Nov 05 2008
Final Crisis #2
Greetings – once again – from your friendly neighborhood Searnold [Shár- Nŭhld]. Today is Wednesday, November 5th, 2008. Welcome to my daily comic book review blog – thanks for tuning in! Are you interested in a comic book but not sure you want to shell out the cash? Let me know and I’ll review it for you – letting you know if it’s worth your hard earned money!
Warning:
This is a new disclaimer I’m going to be including for the next two weeks during my Final Crisis reviews. Everything I know about the DC Universe I learned from watching Justice League Unlimited. Thusly, I am most definitely a DC neophyte, and I’m sure that has tainted my perspective of this enormous DC crossover event. Namely, I found that I did not understand a lot of what was going on. I sort of have a feel for things now that I’ve read EVERY Final Crisis book. But in order to save you from having to do the same, I’m going to be including a bit more summary than usual - which some might claim teeters on the edge of spoilers. So if you already plan on reading EVERY Final Crisis title, I recommend you skip this blog for now. Otherwise, enjoy the next two weeks of CRISIS!
Today’s Issue:
Final Crisis #2, published by DC in June 2008. Written by Grant Morrison (X-Men, Batman) with pencils by JG Jones (Wanted, all 52 covers of 52.) In order to get the most out of today’s ramblings, be sure to check out yesterday’s review of Final Crisis #1.
Premise/ Summary [SPOILER ALERT!]:
This whole story is so damn confusing I have no problems putting spoilers here. My hope is that after you’ve read all of my reviews, you’ll know enough that if you go back through and read these issues, they might actually make sense. I suppose good literature is supposed to be dense enough that you can read it twice and still find something new in it. But comic book stories shouldn’t be so confusing that you HAVE to read them twice in order to understand what just happened!
Okay, now that that’s out of the way… This issue is dealing with the fallout of the death of the New God, Orion. We start out in Japan where Mister Miracle recruits Sonny Sumo into a team to fight the New Gods. We get a quick glimpse at Uotan who is having odd dreams about his previous life as some kind of guardian of the multiverse. Cut to the cop from last issue - Mister Turpin - who is looking for the missing kids he was just with at the end of last issue. Confused yet? I was. Then he goes to a place called Bludhaven where he gets captured by Darkseid’s minions - the Gods of Apokolips. We get a quick one page funeral for J’onn J’onzz. (Come back tomorrow for my review of Final Crisis - Requiem, where J’onn J’onzz gets the funeral he deserves.) Then it’s off to figure out who killed Orion. The Green Lanterns bring in an Alpha Lantern, Kraken, to assist with the investigation. She accuses Hal Jordan, one of Earth’s Green Lanterns, but as it turns out, she is one of Darkseid’s minions herself. [And might also be the Green Lantern villain Parallax - this was one of those confusing moments where I wished I knew more about the DC Universe.] She captures Batman and takes him to Bludhaven. We then have more quibbling amongst the supervillains. Luthor isn’t impressed by the death of J’onn J’onzz, so Libra blows up the Daily Planet - theoretically killing everyone inside! The issue ends with two of the Flashes trying to figure out how Orion was killed. They theorize that some kind of anti-God bullet was fired backwards in time, but are quickly interrupted by the dead Flash appearing and telling them to run for their lives!
Again - what an incredibly packed issue!
Awesome Parts:
I’m definitely digging to over-sized issues. I felt like I got my money’s worth in terms of quantity per dollar. Also on the plus side, this issue made sense. Well, at least mostly. Grant did a good job of introducing the Japanese characters. Maybe that’s because they are new characters so he felt they needed introductions? I don’t know - but this proves he has the ability to write well. From having no idea who these guys are, I now have a basic idea of their personality, powers, motivations, and NAMES! Why can’t he give introductions like this to all of his characters? Even the part with Uotan made sense in this issue. He’s in a body that isn’t his, and having these odd memories about his past life. That’s a perfectly understandable premise. Now - is any of that going to become relevant? So far it hasn’t. In fact, most of what happened in this issue hasn’t been relevant to the larger story. At least not yet. I do love the cliffhanger ending of this issue: we’re not entirely sure if the Flash is alive, but we certainly wonder why he’s not dead. (He seems to be trapped in some kind of limbo.) Oh - and that anti-God bullet being fired backwards through time was a pretty cool idea, too.
Un-Awesome Parts:
In the midst of this crisis Superman runs off to pretend to be Clark Kent? Seriously? That’s pretty lame of him. And have villains never attacked Lois before? That’s pretty noble of them. And then there’s this cop, Mister Turpin, whom I’m only mostly sure is the same guy from the first issue because they still won’t use his damn name! That aside, how did he get away from Darkseid and why doesn’t he remember anything? See - there’s a fine line between mystery and confusing as Hell. For something to be a mystery, we have to know that we aren’t supposed to know something. We have to understand that it’s a mystery. Trying to figure out who killed Orion and how - that’s a legitimate mystery. But for a lot of this issue, I just felt that I had missed something - that I was lost. Instead of assuming Mister Turpin’s story was supposed to be a mystery, I felt that Grant hadn’t given me enough information to coherently follow the story. Like I said yesterday - Grant’s writing is often like that. It will probably make sense in a couple more years if I continue to read every corresponding issue.
My Recommendation:
Believe it or not, I do recommend Final Crisis #2. At this point, you don’t need to have a comprehensive understanding of the DC Universe to follow the basics of what’s going on. It’s more confusing than I’d like, but also has some good mystery and some unexpected turns. Be weary about buying into this crossover though, because it’s about to get over-complicated and waaaay too confusing for me to recommend.
That’s it for today. As always - thanks for reading - see you tomorrow for Final Crisis - Requiem. And don’t forget to let me know if there are any comic books you’d like me to review for you – I take requests!
-Searnold, SuperSearnold@yahoo.com www.myspace.com/SuperSearnold
