* Final Crisis #7, by Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke, came out yesterday. I reviewed the entire series here. There’s a burgeoning comment thread attached to that review, mostly focusing on critical approaches to Grant Morrison comics, here. And there’s a semi-related post about how Morrison uses the concept of “the future,” and about the Icelandic trip-hop/techno outfit Gus Gus for some reason, here.
* Believe it or not, other websites have been discussing this comic too! Here’s Jog’s review. As with most of his FC reviews, he’s skeptical…
Final Crisis is a deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply flawed work.
…but ultimately mostly pleased. Kudos to him for leading with how the opening of this issue is basically Morrison dragging Dark Reign‘s zeitgeist misreading out into the street and beating it to death. Made me laugh to beat the band, as the fella says. Did everyone note the pharaonic architecture of the, ahem, White House?
* Douglas Wolk does his usual annotation thing, as does David Uzumeri. Both of them detect a heaping helping of Watchmen references and Alan Moore bashing–young(er) imaginative Morrison slaying the Dark Father, that sort of thing. Personally I didn’t see it–I remain a bit thrown by how out of the blue the Mandrakk/Monitor climax seems after six issues of “this comic is about Darkseid,” though Jog’s comparison of the Monitor digression in Final Crisis/Superman Beyond to the similarly tangential presence of Darkseid himself back in the Sheeda-centric Seven Soldiers helped me contextualize it a bit better. But if you’re really going to read the climax as Morrison slaying a particular way of doing comics, Moore is as good a target as any, though Matthew Perpetua prefers Brian Bendis.
* And from the sound of this interview with Morrison, so does Morrison. Sayeth Grant:
I wanted to be faithful to the spirit of the King. This had to be a story of gods, of God in fact, hence the ‘cosmic’ style, the elevated language, the total and deliberate disregard for the rules of the ‘screenwriting’ approach that has become the house style for a great many comic writers these days. The emphasis on spectacle and wonder at the expense of ‘realism’, the allegorical approach…it’s all my take on Kirby.
This certainly isn’t the first time he’s taken fairly obvious swipes at the Master of the House of Ideas.
* Just as interesting, however, is the way he uses this interview to express anticipatory displeasure and dismissal of how his own publisher will handle many of the ideas he introduced in Final Crisis. I’ll be honest, this bothers me a bit, since I think he has not exactly been forthcoming about his own role in both the series’ delays and in DC’s inability to properly situate it amid the rest of their line. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about this.
* As is his wont, he goes after the peanut gallery too:
Of course I’m aware of a perpetual and chronic discontent from a particular jaded minority on the internet but I try to overlook their constant expressions of dissatisfaction on the grounds that it’s depressing and often personally abusive.
Surely part of the fun of comics includes following stories across titles? If you like comics, what’s so awful about buying another one to see what happens next? And if you don’t want to buy it, don’t bother. Do something else. Buy cigarettes or booze or bananas. I don’t know!
Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’?
Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant ?
“As long as it feels right and looks brilliant.” Aye, there’s the rub, Grant! YMMV, as they say. But it’s nice to see him once again explicitly prescribe a “buy what you want, read what you want, ignore what you want” remedy for Dem Ol’ Konfuzin’ Event-Komik Blues–even, if he is to believed in this interview, when that cuts against the lasting impact of his own work.
* So what would he want you to want to read, and how would he want you to read it? Comme ca:
FINAL CRISIS # 1- 3
SUPERMAN BEYOND # 1 – 2
SUBMIT
FINAL CRISIS # 4 – 5
BATMAN #682 – 683
FINAL CRISIS # 6 – 7
I’ll probably give the whole shebang another read-through in that order. It’s too bad it’s not going to be collected like that in the near term, but in much the same way that the heroes pray for resurrections, the readers pray for Absolutes.
* This sort of thing drives me crazy, and is actually part of my problem with the intensity of focus some critics have on Morrison comics too:
I found myself wondering what it would be like if comics’ storytelling stopped aping film or TV and tried a few tricks from opera, for instance. How about dense, allusive, hermetic comics that read more like poetry than prose? How about comics loaded with multiple, prismatic meanings and possibilities? Comics composed like music? In a marketplace dominated by ‘left brain’ books, I thought it might be refreshing to offer an unashamedly ‘right brain’ alternative.
