This article was written for the May '24 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 340).

It’s the ultimate movie trailer cliché: “Worlds will live, worlds will die.” But there’s one story that phrase falls short of accurately describing: the 1984-85 DC Comics maxiseries Crisis on Infinite Earths, by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez. In its 12-issue run, Crisis streamlined DC’s messy, multi-versal continuity into a single universe by destroying many Earths and merging the survivors into a single world. When it was over, DC’s relaunched its iconic characters into a universe where they’ve thrived and continued to grow ever since.

Adapting this legendary comic-book tale’s dense plot and vast multitude of characters into animation is a huge project, one that Warner Bros. Animation is executing over a trilogy. Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Part One arrived in early 2024, with Part Two arriving April 23 for purchase as a digital movie or on disc. Part Three arrives later this to wrap up the trilogy, which WBA describes as the beginning of the end of the Tomorrowverse phase of DC animated features that began with 2020’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow.

Returning for Part Two is an all-star voice cast that includes Jensen Ackles as Batman, Emmy winner Darren Criss as Superman and Earth-2 Superman, Meg Donnelly as Supergirl and Harbinger, and Stana Katic as Wonder Woman and Superwoman. The film is produced by Jim Krieg and Kimberly S. Moreau and executive produced by Butch Lukic, Sam Register and Michael Uslan. The film is directed by Jeff Wamester from a script by Krieg.

A Story that Made Sense

With Part Two bridging the exposition and set up of Part One while preparing the audience for the climax in Part Three, it was a tricky script to write, Krieg says. “We have to move the story forward, end in a cliffhanger, but still somehow tell a story with a beginning, middle and end — which I hope we did,” says Krieg.

Adapting a comic famous for its dense plotting and intricate continuity to an animated feature posed some obvious challenges. “We tried to keep in all the major moments fans remembered, and then fill in story in between those moments in the way that made the most sense,” Krieg says.

That meant finding a version of the story that works for the audience for an animated version 40 years after the original was published. “With Crisis on Infinite Earths, the story was so sprawling — and also specifically about the DC characters who were around at the time — we felt we had to pare down the script to characters who are important to a contemporary audience, for the most part,” he says.

While The Flash’s relationship with Iris West formed the spine of Part One, the second chapter turns to Supergirl, the Monitor, and an obscure but important DC character called Psycho Pirate. There was a little more freedom to play with those characters than for DC’s better-known icons.

“Psycho Pirate has such a weird, complicated comic-book backstory that it’s a mystery to most fans, so that seemed like an opportunity to create a history for him that would make sense for our story,” Krieg says. “And even Supergirl, who made such an impression in Legion of Super-Heroes, we meet her in flashback, right after the loss of Krypton, so she’s a bit of a blank slate. The Batman sections of Part Two deal with the contrast between his rather rich, complicated family life that comics fans know about, and the rather sad, solitary existence he leads in the Tomorrowverse.”

The challenge of adapting a story of such scope to animation is only partly alleviated by making it into three movies, says Lukic. “The budget isn’t larger for more characters than any other animated movie we have done, except for a larger budget for the voice cast,” he says. “Our FX budget was probably bigger, but everything else — character design, backgrounds, [story]boards, animation — was the same. Everyone had to do more work in those departments, for the same pay.”

‘We were designing a lot of the characters in those previous movies so it wouldn’t kill our budget when we got here, but there were still a lot of characters to design that we never were able to use in the previous seven movies.’

— Producer Butch Lukic

The production process for the feature was similar to previous Tomorrowverse projects. Krieg’s script was handed off to storyboard artists, whose work was turned into an animatic that cut tightly before being sent to overseas animation studios, Lukic says. “Scenes with no animation happening at all, like in-between dialog pauses, we usually cut and, when we get the animation back, we can stretch the footage back out to where we need it,” he says.

Character designers for previous Tomorrowverse projects kept in mind that the series was leading to adapting Crisis. “We were designing a lot of the characters in those previous movies so it wouldn’t kill our budget when we got here, but there were still a lot of characters to design that we never were able to use in the previous seven movies,” Lukic says.

The style of Crisis’ animation matches the overall look of the Tomorrowverse. “I went for a thicker, tapered line style, opposite of the deadline normal style, so, it’s more of a comic-book look,” Lukic says. “It was tough. Some of the studios got it, some didn’t, so it was some work revising their animation when it didn’t fit.”

Lukic eschewed the use of 3D modeling software such as SketchUp for creating backgrounds. “I went for traditional layouts — freehand. It has more organic look and feel,” he says. “I also shadowed most of the backgrounds before they went to paint, determining where I wanted specific shadows to lay, and where the light source was coming from.”

That not only gave the compositions more weight, it gave the movie a more cinematic feel, Lukic says. “I wanted the board guys and the director to use the full widescreen composition — not have characters generally in the middle of the shot — and use foreground elements, to give more depth to your shots.”

While the comic is known for its massive battle and crowd scenes — one of the hallmarks of the work of the late George Pérez — the movie avoided that as much as possible for logistical and budget reasons. “It was necessary to pick your shots that really needed it and, with that, limit the overall animation necessary for those scenes.”

Real Talk

Another way the production tried to keep the sometimes-abstract storyline relatable was with more realistic and restrained dialog. “Virtually every event in this movie is so vast, epic, and over-the-top that, honestly, it’s not very relatable,” says Krieg. “Giving the characters dialog that they might actually say in a normal situation, like joking in line at the grocery store or something, makes the impossible stakes somehow more believable.”

Fans so far have appreciated Part One of the animated Crisis, but Krieg says he was happy to get approval from Wolfman and Pérez, the creators of the original classic, at a lunch meeting a few years back — before Pérez’s death in 2022.

“We pitched them what we had, including the changes for streamlining, and they couldn’t have been more gracious and enthusiastic,” Krieg says. “They told us that their version still exists, and the movie will likely only create an opportunity for new readers to experience it. It was really wonderful to get their stamp of approval.”

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earth: Part One and Two are currently available on Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play and Vudu.