Travis Hedge Coke
Patricia Highsmash
Five Ways to Read Final Crisis 2
Non-Morrison Geometry
by Travis Hedge Coke
“In
The
Beginning
There WAS an end
“So like man —
Cain didn’t MURDER
His crazy brother —
“The
Whole
Thing was a
FANTASTICSUICIDE.
Hugh Beane”
– Suzuki Beane, Sandra Scoppettone and Louise Fitzhugh
Final Crisis is written by Grant Morrison.
What if we only read the parts of Final Crisis which are not written by Grant Morrison? Some are editorial diktat. Some were suggested by Morrison or collaborative, some riffs on scenes or sequences written for the main comic, and others are seemingly only branded or published concurrent to Final Crisis. What strange angled shape would those comics form as a hyperstory surrounding, supporting, and shooting through Morrison’s?
Here, as time becomes space, reading order becomes exceptionally superfluous. A shared strict chronology is counter to the comics and their occurrences. An angst for many a comics reader, a medium whose commentators can be famous for extensive reading lists and shuffled orders worried over with sweat and tears.
One of the reading lists for Final Crisis that I came across, researching for these tries suggests putting Batman and Robin #8, which has flashbacks to Final Crisis and reveals things left cliffhangers by that story, immediately after the plot that becomes a cliffhanger begins. Reading orders are too often calculated on providing answers as soon as a mystery has begun. Other reading lists demand first appearances for every character not created for Final Crisis be read or skimmed before reading page one of FC, and what good? what good?
Kal-El! Kal-El! Lama Sabachthani!
Resist, Secret Files, Legion of Three Worlds float with Final Crisis in a nebulous chronology, a nebula of comics coalescing and spinning off, radiating and contracting with our attentiveness.
George Perez, Ryan Sook, Geoff Johns, Len Wein, Greg Rucka are not beholden to the nebula for their stardust. Their part needs its shine. The hyperstory can assemble itself.
Was Countdown to Final Crisis always counting down to Final Crisis? It is now.
The Death of the New Gods
The Death of the New Gods, drawn and written by Jim Starlin, begins with the murder of the God of Death’s human vessel.
Within pages, photojournalist Jimmy Olsen agrees to cover for local police, on a murder investigation, out of professional quid pro quo. This is treated, internally, as not at all a bad thing or a sign of ugly times.
Through the entire visit to the decedent’s hospital room, everyone smiles so big; press, police, children.
Metron, God of Scientific Inquiry, wakes from dreams of destiny to a bedroom with a fuzzy blanket, Dr Strange’s window pane, and smoke emanating from an unaddressed recreational pipe.
As if to highlight to vile callousness, Desaad, God of Sadism, now has a strong right hand named, Justeen, after the Marquis de Sade’s unwaveringly kind, compassionate, and forthright victim, and like Justine in so many borrowed stories (Frankenstein; The Alexandria Quartet), Justeen, too, immediately dies.
High Father, patriarch of gods, and deification of guy who has seen some shit, is dead, existing only as educational recordings.
Himon, God of Foxholes and Behind Enemy Lines Action, teacher, father, wise man and hater of all things fascist, is taking a vacation because the enemy action is too hot for him.
For anyone familiar with the New Gods, especially as portrayed by their creator, Jack Kirby, Death opens strange and fractured and wrong. But, no one seems to know it is wrong. They carry on, callous, dismissive, amused.
Barda. Black Racer. Magnar. Lightray. As Darkseid resurrects all who serve him from Apokalips, New Gods of New Genesis are being slaughtered left and right, and so, too, those of Apokalips. Kanto. Mortella. Hardly any of them given any characterization in these pages, they all seem to die pointless, repetitive murders.
Superheroes investigate, as Olsen does, but they too crack glib and seem annoyed to even be bothered.
Superman, within pages of appearing, is as classist and racist as Darkseid, who narrates Superman’s fight with Orion, calling Orion, “My gene pool run amok.”
What strange world is this, wherein Superman is as bigoted as Darkseid and Big Barda, energetic, passionate warrior, is commemorated with the death of hope and her “loving spirit”? Scott Free, God of Escapes and Freedom, dressing in black and committing to evil? Scott Free, God of Escapes, called, “the embodiment of loyalty?”
Himon turned evil. Scott Free turned evil. Forever People seemingly evil. Darkseid, himself, seeing an end coming waits for death and in the same sense, pursues it. What is this world of upset and lies? What distressing, paranoid suicide is this?
Rage of the Red Lanterns
Raging dead bodies, conscious of their anger and pain, vomiting blood hot as molten lava and bright as flares.
“With blood and rage of crimson red,
ripped from a corpse so freshly dead,
together with our hellish hate,
we’ll burn you all, that is your fate!”
– The oath, the promise of the Red Lanterns.
Nei Ruffino’s colors and Shane Davis’ pencils contrast the cool confidence of the Green Lanterns with their bilious, vicious counterparts. The writer, Geoff Johns, takes the Green Lanterns on an investigation of the broken pieces of Anti-Monitor husk, a cosmic interreality god turned empty busted eggshell in outer space.
The Green Lanterns, as the Red Lanterns attack and grow confident, begin to doubt. To doubt cosmic law. To doubt the goodness of allies. To doubt their path.
Requiem
J’onn J’onzz, serene and alien in his glass coffin on Mars, eyes open but dead, flowers resting on the lid above him. Superheroes surround the decedent, heads bowed, all more or less showing the same pro forma respect, all holding their bodies, their heads, their hands the exact same way.
Black Canary cries. Batman just looks like Batman.
