The Trainwreck

I wrote the following blog several months ago when thinking about the pairing of Final Crisis with Grant Morrison. I decided to shelve it, thinking I was maybe being too harsh.

After reading part 1 of Batman R.I.P. today and flipping through the Final Crisis Sketchbook, I decided to revive it. Both of these big events look like self-indulgent messes that are less about telling engaging stories than they are about a celebrity writer getting free reign to be as cute as he wants to be.

I’ll be very happy if I’m proven wrong, but the first part of Batman R.I.P. and several pages of Japanese superheroes and New Gods-related characters in the Final Crisis sketchbook did not make me excited about what’s to come.

I’m told Grant Morrison turned in the [Final Crisis] issue one script back in November. However, it was not exactly what has been previously discussed and didn’t bounce off from the end of “Countdown” as intended. It also goes off on what can only be described as Morrisonian tangents. You know, what readers call “the good bits.”

from DC’s Final Crisis #2 solicitation:

Meet Japan’s number one pop culture heroes, the Super Young Team and their languid leader, Most Excellent Superbat! Join legendary wrestler Sonny Sumo and super escape artist Mister Miracle as they team to face the offspring of the Anti-Life Equation! See Earth’s superheroes mourn one of their oldest allies! Witness costumed criminals sinking to new depths of cowardice and depravity as Libra takes things too far! Uncover the doomsday secrets of the poisoned city of Blüdhaven! Learn the shocking identity of the prime suspect in the murder of a god! And read on if you dare as Batman becomes the first of Earth’s champions to face the Fallen of Apokolips. All this and a spectacular return from the dead…

Let me go on record and say that, in spite of my moaning about the awfulness of Countdown, I would very much like Final Crisis to be a huge critical success. I don’t like hating comics. I don’t like wasting my money in $2.99 increments each week. I really want to like it.

But man, are the signs not pointing to something good. I was excited when I heard that Grant Morrison was doing the writing, because I considered him to be among the current comics writing geniuses.

As time has passed, I pondered that I also at one point considered Paul Dini to be a creative genius, and look how unpredictably awful Countdown has become. So I thought it worth considering what exactly Final Crisis is.

DC’s “crisis” events are first and foremost displays of continuity. As I wrote in June of 2007,

More than anything else, Infinite Crisis and 52 were a celebration of attention to detail. Whether they were carefully laid plans or the mundane made meaningful, the mega-crossover was woven together from the fabric of what had happened in DC Comics pages for the years preceding. Clues were placed and red herrings were loosed, and those who looked closely and did their homework were rewarded for their attention.

Countdown’s utter regard for continuity, bordering on contempt for any readers who actually remember events that happened in previous issues, is arguably the defining characteristic of its failure. A quick search among online critics or a glance at the sales patterns shows that Countdown performs nowhere near the levels of its inspiration and benefactor, 52.

And turning now to Morrison, take a look at where the man gets most of his credit: Invisibles. Animal Man. All-Star Superman. Marvel Boy. Each of them allowed him to essentially do whatever he wanted to do with little to no regard for any previously established continuity.

Look instead at when he had to work within the confines handed down by his predecessors: his recent run on Batman has received mixed reviews at best; New X-Men was an unprecedented reinvention within the in-continuity series — there was little forced upon him — few rules he had to accept, with the exception of being unable to revive Colossus already. He got to invent secondary mutations so he could have his Rasputin. Seven Soldiers was all about re-inventing characters. Perhaps the only example of Morrison functioning within someone else’s rules with widely-hailed success was his run relaunching JLA in the mid ’90s, which is at least comforting considering the Final Crisis subject matter.

DC has said in no uncertain terms that Infinite Crisis was the middle crisis, and then Final Crisis is what wraps it all up. Dan DiDio has built this up to represent everything a DC reader of the past three decades would expect it to represent … and then half a year before it starts shipping, he reads the script for the first issue and it isn’t what it’s supposed to be.

Well what did he expect? I am not in any way trying to claim that Grant Morrison isn’t a talented or creative storyteller. What I am definitely saying, though, is that DC’s Crisis events exist by respecting, working with and building continuity, and that is not an area where Morrison has shined. He’s at his best when he gets to take the slightly familiar and run with it, however he sees fit.

I think I can safely say that Final Crisis will be an interesting story, but DC’s strength has been in its ability to build interesting stories out of astonishingly utilitarian works. The gamble and the uncertainty with Final Crisis was in the decision to give such a continuity-laden job to someone whose professional body of work doesn’t match up with the task.