Reflections on Final Crisis...

[drinkblatzbeer]

So, it's finally over and done with...well...not quite...but for the only parts that matter...

So, what did i come out of this with??

- a story, sans many of the actual details, only a few key moments, can actually be interesting and fun to follow...i still wish this could have been longer, but at the same time can sit back happy with what i have read...

- the promise, that all that really was needed was the core book...eh...half true...superman beyond, with what i thought was a horrible 3D gimmick, is pretty essential to reading the crisis...

- legion of 3 worlds...will this ever be finished??!?!!??

- jg jones not being able to finish everything was a distraction...after having to deal with tony daniel's art in batman, and how he just didn't mesh with morrison, i really liked how well jones conveyed what grant was writing...everything after him, to me, just didn't feel quite right...

- i don't know the exact point of where rewrites and editorial posturing took place, but the story was very strong through the first four issues...
five was a bit of a step off, and six and seven to me felt alot more disjointed than the rest...
i've reread them twice now as part of the whole and then just those two together and they don't flow quite as well as i felt the earlier books...
that being said, i still liked how everything played out...

- superman has come off as more relevant and powerful than ever...his return in issue 6 felt like an event in itself, the way he has been portrayed here, along with his portrayal in all star superman, have shown an affinity, appreciation and downright understanding of a character that at least i have never been fond of much before...
with the lack of the "gods" of the 4th world (in a traditional sense) in this storyline, superman has finally been portrayed in such a godlike stature...
i'd love for grant to get a shot at one of the super books...

- i thought it also iconic (as well as ironic), that the powerless batman gets the kill shot on darkseid, a predominantly superman foe...superman ultimately saves the day, but not before batman (almost behind the scenes), with the help of the flashes, set the final act in motion...

i'll probably read the entire thing a third time this weekend...i feel that as far as comics go, in my lifetime, this ranks up near the top as far as fun, interesting, provocative and utterly enjoyable reads...
for me, this has done to the DC universe, what the Infinity Gauntlet did for marvel...
i've read the first couple crisis stories, invasion, among other x-over books, but this is the definitive one i'll always come back to...
the epic scale of stories i've read over the past couple years with stories like sinestro corps in GL, RIP in batman, and gog in JSA have been interesting precursers ideawise to this...i'm hooked and can't wait to see if DC can keep this momentum going...

[Raker616]

I thought it was a horrible mess of an event that i'm very happy is over and hope that it will be forgotten and retconned out as soon as possible. Now we can all put the focus on GL and BL where it belongs and watch as Geoff shows Grant how a real event comic is supposed to look like.

[HulkSmash666]

Final Crisis was a friggin abortion of a story.

It was the worst thing Morrison has ever done, IMO. It was all over the place and had lacked any cohesion with the spin offs and tie-ins. Plus it lacked any real....well, sense, really. I found it hard to follow, and found it not the least bit interesting.

I'm still confused as to who all the characters were and why I should care about them.

This series sucked, big time.

Infintite Crisis was 1000 times better in every way.

[Calybos]

Don't hold back, dude! (grin)

I found it dull enough that I dropped it with Issue #3. I know some people like Morrison's style of... errr, writing (I can't really call it "storytelling"), but I'm not one of them.

Glad it's over.

[Rio_de_Janeiro]

i loved the scope, the intensity and the sheer atmosphere of doom.
i enjoy grant's storytelling, i love chopped up narratives (like memento, for example) and grant told me a story in bits and pieces. i had to do some real deep reading and thinking. and talking to the people online to understand some parts has been very eye-opening.

it was a pleasure for me to read it.

cheers,
rio.

[Arishem]

Final Crisis was a messy, poorly executed story by Morrison. This abysmal story sounded like something my nephew would write. F$%# this crap, he threw almost everything and anything at you that looks cool but that never really delivers. The event seemed like it was a composite of some parts of a good story meshed in with what should have been on the cutting floor. Artistic style? People were standing around literally doing nothing at the end of FC. And it looked like Morrison trying pull off a "wow that's awesome moment" by throwing in the Zoo Crew. Oh please, is that your lame attempt at Dex Star the Rage Cat? Morrison is getting full of him self if he thinks he can pass this story off as "artistic." Then again, some Morrison fans are buying it up and throwing out ridiculous excuses. LMAO. And DC? Well, I can't believe they let this happen.

