Writer/Artist: Grant Morrison, Doug Mahnke, Carlos Pacheco, Matthew Clark, Jesus Merino, Marco Rudy, Christian Alamy, Norm Rapamund
Publisher: DC, $29.99 HC
Why You Should Know It: The third in the DC series of Crisis events, Morrison’s Final Crisis has received it’s share of both good and negative criticism. The series is a mix of a love letter to Jack Kirby, an experiment in cross media storytelling, and a major mainstream super-hero crossover event.
The core plot revolves around the evil god Darkseid making his major push against Earth as he is slowly dying, corrupting the fabric of the universe around him. The weakening of reality itself has crumbled the barriers of the multiverse, a collection of 52 parallel Earths kept safe and examined by a race of creatures know as the Monitors.
The trick to reading Final Crisis is to have a willingness to do a bit of homework. Morrison tells the story as if your channel surfing, only spending little spurts of time on each sub-plot. In a departure from a publishing event that usually tells the story in a straight forward manner, a large part of Final Crisis is seen from the ground level up. A normal bystander of an apocalyptic event doesn’t have the benefit of linear narration and play-by-play, so neither do you in this case. You have to piece the puzzle together, and it seems like Morrison intended the reader to do so by addtional reading through online resources as well as the original source material that came before Final Crisis.
If you’re willing to, I would recommend a healthy does of DC history homework along with a few online tools. Wikipedia is your friend here to say the least, as well as the numerous blog resources that have taken the time to examine and review this book.
Considering the original single issues would cost you over $40, the $29.99 cover price is fair to me especially because this is a dense read and the packaging is nicely designed. The only thing you lose from the original format is the 3-D of the Superman Beyond chapters, but depending on your eyesight that may actually be a win.
Recommend Homework:
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus series, Crisis on Infinite Worlds, Grant Morrison’s run on JLA, Infinite Crisis, 52, The Sinestro Corp War, Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory, Batman RIP. For blog resources, check links below.
Personal Review: I honestly really enjoyed Final Crisis. I made it a point to read the entire run of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus collections, and after that you start to see a lot of the connection points in the plot that you might otherwise overlook. Morrison loves to utilize obscure references and sub-plots from other works, and while that may not be reader friendly I got the impression that this wasn’t meant to appeal to a mainstream crowd anyway.
There are certainly elements that appeal to everyone though, and no shortage of major action and superheroic fun. When you have three generations of Flashes running backwards through time to catch a bullet fired from the future, it really doesn’t get much more awesome than that.
The ending was a major point of conflict for readers because of the abrupt change from Darkseid being the main villain to a character named Mandrakk. The trick was that you had to read a two issue story called Superman Beyond between certain issues of the main Final Crisis series. If you didn’t, then it’s understandable why you wouldn’t like the ending at all. Even if you read it, the story changes gear completely into a meta commentary puzzle of the very nature of the comics industry. Which is exactly something I’m a sucker for, but many readers may not give a crap.
As for the art, it would have been nice if J.G. Jones had been able to do the entire series, but I’m not going to complain when Doug Mahnke is your replacement artist. As a whole I enjoyed the art despite the stylistic changes from some chapters.
If you like this then try: Invisibles, We3, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus series, Crisis on Infinite Worlds, Grant Morrison’s run on JLA, Infinite Crisis, 52, Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corp War, Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory, Batman RIP
Related Links: http://finalcrisisannotations.blogspot.com/
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2009/02/26/final-crisis-cliffs-...
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