By various (DC Comics)
ISBN 1-84576-552-4
After the never-ending calamity of the DC Infinite Crisis event, the company re-set the time line of all their publications to begin One Year Later. This enabled them to retool their characters as they saw fit, provide a jumping on point for new converts and also give themselves some narrative wiggle-room.
They began to fill that room with a hugely ambitious weekly miniseries which would tell the story of that “Lost Year†from the point of view of many of the company’s minor players, setting up events and triggers for an even more calamitous crossover event at its end. Rather than get into specific events it’s probably fairer all around to summarise the various plot strands in broad terms as this is a very impressive project with lots to entice and entertain, and one you really should experience at first hand.
At the end of Infinite Crisis a shell-shocked planet Earth remained, but reality had again altered, with only a select few knowing how or why. But there were some major changes that everybody could see. Superman, Batman (as well as Robin and Nightwing) and Wonder Woman were gone. Superboy and many other heroes, as well as a huge number of ordinary people were dead. Blüdhaven had been bombed into toxic rubble, and many other cities were almost as badly damaged. Magic had broken loose around the globe, unleashing monsters and mayhem. Moreover, a large number of superheroes were simply unaccounted for. But life goes on and the survivors began to pick up the pieces…
In the first 13 instalments collected here ex- Gotham City cop Renee Montoya meets the enigmatic hero The Question and begins a hunt for Intergang thugs and her own future. It is a quest that will take her to the ends of the Earth. In Kahndaq it will bring her to the attention of hard-line super-despot Black Adam who is busy marshalling an international alliance of like-minded rulers and rogue states, until he meets a girl who will change his life forever.
Ralph ‘Elongated Man’ Dibney, whilst coming to terms with the murder of his wife, encounters a youth cult that seeks to resurrect the dead. His own loss pales beside the seeming obsession of Wonder Girl who will not accept the death of her beloved Superboy.
Booster Gold is protecting Metropolis and gathering profitable sponsorships until the mysterious Supernova shows the world what true heroism is. John Henry Irons is at odds with his niece Natasha. She wants super-powers and is prepared to get them from Lex Luthor’s Everyman Project even though they are responsible for mutating her uncle into a being of solid metal.
At St. Camillus, a hospital dedicated to meta-human medicine, there is a full emergency when the survivors of the Deep Space mission from Infinite Crisis suddenly return, maimed and exhausted. Unknown to anyone Animal Man, Starfire and a blinded Adam Strange are marooned on a crippled starship light-years from anywhere.
In Gotham City, a new Bat-masked avenger is taking a bite out of the underworld, and all over the planet mad scientists are vanishing…
Written in a tag-team collaboration by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid, story breakdowns by Keith Giffen, drawn by Eddie Barrows, Chris Batista, Joe Bennett, Ken Lashley, Shawn Moll and Todd Nauck, inked by Marlo Alquiza, Draxhall, Jack Jadson, Ruy José, Tom Nguyen, Jimmy Palmiotti and Rob Stull, with colouring by David Baron and Alex Sinclair, lettering by Phil Balsman, Pat Brosseau, Jared K. Fletcher, Travis Lanham, Rob Leigh and Nick J. Napolitano and stunning original covers by J. G. Jones and Alex Sinclair, this is a landmark achievement in American comics and one you should see for yourselves.
© 2006, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.