This week's comic to look out for is Infinite Crisis #1 by Geoff Johns and Phil Jimenez.

About 20 years ago, DC Comics released Crisis on Infinite Earths, a brave but flawed attempt to reboot decades of confusing continuity via a 12 part mega-event. When it was over, the DC Universe was simplified to make it less confusing to newer readers. Gone were the multiple earths that housed alternate versions of Superman, Batman and others. Killed and/or erased from existance were longtime characters like Supergirl and the Flash (the classic Barry Allen version of the character). It was an unprecedented attempt to deal with the confusing backlog of shared character continuity and the result was not only a loss of what made DC comics so fun but also the continuity tinkering created a need to do this sort of spring cleaning every once in a while.

For the past year, starting with the Brad Meltzer-written Identity Crisis mini-series, DC has been building up to this new event. Identity Crisis led into the 80 page Countdown to Infinite Crisis which in turn led into 4 separate Countdown mini-series plus various issues of other DC titles like Wonder Woman and JLA and now (for those of you who still have any cash left to spend) we have the actual Crisis itself.

The weird thing is, at this point it isn't clear yet what this 21st century Crisis is going to consist of. Will the Multiple Earths be brought back? Will major characters die? New characters be introduced? Are we talking reboot here or just some sort of shift in the status quo?

Either way, this series is being drawn by Phil Jimenez, the perfect choice to follow in the footsteps of past Crisis artist, George Perez (who will actually be involved in this series on a couple of levels as well including the cover shown above). Jimenez' artwork is detailed and energetic and handles a universe of characters well, just like Perez.

If you want to try to catch up on what you've missed so far in the various Countdown series, check out DC's Crisis Counseling page.