What Is Crisis On Infinite Earths?

THE PLOT

The Monitor and Anti-Monitor are cosmic beings from the Dawn of Time. While that may mean the vast majority of their billions of years of existence has been pretty boring, it does make them near god-like levels of power. Anti-Monitor is made of anti-matter, which destroys regular matter. His goal is to destroy all the Earths in the DC Universe. The Monitor seeks to stop Anti-Monitor from doing this and sends Harbinger to different Earths so she can recruit various heroes and villains to unite for the cause.

As the story progresses, villains turn on each other and Harbinger gets possessed by one of Anti-Monitor’s Shadow Demons. While possessed, Harbinger kills The Monitor and allows Anti-Monitor to assume form. It also causes the last five remaining Earths (1, 2, 4, S, and X) to be put in a Limbo Universe, safe from Anti-Monitor’s grasp.

Over the next several issues, Anti-Monitor clashes with multitudes of DC’s heroes and villains. During this war, Kara aka Supergirl is killed and Barry Allen sacrifices himself to thwart destructions of these remaining Earths. Realizing he cannot destroy these remaining Earths, Anti-Monitor journeys back in time to prevent the Multiverse’s creation by stopping The Big Bang. The Spectre intervenes and rallies the remaining Earths’ heroes to wage an epic showdown at the Dawn of Time.

In the end, Anti-Monitor is defeated and The Big Bang happens. This time though, only one universe is created. This would become known as New Earth, with a new incarnation of characters from the previous Earths. The only characters who remain are Earth 2 Superman, Earth 2 Lois, Earth 3 Luthor, and Superboy Prime. Knowing that they cannot dwell in this final universe, they travel to their own pocket universe to spend the rest of their days. Or at least until Infinite Crisis happened 20 years later. But that’s a crossover for another time.