Crisis on Infinite Earths
The Crisis on Infinite Earths is an event that features in DC Comics.
Contents |
History
Origin
The Crisis on Infinite Earths was a reality-changing series of events centered around the efforts of the Anti-Monitor to destroy the matter multiverse and thus attain ultimate power. In the wake of the event (later known as simply "the Crisis"), thousands of universes, and all the people and things within them, were erased, and many heroes and villains from the worlds that survived were wounded, irrevocably changed or outright slain.
The Monitor came to sense the coming crisis growing near and dispatched Harbinger to recruit various heroes from across the Multiverse to help fight it. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #1)
Due to the actions of the Anti-Monitor, the cosmic being had created an anti-matter wave that was consuming the Multiverse. The antimatter wave started sweeping across parallel universes, erasing entire worlds. Earth-3 was among the worlds impacted by the wave with Dr. Alexander Luthor and Lois Lane sending their new born son Alexander Luthor Jr. in a rocket ship into the wider Multiverse so that he could survive the destruction of his world. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #1)
With the coming crisis, the Monitor decided that he needed heroes to aid him and had Harbinger separate herself into various replicants that went across the Muliverse to recruit champions to combat the threat. He then mobilized his assistant Harbinger to gather heroes and villains from across different Earths to resist the destruction. Among those summoned were characters like Superman of Earth-2, Blue Beetle, Firestorm, and the Outsiders. The early stages focused on the Monitor explaining the scale of the threat and beginning to organize a united front, while the Anti-Monitor’s shadow demons appeared to sabotage their efforts and prepare for the wave’s expansion. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #1)
On board the Monitor's satellite, the Monitor warns his assemblage that a wave of antimatter energy is sweeping through the Multiverse, consuming entire realities. He has established certain devices throughout the various realities designed to halt the antimatter wall. He requires the heroes to travel to each reality and activate each of the devices. Nobody truly trusts the Monitor, but they realize that they have little choice but to heed his warnings. Superman of Earth-Two, King Solovar and Dawnstar travel to Earth-AD, the world of Kamandi. They find the adventurer, Kamandi, scaling the side of an immense golden tower. The heroes realize that this is of the devices that the Monitor spoke of. A horde of Shadow Demons arrives to sabotage the tower, but the heroes manage to drive them away. Arion, Obsidian and the Psycho-Pirate arrive in ancient Atlantis. Suddenly, Pariah arrives, but quickly falls sway to the Psycho-Pirate's emotion manipulation. Arion turns his power against the Psycho-Pirate and frees Pariah of his influence. Psycho-Pirate suddenly disappears and rematerializes in a darkened room. A deep voice bellows forth to him, commanding him to follow his every order. Psycho-Pirate, terrified by this mysterious individual, meekly complies. Meanwhile, back on the Monitor's satellite, the Monitor asks Harbinger to retrieve Alexander Luthor from his nursery. Harbinger is shocked to discover that Alex, formerly an infant, is now the age of a young child. Suddenly, the dark influence of the Shadow Demon takes control of her, commanding her to betray the Monitor. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #2)
The Monitor revealed more of his strategy by distributing giant tuning fork-like towers across time and space to anchor universes and slow down the antimatter wave. Heroes such as Batman, the Flash, and others were tasked with protecting these devices from shadow demons. Meanwhile, villains began to suspect opportunities to exploit the crisis for their own gain, foreshadowing alliances and betrayals to come. The scale of the conflict escalated further as the heroes began battling not only cosmic destruction but also each other’s mistrust and the manipulations of the Anti-Monitor through his agents. Barry Allen of Earth-One encounters the Antimatter wave before being captured by the Anti-Monitor. On Earth 1, various heroes attempt to save people from the approaching Anti Matter wave. During WWII, the Monitor's towers appear during a battle in which Sgt. Rock, Haunted Tank, and the Losers are fighting together against Nazis. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #3)
