the rolling Final Crisis thread

Tuomas -

Most of your questions were covered in Douglas' excellent annotations here:

http://finalcrisisannotations.blogspot.com/

Instead of my rehashing his info, take a look and then see what questions remain.

Superman Beyond #1
How does the society of Monitors relate to the Monitor we saw in Crisis on Infinite Earths? Was there always more than one Monitor, and the Monitor in CoIE simply never mentioned the other Monitors? Or did this society of Monitors only come into being after CoIE? The way I interpreted this issue is that the Monitor in CoIE was the probe the Over-Monitor/God sent to investigate a flaw in itself (i.e. the multiverse)... And it was only after the probe came into contact with the multiverse that Over-Monitor/God became "infected with stories", creating this story/history of a society of Monitors, which became reality because any story the Monitor(s) believe(s) in does come true. If this is correct, is Dax Novu/Mandrakk the Monitor of CoIE? In this issue he is said to be "the first son of Monitor", which could mean he was the probe mentioned earlier.

(x-post)

Okay, thanks! I'll look into that, and see if there are still some questions left unsanswered.

I read Douglas's annotations and they did answer some of my questions: now I know who Sonny Sumo is, what happened to Mary Marvel, and (maybe) what the hand writing "know evil" is about. I have to say, though, that I immediately connected the hand to The Hand of Glory in The Invisibles; I think it was mentioned there that The Hand of Glory is "cursor that can move through time" (or something like that), and here we have a cursor hand. So maybe it is Jack Frost's hand reaching from another series, saying that you should know evil, i.e. embrace your dark side and think beyond simple binaries. (Which is kinda what happens when Superman and Ultraman merge in Superman Beyond.) Or alternately, it's saying that you should know evil is never an external, unknowable force, rather than something that was always in you - note that both of the big bad guys in FC are born out of good guys. I also noticed that the Wikipedia page for Hand of Glory has this interesting bit of information:

The legend is traceable to about 1440, but the name only dates from 1707. It was originally a name for the mandrake root (via French "mandragore" and thus, "maindegloire"[2] - "hand of glory") that became conflated with the earlier legend. The confusion may have occurred because mandrakes are said to grow beneath the bodies of hanged criminals.

So, Hand of Glory = Mandrake = Mandrakk? Is this Dax Novu/Mandrakk trying to inform Frankenstein about the nature of evil?

Other than those above, I didn't find answers to my questions in the Douglas's annotations, so I'd like to hear what you think about them?

Okay, here's a few more questions:

Superman Beyond #2

I get that throughout this issue there's a meta-commentary going on towards Alan Moore in general and Watchmen in particular, kinda like what Morrison did in Zatanna #1 and Manhattan Guardian #1-2. But in those issues it felt pretty obvious Morrison was doing a good-natured cricitism/satire of Moore, whereas this one seems a bit more ambiguous in it's commentary. We have the doomsday clock, the bloodstain, and Allen Adam as Dr. Manhattan, but I'm not sure what Morrison is trying to say with them? Is Allen Adam a commentary on how far up his own arse Moore can go, or does he signal admiration for the sort of concepts Moore managed to bring into superhero comics? Maybe both?

Also, I can't quite figure out what's going on with Zillo Walla? She was the lover of Mandrakk, does that mean she was actually in league with his? If that is so, why did she gather those Supermen to fight him? Did she change sides when, as she put it, she "found a better story" than Mandrakk's, i.e. the story of Superman?

If Mandrakk was, like Zillo Walla says, fed by the Monitors' belief in him, that would explain why they didn't simply erase/kill him when he first turned evil. The Monitors were infected with stories, and most stories require a proper antagonist, so Mandrakk was kept alive in his tomb so he could come back for the conclusion of the Monitors' story, their Final Crisis.

Tuomas, I think your readings (questions) about these are ones that won't ever have a right answer; ie: require interpretation. I don't think anyone is going to have a definitive response to Morrison's use of Moore imagery in Superman Beyond, and as long as you've located the basic imagery, I don't know whether someone on this thread (Douglas included) can give you the correct answer. I would suggest, also, that one of Morrison's favorite tropes is the interpretation/symbolism of comic books and comic book iconography, and if you're struggling to understand his stuff, that's the correct place to be in. (I know it's kinda a cop-out answer, especially in a medium where obfuscation is a weakness, but it's kinda like reading Adorno like poetry; sometimes the form is apart of the text.)

