SiC 08 — Losers Gonna Lose (03:07:1985)

This episode makes it even more clear to me that a lot of my confusion while reading these comics at the time they were published is the apparent lack of coordination between the “Crisis” series and the “regular” comics. We see the expanding white wall in Crisis #3, but no such thing, really, in DC Comics Presents #82 or JLA #239. I also think the ominous-looking Monitor on the cover of the Crisis book definitely contributed to my (then) continuing confusion over whether he was a “good guy” or a “bad guy”. Maybe the folks at the helm of DC at the time were trying to create dramatic tension, or maybe they just didn’t have their act together, but, yeah, I was still confused.

I certainly did enjoy the various teams of DC characters sent throughout time, space, and other dimensions. I loved seeing some of the less well-known characters teamed with the more famous heroes, and some of the newer characters teamed with the more established ones, but the time travel aspect created, for me, some real questions: If there were those white (antimatter?) walls in the 19th and 20th Centuries, destroying Earth-1, or at least parts of it, how was there another such wall in the 30th Century? Wouldn’t the Earth have already been destroyed by then? Time travel stories are fun, but often generate headache-inducing paradoxes.

Like you, I enjoyed the ending to the Adam Strange team-up, when Superman got to “commune” with the souls of the Kryptonians. I know he’d had Supergirl, the Kandorians and even the Phantom Zone criminals to talk about Krypton with, but this seemed mor of a spiritual experience for him, which we don’t often get to see.

The Justice League story brought up more time travel confusion, with the missing three weeks for the Leaguers who’d been on Earth-2 for only a matter of hours. This did actually tie into the Crisis storyline, with Martian Manhunter’s bit of exposition, but, having the Flash bring them back to “redo” the missing weeks raises the question: Well, if they *were* around during those three weeks, why didn’t they show up when the Justice League needed them? That’s part of the reason for the formation of the new League. If they *did* show up, the new League wouldn’t exist, and if they *didn’t* show up, what were they doing? Time travel is a risky business for writers, I think.