SuperSearnold - Comic Book Reviews

Greetings – once again – from your friendly neighborhood Searnold [Shár- Nŭhld]. Today is Saturday, November 8th, 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 #3 - published by DC in July, 2008. Issue 3 has the same creative team as the first two issues, Grant Morrison (X-Men, Batman) and JG Jones (Wanted, all 52 covers of 52). Go back a few days and check out my reviews of issues #1 and #2 for today’s entry to make as much sense as possible.

Premise/ Summary [SPOILER ALERT!]:
Disclaimer - the reason for the spoilers is so that you don’t have to read EVERY issue of Final Crisis in order to understand what’s going on. My hope is that you can read my summaries, decide which issues sound interesting, and pick those up.
This third issue felt even more incoherent than the previous issues, so bear with me. We start with The Question learning that something is going on in Bludhaven. We get one page of Uotan pondering the meaning of his strange dreams of another life. Then Flash - the old one, Jay - is telling his family about his encounter with the previously dead Flash. However, this scene was mostly confusing to me. I couldn’t tell from Jay’s story what had happened to the other 2 Flashes. Cut to Libra who threatens all of the big-whig villains (i.e. Lex Luthor) into joining up with Darkseid by forcing some sort of mind-control mask onto them. Cut to Superman in the hospital with an injured Lois. Apparently after the explosion last issue, Jimmy Olsen is fine, Perry White is on life support - but the only thing keeping Lois alive is Superman massaging her heart with his heat vision. Do they not have a machine for that? Someone mysterious who knows Clark’s secret identity offers him a chance to save Lois’ life - but you won’t see more about that unless you read Superman: Beyond 3D! [I do have to give Grant props here, though - I don’t know whether or not I was supposed to know who this mysterious woman is. I, of course, STILL don’t know who she is (because Grant has something against using names) but this scene still made PERFECT sense to me. Well done!] Then Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, is being arrested by Alpha Lantern Kraken. Apparently nobody got Batman’s distress signal last issue when he found out AND ANNOUNCED INTO HIS COMMUNICATOR that she was actually a villain! Anyway, Wonder Woman somehow decided that Darkseid is involved in these shenanigans, so she and another Green Lantern whom I don’t recognize (that’s my inexperience showing) put together a superhero draft. That was pretty cool. At least the idea was cool. The execution… well… it didn’t go anywhere. So… phooey. Anyway, we then cut to Japan where Sonny Sumo’s plane explodes and he gets rescued by The Super Young Team. [Another scene that actually made sense even without previous knowledge of the characters. See - you CAN do it, Grant. Try to be a bit more consistent and a bit less confusing.] Then Wonder Woman is in Bludhaven - checking things out. I’m giving Grant the benefit of the doubt and assuming that there have been shenanigans going down in Bludhaven in all sorts of DC books for awhile now. Because if this city just got introduced in the pages of Final Crisis, they did a TERRIBLE job of introducing it. The way the characters have been talking about it, I’d thought it was a small country somewhere in Eastern Europe. But apparently it’s a US city. Anywho, Wonder Woman is attacked by the servants of Darkseid and injected with a green chemical that is supposed to make her the carrier of the Anti-Life disease. Then Oracle turns off the internet to prevent Anti-Life from spreading. And the other two Flashes run into Wonder Woman - now toting one of those mind control masks (like on the cover).
Again - a lot going on here. I hope that wasn’t too hard to digest. Believe me, reading the actual issue doesn’t make it much easier.

Awesome Parts:
Darkseid wins! I still really like this premise. And the issue is definitely large enough to justify the $3.99 price tag. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this before - all of these books are selling for $3.99. But from a strict number of pages standpoint, they’re totally worth the inflated price. And the superhero draft was a cool idea, too. I just wish it had lead anywhere. Seriously - I’ve read issue 4. The draft had 0 affect on anything.

Un-Awesome Parts:
I already mentioned some of the logical inconsistencies during the summary, so I won’t go into that. Let’s look at a few other things that don’t QUITE make sense. I don’t know what Anti-Life IS. I understand that it’s what Darkseid has been looking for his whole life - I got that from the JLU cartoon show. But I don’t know what it IS. It appears to just be a method of mind-control. I thought it would be more than that. I thought it would kill people. Heck - I thought it would destroy the universe. But apparently it’s just mind control. And in that case, what was up with that disease they infected Wonder Woman with? The way they spread Anti-Life seems to be by clasping one of those metal cases over your face. I don’t understand at all what they needed Wonder Woman for. And why did they need to crash the net? Does reading the Anti-Life equation put one of those metal masks on your face? I’m okay with that solution if that’s how they want to play it - I’m not okay with there being no explanation. By this point in time, reading order has gotten confusing, too. Not that reading order matters too terribly much in a case where information is this scattered. You just read it all and hope your brain can sort it out afterwards. So on that note, would putting a recap page in really be that terrible of an idea? People who are familiar with the stories can SKIP the recap page. I’d love to know what’s been going on with Darkseid recently and how he got to Earth. I’d love to know how he FINALLY acquired the Anti-Life equation. And I’d like to be able to follow some of the branch-out stories without having to read EVERY single Final Crisis tie-in. Seriously Mr. Dan DiDio - recap pages. They’re Marvelous. Pun intended.

My Recommendation:
You can probably tell that we’ve gotten to the point where I recommend you stop reading Final Crisis. Comic books should do more than give you information about the unraveling of events. You should ENJOY the ACT of reading them. And by this point the story has become so disjointed - and there’s so much confusion - that I didn’t enjoy reading this issue. To be honest, going back through these issues NOW (after having read EVERY crossover title) they do make more sense than when I first picked them up. So I’ll give Grant the benefit of the doubt - maybe a lot of the confusion is due to my inexperience with the DCU. But - when there’s an event going on that’s THIS HUGE - don’t you want it to be accessible to new readers? Final Crisis #3 is not - even if you’ve read issues #1 and #2.

That’s it for today. As always - thanks for reading - see you tomorrow for Final Crisis - Revelations. 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

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