The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 478: Final Crisis #7, March 2009

What does one do when faced with the idea that we damage our fictions, that we should not be participating in them, but viewing them from outside, allowing them to grow and shift, but keeping our own toxic narratives from destroying them, and, by association, ourselves? Though then we come to realize that our toxic narratives have grown from the narratives we have inherited from our fictions, from the imaginary from which we define ourselves. And so to cure ourselves, and to cure our fictions, we must come to realize that, while we may have created them, they have taken on life and form of their own. They will outlive us all. It behooves us to pay attention to what is embedded in them, what the next civilization will learn about us from the stories we've left behind.

Hence, I suppose, the study of literature, in some ways.

The Supermen of the Multiverse, "a team of solar-powered heroes so incredible it can be assembled only once, against the absolute enemy," is a remarkable couple of pages in this issue. Each time I read the series, I spend time picking out the Superman proxies from other publishers that are marginally concealed beneath costume tweaks and changes. Hyperion and the Sentry are here. Mr. Majestic is here, as are Supreme, Apollo, Ultiman. The Red Son Superman is here, as is Sunshine Superman, Overman, and, leading the way, as is appropriate, Captain Marvel. They fly out from the page, one bounded by no panel borders, both moving from and moving into our collective unconscious, to battle the creature that sits at the heart of the darkness in reality that we all know, to battle the ultimate force of despair with the nourishing light of the sun. This is how the end of the world ends.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 477: Final Crisis #6, January 2009

The coming season of the Arrowverse television shows fills me with the hope that we're going to see some really cool crossovers between the series. At the end of Legends of Tomorrow, I realized that the overall aesthetic for the series really was the line-wide crossover, but now with four shows to draw on (plus, with luck, Constantine if NBC are cool about it), we might actually see some shared narrative storytelling going on. I'm imagining a line-wide crisis of some sort that we see discretely through the lens of each show, but that is a larger picture when seen through the lens of all four. And if the writers could swing it so that, unlike many crossovers, we didn't need to watch each show, but would be richer for having done so, that would be amazing.

The reason I bring this up is that today's comic is that fourth act, the one where everything seems to completely fall apart. The world is spiraling down a singularity created around the incarnated Darkseid. The Green Lanterns are trapped in the event horizon, the Earth-bound superheroes fall to anti-life, one by one. Checkmate and S.H.A.D.E. are preparing to tunnel into a parallel universe to evacuate the world. And in the midst of it all, the man we've been following, that guy who dresses up like a bat, confronts the physical manifestation of universal totalitarian control in his own throne room.

When Superman finally returns to the pages of this series, it is as an exploding sun of grief and rage. He demonstrates exactly how powerful he is, bursting through the armies and shields of the New Gods as if they weren't even there. And he does this because his friend, the Batman, is dead. But it's not just friendship (that would be enough, but that's not all there is to it). Superman is invested in humanity becoming its better self. That's the tale we get hit over the head with in any other pop culture version of the character, the Jesus/Moses/Buddha/prophet of you choice metaphor. Hey, I'm not innocent of it either. As I never tire of saying, that idea was the seed from which my thesis grew. So then let's look back at yesterday's comic, where dark, animalistic gods find out that there is a human being, unpowered, driven by grief and rage, who turns the darkest of human emotions and experiences into weapons of light, tools to combat the manifestations of the worst of humanity (because, really, that's kind of what these dark gods are). For Superman, seeing this person die is seeing an aspect of humanity die that is all too rare: the strength to take what has damaged us almost beyond repair and turn it back against itself, to turn anguish and despair into strength and resilience. And love. Always love. I am reminded of this recent letter composed by the victim of the horrendous attack at Stanford. A warning - I could not get through this whole piece of writing. It is one of the most blatantly traumatic things I have ever read. But this young woman takes this event, this moment in her life that will colour everything for the rest of her life, and aims it back at the culture through which it is perpetuated. She speaks, turning her unbearable pain into a moment of love and support for everyone who has not been able to find this strength, standing as a paragon, as an example of how we can take in hate, take in the things that are meant to break us irreparably, and use those things to stop the very sources of our misery. She is a hero in every single sense of the term. And sometimes, just sometimes, all it takes to become that hero is to stand and use your voice. If only we all could find such courage.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 476: Batman #683, January 2009

"This Batman has a reputation," Mokkari tells Simyan at one point in this issue. At which point I thought, "Well, if you know his reputation, how can you possibly think that what you're doing will work?"

Of course, it doesn't. This issue fills in the action implied in Final Crisis of Mokkari and Simyan's failure to create an army of clone warriors fueled by Batman's pain and grief, emotions that they find, too late, that Bruce turns into weapons in and of themselves.

It's been a long while since I read this comic, and I'd forgotten the beauty of the final two pages. I'm going to quote them in full here. Bear in mind, this is the last issue before we come to Final Crisis #6, a moment of finality in Batman's existence. But in these last two pages, narrated by Alfred, Morrison shows us the same kind of understanding of Batman that All-Star Superman shows us of the Big Blue Boyscout.

"'Alfred,' he said not long ago. 'If anyone ever asks for an obituary, tell them Batman's big secret was the classic whodunnit?
'Only it's not about who killed Batman but who kept him alive all these years.'
And he stopped there, leaving the rest to me.
The whereabouts of Batman remain unknown.
And yet...
...I can see him now, in the grip of implacable forces, innumerable foes.
Somewhere without hope.
In a place where all seems lost.
And I know this...
The enemy will look away, just for a moment, underestimating him for that single fraction of a second too long.
And no matter how dark the night...
...there will be no hiding place for evil."

That just about says it all.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 475: Batman #682, January 2009

Okay. Apologies for the slight blip. I over-indulged on Saturday night, and Sunday was a bit of a write-off.

We're at a very odd moment in Morrison's Batman. From a publishing vantage point, the last we saw of Batman he had disappeared into the water with Dr. Hurt's helicopter. In this issue, we see him moving through different parts of his history. And, interspersed, is the Lump. Something odd is going on. Chronologically, however, we've seen Batman contacted by the Justice League and warned of the incoming New God invasion. We've also seen him listed as missing on the giant Checkmate board, so to find him, by the end of this issue, imprisoned and being tortured by Simyan and Mokkari, is somewhat unsurprising. Plus, we have that "Final Crisis" trade dress on the front.

The story itself is quite satisfying as a piece of Morrisonian fiction but, as I noted for some of the earlier issues of the Batman run, its esoteric nature was likely quite off-putting for long-time Bat-fans. More so than even Superman, perhaps, because of his constant explicit presence in the pop cultural landscape, Batman is one of the less-outre of the superheroes. He's a guy dressed as a bat. No superpowers (arguable, really), no weird, mystical background (wellll......). He's what many of us think we could potentially be if we had the money, the time, and the drive. So to take him and start pushing him through the more bizarre aspects of life in a superhero universe, which Morrison does so well, is off-putting.

It makes me chuckle. You ain't seen nothing yet.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 473: Final Crisis #5, December 2008

"They have only ever face the idea of a god before. Now is god incarnate come among them!"

I have a couple of board games based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft - Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror. In each of them, one of the Great Old Ones, main enemies in the game, that one can face is Azathoth, the nuclear chaos at the center of creation. When (if) he awakens, unlike the other Old Ones that are options as enemies, the game immediately ends. Unlike the others, he (it) is a GOD, all-caps, unbeatable - its will is creation and destruction themselves. For the majority of the game, the players are facing the influence of the god, the idea of it, but not the god itself. When that happens, the world ends.

So what does it say of the heroes of the DCU, from A-list to Z-list, that they do indeed stand against not simply the idea of Darkseid, but against the god himself? I have been, unsurprisingly, thinking about this a lot over the last few weeks, as I prepare to write the book that might be my dissertation, but that might simply be a book, about the incarnation of the mythic in reality. In the DCU, it is an actual presence, thinking, moving, living, that incarnates as Darkseid, an idea become flesh in two dimensions. But the DC heroes (and, as we'll see, villains) stand against this incarnated idea, proving themselves if not gods then mythic figures at the least. And if that's the case, if these are mythic figures, ideas, stories, how do they incarnate in our lived reality? I have what I think are the beginnings of answers to that question. I'll keep you apprised.

There is, in one panel, in one speech bubble, of this issue mention of Batman. Remember him? How we were reading through his final days? Tomorrow we'll see exactly what happened, what it means that the "Batman psycho-merge killed the clone army" that Mokkari and Simyan were trying to build.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 472: Final Crisis #4, November 2008

There's a lovely moment in this issue where The Ray is outlining a plan to transport his fellows to the JLA satellite by becoming a teleport carrier wave, and the Tattooed Man questions the sanity of the plan, to which Ray replies "Seriously. I thought you were a super-hero, like the rest of us." The Tattooed Man is taken aback, to have been considered by this young hero to be "one of them." It's a nice continuation of the sentiment that Mark Richards' wife expresses at the end of yesterday's comic, though, unfortunately, my research into Richards' subsequent appearances shows that he was used simply as a low-level villain after this, with one or two attacks of conscience for good measure.

