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?

It’s long been a tenet of Grant Morrison’s comics runs that everything makes a lot more sense once it’s finished, and that in terms of the bigger picture, it’s often better to read the complete saga altogether rather than attempting to make sense of individual issues on a month-by-month basis.

But on the other hand, Morrison is a man with a deep and inherent understanding of the medium in which he works – and despite the dense layers that sit atop his stories waiting to be unpicked, he’s not someone who simply writes for the inevitable collected edition. He’s working in a medium that is, first and foremost, serialised. As such – and this is true of both Animal Man and New X-Men, two runs that saw earlier issues significantly illuminated by what would follow – among the deep levels of mystery, he’s still aware of the importance of crafting individual, monthly issues (or shorter “mini-arcs”) that on their own terms stand out like jewels.

And that’s certainly the case with Batman #678. Ostensibly nothing more than the third part of the wider Batman RIP storyline, and with pages that advance that main plot by small measures while still retaining much of the inherent mystery and weirdness, where this issue jumps out as one of the best of Morrison’s run so far is in the relatively self-contained tale of a drugged-up, amnesiac Bruce Wayne wandering the streets of Gotham attempting to rediscover his identity.

Now, admittedly the “down-and-out with a heart of gold acting as guardian angel” is a trope that’s almost as old as story itself (even in comics, there are fairly immediate antecedents in the likes of Sandman’s Mad Hettie) but Morrison makes particularly strong use of Honor Jackson here. A character previously seen being given money on the street by Wayne (in one of those Morrisonian blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scenes that you’d never have guessed would prove to be important), here he’s Bruce’s guide (while also using those still-inherent fighting skills as a bodyguard) and it’s a genuinely touching tale – even moreso when Bruce learns that the man he’s spent the day with had actually died that morning (again, something that verges on cliché is given weight by the fact that it was probably Bruce’s money that gave Jackson the means to overdose). How much of the day’s experience was real, then, and how much in his head?

Irrespective of whether you actually know the Silver Age story of the Zur-En-Arrh Batman, meanwhile, that final page (complete with direct quotation of the issue in question) is an absolutely arresting image – has Bats truly gone bats? Or is he clawing his way back to a new kind of sanity? Throughout this run we’ve had hints and references made to a plethora of Silver Age concepts, and with some of the most blatant in this issue (Bat-Mite also makes an appearance, while Dr Hurt dons a costume not dissimilar to the one worn by Thomas Wayne in another old story that posited somehow that Bruce’s father was in fact the first Batman) a sense of the master plan is starting to become clear – by hook or by crook, Morrison is establishing, as part of his “new” Batman mythology, that these stories actually happened. Maybe they actually happened to Bruce, or maybe they all took place in his head as part of Hurt’s isolation experiment. Either way, though, it’s a ballsy move – tearing down the boundaries of “pre” and “post”-Crisis continuity to create something altogether more… dare we say it… legendary?

The last time DC decided to tear down the Batman, they had a drugged-up muscleman unleash the entire population of Arkham upon him before breaking into his home and snapping his back. This time, Morrison is playing on something rooted far deeper within the character – dark, twisted psychology. In requiring more than a cursory read to truly understand what’s going on, it perhaps doesn’t play to the gallery as much as a usual big-bucks blockbuster comics run might – but it’s bold, daring comics, especially in a title of this stature, and it’s all the better for it.

There’s plenty of news worth commenting on straight out of Wizard World Chicago as the Summer’s con season truly gets going, including reflections on the unfortunate passing of Mike Turner, Ghost Rider news (seriously), the near-mythical Superman 2000 pitch and Eric Stephenson’s recent promotion.
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I can’t remember a week of comics as good as this in a very long time. In a way, it’s a reflection of just how badly things tend to be scheduled – and certainly, for a writer of a site where we can only review four new books a week, it’s frustrating to have to miss out so much stuff, when there are other weeks in which we’ll barely have anything of interest to say. Nevertheless, the disappointment of Final Crisis aside, we’ve had customarily superb issues of Astonishing X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man and Batman, the possible sleeper-hit of 1985, and somewhat surprisingly, two books by Geoff Johns (Action Comics and Green Lantern) that were both perhaps the strongest issues of his recent runs. But of course, at the head of all of this – in much the same way as it stands at the head of pretty much the entire mainstream comics field – is All-Star Superman.

One issue to go! How will we cope in its absence? I’m genuinely not sure. Sure, the scheduling has been erratic (although, hey, it’s actually managed to overtake All-Star Batman now, by virtue of actually successfully hitting a bimonthly release for the first time), but by gum, it’s a comic that lights up any week in which it deigns to appear. It goes without saying by now that Morrison and Quitely have crafted one of the finest Superman stories of all time – an absolute masterclass of comics creation on every conceivable level. In fact, is there really anything left to say about it?

Well, it is worth noting that perhaps the weaker issues of the series have been the ones that revolved a bit more around action, rather than emotion or metaphysics. Not that the action hasn’t been well-done – it’s just that the more memorable moments of the series (the one with Clark’s dad, the two “replacement” Kryptonians, and of course the incredible issue #10) have tended to be when it’s reflected on the deeper meaning of Superman and his existence. What’s surprising about #11, then, is that in setting up the big-bucks series finale (short version – Lex Luthor has powers for twenty-four hours) it provides perhaps the most thrilling “action” issue the series has seen to date - and it’s one that takes its place alongside the “reflective” issues.