Well yeah, I didn't think there would be any "correct" answers to any of these questions, but I was wondering if at least some of them were addressed in all the related FC material I didn't read. And even if they weren't, I'd like to hear what other ILCors thought about this stuff - surely I'm not the only one asking these sort of questions?

(I'll write more about the latter issues of FC when I have more time, because I feel I need to get this stuff out of my head, but maybe I'll try to formulate it into theories about FC rather than just asking potentially unanswerable questions.)

the more answers you get from final Crisis, the more questions you have. I am being kind to Morrison that sometimes you really have to fill in the blanks. most of the Libra stuff seems just to disappear and the monitor stuff gets confusing but keep asking the questions as if anything it means I'm not the only one stumped on these things.

Okay, as promised here's some more ponderings on FC...

Submit #1

This is a pretty straightforward issue, so not much problems here. Except that... In issue #3, when Wonder Woman was corrupted, we learned that Darkseid spreads the Anti-Life equation via some sort of virus or bacteria. So why does he also use the weird helmets seen in this issue? Wouldn't the virus be more effective? (Indeed, in issue #7 we see that control of the helmets is easily overriden by Dr. Sivana and Luthor.) And in next issue we also learn that simply seeing the Anti-Life equation on a computer or TV screen is enough to make people servants of Darkseid. So why are the helmets needed?

In this issue Black Lightning says that the sign of Metron began to "appear all over the world before all this started". So maybe I was right when talking about issue #1, that Metron's weapon is really some sort of anti-oppression meme buried in the subconscious of humankind, and the sign is merely a conduit for it. But how did Black Lightning learn that sign is so important? Maybe he got the information from Kamandi, who, as we saw in issue #2, had moved from his alternate Earth to Earth-1 (or whatever Earth this story is taking place in)? Except that we never find out how Kamandi learned about the meaning of the sign, or how he might've given the information to BL, or even how he got out of the jail cell he was in in issue #2. Maybe paying so much attention to this is nitpicking, but since Morrison devoted two whole pages of issue #1 to Kamandi's search of the sign, you'd think he bother to resolve that subplot in some way.

Final Crisis #4
In this issue we see Superbia and Warmaker of the Ultramarine Corps, but I thought Superbia was destroyed and Ultramarine Corps injected inside Qwewq/Neh-Buh-Loh in the JLA/Ultramarine Corps special? I guess the UC got out of Qwewq before he died, and rebuilt Superbia.

The way Barry saves Iris from the Anti-Life Equation is sweet, but on the other hand Morrison has introduced so many different ways to break off the Equation it kinda starts to lose its scariness. It should be like the mother of all brainwashes, not something you can just shake off. Anyway, I like how Morrison tries to depict how the Anti-Life Equation works instead of just making it into some mysterious magical force that takes over people. That said, I wish there'd been more scenes that depict how the ALE works on ordinary people, that would've made Darkseid's threat feel more tangible. I think Morrison did a better job of examining the ALE in the Mister Miracle part of Seven Soldiers.

Final Crisis #5
The bits about Checkmate, OMAC, Brother Eye, and what have you totally confuse me because I know almost nothing about their background. I think most of that stuff could've been left out without the story suffering at all.

The Question's seems like a cool character, but basically her only contribution to the story seems to be the gathering of the army of Supermen. Speaking of which, why is it an army of men only? Don't any of the parallel Earths have a Superwoman instead of Superman? I'd say this is one of Morrison's most male-centric stories ever... Wonder Woman spents most of the series under Darkseid's control, and Supergirl's star moment falls under that time-honored cliche, the fight between female protagonists. The most memorable female character in the series is probably Mary Marvel, and that's only because she's turned into an S/M bitch. That's a rather heavy-handed and stereotypical way of depicting someone's corruption - whatever happened to pro-queer Morrison? Anyway, I guess one big reason for the male-centrism is that this is the most "official" DC Universe story Morrison's ever written, and official DC Universe is pretty male-centric (moreso than Marvel, I think). Still, I was expecting more of him.

