Final Crisis

JangoFett

Just before I get going, it is cool that I've started threads on specific comic book storylines? I'm new here and just wanna know if its cool?

Anyway, to the point.
This is meant to be the big one, the final part of The Crisis Trilogy, FINAL CRISIS!
Crisis on Infinite Earths removed the multiverse, cleaned up a lot of what was happening and refined the characters origins and development. In the years between that and Infinite Crisis a lot of origin/development tweaking was done as well. Infinite Crisis gave us back the multiverse, but a refined multiverse, 52 of them and most of the ones we know about are elseworlds (something I rather like).

And now Final Crisis is going to give us what exactly? Will the multiverse be removed again? Will it be narrowed down to a lesser number?

Other storylines leading into it include Batman R.I.P that will involve Hush (Please don't kill him) and the Green Lantern one about the dead coming back.

Also *SPOILER* Barry Allen is back as seen in DC Universe 0 and there's a petition NOT to kill The Martian Manhunter online somewhere!

Your thoughts?

TickingOrange

Really looking forward to this one as its a bit of a mystery what it'll be about. They've said it'll be self contained and won't spill over into regular titles. At the same time it'll be a multiverse spanning tale that will touch upon the first and last man on earth.

Some groundwork was laid in Death of the New Gods, which wasn't that good by the way. Basically the New Gods were created by a benevolent being known as the source. It has recently been reunited with its other darker half, who seeks to bring balance by making the universe a darker place (The Day Evil Won).
On the Barry Allen thing he'll probably just be around for the event (Heroes Die, Legends Live Forever) and then never be seen again. Wasn't Wally told that Barry would return to him three times and he's been back twice already?

Morrison can be hit or miss for me but at least the art will look pretty.

ztoical

hey Lads you know you can use spoiler tags to cover any text that you think might be spoiler info - either that or ask the mod to change the thread title to say it contents spoilers.

JangoFett

Ahhhhh, thats how its done, cheers guys!!

Ok.....

Yeah, Barry's back, but is he BACK back or is it more time-travel shenanigans? It does seem like proper back the way he was talking and the artwork and imagery. And Darkseid is meant to be dead but apparently he's a major part of Final Crisis, there are rumours of him ascending to "The Fifth World"

Any other rumours floatin around?

Fysh

The Green Lantern aspect is supposed to introduce the Rainbow Corps or something like that, from what I understand. Ie expanding from the Sinestro Corps with their yellow angle there's supposed to be the Black Lanterns who focus their deadness as a power, the Red Lanterns who focus their anger, and a bunch of others. Sounds pretty damn stupid to me, but what the hell. I'm wondering if Deadman or the Spectre will be involved in the Black Lanterns, but only because they're characters that doesn't get used much and even then are usually used poorly...

TickingOrange

The Spectre is in Final Crisis: Revelations. A mini written by Greg Rucka and drawn by Philip Tan.

JangoFett

Yeah, I wanna see the Spectre get involved in this in nasty way. He's answerable to nobody...except God like. So if anyone tried to get all self rightious on him he can just say "I'm the ****ing Spectre BRUCE...get ****ed mate!"

Yeah, the green lantern thing with all the colours...I love Green Lantern and all the mythology, I wanna see where they're goin with all the colours.
The Sinestro War was amazing, handled perfectly!
So we Have Green, Yellow, Pink(Star Sapphire Corps), Red, Blue(Ganthet and Sayd with their "Hope" Corps), Black....and I think there's another....an orange one maybe

And there's been predictions of a War of Light or something. Not spoilers, this was revealed months ago!! So hopefully that'll have an interesting role in Final Crisis. I think Mongul is gonna have a lot to do with the Red Corps, I saw a poster with him wearing a red ring...

But the Black Lanterns seem like they'll be the ones not to **** with. I wonder if they'll have any dealings with The Black Runner aka, the Black Flash....cuz he's gonna be involved somehow in Final crisis seeing as Barry's back and he's an underused character

JangoFett

Alright, Final Crisis is here but the order here in Perth has been delayed but I did read about it online

The Martian Manhunter is dead. Libra's new formed supervillain group dragged him into a room and killed him. In Issue one!! Brilliant!

all-time-FANBOY

Think I'll wait and see what the reaction is, and hold out for the trade. The original Crisis I read a few years ago, and was what got me into the DC Universe in a big bad way. I loved the fact Infinite Crisis was a sequel revisiting some of those elements, but it was disappointing seeing Alexander Luthor and Kal-L be killed off, the multiverse back but not quite, the Monitor becoming monitors and Superboy-Prime reduced to a one-diemensional villain. (And Superboy-Prime being more or less the same everytime he's appearred since, such as Sinestro Corps, and I'm guessing the up-coming Legion mini).