[gorthon616]

I think sometimes Morrison mistakes making work that is so incomprehensible that only a genius could figure it out... and a work of genius are the same thing.

Hint. Hint. Not quite.

[drinkblatzbeer]

honestly, and not to be condescending, but when reading altogether this story isn't that hard to get...

i'm actually surprised to see all the negative comments in this topic...

[Ill Communication]

It has led me to never want to buy another mainstream Morrison book EVER again.

I really don't know what I was thinking ... what he tried to do with JLA, Ellis did it better in the Authority, his X-men blew, AND he made me want to drop Batman.

I think he's a brilliant writer (Doom Patrol, Animal Man, the Invisibles) ... in a medium that's more suited to him, like Vertigo, but he needs to stay away from superheroics.

[drinkblatzbeer]

i agree his x-men wasn't that good, but at least he tried to do something different with stale characters...

totally disagree with his batman run...

and, agree to a point with the JLA/authority comparison...EXCEPT...morrison had A LOT to try to live up to with JLA and a very strict adherence and standard set that i don't think he was allowed to stray too far from (and "rock of ages" in my eyes IS one of the top JLA stories of all time, which is a pretty big accomplishment)...while ellis pretty much had an open door and green light to do and try anything with authority and basically it came on in such a surprising manner and was such a critical success that it's really unfair to compare it really to almost anything...

[JCAll]

Final Crisis was rubbish up to issue 5. After that is started being coherent, at least if you read the Secret Origin, but the inclusion of the Japanese heroes continued right to the end to be as pointless as I always suspected.

[DCKar2nist]

Well aren't the Japenese heroes the new forever people? So there was a plan in place.
Anyone know what happened to Shilo by the end of the series, to lazy to go check

[EC1231]

WTF? This shit pisses me off b/c I don't understand what or why whatever happened happened. It's like a bunch of ideas were stapled together and voila...wtf?! I hope SBP actually destroyed the future, and then retcon punched it out of existence so he wouldn't have to eb part of this abortion.

[Ilash]

I loved Final Crisis and I think it's probably the best event comic I've read to date. Yes, it is deeply flawed but I'm willing to forgive that for something that is so ambitious and so genuinely exciting.

Though, yes, you really have to read the whole thing through (with Superman Beyond) in one shot to truly appreciate what Grant was going for.

[Jim Thompson]

I loved this mini-series, and thought it was the best thing DC has put out in years. This one really lived up to the "event" status for me. Well done, Mr. Morrison! Make mine DC! :biggrin:

[drinkblatzbeer]

Well aren't the Japenese heroes the new forever people? So there was a plan in place.


not 100% sure, but i think it was also a bit of a slap back at DC by grant for nixing his original idea of the big 7 being the "new" new gods...because, aren't the japanese heroes all in some way reminiscent of them??

[Zombie Uatu]

Unfortunately it suffered from a slow start. It wasn't until the jump, after issue #3, that it really took off. Going back and reading through the first few issues did reveal to me how important they were to the overall, but the constraints of linear storytelling damaged the first couple of issues and, I suspect, people's perceptions of the entire series.

One of the complaints I don't get about the series is that it was 'incoherent' or 'needed a degree in DC universe history to understand'. The plot, though layered and intricate, was perfectly understandable. I'm not a DC nut myself, dipping in only occasionally for certain characters and events, but this story was perfectly comprehensible to me.

Although quite dark, there was a real feel-good aspect to this series by the end. Superman, the best of us all, wishes the world back to perfection. Anti-life, which is basically self-hatred and the depths of depression, is overcome. The underplayed hero of the story, Nix Uotan, survives, though altered, and possibly dormant, and one suspects his love may also have done.

One complaint which I do understand is those who say that, though dealing with the multiverse and the monitors, this didn't really feel like a Crisis. What it does do, however, is really leave things open for the DCU to move forward without constantly having to resort to self-examination and reboots. The elements that make things cool such as the multiverse are still there, but the continuity rebooting threats are cleared from the board; the idea of continuity itself being the story is removed by taking away the Monitors... with the exception of Nix Uotan, who is, as we are told at the end of issue #5, something new... the judge of all evil, who if used properly, can be a sort of doomsday weapon for the good guys - evil need never be allowed to win again.

Some other things I liked - Darkseid was really played up as a credible threat, which he hasn't been before, and the Evil Gods were significantly more menacing than they ever have been. Superman and Batman both got great portrayals - and does anyone really think Batman's dead? He's obviously caught in the life-trap. The use of the Green Lantern oath at the end as a rallying cry for all heroes was inspired.