The wheelchair-bound dude with the Rubik's Cube is obviously Metron's human incarnation from Mister Miracle. Does this mean other New Gods appear in this story in human form too? I haven't been able to spot any of them, but my knowledge of New Gods is limited. Is the ape-like dude who's in the same cell with Metron and Nix Uotan a New God too? What he says to Nix makes him sound like yet another Morrison surrogate, and it also reminded me of Zatanna from Seven Soldiers. He doesn't say the word "magic", but Morrisonian ideas about imagination and magic are clearly repeated once again there. That's not a criticism though; this is what Morrison does best, and the whole jail cell scene with the cube and the picture of Weeja Dell is one of the most memorable bits in FC.

Speaking of memorable moments, I wish Batman's escape from Simyan and Mokkari would've been included here instead of Batman's own title, at least in a condensed form. I can see why Morrison wanted to put it there, since it's such a perfect obituary for the Bruce Wayne Batman, but I think it's also an awesome, dramatic moment in the FC storyline. Now Batman's escape and confrontation with Darkseid comes with also zero explanation in story proper, and that's a bit of shame.

"comes with almost zero explanation"

Haha, I love these questions - I enjoyed Final Crisis but I had to read it like a tone poem or something without trying to follow what was happening too closely. about the anti-life mechanism, I assumed it operates like metron's symbol - a banal physical act (helment, e-mail, whatever) that triggers something internal... like a metaphor with fangs

About Alan Moore, how is Zatanna and Manhattan Guardian commentary on his work??

"The Question's seems like a cool character, but basically her only contribution to the story seems to be the gathering of the army of Supermen. Speaking of which, why is it an army of men only? Don't any of the parallel Earths have a Superwoman instead of Superman? I'd say this is one of Morrison's most male-centric stories ever... Wonder Woman spents most of the series under Darkseid's control, and Supergirl's star moment falls under that time-honored cliche, the fight between female protagonists. The most memorable female character in the series is probably Mary Marvel, and that's only because she's turned into an S/M bitch. That's a rather heavy-handed and stereotypical way of depicting someone's corruption - whatever happened to pro-queer Morrison? Anyway, I guess one big reason for the male-centrism is that this is the most "official" DC Universe story Morrison's ever written, and official DC Universe is pretty male-centric (moreso than Marvel, I think). Still, I was expecting more of him."

^^ cosign

sorry i probably didn't need to copy paste the whole thing there.

no one has yet explained to me in what sense batman RIP was actually RIP, is bruce wayne still alive? what?

oh yeah, he died in final crisis, didn't he

i remember going "schyeah right". i didn't realise he'd been replaced with grayson.

About Alan Moore, how is Zatanna and Manhattan Guardian commentary on his work??

In MG #1-2 it's mostly just a throwaway joke about the battle between No-Beard (the bald fellow) and All-Beard (the one with the huge beard), who are both crazy in their own way: which two comic writers might they resemble? But Zatanna #1 is quite obviously a parody/homage to Promethea: Zatanna & co's trip through the "spheres of magic" is quite similar to the trip Promethea takes, except that Morrison is less serious and rigid about it all. He even has Misty saying to Zatanna, "I love the way you write about magic. It’s so like, down-to-earth and non-preachy", which I take as a criticism of how Moore writes about magic.

oh yeah, he died in final crisis, didn't he

Yeah, what actually did happen to Batman, as I can't remember now. SOmething about him being skeletonised, and put in a Kal-EL style rocketshiup, and going back to caveman times. Can anyone explain it in a way that makes sense?

IT'S A MYSTERY!!!

Has Final Crisis finally finished yet?

I've seen an interview where Morrison basically acknowledges the treatment of women characters in Final Crisis and plugs a future Wonder Woman miniseries to make amends...

I think the biggest problem with the female characters in FC is that most of them are basically put into "weeping girlfriend"/"damsel in distress" roles. Superman saves Lois, Flash saves Iris (and both of them are saved with a kiss, Prince Charming style), Ollie saves Dinah, Frankenstein (as far as I can tell) frees Wonder Woman, Weeja Dell is basically just an absent dream girl Nix Uotan is trying to find, etc. The only major female characters to get some independent action are The Question, Supergirl, and Mary Marvel, and like I mentioned upthread, their roles in the story are kinda marginal or otherwise problematic.

Okay, as promised, here's a few more notes on FC...