I freely admit I may be in the minority, but don't have high hopes for this. I have loved Morrison's All-Star Superman though.

Fysh

I'm curious to see how it pans out as a whole. I may check out the Spectre tie-in as I like the idea of the character, but I don't think anyone in DC editorial has worked out the Spectre's place in the DCU.

As for the Crisis itself, there's a lot of bluster and promise from Morrison and DC about this but after the disappointingly anti-climactic conclusion of the Seven Soldiers of Victory series I'm not willing to just take his word on it. Not being a huge DC fanboy (or particuarly well versed in its convoluted history for that matter) things like the return of Barry Allen don't mean all that much to me, which means I want a strong and satisfying central storyline. I've found that Morrison isn't particularly good at delivering these, being more of an ideas guy (although I freely admit that some of his ideas are very interesting, for example the Mister Miracle mini).

Judging by the general reactions to issue 1, DC will be lucky if Final Crisis doesn't just serve as proof that their current methodology for big summer events is fatally flawed.

all-time-FANBOY

Fysh wrote: »

Judging by the general reactions to issue 1, DC will be lucky if Final Crisis doesn't just serve as proof that their current methodology for big summer events is fatally flawed.

Such as all the tie-in issues? The stories strong adhering to past published work - most especially convoluted continuity? Lots of things to dislike about the reasoning behind these event storylines. Exactly why I've stopped buying and caring and my wallet is happier for it.

Fysh

The tie-in issues is an interesting one, because at least the minis are appropriately named as Final Crisis : *whatever*, but then there are a bunch of other DC titles which are carrying either "Dark Side Club" or "Sightings" banners to indicate that they're not really crossovers, but they might have things that are important to Final Crisis. So they are, sort of. But not officially. Yet. Or something.

As for the continuity-porn storyline, there's already big problems with that. Final Crisis starts off with several events that apparently contradict Countdown to Final Crisis and Death Of The New Gods, and beyond that it's not particularly easy to understand why anything that happens in it is of much significance. The death of the Martian Manhunter could just as easily be the death of some fancy-dress-wearing weirdo for all the explanation given in-story. And the way the New Gods were explained in-story was just stupid. "Hey, you're members of the essentially world-spanning Justice League, and should have met these guys loads of times. But I, Superman, am here to patronise you all and explain who they are as if it were the first time any of you had heard of them".

It seems kind of horrible to say, but I sort of hope it tanks just for DC to get the message that these kinds of crossovers just aren't very good. I know they're a business, but people would have no problem paying for their comics if those comics delivered on their promises and were any good...

AngryBadger

I think this cross-over is going to suffer from the same major problem I find with ALL DC universe crossovers. At least half the story will take place in other Minis, or crossover isues.

In "Infinite Crisis" the Flashes dissappeared early in the story after an attack by Superboy Prime, then re-appeared later, but whatever happened in the intervening time obviously happened in another book altogether. There were several other instances in the story where similar things were referenced but actually took place in a completely different book. It felt like I was reading a summary of the actual story, not the story itself.

Every major crossover they've done in the last 2/3 years has ben accompanied by a bevvy of stupid minis which ultimately serve no purpose other than to cash in on the crossover. And they're generally garbage.

I think It's fair to say Marvel are not as guilty of this. Yes, they have minis orbitting every crossover, but in general it's entirely possible to just read the main crosover series, and ignore the satellite series without missing anything (the one notable exception that springs to mind is the Spidey/Iron man fight in Civil War). And where there's a tie-in I find they're usually worth reading. I mean the New/Mighty Avengers tie-in issues with "Secret invasion" are excellent!

So basically I'll pick up the issues of the "Final Crisis" series, but none of the tie-ins or crossovers.

