It’s hard to shake the feeling that something’s gone badly awry with Final Crisis. As it goes on, you can definitely see a sense of what Morrison’s trying to do - he’s trying to forcibly evolve the DC universe into something new and unprecedented by bringing down the Fourth World from on high - but the act of telling that relatively straightforward story has been muddied and, to be honest, almost ruined by a combination of factors. These include the fact that he surely simply won’t be allowed to get away with bringing about such drastic change as he’d probably like (hence the rumours about changes being made to the planned ending), his own tendency towards obliqueness and obfuscation (fine in some contexts, but rather less so in a big “event” story), and the sheer amount of story and characters he’s having to cram in.

For the sheer number of plot threads going on, too few are adequately explained. Hal Jordan is on trial by the Green Lantern Corps at the same time as an entirely new Mr Miracle and associated team are showing up at Checkmate, while a possessed Mary Marvel and other villains are fighting a bunch of heroes in Bludhaven, while Libra (who was supposed to be a “big villain” but who really has done nothing since issue one) stands around shouting at other villains, while Renee Montoya goes… somewhere for a page… and so it goes on. The main plot - Darkseid takes over Earth with the Anti-Life equation while a bunch of misfits unaffected by it transcend to New God levels of power in their attempt to fight back - is actually coming along pretty nicely, and provides most of the issue’s best moments (the Rubik’s Cube bit is lovely, and this new interpretation of Darkseid is terrific, genuinely malevolent and terrifying while also superbly designed). The stuff with Mister Miracle and his merry band, meanwhile, does contain some of the more confusingly Morrisonian dialogue, but is at least entertaining.

But why do we need all the other associated guff? It feels like an issue of 52 - but this isn’t a year-long weekly series where multiple unconnected plots can weave in and out of the pages at a leisurely pace. This is the fifth issue of seven, and some of these plots have only had a total of a few pages devoted to them (and others, such as Barry Allen’s return, don’t even appear this month). They feel meaningless. It basically looks like Morrison came up with the core story, but was told it wasn’t sufficiently rooted in DC-ness (it’s almost the antithesis of Infinite Crisis in that sense, in fact) and so had to throw in a load of stuff about the characters that DC sees as most crucial at the moment - i.e. the ones who’ve been followed through Countdown and its associated million tie-ins (almost none of which I’ve actually read, because I find these characters boring). And if you’re going to throw in a load of DC characters just to make it feel more like it’s part of the shared universe, then where’s the sense in completely taking Batman and Superman out of the story?

To its credit, and in comparison to Secret Invasion, there is at least stuff happening. The problem is that there’s simply too much of it, and it’s becoming an increasingly incomprehensible mess as a result. If you’ve got someone as capable of good storytelling as Morrison writing your event book, don’t saddle him with all the associated crap of your wasted last couple of years of “main” universe story. Just let him get on with his elaborate and bonkers homage to Jack Kirby (speaking of which, I’ve not commented on the art yet because I simply don’t know which of the myriad artists are responsible for which bits, but there’s a lovely snarling Darkseid panel on the penultimate page with some Kirby-esque thick linework), and leave Checkmate and Mary Marvel and “the Society” and Bludhaven and all of that other tedious nonsense out of it next time, eh?

I was a bit worried going into this. Following the hiatus, filled by DC with a bunch of tie-in one-shots (some even written by Mozza himself), it was beginning to look like, once Final Crisis picked up again, it would be dependent on knowledge of some of the stuff that had been published in the interim. This very week a title was released called Final Crisis : Submit, which people across the net have been exhorting to “read before you read issue #4!!!!111”

Such things would have made a mockery both of the book’s original promise to be a self-contained miniseries – and also of its status as a “first book on the pile”, something it should be aiming for as a massive event coming out in the same week as Marvel’s massive event. Thankfully, I’m happy to report that the people who’ve said you need to read Submit – or indeed any other tie-in – first are talking bollocks. Hell, you don’t even need to have read the first three issues, really – all of a sudden, those slow and occasionally baffling chapters look more like a prequel than part of the series itself. Issue #4 begins where you suspect the series as a whole should have kicked off – Earth is in the shit, Darkseid is on his way, and the heroes had better do something about it quickly. Despite the apparent jump in time from the closing pages of #3, these facts are conveyed quickly and effectively – to the extent that I gleaned a better understanding of what had happened earlier in the series than I had from actually reading the issues as they came out. And no information from other books is really necessary – the tie-ins embellish, rather than define, the main series.

