This is the way things work in superhero comics: trauma explodes and its aftermath is only good for shuffling the status quo. Grief gets its 15 minutes, sure, but cataclysmic happenings are really just about getting readers interested in coming back for new chunks of story.

That's not always a bad thing, but it's…

To my mind, the best episodes of a big-deal, all-hands-on-deck superhero crossover event are the ones that focus on the ground-level repercussions of the world-threatening chaos. I remember reading a great issue of Gotham Central when DC's Infinite Crisis event was happening that showed riots and madness in the…