Review: Final Crisis #4 (of 7) & Final Crisis: Submit #1, DC Comics, (Grant Morrison, writer)
Ok so I am kicking off comic reviews this week on The Blog. They won't likely pop up every week, but I will do them as I can.
First up – DC’s Final Crisis #4. A little back story: This is the 3rd part of a trilogy that started with Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the 1985. At the time, DC Comics was a bit of a continuity mess – full of multiple storylines that could not possibly work together. Example - there was a Superboy comic, but Clark Kent did not put on the suit until he was an adult in Metropolis – so how does that work? So they explained this by saying that there were several realities that bled in and out of each other at times. This was still pretty much a mess, so in the first Crisis they destroyed all the different realities and timelines, creating one “true” Earth with one distinctive history. Over time, different writers made the same kind of “mistakes” – people came back from the dead, character elements were simply ignored or forgotten, etc. So in 2005, DC released Infinite Crisis, which effectively recreated 51 of the other “lost” realities, and explained away all the continuity mistakes that had been made over the 20 year gap (in a lightweight dumb way, but it all worked out). Since then, they have been laying the groundwork for Grant Morrison’s twisted idea for the 3rd part of the Trilogy – Final Crisis. In this mini-series, the villain Darkseid has unleashed the “Anti-Life Equation” on Earth via all media (internet, tv, radio, cellular), causing all who see or hear it to submit to the will of Darkseid. In the new world that is created, Anti-Life justifies ignorance, pain, abusing the weak, etc – Life is a question and Anti-Life is the answer. Basically, everyone who has submitted is evil and worships Darkseid completely. Final Crisis is the darkest of the entries into this series. In this one, evil wins right off the top.
Ok so this week we got Final Crisis: Submit #1 and Final Crisis #4, where we find the few heroes who are left beaten down and not in high spirits. Submit tells the story of how hero Black Lightning sacrifices himself into submission to save a “super villain” (The Tattooed Man) and his family. This one is a great read – a bit melodramatic in showing how much the “hero” and “villain” really are alike – but overall this is a great moment for Black Lightning. In the end, he is transformed by the Anti-Life Equation, which serves the bleakness of the main story well – but he also transforms the villain into a bit of a hero.
In Final Crisis #4, we learn that the heroes can only communicate through the Daily Planet newspaper – printed secretly from the Fortress of Solitude – and are scattered across the world at “safe houses”. This is a bleak, bleak mini-series. The bad guys have almost completely won – and while we know at the end they have to fix it, seeing what they are putting some of the characters through still has resonance. Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and Black Lightning have all been forced to submit, Martian Manhunter is dead, Superman and Batman are missing, and people are basically snapping off all over the world – killing each other or worse. This issue basically drives the point home that even if the remaining heroes win, the world will have been put through hell and there should be some consequences. Important characters are dead; most of the heroes have submitted and are hunting “survivors”; and a very small list of B-Z list heroes are trying to fix it – but they are dropping like flies and have no idea how to do that.
I have no idea where this one is going, which is a good thing. I have always been a fan of Morrison, and I hope he is on his “A” game and he can bring this home with issues 5-7, and with the upcoming Final Crisis: Resist.
Grades: Final Crisis #4 - B+, Final Crisis Submit – B.
Ok so I am kicking off comic reviews this week on The Blog. They won't likely pop up every week, but I will do them as I can.
First up – DC’s Final Crisis #4. A little back story: This is the 3rd part of a trilogy that started with Crisis on Infinite Earths back in the 1985. At the time, DC Comics was a bit of a continuity mess – full of multiple storylines that could not possibly work together. Example - there was a Superboy comic, but Clark Kent did not put on the suit until he was an adult in Metropolis – so how does that work? So they explained this by saying that there were several realities that bled in and out of each other at times. This was still pretty much a mess, so in the first Crisis they destroyed all the different realities and timelines, creating one “true” Earth with one distinctive history. Over time, different writers made the same kind of “mistakes” – people came back from the dead, character elements were simply ignored or forgotten, etc. So in 2005, DC released Infinite Crisis, which effectively recreated 51 of the other “lost” realities, and explained away all the continuity mistakes that had been made over the 20 year gap (in a lightweight dumb way, but it all worked out). Since then, they have been laying the groundwork for Grant Morrison’s twisted idea for the 3rd part of the Trilogy – Final Crisis. In this mini-series, the villain Darkseid has unleashed the “Anti-Life Equation” on Earth via all media (internet, tv, radio, cellular), causing all who see or hear it to submit to the will of Darkseid. In the new world that is created, Anti-Life justifies ignorance, pain, abusing the weak, etc – Life is a question and Anti-Life is the answer. Basically, everyone who has submitted is evil and worships Darkseid completely. Final Crisis is the darkest of the entries into this series. In this one, evil wins right off the top.
Ok so this week we got Final Crisis: Submit #1 and Final Crisis #4, where we find the few heroes who are left beaten down and not in high spirits. Submit tells the story of how hero Black Lightning sacrifices himself into submission to save a “super villain” (The Tattooed Man) and his family. This one is a great read – a bit melodramatic in showing how much the “hero” and “villain” really are alike – but overall this is a great moment for Black Lightning. In the end, he is transformed by the Anti-Life Equation, which serves the bleakness of the main story well – but he also transforms the villain into a bit of a hero.
In Final Crisis #4, we learn that the heroes can only communicate through the Daily Planet newspaper – printed secretly from the Fortress of Solitude – and are scattered across the world at “safe houses”. This is a bleak, bleak mini-series. The bad guys have almost completely won – and while we know at the end they have to fix it, seeing what they are putting some of the characters through still has resonance. Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, and Black Lightning have all been forced to submit, Martian Manhunter is dead, Superman and Batman are missing, and people are basically snapping off all over the world – killing each other or worse. This issue basically drives the point home that even if the remaining heroes win, the world will have been put through hell and there should be some consequences. Important characters are dead; most of the heroes have submitted and are hunting “survivors”; and a very small list of B-Z list heroes are trying to fix it – but they are dropping like flies and have no idea how to do that.
I have no idea where this one is going, which is a good thing. I have always been a fan of Morrison, and I hope he is on his “A” game and he can bring this home with issues 5-7, and with the upcoming Final Crisis: Resist.
Grades: Final Crisis #4 - B+, Final Crisis Submit – B.
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