the rolling Final Crisis thread

While I agree with you completely, what you said just translates to these people as "YOU ARE STUPID STUPID FOOOOLS LOLOLOLOLOL" and they just can't deal with that - you're an 'elitist'. (Also, to be fair, Grant Morrison is not the easiest writer in the world. He makes you work, and a lot of people read comics as light relief.)

I did follow up my Final Crisis this week with a Marvel Essentials, which had big captions saying things like 'MEANWHILE CAPTAIN MARVEL TALKS TO CAROL DANVERS' when they're right there, talking, on the page, and you don't really need a caption. Or Captain M blasting something and at the same time thinking "Must BLAST this creature - with ALL the POWER of my UNI-BEAM!" and the creature is thinking "UNNNH!! His UNI-BEAM -- BLASTING ME!! GOT -- TO -- WITHSTAND IT!!!"

It's two polar opposites, but I think a lot of readers actively miss this kind of hand-holding and equate the lack of it with a presumed 'arrogance' on the part of the writer - "How DARE he assume I'm a functioning, thinking being? THE BASTARD!"

Sorry, xpost to Deric there.

Or as Stan Lee would put it, "Meanwhile, Doc Superman writes his own confoundin' commentary -- little realising that Valiant Vic Fluro is aiming a mysterious missive at the very heart of the previous post! To be continued in the tale we just HADDA call -- 'WHEN POSTS COLLIDE!!'"

:D

While I agree with you completely, what you said just translates to these people as "YOU ARE STUPID STUPID FOOOOLS LOLOLOLOLOL"

Oh, a much more detailed response is forthcoming. Just you wait and see!

btw, I think this is where Robby officially went from being amusingly obsessed Silver Age to cringe-inducing Pollyanna with likely borderline personality.

I haven't read this Final Crisis thing, like I said on the Moore thread, but I do think Morrison's comics are sometimes quite hard to decipher even for a seasoned reader well versed in the language of comics. Just think of the last story arc in New X-Men, for example. And I don't think it's just a question of "intelligence" or the lack thereof on the part of reader, but the fact that Morrison sometimes seems to ignore the basic rules of pacing and plotting a comic, and puts his story elements out in fast, compressed rushes. The plus side to this is that his comics tend to get better (and easier to understand) on the second reading, but it can still be quite irritating and lazy.

"but like I said in the Moore thread"

a) Tuomas pleeeease stop opining on (peoples' opinions of) comics you haven't read
b) compressing all this information into off-panel inferences is not lazy, it's really complex and thought-out. it's much more in the mode of Xaime Hernandez than someone forgetting to include something.

*it just knocks the actual discussion off-track, and it's not like you're short of interesting or idiosyncratic readings of material you have seen

Also stop correcting yourself when you were right the first time :)

Well, there is a point there, in that - not so much in the final arc of X-Men but the one that preceded it - I was expecting one of those montages where it would explain exactly how SPOILER A turned out to be SPOILER B in disguise and how his whole evil plan had progressed - not so much because it would have made the unfolding story any better, but just as a little treat in its own right. (Also because as I read over everything leading up to that twist, I felt like I was spotting errors, explaining them, and then awarding no-prizes to myself, which felt almost like cheating for some reason.) In comparison with that, Final Crisis is the easiest thing in the world to keep up with, even on one reading.

That was probably the first time I'd read that kind of inference-heavy work - JLA had one issue that felt like the second part of a two-issue story, with issue one entirely inferred, but that seems almost like a testing of the waters now. Since then I've learned to enjoy my own inferences of Morrison's material rather than expecting the author to hold my hand and tell me exactly how to interpret it, but I still like the visceral thrill of a 'let me explain the plot to you, foolish mortal' scene - it's very old school and always feels like the end of an episode of Poirot in the drawing room.

I'm extremely fond of the notion of some dude reading the entire dictionary, particularly within the context of a clusterfuck soopah event - judging by that page (which I mentally refer to as the "Wally Sage" page), there's more Moore bashing to come in SUPERMAN BEYOND.

really tired, so I'm sure once I've slept I'll have a bunch of questions, but just to start off:

Do we understand what happened with Turpin this issue? (Why he's searching for the kids AFTER he's already found them?) There seems to be something time-travel related... did we skip a bunch of time in the issue?

Turpin is confused at his own behaviour - he doesn't understand why he's so aggressive and his thoughts are not entirely his own. The shot of him in the bathroom mirror suggests that his head is cracked, somehow (this is also another visual clue as to what exactly has happened to him if you know the DC character he met in issue 1). When he meets Reverend Good, Good addresses him as though he is someone else, indicating that another character is possessing his body: last time we saw him, a sinister figure was lamenting how these Earth bodies wear out so quickly. You can deduce that the same presence has now transferred from that body to Turpin's.

