15 DC Comics Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die

Comic book continuity is an incredibly tricky beast to keep in check, especially for DC as a lot of their earliest writers weren't too concerned with keeping details consistent between stories. Questions soon arose like 'Can Superman fly or just jump really far?' and 'How has Robin been a teenager for longer than I've been alive?'. DC tried to mitigate some of this by revealing that its older stories took place on an alternate Earth but by 1985 even this had become convoluted beyond control.

Then legendary double act Len Wein and Marv Wolfman came along with an idea to streamline continuity. Said idea was a huge 12-part epic which saw heroes from across the multiverse uniting to battle the cosmic destroyer the Anti-Monitor. By the end of the event, the entire multiverse had been merged into a single universe, one whose heroes had new origins which combined the best aspects of their past.

In anyone else's hands it might have been a disaster, but Wein and Wolfman had a deep enough understanding of DC continuity to craft a coherent and compelling narrative that ties together a story set on a scale that had never been seen before.

Crisis on Infinite Earth also set the bar for every blockbuster event to follow, including massive stakes, stunning art (thanks to George Pérez) and shocking deaths of characters like Supergirl and the Flash in a time before it was considered the norm.

It's the ultimate love letter to DC continuity.