Grant Morrison quickly establishes the scope of Final Crisis: it is a story as old as time. Maybe borrowing a page from Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, Grant Morrison opens Final Crisis near the dawn of time, as early man is ready to take the next evolutionary step. And borrowing from mythology, man doesn’t take the first step to his own but evolution is handed to him by the gods as Metron, a New God, gives fire to Anthro, the first boy. From that early point in time, Morrison’s tale takes us to modern day Detroit and the death of a god, distant Oa and the Guardians of the Universe, and to the citadel of the Monitors and the guardians of the multiverse.
Grant Morrison has done the crossover event before in DC 1,000,000, another story that jumped through time. Right from the start, that series was a hectic race to the finish as Morrison tried to cram in every idea he possibly could into that story. It fit in perfectly with his JLA, a full-speed-ahead/damn-the-torpedoes series featuring the big guns of DC. But it’s a different world now as the DC heroes have been through identity crisises, infinite crisises, 52 weeks without the trinity and a countdown. When Morrison was on JLA, DC’s general pace was slow, steady and unchanging, perfectly ready for Morrison to inject his manic ideas into. Now, manic ideas are almost the norm as DC tries to keep on topping itself. So it’s only right that in this current DC climate, Morrison tries to bring all the concepts that have been running wild together within the pages of Final Crisis #1.
The tagline for Final Crisis has been “the day evil won.” In this issue, we see evil as business, as religion and as a game to be played by slightly petulant supervillains. Maybe as a last hurrah for the Society of Super Villains, the obscure villain Libra tries to give them a new purpose, using the crime bible from 52 as his basis. The DC villains have been standing still for years now, thinking that working as an organization would benefit them but what have they done? What have they accomplished? Does anyone really think where Lex Luthor, Vandal Savage and Gorilla Grodd failed that this Libra would succeed? More than the others, he does make a shocking killing this issue, one that comes out of nowhere but seriously raises the stakes for the Justice League of America.
While the earthly villains are doing their usual plotting and dreaming of world conquest, something is happening on a much higher level as the death of the New Gods begin to finally have some meaning. Morrison’s goal appears to be to explore their meaning in a world full of powerful beings like Superman and Green Lantern. From Metron giving fire to prehistoric man to the Dark Side Club and some familiar apocalyptian characters, the Fourth World characters feel important again. Ever since the books were canceled the first time back in the 1970s, it’s felt like DC has had no idea what to do with Jack Kirby’s characters, tenderly pulling them out now and again but fearful to alter the spirit of Kirby. But I don’t think that Kirby would have wanted these characters (or any of his characters at DC or Marvel) to be so fearfully revered and remain so unchanged, even over 30 years later. The Fourth World concepts remained stagnant, or worse yet, were modified even more to resemble spandex-clad super-heroes and villains.
Morrison got to play a bit with the Fourth World characters in JLA but it was with the Seven Soldiers series a couple of years ago that he really got to mess with the characters. In the 7S Mister Miracle series, we began to see the New Gods as more than the faux-costumed heroes and villains that they’ve become over time. They became something unexplainable and mindbending as Morrison explored the nature of godhood and how it related to human concepts. He tried to make the New Gods human or at least human-like while trying to show what makes the concept special. In a number of ways (particularly thanks to artistic issues,) the Mister Miracle series failed more than it succeeded and is probably the weakest of the Seven Soldier series. Now he gets to revisit those concepts and will hopefully be more successful.
It would be wrong not to mention JG Jones’s artwork and Alex Sinclair’s coloring on this book. After creating fifty two covers for 52, the two blend together seamlessly. Jones has really grown over the last couple of years as an artist. Gone are the occasional stiff and lifeless figures seen in Marvel Boy. Gone is the over-reliance on photo references that made parts of Wanted distracting. The artwork in Final Crisis is heroic and villainous; it shows these characters in their glory and in their depravity. Like Rag Morales’s artwork in Identity Crisis, the artwork goes a long way to establishing a heroic ideal and a malignant underside to it. Sinclair’s colors give a shine and glow to the world and give it a life. Unlike a lot of computer coloring, the effects are not over-done and don’t distract from the artwork or the story.
Final Crisis #1 isn’t the greatest comic book ever but it’s subtle and intriguing enough that, if the rest of the series capitalizes on all of the ideas and concepts in this book, this could be a great crossover event. Morrison has thrown a lot of idea in this book, from the death of gods to the death of heroes and he even makes the multitude of Monitors interesting. And after the mess that was Countdown, anything that makes the re-emergence of the Monitors seem like a good idea must be a good book.
Final Crisis #1
“D.O.A.: The God of War!”
Written by: Grant Morrison
Drawn by: JG Jones
Colored by: Alex Sinclair
Lettered by: Rob Leigh
June 2, 2008
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