the rolling Final Crisis thread

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.

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.

I got this part, but what I would've liked the comic to explain is, A) how Kamandi knew about Metron's pattern, and B) how did he relay that info Black Lightning? Or did Black Lightning get the info from someone else? Kamandi's appearances in FC make little sense from the point of view of the story; he's basically there to emphasize certain plot points, but it's impossible to know what exactly happens to him and why.

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.

I thought this explanation Sonny Sumo gives is curious. If he's someone else than the real Sonny Sumo's life, does that mean he's actually a New God who fell into Sonny Sumo's body, just like Darkseid fell into "Dark Side's" body? Anyway, Sonny Sumo is yet another character who's relevance to the plot is flimsy. Mr. Miracle comes to recruit him, and supposedly he has some good reason to do that, but Sonny doesn't really do anything in the story, does he?

The hand writing "know evil" is a sort of digital/Earthly analogue to the hand writing messages on the Source Wall.

I still think it also has to do something with the Hand of Glory in The Invisibles. I think the fact that The Hand of Glory was called a "cursor that moves in time" in The Invisibles, and the "know evil" hand being an actual cursor (and the same colour as the HoG too) is too much of a coincidence. See also the Hand of Glory/Mandrake/Mandrakk connection I made upthread; I know it's kinda far-fetched, but this is Morrison, so who knows? Also, I'd love to hear people's theories about what "know evil" actually means. What is the hand trying to say and why?

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 got this, but since it seems unlikely Superman actually freezed all the sentient beings on Earth (or in the universe), I don't understand why he did in the first place? If the Miracle Machine does whatever you wish it to do, couldn't Superman just have wished for everything to return to the way it was without any of this freezing business? Did Superman only freeze his friends and loved ones (that's how it looks like in FC #7) in the case the Miracle Machine wouldn't work?

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.

It is the same rocket, or at least Mahnke draws it the same way. But what I was really asking is, what does it mean it landed there? Surely it's no coincidence that it's in the same place Bruce Wayne is now... Was Batman's body actually put in the rocket, and then he somehow recovered during the its trip? (That wouldn't explain the different-looking utility belt though.) And why does the rocket look like the one Superman came to Earth in? I guess/hope these questions are explained when Morrison or someone else eventually brings Bruce Wayne back.

Sony Sumo is the link between Shilo Norman & the Super Young team. He's the reasons the Super young team want to join them.

and Shilo says he needs Sonny to "recruit a team"

But the Super Young Team doesn't really have much to do in the story either, does it? Nothing Shilo does in FC requires a team to support him, so it's kinda unclear what he needs one for...

I just noticed an interesting detail in Superman Beyond 3D #1 (I think Douglas may have mentioned it in his annotations): on page 8 Zillo Valla calls The Bleed "Ultramenstruum", and in The Invisibles the same term is used for "Magic Mirror", i.e. the floating, reflective ooze that comes out of Lord Fanny's orifices, and which is said to be the stuff that binds the universe together. This raises a few interesting thoughts. First of all, with this terminological trickery Morrison cleverly reclaims the authorship of the The Bleed: obviously it was first created by Warren Ellis, but by naming it "Ultramenstruum" Morrison is saying that The Bleed is actually the same stuff he'd already introduced in The Invisibles, years before Ellis. Secondly, if The Bleed and the Magic Mirror are the same stuff, that would mean that The Invisibles universe is part of the DC multiverse, possibly even one of the 52 universes. I doubt anyone's gonna follow up on that idea, but it's fun to speculate.

Now that I think of it, there's actually quite a few similarities between The Invisibles and Final Crisis, let me try to list the ones I can think of:

* Both series deal with a war against the forces of restriction and anti-imagination.
* Both series have a scene where a protagonist who's sworn never to use a gun uses one to destroy the main bad guy.
* Both series have a similar ending: in The Invisibles everyone gets what they want, even the enemy, and in Final Crisis Superman wishes the best for all of us, a happy ending.
* Boths series end with the pictures/words fading into white, which is essentially a victory of the imagination; the infinite potentialities of the blank paper triumphing over the restriction of the ink.
* And of course there's the Ultramenstruum stuff mentioned above.

Can you think of more connections/similarities?

Question: in FC#7 Superman sings away the last remnants of Darkseid's spirit, and you see it dissipate. In the last panel on that page, you see... something... blow up. A spaceship floating in the Bleed or... I'm not sure. I'm not even sure where that scene is taking place (I assumed the Fortress of Solitude was where he was building the Miracle Machine). But uh, what happened at the end of that page?