As Supergirl joins a despondent Batgirl on top of a city building on Earth-One, trying to encourage her before she is called to rescue a plane that falls apart approaching the antimatter wave, Pariah arrives on Earth-Six where he confronts the royal superhero family of Lord Volt, Lady Quark, and Princess Fern as the antimatter wave destroys their world as well. Lady Quark watches helplessly as both her husband and daughter are consumed in the wave while Pariah transports her safely out of the universe. Meanwhile, the Monitor prepares to create a new hero to help him in his quest. By firing an ion-based energy ray into an unstable star in the Vegan system in the Earth-One universe, he causes a powerful flare of solar energy to travel to Earth. It reaches the observatory of Dr. Kimiyo Hoshi, who berates her staff as she uses the telescope to observe the destructive phenomenon present. She screams as the flare strikes her and then mysteriously transports her out of the lab, leaving her fellow workers and her father wondering what happened to her. In the dark place where the Psycho-Pirate is taken prisoner, the shadowy figure watches on the screen the Red Tornado in action and uses his power to teleport him to the same place. On Earth-Two in the time of Camelot, Firestorm and Killer Frost who was still under the love thrall of Psycho-Pirate to get help from the Shining Knight to protect the cosmic tuning fork planted there in that time period, as Vandal Savage watches from a window. The three heroes engage the Shadow Demons in battle, but it is all for naught as they merge and form a giant Shadow Demon. This also happens in the other time periods that the cosmic tuning forks and the Shadow Demons appear. In the present time of Earth-One in Metropolis, the superheroes see yet another cosmic tuning fork appear, though this time with a female in a costume similar to that of Dr. Light. She tries to warn the heroes approaching her to stay away from the tower, and blasts them away with a burst of light. Katana, who understands Japanese, realizes that this Dr. Light is not their enemy, but an ally. Superman, who is able to converse in Japanese, tells Dr. Light that he knows the situation they are in and they only want to help. While on board the satellite, the Monitor watches the heroes valiantly but vainly try to protect the cosmic tuning forks, as Pariah emerges to find that the Monitor was expecting him. He reveals to Pariah that he was responsible for his survival when he should have died for his deeds, but before he could say anything more, Harbinger appears, obviously not in control of herself. She strikes the Monitor with a powerful blast that sends him hurtling down platforms until he finally lands dead. Pariah mourns as he realizes that with the death of the Monitor came the death of all hope. At that moment, the heroes of both Earths One and Two can only watch as their worlds, consumed by antimatter, fade into nothingness. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #4)
The multiversal crisis intensified with widespread destruction and key events. The issue primarily focused on the Anti-Monitor's escalating campaign of annihilation and the desperate measures taken by the heroes of various Earths to stop him. However, the Monitor knew this would happen and his death releases enough energy to project two of the last five parallel Earths into a protective limbo that nullifies the wave. The most prominent and tragic event was the ultimate sacrifice of the Flash (Barry Allen); having been captured and taken to the Anti-Monitor's antimatter universe, Barry managed to break free and used his incredible superspeed to single-handedly destroy the Anti-Monitor's gargantuan antimatter cannon, running so fast that he disintegrated, but successfully saved the remaining positive-matter universes from instantaneous destruction. Concurrently, other heroes fought valiantly across numerous fronts, with Supergirl engaging the Anti-Monitor directly on his home turf, where she valiantly gave her own life in a fierce battle to damage his armor and temporarily halt his assault. The episode of the story was filled with loss and desperation as the remaining Earths were seemingly consumed by the wall of antimatter, leaving the heroes to face what they believed was certain, ultimate defeat. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #5) The situation became even more dire after the sacrifices of The Flash and Supergirl. The remaining heroes of the multiverse learned that the Monitor had died at the hands of a Shadow Demon-possessed Harbinger, leaving them without their guide and protector. The Anti-Monitor recruited Psycho-Pirate to his cause, infusing him with part of his power to manipulate the heroes of Earth-4, Earth-S and Earth-X against the rest; this fails when all five Earths enter the limbo universe. The Anti-Monitor then increased the power of the Psycho-Pirate, whom he had captured and held in his antimatter universe, commanding him to use his emotion-altering abilities to spread fear and paranoia among the heroes and populations of the final three existing Earths: Earth-One, Earth-Two, and Earth-Four. Chaos erupted across the remaining worlds as heroes began battling each other under the influence of the Psycho-Pirate's powers, while Brainiac and Lex Luthor of Earth-One coordinated their own villainous plans, taking advantage of the global turmoil. Across various locations, minor heroes and villains fell victim to the escalating war and the spreading antimatter wave. Amid this confusion, Harbinger and Alexander Luthor Jr. of Earth-Three realized that the remaining worlds, though temporarily linked in a 'netherverse' of the Monitor's creation, were still in danger of colliding and destroying each other unless the time distortions could be resolved. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #6)
In the end, the remaining five universes- Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-4, Earth-S and Earth-X- were merged into a single reality ("Earth-Sigma") with a fixed past and future (or so was said), and the Anti-Monitor himself finally destroyed.
