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.