What we’re left with, then, is an archetypal “turning point” issue, in which the heroes – those who are left – finally band together to make a stand. You’ve seen it all before, of course – but even so, the sequence in which the rebels (as they’ve become) gather over the SubWave Netw… er, sorry, the Unternet… is superbly inspiring, and not just because of the timely reminder of Alan Scott’s status as one of the DCU’s most venerable heroes. But this is a feature of Morrison’s work – it’s so frequently about moments, and for arguably the first time this series, the issue is full of them: Ollie and Dinah’s farewell, the former then immediately showing just why he’s so excellent; mirroring that, the deeply touching reunion of the Allens (and I’ll be hesitant about this, since it’s only consisted of a few pages, but so far Barry’s return is working – maybe because Grant’s giving him most of the best dialogue); the details of the anti-life equation itself, which is driven by the fantastic idea that in order to conquer people, Darkseid has simply shown them “mathematical proof that [he] is the rightful master of everything in existence”. As an invasion plan, you have to say it’s pretty original.

But it’s not all about heroic comebacks just yet. Rather than being a simple progression of good-to-bad-to-good-again, events are fluctuating in different ways, often meeting and crossing in the middle – and so while Alan Scott’s freedom fighters are raising mood and spirits, elsewhere Earth’s conquerors are only making things worse and worse. After all, Darkseid has been an unsettlingly malevolent presence throughout the series, and yet he hasn’t even appeared yet. This threatens to change, however, in a superb closing couple of pages, as the story of Dan Turpin’s attempt to resist becoming the tyrant’s reincarnated form draws to an (apparent) end – an arresting final full-page image by JG Jones portending even worse to come.

It’s just a shame that the visual side of the book in general has turned into such a fiasco. You just can’t put artists on event books like this if there’s a chance they won’t see it through. You wouldn’t put Quitely or Hitch on this - and Jones, as good as he is at crafting pretty and iconic images, isn’t a Quitely or Hitch when it comes to his storytelling. That said, he does provide some beautiful work here - that terrific closing page, the scenes with the two Flashes, not to mention a fourth absolutely stunning cover in a row, perhaps the best of the lot - but it doesn’t feel worth the upheaval of jumping between him and Carlos Pacheco in this issue and for the next couple, before being replaced entirely by Doug Mahnke for the seventh. Pacheco, for his part, is solid enough, but that’s all he is. The series is a whole is very well presented, with a classier look and feel compared to, say, Secret Invasion - but it feels like sacrifices have been made in order to get a flavour du jour artist’s name on the front, and I don’t think it’s paid off.

Still, we’re getting there. Suddenly, Final Crisis looks less like another lumbering DC crossover, and more like an actual event - and one that, pleasingly, remains a valid self-contained tale in and of itself despite all the tie-ins (not that I’d recommend it to a complete DC novice, but neither do you have to be an avid reader of everything up to and including Dan Didio’s self-congratulatory editorials to “get” it). As with Batman RIP, it’s been a bit slow to kick in, but now that the tension levels are rising - he really does foreboding menace well, doesn’t he? - you sense that even better is still to come.

There are a number of factors contributing to Final Crisis just… not really working as a big “event” book yet. It’s fairly typical Morrison storytelling, in that it’s slow-burning, and allusive, and multi-layered, and in that many of the early pages will only really begin to unfold themselves properly upon a second read once the whole thing is over and done with. Unfortunately, such storytelling isn’t really all that well-suited to a big summer event book, certainly not one with the weight of promotion that DC have afforded it, and which promises to be massively significant to the future direction of its universe (and thus pretty much required reading for anyone with any level of interest in proceedings).

This would certainly account for much of the criticism - or, perhaps more accurately, apathy - that the first couple of issues have received. No-one’s calling it bad comics - it just feels pretty mislabelled at this point. We’re up to issue three, now, and it has to be said that until the closing pages of this issue, not much has been happening - and much of what has occurred has done so off-page. The massively-teased happening of Barry Allen making his comeback has so far proven to consist of little more than fleeting glances and related flashback - indeed, you half wonder if the full story of his return isn’t going to occur instead in a miniseries/special of its own (probably written by Geoff Johns).

