Final Crisis

[Slimybug]

I hate Grant Morrison

A decade ago I was buying everything that DC was selling when it came to the impending Final Crisis. All 51 issues of Countdown, and those things that crossed over into it in one way or another: Amazons Attack, and with it, the first 10 issues of Wonder Woman, half of of The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, Death of the New Gods, Black Adam: The Dark Age. And, of course, I was reading all of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps through the Sinestro Corps War. They wanted my money,a nd they were getting it!

Finally, after blowing so much of my college-student dough, I picked up the first issue of Final Crisis. And I could barely understand a word of it. I read somewhere that to truly understand it, what you should REALLY read is Grant Morrison's run on Seven Soldiers. Well, I was disgusted, and I swore off the whole thing. I never read Final Crisis, and I haven't read a new comic book since. I've HEARD all about the New 52 and Rebirth and all that jazz, but have not picked up a single new issue.

A decade on, I figured it was finally time to give it another chance. So with the help of the Ames, Iowa Public Library (the best comic-book-collection library in the world, BTW [likely due to it being on a major college campus {Iowa State University}]) , I started rereading much of what I read back in the day.

Well, first I read Seven Soldiers. And I'm not sure I'm any better off now than when I hadn't read it, because I barely understood a word. That's Grant Morrison for you. I didn't understand his run on X-Men either. I don't understand how anyone can understand his writing. I also read Batman: R.I.P. because I thought it was connected to Final Crisis, and that was where Batman would die. It wasn't either. And it was very hard to understand.

I reread Countdown, and that didn't make much sense either, but I was told it really had very little to do with Final Crisis.

As I started reading Final Crisis, it actually made more sense than I remember. Darkseid somehow finally gets the Anti-Life Equation so that he can make the universe his slaves, some other stuff is going on that I can follow, Martian Manhunter dies. It was going all right. Then, in the last couple issues, it started to veer away from sense. And then that final issue....Wow. I cannot tell you what happened. The most sense I can make is that Darkseid is dead and defeated at last.

I'll comment more about the event and the other events around it, as I am trying to get back into DC Comics from this time period on. But I wanted to know what other people think of this event.

[married guy]

While I do think that Grant Morrison can disappear up his own arse from time to time, I enjoy the bulk of his stuff.
Klaus is pure gold.
His run on JLA and the Flash with Mark Millar is top shelf.
Multiversity was fantastic.

He hits a lot more than he misses.

[Slimybug]

While I do think that Grant Morrison can disappear up his own arse from time to time, I enjoy the bulk of his stuff.
Klaus is pure gold.
His run on JLA and the Flash with Mark Millar is top shelf.
Multiversity was fantastic.

He hits a lot more than he misses.

What are your thoughts on Final Crisis? Could you understand that last issue?

When it comes to Morrison, all I can judge him on are the things I've read, which, as I've said, are his run on X-Men, Seven Soldiers, Batman R.I.P., and Final Crisis, in none of which I could tell what's going on.

I have to wonder if it's just me. I mean, I don't get this lost in comic books by any other writer. Yet every time I read something by this one guy it's like "...what?" Yet he's so poular. I have to wonder if Dan DiDio even understood Final Crisis.

Oh, I forgot, I also read 52, which he co-wrote, and that I love. Is there any official information on what writers wrote which parts? Because I know the Animal Man/Starfire/Adam Strange storyline had that definite Grant Morrison, I-can't-understand-what-the-heck-they're-talking-about feel to it.

[Gurz]

I only read a tpb of final crisis, the extended edition, and it was ok. The part disappointed me was all these Supermen from paralel earths gathered to fight an evil force, but in the end there was no fight, green lantern did a number on the multiverse vampire or something ( it has been a while since read it) and that was it... I thought i was gonna see the biggest fight in DC history for a while but all the build up for nothing... And Batman shooting Darkseid with a gun was smelled like Morrison sold his soul to NRA money or something. I love 52 weeks btw, that was amazing. Batman: RIP was so meh... Bondesque, villains try to break Bruce... just put a god damn bullet in his head... But no lol, we as villains must dope him up, tie him down and burry him and turn our backs so he can overcome all of this and look all the more heroic for some like in a James Bond kind of way, you know... Scopiona was a nice villain though, i liked her, she has pottential and i really enjoyed Batman and Robin, Profesor Pyg is an amazing new villain.