The things that didn't quite work were Mandrakk the Dark Monitor, who if introduced earlier into the main series, could have been a truly cool and menacing threat, but rather felt a little hurried, and the use of the Super Young Team and Mister Miracle (hope they fix the colouring error that turned him white for no reason) who sort of managed to be crucial without really doing anything.

All in all this was a success, much more so than Secret Invasion (which basically felt like constant build-up until the last issue, which was build-up for Dark Reign) and dealt with a lot of high-concept ideas in a mature and well-developed way. It was flawed by the fact that the 'big stars' squeezed out the real heroes of the story (Nix Uotan, Mister Miracle and the Super Young Team), and that in places where they should have been used to better effect, we were instead given the perspective of Alan Scott and Black Canary, who were unnecessary. But it did given us Tatooed Man's redemption, which was ace. Basically a success, but not an unqualified one.

[Captain Smith]

I was interested in Infinite Crisis and the GLC developments. The rest seemed rather forced nonsense. Monitors and Darkseid - a conceptual bore to me.

Nothing really resolved - the new universes handled badly - can you say Countdown and Monarch. Superboy-man/Prime - neat character - and then shuttled off somewhere for a 1000 years.

I saved my money.

[ColdFury]

I think to say that if you didn't like this story that you 'didn't get it' is a cop out.

The author is a proven writer, and has some really terrific ideas. The things that Final Crisis succeeds at where other series (Infinite Crisis, Secret Invasion) often fall short is the parts where it 'sold' the threat. This was the END of the world. All the cards were down, the heroes were teetering on the brink of oblivion. The evil gods were EVIL, and domineering.

And then through the actions of Superman and Batman the day is saved.

Great concept. (Excluding the absolute disastrous handling of Wonder Woman in the event. Way to build up her fan base, guys. First give us Amazon Attacks, then an event book that lobotomizes her for 90% of the story.)

Terrible, terrible execution. Characters, ideas, concepts were introduced at dazzling paces, as if to see what would stick. The Japanese Super Young Team was a great idea. But... they really didn't have a role in the story except as canon fodder. And not even particularly interesting ones, at that. The entire checkmate storyline was tacked on at the eleventh hour and... did what, exactly?

The fates of characters are up in the air, in ways that aren't exactly pleasant. Having the entire world 'wished' better leaves some nagging doubts about how things will be post Final Crisis. After having another reset button a few years back, this feels as if they've given themselves another 'oh, this was changed when the world was wished back' button.

So the ending of the story leaves questions, a lot of the structure of the story was disjointed, and many of the concepts and characters in it seemingly of little use to the main narrative.

I hate to fall back on this trope, but it feels like the story drafts needed a bit more editing. Tighten it up, reign in some of the less tangental ideas and try to give the story a bit more focus. Superman, alone, leaves at the behest of a Monitor, Lois on her deathbed, and then reappears with the aid of the Legion, with Lois doing just find during the end of the world? What? Not even a zany "Check out Superman's Crazy Adventures in Superman Beyond & Legion of Three Worlds, out now!" to help bridge the gap in true comic's tradition. Instead the readers are just left to reconcile the hole in the narrative themselves.

I enjoyed the bigger concepts of Final Crisis, and issue #6 with Batman truly caught me off guard. But the undoing of that in issue #7 and the lack of structure to the story leave a bad taste in my mouth.

[TradePaperbackTraitor]

My reflection is that I think Grant Morrison just single-handedly boosted Marvel's sales. LOL

For every person who said: "OMG, Morrison is teh genius, best comic book evah!!!" there were about ten people who said: "WTF is this incoherent crap??? I think I'll go read Secret Invasion instead."

[TROUBLEZ]

If I were going by events that's how I would look at it.

And good point on the Wonder Woman thing.
DC has been trying to hype her up as part of the big three, putting out the Amazons Attack thing, and Rise of the Olympian then Morrison downplays her character in one of the biggest events.

[carabas]

For every person who said: "OMG, Morrison is teh genius, best comic book evah!!!" there were about ten people who said: "WTF is this incoherent crap??? I think I'll go read Secret Invasion instead."And for every one of those there were five who said both events sucked.

But really, if message board critique was indicative of sales, Jeph Loeb would not have a job writing comics and both Marvel and DC would have gone out of business a few yaesr afer the internet got going.