Final Crisis #6
I'm sure the reason Superman's now in the future is explained in some additional FC material, but it doesn't really bother me, as it doesn't affect the main story. All we need to know is that Brainiac 5 brought him there, and that he wants to give him the Miracle Machine. Wouldn't a better name for it be Deus ex Machina, though, as that is the function it will have in the next issue? The cube that stores the Machine in and how the cube opens reminds me of Moebius's art, I'm not sure if that's deliberate. There certainly was a deliberate Jean Giraud/Moebius reference in Seven Soldiers #0.

Just before he shoots him, Batman sees Darkseid's true form around his physical form, just like Shilo Norman did in Seven Soldiers #1. Does that mean Batman has become a New God too? And where did Batman get the gun he shoots Darkseid with? I guess it might've been just lying around, but it's kind of convenient that the Radion bullet just happens to fit in it.

I thought Darkseid's Omega Beams were supposed to totally kill a person, or at least that's what I remember them doing in some earlier Darkseid comics I've read. So why do they now transport Batman into the distant past? And if the beams didn't kill him rather than zap him into where he is in the end of FC #7, why is there a charred corpse of him left behind? Could the corpse belong to one of the Batman clones that were destroyed in Batman #683? Seems unlikely, as the clones weren't wearing a Batman suit, plus Superman would've most likely found more than just one corpse then. Some comments online said that the beams put Batman into a similar Life Trap as Shilo Norman was in in the Mister Miracle miniseries. I don't quite buy it, as Darkseid had reason to do that to Shilo, whereas nothing here indicates he meant to do anything else than kill Batman.

Btw, the cover of hardcover edition of FC is a variation of the final panel of issue #6, so it spoils a rather big plot point. I'd read FC before buying the book, so it didn't bother me, but I'm sure some readers will feel disappointed due to such a huge spoiler. I can see why DC wanted to put that picture as the cover, as it's bound to draw attention ("This is the story where Batman dies! No, really. Yeah, we know we already did a story called Batman RIP, but this is where he really dies! Honest."), but still...

I thought Darkseid's Omega Beams were supposed to totally kill a person, or at least that's what I remember them doing in some earlier Darkseid comics I've read. So why do they now transport Batman into the distant past?

http://fourthworldfridays.blogspot.com/2008/02/forever-people-6-omega-effect.html

Just back from vacation and totally sick with some kind of horrible hippie flu, but:

*The Omega Effect doesn't outright kill you, it takes you out of your time & makes you live your various possible existences. (That's what happened to Shilo in SS:MM #4, for instance, and what happened to Sonny Sumo in Kirby's Forever People.)

*It's been noted that "who was that masked corpse?" will be a plot point down the road.

*The cube in which the Miracle Machine is sealed was established in the Machine's earlier appearances in Legion of Super-Heroes stories. It's a deus-ex-machina device that's literally been sitting around for forty years' worth of continuity at this point...

*I've noted this elsewhere, but "Batman R.I.P." is a story in which Batman does not die and does not at any point appear to die, which begins with someone in a Batman outfit yelling "You're wrong! Batman and Robin will NEVER die!," and in which the characters who STICK BATMAN IN A COFFIN AND BURY HIM IN THE GROUND specifically note that they do not intend to let him die. It's about his psychological rather than physical destruction.

*The Question's role in this story is to serve as a bridge between secular (police) authority and divine (superheroic) authority--she's also the bridge between this world and "the world that's coming," and it's suggested that she's the model for the Global Peace Agency from Kirby's OMAC.

More in a bit...

*I've noted this elsewhere, but "Batman R.I.P." is a story in which Batman does not die and does not at any point appear to die, which begins with someone in a Batman outfit yelling "You're wrong! Batman and Robin will NEVER die!," and in which the characters who STICK BATMAN IN A COFFIN AND BURY HIM IN THE GROUND specifically note that they do not intend to let him die. It's about his psychological rather than physical destruction.

Yeah, the way I read Batman RIP (including Last Rites) is that it's supposed to be the metaphysical and meta level end of the Bruce Wayne Batman, even if he doesn't physically die. I think the concept of the dark, brooding, drive-by-his-demons Batman has been milked for what its worth, so maybe with the birth of the Fifth World we should see a rebirth of Batman too. If Dr. Hurt was (like I interpreted it) a physical manifestation of Batman's dark side, then maybe Morrison was trying to say something along those lines with Batman RIP. It's really refreshing to see Dick Grayson as Batman now in Batman & Robin, as he's quite different from Bruce but still essentially Batman. If Bruce ever comes back, I'd love to see him not become Batman again, rather than take some sort of behind-the-scenes/mentor figure for Dick and Damian, who'd continue as Batman & Robin. But of course we all know DC won't let Bruce Wayne retire (and Morrison must know this too), he will be Batman again. That's why I think the premise of Batman RIP is false any way you look at it.

