So, hey, I’m back.
38 Comments | Posted: January 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Think About It Won't YouWhat’d I miss? Nobody killed Batman or anything, right?
Oh, they did? Let me take a look at this.
Oh, hey, there’s no reason at all people would flip out and scream bloody murder over his final actions, because he explained how he was breaking the one rule he would never break before and the situation demanded it, is there? I mean, he addresses the elephant in the room before even pulling out the gun.
Oh, they did? And they’re still?
…
Wow.
OK, but I mean, it’s Batman. He made them like ten crudzillion dollars last year with that movie. Morrison put an out for the situation in the first four pages of that comic, to be used by the one character who could be trusted with that sort of power, you know? Surely comic book readers have to…
Oh, really?
Damn, people.
Damn.
I haven’t read the full issue yet…but I’m interested in how Batman would be willing to shoot and kill Darkseid and not, say, the Joker.
Well, you know, trying to prevent the end of the fucking world might have something to do with it.
Oh, Kevin Church! You and your crazy talk. Next, you’ll be saying that comic book characters come back from the dead all the time or something.
Wait, wait, wait- what does all of this have to do with whether or not I’m a feminist because I read DC’s Haunted Tank reprints?
I like how people say, “Batman had no choice!” as if the whole situation wasn’t made up. He had no choice because the author didn’t give him a choice. If Morrison wanted the deus ex machina gun to send Darkseid to the Phantom Zone or something, he could have written it that way. The question isn’t “Would Batman do it if he had to?”, it’s “Why did the author put him in a situation where he had to?” Forcing Batman to break his vow accomplishes what, exactly?
“Why did the author put him in a situation where he had to?â€
Oh, come on. That’s his job with this one, isn’t it? To create the be-all, end-all of DCU events? By putting Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman into untenable positions and having them still come out on top, he’s fulfilling his mandate. I could go on about how permeable the Phantom Zone has been proven, or maybe I could discuss how Darkseid has been shown as unstoppable so far and Batman went with the only weapon he knew would work against a New God, but you could still ask the question “Why would the writer do this?”
Which I suspect is rather the point for a lot of people.
I don’t know why, instead of Morrison raising the stakes, he didn’t just have Batman say, “The stakes are higher than ever.”
One could also note that, as we’ve seen over the course of this series, that New Gods don’t die. They are simply re-born. SO really, all Batman does is “kill” one iteration of Darksied, making way for the next.
And really, is Batman with a gun really that shocking? Anymore than when they had him carry one around in Year Two twenty years ago?
Because it’s dramatically and thematically appropriate. “The Day Evil Wins,” remember. To defeat the God of Evil, Batman must break his most solemn vow and use a gun to take a life. He succeeds, but for that unforgivable sin, submitting to his own ultimate evil, he receives the ultimate punishment.
This is big, mythological stuff, and I think Morrison’s pulling it off in style.
Eh, I’d rather see Batman triumph by being true to his nature, rather than treating his moral code like it was some kind of golf handicap. It’s all very Bush Doctrine, isn’t it? “Well, you know, torture is wrong… but we really, really need some information out of this guy, so I guess we have no choice.”
Eh, I’d rather see Batman triumph by being true to his nature, rather than treating his moral code like it was some kind of golf handicap.
Yes, because that’s exactly how it was presented, not as Batman breaking a vow to save the world and being punished for it…which is what Josh said. Maybe he should have angsted for a few pages and been really melodramatic. Perhaps that’ll be Meltzer’s next Final Crisis tie in: FC: Batman Cries A Lot While Holding A Gun.
Homer’s works are mythological. The Lord of the Rings is mythological. Final Crisis aims at the same ground, but I don’t think Morrison’s even coming slightly close – the comic is just so scattershot that nothing feels like it’s been built properly. Tawky Tawny and Tiger Kalibak having a fight would have been a lot more mythic, for example, if the fight hadn’t just been thrown at us in issue 6 with no particular development of either character beforehand.
Honestly, defenders of the series have a point about the Batman whiner brigade, but there are real, legitimate criticisms to be made about this comic. It’s just not very good: yes, Morrison has mad ideas, but the pacing is shit and the execution is frequently slapdash.
