You’re reading The Complete Infinite Crisis, a Comprehensive and Encyclopedic look through the universe-changing superhero event published by DC from 2005 to 2006. Shelfdust are proud to provide a complete overview of the story, and everything that happens in it. We thought this would be easy, but we’ve had to bring in a bunch of experts to help us out and explain all the really confusing bits!

Steve Lacey has been helping to explain Countdown to Infinite Crisis, but we never got an answer on what happens at the end of that story. Steve, can you help us out?

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Infinite Crisis doesn’t start off with Ted Kord – so what happens to him?

Lacey: Ted was signed up to the Maxwell Lord Insta-Headache-B-Gone Cranial Pain Cure.

So, it turns out that the person siphoning off Ted’s funds was his former JLI colleague Maxwell Lord, who had risen in the ranks of shadowy spy organisation Checkmate, s rise partly-fueled by his metahuman ability to telepathically coerce people into doing his bidding. Lord had also stolen a satellite from Batman, who hadn’t noticed, and used it to initiate the One Man Army Corp (or OMAC) project. Kord tracked Lord to his mountain headquarters in Switzerland, and turned down an invitation to join Checkmate. Vowing to bring his former friend down, Lord responded by shooting Ted in the head, making him dead.

So, yeah, while Infinite Crisis the series doesn’t start with Ted Kord, his death became the inciting incident for a number of elements relating to the Crisis, including Batman’s involvement and hunt for Brother Eye, Wonder Woman’s fall from grace in the eyes of the world, and contributed to the fracturing of the Trinity.

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That sounds brutal! What happened to Maxwell Lord? I hope he got his just desserts! Come back next week and let’s all find out together!

 

Steve Lacey is a writer and podcaster best known as one half of The Fantasticast. You can find him on Twitter here!