Overall- OOOOOK.... Let's see if I can make sense of what I just read. Actually, I get the feeling that I won't be able to make full sense of Final Crisis until I've read the 7th and final part.
We open with the trial of Hal Jordan on the home base of the Green Lanterns, OA. Hal has been accused of killing a New God, even though Hal doesn't remember committing the murder or remembering where he was at the time of the murder. Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner arrive and accuse Alpha Lantern Kraken of fooling with Hal's mind. Kraken at first denies the accusations, but then stops the charade and attacks the Lanterns and the Guardians of the Universe. We find out that the mind of Granny Goodness is occupying the body of Kraken, and that Granny wants to take the giant power battery, which powers the rings of the Green Lantern Corps back to Darkseid. Hal and the Lanterns manage to take down Granny, and Kyle and Guy reveal that the Earth has been caught up in a tear in space/time, brought on by the arrival of Darkseid. Hal and all available Lanterns head to Earth to face down Darkseid and his forces.
Meanwhile, on Earth, things have continued to deteriorate. As Darkseid continues to gain power, his forces continue to grow. The remaining heroes who haven't been tainted by the anti-life equation continue to defend themselves against the forces of Darkseid. Some of the heavy hitters unaffected by the anti-life decide to stage a last ditch attack on Bludhaven, which is where Darkseid himself is still powering up. Darkseid's most powerful forces intercept the heroes, leading to a large scale battle.
We also see a gallows, where Libra has been publicly executing dissidents, which apparently includes the Calculator. Calculator begs for his life, and Libra reveals that someone had been coordinating the attack on Bludhaven, and that he believed that person was Calculator, while watching Lex Luthor like a hawk. The whole while, Lex Luthor stands stoically by, leading me to believe that it was possibly Lex who was coordinating the attack on Darkseid's forces in Bludhaven.
In the end though, none of it matters, as Darkseid reaches full power, and becomes, I guess for lack of a better term God. He bends space and time, and takes his place as the conqueror of the entire planet Earth. Although all seems lost at this point, the issue ends with some weird guy(possibly a New God, I'm not too sure)standing amid the chaos and destruction of the Earth stating that, "The judge of all evil is here.".
There was a lot of other things that occurred here, but I either didn't think they were important enough to write about, or(and this is more likely)I had no idea what was going on. Like I've stated numerous times on this blog, I in no way, shape or form consider myself an expert in the history/characters of the DCU. While I know every aspect of the Marvel Universe like the back of my hand, I'm still learning the DCU. I'm getting there, but alot of stuff still escapes me. I'm not really sure who Mister Miracle is, but I think he is/was a New God. He also showed up with Mr. Terrific, but like I said, his importance was lost on me.
Oh, and I was mildly pissed off at how easily Mary Marvel was able to dispatch of Captain Marvel and especially Black Adam. Come on man, Black Adam once declared war on the whole world, and it took the combined force of practically every super-hero on Earth to stop him. In my mind, Black Adam is MORE than a match for Mary freaking Marvel... Oh, and yes, I am obviously a big Black Adam fan. I was OK with Mary beating up Freddie Freeman(Captain Marvel), even though I'm a fan of his as well, due to his reluctance to strike his old friend, but COME ON, Black Adam should have squashed Mary under his boot heel!
Batman Death Watch: The only mention of Bats was when one of Darkseid's minions informed him that, "The Batman Psycho-Merge killed the clone army these fools tried to build!" Other than that there was no mention or appearance from The Batman. The blurb for the next issue simply states, "What will happen to Batman?".
I liked the scenes with Hal and the Lanterns, as well as the fight scenes(well except for Mary Marvel overpowering Black Adam and Captain Marvel...), and Darkseid finally placing himself as God was a pretty cool visual too. Unless I'm misreading the situation, and God knows I probably am, I'd love to see Lex Luthor make a power play against Libra and/or Darkseid. I just can't see Lex as anybodies lackey, not even Darkseid. Other than that, I had no idea as to what was going on in the rest of this comic book. The stuff with New Gods, Rubik's Cubes, weird guys drawing pictures and anything I neglected to mention went totally over my head(and that's no easy task, I'm 6'3"!)