Post-Crisis
After the Crisis reorganized reality, the event itself was rewritten to be the Anti-Monitor's attack on time, where he hoped to force all history to merge into a single, simultaneous point, in order to destroy the entire matter universe in a single blow. The true events of the Crisis remained known to only a select few, such as the Time Trapper and the Linear Men.
Post-Flashpoint
Following the Flashpoint, a new version of reality was created with a different history of events.
Overview
In appearance, Crisis on Infinite Earths was a sprawling cosmic event spanning multiple universes triggered by the on-going conflict between the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor, depicting both the annihilation of entire realities and the desperate battles of heroes trying to stave off oblivion. Its imagery alternated between the quiet devastation of entire worlds erased in white antimatter light and massive splash pages of armies of heroes and villains fighting side by side. The Crisis emerged as a cosmic tempest of antimatter—a primordial storm sweeping through the multiverse with indifferent destruction. Vast waves of darkness engulfed realities, leaving behind voids where entire histories, heroes, and civilizations had been—until only a single beacon of light remained. (Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #1)
The Crisis manifested visually as flickering panel after panel in white or black, each representing an Earth being obliterated, until everything converged into one amalgamated world. As the antimatter front advanced, the skies themselves began to fracture: dimensional tears opened in thin air, bathed in sickly orange light, while streaks of dark cosmic energy pulsed like wounds in the heavens. Matter collapsed inward, cities dissolved into featureless ruins, and even cosmic structures like the Source Wall trembled in response. The visual spectacle was not one of explosions or battle, but of annihilation—meticulously precise destruction that left no rubble, only absence. It was an unrelenting spectacle of erasure: histories unmade, timelines redrawn, and the vast multiverse reduced in stages to a single battered point of existence. Eventually, the surviving embers of reality converged into New Earth, a singular reconstruction forged in the tempest’s wake. This fused world retained echoes of its predecessors but carried the weight of loss. It represented both a phoenix risen from cosmic cinders and a testament to what had been sacrificed—universes erased, heroes fallen, and countless lives extinguished. For those who remained, this was no neat outcome; it was a fragile truce struck at the edge of oblivion, a single beacon of hope flickering against the memory of infinite darkness.
The Crisis had been sparked by the Anti‑Monitor, a being of unimaginable cosmic scale born from the antimatter universe. His insatiable hunger led him to trigger antimatter waves that consumed reality itself, aiming to replace positive matter existence with his own antithetical domain. Opposing him stood the Monitor, his parallel-force counterpart, who forged a desperate coalition of heroes and even villains across multiple worlds, preparing them against annihilation.
The Crisis brought unimaginable consequences. Realities were erased without remorse. Heroes such as Supergirl and the Flash sacrificed themselves, as did Golden-Age icons like Earth-Two’s Batman and others, in order to slow or halt the Antimatter wave. Amidst tragedy, only five Earths remained—Earths 1, 2, S, 4, and X—which were merged into a solitary reality known as “New Earth.” Across this new Earth, histories were rewritten: Superman became the lone Kryptonian, bestselling origin-of-heroes altered, and legacy heroes like the Justice Society were integrated as mentor figures to newer generations. Paradoxes, lost Earths, and haunting memories lived on through characters like Psycho-Pirate, who alone remembered the vanished multiverse.
In the aftermath, characters found themselves reborn on New Earth, equipped with revised shared histories. Superman's tragic sabbatical following Krypton's destruction was changed. Wonder Woman no longer had centuries of WWII adventures; Batman became a shadowy legend revered by Gotham's citizens. Flash was inspired by the legacy of Jay Garrick, forging a lineage of speed heroes . Thus, the Crisis served not merely as an ending, but as a new origin: a recalibrated foundation for building modern mythologies in a unified, streamlined world.
Participants
- Anti-Monitor :
- Monitor :
- Harbinger :
- Pariah :
- Psycho-Pirate :
- Alexander Luthor Jr. :
- Kal-L :
- Superboy-Prime :
- Supergirl :
- Brainiac :
- Darkseid :
- Barry Allen :
Notes
- The Crisis on Infinite Earths was created by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez where they made their first appearance in Crisis on Infinite Earths v1 #1 (April, 1985).
- More specifics on the twists and turns of the Crisis can be found in the Anti-Monitor's entry.
In other media
Television
- In the Arrowverse, the Crisis on Infinite Earths appeared in the setting of the live-action television series during their sixth annual crossover event.
Films
- In Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Crisis on Infinite Earths was depicted in the setting of the multi-part animated film.
Appearances
- Crisis on Infinite Earths v1: (1985)
