SuperSearnold - Comic Book Reviews

Greetings – once again – from your friendly neighborhood Searnold [Shár- Nŭhld]. Today is Tuesday, November 11th, 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 - Superman: Beyond 3D! #1, published by DC in August 2008, written by Grant Morrison (X-Men, Batman) with pencils by Doug Mahnke (JLA, Batman) and 3-D by Ray Zone (I’m not sure if that’s a guy or a company.) But yes - this book is in 3D! It is the first of a 2 part mini-series.

Premise/ Summary [SPOILER ALERT!]:
First - Superman is getting the cosmic snot beat out of him. But that doesn’t have anything to do with anything. So moving on - as we saw in Final Crisis #3 (hey - a clear reading order - fancy that!) the only thing keeping Lois Lane alive is Superman’s constant massaging of her heart with his heat vision. But then some sort of cosmic being (who remains unnamed throughout the entire issue - THANKS GRANT! <— sarcasm) appears, freezes time, and offers Superman a once in an eternity opportunity to save Lois’ life. So all of a sudden Superman is crashing through the omniverse and he has to upgrade his vision to 4D! in order to perceive what’s going on. He crash lands in Limbo with a few alternate versions of himself, including Ultraman - an evil version of himself. He then tries to lift a book with an infinite number of pages in it so that he can bring it back to his ship and upload the programming of how the ship can fix itself. Let me just say this right now - why doesn’t he move the SHIP instead? Anyways, he can’t do it, but Ultraman can. And Ultraman ends the issue by exclaiming that the book with infinite pages has shown him the future and EVIL WINS!

Awesome Parts:
The 4D art looked really cool. To be honest, I couldn’t bear the idea of cutting up my comic book in order to get 3D (errr… excuse me - 4D!) glasses. So maybe I didn’t get to experience this book to the fullest - but the art still looked pretty awesome. And I still like the idea of evil winning - so I’m glad that it made Ultraman happy, too.

Un-Awesome Parts:
Most everything else falls under the un-awesome category. The first page is completely out of context. Maybe it’s one of those things that will make sense at the end of the second issue. But… it’s not a mystery so much as it’s senseless confusion. It’s just a random scene that is COMPLETELY WITHOUT CONTEXT of Superman getting the snot beat out of him. It looks cool - but it makes no sense. The whole ship crashing through the multiverse doesn’t make sense, either. Nothing caused it. It just sort of happened. This is the sort of confusing thing that Grant does. Okay - I get it - we’re crashing. But he just sort of skips over the HOW and WHY. I suppose I can recognize the skill in helping readers feel the same sort of urgency and confusion that Superman is feeling - but I’d like to feel it without being left wondering what’s going on. Also, some of this stuff is just so far out of the league of fathomability that my brain has a hard time processing it. Like - how do you even wrap your head around stuff like lifting an infinite number of pages or being outside of the multiverse. When you start talking on that big of a scale, you need to define the rules of existence in great detail in order to give some sort of basis of something as a reference point for us to think about. But Grant doesn’t do a good enough job of explaining exactly what this “Limbo” place is or how Superman and company got there for me to enjoy this book.

My Recommendation:
Hunt down this issue in a comic book store and take a glance at the 3D art. It’s pretty trippy. Then put the book down and walk away slowly, so as not to alarm anyone. Final Crisis - Superman: Beyond 3D #1 is not worth buying. Sorry Grant - I seem to not be a fan of your work. Once issue #2 comes out, I’ll do another review and let you know if it explained enough to make the series worth buying.

That’s it for today. As always - thanks for reading - see you tomorrow for DC Universe - Last Will & Testament. 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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