[married guy]

Final Crisis started strong, but became a bit of a mess by the end - and yes, I found it confusing!!

Also, 52 is quite brilliant. I truly believe we will never see another weekly title meet the high standard this book did.

[failo.legendkiller]

Morrison style of writing is too hard and confuse to understand for people not native speaker as me.
It's really hard to take on his works, that's why I'm still wavering to get into his new GL run.
Some of his concepts as Multiverse or "lost in time" are exactly what I never suffered in comic books.

That said, I can't deny that he is a great writer. Too visionary for my taste but with innovative and very interesting ideas.
Simply his way of writing is not my cup of tea.

[dancj]

Grant Morrison can often be confusing, but he's also written some of my favourite comics.

In the too confusing to enjoy area I put:

7 Soldiers (mainly the bookends - the individual minis are fine on their own)
The Invisible Kingdom (the final volume of the otherwise coherent The Invisibles)
Seaguy
Nameless

But other times, he's excellent:
Animal Man
WE3
JLA
The Filth
Flex Mentallo
Annihilator

Final Crisis though, I thought was fantastic. The best superhero comic in years when it came out.

[ArsonoptiX]

Grant Morrison is hit or miss with me...Final Crisis....I soooooo wanted to be hyped for it but all that metaphysical talk..it just turned me off. I read it because I was committed but man was it a hard read. As it stands when I did a massive back issue dump. Aside for the Legion mini, I got rid of the whole thing. Morrison's high point for me was his JLA run...which disappoints me because it shows when he WANTS to he can do a straight superhero story...I think he just likes weaving in the pseudo poetry prose he does. 7 Soldiers of Victory suffers because DC let him get TOO weird.

I'm staying faaaaarrrrrrrr away from Green Lantern.

[Jekyll]

I didn't understand Final Crisis either. Never read much Morrison outside of his Batman & Robin where Dick took over as Batman. I actually quite enjoyed that series. However, the only reason I picked up Final Crisis was because Barry Allen returned......outside of that I didn't understand the point or enjoy the story.

[ArsonoptiX]

I didn't understand Final Crisis either. Never read much Morrison outside of his Batman & Robin where Dick took over as Batman. I actually quite enjoyed that series. However, the only reason I picked up Final Crisis was because Barry Allen returned......outside of that I didn't understand the point or enjoy the story.

It was SUPPOSED to be "evil wins" which would have made a STELLAR series. I think Johns would have given us a masterful roller coaster ride around that premise. But Morrison...from that dude turning into Boss Darksied, that mumbo jumbo talk in the Bleed...it was just like "what the hell did I just read." Lord, I'm not saying it's bad....but yeah when folks are walking away wondering wth happened...Multiversity was the same for me. GREAT premise but the Ultra comic, some of it was just...smh. After that i said "never again Grant Morrison, never again." I think I have the last issue of Multiversity that I STILL haven't read.

[Slimybug]

Final Crisis though, I thought was fantastic. The best superhero comic in years when it came out.

See, now I want to see you elaborate on that. What did you like so much about it?

[charliehustle415]

I hate Grant Morrison

A decade ago I was buying everything that DC was selling when it came to the impending Final Crisis. All 51 issues of Countdown, and those things that crossed over into it in one way or another: Amazons Attack, and with it, the first 10 issues of Wonder Woman, half of of The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, Death of the New Gods, Black Adam: The Dark Age. And, of course, I was reading all of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps through the Sinestro Corps War. They wanted my money,a nd they were getting it!

Finally, after blowing so much of my college-student dough, I picked up the first issue of Final Crisis. And I could barely understand a word of it. I read somewhere that to truly understand it, what you should REALLY read is Grant Morrison's run on Seven Soldiers. Well, I was disgusted, and I swore off the whole thing. I never read Final Crisis, and I haven't read a new comic book since. I've HEARD all about the New 52 and Rebirth and all that jazz, but have not picked up a single new issue.

A decade on, I figured it was finally time to give it another chance. So with the help of the Ames, Iowa Public Library (the best comic-book-collection library in the world, BTW [likely due to it being on a major college campus {Iowa State University}]) , I started rereading much of what I read back in the day.