Some really, really needs to banish Grant Morrison to Earth-PictureBox Inc. Seriously, there are a lot of exactly these kinds of comics out there. I’m always disappointed when intelligent people–intelligent professional comics-writer people, for god’s sake!–act as though there aren’t because Martian Manhunter hasn’t been in one. How I would have loved to title a post “Carnival of Acme Novelty Library #19″! I really want Alvin Buenaventura to comp Morrison a copy of Kramers Ergot 7. You don’t need the combined might of Superman and Captain Marvel to lift it, Grant, I promise.
* This is getting into the minutiae a bit, but there’s a passage about Wonder Woman that echoed something my friends and I were discussing just yesterday:
NRAMA: Regarding the big legends of the DCU: Superman got his mini-event, Batman took on Darkseid, Flash tries to outrun death, Green Lantern overcomes granny . . . but Wonder Woman turns out to be Anti-Life Patient Zero and spends the bulk of the series as a disfigured thrall. Why does Wonder Woman not have a comparable moment in that context?
GM: I wondered about that myself. I love what Gail Simone (especially) and other writers have done to empower the Wonder Woman concept but I must admit I’ve always sensed something slightly bogus and troubling at its heart. When I dug into the roots of the character I found an uneasy melange of girl power, bondage and disturbed sexuality that has never been adequately dealt with or fully processed out to my mind. I’ve always felt there was something oddly artificial about Wonder Woman, something not like a woman at all.
Having said that, I became quite fascinated by these contradictions and problems and tried to resolve them for what turned into a different project entirely. Partly because I didn’t want to use any of that new material in Final Crisis, I relegated Wonder Woman to a role that best summed up my original negative feelings about the character. My apologies to her fans and I promise to be a little more constructive next time around.
Wonder Woman gets a ‘moment’ in Final Crisis #7 but by that time, Mandrakk has sucked all the life out of the story!
The thing about DC’s Big Three (or Trinity, if you must) is that the only thing that inherently links those three characters is their pop-culture currency from 1966-1978, and the fact that their copyrights are controlled by the same corporation. On an alternate Earth, the DC Trinity consists of Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, and Doc Savage, while Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are consigned to the Wold Newton Universe and WildStorm comics written by Alan Moore and Warren Ellis.
(My pal Matthew Perpetua pointed out to me that in most regular readers’ eyes, the real trinity at this point would probably be Superman, Batman, and Hal Jordan. I’d probably rather read interaction between those three, if only because it probably wouldn’t be about how important the three of them are to each other and the world.)
Thinking about this, I realized that what Wonder Woman needs is an Ed Brubaker/Captain America run. To quote Tyra Banks, I always thought that Captain America had all the potential in the world, I obviously recognized his important role within the fictional Marvel world, he was fun to see in team-ups, and it would constantly frustrate me that no one was producing the post-9/11 Cap book of my dreams, but for the most part I’d written him off because almost all the stories done with him were so lame. In other words, he was Marvel’s Wonder Woman–seriously, replace “post-9/11” with “feminist” and the situations are almost identical. If Marvel had structured their entire universe around, say, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Captain America as a “Trinity,” Cap would have looked like a total unreadable punk by comparison. But they didn’t do that, they used him where it made sense, and eventually they got lucky and Brubaker came along knowing EXACTLY how to use the character, and he turned out to be awesome. Then they killed him and somehow he got even more awesome. Now he’ll come back, probably around the same time as the movie hits, and he really WILL be a big deal to the fans.
To be fair, I actually agree with Mark Millar that Marvel’s real pop-culture magical characters are Spidey, Wolverine, and the Hulk, not Cap, so it’s not a perfectly analogous situation to Supes Bats and WW, but you know what I mean. Point is, instead of forcing her into an “important” role in every because she’s an “important” character–and certainly instead of making every run on her solo book be about how important she is–just tell a cool story with your biggest characters. Eventually someone will come along and really know how to make the character sing to people who didn’t write papers on her in college/aren’t bloggers who focus on gender in DC comics/don’t want her to be 300 in drag, and THEN you can start making a big deal of her again. (Chances are that writer will be Geoff Johns or Grant Morrison, as has been the case with basically all the other major characters at DC over the past few years, and it sounds like in this case it will be Morrison.) I don’t purport to know how that would work anymore than, in the end, I had a clue how to make Captain America work. But I gotta believe someone does, and Morrison seems like a safe bet.
I’m still a little confused as to how the Batman series connects to Final Crisis. Did I miss something along the way? I thought I was paying attention…
Also, I could not agree with you more about Wonder Woman. It always surprised me that they had Jim Lee work on Batman for a year and then Superman for a year and then nothing for Wonder Woman. They keep talking her up but never really backing it up. I think they tried doing this with the Heinberg/Dodson reboot, but that failed miserably and they couldn’t follow it up in time and now we basically have a continuation of the previous series. I really did enjoy Rucka’s run and am enjoying Simone’s but I still feel like it could be so much more.
