Prediction: I think I understand Final Crisis

[PatrickG]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20198161,00.html

I read the 5 page preview at EW.

And I think I figured out something BIG.

The New Gods died.

Human beings are Gods now. Everyone is.

Darkseid is the last of his kind. He wants to be the bogeyman. He doesn't want humanity to realize that it's the new divinity. He'd just assume drown out humanity with fire and brimstone, guilt trips and Copernicus to make them think that they aren't the center of the multiverse.

But they are. We are. Everyone is.

And surviving the Fourth World doesn't make Darkseid FEARSOME. It makes him a DINOSAUR. He's an old man railing against us, the people he can't understand.

Final Crisis is really the story of a pathetic Darkseid going John Henry against the human machine that's superior to him in every way and giving his all for the kind of pure evil they don't make anymore.

Evil won in heaven but heaven is obsolete. That's the cruel joke of it all.

Now it isn't good or evil or chaos or order. It's just me and you and you and you and you. Infinite perspectives. Not the ABSENCE of absolutes but infinite and sometimes contradictory absolutes.

Unity is a fool's dream. Duality is dead. Welcome to the quantum universe, Darkseid. You're an evolutionary dead end. Evil triumphs over good but both are old news. Evolve or die, old new god.

[Sarah Beach]

Oh. An Absurdist's outlook on existence? Great. That really connects with me.


NOT.

*sigh*

[Charles RB]

I thought Final Crisis was Evil Wins and there's a massive Epic punch-up between Ultimate Evil and Ultimate Shiny Heroes, cos that was what Morrison seems to be saying it is in the interviews with him.

[scout1279]

If good and evil are both obsolete, what the hell are all the goddamn superheroes fighting for?

I think Morrison is a really talented writer, but is this really the sort of thing that DC thinks is going to help sell comics? I'm not saying that there's not a place for this stuff, I'm just not sure the core of the DCU is it. There's a reason Marvel is out selling DC, and I think this is part of it.

Edit: Having now read the preview pages, I can't say that I think that is what's going on, but it looks interesting. Art's real pretty too.

[Charles RB]

If good and evil are both obsolete, what the hell are all the goddamn superheroes fighting for?

Darkseid's making a mess and they're fighting so he'll fuck off & they can play Grand Theft Auto IV.

...I now want a Spider-Man story where villains and crime keep forcing him to leave the queue for GTA4 and he has to keep starting at the end again (and when he finally gets to the front, the store shuts).

[scout1279]

Darkseid's making a mess and they're fighting so he'll fuck off & they can play Grand Theft Auto IV.

...I now want a Spider-Man story where villains and crime keep forcing him to leave the queue for GTA4 and he has to keep starting at the end again (and when he finally gets to the front, the store shuts).

That's the next Brand New Day arc.

[DavidAllred]

Somehow in the middle of helping a family bury a fine young man who was killed three weeks before his graduation, I managed to read this paragraph from an essay entitled, "The Discreet Charm of Nihilism." I think it applies should DC move the direction Patrick hypothesizes:

"A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death, a huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders we will not be judged. The Marxist creed has now been inverted. The true "opium" of modernity is the belief that there is no God, so that humans are free to do precisely as they please."

[TCJohnson]

Oh. An Absurdist's outlook on existence? Great. That really connects with me.


NOT.

*sigh*

But that doesn't really mean that is what is going on. Remember we only saw 5 pages. And I don't think that is even accurate.

[Paul McEnery]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20198161,00.html

I read the 5 page preview at EW.

And I think I figured out something BIG.

The New Gods died.

Human beings are Gods now. Everyone is.

Darkseid is the last of his kind. He wants to be the bogeyman. He doesn't want humanity to realize that it's the new divinity. He'd just assume drown out humanity with fire and brimstone, guilt trips and Copernicus to make them think that they aren't the center of the multiverse.

But they are. We are. Everyone is.

And surviving the Fourth World doesn't make Darkseid FEARSOME. It makes him a DINOSAUR. He's an old man railing against us, the people he can't understand.

Final Crisis is really the story of a pathetic Darkseid going John Henry against the human machine that's superior to him in every way and giving his all for the kind of pure evil they don't make anymore.

Evil won in heaven but heaven is obsolete. That's the cruel joke of it all.

Now it isn't good or evil or chaos or order. It's just me and you and you and you and you. Infinite perspectives. Not the ABSENCE of absolutes but infinite and sometimes contradictory absolutes.

Unity is a fool's dream. Duality is dead. Welcome to the quantum universe, Darkseid. You're an evolutionary dead end. Evil triumphs over good but both are old news. Evolve or die, old new god.

Reckon you're onto something here.

[TCJohnson]

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20198161,00.html

Human beings are Gods now. Everyone is.

Darkseid is the last of his kind. He wants to be the bogeyman. He doesn't want humanity to realize that it's the new divinity. He'd just assume drown out humanity with fire and brimstone, guilt trips and Copernicus to make them think that they aren't the center of the multiverse.

But they are. We are. Everyone is.

And surviving the Fourth World doesn't make Darkseid FEARSOME. It makes him a DINOSAUR. He's an old man railing against us, the people he can't understand.


Two problems with this:

Darkseid did not survive the 4th world. He died, just like all the other New Gods. The only one to survive it was Orion.

And if he is the last of the kind, then what is the Black Racer doing there?

[Corrina]

I like the idea that DC humanity is now godlike. And the decision to remake their world rests in them.

I vaguely recall an arc where everyone had superpowers but now I can't remember where or even what comic it was in. Was it a Morrison comic?

