Examining the popular “comic book crisis” itself is recognizing the tradition of telling comic tales of the heroes eternal. With that said, during Joseph Campbell’s “Road of Trials” – the preliminary spark in the crisis or epic crossover of champions – the heroes are chosen and tested. For example, in DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths and Marvel Comics’ Secret Wars, individual superheroes were decided upon throughout the universe by The Monitor and The Beyonder, respectively, to face up to the challenge of the criminal element permeating the cosmos. This, in turn, continues until the stakes are driven higher and more intense during the comic book event itself, as the next chapter will reflect.
Nowhere else is this more evident than comic book wunderkind James Shooter and DEFIANT’s Comicfest ’93 Philadelphia giveaway, Defiant Genesis #0 – or as it was released to the public in February 1994, The Origin of the Defiant Universe. This important chapter introduces the players of the DEFIANT Universe, their challenges, and the consequences at stake coming from the nearly completed, but unpublished, comic book event, SCHISM.
Shooter and illustrator Barry Windsor-Smith’s Solar: Alpha and Omega storyline appearing in the first 10 issues of Valiant’s Solar: Man of the Atom saw the beginning of the comic book publisher’s Unity event in preface and prologue, as the actors were cast and Solar became the White King, while his opposite, Mothergod, took on her role as the Dark Queen. However, sometimes, heroes are tested one against the other. In Marvel Comics’ Contest of Champions – the first companywide crossover in comic book history – heroes were pit against heroes in a covert competition by powers beyond comprehension.
These being as they may, it is in the pages of Marvel’s The Thing #10 where the creative team of John Byrne and Ron Wilson reintroduced unlikely hero and man-monster, Ben Grimm, and his fellow members of the Fantastic Four. This first family of comicdom experienced the power and sheer strangeness of The Beyonder himself – and are transported after this initial initiation to the realm that is forever known as “Battleworld.”
And, as we will see in the next episode, “The Comic Book Event,” that battle, among others, is ready to begin!
-Scott Braden
