Review: Final Crisis #5 (Final CRISIS in general)
AKA I Am Completely Lost
legionfan1964 from the DC Comics message boards got this rant off his chest:
I’ve been reading DC comics continuously since before I was 10 years old, I’m in my 40s now, and I have very little idea what is going on in Final Crisis. Please pardon me while I rant for a minute.
There is no narrator and there are no central main characters (that I can identify as such) that are really driving the story. Yeah, I can tell that Darkseid is the bad guy, he’s instituted a big master plan, and the world is in trouble. But this is basically the plot of nearly every comic book. What makes a story interesting are the subtleties, how characters interact, how they respond to the bad guy’s threat, and how they triumph over the bad guy, using their powers or smarts or whatever. None of that is apparent to me in Final Crisis – it’s either glossed over or expressed in a way that I am unable to follow.
I don’t read every DC book, but I think I have a good working knowledge of most characters in the DC universe. And from the way they are drawn / portrayed, I don’t know lots of the characters in this story, or even whether or not I am SUPPOSED to know them. I can’t follow the time-frame of this story. When the action changes from one location to another, I can’t tell where I was or where I am now, who is talking, who is fighting, or often what they are talking about – just that Darkseid is a bad dude.
I know Grant Morrison has written some pretty good stuff, and JG Jones has drawn some pretty good stuff, but this is just a confusing mess. I can’t help but think that a few captions here & there or some “Previously…” recaps would have gone a long way toward making this story more accessible and enjoyable. I really hope it gets a lot more coherent in the remaining 2 issues.
Sorry for the rant, just had to get this off my chest. Does anyone else feel this way or am I alone in this?
Dozens of fanboys disagreed with him on the message boards- a bit condescendingly of course. But he’s right- FINAL CRISIS requires a reader to search blogs, message boards, and interviews to determine what is going on.
Writer Grant Morrison had stated that, similar to techno music, he wanted to cut out the unnecessary transitions and exposition in traditional comics by decompressing the issues. Unfortunately it resulted in what seems like random scenes, unknown settings, and it doesn’t help that DC characters constantly change costumes and artists take liberties with creative interpretation. It doesn’t help that there are no true protagonists, either.
The apologists (and as FINAL CRISIS has lumbered along all year- including a delays- they grow) are out in full force. For some reason, they have no issues with not having a narrator, and are 100% versed in New God history, and can follow the plot, awkward transitions, and ambiguous artwork that is subject to a multitude of interpretation (my initial observations of JG Jones and Carlos Pacheco’s panel layout and scenes are almost always incorrect. ) In fact, if you were an inspiring artist and tried to sell FINAL CRISIS to a publisher, you’d be laughed at because it’s impossible to follow coherently. I’ve truly never experienced something like that since the Image Boys back in the 1990’s. It’s like no one cares about Sequential Art 101.
In terms of plot, the basic outline IS simple, but for some reason it takes 5 issues and a bunch of mini-series just to say: Darkseid has figured out the anti-life equation, and is turning our world into the 5th world. Like the heroes, the readers have to figure everything out. The bad news is, one must re-read every issue and spin-off to even remember what’s going on, PLUS read online research, wikipedia, reviews, and message boards to find out what’s going on.
As many fans stopped getting FINAL CRISIS after FC#1 failed to live up to expectations, the remaining fans are all loyalists, so the reviews and annotated page analysis blogs are mostly positive. Morrison’s interviews and his stated goals are very positive, too. In fact, he really has a good grip on it, and the scripts looked great. The execution was poor, and the target audience is too small for a CRISIS event.
In conclusion, ONLY by reading the online annotations, and having a fanboy connect all the obscure references and dangling plot points and symbols, can FINAL CRISIS be fully understood. To me, that weakens it. For younger readers, it’s not a big deal. To me it is.
Compare FC to Marvel’s Secret Invasion. Each issue of SI has a recap of the previous issue, a “who’s who” at the beginning, and easier to follow artwork. SI has its own set of problems (namely nothing happens for the bulk of the series), but at least it’s “user friendly”.
So, no, legionfan1964, you are not alone. I just hope you are not actually buying these comics in this financial CRISIS. I borrow them from a friend.
Marvel and DC dropped the ball this year- they continue to hype and hype and fail to deliver of the crossover events.
Similar Posts:
- Review Final Crisis #6: Batman dies?
- Review: Final CRISIS #7 (of 7) – what happened?
- Review: DC Comics Final Crisis #1 (SPOILERS)
- Review: DC Comics’ Countdown to Final Crisis Series
- DC Comics Final Crisis #2 Review Spoilers
DailySkew RANDOM Posts:
- Countdown to Final Crisis, Part 2
- Slumdog Millionaire: Movie of the Year
- Hillary Clinton in Florida
- 19 Killed in Rio Shootout; No One Cares
- DC Comics – Red Robin 7 Review, Red Robin 8 Review
naw man you guys are haters. I need to re-read Final Crisis as one thing to understand everything, it’s similar to seven soliders , It wasn’t straight forward, because the exiled monitor scenes made no sense to me, but everything else was like icing on the Cake. Grant Morrison is a fricking GENIUS
I’m really starting to enjoy it also. I got in late after buying the first issue and not really liking it. I recently reread that then went and bought the other issues along with several of the tie-ins. This is shaping up to be a interesting finish to the crisis.