[TCJohnson]

I like the idea that DC humanity is now godlike. And the decision to remake their world rests in them.

I vaguely recall an arc where everyone had superpowers but now I can't remember where or even what comic it was in. Was it a Morrison comic?

In 52 you could buy super powers for a few grand.

[LewisH]

It's the same plot as EVERY other CRISIS since the first one. Big bad villain(s) X engage in activity Y that will result in the destruction of the world(s)/universe(s) unless he/she/they are stopped. It's a few months of a cast of thousands bashing into each other with varying levels of hyperbole and scenery munching dialogue. It'll be fun just like an action movie but to ascribe any deeper philosophical meaning to it than that is just an illusion.

I really wish they had called this "If this is summer, it must be a Crisis" instead of "FINAL CRISIS!!!!!" They've raised expectations way to high. A lot of people are going to be disappointed either because they don't like Morrison's style or
are expecting way too much when they should just be looking forward to a nice summer cross-over instead of the be all end all of graphic story telling.

[Tobias March]

I like it Patrick. What's more I don't find it nihilistic at all, but an embrace of hope - which is what Morrison has been aiming for since the Invisibles.

[Nick Soapdish]

I like the idea that DC humanity is now godlike. And the decision to remake their world rests in them.

I vaguely recall an arc where everyone had superpowers but now I can't remember where or even what comic it was in. Was it a Morrison comic?

Mark Waid did a Midsummer's Dream right before the Morrison JLA kicked off and it featured everybody in the world starting to get superpowers except for the superpowers. It was all a dream, but it was supposed to turn real somehow except the heroes awoke and broke the spell. The "villain" left saying that they would regret their victory because Earth would need everybody to be heroes someday.

[Corrina]

Oh, I don't know. Superheroes draw on ancient myths, they're archetypes of the highest order. It's quite possible to write a story that is surface action and much more in-depth layers under that.

For instance, the first Indiana Jones movie works because of the internal character arc. Indy is just like his German counterpart at first: they both have no morals about taking something that they want because it excites them. (Indy's opening sequence, where he takes something the natives don't want him to take.) AT the end, he closes his eyes to something he doesn't understand and saves himself. He changes.

Whereas in imitators like "High Road to China" (that Tom Selleck one), it doesn't work because there's no internal character arc, there's no greater meaning to the action.

Indiana Jones has a greater hold on our collective imagination because of the stuff that's going on under the surface.

[Perry Holley]

I vaguely recall an arc where everyone had superpowers but now I can't remember where or even what comic it was in. Was it a Morrison comic?Morrison's last story arc of JLA (forget what it was called) had every person on earth temporarily gaining superpowers to defeat some cosmic threat.

[Corrina]

Aha, yes, that's it Perry. Cool idea. Wonder if Patrick's right and Morrison will reuse it.

[Nick Soapdish]

Morrison's last story arc of JLA (forget what it was called) had every person on earth temporarily gaining superpowers to defeat some cosmic threat.

World War Three?

That's what happened in that arc? I never did quite figure out what was going on there. I remember a subplot with Luthor and a new Injustice League and Prometheus going after Oracle and getting whalloped when Bats switched his helmet around. But the rest was all pretty fuzzy.

[MartinRedmond]

The correct explanation to FC is "who cares?".

[Paul McEnery]

It's the same plot as EVERY other CRISIS since the first one. Big bad villain(s) X engage in activity Y that will result in the destruction of the world(s)/universe(s) unless he/she/they are stopped. It's a few months of a cast of thousands bashing into each other with varying levels of hyperbole and scenery munching dialogue. It'll be fun just like an action movie but to ascribe any deeper philosophical meaning to it than that is just an illusion.

I really wish they had called this "If this is summer, it must be a Crisis" instead of "FINAL CRISIS!!!!!" They've raised expectations way to high. A lot of people are going to be disappointed either because they don't like Morrison's style or
are expecting way too much when they should just be looking forward to a nice summer cross-over instead of the be all end all of graphic story telling.

That'll be next year. Written by Giffen. Starring Ambush Bug.

[OzBat!]

That'll be next year. Written by Giffen. Starring Ambush Bug.
And it shall be AWESOME!

[Linkara]

World War Three?

That's what happened in that arc? I never did quite figure out what was going on there. I remember a subplot with Luthor and a new Injustice League and Prometheus going after Oracle and getting whalloped when Bats switched his helmet around. But the rest was all pretty fuzzy.

That's Grant Morrison: shove twelve plots that each could have their own arc into a blender and watch the carnage. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But yeah, I'm shocked that everyone is forgetting this story.

In the "Midsummer's Nightmare," it served as a prologue that this one guy was trying to prepare humanity for the coming of a terrible, ancient beast. Grant Morrison picked up on that and laid clues along the way until we finally reached World War III.

Said primal force is an ancient weapon called Mageddon. It created fear, self-doubt, and other happy things in humanity, causing the nations of the earth to start randomly declaring war. The JLA would've been able to help respond and quell the problems, but Luthor had assembled a new Injustice Gang and took it upon himself to use said gang to attack the Watchtower itself, distracting the League. In the midst of this, Mageddon arrives and in a last-ditch effort, they manage to accomplish the plan from Midsummer's Nightmare and temporarily give EVERY person on earth superpowers. This weakens Mageddon to the point where Superman is able to absorb the anti-sunlight that powers Mageddon, leaving it a big chunk of dead in the sky.

It was SO DAMN AWESOME. :biggrin: