Final Crisis #7

[HHComics]

I started reading it and about half way through, I just gave up. I didn't get it and what was worse, I just didn't care. The more I read, the less I cared. The more I read of the disjointed, uber-cerebal, psycho-babble, the less I cared. The less entertained I was. The more pissed off I became.

I couldn't even read another comic afterwards.

So it boils down to 2 things. 1) It was a lousy series written by someone out to prove how much better he is than everyone else when it comes to telling stories or 2) I am an idiot who didn't understand a **** thing written by someone out to prove how much better he is than everyone else when it comes to telling stories.

And now I'm in a comic funk. This blows.

[Cory Prime]

Ok I haven't read FC #7 yet but so far I have really enjoyed the series, but I can see how it might be pretty hard to wrap your mind around at times.
I'm not going to discuss it all until I have read the Final issue though.


Until then, a gentleman by the name of David Uzumeri has worked up some pretty awesome Final Crisis Annotations over at Funny Book Babylon.
Try giving 'em a read! See if that helps the Crisis Heart/headache you have, Jay.
http://www.funnybookbabylon.com/categor ... s-reviews/
(oh it looks like you can't get the annotations for FC 1-3 in the Annotations section. You can find them in ARTICLES however)


EDIT:

Just thought I would throw in Part 1 of The Grant Morrison Exit Interview on Newsarama.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/010928- ... risis.html

[HHComics]

Read the review and confirmed what I suspected: I'm stupid.
Thanks Grant.

[no1crush]

As much as I like the guy's work, there's just way too much crammed into these past few issues. It probably would've worked better if it was stretched out to 12 double-sized issues, with FC: Revelations, Submit & Resist folded in.

[BaggedAndBored]

If I have to read a 2,000 word blog post to understand a 1,000 word comic, then it seems to me there is something wrong with the comic. Having said that, I've yet to read FC No. 7. I'm afraid too. I walked into HHV1 yesterday to find Jay lying in the fetal position, a copy of Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam clutched to his chest. He was alternating between sucking his thumb and cursing Grant Morrison for ruining his love of comics. After he vowed to abandon comic books for ever, turning instead to stamp collecting, I left. I just couldn't take seeing him like that. Heaven help stamp collectors if Jay ever jumps ship. Philately is not ready for his level of geekdom.

[Bob Prodor]

Well said, B&B. I like reading "DVD Extras" in Wizard about Kingdom Come or Watchmen that can be elaborated on or pointed out, but if you need an essay to even understand a comic, it's rubbish.
As a reader, I've found myself over the years asking myself, "Why am I reading this? Because it's good, or because I think I should?"
The same can be said for anything. I was watching some direct to DVD Marvel animated movie and thinking, "Why am I watching this?" Because it's comic related? It's crap! I shouldn't waste my time checking stuff out just because it's based on comics- I should be seeking out good stories, stuff that makes me think or feel something.

[Dirce]

I re-read the series just to make sure I wasn't insane or stupid or missing something, but I'm not. Final Crisis read like a bad fan-fic. There was only the most basic outline of a coherent story, assumed reader familiarity with the characters allowed the writer to skip any kind of characterization whatsoever, and it all had an air of "I can do whatever I want and there's nothing you can do about it. 'Cause I'm an arr-TEEST, dammit!"

Fully expecting zingers due to the first sentence...

[Sweet Xmas!]

I think I boil down Final Crisis to two words: sensory overload.

Two problems I can see with FC. One, it took freaking forever for the books to come out. And since DC refuses to use the Marvel summary of the previous issue, it's easy to forget what the hell happened. And two, a lot of the major subplots happened outside the main book.

I read FC# 7, and had the same WTF moment. So I employed the tactic that I used with Morrison's last maxi-series (7 Soldiers of Victory), dug up all 7 issues of FC, plus Superman Beyond, and read it all in one sitting. And you know what, it wasn't a bad story. A lot of the things set up in other books (Resist, Submit, Batman RIP, Legion of 3 Worlds) all collided in FC. But, if you weren't picking up those books, then yah, it was freaking confusing. There's also tie-ins to the 7 Soldiers series that came out 3 or 4 years ago, so that's another layer of confusion.

This was the second Morrison epic which essentially is his homage to the creations of Jack "King" Kirby. I remember Morrison had advertised this series as beginning with Anthro (the first boy on Earth) and ending with Kamandi (the last boy on Earth). And it actually ended with Bruce Wayne in a cave...just not the Bat-Cave.

So what exactly was the outcome of this massive story? We finally saw the full extent of what the anti-life equation is (a New Gods device), Barry Allen returns from the dead after 20 years of a meaningful death, and Earth 51 previously destroyed in Countdown, is the new home for the Kirby creations Kamandi and OMAC (probably should be renamed Earth K). Oh, and the New Gods will return again at some point in new forms like Kirby's Marvel analogs - the Eternals.

Other than the return of Barry Allen, I thought this was a story worth telling. The execution could had been better. Keep all the storylines in one title rather than spread over various books might had helped. I pray DC is true to its word and this is truly the FINAL crisis. At least for another decade when they have to reboot the universe again.

[HHComics]

It's been 4 days since I've read a comic. I think it broke me.

[BaggedAndBored]

It's been 4 days since I've read a comic. I think it broke me.

The end is nigh

[Andrew Foley]

if you need an essay to even understand a comic, it's rubbish.

I challenge this notion on the same grounds I'd challenge someone telling me Picasso's Guernica is a rubbish painting or David Lynch's Lost Highway is a rubbish film.

Taking the latter specifically: I watched Lost Highway a half dozen times; always enjoyed the experience; and couldn't make sense of it as a story. Same goes for Mulholland Drive, though I didn't like it as much or watch it as often.

One day I got it into my head to do a little reading on Mr. Lynch's films online. After reading a few articles and posts from people who are REALLY into Lynch, I discovered both LH and MD actually did have (mostly) linear plots. These were stories I might have been able to grasp independently, if I'd applied myself. But I didn't, not because I was lazy, but because I enjoyed the experience of watching them regardless. That said, I wouldn't hold someone not enjoying the experience against them--tastes vary, as do expectations.

Jay didn't enjoy the experience of reading Final Crisis, for much the same reason I didn't enjoy my experience reading Infinite Crisis--for whatever reason, the execution of the books didn't appeal to us and eventually we stopped caring. And expressing our disappointment at having something not appeal to our sensibilities--that's fine. In the same way that a lot of people look at Jackson Pollock's paintings and see nothing special, our frames of reference in regards to those particular series didn't align with the creators', at least not enough for us to enjoy them.

That doesn't mean that either of them is bad. In our post-modern culture, I don't know that there is such a thing as a comic being objectively bad anymore, anyway. Between sales and critical reception, there are tons of comics I think are awful on almost every front that are terribly popular (emphasis on the "terrible"). Meanwhile, some people don't think Jack Staff's the best superhero book going. There's no accounting for taste.

Or maybe there is. When reviewing a book, I always attempt to establish what it is the creators were attempting to achieve, and base any critique on my perception of whether or not they achieved it. Which means I could, in theory, end up giving a positive review to something I didn't enjoy (in theory because nobody puts a gun to my head and says I *must* review something--if I didn't enjoy something, I don't see myself expending resources giving it a positive review even if it did achieve its creators' goals.)

For whatever reason, every review I've read of Final Crisis #7 (mostly at Newsarama, Comic Book Resources, and The Savage Critics) has been generally positive. I don't believe all these people are pretending to enjoy something because they're afraid they'll look dumb if they don't. I'm also not convinced all of these people are entirely, 100% clear on exactly what actually happened, in plot terms. They enjoyed Morrison's fragmented spectacle style of storytelling, or the metacommentary on imagination and storytelling, or Batman killing the personification of evil, or whatever, to the point that they could forgive Morrison's deliberate deviation from the traditional North American superhero comic storytelling style.

At the end of the day, Morrison was trying to do some things wildly different from what's usually in the pages of a North American superhero comic. I admire him trying something new (as I usually do with Morrison), I don't know if it really worked, even judged by the writer's own criteria (I usually don't with Morrison), and I'm really not sure if this was a huge, universe wide crossover was an appropriate place to blast sequential narrative into pieces--from a business perspective, if nothing else.

I will say this: while not understanding Final Crisis doesn't make someone dumb and not enjoying it doesn't make someone dumb, at the same time having a significant number of people not understand or enjoying Final Crisis doesn't make it a bad comic. Too many people enjoyed the experience of reading it for me to believe that.

For myself, I'd take Final Crisis over Infinite Crisis, Civil War, or Secret Invasion (or Invisibles or The Filth, if it came to it). And that's even though I don't really understand what happened, something I'm going to blame on my trying to blast each issue in ten minutes before my shift started...hopefully, when I read it collected, it'll work like Seven Soldiers and the whole will prove greater than the sum of its parts. Even if it doesn't...well, I'd rather read something that reaches high and misses the mark than aims low and just fills the requisite number of pages.

[Dina_Hastings]

For myself, I'd take Final Crisis over Infinite Crisis, Civil War, or Secret Invasion (or Invisibles or The Filth, if it came to it). .

Okay, now you've lost me.
Granted, I stopped reading at issue five. I'd bought the third issue with all the online hoopla over Wonder Woman with tusks riding a giant dog (an image more ridiculous than scary), went back and bought the first two, then the next two, not really enjoying it, but compelled to buy for some reason. When I finally sorted out my feelings about the book in that I liked the character moments in the background (Sivana always having the evil smile on his face, John Stewart describing how he had to pull himself off a hospital bed for the final battle) the characters Morrison wanted to focus on like the new Mary Marvel or the Super Young Team were more annoying than anything else, that's when I could put it down and walk away.
I didn't find it too complex though: just a decompressed version of a story Morrison told back in his JLA run (where he was bragging about how much more concise he was than American writers and how cool it was to have new Flashes and Green Lanterns and Green Arrows).

[Andrew Foley]

For myself, I'd take Final Crisis over Infinite Crisis, Civil War, or Secret Invasion (or Invisibles or The Filth, if it came to it). .

Okay, now you've lost me.

Well, on the upside, you got through almost the entire post before you got lost. I salute your tenacity.

If I lost you on that line rather than the preceding rambling, I suspect our tastes just diverge when it comes to superhero comics.

I think Final Crisis was more ambitious than any of the other mentioned crossovers, had more to say about any number of things, had a more idiosyncratic, less editorially-directed approach, and a more distinct authorial voice. Those are generally good things in my book, except when they aren't.

Final Crisis made as much sense to me on a plot level as Infinite, which I found confusing as hell. I don't recall Johns stating he was deliberately experimenting with fragmented narrative, which means that the confusion wasn't a result of the intent, the way one could argue it is with FC).

I was happier with the characterization of the characters in Final Crisis than I was for Secret Invasion and esp. Civil War, where a bunch of characters did a bunch of things that just made no sense (SHIELD attacking Captain America for not enforcing a law that didn't exist yet, Spider-Man unmasking, having the big brains make a cyborg clone Thor that's unstable enough to kill people, etc.).

Granted, I stopped reading at issue five. I'd bought the third issue with all the online hoopla over Wonder Woman with tusks riding a giant dog (an image more ridiculous than scary),

For you. Not necessarily for all or most. (Also, I don't know that the image was supposed to be scary so much as the idea that one of the DC Trinity succumbed to the forces of darkness, but that's neither here nor there, really.)

went back and bought the first two, then the next two, not really enjoying it, but compelled to buy for some reason. When I finally sorted out my feelings about the book in that I liked the character moments in the background (Sivana always having the evil smile on his face, John Stewart describing how he had to pull himself off a hospital bed for the final battle) the characters Morrison wanted to focus on like the new Mary Marvel or the Super Young Team were more annoying than anything else,

To you. Not necessarily for all or most. I wasn't fond of Mary Marvel/Desaad or the Super Young Team/Forever People stuff myself, but more annoying than anything else? Well, not for me.

I didn't find it too complex though: just a decompressed version of a story Morrison told back in his JLA run (where he was bragging about how much more concise he was than American writers and how cool it was to have new Flashes and Green Lanterns and Green Arrows).

Which JLA story is that? The Darkseid alternate future one? I think you may be the first person I've seen who accused FC of being decompressed...most seem to fault it for shoving too much into each panel and not expanding enough on scenes (though that doesn't really ramp up until the last two issues.)

As for bragging, well, I'll take your word for it, though from the Morrison interviews I've read he doesn't hold a candle to some of his contemporaries when it comes to public displays of ego. I haven't read enough scripts from enough writers to know whether he's more concise than others, be they North American or otherwise. As for the relative coolness of new characters with old names...well, again, it's a matter of taste. Personally, I'd rather have Wally and Kyle than Barry and Hal, though I do have a soft spot for Ollie and my only real exposure to Conor was in Morrison's JLA. And I prefer Morrison's JLA to any other incarnation of the League I've come across to date, for pretty much the same reason I liked FC more than other recent crossovers--it aimed higher than most superhero comics I've come across.