J’onn was weakened, drugged, tortured, beaten, then murdered. He fights back ferociously, an army of superheroes come and murder for him, in his defense. Or, so his power of illusions makes some present believe. With his death, the illusions fade.
With his death, he sends out one final thought, to all his friends, his colleagues and allies. Initially, they interpret it as a “cry for help,” but two heroes, Green Lantern and Green Arrow, decide it could not be, because he sent the same thought to women. Specifically, to Arrow’s sometime romantic partner and both of their sometime leader in the Justice League, Black Canary.
At the end of the comic, alone with the body, Batman places some of his favorite cookies atop the coffin.
Rogue’s Revenge
One day, some supervillains who had a nice quasi-sociable relationship to their local superheroes, murdered a kid superhero.
As the proselytizer of the gods declares the Earth “littered” with murder weapons and promising, “Evil comes! It comes to this world,” these scared, bemused supervillains reject the promise, and decide if the world is ending, if the rules are gone, they will go out on their own terms.
Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins present ground level superheroics in America as a mess, a state of flux, broken ethics and angry pretentious frustration. Kids can be killed. People can be replaced, swapped out for a new variation on the same theme. Everyone is dehumanized.
Balancing Act
The truth of Darkseid’s proselytizer, the message he really carries, is that the balance is not good and evil, hero and villain, Jerry and Tom, but everything and Darkseid.
And, of course, Darkseid is waiting on his suicide.
Last Will and Testament
“My name is Brion Markov,” says the prince of Markova, in Last Will and Testament, written by Brad Meltzer and drawn by Adam and Joe Kubert. Black Lightning tells him to be with his family as the world ends, or to help him look for his daughters. A prince and the Secretary of Education of the United States sit and talk, two men at a table set for four people.
Batman and Robin, father and adopted son, patrol the streets from high above them. The old Robin, Nightwing, joins them. Batman says something about Robin being with his parents, and it is impossible to tell if he means at their graves or if he has momentarily forgotten he has adopted an orphan.
Meanwhile, women sulk, one after another, out in cemeteries, at night, in the rain and dark. They cry and they place their bets.
Men commit to slow weird suicides, and Brion is, in his, successful enough to slit his throat.
But, he lives.
Resist
Resist is a weird clash of angers and horniness after the collapse of all society into a thrall of Darkseid. Soldiers and supervillains and magic beings and mortal just folks clash back and forth in pointless, nonsense battles, and two people hook up, and in sex, find their reason to rebel.
Legion of 3 Worlds
At the end of time, the Time Trapper, covered in cockroaches, tells himself, “This boy of broken dreams and blood and rage.” He lifts up “this boy,” the Silver Age, 1950s-1980s Superboy, and throws him back to the year 3008 CE.
If Earth and life as we know it is conquered by Darkseid and ends in the early 21st Century, how can there be a human society in 3008? Would that not imply Darkseid failed?
Ah, there are alternate timelines. Alternate future histories.
And, this “31st Century is a horrible place for boys and girls.”
Penciler, George Perez, does all he can to bring gravitas and realness to this vibrant strange, cosmic story, these vibrant, awkward, cosmic characters. Every object has weight, density and measure. Each face as weight and its own measure.
The children of the future, the Legion of Super-Heroes, call forth Superman from their past, our Superman. He will have to join them and combat a teen him from an alternate past.
The fragility of identity, of personal past, personal being, the fragility of societies, worlds, and universes becomes too clear as panels become overloaded with whirling, glowing, fighting figures. Figures who mirror other figures. People who reflect their alternate reality selves and who buck against their alternate history selves.
“Are you $#&@!?%ing kidding me, Kal?” a Legionnaire asks Superman, “You want to $#&@!?% redeem Superboy-Prime?”
Superman tells him not to swear.
Superman, arch often at the best of times, is facing himself, immature, horrible. Bad.
Legion of 3 Worlds shows how easy, especially at elevated, cosmic, interreality levels, corruption can seed, exploit, brutalize and grow.
Whether or not Darkseid conquers 21st Century Earth, evil is. Cruelty, guilt, jealousy and sadism exist. Fascism exists and so, too, its attractiveness in the right moments, under the right education.
Revelations
Ninety-some percent of the Earths population, the people, the dogs, birds, everything, possessed by Darkseid, by the will and hate of a suicidal space god, a living dead idea, the Huntress, of all people, withstands the control. Renee Montoya, the Question, is impervious, too, but she has a special blessing from the Hand of God.
The world’s oldest murderer pursues them, enslaving both of God’s strong, compassionate hands, Vengeance and Mercy, the welfare task force of a largely absent Heaven. Their strongest, their coolest, kindest, bravest, best allies are missing or enslaved.
Two women who do not like themselves very much, blamed by everyone, chased by all, hunted by a world. The end of the world. Tuesday.
In the end, a little sacrifice, everything works out. A prayer. A miracle. Just another Tuesday.
Countdown and Aftermath
From dust we return to dust. The fine particulate matter of every plot thread and character from Countdown, which serialized down, reducing in number as it went, becoming Countdown to Final Crisis, begetting Countdown to Mystery, Countdown: Arena, and the stretch of thematic balance on the other end of Final Crisis’ serialization, the Aftermath miniseries, like, Run, Ink, and Dance are like unto the collection and spreading of ashes or mulch. Put them on your flowers and hope. Dump them in the sea and call it closure and dissolution.
Final Crisis is wrapped in these multitudes of tales and trademarked characters. They suture it into the broad weft of the DC Comics shared universe, they trade on its energy and promise, counter it, shape it through a priori presentations, changes, events, which the main Final Crisis storyline would have to touch on or reckon with. Coloring our perception and our anticipation of Final Crisis in ways the advertising for that Crisis, alone, could not.