I don't have much more to say about this issue, though. It's a bridge, really, between the world that was and the world that becomes. The fall of Dan Turpin is absolutely heart-breaking, as he realizes that trying to fight Darkseid's influence is, as he notes, like trying to stop the ocean, and, in the end, all he can do is give in. I think this gives us a good, if distant, impression of the effect of anti-life: all you can do is give in. There is no choice, no hope. Only submission. Turpin's first-person narrative of his journey toward a choice that is not a choice is beautifully told. The heroes manage to communicate, briefly, Green Lantern Alan Scott offering a rallying cry to the anti-life survivors at the worldwide watchtowers, but the end of the issue, the incarnation of Darkseid, lets us know that the brief, green flame of hope that is offered is not going to be nearly enough. With Wonder Woman corrupted, Batman missing, and Superman absent as well, the DCU heroes are without their own gods.

To be continued...?

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 471: Final Crisis: Submit, December 2008

A few weeks ago, I read the first issue in the new Black Panther series, and was struck by the fact that it featured not one person of the Caucasian persuasion. I couldn't recall having read any other comics of that sort, and it was a bit of a revelatory moment for me. And then I read this comic, about 20 minutes ago.

It's two weeks after the advent of Anti-Life, Earth is looking more and more like Apokalips (side note, I'd love to have seen some international tie-ins to this series - what's going on in London with Knight and Squire, how's El Gaucho holding up?), and Black Lightning (a problematic name, yes, but they go with it) is attempting to rescue someone from the Hall of Justice when he intercepts an S.O.S. It comes from the family of Mark Richards, a small-time villain called The Tattooed Man, stuck in a school nearby. Every one of the focal characters in this comic is African-American. I have to admit that, prior to this reading, I'd never actually noticed that, which is both good and bad. On the good side, it's a comic about people, and the colour of their skin makes no difference. Contextually, Darkseid doesn't care what you look like - he just wants to enslave you. On the bad side, not noticing this choice of characters means I wasn't paying attention to the implicit political message of the comic, and that's something one should always do. Writing, creating, is political, and we don't do a work of art the justice it deserves if we don't notice that aspect.

This aside, this issue gives us a nice view (odd choice of words, perhaps) of the situation as Anti-Life spreads around the world. It's not an instantaneous thing. Darkseid wants submission, terror, control. He wants people so scared, they submit to him willingly, and then if they don't, he'll take them anyway. Apokalips Earth is a scary place, but, for Mark Richards, it becomes a crucible, as his wife points out, that fashions him into the hero she always knew he was. Richards submits, but not to Darkseid.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 470: Final Crisis: Secret Files, February 2009

There are two covers to most of the comics in the "Final Crisis" crossover. I really love the trade dress on these covers, the red bars slowly dissolving into black. But, having seen some of the other covers, which, like the cover of the Revelations hardcover, share the vertical titling but not the bars, I kind of wish I had those. Primarily, in the case of this cover, because the alternate would be a gorgeous portrait of FC villain Libra, rather than this godawful Jim Lee Wonder Woman. I don't actually remember where I read it, though it was likely Morrison somewhere, but a suggestion was made that Wonder Woman's costume doesn't really work when you strap it around a large bosom. The original H.G. Peter design was instead placed on a body that was slight up front, but featured the broad shoulders of someone who had spent her life in athletic training. A swimmer or weight lifter's body, rather than a supermodel's. Regardless, even if we account for the aesthetic shift of Western culture to privilege tiny waists and ample bosoms, there's no need for a picture of the greatest female superhero of all time to focus, literally front and center on both the cover and the picture, on her breasts. I would have bought the comic anyway.

(As an aside, Wonder Woman features in exactly none of this comic.)

Now, that said, it's not really a great comic. The lead feature is by Len Wein, whose name will forever be revered for his contribution to comics of the Swamp Thing. His story offers an origin for the mysterious Libra, one that, really, we probably could have done without. Mother dies, Father starts drinking, beats child, child grows up to become supervillain. Yawn. I think I'd have preferred not to know. Throughout this origin story, he seems somehow pathetic, rather than intimidating, as he is when we first meet him at the beginning of Final Crisis. And for all of his talk of balance, I don't see it played out through the story. I was close to only reading the Morrison and Rucka-penned sections of this issue, but then I remember that the larger project is reading comics, not just Grant Morrison comics.