The thing that blows up is the space station where Superman and most of the heroes have been hanging in for most of this issue (except for the flashbacks). It's a composite of The Fortress of Solitude, the JLA headquarters, the Titans tower, and, er, something else I don't really recognize (the Batcave?). You can see it properly on page 5, panel 1 of FC#7. There's no explanation on how it came into being, but I guess the heros just built it. I really have no idea why it blowing up leads Superman to a dark place where Mandrakk is, though, or why Metron's chair is there when we last saw it in the villains' hideout.

Ah - I thought that piece did look like the Titan Tower OR the Watchtower or something. I see what it is now, thanks. Looking at it now I think that last battle is still taking place there, since I assume the Miracle Machine and survivor freezer has got to all be in the same location as it's blowing up.

One thing that I've always believed about Morrison, at least his DC work, is that he's writing one story, connected in more than the fact that the characters were all published (and largely owned) by one publisher. So I'm a hearty endorser of Tuomas' observations. It almost makes me want to read FINAL CRISIS again. Almost.

I wouldn't say it's all one big work, but there's a definitely major connections between Animal Man, Flex Mentallo, The Invisibles, The Filth, Seven Soldiers, and Final Crisis at least: they all deal with fictional entities breaking through the fourth wall into the "real" world, and a major them in all of them is the power of imagination and how it relates to being human (The Invisibles, 7S, and FC are quite explicitly about a conflict between the forces of imagination and anti-imagination). But with his other major works (like All-Star Superman, JLA, New X-Men, Doom Patrol, Batman), while they certainly have some thematic and narrative connections to the above mentioned stories (ASS, for example, provides the final proof of what the child universe Qwewq is, which is rather important for 7S and other interlinked stories too), it's harder to say they're all one and the same story. It's true, though, that almost all of his works contain rather obvious links to each other: Kill Your Boyfriend, WE3, and Mystery Play are the only ones I can think of that pretty much stand alone and don't connect to the larger "Morrisonverse".

"One story" might be overreaching, but it's all certainly the Morrisonverse, at least in terms of his DC work. And perhaps it's most useful to set that as the boundary.

The Watchtower blows up as its the last thing to survive in the face of the anti life equation. it has to blow up to show how superman is totally alone in the universe.

I think at the end of FC7 you see it being bombarded by the anti-life

it is Superman (& miracle machine) vs. everything else (the anti life)

and how with the miracle machine his wish for a happy ending recreates everything from nothing.

this is how far evil had got in Final Crisis. it had beaten everything except superman (cause he cant be beat, amirite?)

but by Supermans final wish, everything was recreated.

Er, I don't think Superman is alone in the universe, because the Superman Squad, the Green Lantern Corps, the angels, and the other assorted heroes show up to fight Mandrakk too. Or did Superman use the Miracle Machine to wish them there?

Actually, I think it's Nix Uotan who summons all those folks there. So Superman is definitely alone.

"definitely not alone"

I believe it was Nix Uotan who did the heavy lifting there, though there is a panel where he says something like "Signal received, Superman" after the Miracle Machine wish, I think. And he did have all the billions of people in the freezer and those other living superheroes, though Anti-Life's cosmic cloud or whatever was suffocating the station.

According to either Wolk or Uzimeri's annotations, what happens in the last scene with Nix Uotan is that the Overvoid (the white page) is swallowing up the Monitors and their universe, as there's no more need for them, and hence they'll stop feeding on the Bleed, allowing the multiverse to grow unchecked. (I suppose this is part Superman/Morrison's happy ending!) So Nix's reward is that he gets to live out his own story as a human, but does that mean the other monitors just faded out of existence? Also resurrected on earth? Does Nix Uotan remain the Judge of All Evil, or is that role now unnecessary? It his story of true love over too, ending tragically? Or is this all simply left unwritten?

(tbf I don't know how many of these questions are relevant to FC, if any)

I think the other Monitors must have been resurrected on Earth too, otherwise it's not a happy ending for all, and that's what Superman wished for. The happy ending for the Monitors is that once they have become mortals, they all have stories of their own, and they don't need to feed on the stories of the Multiverse anymore.

