the rolling Final Crisis thread

It's a great design tho, and it works better tweaked a little on FC

Not wanting to spoil anything much but:

- It read a lot better the second time, for me.

- I get the strong impression (and wasn't there an interview with someone basically confirming this?) that Grant M had a list of things he needed to be in place before the series started, and that the versions of those things ACTUALLY in place are either annoyingly or flagrantly different, so it looks like Final Crisis is just ignoring stuff that happened very recently. By the time the series ends people will have stopped caring about this I expect, but it explains some of the slightly dampened reaction and reviews.

- The early reviews seem also to be taking a "not much happens" line, which seems baffling to me until you realise they're (overtly or not) measuring it against Secret Invasion. Which I also like! But there's more than one way to do a crossover, and it's a shame if first issues now have to be slam-bang rather than slow build. Morrison's been pretty open about the structure of Final Crisis being basically a spike - things get worse and worse and worse and then evil wins, and presumably the remainder is evil un-winning again (or not, who knows). So no surprise that the stuff that happens - and LOTS happens - is mostly piece-moving and setting bad stuff in motion.

- That said I think GM's using some of his Seven Soldiers style pacing again - lots of epic shit is going down, but largely off-panel or briefly on while we look at the things which are going to be genuinely important. I think a lot of readers won't be expecting or wanting that from a 'summer event'.

- Lots and lots of great bits though - my favourite being the Alpha Lanterns double-page spread - and in a single sequence he's made the Monitors intriguing, even if it introduces a thing we'd surely have seen mentioned before. He's got the tone right, and the moments right, it's just a case of seeing how well things tie together.

- That said I think GM's using some of his Seven Soldiers style pacing again - lots of epic shit is going down, but largely off-panel or briefly on while we look at the things which are going to be genuinely important. I think a lot of readers won't be expecting or wanting that from a 'summer event'.

Yeah, I find this weird and a little offputting in a lot of GM's work. It keeps me at arm's distance away from being really emotionally engaged with the story.

can someone tell me who's waking up on the last page? i can't tell

also, i very much do not want the martian manhunter to be dead. this makes me feel like i have failed to become an adult in some meaningful way.

I actually liked that in Seven Soldiers, as I got much more emotional engagement by the camera staying with our heroes rather than zooming out to OMG invasion of the space-elves.

I'm pretty certain it's Nix Uotan waking up.

Never mind the Monitors, this is the first even vaguely interesting Guardians panel I've seen!

Jones kind of blew the first shot of the Black Rider, I think - it's not as clear as it should immediately be that he's just standing there in mid air.

I think Jones got the shot of the Black Racer </pedant> just right. I think it was meant to be subtle, and it was.

I read this immediately before the L O S T season finale, so I'll admit that I may have been a little too amped to make a rational judgment, but I kind of loved this a lot. Points:

-I think Morrison managed, in about half a page, to clarify and refine his use of the New Gods in the Mister Miracle mini into a pretty solid concept (although similar to the Outer Church fellows in The Invisibles). I knew what he was going for before, but it was a little muddled.

-Guardians as cosmic detectives is pretty rad.

-I was kinda dubious about the demise of Martian Manhunter until I remembered what he looks like nowadays.

-All the Monitor stuff and the 52nd Earth...that was all referring to Countdown, wasn't it? I don't have to actually read that shit, do I?

Two things not yet mentioned I liked:

- Supervillain protest march!

- "Ha! The first innnocent victims of the blindingly obvious Doctor Light/Mirror Master team!"

Pedantry acknowledged.

-All the Monitor stuff and the 52nd Earth...that was all referring to Countdown, wasn't it? I don't have to actually read that shit, do I?

Oh fuck, no. It had a new Monarch! Do you want to read about a new Monarch? No, you do not. Basically what you need to know is there on the page - 52 Earths, one of them goes boom, the emoest Monitor takes the fall for it. The only shorthand being used is that the different earths are linchpins of different multiverses.

