Publisher: DC
Writer: Grant Morrison Art: Ivan Reis/Joe Prado/Neil Ruffino
Rating: 3.4/5

Multiversity is Grant Morrison’s Crisis epic. Much like the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, some awful threat is ripping through the Multiverse and devouring worlds. And it’s fun. He’s getting to set down the road map of the New 52’s multiverse, and naturally is pulling from all kinds of Silver Age stories and characters as well as his own and others. For instance, much of the first issue has to do with music, which was a theme he used with Superman during his Final Crisis story, which itself hearkens back to all realities sharing one physical space while vibrating at different frequencies. Which is what allowed Barry Allen to travel between realities way back when.

So for any kind of serious DC fan, old or new, this is a great book.

That being said. It also falls into the trap that a lot of Geoff Johns more recent work tends to. If you’re not a heavy DC fan, if you don’t know about Flash vibrating between realities or who Captain Carrot is or what Lord Havok’s world is supposed to represent; a lot of this first issue is going to fall on deaf ears. I’m probably a fair weather DC fan at best, but for other reasons tend to know about a lot of the ideas and concepts they’ve used over the years.  But to someone that has only read a single earth DC universe which only had an Anti-Monitor and no Monitors, why does Nix Uotan matter? To someone that doesn’t know the origins of Superboy Prime, how much sense does the young man living on a “normal” Earth devoid of superhumans make?

It’s not impenetrable by any means but I’m just getting to the point in my reading where I like my books to rely less and less on nostalgia.

But that’s just me.