(Why does Batman just show up and say “hey, got the god-killing gun, gonna totally kill you now” while loading the damn gun? He’s fucking Batman. He’s too smart to do something that retarded. No, “it’s more mythic that way” is not an acceptable answer. And why is the Miracle Machine being introduced in the first pages of the comic an acceptable out? If you or I set up a magical wishing gun as a decisive element in a event superhero comic, we would be mocked and rightly so, but Morrison does it with some Kirby trappings and suddenly it’s brilliant? What. The. Fuck.)
I dunno. I mean, I like parts of this series. There’s obvious brilliance in bits of it. (Most Excellent Superbat is wonderful.) But it’s not a great work, not even close, and I’m really getting sick of having all criticism of it lumped in with “HOW DARE THEY KILL BATMAN.”
Because I don’t care if they kill Batman. I care how they kill Batman. And this was pretty lame.
“Hero compromises his values for the greater good” might actually be a novel and dramatic twist… if we hadn’t already seen that theme run into the ground in Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Civil War, Secret Invasion, ad nauseum. If you enjoyed seeing it yet again, well hey, obviously you’re the target audience for this stuff. Me, not so much.
Kevin, I think you’re forgetting Thomas and Aparo’s seminal 1973 classic, “Even a Batman Can Cry!”
MGK: I don’t agree that the pacing is off. It’s not standard adventure comics pacing, no, but I don’t think Morrison is writing FC as an adventure comic. It’s a horror comic, and most of the big dramatic moments that are the standard bread and butter of superhero stories are muted or backgrounded to underscore the sense of hopelessness pervading a world under Darkseid’s heel.
Now, I have found the book to be somewhat disjointed, with the occasional baffling scene jumps and cuts, but it’s not like the story is impossible to follow even with that. It’s just different. Obviously, your mileage varies.
But I will say that Morrison’s Batman has never been above theatrically taunting the bad guy whose butt he’s about to kick. “I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE.”
Martians. Hh.
The Lord of the Rings is mythological.
If you think mythology involves overlong allegory in which every character introduces themselves for six paragraphs before getting on with telling you why the hell they’ve shown up, then yes, it is. I really don’t like Lord Of The Rings, despite making a game attempt because Peter Jackson really wanted me to. So, I think there’s the key difference between how me (or Josh, I guess) would look at things and how you would.
Tawky Tawny and Tiger Kalibak having a fight would have been a lot more mythic, for example, if the fight hadn’t just been thrown at us in issue 6 with no particular development of either character beforehand.
It worked for me because I knew both characters beforehand. While I think most of what people need to enjoy Final Crisis is right in the text: Most Excellent Superbat’s superpower, for example, I think Morrison’s done a good job using what most DC readers will be aware of to his advantage. He doesn’t particularly need to explain Tawky Tawny: he’s part of the Captain Marvel mythos, along with Freddie and Mary, etc, and Tiger Kalibak is, well, you know, a Tiger Version Of Kalibak, a character who’s appeared in any number of comics, the animated Superman series, and received his own plastic idol status with the Super Powers toy line.
If you or I set up a magical wishing gun as a decisive element in a event superhero comic, we would be mocked and rightly so, but Morrison does it with some Kirby trappings and suddenly it’s brilliant?
Yes. Morrison makes it work. At least for me. That also applies to J. Kevin Carrier’s comment in which other comics events were invoked. What Bendis, Johns, and Meltzer did poorly, Morrison made work well because he underplayed it, he made it work in the context of the epic he’s telling (humanity can’t fall, because there’s a future waiting for them, and only this machina handled by a deus is going to ensure that’ll happen) instead of it being nitpicked and overexplained in the style that I find more and more grating.
As for the jumps in storytelling: there are moments when it’s legitimately jarring for me, but I recently read 1-5 and when viewed together, it makes sense as a whole, because he’s telling a larger story in slices of varying thinness.
(And I just discovered that The Miracle Machine has been around for freaking ever.)
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with Final Crisis. I’m not saying everyone should like it or they’re dumb, but to say that there are any significant flaws is ridiculous. He is executing something very specific and he has maintained that narrative throughout the story. Not saying it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but to say “but there are real, legitimate criticisms to be made about this comic. It’s just not very good: yes, Morrison has mad ideas, but the pacing is shit and the execution is frequently slapdash.” is fucking ludicrous, and I’ve already elucidated in literally thousands of words over at CBR as to why.
Wait, there’s a Bat-man in these comics? When did that happen?
“to say that there are any significant flaws is ridiculous.”