Actually one thing I'm not clear on - is that Solomon(?) the eeeevil Monitor in the last panel of Monitorworld? I thought he'd been blatted (though if Morrison wants to say "no, it was this", then that's fine with me)

I have been wavering on the spandex lately, and this pulled through just when I really needed it. Many things delighted me, and y'know what, fuck a Martian Manhunter. His new costume is entirely shitty, and nobody's done anything fun with him in ages and maybe now that he's every fanboys favourite alltime character (as the newly deceased comic folks tend to become) they'll do a Sandman Presents style series of noir Martian Manhunter stories set in the 50s. All I really wanna know is how come there's no tribute display to him in the Batcave???

I READ ALL OF COUNTDOWN IN ONE DAY.

I understand that this makes me a slave of the Anti-Fun Equation. But I can confirm that Solomon the eeeeevil monitor survived, and in fact is behind the "sabotage" Nix U is protesting about - by sending the plague-infected Karate Kid to Earth-51 rather than "home" to New Earth as promised. In fact - though god knows I can't remember the "intricacies" of CD's plot - he or his stooge Bob The Monitor may have been responsible for Earth-51 getting destroyed the first time too, by Monarch's quantum energy breach. Solomon in Countdown was a rival to Darkseid and enemy of him, so I have no idea who he's talking to when he's talking into his hand at the end of that page.

The Monitors in Countdown were portrayed slightly differently to those in Final Crisis - no mention of the Orrery, enormous interest in what's going on in each Universe. But the backstory SEEMS to be that Solomon wants Nix Uotan off the table for some unrevealed reason. To do this he engineers the destruction - or severe compromise, anyway - of his universe, and then presumably agitates for his punishment.

Speaking as someone with little contact with the DCU, I have to ask: have the Monitors always been so...Arkwright-y?

There is no "always" w/r/t the Monitors. The Monitor appeared in the original Crisis 20 years ago and, as far as I know, never again until just after Final Crisis. The whole plurality of Monitors thing is pretty much all from Countdown, innit?

Annotated now: http://finalcrisisannotations.blogspot.com/2008/05/final-crisis-1.html

So I have now read FC #1. I thought it was the kind of continuity-heavy crossover rubbish that gives superhero comics a bad name, and I can't see myself bothering with #2.

I think you're 100% wrong, Vicar. There's a ton of continuity stuff in there, but it's all easter eggs. The story doesn't depend on knowledge of much more than what's spelled out or at least hinted at within the bounds of the story itself. I think Morrison did an excellent job of giving any potential newbies exactly as much information about the characters and situations as they'd need to make sense of what's going on. Re-read it and tell me that I'm wrong.

Douglas, I enjoyed the annotations, but did you actually like the comic?

There's a ton of continuity stuff in there, but it's all easter eggs.

I remember when I started reading superhero comics, it was actually kind of fun being confused by all the characters, and having to try and find out about them.

Also, Final Crisis wasn't that complex! It's a comic. It's just, you know, superhero biff-baff.

I've read issue one a couple of times, I don't really see anything that one would need to be read beforehand to get the issue. It seems to be set up more as a detective story than an action film. I've got a feeling that it is going to be very self contained for this kind of comic story.

JG Jones artwork is really lush. The panels with the Guardians and Monitors were really great, that guy can really do some cool cosmic comic looking stuff.

I liked it a lot. Actual review to follow, prob., on Savage Critix...

I'll re-read it sometime when I'm sober.

The second time reading through FC #1, everything was clear and awesome and made sense, except for dispatching J'onn J'onzz in such a non-dramatic way, making this insanely powerful guy seem like a chump.

Alright, Douglas. Here's my list. Admittedly, some of my questions are probably because there are unrevealed things in the comic, but I can't distinguish [between the intended secrets and unintended ones] because there are so many unrecognizable things to me. Also, it seems to me that a lot of Morrison's "poetic liberties" are confusing me. So... here's my reading of the comic. (If I didn't mention it, I probably understood it. Or understood it *enough* to not be totally lost.)