I like this reading of RIP, Tuomas, and it reminds me of Morrison's interviews where he'd emphasis the changes that Batman has gone through over his comic book career. Like, he didn't want to see goofy Batman and serious Batman as two different interpretations, but as the same character at different points in his life. So maybe RIP was an attempt to say - we can end this (very lengthy) chapter of Batman and maybe when he comes back, we can try something new. The dynamics can change. He can continue to grow. (Which maybe plays into the no-beard versus beard thing, and maybe the idea of a Final Crisis in general -- trying to push past this brooding, dark chapter of the DC universe, or spend it out so that there are no more chips and something different has to begin again.)

*The Omega Effect doesn't outright kill you, it takes you out of your time & makes you live your various possible existences. (That's what happened to Shilo in SS:MM #4, for instance, and what happened to Sonny Sumo in Kirby's Forever People.)

According to Darkseid's Wikipedia page page the Omega Beams can both erase/kill someone completely (and I'm pretty sure we've seen them do that before), or put him into the Life Trap. In the case of Shilo Darkseid seemed to have a motivation to do the latter. With Batman, I can't see any reason why Darkseid would want to put him into the Life Trap rather than erase him.

and maybe when he comes back, we can try something new.

I think the likely outcome of RIP and FC is that, when Bruce returns, his experiences with Hurt and the Life Trap have changed him, so we'll at least see a metaphysical rebirth of Batman even if Bruce assumes the role again. At least that's how I think Morrison has planned it, we'll see if future Batman writers will agree. It would be sad to see Dick give up the cape, but at least this resolution would be better than a return to the same old same old.

Here's some notes on the final issue...

Final Crisis #7
This issue features what I think are both Morrison's best and worst qualities. On the one hand, there are plenty of "OMG!" cool and clever moments, but on the other hand there's also a lot of "and then this happened and then this happened and then..." type of storytelling, which lacks proper structure and sense of drama. We've seen Morrison do this many times before, the best example I can think of is Seven Soldiers #1. But at least with SS #1 it was obvious Morrison had too few pages properly tie all the threads together, so he had to rush through each storyline. In FC #7, however, there's plenty of space devoted to stuff that's kinda irrelevant to the main plot, whereas the main story feels like several important bits were simply left out.

For example, on pages 6-7, why is there a scene with Supergirl fighting robots that look like the robot JLA from JLA Classified? The robots were only introduced a page before, and they serve absolutely no purpose in the story. On page 12 there's a panel that says "this is how Checkmate went down fighting", and there's some robots with mohawks battling Darkseid's forces. Maybe this panel refers to some additional FC material, but we haven't seen these robots before or after in the main story, and there's no explanation where they came from, so including them into that one panel feels confusing and unnecessary. And on page 14, do Hawkman and Hawkwoman die while fighting that Lord Eye? It's kinda unclear, but if they do, casually killing two longstanding characters in a fight that lasts two panels feels undramatic. On page 17 we learn about Morticoccus, "the god-bacterium designed to strip Earth's heroes of their powers", but previously there'd been only one single-panel reference to this bacterium in issue #6, where a handful of heroes are losing their powers. Seems like Earth's heroes losing their powers would be an important plot point that would've been mentioned earlier, but we don't really see anyone getting depowered besides those few folks in that one panel. In the panel preceding the Morticoccus one we see that Supergirl definitely still has her powers, so why wasn't she infected? It makes no sense to introduce a seemingly important plot element this late in the story, especially when it's done in a way that only confuses the reader.

On page 17 we see that Wonder Woman is still under Darkseid's control, but the next time we see her she is suddenly herself again. So how was she freed? Looks like Frankenstein had something to do with it, but we never really find out. You'd think it makes more sense to devote a few panels to explaining this rather than to Supergirl fighting some random robots?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Black Racer supposed to be Death? On page 7 we are told that Darkseid was "fatally wounded" by Batman's shot, so wouldn't the Black Racer have come for him anyway? Why were the Flashes needed to lead him to Darkseid? If this was the excuse to resurrect Barry, it's kinda flimsy.