I’m sorry, I cannot stop laughing at this. The pacing is shit, the execution is slapdash, and your reviews at CBR would do a lot more as an argument for the series if you actually critically dissected the issues instead of praising absolutely every individual aspect of them. I mean, I’m sorry, Morrison has done some good stuff in this series, but when you’re praising the romantic plotline between Nix Uotan and Weeja Dell as “resonant” you’re not doing much to convince anyone that you’re writing something with critical merit rather than blind effusive praise of Morrison simply because he’s Morrison.
Jeepers, it’s only the lynchpin of the Fifth World. What a minor and unimportant development. Morrison set it up as the thing that wakes Nix up and basically turns him into the Monitor of The Fifth World. It’s literally “resonant” as in, it effects all sorts of other things, in an outward trajectory.
And I’m pretty sure I spent an entire review talking about the pacing. Maybe #3?
And I still don’t believe that if someone doesn’t like something, that means it’s flawed in terms of the author’s intent. That’s the difference between criticism and a review. The difference between “I didn’t like it” and “Did the author succeed in what he set out to do”.
I wouldn’t blindly praise Morrison simply because he’s Morrison. If you want to look at a flawed work, look at Batman R.I.P. That’s a disjointed mess with flashes of greatness.
The pacing and plot delivery relies on the fact that comics are easily reread. It’s not objectively bad in that sense- it’s not for everyone’s taste, but Morrison puts the necessary information in the comic, it’s just possible to miss it. And frankly I appreciate the trade-off, since it points up how much padding there can be in comic stories sometimes.
While I think the last issue or so were improvements, I’m not enjoying Final Crisis anywhere near as much as I have past Morrison works. I feel like he played with this stuff a lot more effectively in Rock of Ages and World War III (save the ending) in JLA. Back then, I felt like he was one of the few writers who actually had the talent to play in Jack Kirby’s sandbox without making everything seem ridiculous or completely mishandling everything…now, I don’t know. Between this and RIP, I think Morrison’s starting to look way past his prime.
My friend got me into comics about 2 years ago after being out of it for almost 15 years. He gave me all sorts of great reads. I’ve enjoyed just about all the Marvel epics that have been put out in the past couple of years and many of the DC ones too. But I have to say, I have bought and paid for every Final Crisis book and spin off like Rogues and Revelations. But I have to say honestly that Final Crisis has been the shittiest series of comics I have purchased and read since I was kid.
I am reading and reading here and every other site about how stupendous the writer is and the story is, and no matter how I look at it, I cannot see/feel the same.
I mean, I am sitting here reading these books and seeing characters who haven’t been around for 10+, 20+, years, having to go on Wikipedia to read about who they are, and then realizing they’re only in the story for a brief moment.
I did not like this at all. Maybe it’s because I am new to comics. Regardless of being new, DC has been horrible to read.
Maybe you should pay for comic books you’ll enjoy, “LowGMan.”
Crisis has been brilliant. Judo chops to naysayers! The damn thing made me cry, and I’m wicked tough.
For reals.
Let’s not judo-chop people just because they like different comic books.
Let’s judo-chop people because they take your liking something else as a personal affront.
The Miracle Machine’s been around forever, as Kevin says, but (assuming Morrison’s continuing with his “we’re dealing with all continuities” ala his Batman comments and not picking and choosing things) Superman should be aware of its existance and it was destroyed around…1979/80 or so. Sad as it is, the MM scene kind of threw me and I spent the rest of the issue saying, “Wait, what?”
Of course, I’m also someone who has issues with the pacing (it sometimes seems choppy to me, as if Morrison wanted this to be a quick-cut action film rather than the exploration of ideas and themes the story exhibits in other scenes), so, obviously, I must be wrong.
It’s a horror comic, and most of the big dramatic moments that are the standard bread and butter of superhero stories are muted or backgrounded to underscore the sense of hopelessness pervading a world under Darkseid’s heel.
That’s weird, because I’m not getting a sense of hopelessness at all. Lots of people saying “Things look really hopeless” doesn’t actually generate a sense of hopelessness, you know? What I’m getting is a sense of confusion pervading a world in which shit happens essentially at random, and this is coming from somebody who really, really rates Grant Morrison.
