the rolling Final Crisis thread

Holy shit, the amount of thrill power in Superman Beyond... Wow. Final Crisis would have been worth it for just this issue.

Yeah, no kidding. Got some notes up at http://finalcrisisannotations.blogspot.com/2009/01/final-crisis-superman-beyond-2.html .

I would like to note that nobody from DC has claimed that Bruce Wayne is actually dead for keeps.

Douglas, you missed on page 14, in the last panel. Those splotches are more Watchmen resonances, the blood splashes from that book. Making, of course, the panel dialogue that much more meaningful, "And I see now," especially since Superman Beyond is, essentially, a book about seeing (seeing a comic in 4D, seeing comics as readers, seeing comics from inside the comic book, and, here, seeing comics in dialogues with other comics).

Also, I wish you had spoken more about the relationship between Limbo here and Limbo in Animal Man. (Speaking of which, I didn't catch the Dr. Manhattan reference -- I thought he looked a bit like Morrison!)

Haha this is exactly the amount of detail revealed and withheld to make me excited like a kid, well done everyone!

I can't help matching the final page here with the one in All-Star Superman. Same purpose ("neverending battle"), though I think I the gravestone was an even better idea.

For about three seconds I wanted a tattoo of the gravestone and epitaph.

Awesome issue -- I could've done without some of the 4-D, if I wanted to nitpick -- but who wants to nitpick? I wish the main series had been a bit more like this, to be honest...

fc 7 almost can't help be anticlimactic - what's left to resolve?

you know, except for dead batman and all and the annihilation of almost everything and all...

I dunno, there's the Nix Uotan/Monitors/multiverse arc, the who-shot-Orion question, the how-did-Darkseid-fall question, the Flashes arc, the Checkmate endgame, the Miracle Machine/Metron sigil business, Luthor and Sivana's plan, the Green Arrow/Black Canary/Tattooed Man/Black Lightning fight, and what the hell is up with Kamandi anyway?

I know, there's plenty of things to wrap and I hope the Flashes will play a huge part in that ending, but this ending, "To be continued" and all that stuff, was an Optimus Prime made of thrillpower. It's so good it has to go down. Otherwise, we might die from the adrenaline rush.

yeah, i know, it's just that after S3D#2, it IS a question of wrapping things up -- the "what the hell is going ON?" factor has decreased considerably. for me, at least. not a bad thing, just an observation

Has it been explained yet what the relationship is between any of this Darkseid stuff and the monitor stuff? is libra going to have a secret identity after all, or does that not matter any more? also, were zillo vallo and mandrakk already existing characters or are these two issues their first appearance? I guess she is apparently the lover of mandrakk? why was she bringing all the supermen to fight him then? are all the monitors vampires? awesome art though! wish it had been a little less compressed (i.e. if mandrakk is the main bad guy, i wish he had something analogous to the long buildup that darkseid has had in final crisis, but I haven't read any of the other tie-ins so maybe I just missed it all!)

Libra's secret identity was disclosed in FC: Secret Files (answer: he's just some dude).

David Uzumeri, bless him, has a long meditation on Mandrakk at http://www.funnybookbabylon.com/2009/01/24/final-crisis-superman-beyond-annotations-epilogue-mandrakk-a-brief-history/ .

Zillo Valla first appeared midway through Countdown, which I have not read. I am considering following the end of FC proper by liveblogging a read-through of the entirety of Countdown. Because I love the Internet enough that I am willing to subject myself to Countdown for it.

Mandrakk appears to bear some conceptual relation to Starbreaker--see http://www.comics.org/graphics/covers/1449/400/1449_4_096.jpg --but I don't think his name had been mentioned before FC:SB3D #1. HIs name, though! "Man/Dracula" plus "Mandrake the Magician," the first superhero in some sense...

Doug, I am torn between being really excited to read your thoughts on Countdown, to "For God's sakes man, don't do it!"

And what about all those spin-offs? OY.

Put down the internet and step away from Countdown.

Sir, I have a tazer in my hand an am licensed by the country of ILC to use it.

I've been a big GM fan for a long time, and this has always been present in his approach (though much moreso lately), so yeah: I do enjoy the digging. But in 7 Soldiers, I got the feeling that the chopped & channelled style was occasionally covering up some seriously rushed storytelling.

I totally concur with this. I got way more out of reading Douglas's chapter about 7 Soldiers in his book than I did while actually reading the series itself. Liked the book a lot, BTW.

Hey, new blood!

Pleased to meet you, tbatc! Now, don't let this hood panic you, and before we get started, do you have any allergies we should know about?

Preview of the final issue is up: http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album.php?aid=25503 Um... wow.

Ha. Excellent. "I enjoy swearing when I feel the situation demands it."

Nice art, too -- faces are a little lantern-jawed, but more fun than Jones, perhaps?

Ha ha, glad to see Sunshine Superman back!

I thought that was him!

Mandrakk may or may not tie in to Marduk of Babylonian myth. Just a thought.

I found myself really loving the Superman special, but have been lukewarm on the first three chapters of FINAL CRISIS itself (and have sworn off all the tie-ins). I'm willing to give the whole thing a shot, but not until all seven chapters are out.

I have to confess that I'm posting on the Final Crisis thread without having done any more than skim a couple issues in the racks. Is this shaping up to be a really worthwhile read or is it more like DC One Million was, i.e. not really must read GM superhero reading? I'm kind of skeptical about it from the little I've seen.

DUDE! BUY IT ALL YESTERDAY!

Of course, I kinda disagree with you about the pacing of ASS - I thought it was totally deliberate and appropriate for the story to slow and finally reach an almost elegaic tempo as it approached the Big Guy's ultimate sacrifice and proof of heroism. But FC is maintaining that crazy breakneck thing all the way through, so maybe it's more your deal anyway.