We learn that Superman wishes the Earth (maybe the whole universe/multiverse?) back together with the Miracle Machine, so why do we see him putting people in the "freezer" on page 18? Did the Miracle Machine only restore Earth, but people still needed to be freezed, and then defrosted and put back to Earth? Were all of Earth's 6 billion inhabitants put into the freezer? Seems like an impossible task, even for Superman. I don't see why Morrison had to include this scene, wouldn't it have been easier to make Superman simply wish everything (including people) back they way it was without any of this freezer business?

To be honest, I think including Mandrakk in this issue was unnecessary. Superman Beyond was awesome, the fight between Superman and Mandrakk in it was very cool, but I think it should've been a self-contained story. Darkseid is the real villain in FC, he's a much more impressive character, and his demise is more memorable. Having Mandrakk appear as a "boss number two" feels anticlimactic, especially since he is so easily beaten here. And we never even learn what Mandrakk's plan was. Did he intend to destroy the multiverse, or rule it, or just feed on it? Was he using Darkseid, or did Darkseid set him free by coincidence? I think this issue would've worked better if it had ended simply with Superman singing the celestial music to dissolve Darkseid and then using the Miracle Machine to wish for a happy ending.

Apparently the Overmonitor/God retires the Monitors, but why is Nix Uotan the only one who seems to realize this? The other Monitors act like it's back to business as usual. We see Nix become human again, but does this happen to the other Monitors too, or does the Overmonitor completely erase them? I think making all of them human would be fitting; the Monitors' "crime" was that they'd become vampires feeding on the stories of the Multiverse, because they had no stories of their own, but if they become mortals each and every one of them now has a story.

On the second to last page, in the first panel, we see that a rocket has landed where the caveman lives. It's the same rocket that we see on pages 6-7, the rocket in which Lois & co load the mementoes of humankind (including Superman's cape and Batman's light signal). So apparently it flew trough the time distortions into the distant past... What's the siginifigance of this? And surely it's not a coincidence that it looks like the rocket in which Superman arrived to Earth? (In fact it could even be the very same rocket - did Ma and Pa Kent save it?)

On the last two pages see Batman placing something on top of the dead caveman. I first assumed it was his utility belt, but if you check the previous issues, the utility belt Batman is wearing in them looks considerably different from this belt. I guess you could blame it on discrepancy between artists, except that I think Mahnke drew the last page of issue #6, and even there the belt looks different. So could the difference between the two belts mean that this Batman (or this reality) is not the same as the one we've seen before? Is Batman caught in the Life Trap?

I never really followed the connection between the Darkseid and Mandrakk storylines - in fact maybe there really isn't one? - so I'd be interested in what if anything I missed... there was interaction between the Darkseid stuff and the monitor stuff (Nix Uotan hangs with Metron, e.g.) so perhaps I'm wrong... I don't think it's such a big deal since I don't think the story is meant to handle too much scrutiny

I don't think there actually was much connection between Mandrakk and Darkseid, except that Darkseid's shaking of the multiverse somehow allowed Mandrakk get out of his tomb. That's why I thought Mandrakk was a good villain in the mostly self-contained Superman Beyond, but rather extraneous in the main Final Crisis storyline. Leave Mandrakk out of FC #7, and the story doesn't really change that much.

Ha ha, I read this without having any real grounding in DC comics so I am still floored by there being eight Flashes.

trying to push past this brooding, dark chapter of the DC universe by paving the way for Blackest Night!

I thought Johns had planned The Blackest Night long before Final Crisis came out? I haven't been following the Green Lantern titles lately, but is there much connection between FC and TBN?

Nah, there's no real connection (yet). BN is pretty much just the culmination of several years' worth of GL storylines, spread out to encompass the DCU as a whole.

I think there were a few things in FC that were explicit set-ups for BN, like the Flash and the Batman bits.

and also the Aquaman and Hawkman bits.

Hawkman & Hawkgirl/woman are clearly supposed to die in FC--check out the two feathers on the "memorial" page--but apparently it was decided at some point after FC #7 had gone to press that they hadn't died yet. So a scene in a Dwayne McDuffie issue of JLA got rewritten in a hurry, and they got a life pass long enough to get themselves killed over in Blackest Night.

