Our Worlds at War

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Cover to JLA: Our Worlds at War #1. Art by Jae Lee.

Our Worlds at War was a comic book crossover, published by DC Comics during the summer of 2001. OWAW was written by Jeph Loeb, Joe Casey, Mark Schultz, Joe Kelly and Peter David. Pencillers were Mike Wieringo, Ed McGuinness, Doug Mahnke, Ron Garney and Leonard Kirk.

1 Plot
2 Life imitates art
3 Criticism
4 Issues

[edit] Plot

The crossover, which occurred mainly through the monthly Superman titles, Wonder Woman, and a series of character themed one-shot specials, dealt with the heroes of the DC Universe facing the threat of the cosmic force known as Imperiex, who attacked Earth for the purpose of using the planet as the staging ground for the "hollowing" of the entire universe. However, as the battle against Imperiex reaches its climax, Brainiac 13 appears and launches his own scheme to use the chaos to conquer the universe.

[edit] Life imitates art

Our Worlds At War came to a close just weeks before the attacks of September 11, 2001. In a sobering occurrence of synchronicity, Adventures of Superman #596 was released one day after the attack, featuring the image of Lex Luthor's twin LexTowers heavily damaged by alien attacks on the issue's first page. The book's writer, Joe Casey, could not have intentionally referenced the attacks on the World Trade Center, but DC acknowledged that it mirrored the devastation so vividly that they made the books returnable without penalty to retailers. Many retailers took DC up on this offer, causing the issue to become sought after on the secondary market due to its rarity and general curiosity towards the real-life synchronicity with the 9-11 attacks.

Though the merits of the crossover itself are debatable (indeed, the storyline was critically panned by many when it was published), the story held a mirror up to post-9/11 America. Superman's new S-Shield, a reaction to the deaths caused by Imperiex, remained black from Adventures Of Superman #596 until the Ending Battle crossover a few years later. Other elements included the deaths of several key characters, including Wonder Woman's mother, Lois Lane's estranged father Sam Lane, and Aquaman, who later was revived under the retcon that he and much of the population of Atlantis had been spirited away seconds before their apparent deaths. More controversially though was Clark's search for his missing adoptive parents in a ravaged Kansas, who were assumed to be killed during the attack on the state.

[edit] Criticism

While a moderate sales success, the series itself was widely panned when it was released. Many critics complained that the series featured too many tie-ins-in fact, the series was originally envisoned and promoted as a storyline within the Superman books with only one or two tie-ins, but it eventually grew into a larger event when DC decided to expand the storyline to include a large number of one-shot tie-in issues, as well as crossovers within other monthly titles. This was particularly irritating to some readers because DC had already planned another company-wide crossover ("Joker: Last Laugh") which hit the very next month. Neither crossover was well received, but having two in a row was considered highly excessive by many fans.

The story was also criticized for its gratuitous amounts of deaths. While several of the deaths in the crossover were quickly reversed after the storyline ended (most notably Guy Gardner, Martha and Jonathan Kent, and Aquaman) several characters such as Queen Hippolyta, Maxima, and General Sam Lane (Lois Lane's father) remained dead after the crossover ended, as well as a large portion of the population of the state of Kansas.

That said, the death of Queen Hippolyta drew much criticism from some female fans due to the graphic nature of her death (killed in an explosion that left her horribly burnt and ultimately dying in arms of her daughter, Wonder Woman).It is because of this that the series is sometimes called "Our War Against Women" - a play on the book's abbreviation; OWAW. However, with the reality altering events of Infinite Crisis, Hippolyta's death appears to be effectively nullified and she has been confirmed to appear in the upcoming miniseries, Amazons Attack in April 2007.