Tales From The Dark Multiverse: Crisis On Infinite Earths #1 Review

The Last Days Of The Justice League

Written By: Steve Orlando

Art By: Mike Perkins, Andy Troy, Troy Peteri

Cover Price: $5.99

Release Date: December 15, 2020

Tempus Fuginaut is ready to tell us another tale deep in the Dark Multiverse, where nobody gets a happy ending, and in this tale of death and destruction, we're going to be looking at the Crisis On Infinite Earths..... at least that's what the title says. In reality, we're going to be looking at a dark version of a story that took place after the original Crisis called, The Last Days of the Justice Society. I guess that title does scream bestseller when it's on the shelves when you through the Dark Multiverse moniker in front of it. Let's jump into this issue and see how this story plays out and if it makes a lick of sense. Dive on in.

In trying to determine the "Dark What If" of this story we have to look at a bunch of things. First off, during the Crisis we find out that instead of Earth-One surviving as the seed Universe that others were merge their history into, it was Earth-Two that survived and because of this for some reason, (bare with me) when the Spectre's energy shot out through all of time and space and powered up Hitler's Spear of Destiny that brought upon the end of the world, it was the Justice League of America that traveled to Asgard to stop Ragnarok instead of the Justice Society like we originally saw in the story, The Last Days of the Justice Society....... and somehow because of this, our heroes, which would have taken on the bodies of the Norse Gods (continue to bare with me, that original story was weird as hell), they were unable to defeat the likes of Loki, Fenir, Surtur and a mess of other monsters and Ragnarok was able to come to Earth and continue, unlike where the Justice Society were stuck in an endless loop, where they would keep the forces of destruction at bay forever to ensure the safety of the world.  

So the JLA has been defeated and our story becomes the All-Star Squadron, later after the first battle the Justice Society of Earth against Surtur in a bid to stop him from destroying the world...... which now essentially just becomes a bloodier version of the original The Last Days of the Justice Society story, where we spend the majority of the book just watching our Golden Age heroes go down fighting until a sacrifice is made to save what little the world has left, which dooms one of our heroes and also makes it so the salvation of Earth is based on the dooming of countless others throughout the cosmos. Not very hero-y.  

All in all, the art in this issue is great in all its gruesomeness since that's what it really seemed to go for but the gruesomeness is not something that makes a great story, not to mention the false advertising about what this story was about. The Crisis is over in this and it's time to move on and move on we do to a new bout of destruction that goes on page after page and like a lot of the Tales From The Dark Multiverse stories that take place around this era, I don't know how "new reader friendly" this will be for everyone who isn't familiar with the original story this "Dark What If" is based on or who may not be as familiar with some of the lesser-known All-Star Squadron characters that make up this book. Even with my problems with how this story works though and as someone is who familiar with the characters and source material, there is some fun to be had in this dark battle against all hope because while it doesn't exactly work in my mind with how this would have started, the bleak look at these heroes is something that you don't get to see all the time and while death and destruction make up the majority of this book, the quiet moments of reflection for our characters in what they want to achieve and thinking back about what they lost are some moments in this story that really stood out to me.

Bits and Pieces:

While this is less Crisis On Infinite Earths and more The Last Days of the Justice Society, the story that we got in this is something that feels right out of the Dark Multiverse with how bleak it is and while that may not be for everyone, it is a chance to see our favorite and not so favorite Golden Age heroes get together to save a world where the more modern heroes fell in battle. The art is great and there are some decent character moments in the story, but the over-the-top death and blood seemed excessive and the setup for the story didn't work as well as I would have liked.  

6.8/10