Superman Poster #21 FRAMED Supergirl Crisis on Infinte Earths #7 (1985) George Perez

Description

You are purchasing the item pictured, framed. Priority mail, tracking and $50 insurance is included with purchase. Item will be bagged to protect from dust, packed in packing peanuts and boxed. Just open box and hang it on the wall…makes a perfect gift!

For comics fans of a certain age, the image of a weeping Superman with the broken body of Supergirl in his arms, while a veritable who’s who of the DC Universe looks on from the background is THE signature cover of the 1980s. The concept of a wailing super hero modeled on Michelangelo’s Pieta was nothing new in comics; George Perez himself had even drawn a couple. But Crisis of Infinite Earths #7 may have been the most powerful, in part because of the iconic nature of the characters involved, the supple power of Perez’s line, and the total lack of unnecessary text. Plans had been afoot to kill off Supergirl for several years, even before her eponymous title declined saleswise and a big-screen adaptation starring the immortal Helen Slater crashed and burned in 1984. But that vigorous shake given to DC’s notoriously byzantine continuity by the Crisis miniseries provided Perez and writer Marv Wolfman with the license to do the unthinkable: kill off a major member of the Superman family. And thus a classic cover was born. “Before Crisis it seemed that half of Kyrpton had survived the explosion. We had Superman, Supergirl, Krypto, the Phantom Zone criminals, the bottle city of Kandor and many others. Our goal was to make Superman unique. We went back to his origin and made Kal-El the only survivor of Krypton. That, sadly was why Supergirl had to die.” – Marv Wolfman. “Crisis on Infinite Earths” is a 40 issue Pre-Crisis and a 59 issue Official/Unofficial Crisis crossover event and an eponymous 12-issue American comic book limited series (identified as a “12-part maxi-series”), produced by DC Comics in 1985 to simplify its then 50-year-old continuity. The series was written by Marv Wolfman and illustrated by George Pérez (pencils/layouts), along with Mike DeCarlo, Dick Giordano, and Jerry Ordway (who shared inking/embellishing chores). The series removed the concept of the Multiverse in the fictional DC Universe, and depicted the deaths of such long-standing superheroes as Supergirl and the Barry Allen incarnation of the Flash. As such, it is one of the most important events in the DC Universe, and continuity in the DCU is typically divided into pre-Crisis and post-Crisis periods. The title of the series was inspired by earlier crossover stories involving the multiple parallel Earths of the Multiverse, such as “Crisis on Earth-Two” and “Crisis on Earth-Three”, but instead of lasting two to five issues and involving members from many superhero teams from many parallel worlds, it involved virtually every significant character from every parallel universe in DC’s history. It in turn inspired the titles of four subsequent DC crossover series: Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! (1994), Identity Crisis (2004), Infinite Crisis (2005–2006), and Final Crisis (2008). The story introduces readers to two near-omnipotent beings, the good Monitor and the evil Anti-Monitor, who had been created as a result of the same experiment that created the Multiverse. The Monitor made cameo appearances in various DC comic book series for two years preceding the publication of the series. At first, he appears to be a new supervillain, but with the onset of the Crisis, he is revealed to be working on a desperate plan to save the entire Multiverse from destruction at the hands of the Anti-Monitor. The Crisis series depicts the efforts of DC Comics’ superheroes to stop the Anti-Monitor’s plan to reign supreme as the ultimate ruler of all. Under the initial guidance of the Monitor, a select group of heroes is assigned to protect massive “tuning forks” designed to merge the surviving Earths into one that could be protected from the antimatter that has already annihilated untold numbers of alternate Earths. Eventually, the conflict grows and nearly every DC hero becomes involved in the battle. The Monitor is murdered by his own assistant, Harbinger, while one of her duplicates is temporarily possessed by one of the Anti-Monitor’s “shadow demons.” However, he expects the attack and allows it to happen so that his death will release enough energy to project the last five parallel Earths (the homes of the known DC Universe) into a temporary Limbo universe. In-between, the Anti-Monitor recruits Psycho-Pirate to his cause, (who at the time had not yet been entered into the Limbo universe following the absorption of Earths 1 and 2 into the Limbo universe), and even temporarily infuses part of his power into him to control the other three Earths (4, S, and X). This fails when all five Earths are now inside the Limbo universe. Harbinger then recruits a group of those five remaining Earths’ heroes to lead an assault on the Anti-Monitor in the antimatter universe under her guidance, using Alex Luthor’s antimatter powers to open a portal between the Limbo and Antimatter universes Alexander Luthor, Jr., and Pariah acting as the guide to track down the Anti-Monitor at his fortress, where he was using a converter powered by stellar energy to force the last 5 earths together, thereby destroying them once and for all (given he learned what the Monitor had done to save those worlds and their respective universes). The heroes triumph by destroying the converter, and he’s forced to retreat,after a pitched battle with Supergirl leaves him desperately wounded and Supergirl dying minutes later. George Perez (born June 9, 1954) is an American writer and illustrator of comic books, known for his work on titles including The Avengers, Teen Titans, and Wonder Woman. In 1980, while still drawing The Avengers for Marvel, Perez began working for their rival DC Comics. Offered the art chores for the launch of The New Teen Titans, written by Wolfman, Perez’ real incentive was the opportunity to draw Justice League of America (an ambition of Pérez’ which “seemed like a natural progress from the Avengers”). Long-time Justice League artist Dick Dillin died right around that time, providing an opportunity for Perez to step in as regular artist. While Perez’s stint on the JLA was popular with fans, his career took off with the New Teen Titans. The New Teen Titans was launched in a special preview in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980). This incarnation of the Titans was intended to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s increasingly popular X-Men comic, and Wolfman and Perez indeed struck gold. In August 1984, a second series of The New Teen Titans was launched by Wolfman and Perez. Moreover, Perez’s facility with layouts, details, and faces improved enormously during his four years on the book, making him one of the most popular artists in comics as evidenced by the numerous industry awards he would receive during this time. Perez took a leave of absence from The New Teen Titans in 1984 to focus on his next project with Marv Wolfman, DC’s 1985 50th-anniversary event, Crisis on Infinite Earths. Crisis purportedly featured every single character DC owned, in a story which radically restructured the DC universe’s continuity. In 1985, DC Comics named Perez as one of the honorees in the company’s 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great. Perez revealed in September 2013 that long term problems with his vision had reached the point where he had become essentially blind in his left eye due to hemorrhaging. Laser surgery was ruled out as an option the next month, leading to November 2013 operating room procedure. “According to my eye doctor the surgery went well and I have already noticed a small bit of improvement in the vision of my left eye,” Perez wrote on Facebook. “Before the operation, when I was asked ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’, I couldn’t even see the person’s hand. Now I can make out the number of fingers, albeit still fuzzy.”