I know that it is super trendy to hate it. Dial B for Blog - the same comics weblog that spent an insensitive week gushing over Christian messages in comics, and pathetically attempted to convince readers that the first Silver Surfer/Galactus appearance in Fantastic Four was a Jesus story - went absolutely bonkers over Infinite Crisis #3. (And I grabbed some of Dial B's scans for my use, bleah.) Like, f-bombs everywhere bonkers. And when I pointed out on the comments boards the irony that, not one week earlier, Dial B was all sugary-sweet for the Savior, I was admonished for assuming that every story with Christ guest-starring in it was a Christ-is-LORD story. Sigh.

So here's the major plot points and what I thought.

The Secret Society unloads onto Aquaman, and the Spectre destroys a healthy portion of Atlantis. I'll agree with the prevailing sentiment that these pages were difficult to parse. You have two undersea battles here - one with Aquaman in San Diego (Bay? I assume.) and the other with Spectre vs. Tempest and the collected mages of Atlantis. The scene change isn't that obvious since everything underwater is blue-green in both arenas. The biggest comprension issue is when the Spectre smashes one of Atlantis's bubble dome biosphere cities with his hand... it's hard to tell exactly what is happening in that panel because it is small, it straddles the page crease, and there's one of those annoying pre-made sound effect fonts covering much of Spectre's arm. It's a big event and should probably have been given a much bigger panel and at least better page placement.

My overall feeling on Atlantis is a big Who Cares. It's not a place my comics take me very often.

The OMACs invade Paradise Island; the whole place vanishes at Wonder Woman's request. Diana's PR lately has been lousy since Brother Eye keeps replaying her snapping Max Lord's neck on every channel, and the OMACs are furthering the problem by broadcasting the Amazons' retaliatory war. (They have some kind of special purple OMAC-killing cannon now.) Diana figures this out and asks the entire Amazon culture to retreat into some un-named plane away from man's world. There's some talk about how Wonder Woman will never see Paradise Island or the Amazons again, but come on. I don't buy that grave prediction for a minute and neither should you.

Similar to the war on Atlantis, this is just a patented life-changing, holy-crap-the-stakes-are-high moment... and if I was a big Wonder Woman fan, I probably would care more. There is a very nice symbolic page where Diana watches the Island disappear and, yeah, that got me a little bit. I do think that maybe she should have asked Athena to banish the OMACs instead of yanking Paradise Island away.

Batman feels despair and is offered the chance to start over by the Superman of Earth-2... which he declines in grand fashion. This was total kickass. Batman is always the jerk in the corner figuring everything out before everybody else gets their capes out of the closet. He's the smartest guy in the room and he knows it. But this time - with his creation Brother Eye out of control - he has majorly screwed up. Seeing Batman, alone in his cave, fall to his knees having a minor panic attack... that is powerful. And at that moment, when the Batman is weakest, then The Original Super-Hero (capital letters all well-earned) strides in from on high. He's come to enlist "our" Batman in his cause: restoring Earth-2 to dominance. His recruitment speech is impassioned and well-delivered. Superman G1 genuninely believes that the Earth-1-ers have bungled their chance, but by the end of the book, it's apparent that he is being played by his cohorts... which is nice because it means that this Superman won't end up being the true antagonist of the piece.

Batman returns to form, recovers from his brief loss of faith... and whips out his kryptonite ring to keep Superman away from him. There's a panel and a line here that I love... Earth-2 Superman is looking at Batman with a philosophical disappointment (because he knows he won't be able to change Bruce's mind on the matter) and, after pointing out that Earth-1 kryptonite won't affect him, he says "It doesn't hurt me... physically, at least." Ooooh, Bats. You just hurt the Golden Age Superman's feelings!

While the Shadowpact are helping clean up fallout from the Rock of Eternity explosion, a new character is introduced as a probable new Blue Beetle. The scene where this Jaime fellow finds the first Blue Beetle's mystical scarab is eerily similar to the Old Name / New Person scenes that regularly show up in mega-events like Infinite Crisis. Typically, the young unknown adopts an established heroic persona and somehow manages to turn up to help before the story is done. Like in COIE when Yolanda Montez overhears that Wildcat's legs are broken so he can no longer be Wildcat, so she vows to be the New Wildcat. Well, Yolanda, Wildcat got better and you got dead. Jaime, best of luck to you, because Ted Kord was a stupidly popular Beetle. Bringing Ted back would be an unseemly feat - he was shot in the head at point blank range, for crying out loud - but, you know, I think I've seen worse.

