LAME. JUST LAME (Final Crisis ending)

[Triforcer]

Don't read if you don't want to know how Final Crisis ends:

[Fordel]

This is why the only comic universe that exists in my reality, is the DCAU. 

[UnSub]

Who at DC pissed Grant Morrison off this much?

... unless he pulls off his latex mask and reveals himself to not Morrison, but Alan Moore. That I could understand.

[HaemishM]

Yeah, I'm not sure I get it.

 

[rk47]

agreed. outside the JLA top five or six cast. The rest are pretty much meh in general public eyes. Force shoving these minor toons is like telling people to swallow their favorite burger except with foreign sauce / objects in them and insisting 'it's goooooood'

but hey, it's their universe to screw with.

[Velorath]

Don't read if you don't want to know how Final Crisis ends:

There's still one issue left.

[UnSub]

I'd forgotten the rumours that Batman was coming back as a New God when I read this originally.

[HaemishM]

Now, the ending is out.

Does anyone have any fucking idea what happened in that entire disjointed mess of a story? Other than Batman being dead and someone else taking up the cowl?

[Velorath]

Now, the ending is out.

Does anyone have any fucking idea what happened in that entire disjointed mess of a story? Other than Batman being dead and someone else taking up the cowl?

Apparently you need to read some of the tie-ins (Superman Beyond is the one I hear mentioned the most often) to make any sense of it.  I like how all the reviews are really positive despite acknowledging how fucking confusing and poorly told it all is.  Personally, I don't find the story interesting enough to even bother trying to make sense of it.

[UnSub]

Any good summaries / commentaries out there?

If the wiki is right, this is indeed one of the stupider things DC could have done.

[Trippy]

[HaemishM]

Is THAT what that was? What the fuck does that mean?

Yeah, making a fucking mini-series this confusing that pretty much requires you to read umpteen billion tie-ins is epic fail. It doesn't help that I've never given a shit about Darkseid as a villain. Grant Morrison DID Darkseid the way he should be - a deep, dark abstract motherfucker. The problem is that that type of villain would need to be dealt with fatally, which in years past, the DC heroes have not done. The only other writer I've seen handle Darkseid in this manner was Keith Giffen in Legion of the Super-Heroes like 20 years ago. The rest of the time he's been mostly an impotent moustache-twirler.

I also never gave a shit about the New Gods, and this whole series seems to have been to make the new New Gods.

[UnSub]

Final Crisis really looks like officially sanctioned DC fanwank. Especially when it pulls in characters best long forgotten like the Boy Commandos and then make them pivotal characters.

Except you can’t say “less” about Brooklyn, because thanks to the stupid, stupid need of DC comics writers to desperately tie every little goddamned thing together in their vast patchwork universe, Brookyln eventually grew up to become Dan “Terrible” Turpin, and therefore also eventually became Darkseid as well. I assume that at some point there will be horrible, horrible fanfic about this demonstrating how Brooklyn’s experiences in World War Two eventually led to him becoming Darkseid.

Both DC and Marvel really need to settle down on the major events for a while. Having just killed Batman - hahaha, DCUO - it appears they are going to introduce a new Batman and have Bruce Wayne as a New God (according to internet rumours). Does this really add anything to the storyline? No. And it won't be too long before New God Wayne gives up all his power to save the universe or something and is then turned into normal Bruce Wayne; here comes the next verse, same as the first.

[Triforcer]

Any good summaries / commentaries out there?

If the wiki is right, this is indeed one of the stupider things DC could have done.

Please tell me that was some sort of joke.  Also,

[WindupAtheist]

Superman then builds a copy of the Miracle Machine in order to recreate the Multiverse when Mandrakk the Dark Monitor arrives to consume all remaining life. At the same time, an army of alternate Supermen from across the Multiverse, led by the Captain Marvel of Earth-5, arrives, followed by Nix Uotan who, in turn, summons the Zoo Crew (restoring their original forms and powers in the process), the army of Heaven, the Green Lantern Corps, and the Super Young Team (now transformed into the new Forever People). The battle ends when the Green Lantern Corps stake Mandrakk with a spear created by their power rings. Superman and Nix Uotan then use the Miracle Machine to recreate the Multiverse as it was before Darkseid's ascension, and turn the other Monitors into humans and scatter them across the Multiverse. The final panel shows Batman in the past drawing on a cave wall.

Shit like this is why comics are dying. That is concentrated stupid, and may as well be Sanskrit to a random kid who really liked Dark Knight so he picks up a comic book in the store.

[Fordel]

The thing is, when have comics NOT been that shit?

No, sincerely, I do not know if they were ever actually 'good' or 'done right'.



The Actual comic books seem like massive idea/theory machines, where 95% of it should remain on the big white board of ideas. Which is why the DCAU is so great, they basically take the remaining 5% and clean it up.

I'm so sad they stopped making those cartoons. 