JangoFett

Marvel are not as guilty? Dude, Civil war was a tie in MESS!! It was awful, I have the core issues and there are HUGE gaps in story line cuz they don't include the tie ins, and the same goes for WWH, huge gaps in story, Marvel are worse at the tie in crap, although this stuff DC is doing with Final crisis looks like they're going to do a Marvel on it and make you spend stupid amounts of money if you want to understand the whole story...*****

flyingoutside

I agree with jangofett there was over a hundred tie-ins to civil war thats madness. Secret invasion looks like its going the same way

AngryBadger

flyingoutside wrote: »

I agree with jangofett there was over a hundred tie-ins to civil war thats madness. Secret invasion looks like its going the same way

Fair enough, there were tonnes of Tie-ins, but the main story didn't suffer hugely if you didn't read every single tie-in. (with the exception of the Iron man/Spidey fight).

Example, I didn't read ANY of the tie-ines from say "Thunderbolts" or "Heroes for hire". I didn't feel my enjoyment of the Civil War mini suffered at all. Whereas with Infinite Crisis, the battle between the Flash(es) and Superboy Prime took place in a different book to the mini (I'm assuming the Flash title? I read the IC trade so wasn't following it as it was all released), I definitely felt that my enjoyment of the IC trade suffered because that event happened somewhere else entirely. For me Superboy Prime appeared, dissappeared, then appeared again and I had no idea why/where he was going and so on.

I'm not saying Marvel aren't jsut as bad for having tie-ins, or extra mini-series, what I'm saying is that (in my experience) Marvel tie-in issues/weries will inform the overall crossover story and can definitely enhance your enjoyment when all is said and done, but you won't feel like you're losing half the story if you avoid the tie-ins altogether.

I suppose what's considered significant/insignificant in terms of a crossover is down to the individual, but I definitely feel I can pick and choose the tie-ins I read with marvel, whereas with DC the mini feels like I'm only reading half the story and am missing out.

JangoFett

Ok, you're right about the Superboy Prime fight with the flashes, that was all in the flash book so you missed it in the main Infinite Crisis book

But DC are doing something different, 3 and 4 and 5 part tie ins...which is as bad as having tie ins in the regular titles, but it may make it easier to follow...maybe

shenanigans1982

I aint a big DC fan with the exception of maybe Batman but was given Final Crisis to read by my brother....and I aint got a clue what is happening. I thought it was maybe just because I was new to the DC universe and needed to know my background info. But shouldn't at least one point of these crossovers be that they shud be accessible to any new reader?

And I think in that respect Morrison was a really bad call to write this. I am sure that his fans will claim it to be the second coming but I find his writing to be too much about just getting his own ideas out there and forgetting that he has to connect with the readers. I think this will get the same reaction as his X-men run and need somebody to step in and clean up his mess.

Fysh

In fairness, 2 issues into a 7 issue mini-series is a bit early to be judging the whole thing, and while I know that comics are a serial format, there has to be a point at which a writer can say "Hang on, you're going to have to wait an issue or two before I explain everything, this is a 7-issue series after all".

I'll be honest, I'm not the biggest Morrison fan - I really liked most of 7 Soldiers (if it had had a proper ending, it would have been absolutely awesome), enjoyed We3 and Seaguy as relatively fluffy bits of entertainment, was perplexed in a good way by the Filth, and frankly let down by the complete non-event that was the conclusion of The Invisibiles - but I do think that Final Crisis could build up to be a reasonable comics event, certainly by his standards. I've often found that there's a certain amount of "disconnect" in Morrison's comics, a feeling that there's something missing between one scene and the next, but in Final Crisis that seems to be something that's being exploited on purpose - the heroes themselves are aware that things are not as they should be and events aren't flowing as they ought to be. So while it's reading as a not-particularly-easy-going set of single issues so far, what it builds up to may yet be something far better than the sum of its parts.

Snakeblood

shenanigans1982 wrote: »

I aint a big DC fan with the exception of maybe Batman but was given Final Crisis to read by my brother....and I aint got a clue what is happening. I thought it was maybe just because I was new to the DC universe and needed to know my background info. But shouldn't at least one point of these crossovers be that they shud be accessible to any new reader?

And I think in that respect Morrison was a really bad call to write this. I am sure that his fans will claim it to be the second coming but I find his writing to be too much about just getting his own ideas out there and forgetting that he has to connect with the readers. I think this will get the same reaction as his X-men run and need somebody to step in and clean up his mess.

I don't like Morrison when he writes stuff like the Invisibles where the ideas seem to choke out the story, but I really liked issue 2 of Final Crisis. I don't know exactly who everyone is, , but it's clear to me who is good, who is bad, and who is in a whole heap of trouble. It's an exciting comic now, where the first issue was a bunch of 'Who is this? What's that? What's going on?'