Earths. Development In 1981, Wolfman was editing Green Lantern. He got a letter from a fan asking why a character did not recognize Green Lantern in a recent issue despite the two having had worked together in an issue three years earlier. Soon afterward, Wolfman pitched Crisis on Infinite Earths as The History of the DC Universe, seeing it as a way to simplify the DCU and attract new readers. The History of the DC Universes title was changed to Crisis of Infinite Earths because its premise, involving the destruction of entire worlds, sounded more like a crisis. Wolfman said when he pitched the series to DC, he realized it was going to be a completely new beginning for the DCU. "I knew up front, and they did too, how big this was going to be," he said. "But, no-one knew how well it would sell, or whether it would sell at all. It was a risk DC was willing to take, because my thoughts were that DC needed a lot of help at that time, and they did too." Wolfman also said he saw it as an attempt to improve DC's reputation for storytelling. Many readers at the time saw them as old-fashioned. The crossover was fleshed out and coordinated at a meeting attended by president Jenette Kahn, Paul Levitz, vice president and executive editor Dick Giordano and DC's editors. In 1982, DC hired a researcher to go through their library and read every comic the company had published, a task that took two years. The series was delayed to 1983 due to the time for research, and again to 1985 when it was still not ready for 1983 and to coincide with DC's fiftieth anniversary. As an event like Crisis on Infinite Earths had never happened before, those working on it met for around two hours a week; at the time, this was uncommon. The groundwork for the series was laid the year before it was published. One of the greatest challenges for Wolfman and Giordano was coming up with a story. Wolfman cited making use of every DC character and creating a plot that was fun to read and filled with surprises as difficulties, as the series needed to sell well; if it did not, it could have caused a disaster for DC. Plotting became easier once a beginning and an ending had been determined and when