Ok. It opens with a caveman. Suddenly he's interrupted from his regularly scheduled events (foraging, hunting, assumedly) by a glowing blue guy in a floating chair. He says that he is Metron. It's not in a word bubble, but a funny-looking bubble. So I assume he's communicating telepathically. Probably in the caveman's language. He then gives the man fire. Next, we see a bunch of cavemen beating the shit out of each other, some guy is dragging some gal away by her hair - standard caveman stuff. Then the guy from before comes and he's wielding fire. He's totally badass, and lights the whole place up. It's unclear why - maybe he's pissed with everyone. Maybe he loathes himself - he's a self-hating caveman. Maybe it's his way of demonstrating power. (Question one: Why is he burning everything?)

Now we've got the slightly overweight guy. Today. He's smoking a cigarette and it's a noirish monologue. He finds a super muk muk in the garbage. I have no idea what a super muk muk is. (Question two: What is a super muk muk?) The muk muk is not dead tho - he jumps up and shouts some vague warning ("He is in all you") and then falls down again.

Stewart lantern is called to the site where the detective found the muk muk. The Detective says that seeing this is like sacrilege. (Question 3+4: What is it that he's seeing that is disturbing him? Why is it sacrilege?) It looked like it was day when we last saw the detective, but now it's night and the sky is full of red lightning. (Question 5+6: Has the detective been standing around doing nothing while it became dark? And what the hell is that weird lightning?)

What does "six" mean? Is it a noir term for a corpse? (I've seen a lot of noir flicks, but I don't recognize it.) Maybe this is the sixth body he's found? Why does the detective thank the Question for helping him, when it seems like Question only asked him a question? What does Dark Side Club signify? (This is questions 7 through 9.)

What does "deep and dreamless" mean? Does it mean Hal Jordan was sleeping? Or is there some greater significance? It sounds like poetry that is supposed to sound good, but doesn't actually mean anything.

I know who Sparx is (from Superboy and the Ravers) but I have no idea what's going on with her here. What are they looking for? Who is this empress? If this was a trap, does that mean the empress's vision was manufactured by some villain?

"waiting 50,000 years for vandal savage to crush..." I get that this probably relates to the opening sequence with the cavemen, but I don't understand it. Who is Vandal Savage? Is this just another piece of poetics?

What does M'YRI'AH mean?

What's the deal with these missing kids? Who is Granny? Am I supposed to recognize this kingpin'esque figure in the club? (I know what the anti-life equation is, so I can guess that maybe this guy is a physical personification of Darkseid, or something. But what does the murder of the muk muk from earlier have to do with these kids he's brainwashed?)

I don't know anything about Earth 51, or who these monitor guys are. What's their job? To save realities? What is the orrery? Obviously something has changed for these guys, but since I don't know who they used to be, I don't really understand what's going on with them now that's special.

Back to the caveman, and suddenly there a statue of liberty behind him (wtf?) and some guy is asking for the weapon Metron gave him. (The fire?)

Some guy wakes up. I have no idea who he is.

A few answers:

Vandal Savage is an immortal supervillain who's kinda badass, especially during the early part of the Wally West Flash series (i think the first 15 issues or so?) where he makes a super-speed steroid called Velocity 9 and fucks shit up. He's seen in the cavemen scene in FC 1.

M'yri'ah was the Martian Manhunter's wife on Mars.

Also, read Seven Soldiers (esp. the Mr Miracle stuff) for an intro to the New Gods avatars theme Moz is working with here.

Bah. I read Shining Knight, Guardian and Zatanna, but couldn't force myself to read the other four. I guess I should probably do that?

You missed Frankenstein!

anyway, they read quite well in the trades, yr local library might have 'em.
and the Muk Muk was Orion, Darkseid's son who was raised on New Genesis by Highfather in a trade for Mr. Miracle--who was raised on Apokalips by Granny Goodness, who raised kids in the service of Darkseid at her orphanage and that answers another of yr questions.

The Detective is "Terrible" Turpin, a cop from Kirby's 70s New Gods comics, who here takes on many qualities of Kirby himself.

