Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths - Part One concludes, after the credits have staggered their way up-screen, with a dedication to George Pérez, the penciller for the 1980s comic book series that this animated feature is based on. The solemnity of the gesture is rather undercut though by the decision to have this particular inscription break up into the same flaking ash that marks the destruction of this film's doomed, two-dimensional heroes. Quite apparently even the briefest of obituaries, for those whose work is being ruthlessly mined, pales in comparison to the sanctity of the cliff-hanger. The dignity usually extended to those who have passed a mere trifle when judged against the maintenance of a mood calculated to pack people back in for Part Two. Other than this worryingly ill-judged addendum, Crisis Part One is everything we've come to expect from these stale, direct-to-video adventures: a neat central concept that is obscured by circuitous writing and a staging so flat and lifeless that no-one can be left in any doubt that the talent that buoyed DC animation through its golden age has long since migrated elsewhere. As if to underline this point, Part One spends a significant amount of its time centred around The Flash's dealings with Amazo, the power-leeching adversary who previously dismantled television's Justice League in 2003's Tabula Rasa two-parter. The strange elegance of an android shaped like an awards statuette, who fought his opponents by physically reproducing their own powers, is replicated here as a busy-looking robot full of accessory chambers who simply holds out his hand, numbing his already static enemies into a state of sleepy repose.
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