And just to put it all together in a blender and mash it up… I was once at a Comic Con panel with Grant Morrison, back when he was rebooting JLA, and he said he had also proposed rebooting Wonder Woman as a lesbian feminist, but that DC really didn’t care for that idea.
300 in drag is about as close to my ideal representation of Wonder Woman as you can get.
Thanks for the Final Crisis checklist. I wish I had seen it before reading the series. I was considering writing something on Final Crisis, but backed out when I couldn’t figure out who the space vampire was. I’m not opposed to stories threading across different titles, but I don’t follow the Big Two well enough to have known that this was even taking place. The introduction of key characters could have happened in last week’s Mark Trail and I would have probably been more aware of it.
I love that Morrison decries “the emphasis on spectacle and wonder at the expense of realism” when it was realism that nearly kept me from reading the series and pretty much ensures that I will never revisit it. I can’t remember the last time I saw such a gap between the intent of the writing and the execution of the art. I think that’s where your Los Bros. Hernandez comparison falls apart.
I maintain that if you want a Wonder Woman to succeed, you desperately need to downplay the mythology stuff and keep the emphasis on her being more of a superhero. It’s also silly to try to get in her head and psychology — she works best as this unknowable goddess that people respond to, bringing out the best and worst in people. Greg Rucka had the right idea, but ultimately his comics did not have nearly enough action, and often just felt like talky West Wing things. But making her something of an Oprah figure is brilliant, and introducing Veronica Cale as her Lex Luthor was also an inspired move that should be mined and developed by all subsequent WW writers.
For one of the most entertaining Wonder Woman stories in years, allow me to recommend Incredible Hercules: Love and War, currently available in single issue form from mighty Marvel! 😉
Shaggy: It’s spelled out pretty clearly in Batman #683: Batman gets back to the Batcave after the chopper goes down at the end of RIP. He’s almost immediately called out to investigate the murder of Orion. From there it’s as it was shown in FC proper–Granny Goodness captures him while disguised as that Alpha Lantern. Mokkari and Simyan stick him in their strict machine and use Lump to probe his memories and see what makes him tick so they can a) break him and b) use his memories to create an army of unstoppable super soldiers. Batman is too awesome, he gets free, he shoots Darkseid, he gets zapped with the Omega Sanction and sent back in time.
Also, that’s a good call about not having Jim Lee do a Batman run. Not that Hush or For Tomorrow were anything but an awful sandwich on awful bread with awful juice to wash it down or anything, but yeah.
I don’t like the idea of making Wonder Woman EXPLICITLY about feminism any more than I like the idea of, I dunno, John Stewart or Luke Cage being explicitly about the civil rights struggle.
Steven: I don’t think making WW a Greek myth/culture-based character works because a) old-timey stuff gets old fast in comics; b) making her a blood-splatters sword-and-sandals warrior really makes her incompatible with Batman and Superman, the two most prominent “don’t kill” superheroes there are. I think you can USE her roots in mythology, the same way you can use Superman’s roots on the planet Krypton, but it’s a mistake to make that their permament M.O.
I actually had access to FC #7 early, before I read Superman Beyond #2, and I’d pretty much forgotten what SB #1 was about except the Doctor Manhattan character at that point. So when Mandrakk the Dark Monitor/Space Vampire showed up, I didn’t connect it with SB at all–I connected it with the sinister Monitor back in FC #1. And that worked fine.
Which artist are you talking about, JG Jones? I guess you’re right, he’s a pretty realistic artist. Still, the series gradually moves away from the early issues’ feint in the direction of a cops-and-capes “realistic take” thing, I thought rather effectively.
Matthew: I still like Cheetah.
Ben: Seconded.
aaaah I did indeed miss something. I went back to #683 and found that page. I guess upon reading it the first time my mind honestly didn’t connect it. I kept trying to find it somewhere in FC #6.
Totally agree with Matthew… the Greek mythology needs to be downplayed. I was hoping that was the plan after all the Amazons disappeared at the end of Infinite Crisis, but they really didn’t stay gone for very long.
I wasn’t thinking of the mythological aspect of Wonder Woman so much as I was her personality. It always seemed to me that the difference between Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman is that Superman doesn’t want your help because he wants to protect you, Batman doesn’t want your help because you’d just get in the way, and Wonder Woman expects you to pick up a rock or a stick or whatever is lying around and help you help yourself, with her standing by your side. I don’t really follow Wonder Woman, so I don’t know if this is how she’s normally portrayed, but it’s the kind of Wonder Woman I would read, if done well.