I think most of these questions (and more) are answered on Douglas's Final Crisis blog, but I still think it's good to have some discussion here, or else we might else all just meet up over there and try to sort it out.

It is, unless I'm very mistaken, absolutely irrelevant that it may or may not be Vandal Savage in the opening sequence. All you need to know is that he's been around along time, and periodically tries to take over.

The Caveman is burning stuff because he's just been given the knowledge of fire, and is demonstrating it in the most visible way possible, driving away those that have good reason to distrust him (it's not clear whether it's an invasion or just a Friday night, but he's putting a stop to it)

Muk muk is just slang for someone high up, short for muck-a-muck (though I suppose if you didn't know that piece of slang you'd have to take it from context).

It feels like sacrelige because he's looking at a dead god in a dumpster.

Fair point, the red skies are a throwback to external knowledge, in that it also happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths (I don't actually know if there was an explanation for it except that it's a great shorthand for a) something that everyone in the world can see and b) after the continuity was straightened out, all that almost anyone remembered was that the skies turned red, which was creepy).

Turpin's "six" are the six kids that he was looking for when he found Orion. I think you've become confused about whether he's investigating the deicide - he's not.

The Question gave Turpin a lead (it should in fairness be clearer that the dialogue on panel two is from the Question rather than Turpin). We (and Turpin) don't necessarily know what the Dark Side Club is yet.

Deep and dreamless is sleeping, yes.

Empress is the name of the lady in red (did she start in Young Justice?), the object they are searching for is Metron's chair, which is occupied by Libra in the next scene. It's a relic of considerable power, so it makes sense that more than one group would be seeking it.

The monitors monitor realities, one of them went south, it's monitor mis taking the rap for it. The guy who wakes up on the last page is him as a human.

Questions that are (as far as I can tell) supposed to be unclear at this stage*:
What is Orion talking about?
Why is Metron's Chair empty?
Who is Libra?
Is Martian Manhunter dead?
Was there something special about the six kids, or was Darkseid just looking for the best and brightest?

*I don't mean that they're unanswerable based on the entire knowledge of the DC Universe, but they're not in this issue, and we can have a reasonable expectation that they'll be cleared up in a further issue of Final Crisis.

So when monitors "die" they wake up as human beings? How does that work? And why would a monitor be punished for his Earth going south? If you're a monitor, you're just supposed to monitor it - right? What's your liability?

Also, when Turpin is attacked by the kids, there are eight of them. Does that mean he only knew about six? It seems confusing on Morrison's part to have Turpin searching for six and then throwing in two more without explanation.

So when monitors "die" they wake up as human beings? How does that work? And why would a monitor be punished for his Earth going south?

As noted above, the Monitors have only existed in a plural sense for maybe most of a year, and have only been used in one other series, to my knowledge. There is no pre-existing cosmogony here.

Have you read much Grant Morrison stuff before?

Martian Manhunter is definitely dead.

I've read All Star Superman, Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Batman, we3, Seaguy, New X-Men, JLA v.3, the parts of Seven Soldiers I indicated above, Kill Your Boyfriend, and a bunch of Invisibles.

(I should clarify with the Batman - I'm reading his current series and I've read Arkham Asylum.)

And Animal Man + New X-Men were both of my top 10 runs of all time list.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER IS NOT DEAD

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

Honestly, at this point it's more of a mercy killing. Aside from Rucka in Checkmate I can't think of a single writer who's done anything decent with him in ages. This just puts a stop to the terrible stories he's been in lately and gives whoever inevitably revives him a few years down the line a clean slate to work with.

The monitors appear to have become more involved in their worlds (kind of like Marvel's watchers). As noted the penalty for Nix Oatan's failure is exile, being stripped of power and duties, to live out the rest of his life as a human. As also noted, there are divisions within the monitors about whether this is fair, and one in particular appears to have been manipulating the situation to remove him.

I mean, if you want to know how all this happened, you have to read Countdown, but the fact that it happened seems to me to be right there on the page.

I thought the extra kids were there to indicate that Darkside has been using many of them, not just the ones Turpin's looking for, but I'm possibly wrong.