That said, when you’re waiting for a story to really kick into gear, there are few tonics better than a “shit hitting the fan in a big way” sequence. And Final Crisis at last (see how I avoided using the word “finally”, there?) begins to live up to the noun part of its name as Darkseid’s plan swings into a higher gear. The whole “an email sent to everyone in the world” thing is perhaps a little daft, but this is Morrison we’re talking about after all - and it creates some superb tension as other elements of the plan click into place all at once. Countering this, meanwhile, is the gathering of the “superhero draft”, another really well-constructed sequence that adds a suitable air of gravitas to the situation.

Despite the storytelling finally kicking up a notch, there’s still a sense that there are just a few too many plot threads jostling for space, many suffering from not being afforded adequate attention and page time. As individual scenes, many of these are great - along with the two mentioned above, Jay Garrick’s pages are excellent (”And we ran. By God we ran. Three generations of the Flash”). But when we alight on the villains it still feels like a hangover from recent DC past and the fascination with rogue-centric stories like Salvation Run (not to mention that Libra, the supposed exciting new villain of the piece, already feels like little more than a lackey to Darkseid); and the same can be said for the opening pages (how many more moodily-lit Renee Montoya scenes can DC see fit to publish? 52 was two years ago!). And that’s without even getting to Shilo Norman and the Super Young Team, or the Earth-bound Monitor, or Hal Jordan’s arrest, or… you get the idea.

Thankfully, after a slightly shaky start to the biggest gig of his career so far, JG Jones is suddenly delivering the goods in spectacular fashion. He doesn’t put a foot wrong here, either in his storytelling or his character portrayals (even if that new Mary Marvel costume - and while we’re at it, can I just say BORED NOW of that particular bit of character “development” - is rotten). There’s a particularly great bit of panel composition in the Question/Frankenstein scene, and there’s a vibrant energy throughout the different types of mood and action that Morrison calls for. It’s indicative, really, of the fact that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the craftsmanship on show here - it’s an extremely well-made comic, and if it had been the first or even the second issue there’d be plenty of cause for optimism. As it is, it feels like it’s taken three issues to even start to get anywhere, and the two-month wait for #4 is hardly welcome either.

It feels like a stuck record to say it, but this is yet another Morrison story that’s almost certainly going to read a lot better as a book. Nevertheless, the omens of the closing pages are positive (by which I mean they’re negative… but in a good, exciting way), and the quality of writing and art at least do enough to push it ahead of Secret Invasion (in which even less has happened so far) in the “big crossover event” stakes. It would just be nice if said quality were applied to something a bit bigger. Threatening the world is all well and good, but let’s hurry up and see the threat, hmm?

Another week, another first issue of a Grant Morrison-penned “event” story. But where the opening two parts of Batman RIP have thrilled, the first chapter of Final Crisis underwhelms. The technical quality is there, but the story fails to deliver on the promises that this will be something huge, significant and epoch-making.

The main problem, really, is that it’s difficult to see anything in the series so far that’s particularly original or compelling. It’s far too rooted in recent DC history and style – and so a number of pages are devoted to a scene featuring the staggeringly dull Monitors, something which will make absolutely no sense to anyone who didn’t read the interminable Countdown (that’s, er, most of us then), and for what should be a self-contained miniseries accessible to new readers popping in to see what all the fuss is about, this is pretty criminal. Perhaps the strongest element of the issue, meanwhile, is in having much of the action take place through the eyes of longtime Superman supporting character Dan Turpin. It’s good that Morrison understands the need to provide a human counterpoint to the metahuman drama – it’s something that Infinite Crisis, for example, sorely lacked – but even this feels like a huge retread of the character arc that 52 built around Renee Montoya (even down to the fact that Montoya herself appears, in her new guise as the Question).

Despite this peripheral material, there’s a sense that there are two main plot strands – which will presumably converge at some point – but again, neither are hugely interesting at this point. Another story where the villains all band together to take on the superheroes? Didn’t they do that (largely in the background) during Infinite Crisis? And for all that Morrison might talk up in interviews his neat idea of bringing back a forgotten villain from the ’70s as a terrifying new threat… I’m just not feeling it yet. The action that puts Libra on the villain map, as it were, feels nowhere near as landmark as it should - despite being the death of a long-time and well-respected Justice League member - as the storytelling is a little muggy, the character in question barely gets to utter a line before being offed, and his death is only subsequently confirmed off-panel.