Greg Rucka contributes a page from the Crime Bible to this issue, though I won't say much about it, as it's reprinted at the very beginning of today's graphic novel. Morrison gives us a short piece on the nature and history of the Anti-Life Equation, which is good, as over the course of its history, it's been a bit nebulous. Which, I suppose, is fitting for a god-weapon. We also get a sketch-book section from Morrison and J.G. Jones which doubles as a metatext of Nix Uotan's sketches, which we get a glimpse of in the early issues of the series when we follow the fallen Monitor into the real world(ish). Notable here, and actually in the Superman Beyond series, is that we get a glimpse of Doc Fate, mystic champion of Earth-20, and focal character in Morrison's later DCU epic Multiversity. I love seeing these things playing out over the course of decades. It speaks to the kind of creative vision that DC has been sorely lacking in the last few years. If you're going to set things up, you have to have some idea how you're going to knock them down before they simply crumble by themselves.

Tomorrow we'll move back into the story proper, and get a ground-level view of the end of the world.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 10 - Final Crisis: Revelations, 2009

In laying out my lineage of the link between religious writings and comics, the utilization of words and pictures to communicate sacred stories, I touched briefly on the remarkable creation by Greg Rucka in the late 2000s DCU of the "Crime Bible." I've the inklings of a paper on it in my head, but that's not what I'll get into here.

There were numerous mini-series that comprised the "Final Crisis" event, and at the time it seemed to me that they were actually completely separate stories, all culminations of a sort, that were conveniently grouped under a single event banner. I'm still mostly convinced that that was the case. But FC:Revelations at least meshes this climactic confrontation between The Question and the Religion of Crime quite nicely with the events of the greater crossover. Having not read the Legion of Superheroes tie-in, or the Flash Rogues tie-in, I don't know how much they bring to the larger tale, but Revelations brings a more street-level view of the ascension of Darkseid to the DCU. That might be a strange thing to say about a comic that features both God's spirits of Wrath and Mercy, but our focal character of Renee Montoya keeps things nicely grounded. And the story also shows that while the (New) gods may move in mysterious and abstract ways, their presences are more viscerally demonstrated by the mortals whose lives they touch. We do not talk to our gods, but only to the texts through which they ostensibly communicate with us, and Rucka's tale of the Crime Bible across a number of years explores this notion quite beautifully.

I will note that I'm not a big fan of Philip Tan's art in this series, or at least of one particular aspect: every prominent female character had D-cup breasts. I'm seriously not sure how the Question manages to stay upright. Batwoman, who in most other depictions I've seen is illustrated as lithe and athletic, here falls into the voluptuous (at least chest-wise) cliche of superheroines. Even the brief flashes of Supergirl late in the story show her with some breasts of Power Girl-stature. Now, this is certainly not to say that there are not, in the DCU as in reality, women who have chests this large, nor is this in any way a denigration of those who do possess such breasts. But the proliferation of them in this graphic novel took me right out of the story every time they were there. Like Batwoman, Montoya is usually depicted as being a relatively slight and athletic character. To suddenly see these volleyball-sized protuberances on her was completely off-putting. Aside from this, Tan's art was nicely evocative of the end of the world aesthetic of Gotham in the days of anti-life.

As Final Crisis #3 skipped over, with the Flashes, the initial wave of anti-life, it's nice to see it filled in in this story, and to see that the Crisis isn't simply a battle of gods, New, old, and superheroic, but also a tale of people dealing with a world that is ending.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 469: Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D #2, March 2009

I have to say, I'm pretty glad that I only have a few comics that are in 3D in my collection. As the glasses don't fit properly over my other glasses, I have to read the comics from a slightly blurry perspective already. Couple this with my un-coffee stimulated morning mind, and it's a struggle. But one I'm happy to take on.

This is one of my favourite comics ever. I use a piece of the dialogue in it in my MA thesis, and it's a piece of dialogue that, in many ways, sums up everything I think about comics, and about faith and belief.

