Final Crisis # 7 (of 7) – Review

By Grant Morrison (writer) Doug Mahnke (pencils), Tom Nguyen and Cristian Alamy (inks)

The Story: DC’s Final Crisis concludes with Superman saving all of reality by defeating a resurrected Darkseid and an insidious Mandrakk, the Dark Monitor. All the various plot threads coalesce as time and space are restored through Superman utilizing miracle technology from the future. In addition, the status of Batman, who is perhaps the biggest conversation topic of Final Crisis, is visited and his future narrative is formulated.

What’s Good: The way Grant Morrison wrote this installment reads like a flip book whose pages are out of order. Whether or not this is effective is a subjective assessment. Nevertheless, I find it to be enjoyable and rewarding. Don’t get me wrong: this is highly nontraditional story telling, but I am intrigued with the multi-narrative approach that reflected the “real” representation of the broken time line.

Like a great dessert can retroactively make an average meal good, so too the end of this issue’s ability to sweetened the beginning. The dramatic conclusion of the Monitor saga worked really well, as did the final pages, which will no doubt be the most controversial.

What’s Not So Good: There are way too many sub-plots at play here. I would have liked to see more time allotted to the main thrust of the story, rather than peripheral stories involving marginal characters. There’s so much time spent catching the reader up with what has happened previously in the story, a reader could pick up this issue and get all the information needed for the whole series without reading the ones before it. If you’re confused by this issue, then the previous installments won’t clear anything up for you. And if you get all the heavy DC continuity and meta-narrative stuff, than this issue is all you need.

Additionally, changing art teams for this final issue might have been necessary for practical and editorial reasons, but it is nevertheless jarring. It changes the tone and feeling of this series, and for-better-or-for-worse, wrecks whatever momentum was working for FC. Don’t get me wrong, Doug Mahnke draws very well and tells the story clearly. I just would have liked him to be on from the beginning or not at all.

Conclusion: It is hard to sum up this comic because I don’t really know what it was supposed to do. If this issue is meant to be an exercise in experimental comic book creating, using mainstream superheros as a pallet, than this issue is a success. But if this series is meant to impact the modern DC universe and satiate a reader’s appetite for DC superhero stories, than this issue is slightly above being a failure.

I think the biggest setback of this issue (and this series, for that matter) comes when Morrison focuses to much on cool ideas by sacrificing solid story telling. Perhaps the most damming conclusion I’m forced to say about this comic is that it is un-recommendable.

Final Grade: C+

-Rob G

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #2 (of 2) – Review

By Grant Morrison (writer) Doug Mahnke (pencils) Cristian Alamy with Tom Nguyen (inks)

The Story: Superman must unite with versions of himself from other dimensions to fight Mandrakk the Dark Monitor and save reality, and collect the distilled essence of the multiverse  in order to save Lois.  In grand Morrisontonian fashion, there is a whole bunch of symbolism and narratives about narratives.

What’s Good: I’m still loving the idea of how Superman was remade into a celestial being whose power dwarfed the Monitors and that he was fighting and winning against a vampiric and omnipotent evil. The way Superman evolves into this being is logical in that crazy, tripped-out Morrison way of spinning logic into something that doesn’t make sense at all but still operates on its own self-defined principles. And hey, let it be known I am a sucker for 3-D comics. It’s so simple yet satisfying when the plot moves to a higher dimension just as the 3-D pages kick in.

What’s Not So Good: The thing that annoys me most about this issue was Dr. Manhattan– I mean– Captain Atom. Specifically, a Captain Atom who looks EXACTLY like Dr. Manhattan down to the symbol on his forehead. Seriously, DC better send Alan Moore a check pronto!

Conclusion: The thing I like about Morrison’s comics is that they are meant to be reread because his stories work on multiple levels. In this day and age when comics are as expensive as they are, I think his stories offer maximum value for your dollar.  Better yet, never once did I ever feel lost in this story, even though I knew very little back story.  Morrison provides the necessary information in  a way that doesn’t slow down the story or make it feel like an encyclopedic entry of an aspect of DC continuity.  I’ll be  rereading this entire series over and over again.

Grade: B+

-Rob G.