The one thing that I think is both unclear and unexplainedly important: Earth 51 wasn't destroyed at the end of Countdown, but all the humans except a young boy died. This presumably makes it the setting for Jack Kirby's series Kamandi, The Last Boy On Earth. And so what we're seeing on the last two pages is the dude from the start (apparently his name's Anthro) copying the markings from Metron's costume, and catapulting himself through space and time to Kamandi's world, which explains his agitated reception. I might be completely off-base here, of course.

See, one thing I've noticed in rereading Final Crisis is that a lot of things are subtle Morrison tricks that in another comic (esp a non-canon linked one) one would just dismiss as Morrison being poetic, or Morrison doing something off-beat and weird. But here, because it's unclear what are references and what are Morrison-thingies, it's harder to read.

I promised to explain this stuff using ONLY material that actually appeared in Final Crisis #1--no additional DC continuity at all--so:

Ok. It opens with a caveman. Suddenly he's interrupted from his regularly scheduled events (foraging, hunting, assumedly) by a glowing blue guy in a floating chair. He says that he is Metron. It's not in a word bubble, but a funny-looking bubble. So I assume he's communicating telepathically. Probably in the caveman's language.

All right so far, except as we see in the next sequence the caveman doesn't have language.

He then gives the man fire. Next, we see a bunch of cavemen beating the shit out of each other, some guy is dragging some gal away by her hair - standard caveman stuff. Then the guy from before comes and he's wielding fire. He's totally badass, and lights the whole place up. It's unclear why - maybe he's pissed with everyone. Maybe he loathes himself - he's a self-hating caveman. Maybe it's his way of demonstrating power. (Question one: Why is he burning everything?)

What's going on is that the fire-acquirer's tribe is being attacked by another tribe; the guy who got the fire uses it to drive the attackers away. Note the central attacker, with black hair; we'll see him later.

Now we've got the slightly overweight guy. Today. He's smoking a cigarette and it's a noirish monologue. He finds a super muk muk in the garbage. I have no idea what a super muk muk is. (Question two: What is a super muk muk?) The muk muk is not dead tho - he jumps up and shouts some vague warning ("He is in all you") and then falls down again.

Slightly overweight guy is identified later in the issue as Turpin. "Muk muk" is old-fashioned slang for "powerful person": Turpin is an old-school kind of guy, we deduce from this. We can also tell from his monologue that he's a cop and a detective. Also note the sinister figure who looks like he's on skis hovering above the dying guy, and note that as he's dying the sky has turned red very quickly--over the course of a minute or so.

Stewart lantern is called to the site where the detective found the muk muk. The Detective says that seeing this is like sacrilege. (Question 3+4: What is it that he's seeing that is disturbing him? Why is it sacrilege?) It looked like it was day when we last saw the detective, but now it's night and the sky is full of red lightning. (Question 5+6: Has the detective been standing around doing nothing while it became dark? And what the hell is that weird lightning?)

John Stewart (he's called "John" at the beginning of the sequence, and later by Hal), who Turpin accurately identifies as a "space cop," is called in on a "1011"; we learn from later dialogue that that means "deicide." The dead super-guy is a god; the later scene with the Lanterns identifies him as "Orion, the soldier god of New Genesis." That's why Turpin feels like his presence is sacrilege--he's just a guy, and a god has died in front of him. The weird lightning is weird, and the skies more or less instantly turned dark: "the weather's gone nuts," all over, as dialogue points out at the beginning of that scene. Note the guy with the ski-like stuff is still there.

What does "six" mean? Is it a noir term for a corpse? (I've seen a lot of noir flicks, but I don't recognize it.) Maybe this is the sixth body he's found? Why does the detective thank the Question for helping him, when it seems like Question only asked him a question? What does Dark Side Club signify? (This is questions 7 through 9.)