One thing that nobody seems to have picked up on is that Final Crisis is not just a thematic rehash of Crisis on Infinite Earths, but also of the Legends and Millenium mini-series (and possibly some others, but who cares?). The problem is that Morrison is trying to include everything and the kitchen sink – but if I wanted a kitchen sink I WOULD HAVE BOUGHT A KITCHEN SINK.
I think that’s something that fans are assuming more than the actual intent of editorial and Morrison. FC has been very discrete: it’s not tied into monthly books directly and any of its ancillary material have carried the Final Crisis branding. Secret Invasion is something designed to create a line-wide event; Final Crisis seems to be designed for its own purposes. Personally, I prefer the latter, but I can understand how many fans might enjoy the former.
I didn’t find it to be either convoluted or confusing, but that may be because I don’t like it when comics spoon-feed me everything with narration, captions, and expository dialogue. I like being engaged by a work and getting to piece together some things – it’s something I’ve discussed before, in relation to how David Mamet and Grant Morrison have similar approaches. Everything you need to know is on the page, as others have pointed out in these comments. Putting together some of the elements is a lot of the fun for me.
Man will it be embarrassing when this series ends and has no impact on readers at all aside from the fact that it established that DC can sell a $4 comic no matter how bad it is.
Not only is Final Crisis failing to impact the monthly comics, it also can’t even coincide with it’s own mini-series! That is the point of a series like Final Crisis, after all, to impact the entire universe of comics. So, uh… why is that not happening here?
I can only imagine the disappointment from casual Batman fans who bought #7 to ‘SEE THE FINAL FATE of BATMAN!’ as DC directed them to. What a readership killer this one issue is. Convoluted and confused with so many plot threads that none of them can be maintained issue-to-issue, readers are also treated to an absurd death scene that is somehow supposed to relate to Batman R.I.P.
People are seriously complaining about the gun? Hey, remember in “What Ever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, when Superman breaks HIS solemn vow and kills Mr. Mxyzptlk, and so he punishes himself by sacrificing his powers? Did we complain about that then? Because I remember that we thought it was kind of awesome. I guess I need to go read some lettercols to refresh my memory and gauge the outrage.
“DC can sell a $4 comic no matter how it has almost double the pages than your average 2.99 comic.”
Fixed it for you. You might be thinking of Secret Invasion.
Actually Grant IS spoon-feeding you the ideas and that is the problem. Batman’s big gun speech is ALL exposition, for instance. There are very few pieces of dialog in this series that are not moments where the character is telling the reader something that the story should be conveying on its own.
I cannot see how Final Crisis could be viewed as sophisticated, let alone what the comparison could be to David Mamet. The only writer I can see as being similar to Mamet in his writing is Bendis.
Additionally, readers have been sold on Final Crisis for about two years now that it would impact the entire DCU. How is it now a discrete comic?
Ben,
We’re not hiring, but we’ll let you know.
There’s a difference between a character telling the audience what they need to know to understand a scene and a overexpository dialogue in which Roy Thomas or Marv Wolfman characters go on about “Oh no this situation is very bad and we will have to band together and fight it and be tough.” Batman should be telling the readers about the gun (and again, he’s been shown as a taunting sort by Morrison before,) Braniac 5 should be talking about the Miracle Machine. They shouldn’t be telling the readers what’s happening on the page directly.
And I don’t see how it could be so summarily dismissed. And I have to say that your second comment sounds like something that someone who’s never looked beyond the dialogue in Mamet’s works would say; Bendis does things that absolutely betray good storytelling time and time again, with the end of Secret Invasion being the most obvious example I can think of – after a series of escalating battles, he mutes the impact of the final conflict by having it be a montage of flashbacks with narration on top, a trick he’s done before and will do again.
Were they? I don’t read a lot of the hype that either company puts out, so you may well have a point. And as far as having a point goes – it’s obvious that you’ve got some very well considered opinions about Final Crisis that might be a better fit in your blog versus my haranguing you over what I consider to be deliberate obtuseness on your part.
(And calling a creator you don’t know by their first name is just weird, man. Don’t do that. It freaks me out.)
There’s always been something about Bendis’ visual storytelling that just seemed off to me- the pacing of images and action seems wrong somehow.
He does it very well a lot of the time on Ultimate Spider-Man, but he also structures it like a very traditional comic book. (However, I do remember him using the flashback-and-narration thing during the first Venom arc, which I was annoyed with then.)
One someone drops the ‘obtuse’ bomb there’s no going back, is there?
I’ll agree to disagree on this one.