Please forgive it, but I think I need to digress a bit this morning. I'm in a pretty dark place in life right now. I've recently taken a leave of absence from my doctoral program, due in part to a complete lack of support that I've had from my supervisor. I'm unemployed in a city wrestling with a terrible unemployment problem. My wife has taken a stress leave from her job due to unreasonable expectations from her managers and PIs. And my son, who has just graduated high school, is currently wrestling with depression and anxiety, as am I. I look back over the last few years, and wonder if I made a terrible mistake in moving our family to Calgary. I don't know who I am, or what my place in the universe is any more. I thought, when I decided on a life in academia, that I'd finally figured it out, that I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. That is gone now, and, at 42, I feel adrift. Part of me wants to pack up, give in, and move back home, back to where I can slip into a comfortable space that we left four years ago, surrounded by friends and family and familiar surroundings. But then part of me sees that as nothing more than a backwards movement. There is a world out there that exists only when we experience it. There is a world out there screaming out for change, and I just want to help make it a better place for everyone. I'm just really tired of feeling useless, and I've been feeling it for a long time now.

Which, as we undigress, is why I was happy to read this comic today. I believe in Superman. I really do. I just have to figure out how he'd deal with this situation.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 468: Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D #1, October 2008

Oh, it's nice to be back. A break is good, but I missed reading and writing about a comic to start off my day.

I cite a scene from the second issue of this series in the opening of my Master's thesis, a document of which I'm inordinately proud. It seems to be that Morrison was composing not only Final Crisis and Batman, but also All-Star Superman pretty much coevally, and the three present reflections of one another. If you're interested in the metatext that is, in some ways, missing from All-Star, you can find it in Superman Beyond.

Also, please note that in my title, I've retained the 3D part. The GCD does not keep it, but, given that the tale takes Superman beyond the fictional three dimensions of his reality, and that the material nature of the comic takes the comic itself beyond the two-dimensional nature of the medium, I think the 3D is an intrinsic part of the title, and thus of the identification of the story. I talk a lot about titles with my classes when we come to reading poetry, about how a title (much like a name) can define a work (or a person).

We last saw Superman in the main series being approached by a mysterious figure who knew his secret identity, and offered a chance to save Lois' life. This comic picks up immediately at that moment (and it is only a moment, the entire story taking place between beats of Lois Lane's heart), and propels Superman into another Crisis. Surely, you say, the manifestation of the dark New Gods and the anti-Life equation on Earth is enough crisis for one series, and you're right. But Superman Beyond becomes commentary on this Crisis, reveals the fundamental source of the DCU Crisis and the crises that are besetting all of the 52 worlds. And, fittingly, it is a team of Supermen who are called together to stop this primal crisis, each an echo of the primal Superman, our focal character.

Which is, admittedly, a lot to take in over one's first cup of coffee in the morning. But such a push can often be profitable, can shift one's perspective as readily as the red and blue glasses I wore to read today's comic. Tomorrow's continuation of the series will take us deeper into that other place that is all places, shift our perspective even further. Let's see what comes of that.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 463: Final Crisis #3, September 2008

Many superhero event comics focus on the efforts of the human and superhuman communities to stop the end of the world, or the universe, or the multiverse. It's usually a race against time and circumstance to stop a villainous plan that would see the end of everything. But with Final Crisis, the tag line "The Day Evil Won" rings very true, and sets things apart somewhat. This isn't about stopping the end of the world, but about bringing the world back once it's ended. The only other crossover I can think of that does something like this is the Bendis-penned Age of Ultron, but even that series relies on time travel to stop the problem before it starts. No such luck here, even though we've got a few time travelling Flashes on the stage.

So by the end of this issue, a few weeks into the future from where we started with Batman at the end of "R.I.P.," the world has ended, evil has won, and Darkseid has unleashed the anti-life equation on the population of Earth. Superman has been given a chance to save Lois' life, but only if he leaves her bedside, and leaves the problems of the world behind. We'll follow him into the Superman Beyond mini-series next week. Batman, last we saw, was strapped into an Apokaliptian machine. What's become of him is unsure.

This isn't the first time Morrison has played with this idea, and it might be interesting, once FC is done, to go back and re-read his "Rock of Ages" story in JLA, in which he envisions another iteration of the dark New Gods taking over the planet. There's certainly parallels, though I think FC is a bit darker. It's easy, perhaps, to envision what this event would be like at some undetermined future date, but to envision it contemporaneously makes the horror of it much more visceral.

As I noted earlier, I'll be taking a brief break from this read-through. Got to take vacations when you can in this life. And it's a good place to hang from a cliff - Wonder Woman and her Furies are about to attack Flashes West and Allen, anti-life appears to have consumed the planet, and Superman's nowhere (or everywhere) to be seen. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 462: Final Crisis #2, August 2008

"Did you think that the Gods would tread lightly when they came among you?"

