Final Crisis...Big Headache...

[Thespeckledkiwi]

So I plopped down to thumb through Final Crisis at a local bookstore and all I can say is what the hell am I reading? I can't determine what the hell is going on at all with the story whatsoever. I mean...half way into it I am like who the hell are these characters, why the hell do I care, and what does it have to do with New Gods and Darkseid and the such? I mean...wow.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Really? I thought it was relatively straightforward, as these things go. I would even say that it was simpler and more cohesive than most of these "event" series. I guess that some basic knowledge of the DC universe is required, though. "DCU for dummies" this is not.

 

[Checkmate]

One day those two companies will realize that they're putting themselves out of business because of how convoluted they keep making the stories. It's all but impossible to keep up with any of them anymore, especially when these lame "mega super awesome crossover spectaculars!!!" come about.

People need to be able to keep up with serialized fiction. Making it impossible to do that is just ridiculous, especially when you think what you're doing is securing their business by forcing them to buy ten billion other comics.

 

[Hermiod]

So I plopped down to thumb through Final Crisis at a local bookstore and all I can say is what the hell am I reading? I can't determine what the hell is going on at all with the story whatsoever. I mean...half way into it I am like who the hell are these characters, why the hell do I care, and what does it have to do with New Gods and Darkseid and the such? I mean...wow.

Now you know how I felt reading Infinite Crisis. Put me off DC for good that did.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

One day those two companies will realize that they're putting themselves out of business because of how convoluted they keep making the stories. It's all but impossible to keep up with any of them anymore, especially when these lame "mega super awesome crossover spectaculars!!!" come about.

People need to be able to keep up with serialized fiction. Making it impossible to do that is just ridiculous, especially when you think what you're doing is securing their business by forcing them to buy ten billion other comics.

You know, you're absolutely right, but Final Crisis is not a good example. It was mostly self-contained, had a couple of disposable spinoff mini-series attached to it, but did not really affect the DCU as a whole. You could skip it without missing much in terms of shared universe continuity.

And anyway, why anyone would buy capes and spandex comics rather than, say, Scott Pilgrim is beyond me.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Really? I thought it was relatively straightforward, as these things go. I would even say that it was simpler and more cohesive than most of these "event" series. I guess that some basic knowledge of the DC universe is required, though. "DCU for dummies" this is not.

Well, there were some in there that I did recognize a bit but then (tiger dudes?) some I did not. But I had no idea what was going on.

 

[Mr Light]

Final Crisis is not representative of regular DC comics. It was a weird bizarre surreal Grant Morrison drug out that wasn't even really reality. While Infinite Crisis had a lot of characters and continuity (and was my introduction to modern DC comics!) I thought it was wonderful, basically the most ultimate story you could think of.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Well, there were some in there that I did recognize a bit but then (tiger dudes?) some I did not. But I had no idea what was going on.

A god is killed. There's an investigation. It turns out that the murder was the first act of an invasion of Earth by evil alien gods. Earth is invaded. It turns out that the invasion is itself a small part of a power play between creatures who are more powerful than gods. Superman finds out what happened and reboots reality. The end.

Honestly, was it really that complicated?

 

[TheArsenal]

... Final Crisis ... was mostly self-contained, had a couple of disposable spinoff mini-series attached to it, but did not really affect the DCU as a whole. You could skip it without missing much in terms of shared universe continuity.

Which was odd. Because it came off of a year long build up of weekly comics which billed themselves (most of the time) as Countdown to Final Crisis. A Crisis so BIG it takes a year and 52 comics to build toward it. Not to mention calling itself Final Crisis; pretty ambitious billing following a publishing history where "Crisis" generally meant universes were destroyed, universes were created, and the status quo is "forever" shifted.

But ... in the end it was a small, not very good, disappointing story which had few ripples - minus two deaths, that is. And only one of those two was treated as noteworthy, and the noteworthy death was a bit redundant as I swore I had just seen him die in another comic.

Then this non-event event was milked even further with a few Final Crisis Aftermath mini-series. Can't imagine who is reading those.

 

[Admiral2]

Well, there were some in there that I did recognize a bit but then (tiger dudes?) some I did not. But I had no idea what was going on.

A god is killed. There's an investigation. It turns out that the murder was the first act of an invasion of Earth by evil alien gods. Earth is invaded. It turns out that the invasion is itself a small part of a power play between creatures who are more powerful than gods. Superman finds out what happened and reboots reality. The end.

