I Also Have Issues With Issues I Don’t Have


Final Crisis 7Since Doomanchu is proudly serving pancakes (and his country) right now in Iraq, I’m taking this opportunity to honor him by revisiting his lone post on Doomkopf. And by “honor” him, I do in fact mean “blatantly steal the idea from his post and relate it to something that came out this week.”

The issue (which I do not have, to be clear) that I have issues with is, of course, Final Crisis #7. I stopped buying this train wreck after issue #3, and I don’t regret my decision for a second. All my comic friends seem to have kept up with the series despite their better judgment, and even the guy from my local comic store was more than willing to tell a potential customer why it isn’t worth buying.

These are the issues I had with this particular issue:

1) There is apparently an Earth in the multiverse where everything is exactly the same except everyone’s black. And no, I’m not talking about the Milestone universe (those guys are back on New Earth, remember?). DC must not realize and/or care that they’ve established there are only 52 universes in the multiverse. We’ve already had two universes destroyed (15 & 51), several that will probably never see play again (like Lord Havok’s Earth or the Justice Riders world), and one that’s exactly the same except dudes are chicks and vice-versa (11). A universe where everyone is black is stupid, because who the frak cares if everyone is black? We just inaugurated our first black President last week. If the world is ready to appoint a black man as the leader of the free world, surely they’d be willing to accept a black man as the defender of the world. I mean, not being killed by an alien invasion is still not being killed, no matter who’s doing the preventing of said killing.

2) Bruce Wayne is alive somewhere in a cave. It’s not like any of us thought Bruce was actually dead, but Grant Morrison barely waiting 22 pages to confirm that the major death in Final Crisis #6 didn’t matter is ridiculous. It seems like Bruce is trapped in the past, or maybe the future, or possibly just in an alternate reality somewhere. The point is, he’s alive, and they’re going to be able to do another huge crossover in a few years when the next Batman movie comes out to bring him back from the dead. Let’s just hope DC doesn’t make the same mistake they made this time and hire Grant Morrison to write the thing.

Considering I didn’t actually read the issue, the first and last few pages were the only ones that stood out in my mind. Hypothetically, all the stuff in the middle could have made the start and end of the issue make sense. Of course, hypothetically, Final Crisis #4-7 could have made the first three look good (and I don’t mean by comparison). I’d be willing to bet that’s not the case, though, and I think I might actually be fine not knowing for the rest of my life.

But if you’re one of those folks that like people to “read” comics before they critique them, be sure to stop back this Saturday for the Book of Doom. Jim and Del actually read the thing.