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 - 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...