[Velorath]

Superman then builds a copy of the Miracle Machine in order to recreate the Multiverse when Mandrakk the Dark Monitor arrives to consume all remaining life. At the same time, an army of alternate Supermen from across the Multiverse, led by the Captain Marvel of Earth-5, arrives, followed by Nix Uotan who, in turn, summons the Zoo Crew (restoring their original forms and powers in the process), the army of Heaven, the Green Lantern Corps, and the Super Young Team (now transformed into the new Forever People). The battle ends when the Green Lantern Corps stake Mandrakk with a spear created by their power rings. Superman and Nix Uotan then use the Miracle Machine to recreate the Multiverse as it was before Darkseid's ascension, and turn the other Monitors into humans and scatter them across the Multiverse. The final panel shows Batman in the past drawing on a cave wall.

Shit like this is why comics are dying. That is concentrated stupid, and may as well be Sanskrit to a random kid who really liked Dark Knight so he picks up a comic book in the store.

I'd say the bigger problem is that random kids can't just pick comics up at the store these days anyway, ever since the death of the spinner rack in grocery and convenience stores.

[Raguel]

I see that the Zoo Crew got the Dr. Light Treatment. What's wrong with these people?

[HaemishM]

Don't diss the Zoo Crew, man.

[angry.bob]

The thing is, when have comics NOT been that shit?

No, sincerely, I do not know if they were ever actually 'good' or 'done right'.

Maybe not done "right", but done way, way better. Like everything else in existence, speculators fucked it up in the early 90's. Prior to that, there were big crossover events, but they were few and far between and actually served some purpose like CoIE. If you liked a character/group, you could just buy the one or two books that focused on them and never look at anything else. I'd say the early to mid 80's was the pinnacle of modern comics. Most of the 90's is shit that's carried by big tits. the 00's stuff just sounds fucking horrible, written by dipshits. At this point if you're past puberty and reading this shit - let alone caring about it - keep reading it to ensure you die without getting laid and passing on your sub-par genes. You should all just mail me the money you spend on this crap and I'll post convoluted shit where flagship characters get killed off and then come back.

[Raguel]

Don't diss the Zoo Crew, man.

Sorry I forgot to reply to this.


I LOVED the Zoo Crew. I just don't see the need to make grim n gritty stories about them. It kinda defeats the purpose. But then I don't buy comics anymore, so  my opinion doesn't matter.

[HaemishM]

Well yeah, putting the Zoo Crew in a book that has Superman and the Green Lantern Corps staking a universe-sucking vampire named Mandrakk is a pretty stupid fucking thing to do. I was just happy to see the Zoo Crew at all.

Having read the Superman Beyond series that kind of led into the last issue of FC, I can say that it makes a little more sense, but it's still whacked as hell. It's just way too much abstract crazy shit to be injecting into the DC Universe. It's an Invisibles story with Superman taking the place of King Mob.

[Khaldun]

I actually kind of liked Final Crisis...at least it has some great scenes and vignettes in between the admittedly incoherent storytelling in other patches. But the last issue is *not* grim-and-gritty in the end--it's actually wildly upbeat and very very much a love poem to superheroes (including the Zoo Crew). Whatever else is going on with Morrison, he's pretty much the Anti-Mark Millar--he loves the weirdness and density and contradictions of superheroes, whereas Millar and Bendis and a lot of other contemporary writers are kind of embarassed to be writing superhero comics and basically want to grim-and-grit their way out of the genre one assraping at a time. I freely grant that you couldn't hand FC to a non-comics-fan or a kid and have them make heads-or-tails of it, but that pretty much goes for most continuing titles at the moment. Rather like soap operas (or any serial form of genre storytelling), to get into the hardcore stuff you gotta try some gateway drugs first. For soaps, that might be Desperate Housewives, etc. For comics, it might be something like Jeff Parker's stuff in the Marvel Adventures line (really well-written Marvel stories ostensibly aimed at kids, but also a lot of fun for adult readers) or it might be some great trade paperback comic that's consciously written as a cross-over work intended to get to non-comics fans or it might be something like Bone, an independent comics work that has nothing to do with a continuity. I can't think of ANY Marvel or DC cross-over megaseries that you could hand to someone who doesn't read comics and expect them to a) enjoy it and b) get what's going on. *Maybe* Civil War, much as I didn't care for it, might fly to a limited extent. Maybe the JLA-Avengers book, which is pretty accessible and fun even if you have no idea what all the nods to continuity are. Maybe Kingdom Come, though I think its pretentious heaviness would be off-putting for anyone not already primed to take the characters overly seriously.

[HaemishM]

Yes, but I'm a serious hardcore comics nerd, and I couldn't make heads or tails of Final Crisis either. It's not even about accessibility so much as it is making a coherent, self-contained story. Yes, there were some interesting vignettes - most notably Batman shooting Darkseid. But the story was about 3 issues worth of plot with 20 issues worth of crossover "here's where X is now" shit.