Turpin earlier said "here's me, way past retirement and three weeks out on the trail of six missing kids." That's the six the Question is talking about: missing kids. The help the Question provided was giving Turpin a flyer for the Dark Side Club; her investigations, she implies, have suggested that when kids with "superhuman metagene activity" disappear, the Dark Side Club is somehow involved. As for what it signifis, we'll see when Turpin goes there later this issue.

What does "deep and dreamless" mean? Does it mean Hal Jordan was sleeping? Or is there some greater significance? It sounds like poetry that is supposed to sound good, but doesn't actually mean anything.

The dialogue indicates that John and Hal are close enough to have running jokes: John asks Hal if the call tore him away from some lady friend or other, and Hal replies that he'd just been fast asleep. ("Blonde or redhead?" "Deep and dreamless.")

I know who Sparx is (from Superboy and the Ravers) but I have no idea what's going on with her here. What are they looking for? Who is this empress? If this was a trap, does that mean the empress's vision was manufactured by some villain?

Doesn't even matter who Sparx is. The point of this scene is that there's a brand-new and very green superhero team that's trying to establish itself, one of them has had a vision of the chair Metron was in ealier as an artifact from another world, and in the process of trying to retrieve it they get their asses kicked by a pair of villains who exemplify the banality of evil.

"waiting 50,000 years for vandal savage to crush..." I get that this probably relates to the opening sequence with the cavemen, but I don't understand it. Who is Vandal Savage? Is this just another piece of poetics?

Vandal Savage is the guy Libra is replying to, who spoke in the previous panel; he is the guy with black hair from the cavemen-battle scene, which means we now know that the opening scene happened 50,000 years ago.

What does M'YRI'AH mean?

I think it's safe to infer from context that it's somebody who was very important to J'onn.

What's the deal with these missing kids? Who is Granny? Am I supposed to recognize this kingpin'esque figure in the club? (I know what the anti-life equation is, so I can guess that maybe this guy is a physical personification of Darkseid, or something. But what does the murder of the muk muk from earlier have to do with these kids he's brainwashed?)

I assume we'll meet Granny later; for now, it's just foreboding. The missing kids, we know from Turpin's conversation with the Question, are probably superhuman; Boss "Dark Side" is creepy as all hell, is wearing out his body, hints that he fell from on high ("I was hurt in a fall, you might say"), etc. You don't need to recognize him, you just need to know that he's very bad news and is turning the new generation of potential heroes into "stunted, malformed slaves." The connection with Orion's murder is that Turpin came across the dying Orion while investigating the six missing kids and was pointed here by the Question.

I don't know anything about Earth 51, or who these monitor guys are. What's their job? To save realities? What is the orrery? Obviously something has changed for these guys, but since I don't know who they used to be, I don't really understand what's going on with them now that's special.

What you have to know is mostly explained in dialogue. "New Earth, the foundation stone of all existence" is the world on which the main body of the story takes place (see the shift from Alpha Lanterns "securing the crime scene" to the Monitors pointing at New Earth); the Orrery is the great big thing holding all the Earths. We can gather from this that the "multiversal monitors, ancient and wise" do something huge and metaphysical involving multiple universes, represented by the Orrery, that "universe 51" was lost, and that Nix Uotan, who is being exiled, was the one responsible for it. (Note his hairstyle.) The subsequent conversation reveals that the Monitors are becoming more human--feeling emotions, gaining individual stories--and that that's a new thing for them.

Back to the caveman, and suddenly there a statue of liberty behind him (wtf?) and some guy is asking for the weapon Metron gave him. (The fire?)

The caveman has developed some pretty major technology by his period's standards--image-making, use of fire to cook, bow and arrow--and he's drawing the pattern he saw on Metron's costume in the dirt. (He still doesn't have spoken language, though.) The red sky isn't just a sunset thing, it's the same kind of everything's-awry red sky we saw earlier. The scene behind him is a 21st-century-era calamity--the Statue of Liberty sinking into the ocean, bombed-out buildings and road signs. Something awful has happened, and there's a temporal anomaly--when the caveman turns around, the blond guy has disappeared again, and the pattern from Metron's mask has appeared on his face. What's the weapon? That's a mystery right now.