Time hasn't been skipped: the presence of the post-apocalyptic boy in cut-offs is unexplained as yet but meant to be curious - it's probably before his issue 1 appearance in his own timeline, though.

...And, actually, the fact that Turpin's searching for the kids after he's already found them is a big cue that something is horribly wrong with him right now.

Basically, what we're seeing is the evil New Gods manifesting as MULTIPLE avatars. When a person behaves as one of their archetypes, they are acting as proxies. So Turpin is acting as Darkseid, and so is the guy at the Dark Side Club. We see people acting as Desaad, Kalibak, Granny Goodness, etc.

They make this explicit in the new issue of Teen Titans -- the Teen Titans are proxies for the Forever People.

That's not explaining to Mordy with reference only to what's in the issue, though!

It's certainly not clear, though possible, that they're occupying multiple avatars: we haven't seen Boss Dark Side since Turpin has been infected with Darkseid (and if he still was in the Boss, couldn't Good have just found him there?). Kraken may just be a Fury rather than Granny Goodness, too. Are there other multiples I've missed?

I have to read this again, I assumed from the cracked mirror that Turpin is becoming Orion!

It's possible both are true! Or that one's a red herring: Good makes it clear who *he* thinks is in Turpin, at least, later on, but the aggro especially and the crackle from Turpin touching Orion's corpse in #1 could also be significant...

I thought Sonny Sumo might be becoming Orion :)

poor Sonny Sumo's just lost his patience with all the meta revivalism.

Don't be ridiculous, he can't be the god of war if he kills people! :)

Just a small thought - loved #2 after reading it I went back and reread #1; which now makes a whole lot more sense. I was talking about this to my local comic shop guy over the weekend and he made a good point in that, unlike most of these mega-crossovers, Final Crisis appears to be actually telling a story rather than merely serving as connective tissue for what's going on in a whole load of other titles (Amazons Attack I'm looking at you here.) In any good story there's always a point at the beginning where the reader should really have no idea what's going on - but still be interested enough to continue reading so she (or, most likely in this case, he) can find out.

Also, those portrait covers are things of beauty. I'm definitely getting that variant for the rest of them.

If Turpin is possessed, how come he seems to be conflicted and confused? Are the possessions not full investments (ie: Turpin still has some agency)?

Also, I should comment; I really loved Final Crisis #2, and much more than I enjoyed FC #1. There was a lot more I understood, and except for the final 6 pages or so, I had no problem following the sequence of events.

"Becoming" is the key here, I think.

The people who are "possessed" have not had their own consciousnesses fully displaced: note the scene in JLA headquarters where Kraken tips her hand, shouting "warn them! our weapons are useless!" or some such. Her "occupier" is on edge from Batman's questioning, and the body's true consciousness breaks through for a second; Turpin is at an earlier stage in his possession/occupation, and his own identity has not yet been fully subsumed.

Ha, so Final Crisis is really just like Secret Invasion after all.

I think the point is rather that humanity is being destroyed by these archetypes that were already there -- always the subtext of the Kirby stuff, after all -- and that the evil New Gods are simply giving this horrible plot form and structure. We all tap into these archetypes, and this is what happens when we are overtaken by the villainous gods of Apokalips rather than those from New Genesis.

Not too hard to grasp!

They have multiple proxies because they are forces beyond the corporeal. The limitations of the New Gods concept was always that we understood them as these superhero/supervillain characters with defined appearances, but the idea is stronger if they are beyond all that, and exist as archetypes.

britishes and anglophiles: i watched this week's doctor who and spent the whole time thinking 'god if only they could have gotten grant morrison to write this'

Grant's first two Who stories are two of my favourite Who stories ever.

They have multiple proxies because they are forces beyond the corporeal.

Are there actually any scenes of them having multiple proxies, though, or is it just you speculating?

Not too hard to grasp!

So why do you think Turpin is out looking for the kids again? And why does he not start acting like a New God until after he encounters New Gods?

Turpin's out looking for the kids again because, after his encounter with Señor Dark Side, he doesn't remember having found them; the implication is that that's when Dark Side, after "wearing out" the body he was in, started moving into Turpin. (He also keeps blacking out during the scene when he's beating the crap out of the Mad Hatter; his mind's really on the fritz.) What's left of Turpin knows only that it's supposed to be looking for the kids; the Darkseid in him is not just making him more brutal, it's making him enjoy the brutality.

I already said all that myself! I'm wondering why Matt thinks he is, since he doesn't think that Darkseid has moved into Turpin.

"But I'm surprised that there has been no discussion (that I have seen here) re: the massive contradictions between Countdown/Death of New Gods and FC and how Morrison shrugged his shoulders and suggested it was DC editorial's fuckup (newsarama interview, I think)."

My way of looking at is who cares...they are dead and being reborn. They are freakin' godz, stuff gets weird whenever you deal with them, which is what Morrison is playing up.

