... all that incredible stuff I loved reading about in those wonderful, musty old comics.
Usually I don't dwell on those woulda, coulda, shouldas, those life journey regrets; can't change the past, they always say. 12
Marv Wolfman
Though isn't that what I needed to do now?
Change the past.
And change the future.
I had to change the future.
That wall, that wall of white energy.
Antimatter.
Whatever it touched disintegrated instantly.
The newscasts said one million died in the first twenty mi
nutes. I know that estimate was low.
I kissed Iris goodbye, said I'd be back as quickly as I could, then I took off at near light speed.
The wall was more than two hundred feet high and a half mile wide. Skyscrapers disappeared as it engulfed them. And people, they just ceased to be. A beating heart. A life. A child. An elderly couple. A young woman. A frightened man. One moment, a plea for help. The next, nothing. I saved more than one hundred only to see them vanish a heartbeat later in that terrible white wall.
Their deaths were horribly that simple.
Then it came for me. I turned to run but I was surrounded. I sped up my metabolism, hoping to put on enough speed to burst through to the other side. But it was impossible. I was surrounded by silent whiteness. I thought of Iris. The antimatter would soon be coming for her, too. She may already be dead.
For a nanosecond I felt impossibly cold.
Then I felt nothing.
My last thought was that I hadn't told her how much I loved her. Alexander Luthor Earth—3
Alexander Luthor didn't know that in the cosmic crisis already in motion his universe and his world were about to be destroyed, He was also unaware that he had a doppelganger on a world called Earth-1, Lex Luthor, a criminal mastermind who fought a great hero named Superman.
Alex would have been further stunned to know there was a second version of himself on Earth-2, this one an insane scientist named Alexei Luthor. That Luthor would have been more than anxious to destroy his planet, and himself, if it also meant the elimination of his long-fought rival, a much older and slightly less powerful Superman.
Alex's planet, which would be known as Earth-3, was one of the many anomalies that existed in the multiverse. His world was ruled by superpowered criminals such as Ultraman, his world's Superman; Power Ring, Earth-3's Green Lantern, and Owlman, Batman's genetic double, among others.
Unlike the rest of those on his planet, Alexander Luthor, who shared a tenuous DNA relationship with all the other Luthors in the multiverse, had no criminal inclinations. He was a scientist, inarguably his Earth's greatest.
He was twenty-two when he discovered a permanent cure for the six deadliest forms of cancer. By twenty-six, he had eliminated most genetic diseases and by twenty-nine, he had perfected an inexpensive desalinization process.