I guess the dead body of Batman in FC is explained in Batman and Robin #8, sort of... But I still don't quite get it: why did Darkseid think he would need a dead copy of Batman? What use did he have for that, when he was about to conquer the whole world anyway? And why did he put the clone in a Batman suit between the time the real Batman escaped and when he shot him? He didn't know Batman was coming to him, so it's not like he could've planned in advance of sending Batman back in time and leaving the clone body behind. Plus I still don't get why he sent Batman back in time instead of killing him in the first place?

But I still don't quite get it: why did Darkseid think he would need a dead copy of Batman? What use did he have for that, when he was about to conquer the whole world anyway?

WHOLLY EXTRAPOLATING HERE:

As a tool; the better to break morale, let's say. Clearly he's learned by then not to underestimate Batman (respecting his enemy enough to commission an entire army of clones from him, the better to bend and break break break the world), so, whilst the hunt for Batman continues, he can parade the bloodied corpse of this man, this...epitome of AWESOME, on a pike so as to permanently impress frowns on any remaining resistance, the ensuing river of tears being put to good use for his hydroelectric power plant...of Evil!

Plus I still don't get why he sent Batman back in time instead of killing him in the first place?

Clearly he expects him to die of smallpox within moments of arrival.

Or bcz that's how Omega Beams work? Also BOO AT TUOMAS for flinging spoilers for B&R#8 willy-nilly!

Like someone said upthread, in previous Darkseid stories we've seen the Omega Beams can both totally erase someone out of existence, and send someone to live in alternate realities/histories. Here is an example of the former:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheomegaeffectNG11.jpg

What I don't get is why Darkseid choose to do the latter instead of just terminating Batman's existence?

Sorry about the spoiler, I thought now that B&R #9 is out too, everyone would've read #8 already.

Whoops, sorry, this is the pic I was supposed to post:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/TheomegaeffectNG11.jpg

uh but desaad was still around after that!

Yeah, because Darkseid later resurrected him. But the Omega Beams didn't sent Desaad to some alternate history, they completely erased him. So saying that Batman was sent to the past because "that's how Omega Beams work" doesn't sound like a good enough explanation, because in previous stories they have been shown to kill people.

From here:

Well one of the big questions that everyone is going to be asking is what exactly is the Omega Sanction. In Seven Soldiers, we saw the Omega Sanction transport Mister Miracle to a number of harsh realities until he arrives back seven days later. I could be wrong, but it also seemed like you suggested in Final Crisis #6 that Sonny Sumo might have been sent through time via the Omega Sanction. And of course, there's Bruce, who is sent all the way back to the dawn of man and the last days of Anthro when he's hit. So what is the Omega Sanction, and why does it affect people differently?

Morrison: It fires its victims through time. Originally, it sent people back to different time periods in Earth's past, as seen in 'Forever People', and then I came up with a version of it that actually reroutes the victim through a disorienting succession of different lives, each of which grows more hopeless and more horrible until your soul is dead. Kirby did the bouncing-through-time original and I made up the multiple-corrupted-lives adaptation for the "Mister Miracle" series.

It affects people differently because of the higher levels of cruelty shown by the incarnate Gods in Seven Soldiers and Final Crisis.

Yeah, I know what the Omega Effect is and what it does, but I've been trying to say is that that's not all Darkseid's beams can do. In previous Darkseid stories it's been show he can also kill people with them. (He'd be a pretty weak-ass God if all he could do is zap people into the past.) And I don't get why he doesn't do that to Batman. That quote from Morrison doesn't explain it, unless Morrison thinks the Omega Effect is the only effect the beams can have.

I know this sounds like a minor point to complain about, but I thought the way Batman averted death in FC was weak. Darkseid has no reason not to kill him. And Batman's heroic sacrifice was probably the most awesome moment in the whole story, so it was kinda undermined by the revelation that Batman didn't die after all. And I really like the idea of Dick finally taking the mantle of Batman, and in Batman & Robin Morrison has managed to make Dick a likable character, who both works as Batman and is significantly different from Bruce. I'd have no problem with it if Bruce had actually died and Dick would become Batman permanently. I know this isn't something Morrison could've actually pulled off, but I just find this whole Bruce-is-not-dead-but-in-the-past thing a weak way of getting back to status quo.

And I don't get why he doesn't do that to Batman.

Because then they couldn't do a RETURN OF BATMAN storyline.

Also, you seem to miss point of the cynical cruelty that is The Life Trap!