Here's some more general thoughts on FC:

* Batman breaks his vow of not using guns when he shoots Darkseid, but he also does something far more significant, which I only realized when I reread FC. Just before he shoots Darkseid he says that Radion "is toxic to your kind", so he must know the bullet will kill him. And killing someone has always been the ultimate taboo for Batman. (As far as I know this is the first time the post-crisis Batman consciously kills someone, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.) Sure, the Flashes and Superman ultimately finish the job, but it's Batman who is responsible for Darkseid's death. More than anything, I think the breaking of his most sacrosanct moral code signals the end of Bruce Wayne Batman (at least metaphorically).

* The Monitors are told to be sort of leeches, who feed on the stories of the Multiverse because they have no stories of their own. I think this connects them to the Sheeda in Seven Soldiers, who similarly feed on the cultures of others (in this case their own ancestors), because they lack a culture of their own. And if the Monitors and Sheeda are forces of anti-imagination, this also connects them to the Archons/Outer Church in The Invisibles. (Though I think Darkseid and the Anti-Life Equation are a closer equivalent to the Archons - the ALE "slogans" in FC sound quite similar to what the Archons say in The Invisibles.) And if Superman's wish for every one to have a happy ending leads to the Monitors becoming human, then it is a similar sort of "everyone gets what they want" ending as in The Invisibles. The Monitors get out of their cul-de-sac of imagination, they all have stories now. Similarly, I thought Klarion didn't really betray the Seven Soldiers in SS #0: with him replacing the Queen and providing a fresh new vision for them, the Sheeda might find a way out of their cultural cul-de-sac, so there is no need for any future Harrowings.

Batman breaks his vow of not using guns
Has this vow ever actually been explicitly stated in a Batman comic?

More than anything, I think the breaking of his most sacrosanct moral code signals the end of Bruce Wayne Batman (at least metaphorically).
I think it's more significantly representative of the Morrison Batman that sees Brucio pragmatically setting aside his supposed code of honour to, y'know, save the polyverse.

Maybe so, but when Superman broke his equally strong vow not to kill for similarly pragmatic reasons, it was a huge deal for the character. Maybe Batman is more pragamatic when it comes to such codes of honour though?

Morrison's Batman is, at least.
Superman, of course, is all about the ideal(s). Even within his own story, he's aware that he's a symbol. Batman, meanwhile, again in his own story, is an agent of change.

Darkseid is the real villain in FC, he's a much more impressive character, and his demise is more memorable. Having Mandrakk appear as a "boss number two" feels anticlimactic, especially since he is so easily beaten here. And we never even learn what Mandrakk's plan was. Did he intend to destroy the multiverse, or rule it, or just feed on it? Was he using Darkseid, or did Darkseid set him free by coincidence?

I always read it as Darseid was the enemy within the DC universe and thus doomed to continue to have adventures and plans within DC continuity, whilst Mandrakk was a destroyer of stories and thus comics and wanted a void.

Darkseid for all his flaws works within the system of Kirby, DC, superhero figures & comic narratives. Mandrakk is outside this world and is a far worse enemy, although I also agree with readings that Mandrakk is the rot that set in when all comics had to be like the watchmen and for all Darkseids evil at least he was from the old-school trippy/cosmic side of things.

Darkseid is the baddie that is introduced early that we can all boo and hiss. Mandrakk is against the very notion of comics ( stories, narratives & adventures) having him come on at the beginning of a 7 part series is only going to have him hang around uncomfortably for 6 issues till the climax.

With Batman and the gun, I feel that Morissons Batman kind of knew that after RIP he was heading for the final act. Dr Hurt hints at this in RIP. So the gun thing is a last stand against the embodiment of all evil and an acknowledgment that it would have to be a mortal (and morally inflexible) hero like Batman to realise that only pulling the trigger would work.

The fact that its also a God must have forced him also. I couldn't see it happening if it had been Libra standing there.

Tuomas, thanks for putting your thoughts down - I just read it and had a lot of the same questions. Definitely going to re-read this while perusing that annotations site.

I think Dr. Superman's logic about Morrison's Batman v. his Superman is correct. It surely is no coincidence that Batman betrays both his anti-gun and anti-killing vows to save the multiverse which results in his own death. ("Death", since even the last page of the story admits he's not really dead, like the "hope for resurrection" of Martian Manhunter in issue #2 almost does.) Hamildan's post above seems pretty right too, regarding Mandrakk vs. Darkseid, though reading it, it did feel weirdly sudden to drop him in there in the final issue -- thank goodness Superman Beyond was included in the HC.