[NowhereMan]

You know I think the soap opera thing actually is a perfect analogy because most soap operas are non-sensical shit full of half-asses plots that make no sense and involve often poorly thought out and inconsistent characters. That is why they are difficult for outsiders to get into most of the time and some of these massive cross overs involve lots of the same stuff. Nods to continuity are great when they involve moments that have special significance to those who have followed for years. Not so when someone's long lost cousin who was believed to be dead reappears, reignites a passionate affair with someone else's wife and the writers just assume you're going to know who they are exactly why everyone is reacting to them as they do. That's what so much of this stuff has started to involve only you've got to watch 6 different shows because the cousin was actually a friend of someone in another town and hardly ever appeared in the show he's in now and the reigniting of the affair happened in the soap opera focused around the town hospital.

[Raguel]

I was referring to this (I stopped reading after I saw what happened to Little Cheese  ):

In Teen Titans vol.3, #30-31 (December 2005-January 2006), the Zoo Crew made their first return appearance in some time, in stories presented as excerpts from a comic book story—"Whatever Happened to Captain Carrot?"—that Kid Devil reads in #30. In these excerpts, the Zoo Crew is shown to have mostly disbanded and now live in a "darker" world than in their prior adventures. Little Cheese has been killed, Fastback has disappeared, Captain Carrot is in self-imposed retirement after the death of his partner, Carrie Carrot, the secret identities of Alley-Kat-Abra and Yankee Poodle are now public knowledge, and Pig-Iron and Rubberduck are operating as costumed heroes in secret. The story is a parody of the grim and gritty trend most often identified with late 1980s to early 1990s superhero comics, and it includes references to several of DC's own series (such as Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, including the cover of the Captain Carrot comic which bears a resemblance to the cover of Watchmen #1). In the end, after sending Alley-Kat-Abra (actually, her impersonator, "Dark Alley") to prison for murdering Little Cheese (her motive revealed to be simply that cats hate mice), Captain Carrot and the remaining Zoo Crew members return to action with a new member, the American Eagle, on their way to retrieve Fastback from the future (where Dark Alley had banished him).

edit: I should have made it clear that my ZC comment was OT. apologies

[Riggswolfe]

Most of the 90's is shit that's carried by big tits. the 00's stuff just sounds fucking horrible, written by dipshits. At this point if you're past puberty and reading this shit - let alone caring about it - keep reading it to ensure you die without getting laid and passing on your sub-par genes. You should all just mail me the money you spend on this crap and I'll post convoluted shit where flagship characters get killed off and then come back.

There was some ok stuff in the 90s but for the most part I agree. As long as you're talking DC and Marvel. (Though the Gunslinger stuff based on the Stephen King stories is kind of cool.)

Now, that said, some of the smaller label stuff is really, really good. Dark Horse, IDW, etc. I won't say every line of theirs is good but they have a few good lines. I think the big problem is, the current crop of writers grew up with comic books and are bored with what they view as tired stories. And they are tired. If you're in your 30s. But somehow these guys have forgotten that superhero comics need to be like Pixar movies, readable and understandable to the kids, but have things in them adults can appreciate.

[gryeyes]

While being a huge fan of Grant Morison i found the entire arc horrible. I read the countdown to final crisis series and then continued into final crisis utterly confused. They don't even follow the same fucking story. I am not a big DC fan in general so my understanding of the DC timeline and big events is spotty at best. Yet i still should have understand at least SOME of wtf was going on. I think Grant Morison is punishing DC for fucking making the count down shit without his consent or input.

[Lum]

[Rasix]

Don't talk to it!

But yes, bad farmer bot is bad.  Like Aion.

[NowhereMan]

Did remind me of this thread though and the complaints about the overarchingness and continuity fanwank in a lot of modern comics. Just in case there's anyone reading this who enjoys comics but is put off by all that crap the DC All Stars series are a decent attempt to recapture some of the straightforward comics of the Silver Age (though the Batman one might be a bit too tongue in cheek).

[Khaldun]

Eek, the Batman All-Star is only for serious Miller fans or if you're able to enjoy it in a sort of ironic postmodern mode as a curious car wreck of a series.

Morrison's All-Star Superman is just great, though. A love poem to the Silver Age.

[HaemishM]

The All-Star Batman and Robin was so bad, I had to stop reading it after like 4 issues or something. And I'm a HUGE Miller fan - but everything he's done with Batman since the first Dark Knight has been horrible. You can tell he has absolute contempt for the character concept and is just rubbing his balls in your face about it.

[NowhereMan]

Eh, I found it funny if over the top. Yeah he clearly wasn't in any way trying to respect the character and was pretty mocking of the whole 'Batman's amazing because Batman' attitude that seems to be about. I thought it was all worth it for his meeting with Green Lantern though.

[Tannhauser]

I came close to buying the $30 hardback last night.  Glad I didn't.  Grant Morrison and Alan Moore are my favorite writers but I'm a big Marvel man.  I would like to see some good DC movies though.