Shouted/hissed from the mouth of Alpha Lantern Kraken, host to Granny Goodness, this sentence really sums up the kind of Crisis the DCU is facing now. In many instances, these crossover events hinge upon powerful yet equally-fallible beings, whether from Earth or some other planet, and it is this fallibility, this mortality, that proves their undoing. They operate at levels of power that, for the most part, can be understood and conceived, even if they can't always be combatted to begin with. Such is not the case with Darkseid and the New Gods. They're Gods. They represent fundamental cosmic forces, evil ones, unfortunately, but fighting them is like fighting the laws of physics.

Morrison and Jones are very good at bringing this across in the series. The extremely unpleasant scene with Det. Turpin and the Mad Hatter highlights the primal change Terrible Turpin is undergoing. The ease with which the possessed Alpha Lantern incapacitates Batman (who always has a plan...maybe?) helps us to understand exactly how unprepared a world would have to be for the incarnation of Gods on its face. Something like Final Crisis could very easily be used at an end for the DCU, a horrible and unpleasant one, but an end nonetheless. And, really, it would be, if not for the fact that this fictional universe has been gestating a God of its own. It's during the Final Crisis that we begin to see what he might one day become.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 461: Final Crisis #1, July 2008

First, an admission - according to the reading order that I linked to the other day, DC Universe 0 takes place before this issue. It's penned by Morrison, amongst others, and does tie directly in to the events of Final Crisis, but it's also one of those comics that functions far more as advertisement than intrinsic story moment. And since I'm reading Final Crisis through the lens of Batman, and he's not, as far as I recall, in DCU0, I'm going to skip it. Maybe when I get around to reading the FC graphic novel one day, I'll read that comic first.

My favourite image in this issue is the second one, a double-page splash of Metron and Anthro. It has a real Fingerprints of the Gods kind of feel to it, something at once ludicrous and sacred - which, if you really think about it, is an excellent way of describing most religious beliefs. (That is not a denigration, btw. As I tell my students, critiquing something does not mean you don't love it, just that you don't accept its infallibility.)

So what do we do with this initial chapter? Vast, dark, terrible things happen, but it's almost subtle, understated somehow. The Gods have fallen to Earth and one has been murdered, replaying an archetype as old as religious belief. The Guardians have dispatched Alpha Lanterns (one day we'll read through the Geoff Johns Green Lantern run, one of the few places I feel he's really shone as a writer - the Alpha Lanterns are trouble), the Justice League is on the case, and Dan "Terrible" Turpin has wandered into something he's not even remotely prepared for. Though, in some ways, he's being prepared for something far more awful.

Jack Kirby's "Fourth World" saga has its ups and downs. It's not always great, but sometimes it's transcendent. I've never quite understood Darkseid's end goal, but leave it to Grant Morrison to show us. The ad rhetoric surrounding this series was that it was the final part of a trilogy. Looking back, though, I have a hard time placing Infinite Crisis on the same level as the first or the Final. The convoluted storylines made it hard to understand what was at stake, but with this series, and the first Crisis, it was clear: everything. Everything is at stake. And, though we know it's going to work out in the end, like watching a Shakespearean play, adapted from earlier texts, it's how things get to the end, how the story is told, that is important, that resonates.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 460: Batman #701, September 2010

I think this might actually be the first time I've read Batman in this order. The final image of the last issue, Nightwing hold the cape and cowl, segues into the "Battle for the Cowl" crossover (which, I'll admit, I was thinking about reading after Final Crisis - we'll see), but my recollection of the last time I read through the series was that the next time we see Batman, it's in Final Crisis proper. This issue, however, picks up moments after the helicopter crash in the river, and the captioning continues Batman's entry in the Black Casebook.

That makes sense. The Casebook is for his strangest, most inexplicable cases, and the next one he faces is the assassination of a God. And while it may be solvable, it's not necessarily explicable, if you see my meaning. It's a myth. It happens because it happens.