I feel for people that bought 60 issues of something they didn't like, but there is no reason to screw up a good story because of one that isn't that good.

It is just like some of the Batfans not getting why Dini and Morrison are are not following up on the stories from before 'One Year Later'. Why are they not following up on alot of that stuff, because it sucked. I freaking hope that Dini doesn't even acknowledge any of that cruddy Gotham Knight's Joker/Hush storyline at all in his upcoming story.

"METAL MEN is Morrisonian Madness!"

I will check that one out.

"RUN!" The last page of FC #2 is genius. Actually both of the last pages of the first two issues have been great, as they make you really want to see what is coming up next.

I've got a feeling Final Crisis is going to be like that JLA "Rock of Ages" story in that everyone is screwed up and how they are going to pull out of this one won't become apparent until the end. I don't think you need to have read that storyline or 7 Soldiers to get what is going on in Final Crisis, but I do think that having read both of those stories do add some interesting angles.

it does feel a bit odd that something that's not all that different from the stories he did month in month out on his jla run is now a MAJOR MAJOR EVENT type comic, or am i missing something

p.s. perpetua's line on the multiply valent versions of the gods is, to be fair, the one morrison's been trying to sell in interviews; it's just, you know, not actually in the comic, as of yet

"Love & Monsters" from Doctor Who's second season is as-close-as-dammit to a Morrison-written episode, which is all the more impressive considering that it's from the main series writer.

it does feel a bit odd that something that's not all that different from the stories he did month in month out on his jla run is now a MAJOR MAJOR EVENT type comic, or am i missing something

Morrison's flow is much better now than it was on JLA, and he's working with an artist who can draw. So I don't think it's really comparable.

i can actually see love & monsters with philip bond art and dialogue boxes, i guess.

tbh final crisis's art, for me, isn't going beyond "does the job" — tho i think that might be the colouring more than the art.

not great for reading comprehension tho — w/r/t just one scene, the hooded figure that looks headless when john's being attacked, "say goodbye to your eyes!" when it's not clear that anything's heading towards his eyes, john's ring not being shown remanifesting, then when batman recognises the indentation in thingamajig's palm it doesn't actually look like an indentation — i thought she just had the GL logo on her hand and didn't link it to "a hell of a right hook" until i looked again

Huh? I assumed that she simply had an in-built ring for some reason.

I like that Batman catches something at a glance that leaves the average reader completely puzzled but which can easily be inferred by close reading/looking. As it should be.

Somebody pointed out in the comments over at the annotations site that, after the hooded figure's fight with John, Kraken's entire right arm is suddenly glowing green. Which I had completely failed to notice, too.

Why does the hooded figure's arm have standard human anatomy and GL uniform, though? John's ring disappearing really cocks that scene up for the close reading/looking.

further to Rock of Ages (any Moz JLA storyline) vs Final Crisis: DC wasn't really doing the GIANT crossover thing back then, so if someone (say, Grant Morrison) wanted to do an epic story featuring a bunch of superheroes saving the world/universe, a monthly comic (say, JLA) was the place to do it.

what I'm saying: the only real difference is the marketing

I don't think it's as easy as "Turpin is possessed by Darkseid!" I think it's more like, Turpin is tapping into Darkseid, and a lot of other people can as well. Maybe they tap into Desaad, or Granny Goodness, or Godfrey.

Like I said, this is hinted at in the book, and made explicit in Teen Titans. I imagine they will make it more explicit in Final Crisis as the story progresses to act two. Morrison doesn't have to lay all the cards out on the table in the first two issues, and I don't see why so many people insists that every answer appear right away, even with five more issues to go. I like the way they are handling the crossover elements of Final Crisis -- they are not necessary for the enjoyment of what Grant is doing, but they do clarify aspects of the story, i.e. the motives/nature of the Dark Side Club, or the backstory of the Human Flame.

what about the giant massive crossover DC ONE MILLION right in the middle of his run tho

was it that morrison's run on jla was just unusual in deciding to run with a series of massive cosmic-level type threats?

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/07/05/top-five-things-in-grant-morrisons-jla-run-that-annoyed-me/

"1. Only Superman attending Metamorpho�s funeral

I get it - Morrison was making a point about how ephemeral superhero �death� is - but he could have done so without having NOone but Superman (who barely KNEW Metamorpho) show up at his funeral!!

The worst part for me is that while you may try to write it off and say �Nah, they were busy on a mission� etc, Morrison decries that by actually SHOWING what Flash (former teammate and friend of Metamorpho�s) and Green Lantern (who just had his bacon saved by Metamorpho earlier in the series) were doing during the funeral - and it was just hanging out at the Watchtower!!

SO lame!"

tbh final crisis's art, for me, isn't going beyond "does the job"

Yeah, have to agree--was expecting more after the League of Batmen stuff.