Chris and Reggie’s Cosmic Treadmill, Episode #50
Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One (of Five)
- Crisis on Infinite Earths #1 (April, 1985)
- Crisis on Infinite Earths #2 (May, 1985)
- Marv Wolfman & George Perez
As we were approaching our landmark fiftieth episode of the Cosmic Treadmill, we racked our brains trying to decide the perfect “milestone” comic book event to cover. I mean, Crisis was probably the first thing that popped into both our minds… but, was that really “fiftieth episode” worthy? Like, shouldn’t Crisis be saved for like our hundredth episode?
Well, the fact that we were a tiny comic book podcast that actually managed to make it fifty episodes when so many other shows peter out long before… and even fewer make it into the triple-digits, we decided not to put off a day that might’ve never come. It did, of course… but, that’s a story for another day.
This Crisis series of episodes that we’ll be looking at over the next several days, was this ever-growing beast of a project… we honestly assumed that we’d get it all done in a single (somewhat lengthy) episode! This one quickly blew up… and sorta-kinda took over our lives for a bit. Expanding from a single two-ish hour long show to a five-part, twelve-hour experience… plus an added episode of Weird Comics History wherein we spent a couple of hours going deep on the pre-Crisis DC Multiverse (you will believe Lois Lane and Superman could get married… in so many different ways!)!
Speaking of pre-Crisis stuff… with this very episode, we began working in earnest at putting up our show-blog. In order to give a bit of “exclusive content” over there, I went through all of the pre-Crisis appearances of the enigmatic Monitor. I shared pictures of all of those appearances over there… and in the interest of completionism, I will do the same here. I hope you enjoy!
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Pre-Crisis Monitor Appearances
To our knowledge this is every pre-Crisis appearance of The Monitor. Did we miss any out? Please let us know as we will endeavor to make this as complete a resource as possible.
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From New Teen Titans #21 (July, 1982)
Marv Wolfman / George Perez |
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From New Teen Titans Annual #2 (August, 1983)
Marv Wolfman / George Perez |
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From Green Lantern (vol.2) #173 (February, 1984)
Len Wein / Dave Gibbons |
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From Green Lantern (vol.2) #176 (May, 1984)
Len Wein / Dave Gibbons |
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From Green Lantern (vol.2) #178 (July, 1984)
Len Wein / Dave Gibbons |
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From Flash #338 (October, 1984)
Cary Bates / Carmine Infantino |
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From Flash #339 (November, 1984)
Cary Bates / Carmine Infantino |
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From Tales of the Teen Titans #47 (October, 1984)
Marv Wolfman / George Perez |
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From Blue Devil #5 (October, 1984)
Dan Mishkin / Gary Cohn / Paris Cullins |
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From Fury of Firestorm #28 (October, 1984)
Gerry Conway / Rafael Kayanan |
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From Action Comics #560 (October, 1984)
Paul Kupperberg / Alex Saviuk |
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From Batman and the Outsiders #14 (October, 1984)
Mike W. Barr / Bill Willingham |
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From Batman and the Outsiders #15 (November, 1984)
Mike W. Barr / Trevor Von Eeden |
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From Justice League of America #232 (November, 1984)
Kurt Busiek / Alan Kupperberg |
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From Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #317 (November, 1984)
Paul Levitz / Mindy Newell / Terry Shoemaker |
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From Saga of the Swamp Thing #30 (November, 1984)
Alan Moore / Steve Bissette |
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From Wonder Woman #321 (November, 1984)
Dan Mishkin / Don Heck |
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From Infinity, Inc. #8 (November, 1984)
Roy Thomas / Dann Thomas / Jerry Ordway |
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From All-Star Squadron #40 (December, 1984)
Roy Thomas / Richard Howell |
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From DC Comics Presents #76 (December, 1984)
Dan Mishkin / Gary Cohn / Eduardo Barreto |
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From Superman #402 (December, 1984)
Cary Bates / Curt Swan |
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From Swamp Thing #31 (December, 1984)
Alan Moore / Rick Veitch |
From Justice League of America #234 (January, 1985)
Gerry Conway / Chuck Patton
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From Superman #403 (January, 1985)
Paul Kupperberg / Curt Swan |
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From World’s Finest Comics #311 (January, 1985)
Joey Cavalieri / Stan Woch |
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From Wonder Woman #323 (January, 1985)
Dan Mishkin / Don Heck |
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From Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #319 (January, 1985)
Paul Levitz / Terry Shoemaker |
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From Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes #320 (February, 1985)
Paul Levitz / Terry Shoemaker |
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From Amethyst #2 (February, 1985)
Dan Mishkin / Gary Cohn / Ric Estrada |
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From Action Comics #564 (February, 1985)
Paul Kupperberg / Alex Saviuk |
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From DC Comics Presents #78 (February, 1985)
Marv Wolfman / Curt Swan |
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From G.I. Combat #274 (February, 1985)
Robert Kanigher / Sam Glanzman |
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From G.I. Combat #275 (March, 1985)
Robert Kanigher / Sam Glanzman |
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From Warlord #91 (March, 1985)
Cary Burkett / Dan Jurgens |
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From Jonah Hex #90 (April, 1985)
Michael Fleisher / Gray Morrow |
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From Batman #384 (June, 1985)
Doug Moench / Rick Hoberg |
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From Tales of the Teen Titans #58 (October, 1985)
Marv Wolfman / Chuck Patton |
As we were approaching our landmark fiftieth episode of the Cosmic Treadmill, we racked our brains trying to decide the perfect “milestone” comic book event to cover. I mean, Crisis was probably the first thing that popped into both our minds… but, was that really “fiftieth episode” worthy? Like, shouldn’t Crisis be saved for like our hundredth episode?
This is a daunting task to listen to, so I can only imaging what a task it must have been to put it together. An excellent episode. I really wish that two morrows would publish a companion style book with as much information as you have in this episode.
Now that I have made it through part 1 I guess I'm in for the next 4 parts.
Thank you for checking it out, Chris! This series of episodes was definitely a labor of love… we piled in the hours on this one. One of the anecdotes we'd often share when discussing our CRISIS series was that our *script* for CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS had more pages than… CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS (which is actually true!). This series was very important to us… and we only hope we did it proper service!
Episode Two is what we in the biz call "a doozy"… it's a long'un, and I really hope you enjoy it!
If anyone from TwoMorrows IS reading this… I'd really love to get the names Chris and Reggie immortalized in print… hit me up, and I'll get to work on that companion book!
Finally listened to this. Couple things. You mentioned Green Arrow had a backup feature in Detective Comics in the 50s but that's incorrect. His backup feature was in World's Finest and Adventure Comics. He wouldn't have a regular backup feature in Detective Comics until the 80s. Secondly you said there was no Earth 4 but there was. That's where the Charlton heroes were from.