Definitely better than 1,000,000. I think in some ways it'll read better as a whole--the constant acceleration (I actually didn't think the first couple of issues were all that crazy-breakneck, but by #6 it's definitely zooming) will be more evident, it won't be six months between appearances of significant characters, etc. But I also kind of love what it's getting out of serialization: Morrison writes really good cliffhangers ("RUN!"), and it's doing interesting things with the parallel stories running alongside the main one.

Incidentally, for anyone coming to this thread and wondering which the significant tie-ins are, here's my most-to-least-essential rundown, pending the five issues still to be released:

SUPERMAN BEYOND is essential to the story (and happens in the middle of #3)
SUBMIT sets up a few plot points in #4-6 (read it immediately before #4)
BATMAN #682/683 explains some stuff in #5 and #6 (best to read them between #4 and #5)

LEGION OF 3 WORLDS is only 2/5 done, and mighty good so far, but seems to mostly just be where Superman is between #3 and #6; maybe more will be revealed, but who knows
ROGUES' REVENGE is a lot of fun, and spins out of Final Crisis proper, but doesn't feed back in

REVELATIONS takes a bunch of cues from Final Crisis, but doesn't really inform it (it's referred to glancingly in #6)
REQUIEM and SECRET FILES both "flesh out" bits of the story that didn't particularly need to be fleshed out
RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS is set between #1 and #2, but doesn't appear to have anything much to do with Final Crisis at all
RESIST, pending FC #7, not only doesn't feed into the actual series but seems to contradict it

Double crack-smoking WOW at FC#7. I need to digest it; the wonder of it all overwhelms.

omg, time to strap in the baby! we're going for a walk!

"Where is the baby?"

"Somewhere on...Earth-51."

I'm gonna need to wait for Douglas' annotation notes for a lot of this, I think.

They're up now: http://finalcrisisannotations.blogspot.com/2009/01/final-crisis-7.html

Aside from the nested/traded-off narrators, this one seemed relatively straightforward, actually.

Okay, I'm lying.

Douglas, do you think Darkseid shot the bullet because he had to - because it had already happened - even tho it ended up killing him? Or do you think he committed suicide with intention to die?

I really liked it, but I'm not sure the pay off was worthy of the build-up. There's something underwhelming in 4 issues of pure dread being solved in a couple of panels, and it's a shame the main battle's not happening in the main series but in a crossover (though I know I shouldn't complain a lot about that, considering that Superman Beyond has to be one of the greatest Superman stories ever). With all of its shortcomings, I think DC One Million had a more satisfying ending, but maybe I should re-read both of them back to back and reevaluate my opinion. For the moment, I really liked it, but I'm not as floored as I was with Superman Beyond.

Read it, loved it, read all the Grant stuff as a 12-issue miniseries rather than as a 7 issue one, REALLY loved it.

Scattered thoughts here: http://tomewing.tumblr.com/post/74022211/third-fourth-and-fifth-thoughts-on-final-crisis

Read it yesterday, been thinking about it since (I think I even dreamt about it) and been loving even more ever since. It's just the ultimate and most utterly wonderful iteration of the imagination-and-hope-saves-the-universe Morrison trope + the most condensed issue I've ever read, the ending is anticlimatic, I agree, but it just works! Of course the story would end okay! Superman wished it so!.

I do wish the art in the main series had been a little more consistent -- I'd rather have had Mahnke and his army of inkers for seven issues than the tag-team effort we ended up with -- but apart from that, yeah, loved it, and I can't wait to re-read it. Who couldn't?

The Batman ending was totally Armageddon 2001, though. Minus the triceratops.

Superman wishing a happy ending is a great idea didn't feel so satisfyingly executed to me. It felt like a flashback from what should have been the real ending. Anyway I like the implications and how it links to his older stuff; the penultimate page is really similar to the last page in Invisibles, and the idea that happy endings are something worth wishing and, in comic books, should come true, is more or less the same thing Morrison did in Animal Man #26.

buying comics w/ baby is easy. reading 'em is trickier. took me four hours to get through FC: REV, and then about two hrs for FC. Hubba 2x!

So was there any relation between the Darkseid stuff and the Mandrakk stuff? also, after Darkseid falls (but before the mandrakk stuff), why are things still in danger? - i suppose that's why they're building the miracle machine? (and shooting the stuff in the rocket and freezing everyone?)

fun stuff, but i think this issue and sb were a little too metafictiony for me

But you kinda have to expect that with Morrison.

fair enough - still much better than zero hour, the multiverse epic of my youth... btw, after seeing the guy who designed the andre the giant obey posters on tv, it'd be great if someone made some darkseid anti-life versions

Moz a N'rama: Surely part of the fun of comics includes following stories across titles? If you like comics, what’s so awful about buying another one to see what happens next? And if you don’t want to buy it, don’t bother. Do something else. Buy cigarettes or booze or bananas. I don’t know!

Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head...’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but... ‘fatigue’?

Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant ?

The Mandrakk/Darkseid link is that Darkseid's fall breaks the orrery which somehow leads to Mandrakk waking up....? I dunno really!

Mordy, I think he was already dying when he fell--he just wanted to turn everything into him before he expired, so that everything could die when he did; he killed Orion to take the fight out of the world. Debatable, though.

Why would killing Orion take the fight out of the world?

Killing Orion would take the fight out of me.

but that's just me, you'd have to ask everyone else.

QUESTION: Does this mean the DC Uni/Multiverse has just been recreated/reimagined by Superman???

You mean, "Is Superman God?"?

precisely.
Whereas the post-COIE DCU was largely shaped by the paradigms of Watchmen and DKR, can we now have 20 yrs of comics derivative to ASS? PLEASE