Concerning her compatibility with Batman and Superman, it seems a shame that Wonder Woman as a character should be the one to suffer because she has to accommodate this ‘trinity’, which you already touched on in your original post.
As for her place in the top three characters at DC, I guess it depends on who you ask. You would know better than me if Hal Jordan was back in the readers’ favour. Up until a few months ago I thought he was still a deceased mass-murderer. What’s H.E.A.T. up to these days? But for the general public, there’s no doubt that the three amigos includes Wonder Woman.
And that’s my quota for discussing Wonder Woman met for another year.
I didn’t connect the space vampire with anything. I just couldn’t understand why Superman didn’t just plow through him. I mean, he took out Darkseid. How hard is it to kill a space vampire? The only explanation I could think of was that the space vampire was actually Space Dracula, which would make things considerably more difficult.
I don’t fault the Final Crisis artists. They could draw circles around me any day. I just think they were miscast. I guess I just haven’t read enough modern superhero comics to appreciate the more realistic approach. From what I’ve read, people believe that Mahnke took the series in a less realistic direction for the finale, but the difference between the two is negligible to these eyes. Final Crisis is Kirby Koncepts married with over-rendered, Anti-Life art.
And I think I like Cheetah even more than Wonder Woman.
Steven: “Concerning her compatibility with Batman and Superman, it seems a shame that Wonder Woman as a character should be the one to suffer because she has to accommodate this ‘trinity’, which you already touched on in your original post.”
My concern has less to do with shoehorning the three of them into this weird BFF relationship where everyone worships them and more with the pop-culture impact you mentioned. It’s just weird to make a huge deal out of a vigilante who doesn’t kill, a godlike alien who doesn’t kill, and Leonidas in a tiara.
Giving her something of an Oprah figure would be brilliant, I agree.
I think Wonder Woman needs to save the entire DC Universe, ala Barry Allen. That’s how he went from being a moderately popular character on his last legs to the patron saint of DC. That would give the next creative team a chance to really reinvent the character after some time off rather than just another soft reboot.
My favorite take on Wonder Woman (not to demean other entertaining runs like Greg Rucka or Phil Jimenez) was George Perez’s, because he had the whole “stranger in a strange land” thing going and it gave the character a hook outside of being defined by her villains.
I see Wonder Woman as being kinda like Thor in that neither has the most compelling villains and need something outside the struggle between good guys and bad guys to keep them interesting. Thor really doesn’t have many credible baddies beyond Loki and a couple others, but the palace intrigue of Asgard has kept him interesting during the good times. Ditto for Hulk and his inner struggle or even, say, Hawkman and his romantic dilemnas.
Wonder Woman needs to have something going on in her life that is compelling and encompassing enough that her book could go 12 issus without her fighting Cheetah or Circe and still be fine. Batman or Spider-Man can get by just on fighting their villains because there’s enough there, but Wonder Woman is different.
Carnival of souls
* The carnival of Acme Novelty Library #19 Final Crisis #7 continues: Here are 7 Reasons Why Douglas Wolk Loved Final Crisis. Kevin Melrose rounds up some info on the comic’s prominent, Dark Reign-undercutting use of a superheroic Barack Obama…
Ben, I 100% agree about WW needing to single-handedly doing something huge and positive for the DCU.
Really, they need to get away from the same old villains for her and either build up Cale, as I mentioned earlier, or throw her up against the sort of threats you’d normally have facing the entire JLA. Instead of rehashing the same stories that it is established few people want to read, they need to make a case for why WW is supposed to be so powerful and awesome. The story has to sell that point, not the dialogue.
“The story has to sell that point, not the dialogue.”
Man, is that ever true.
Actually, I think that gets back to a point I’ve thought about a bit over the past half-year or so, which is that oftentimes superhero comics (and movies–cf. The Dark Knight) are a little too much about the ideas the superheroes are supposed to represent and a little too little about doing fun, entertaining stuff with superheroes. Everything is so fraught with symbolism and metaphor and trying to telegraph what each character “represents.” Obviously I have a lot of affinity for that sort of thing or I wouldn’t enjoy Grant Morrison comics (or Frank Miller Batman comics) so much, but in those cases that stuff comes out of the behavior of the characters, not getting from lectured by/about them. It’s particularly egregious with characters like Wonder Woman, where what she represents is actually kind of incoherent.