Many people interested in comics are still only interested in superhero comics. Too bad, because they will miss some fantastic series from the indie scene.
One of these series, a recent hit with critics and the public, is Assorted Crisis Events, from Image Comics, that ironicaly seems to take inspiration from one famous superhero saga, Crisis on Infinite Earths, the already classic 1980s mega-event that reshaped the DC Comics universe for years. There, many strange time-related events start to happen, bringing back people and animals from other ages, mixing different time periods and causing chaos all around.
Here, it is mostly the same. Time has been crazy for some time, making years, centuries and dimensions interact. And, since there seem to be no superheroes, we can see the effects of this occurrences in the lives of normal people with dramatic results.
This volume, with the first issues in the series, has five distincts, independent stories, all revolving around the theme of time out of sync, all of them very good or even great. The first, light-hearted story, follows a girl trying to find a place that can repair an old clock she inherited from her grandfather while all kinds of strange characters and events taken from past and future eras insist on disrupting her day to day. In another, the tragic life of a family of Mexican immigrants to the United States gets even worse when they meet monsters and situations from the past. In another, the whole life of a man seems to happen in just one day while he feels that he has no control or decision-making power over the most important aspects of his destiny. Meanwhile, a girl is traumatized by a time loop of 60 seconds in which she was trapped for a day.
But probably the best tale here is a direct homage to the many “Crisis” in DC Comics history in which heroes from Earth One and its twin planet, Earth Two, would meet for a high-stakes mission (as a variant cover makes clear). In the version presented here, the city of Hearth, located in one version of our planet, is a virtual paradise, a small town that has peaceful and nice inhabitants, good neighbours all around. That is, until the exact doubles of the population arrive there, desperately escaping from a version of Hearth that is destroyed by a fiery apocalypse in another dimension. At first, everything seems ok, with the people of Hearth One welcoming their twins from Hearth Two (yes, they are called these in the story). But it doesn’t take long before mean and hurtful acts from both sides begin to divide them with some unexpected, sad, horrible ans catastrophic results. It is, in a way, a metaphor for the problems created due to a refugee crisis, but one that doesn’t play favourites and has a harsh view for almost everybody involved. The ultimate instance of “We have met the enemy and he is us”.
The book written by Deniz Camp (Absolute Martian Manhunter) was on most “Best Comics of 2025” lists and it was well deserved. His plots mix the best of science fiction concepts with strong character development and a real-life approach usualy present only in independent comics, which this series clearly is. Also, the work of artist Eric Zawadzki is noteworthy for its efficiency in giving form to Camp’s scripts with exciting visual choices, that sometimes are not shy about taking the reader out of their comfort zone — reading portions of this book on a computer screen must be very confusing and frustrating.
A fine example of how stimulating and inventive comic books can still be.
Assorted Crisis Events (2025, Image Comics)
by Deniz Camp and Eric Zawadzki
208 pages
Rating: 10 nerds (de 10) 😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
