Random Final Crisis Thoughts!

Long time, no see, huh? Such is law school. But I finally got a chance to read my Final Crisis HC, so...figured I'd opine a bit as I flip through it again.

-So, Morrison apparently sees the Green Lantern Corp as a police force, as opposed to Johns seeing them more as a military force. I mean, they're both, and they're neither, but the straight police procedural aspect Morrison uses in this story is interesting.

-I would personally pay cover price for an comic full of nothing but Giganta stomping on Dr. Light. But I guess the way the sick freak was finally put down was also appropriate.

-(Wow, that last one looked kind of weird taken out of context. This is not a fetish site.)

-"I am not averse to the taste of human flesh, sir!" is a great, great line.

-You know what? I'll say it: I liked the new Martian Manhunter look. And it's probably not coming back. Alas.

-I love how dismissive Batman is of the New Gods. Incidentally, does FC start immediately after RIP, or do they overlap?

-I can't tell most of the male Monitors apart. Kind of makes the cloak and dagger stuff hard to follow.

-Do the Japanese super-teens do anything important in any of the FC tie-ins? Because they really don't add to the story. I like Aquazon's design, though.

-Pity Alpha Lantern Kraken. I think of all the poor folks possessed by the dark gods, she definitely had it the worst.

-If his minions could get good hosts like Kraken and Mary Marvel, why does Darkseid choose to possess a normal human?

-Ahh, the return of Barry Allen. My apathy is downright palpable.

-The giant dog steed thing has just never worked for me. It looks incredibly silly.

-Ahh, Superman: Beyond. The biggest mind-screw of the whole series.

-Can't help but wonder if Morrison actually wanted "Captain Adam" to flat-out be Dr. Manhattan, and was turned down because of the unnatural divination of Watchmen.

-I haven't read it in years; is Mandraak supposed to be the Monitor from CoIE? I mean, it doesn't actually matter...

-"Submit" doesn't add much to the story, really. Sure, it tells us what the Tattooed Man is all about, but plenty of other characters show up in this type of event with little-to-no explanation, so it's not really that important. Justifier Killer Croc looks wicked, though.

-Darkseid giving a thumbs-down is perhaps not as great a cliffhanger as imagined. It's not like we didn't know he was coming.

-Kalibak also has a better new body than Darkseid.

-Darkseid's victory speech is a bit over-the-top, but appropriately so. It's quite awesome.

-Poor Kalibak went out like a punk.

-Aww, Luthor cut the Calculator down.

-I totally approve of Batman's use of a firearm to take down Darkseid. When all of freaking existence is on the line, Batman got over his own hangup and did what needed to be done. Top form.

-And now we know that it wasn't Batman's body that Superman found, but the body of one of the clone soldiers Darkseid's minions trade to mass-produce.

-I'll admit, I'm still a bit sketchy on the ending. So, Darkseid's physical body is destroyed, but his soul survived. Wonder Woman binds him with her lasso, freeing the population from his control. Superman cancels out his frequency, destroying him. Before Superman can use the Miracle Machine to repair the damage to the multiverse done by Darkseid's fall, Mandraak and Ultraman arrive to finish him off, only to be cut off and defeated by the Green Lantern Corp and the Superman squad.

Far out.

Honestly, this reads a lot better in a single unit than it would have in monthly installments. (Assuming it had shipped monthly.) The problem, I think, is that it doesn't function well as a narrative without the metatextual reading. Granted, that's how I first approached it, so I personally didn't have an issue, but I can see why a lot of fans would be put off.