I’ll go for DC on this one. SI is fun to see, five minutes and we’re done. Great art from Yu, big bombs, big bad guys and plot is really easy. But when you get Final Crisis and start to put up the points of the story, looking at the big picture you see the diference. In four issues FC had more things going on than 7 of Secret Invasion.
The argument that FC critics prefer SI is a textbook strawman argument. In countless threads, critics have stated legitimate and detailed reasons for disliking FC. Despite these legitimate criticisms, FC diehards invariably revert to the argument that the critics prefer slugfests or something equally mindless. This doesn’t happen as often in other threads talking about other writers’ works. In most other threads, people disagree and actually argue about the work, rather than going straight for the personal attacks.
I think the reason why certain FC fans need to lash out in this manner is because they feel personally hurt by the criticisms of FC and Morrison’s work in general. A portion of their ego/identity is derived from the fact that they’re fans of Morrison’s and to insult his work is to insult them.
So for these particular fans, you guys need to chill. Nobody’s insulting you and your insults portray you in a bad light. And just because we dislike FC doesn’t mean we like mindless garbage.
I just can’t stand Morrissons way of writing, showing nothing but hinting everything, jumping from uninteresting third-stringer to uninteresting fourth-stringer character never stating which of it was important and which of it was just nostalgic customer service. So much is happening off-panel, and I’m sick and tired to do the detective work in the Internet to find out what’s going on. Final Crisis just does not make me care about what’s going on and what’s happening to those myriads of obscure characters. It does not challenge me to find out. It’s just annoying me.
And that has nothing to do with Secret Invasion, which is a rather lame event, but does not manage to make me angry at the author for his writing. That’s it.
SI is a straightforward Bendis event. I have no intentions of buying or reading it.
Final Crisis is typical Morrison, especially with how his style is splitting fans. That’s what bugs me. FC on the whole has been hit and miss so far.
Other than the facts that they’re both mega-events, the plots boil down to the invasions of earth in the name of religion, and the “bad guys” are supposed to “win” in both stories, they’re completely different.
Final Crisis is written with ONE VOICE. Everyone seems out of character
Look, I’m enjoying both series. And I’ve been out of the Marvel fold for a couple years now (recent and possibly future developments intrigue me more). But I like DC’s story more; largely because I flat out love the New Gods. And as a fan of theirs, I’ve known for years that a vast majority of comic readers don’t get them and don’t like them. So I totally get why people might not like FC.
There’s no faszination in this story. Gazillions of characters, many of whom I never heard of, constantly changing protagonists. Why should I care – and for whom??? Final Crisis does not make me curious about all those people running around. A good story should manage to get me interested into all this stuff, should make me motivated to track down all this Seven Soldiers series and the New Gods and Sunny Sumo who is the pinnacle of obscurity to me
But Final Crisis doesn’t. It makes me even less interested in Seven Soldiers and all the other stuff.
I love the story and I am completely engaged. It has inspired me to do the research on the characters I’m not familiar with. I like the fact that the first time I read each issue I’m not going to get everything. It makes more fun for me. But i understand where you are coming from as well.
Though I do enjoy Final Crisis, I agree about it not really vibing well with with the previous Crisis events. I’m not sure why it should really be considered a third part of the trilogy.
Expectations for a variety of different reasons really did work against this event. Still, I think it’s pretty good regardless.
Speaking of no-prizes … Is this the No-prize series?
I bet Stan Lee didn’t realize the monster he created.
Sounds like this series would test my no-prize powers.
I wonder if hard to understand novels, replete with symbolism, are no-prize material?
Hey Tony,
I was in a rush, but thanks for bringing up something along the lines of: how WE are accused of being over people’s heads, and how OUR work isn’t marketable.
It’s CRAZY how DC invested so much time, hype, and money into something that only 20 people in the world can fully grasp without any help.
the thing is, i read grant’s interviews, and he sounds like he created alan moore’s twilight of the gods mixed with kingdom come and watchmen.
but it really reads like a poor man’s seven soldiers.
it is not a “crisis”. if this was vertigo or elsewords, everyone would like it.
Glad you picked up my thought. I, too, was in a rush and wanted to mock DC and say that I would redouble my efforts to write obscure stuff that only you and I understand with the Dream Seeker. The more obscure, the better.
Getting published is a work. ‘Nuff said.
heheheheheehee
I’m a 30 year old who never read comics before this year but picked them up because of the batman movie. So far ‘ve read maybe about 40 or so comics. I understand and enjoy Final Crisis. I didn’t know anything about the DCU, I have no friends who read comics. Just reading closely and paying attention, and looking up stuff when I don’t understand it. Just like I read everything. FC#5 was the most enjoyable comic I’ve read so far.
Congrats, D.D. I envy you.