As I've always said, the work of Grant Morrison can be extremely confusing at times, but he'll usually put an, "Oh, now I get it!" moment in all of his series. He did it with Marvel Boy(which I loved by the way)and he did it with New X-Men, which I also loved. I haven't had that moment of clarity yet during this series, but I can feel it coming. Slowly, I think I am starting to put the pieces together... Maybe. For a score, I'm going to go with a 7 1/2 out of 10. I'm ever so slowly starting to see the story come together, but I'm still kind of foggy on the finer points of this story. I am confident that by the next issue and surely by the 7th issue, I'll have a full understanding of Final Crisis as a whole... Maybe!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I had some of the same questions about this issue as you, so I went back and re-read the issues in a row. The guy at the end of the issue is the monitor who got banished to earth in the first issue for being too emotionally connected to his planet. In FC #5 He says something along the lines of "Weeja Dell", which is the name of his monitor girlfriend. I still have no idea who was in his cell with him, but I'm guessing the person with the furry arms is Detective Chimp. That was the one scene in the comic where I could not wait to find out who they were!
ReplyDeleteAlso, as far as Lex Luthor, I think your predicition is quite accurate. He was really apprehensive to even join with Libra, and he already thinks he is god, so Darkseid probably is bugging him a lot these days.
With Mr. Terrifc, I'm finding that with FC, the tie-ins are actually very relevant to the main series, but I know you've been keeping up with those.
Yeah, I remember that now! Those monitors in the first issue! I totally forgot about those guys. That clears up who that guy was at least. Thanks for pointing that out Kello!
ReplyDeleteI would actually love to see Lex make a grab at Darkseid's power somewhere along the line. With how long Lex has been trying to conquer the Earth himself, I can't imagine he'd take a backseat to anyone, even a God.
The FC tie-ins have actually been pretty well put together for the most part, even though there have been a few bumps in the road. I did have a problem with the Question showing up with Checkmate in FC #5, considering the "Revelations" series is all about the Question right now. It was kind of bothersome that Renee was fighting Cain in Rev #4 and in FC #5, she was talking to Amanda Waller, since both comics were released in the same week.
Other than that small oversight, the tie-ins have really enhanced the main story. For example, the events of FC "Submit" fed right into FC #4 and the the stuff that happened in FC "Resist" really helped establish what Mr. Terrific was doing/trying to accomplish.
So far, DC has been doing a good job of not flooding the market with Final Crisis tie-ins and crossovers. It actually makes the Final Crisis books that do come out seem even more special/important.
I think altogether there have been about 19 books carrying the FC label. Just for the sake of comparison, Marvel released 90(!)comics with the "Civil War" banner during the "Civil War" crossover 2 summers ago. 90 comic books for a 7 issue mini-series is crazy(then again, I brought them, so maybe it's me who's insane!). I remember feeling relieved when CW finally ended, because by the end of it I was burnt out. With FC, I'm genuinely excited whenever a new issue comes out, because each FC comic feels important.
Huh, I really went off on a tangent there(as usual!)... Can you believe I wasted that much time and money on "Civil War"! 90 issues!!! What I wouldn't give to have the money I wasted on that garbage back!
As long as you learned a lesson about "events" from Civil War, I would try to look at it in a positive light. But I did check the Civil War trade out of the library the other day, and it after reading the mini-series, it all seems so silly now. I think event fatigue has set in for a majority of comic readers, and I don't care what Dan Didio says, even if the stories good, there is no reason to have event after event after event.
ReplyDeleteAmen! I would love to go a summer without another MAJOR comic book event. Enough is enough. I know I only purchased the main "Secret Invasion" series, and none of the tie-ins(except for the books I normally buy).
ReplyDeleteI personally would prefer smaller inter-family crossovers, such as X-titles, Bat-titles, Avengers titles, etc. I've always felt "Secret Invasion" should have just stayed within the Avengers family of comics, as opposed to branching throughout the entire Marvel U. That way, those of us that don't want to be bothered with a certain crossover could easily skip it. Of course, this puts no money in the pockets of Marvel & DC, so I expect us to continue to deal with yearly company wide crossovers... Until comic fans stop buying them.