Well, first I read Seven Soldiers. And I'm not sure I'm any better off now than when I hadn't read it, because I barely understood a word. That's Grant Morrison for you. I didn't understand his run on X-Men either. I don't understand how anyone can understand his writing. I also read Batman: R.I.P. because I thought it was connected to Final Crisis, and that was where Batman would die. It wasn't either. And it was very hard to understand.

I reread Countdown, and that didn't make much sense either, but I was told it really had very little to do with Final Crisis.

As I started reading Final Crisis, it actually made more sense than I remember. Darkseid somehow finally gets the Anti-Life Equation so that he can make the universe his slaves, some other stuff is going on that I can follow, Martian Manhunter dies. It was going all right. Then, in the last couple issues, it started to veer away from sense. And then that final issue....Wow. I cannot tell you what happened. The most sense I can make is that Darkseid is dead and defeated at last.

I'll comment more about the event and the other events around it, as I am trying to get back into DC Comics from this time period on. But I wanted to know what other people think of this event.

So Countdown had nothing to do with Final Crisis and was pure garbage.

Final Crisis was pretty much Morrison's end cap to all of his DC works up to that point specifically, 7 Soldiers, JLA, JLA Classified, and Batman.

It was a meta-narrative about the nature of reality as it is in "comicbooks" the Monitors are kind of like us (people in the real world) and they see the different realities just as we do in different comicbooks. However, one monitor went bad and tried to destroy all of reality and it was up to Superman and his alternatives to take the fight to him, while on Earth Darkseid who had just been reborn (because the New Gods and Gods of Apokolips died, and they were reincarnated into humans on Earth. tries to take over and collapse the multiverse (for reasons).

It is very confusing, and has a lot of meta-commentary about comicbooks, but he big take away is that because of this we got the best version of Batman in a long time: Dick Grayson as Batman

PS: read All Star Superman which in my opinion is the best comicbook ever written (it encompasses what a superhero comicbook should be)

[MajorHoy]

I have been reading DC comics since the early 1970s, though I have taken ... breaks ... in regularly following them (and comic books in general).
My last big break was between 1995-2010 or so, though occasionally I would buy a specific title or two for a few months during then.

I still have yet to try and read Final Crisis. And it's not how much it would cost to buy the tpb collection since it's available at an area library. Every time I glance through it, it looks way too intimidating, and there's not enough in what I've seen that makes me want to try and tackle it.

[BruceWayneJr.]

With Grant, I've learned that you may or may not enjoy every individual issue, it won't all make sense until it's completed, and then you need to read it again to get a real grasp on it. His work rewards rereads, so if nothing else you get value for your dollar.

Reading the Final Crisis stuff as it came out was a mess, there was no real announcement that Seven Soldiers was a tie-in (it also ties into Infinite Crisis in cool ways, but that's another story), and Countdown was a joke, so everyone got taken for a ride there. There are plenty of resources on the net since then, though, which put the event in a reading order that cuts out all the nonsense.

I don't love FC, but the follow-up Multiversity is excellent and a real treat for long time fans. It's basically an Elseworlds collection of the DC Universe's "flavors" and a lovely tribute to Crisis on Infinite Earths. If FC is the last adventure, then Multiversity is a proclamation that the story will never end.

[Scott Taylor]

There are overlapping stories in Final Crisis, one being that of Darkseid taking over the earth and the other being Mandrakk trying to destroy everything. Through a convoluted series of events Darkseid gets shot by Batman and Superman then sings him to death. Darkseid collapses into a giant black hole and Mandrakk then shows up to help all of creation along its path to destruction. Mandrakk is defeated by an Army of Supermen from all universes along with the Green Lantern Corps, who put a stake through his heart.

Its a vampire story at its heart. The heroes of the DC Universe are Van Helsing. Darkseid is like the guy who is the vampire's main henchman. Mandrakk is the Count Dracula of the story. Van Helsing destroys the henchman first, then Dracula.

Keep in mind that Morrison uses a ton of material that is straight up right out of older DC comic stories, like using the Miracle Machine for instance. He likes to pull up old story devices from his childhood comic reading experiences and put them in his books. But because he kind of makes the story work around these little homage devices, it can be a little confusing.