What is most interesting about this scene is that Superman (our Superman!) gets a full page pin-up shot. It's one of those bits where he swoops in to save the day, so it's meant to remind us that he truly is selfless and heroic.

Some junk happens in outer space. The Rann-Thanagar War miniseries was so bad that every time IC flashes to a space scene I tune it out. I'm sure something really important is going on at the center of the universe, but I couldn't tell you what it is.

The Flash is happy, therefore he must be doomed. All I can say is, Barry Allen had finally found happiness with Iris before DC put the screws to him in COIE. I already miss Beetle, I'm going to miss Wally West more.

We finally learn why there are two Lex Luthors! I really liked this bit as well, although it starts with a confusing scene where you don't know which Luthor is doing want until you get a page in and can piece it together. Just like in the underwater scenes, the panel layouts are trying so hard to mimic what George Perez did in COIE that they simply mess it up every now and then. What's actually happening here is that our Luthor (in that ugly-yet-iconic green and purple armor) is listening in on the transmissions between Black Adam and the fake Luthor... but it sorta looks like our Luthor is participating in the conversation.

The faceoff between the dual Luthors is great, although it is peppered with more of those lame clip art SFX. Seriously DC, stop splooging them all over your books. The stunning reveal is that the Luthor who has been running the Secret Society is actually Alex Luthor of pre-Crisis Earth-3! Whoo! Alex finishes off the battle by calling in his trained attack dog, the Superboy of Earth-Prime (whose story, as I said before, I've never fully understood.) Our Luthor teleports out before Superboy can kill him.

So finally, the big question from the end of Villains United is resolved.

Power Girl stumbles into Alex Luthor's true plan. PG, fresh off her star-making turn in JSA Classified, has been recruited by the Earth-2 Superman and accepted into his inner sanctum where Alex Luthor and Superboy-Prime have been watching over the dying Lois Lane-Kent of Earth-2. Even though she now believes their story that she is actually a long-lost remnant of Earth-2, she is still unsure about joining up because she does feel kinship with her Earth-1 friends... after reading Lois's journal, she makes the same choice that the brainwashed Captain Marvel makes in Kingdom Come: she chooses life. She thinks maybe they can find a way to save everyone, not just resurrect Earth-2 at the expense of Earth-1. But since everybody (but Lois) is off in other plot points, she is alone and free to stumble into a room where she finds a classic COIE Anti-Monitor shadow tower, complete with the missing heroes shackled to its side and the corpse of the Anti-Monitor himself jammed inside of it! Holy crap, that's cool.

This scene is intercut with Batman watching the final survelliance cams from the destruction of the JLA watchtower (which happened months ago), which is the last time anybody saw Martian Manhunter.

In fact, he's one of the poor saps strung up to the tower, along with Black Adam (betrayed!), Lady Quark, the Ray, Breech... each character representing a different potential Earth!

I'd like to see a study done on how many times Martian Manhunter gets abruptly sidelined like this because the writers don't know what to do with him. He's a strong and durable as Superman, nearly as smart as Batman, can shapeshift, and he's a freaking telepath! And yet he continually gets wallflowered, mostly so his presence doesn't detract from the other characters.

The last page shows Alex and Superboy standing over an unconscious Power Girl. The look on Superboy's face is hateful and grim... a shocking counterpoint to one of the last times we saw his face back in COIE, when he timidly requests to enter oblivion with the Kents. There he is hopeful and innocent, now he's destroyed the Watchtower, taken down Manhunter and several other big characters, and spitting jealousy and bile every step of the way. His secret transformation will be a major part in changing Earth-2 Superman's attitude... when he sees how far Superboy has fallen, he'll have to accept that things aren't as simple as he wants to believe.

This is a top-of-the-stack book. It's having fun with all of the untouchable sacred cows of the post-Crisis DCU and taking a lot of risks with the characters. Will a lot of this be undone five years from now? Of course it will. But I don't read comics to imagine what will happen - or even what did happen - I read them to see what's happening now.