Not that it doesn’t get reflective, of course – there’s an absolutely wonderful moment where a valuable whole panel is used to show the sole remaining Superman Robot left to guard the fortress alone in the dark – but really, this is about giving us a proper, explosive grand finale. The confrontation proper doesn’t yet begin – Luthor lurks menacingly in the background after brutally escaping his own execution, leaving his brilliantly malevolent niece (another dusted-off Silver Age obscurity) to steal the show, while Superman is kept busy having a punch-up with a sentient red sun – but everything is set up for what will basically be “the General Zod fight from Superman II done better”. At the same time as it’s being darkly ominous (the wonderful cover image of a headline “SUPERMAN DEAD” with a byline “by Clark Kent” - so simple and classic that I can’t believe it hasn’t been done before - does actually appear in the issue proper), it’s playful and thrilling in turn.

But while Morrison is clearly just having fun throwing ideas at the page and watching them come beautifully together (not to mention throwing in such gems as having Jimmy say “quite frankly”), Frank Quitely is – on an entirely serious level – once again showing everyone just how it’s done. I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but I’ll keep repeating it until the idiots who bleat things like “his people are pudgy and ugly” shut the hell up : he is the singular greatest artistic talent currently working in the industry. His senses of storytelling and composition alone deserve to elevate him up among the all-time greats (the pair of panels in which Superman is shown about to deliver the final blow to Solaris, followed by a city-wide shot of a red explosion, feel like Scott McCloud could use them in an essay about using the gutter properly), but with his startling level of detail and precision (and again, inker/colourist Jamie Grant deserves almost as much credit here), I simply can’t see how anybody could ever complain about his aesthetics. He can do large-scale as well as someone like Cassaday, and if there’s a criticism, it’s that on occasion he’s a bit too over-reliant on those trademark wide shots – with small characters picked out amid a huge empty background – when sometimes, as brilliant as his use of space is, a close-up would add a bit more humanity.

Such details feel like nitpicking, though, because it feels faintly ridiculous telling the creators of All-Star Superman what to do. I’d go so far as to say that this is the first time, in my experience of regularly buying comics (as opposed to just reading whatever fell my way, which was how I did things up until I went to Uni), that I’ve known what it must have felt like as Watchmen or Sandman drew to a close. And if that sounds like hyperbole, and if you’re amazed that such things could be said about a Superman comic, of all things – well, that’s just a reflection of what Grant and Frank have done with this magnificent series. It’ll be a very, very long time before we see its like again.

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.

The standard cry of the Grant Morrison fan, when confronted with a weak or underwhelming issue, is to declare “It’s all leading up to something!” It’s certainly been an issue that’s cropped up at various points during his Batman run, with later issues opening up earlier chapters to enlightening re-reads - and now, after the distinctly filler-ish #675, we’ve finally hit the “something” that everything has, indeed, been building up to. Batman RIP is here.

And bugger me, it’s a cracking start. Yes, it’s true that a lot of it consists of recapping disparate elements of the run so far - but as it does, it highlights those parts that were significant (including bits that we may not have already flagged up, such as the arch-nemeses of the Club of Heroes to whom we’re tantalisingly introduced at the beginning) and begins to draw them all together into the cohesive whole. Not a huge amount happens, but as far as setup issues go, this is almost a textbook example of how to do them.

The best moments really come at the very beginning and end. The teasing opening splash is brilliantly bombastic and melodramatic, and is followed by our first hint of the faces behind the “Black Glove” - although both are sequences that raise more questions than they answer. And the closing few pages are superb - a genuinely disturbing scene featuring the Joker (some of it in his head, some of it in reality - it’s a bit tricky to follow on a first glance, but opens up as you read more carefully). I’m sure there are many who won’t care for Morrison’s current version of comics’ greatest villain - but I think he justified the creation of a new “incarnation” perfectly in the prose issue a while back, as well as providing a get-out clause for subsequent writers to restore him to his “classic” style. Here, though, he’s an unsettlingly twisted and demented creation, sneering from behind his scarred face and counterpointing his bloodthirsty nature with his white, almost surgical garb.

Crucial to the creepiness of the Joker is the work put in by Tony Daniel - and as he makes use of Morrison’s established themes of red and black, it’s just as memorable visually as it is for what’s actually happening. I’m extremely impressed by Daniel’s work throughout, in fact - this is the first time he’s felt to me like anything more than a “substitute” artist, and he nails every aspect of the issue, helping to define its look and feel. You suspect that Morrison is tailoring his writing to his strengths for the first time - but by the same token, he’s certainly complementing the writing, especially in that Joker sequence.

Elsewhere it’s all about the neat touches that show you how both writer and artist are in flying form. The fantastic new Batmobile finally makes its entrance (and you can’t help but feel that the line “It’s not how I saw it when I first had the idea” is a reference to the change in artist), Tim Drake gets a significant amount of time as the focal point, and there are some great examples of panel composition, especially when Bruce and Jet are at his parents’ grave. Morrison’s ideas are clearly bursting from his head at a rate of knots - the “Club of Villains” characters, not even introduced by name, are almost too much to take in at once, and he even comes up with an entertaining random rent-a-crook to serve in an early chase sequence.

This is just confident and classy comics, in just about every aspect from the top downward; and that even goes as far as the cover - not just for Alex Ross’ marvellous painting, but the entire design and layout. It’s true that we haven’t yet hit the real “meat” of the story - but what this first part does is enough to suggest that when it does arrive, it’s going to be a hell of an experience.