Really wish I'd been able to get a hold of those Fourth World books (as well as the Seven Soldiers books) before reading this, but I still totally dug it, even if I don't totally understand everything in it, just what seemed like what Morrison was trying to say about comics in this "FINAL CRISIS".

OK, trying to answer a few more of Tuomas's questions, and forgive me for overlapping with some things in the annotations that Tuomas already noted:

FC #1:

The caveman (he had his own comic for a while in the '60s, but for our purposes all you need to know is that he's a caveman) is given knowledge/fire by the gods, and his task is to put the protective symbols everywhere. (We see in #7 that his life's work has been writing them all over the place in his travels, and we also see them turning up as they're needed.) I gather that he has a vision of the end times in the same way that Kamandi has a vision of him--one of the effects of CoIE, and this crisis too, is that times are collapsed together in an alpha-and-omega way--the first boy on Earth encountering the last boy on Earth. Kamandi, as we see from his flash of dialogue in #7, has had a vision in Command D of the new Kirbyized world.

FC #2:

The Japanese heroes echo the Forever People (but so do the "six missing kids" that Turpin's looking for). Sonny Sumo is a version of a character who encountered the New Gods in the Kirby era--that version was sent to the past thanks to the Omega Effect, this one says something to the effect that he fell out of another world into this one & this Sonny Sumo's old life.

What brought Barry back: that's a question for Geoff Johns, I suspect.

Libra didn't abandon the Metron chair, he was just away from it at the time Barry and Jay discovered it. (The meetings of his society seem to happen during the day, the Barry/Jay scene is in the middle of the night.) Libra's group relocates to Florida very shortly thereafter, either because of their HQ having been discovered by the Flashes or because of the events of Revelations #1.

FC #3:

Mary Marvel is indeed possessed by Desaad. The hand writing "know evil" is a sort of digital/Earthly analogue to the hand writing messages on the Source Wall.

Superman Beyond #2: Yeah, Morrison's got a really odd relationship to Moore's work--he acknowledges it constantly, but he also tries to write things that act as a corrective to it. Superman Beyond has a lot of stuff that functions on a metafictional level--traveling through all the iterations of the Superman story (even, in that wonderful one-panel Civil War gag, the Marvel universe!) and trying to figure out where that monumental story-generating myth comes from and what it means, & obviously the Moore/Watchmen variation on it is a big one to grapple with.

Submit #1: The helmets don't (just) transmit the Anti-Life Equation, they make their wearers into Justifiers--actual foot-soldiers for Darkseid, as opposed to slaves who've lost hope.

I think that when the Metron sigil started appearing everywhere, people protected by it might've noticed that they were protected...?

FC #6:
Superman's in the future because he got called there in Legion of Three Worlds. (But that's not really relevant to FC proper, it's true.)

Darkseid seems, in general, less interested in killing anyone than in _destroying_ them.

FC #7:

The Supergirl-fighting-robots scene, and a lot of what follows it, seem to be there because of the conceptual frame for that section: it's literally a bedtime story being told to children, a fabulous fable with lots of action before it's time to go to sleep.

The robots with Mohawks are the OMACs (or Biomacs)--some of that got set up in "Resist," some of it is just Morrison reprising some stuff that was in Infinite Crisis and also echoes Kirby's "Great Disaster" material.

The freezer business predates Superman completing and being able to use the Miracle Machine--everything is collapsing in on itself, up to and including the story itself (the pace of all of FC starts fairly slowly and keeps getting faster and faster and faster and faster up to the ending), and so Superman is trying to save everyone by preserving them in much the same way that we bag-and-board-and-file superhero stories to preserve them.

I suspect the rocket that lands near the prehistoric Batman is in fact the one fired off earlier in the issue that contains all the most important artifacts of the superhero legends.

As for the Monitors as vampires: like the Sheeda and like the Archons, "us" and "them" turns out not to be a useful distinction. In Superman Beyond, there are a few strong parallels drawn between the Monitors and the readers of comics, and it's interesting to think about the story that way--readers living on stories in ways that can be heroic or vampiric... again, there don't seem to be specific answers to what the Monitors are supposed to mean or represent, just a lot of resonances.