Honestly, was it really that complicated?

Doesn't sound all that complicated.

Stupid, maybe, but not complicated.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

Well, there were some in there that I did recognize a bit but then (tiger dudes?) some I did not. But I had no idea what was going on.

A god is killed. There's an investigation. It turns out that the murder was the first act of an invasion of Earth by evil alien gods. Earth is invaded. It turns out that the invasion is itself a small part of a power play between creatures who are more powerful than gods. Superman finds out what happened and reboots reality. The end.

Honestly, was it really that complicated?

What the hell were all those other Supermen?

 

[Mr Light]

I haven't been reading recent DC comics. I've just gotten the most recent GC/GLC trades, and even the "Final Crisis" GL special only has a single line of dialogue referencing it! Have any of them acknowledged the existence of Final Crisis? Were there any actual consequences to Final Crisis? It's hard to even count Batman "dying" since he "died" at the end of RIP and then came back and died right away again

 

[CaptainCanada]

What the hell were all those other Supermen?

The Supermen of other realities.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

What the hell were all those other Supermen?

The Supermen of other realities.

Or as I call it Morrison using the Multiverse as a dues ex machina.

 

[CaptainCanada]

What the hell were all those other Supermen?

The Supermen of other realities.

Or as I call it Morrison using the Multiverse as a dues ex machina.

FC is all about the Multiverse, so I don't see using characters from it as a big deal.

Final Crisis as a story is fairly heavy on symbolism and such; it's much less a conventional superhero story than a giant allegory (for example, the Super Young Team disappears near the end as a commentary on new characters getting introduced into the DCU and then slowly fading away while the old standards go on). Like a lot of Morrison's work, makes it fairly divisive.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

The Supermen of other realities.

Or as I call it Morrison using the Multiverse as a dues ex machina.

FC is all about the Multiverse, so I don't see using characters from it as a big deal.

Final Crisis as a story is fairly heavy on symbolism and such; it's much less a conventional superhero story than a giant allegory (for example, the Super Young Team disappears near the end as a commentary on new characters getting introduced into the DCU and then slowly fading away while the old standards go on). Like a lot of Morrison's work, makes it fairly divisive.

Okay I've only been following the summary on Wikipedia but what else besides the Superman army and the Monitors is used from the Multiverse, from what I can tell it's mostly Darkseid invading and taking over until Batman offs him and then some vampire thing shows up and gets it's ass kicked by the Supermen.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Okay I've only been following the summary on Wikipedia but what else besides the Superman army and the Monitors is used from the Multiverse, from what I can tell it's mostly Darkseid invading and taking over until Batman offs him and then some vampire thing shows up and gets it's ass kicked by the Supermen.

Superman journeys through the multiverse (in Superman Beyond, which Morrison also wrote, and is included in the trade, since it's important to the story) on a quest to get to the heart of what's going on.

FC has basically two plots: Darkseid's, which is fairly literal. It's "the day evil won", with Morrison bringing out all the standard doomsday tropes to use/analyze them (one of the big things being to make evil look, well, evil and freakish, rather than sexy and cool; see Mary Marvel).

Then there's the more openly metatextual plot, involving the "vampire thing" (a corrupted Monitor), which is the embodiment of gritty/deconstructive influences from the 80s (or, perhaps more appropriately, the more derivative versions that followed). At the end, the Multiverse is, among other things, a representation of infinite storytelling possibility.

The former plot, by itself and played with a more conventional dramatic style (without all the deliberate jarring stuff Morrison does near the end as part of his meta-narrative), is a pretty standard epic event idea (and it has the series' most easily digestible scenes, such as all the stuff with the Green Lanterns, which were my favourite parts of it). The latter is Morrison's weirder side, which tends to separate readers into factions pretty quickly.

 

[Mr Light]

The space vampire was a former Monitor?! Did they even mention that in FC proper, or do you need to get the tie-in for that, even though they said you don't need to read the tie-ins to understand the main series?

 

[CaptainCanada]

Mandraak's history is brought up in Superman Beyond (Morrison changed his tack on essentials midway through when he concluded that he needed a bit more space to tell his story; hence, SB's being included in the trade; also in there is one other one-shot that Morrison wrote, but it's not important).

 

[Mr Light]

Yeah reading #7 was a fun experience for me. All of a sudden Darkseid is gone and the actual villain is some space vampire who never appeared before or was even mentioned in the series. Jeez.