Oh, you'd be surprised at how some on other boards convinced themselves that the CW-DC shows are the next best thing to air. In this case, there's a couple of people that have a bug up their butts about the classic comic and try to sell the TV version of COIE as "better" (generally because they are more about the CW show's politics than being adaptations of comics).



I believe Daredevil and The Punisher were strong examples of that.

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Oh yeah. I mean, pretty much any story in any medium written by anyone over the age of six is better written than Crisis on Infinite Earths. If they have a villain that at one point demonstrates the slightest hint of personality other than "I AM TEH EVILS! DURRRR!! EEEEVILLLS!"... BAM! Better than 1986 Crisis. If they have a POV character with any other personality trait other than "whiny"... BAM! Better than Crisis! If they don't have a bunch of villains show out of nowhere for no reason (but because someone thought it would make a cool cover).. BAM! Better than Crisis. If you have any character development more nuanced than "Supergirl dies so Superman gets SAD and then he gets MAD"... Bam! Better than Crisis.

It's just a total trainwreck on.. not every basic level of writing. Good use of setting, boys! But every other element of story you learned in High School English - plot, theme, character development, refraining from introducing a cool-ass psychic gorilla in a cape and then failing to do anything with him - Crisis on Infinite Earths fa-ai-ai-ai-ailed in a Titanic-meets-the-Hindenburg fashion. I mean you can't really hate it, it's like discovering a Sistine Chapel made of poops. You just have to stare in awe and quietly note to yourself "Man, you can spend a lot of time and effort and end up with a bunch of crap. Life is funny.")

I mean, I watched a bit of Arrow and some of Legends of Tomorrow and I thought they were both pretty bad, but they were leagues of magnitude better than COIE. (I like Supergirl and Flash a lot, though!) There was some attempt at foreshadowing, character development, a plot that made some sense... They tried and failed to use the tools of effective storytelling, Crisis on Infinite Earths didn't even try. It was 99.999% editorially mandated event (combined with a story idea Marv Wolfman had left over from when he was, like, eleven) with the thinnest veneer of story plastered over it.*

(You can certainly argue that the actual craft of writing in COIE was an afterthought and not that important. It was more about art than story, sure. If you turn your brain off and ignore the attempts to square peg the self aware tongue in cheek DC Silver Age into the ultra-serious miasma of '80s fanboy DC it "felt" right. Okay. It was madly structurally ambitious in a way that mainstream comics (and CW shows are not) Yeah, I grantcha, and that IS a think. It was the most important-to-continuity story in mainstream comics. *I* don't care 'bout that but that doesn't mean it's not worth caring about. But the actual script needed about 7 more drafts before it could reach the lofty peaks of "merely GodAwful.")


* Ok, I feel a little bad. There was one nice panel where Supergirl interacted with Batgirl than gave a good insight into both of their personalities and had the twp work as metaphors/stand-ins for "humanity at large" that was VERY well written.

Shame about the other 33,275 panels of pure garbage.

Also does Legends of Tomorrow ever get better? The random, straggly bunch of scrappy losers is my favorite superhero trope, but the first season was so disappointing. And if I don't like Arrow (after 4-6 episodes) is Black Lightning worth a shot?

I don't like COIE: The Comic very much at all, but from what I've heard/seen in clips, the Arrowverse version makes it look Shakespearean by comparison.

I'm not sure they're better than any Daredevil or Punisher comic ever published.  I could be wrong but I think Born Again is better than what we got in DD Season 2 about his recovery from the bomb in Defenders.

We really enjoyed it!  There were just enough cool things left to establish to make the fifth part worthwhile.  I thought, as a TV-budget response to The Avengers, CIE acquitted itself well.  
We'd been away from the Arrowverse a while- in fact, this is the first crossover we've watched- so my wife and I got a kick out
of seeing the various characters, together.   A lot of effort was made to keep characterization scenes.  I guess the one thing that bugged me was the promise of guest star Matt Ryan in the credits for five, but I don't recall seeing Constantine again after Ollie-husk was resurrected.
Batwoman/ Supergirl had good scenes in Two and Three, and the wife raved about Jon Cryer's take on Luthor.
Dr. Fate was the hardest character to recognize- I was watching for some time before we heard "Nabu"- ah! Of course.

It might be interesting to follow up on the finale of Arrow.  The show did its best to be a Batman substitute, the second and third seasons we watched.

Luthor pulled off a quite a coup, for the storylines going forward.  Wow, I'm rather intrigued to see this play out in everyone's series now- that's very good from a marketing view.

Well folks, what y'all think of the grand finale for Crisis?  Barry, meet Barry (again) in the Speed Force but this time a movie Flash. Luthor being the evil power hungry damn everyone else as long as he comes out on top "douche bag" (thanks Choi) that he truly is. Ollie fires 2 last shots, taking the heroes to confront Anti-Monitor and going toe to toe against Anti-Monitor to light the spark witch provides a Rebirth of the Multi-verse while having another death scene, this one a much more fitting ending to the hero/series which has kicked off this CW universe (sorry Smallville, you tried hard) of heroics.

So we now have the "CW Arrowverse" of shows consolidated upon 1 merged Earth (about time, makes more sense this way) with a much stronger connection between ALL the heroes (and possibly villains) beig able to cross in/out of each others series. Will this lead the way to seeing villains doing the same? Would be fun to see Flash villains pop up in Supergirl or vice-versa. We now have Luthor as a potential "main baddie" within the CW universe, so there is that bit of excitement for the new Superman/Lois series. Black Lightning in a sense is now the adult/father figure for the group of heroes, someone like Ollie who is grounded, rolls with whatever comes along and just fly into struggles blindly but will stand and fight for what is right. Hope to see more of the Dynamic Lightning duo of BL and Flash in the future now with Ollie gone. 

The episode 5 was a smart move showing the teamwork and inherent cross pollination that now exists for the Arrowverse. And we see the birth of a Hall of Justice meeting grounds for this new group of Superfriends (and a certain discussion provoking experimental lil' monkey) where there can be smaller connected cross-overs for awhile. All in all this was quite an entertaining and fun packed thrill ride built upon fan moments meant to enhance what was crafted to unite the CW shows into a more cohesive universe. Pretty well done with some odd hiccups and decisions here and there mostly based upon time/cost/too many characters and too many writers, but I really liked it. 

I really enjoyed it. It's a pure love letter to DC Comics and they put so much work into giving us as much as they could. I tip my hat to all involved. Very excited to see everything coming out of it as all these DCTV shows move forward. Especially the Green Lantern HBOMAX series, the Stargirl on Earth 2 with the Justice Society on DC Universe and the Superman and Lois series on the CW.