As someone who’s thoroughly enjoyed JG Jones’ cover art in recent years, meanwhile, I’m a little disappointed by his interior work here. At times it looks lovely - but there’s a slightly soulless quality to some of it, and in places it’s positively static (this is an attribute that harms the aforementioned murder scene - there’s no real sense of action at all). While there’s some nice scope in scenes involving the Green Lanterns, when we catch up with the Justice League there’s some sloppy work, especially a poor opening close-up of Superman’s face. And the colouring doesn’t help, either - again, Lanterns aside, everything’s too red. It would appear to be a specific DC style, having also been an attribute of Infinite Crisis, but it’s really starting to wear thin, and doesn’t help with the overall absence of vibrancy.

There are certainly hints of that quintessential Morrison-ness – the opening pages, while they perhaps go on a bit too long, make for one of his textbook non-sequitur openings, and the image of (a brilliantly redesigned) Metron appearing to prehistoric man is a sharp one. A particularly nice touch, meanwhile, is that because the scene is taking place from Turpin’s perspective, the name of the mysterious red-eyed club owner is always written as Dark Side, even when he’s saying it himself - shades there, I feel, of “Why should I want to know where to find raw shark?” The final page, too, offers a teasing mystery, as we watch an unknown someone apparently waking up in an entirely unfamiliar body.

There’s scope for this to get better – despite being opposed in principle to his return, I can’t help but be excited by the cover of #2 featuring Barry Allen, and indeed the lack of any reference to this plot thread (unless that’s him at the end, which it very well could be) is perhaps one of the reasons for the slightly deflated feel to this issue. Plus, you know, it’s Grant - he doesn’t usually steer us wrong, not when you take the long view. But for the moment at least, Final Crisis has firmly failed to dazzle - and all hope has gone out of the window that anyone but hardcore DCU enthusiasts will want to stick around to the end.

Comics Daily coverage of Final Crisis continues as our more qualified DC enthusiast, Seb Patrick, takes a look over the events of DC Universe #0 and, elsewhere, the viral marketing for The Dark Knight. I geek out about the latest Spider-Man announcement, and then there are more examples of articles we’ve written for Den of Geek, which covers Moore’s defining Batman/Joker story, The Killing Joke, and everyone’s new favourite Marvel character, Iron Man. Continue reading »

It’s been a fair while since I read a DCU comic - almost nothing since the end of 52, in fact. Still, even someone as largely disinterested in DC Universe comics can’t fail to notice that big things are happening. DC’s second weekly series, Countdown, has ended, apparently without getting to the place it was supposed to. Whoops. Someone get Grant Morrison on the horn. Enter DC Universe #0, which sets the stage for Final Crisis in all the ways that Countdown managed not to. Apparently.

DC Universe #0 isn’t so much a story as a guided tour of the current state of the DCU. Both Marvel and DC have been screwing around with mega-crossovers for years now, and just keeping up with continuity is getting to be a harder and harder game than ever. DCU #0 tries to explain where most everyone important is and what they’re doing, with the notable exception of the Shazam family of characters. The problem is, it neither explains who anyone is, nor what situation they’re in. It just shows them doing some stuff and you have to try and piece it together from what’s going on in their parent titles. The Batman segment is especially impenetrable. It’s Batman and the Joker! I know those characters! I shouldn’t be left unable to understand a damn word of their conversation.

The opening description of the recent Crises is almost impressively succinct for what’s been going on, but the rest of the book is a jumble of characters and situations that fail to engage. It feels more like a sampler than a story in itself, which is a pity because it ends with a fairly important revelation that you suspect really needed a stronger companion material. Narrating this tour is a mysterious figure. (Spoiler time, folks. Please exit the review immediately if you’re bothered.) Initially, I thought this was part of the fruition of Morrison’s “Sentient DC Universe” idea that he was talking about a few years back, but it becomes fairly clear who it is - it’s Barry Allen. If they’re serious about bringing back the man Seb and I once named as our No. 2 Best Death in Comics, it needs to be for a better story than Crisis Nine or whatever this one is, and it certainly should’ve been done in a better comic than DCU #0.

There are some nice touches - the way the caption boxes fade from Black to Red is a great detail, and that final page is a fantastic image. Lopresti’s Wonder Woman is Hughes-esque without being gratuitous, and the Spectre sequence is probably the best of the bunch, appropriately creepy. Perez drawing anything is always worth seeing. On the whole, though, it fails as a book. It’s supposed to be leading into Final Crisis, and yet it doesn’t adequately introduce anything or anyone. It’s the comics equivalent of channel-surfing. My first DCU comic for some time, and probably my last one until this Crisis is over as well…