Let me just take a moment to talk about Tony Daniel. I haven't mentioned him much over the last few weeks, except to take exception to his work early on. As I noted in my Final Crisis post yesterday, this issue came out almost 2 years after the last issue, and the very cool thing about that is being able to see the progression Daniel's art has made. He took over Batman after Morrison left, so he's been dealing with these characters on a full-time basis for a long time when issue 701 comes out. It shows. Now, I'm sure he was improving, as we all do, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis while working on the comics I am just now finishing up, but those gradual progressions are often hard to see. It's like watching a child grow up day by day, as compared to seeing a child at 4 and then at 18 and being able to actually see the difference. I also wonder if it has something to do with actually writing the comic as well, rather than being part of a team writing the comic. Getting inside a character's head from a narratological perspective must somehow influence one's visual characterization. The first shot of Bruce sinking beneath the waters in this issue is amazing, as are some of the lovely close-ups of his face. I came down hard on Mr. Daniel early on, and it might have been due to the tradition from which he emerges, but his work here is stellar.

The comic is also a nice prelude to Final Crisis, opening as it does with the caption "Days to Omega: 30." And, as I have with so many of these comics, I'm going to close with Batman's take on things. The skies turn red, and Superman calls: "Drop everything. We need you on this. Someone just killed a god." Batman's casebook notes respond: "Super-people. I've worked so hard to gain their respect, they sometimes forget that I'm flesh and blood. In Superman's world, everything is mythology." Bruce sells himself short, here. He is mythology. Perhaps that's why we love him so much.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Reading the Bat in Morrison's Final Crisis

There were those who loved Final Crisis, and those who hated it, much as there always is with crossover events. I loved it, but, as we've seen over the last few weeks, I'm biased. As such, I've decided that, rather than simply read the Batman comics that take place around Final Crisis, I'm going to read through FC as a part of my read of Morrison's Batman.

However, I'm going away for a bit over the weekend, so there'll also be a pause of 4 days in the read. I'll set some pre-read comics (always a necessity in a project like this) to post, but they won't be Morrison or Batman-related. And, maybe, it's good that we take a break where we do.

For anyone interested, this is the read order I'll be following over the next little bit. Only Final Crisis: Revelations is not written by Morrison, but I have to say that one of my favourite products of this era of the DCU is Rucka's "Crime Bible." I actually used it, and Revelations, in my MA Thesis.

So it'll look like this:

Batman #701
Final Crisis #1, 2, 3
[4 Day Break]
Superman Beyond #1, 2
Final Crisis: Revelations (should be the weekly graphic novel next week)
Final Crisis: Secret Files
Final Crisis: Submit
Final Crisis #4, 5
Batman #682, 683
Final Crisis #6, 7
Batman #702

You'll note that two of the Batman comics come well after the number we're up to, and they were published almost 2 years later. They fill in spaces between "R.I.P." and Final Crisis, and I'm not certain why they ended up being published when they were. Either Morrison hadn't figured out how Bruce got to where he gets, or he had, and people wanted to know so they published it. I'm unsure.

Once we hit Batman #702, that'll be the end of Morrison's run on that title (with the exception of the 700th anniversary issue). On to Batman and Robin, probably my favourite take on the team and the characters. But first, it's time for the end of the world...onward? 

Also, here's a much more comprehensive reading order, going back years before Final Crisis was ever published. One day...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 49: 1602 #3, December 2003

There's a couple of parts of this comic in which we get an inkling that the 1602 world isn't just an experiment in displacing the characters of the Marvel Universe, but actually a part of that very same universe. "...I merely watch," the text of the final caption box on the first page, is the blatant clue as to the narrator's voice, and the back of his head shows up in a later panel. That Uatu makes his presence known makes 1602, at the very least, a possible What If world, which, by this point, have been acknowledged as part of the Marvel multiverse.

These questions of multiversality (or, to quote Morrison, multiversity) offer some interesting ways of coming at superhero comics. Leaving aside for a moment that a newly-published theory is actually positing interaction between parallel universes, in many ways, especially for the last decade or so, we've seen rampant tacit interaction between parallel comics universes. There is a long history of multiverses and alternate realities in superhero comics, stemming from the "imaginary stories" of the fifties and sixties all the way to Morrison's current meditation on the concept in Multiversity. Interesting shorthands have been created that allow writers to deal with multiverses, the notion of "the Bleed" being perhaps the most useful, and most used. These veins of the multiverse not only separate the various dimensions, but also parse the universe in terms of the biological, a metaphor with which we are fundamentally in tune. And while this notion, and its genesis in the differing vibrational rates of alternate Earths (see Flash v.1 #123) primarily finds its origins in DC Comics and their eventual offshoot Wildstorm, Marvel writers, Jonathan Hickman notable amongst them, have taken up the concept in the Marvel Universe(s). The Bleed, or the veins of the multiverse, become a concept in numerous multiverses from different publishers, and thus become a metaphoric link between economically disparate fictions. Thus we see a version of the Sentry show up in Final Crisis, gathered together with other versions of Superman (along with a version of Supreme), or we see the Avengers take on a barely concealed version of the Justice League in a recent issue of that series. These veins allow us to think superhero comics not as disparate fictions attempting to grapple with the mythic resonances of these kinds of characters, but as parts of an organic whole, combinations and permutations moving toward some kind of solution. Whether or not the solution even exists is beside the point. It is the movement that matters.