[TradePaperbackTraitor]

And for every one of those there were five who said both events sucked.


LOL I won't deny that. For everyone bashing the hype machine of Crisis and the final product, Secret Invasion had at least three times the hype. I don't know how many times I saw that double-page advertisement with the kids eating ice cream and one looks like a skrull. While more comprehensible, SI was also a letdown. In the end, I don't think we really cared who the Skrulls were.

Both companies need to rethink their events. I personally think they should be more like New Krypton or the Sinestro Corps Wars. Narrowed down to a few hero-specific titles.

[TROUBLEZ]

Those ads with the kids eating ice cream were stupid. If anything that made me not want to buy SI and I didn't.

Couldn't they have atleast had a comic artist to do the promo ads? It looked more like a parody or something you see at somethingawful.com with their photoshop phridays (love that site).

[TROUBLEZ]

Both companies need to rethink their events. I personally think they should be more like New Krypton or the Sinestro Corps Wars. Narrowed down to a few hero-specific titles.
My thoughts exactly!

[Raker616]

You know I tried to explain FC to one of my friends he decided wait until all 7 issues were out to read it and man the look on his face was priceless. This is someone who's read 52, Countdown, DOTNG and Superman Beyond alond with FC and by the end he was completelly lost. If that doesn't tell you that something is wrong with this book nothing ever will, i'm not in the I don't get it camp but even after my explanation he was confused.

[genesis]

I absolutely loved the first 5 issues of the series and thought they were fantastic. I didn't find the pacing to be too slow or anything. Then issue 6 came out and it was decent tried to get way too much done in the time frame, but still decent. 7 was just wtf Mandrakk should not have been introduced at all as there didn't seem to be a reason for him to be there other than to look good this should have been a Darkseid event. All in all I think this should have been 3-4 issues longer and 6 and 7 are just apparent something changed from the original plan. Maybe I'll have a different opinion when I reread them tomorrow but as of now can't say i was pleased with the whole series. If only the last two matched the first 5.

[Wile_E_Quixote]

So I just re-read FC #7 for the third time, and it's a piece of crap. There's really no other way to describe it. I feel as if Morrison went to Dan DiDio with an outline that he wrote on the backs of some cocktail napkins while he was on an ether jag and DiDio, who was busily snorting the nitrous out of cans of whipped cream, said "Hey, that's great, let's just rush it into print. No need to actually write a coherent story around it." There are a lot of neat ideas in FC, but they never come together. The idea of the New Gods possessing human beings was neat, especially Dan Turpin's struggle with Darkseid, but then it gets tossed aside. There's Darkseid's possession of all humanity with the Anti-Life Equation, but again, the idea is never really fully developed. It's a cool idea, like "Hexus, The Living Corporation" from Morrison's Marvel Boy, but it's not developed at all, it's just a convenient Deus ex Machina.. Then you have Batman shooting Darkseid. You could have had an interesting story about Batman coming to inside of Mokkari and Simyan's lab, fighting his way through Command D, finding the gun and deciding to shoot Darkseid, but nope, let's just have him show up at the end of issue 6 and bust a cap in Darkseid's ass. The whole of Final Crisis is like this, interesting ideas and great character moments that if they were contained within the framework of an actual story would have been brilliant but instead end up disappointing.

In fact that's what the whole series is like, a whole bunch of Deus ex Machinae (if that is the correct plural), strung together for seven issues with inconsistent artwork. Compared to Crisis on Infinite Earths it's weak, both in story and artwork. Final Crisis is like Grant Morrison's Zero Hour, it's the biggest piece of crap I've read in years and it's even more disappointing coming from Morrison who has been, up until now, one of my favorite writers.

[JumpingJupiter]

He just may have.

[rondre sleazde]

Was he ever really that great?

[DeadXMan]

when he's outside the mainstream, he's fine.

But really, he jumped the shark in New X-Men. Particularly in the weapon plus and planet X arcs.

[Taskmaster]

Apparently the reflections of most readers here may reflect those of many for the most point with reports of many comic shops reporting an even greater drop of DC books because of Final Crisis than Marvel's Spider-Man books did after the One More Day fiasco. Keep in mind this is the whole line for DC over just the Spider Books at Marvel and it could wind up being a big problem. This has been reported from various sources and various places online including right here at CBR over in today's Lying in the Gutters