Some guy wakes up. I have no idea who he is.

Check his hairstyle. He's Nix Uotan, the Monitor who was exiled a few pages ago: his "exile" is from the Monitors' metaphysical domain to the quotidian world and mortal existence.

Does that help some?

Yes, totally. Let me reread it quickly now and see if I have any still unresolved questions.

"They're asking for it in these outfits"

Is he making a perverse sexual comment with this?

Also, what's the deal with Bludhaven? (Is it like South Bronx?)

And why are there 8 children if Turpin was looking for 6?

(Btw, I understand it much better now. This is my 4th or 5th reading, but it's going very smoothly. I'm hoping I won't need remedial explication for each upcoming issue tho.)

i'm enjoying that douglas's explanation's here are serving a rhetorically opposite purpose to the ones in his annotation-blog. good work!

"asking for it" etc.: there was a very, very stupid plot that involved dr. light being a rapist. i'm hoping morrison has the stones to develop this one-liner into a critique of how fucking retarded that really was. (said story led, convolutedly, into 'infinite crisis', which if you read you will really find final crisis incredibly easy to follow and reader-friendly by comparison)

bludhaven is the even worse neighbouring variation of gotham city they created to give one of the ex robins to go and be a vigilante in when he decided he was called 'nightwing'. i believe it was destroyed in infinite crisis when (stupid, stupid) some villain turned someone with a name like 'pyro, the human flame' into a weapon of mass destruction and dropped him on it.

no idea on six/eight kids other than other's, above; 'deep and dreamless' is from 'o little town' ...

...1

"In Infinite Crisis #4, the Secret Society of Super Villains drops Chemo, a gigantic, semi-intelligent pile of chemicals, on the city, causing a devastating explosion and toxic chemical fallout. The city is destroyed. Nightwing, Batgirl and Robin survive, since all were out of the city at the time of the attack, but the fates of other Blüdhaven-based heroes such as Tarantula are unknown. "

Again, addressing it from within the story:

"They're asking for it": yes, he's a perv. (Note that he's trying to hit up Mirror Master for some Viagra later in the scene.) The point of the scene is that both Dr. Light and Mirror Master are really pathetic guys.

Blüdhaven, we can gather from the context of what Rev. Goode is saying, is kind of South Bronx, kind of post-Katrina New Orleans.

There are more than 6 children because, as the Question noted, there are a bunch of metahuman kids going missing lately; Turpin the cop only knew about the ones in his jurisdiction. (We saw in the first scene that he was in Metropolis, but from the Statue of Liberty in the background as he's outside the Dark Side Club, he's gone to NYC to find out more.)

"asking for it" etc.: there was a very, very stupid plot that involved dr. light being a rapist. i'm hoping morrison has the stones to develop this one-liner into a critique of how fucking retarded that really was. (said story led, convolutedly, into 'infinite crisis', which if you read you will really find final crisis incredibly easy to follow and reader-friendly by comparison)

I don't think he's mocking that story at all, but rather taking an established thing and running with it -- his object is, as Douglas says, to show that these villains are pathetic, terrible people. They are evil. Of course some of them are rapists and misogynists. I mean, Identity Crisis may suck, but it's actually not such a bad thing that it opened up the door to acknowledging that supervillains might be up to other sorts of evil behavior.

Was Chemo that giant chemical guy who showed up in an issue of PAD's Supergirl? The one who was dallying with consciousness?

I realised the other day that the whole "it starts with the first boy on Earth and ends with the last boy on earth" claim (made in interview by GM) doesn't specify which Earth - so if that is Kamandi of earth-51 then the story starts with the first boy on the first Earth and ends with the last boy on the last Earth: even more multiverse-spanning than you might have thought :)

I think that if they want to do a story about how "realistically" supervillains might be up to that, then that why we have Vertigo, so go and do a proper psychological study of it, rather than just going "and then Zatanna magicked it away!"

If you had not noticed, Vertigo hasn't done a "mature" version of a DC property in many, many, many moons. It's simply not what Vertigo does anymore.