Not that this says anything about the comic in question, really. This issue, at least, combats the problem I was thinking about yesterday, that of the novelty of revelation carrying the story more than the narrative itself. Things happen in this issue. Major events propel the plot forward and characters are developed in such a way that they are made distinct from the archetypes from which they are drawn. Not too distinct, mind you, but enough that we can see the way in which the different time period manages to change the surfaces of the characters at the very least. But I still can't get away from the idea that this story would not be nearly as well-regarded if it didn't feature the Marvel superheroes. Only three issues in and I'm already getting ready to set it aside and read something else before finishing the series. But I did say there'd be music by next weekend, which means the series needs to be finished, in which case, I'll see you again tomorrow, direct from the 17th century.

Crossovers, Mega-Crossovers, and the Fools Who Love Them interlude

So, as I'm considering the massive marketing machine that has for so many years been the multi-part crossover, Marvel and DC are in the midst of their BIGGEST CROSSOVERS EVER!!!!

I am, of course, talking about Marvel's "Secret Invasion" and DC's "Final Crisis". The two have taken decidedly different approaches to the crossovers, and the effect is quite interesting.

Marvel have apparently been building the secret invasion for years. Or rather, Brian Bendis, the evil genius mastermind behind the crossover, has. Years back, when he started up New Avengers, Bendis alluded to a sinister force within S.H.I.E.L.D. Little or nothing was ever mentioned of it again, the House of M came and went, as did the Civil War, and all of a sudden the Skrulls invaded and everything made sense. The main series, Secret Invasion, is a surprisingly stand-alone story. We have invasions of Skrulls, and heroes doing their best to repel them. The really interesting bit is when you follow not only this title, but Bendis' two Avengers titles as well. In these, he travels back to various events he set up all those years ago, and shows how they were actually pieces of the invasion. One likes to think he set it all up. I really believe he did, because that makes the last few years of Avengers comics even better than they already were. And they were pretty amazing. Of course, Marvel has the invasion spreading out into all of their titles, which really does give the feeling that this event is impacting all the of the heroes and forging changes in the shared universe.

DC, on the other hand, have gone a different route. As far as I can tell, the Crisis is not impacting any of the currently published titles. Instead, we have a number of mini-series branching out of the main one. I have to admit to having a soft spot for Final Crisis, as it is written by my favourite comics writer, Grant Morrison. But it just doesn't seem to have the impact that Marvel's invasion is having. I feel a little hypocritical writing that, as one of my biggest problems with the previous Infinite Crisis series was that you have to have read 5 or 6 other series for it to make any sense whatsoever. Final Crisis seems to mostly stem from Morrison's mega-crossover (which will be discussed in greater detail in a later column) "Seven Soldiers", most specifically Jack Kirby's New Gods and their fall to Earth. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun, and once the series, which is only 3 issues strong so far, gets more steam, it'll bleed into the other series. However, as my fellow comic fans will atest, an important part of following one hero or another is trying to keep straight just when in the hero's life a particular even happens. If Batman is undergoing a mental breakdown in his own title, when are we supposed to assume that he was captured by the Apokaliptan gods in Final Crisis?

(Try geeking out more than that. I dare you.)

So, the verdict, so far, is that the "Secret Invasion" event seems to be hitting more emotional highs than "Final Crisis". The action is faster, the consequences more far-reaching. "Final Crisis" seems to be a self-contained story, rather than the crossover it was advertised (or assumed, perhaps) to be. Morrison has said that if DC hadn't allowed him to do the story in official continuity, he would have done it as an All-Star title, which perhaps explains why it doesn't seem to be having any affect on the DC universe. Again, with "Secret Invasion" more than half done, and "Final Crisis" not quite to the halfway point, it may be too early to tell which is the better story.

But don't take my word for it. Go read them. They're both excellent.