Anyway, bottom line is, you and a lot of people didn't enjoy Final Crisis, and at least some people did, and that's all fine until one "side" tries to claim that they're right/smart and the other is wrong/dumb. It's absolutely possible for both points of view to be correct.

[Dina_Hastings]

"If I lost you on that line rather than the preceding rambling, I suspect our tastes just diverge when it comes to superhero comics."

I think Final Crisis was more ambitious than any of the other mentioned crossovers, had more to say about any number of things, had a more idiosyncratic, less editorially-directed approach, and a more distinct authorial voice. Those are generally good things in my book, except when they aren't.

I wasn't talking about the other crossovers though (which I haven't read). I meant you taking this over Invisibles or the Filth.

"Which JLA story is that? The Darkseid alternate future one?"

That is the one I meant, yes. I didn't think Morrison could top himself with the way Atom took out Darkseid in that story.

"As for bragging, well, I'll take your word for it, though from the Morrison interviews I've read he doesn't hold a candle to some of his contemporaries when it comes to public displays of ego. I haven't read enough scripts from enough writers to know whether he's more concise than others, be they North American or otherwise. As for the relative coolness of new characters with old names...well, again, it's a matter of taste. Personally, I'd rather have Wally and Kyle than Barry and Hal, though I do have a soft spot for Ollie and my only real exposure to Conor was in Morrison's JLA. And I prefer Morrison's JLA to any other incarnation of the League I've come across to date, for pretty much the same reason I liked FC more than other recent crossovers--it aimed higher than most superhero comics I've come across."

Well I'd actually have to find these quotes online to prove it, but he once compared how the Superman writers at the time (during the Loeb and Kelly era) built an eight (I think) part story around Joker having god like power, which he dealt with in two pages in JLA. I also thought it was strange how someone who was a big cheerleader for Wally/Kyle/Conner ten years ago wrote the story that brought back Barry Allen (though that could be more to DC editorial than anything else).
What I'm trying to say is I think Morrison can be as big a hype man as anyone else (though I do realize if you don't self-promote, no one else will do it for you), and just like anyone else, the work won't always live up to the hype.

"Anyway, bottom line is, you and a lot of people didn't enjoy Final Crisis, and at least some people did, and that's all fine until one "side" tries to claim that they're right/smart and the other is wrong/dumb. It's absolutely possible for both points of view to be correct."

Well, you're right there.

[Sweet Xmas!]

Andrew and Dina, I reiterate, to fully experience FC, read all 7 issues in one sitting. While there might still be a lot of gaps since the subplots are more fully fleshed out in other titles (ie. Batman RIP, Superman 3D, Resist, Submit, etc.), one should get a better sense of what Morrison is attempting. And while I don't like everything Morrison has written (Sea Guy), I tend to give him a lot of latitude based on past works. Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA and Zenith are pretty good track records.

It's obvious the thing that interests Morrison in the DCU is writing BIG stories. He was part of the team that wrote 52, and quite honestly, a lot of what he did in FC was an encore performance of his Seven Soldiers of Victory maxi-series. Which arguably is where FC really began. The death and/or descent of the New Gods was played out in the Mister Miracle mini, even though the main plot concerned the Nebula Man and the Sheeda.

While I don't remember all the particulars of Seven Soldiers, I found FC, even with its fractured narrative, was a better executed story. Seven Soldiers had about 30 issues or chapters (7 titles x 4 issue + 2 framing issues), which was solely scripted by Morrison. FC, I've lost count of how many titles tie into the main story. The key difference is some of the other related titles is written by others, Johns on Legion of 3 Worlds, Rucka on Revealation, etc. I think having other writers contribute has forced Morrison to be more focused with FC than Seven Soldiers. Seven Soldiers was clearly his baby, and he basically had the luxury to get as weird or esoteric as he liked.

It's interesting Andrew used David Lynch as a comparison. I have similar affections to Lynch's films as I do to Morrison's works. Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, the Straight Story, Elephant Man, and Muholland Drive are my favorites. Eraserhead was just plain WTF, Dune he was limited by material not of his own creation, and Wild at Heart...didn't really do anything for me. Like with Morrison, while I don't like everything Lynch has created, because of his past track record, I'll always make time to look at his films or tv shows.

The only thing that creeps me out about Lynch is his vision of the after life. His exploration of it in Twin Peaks and Muholland Drive still creeps me out to this day.