Final crisis was billed as “the Day evil won” and indeed on this front it delivers. Evil has pretty much won by about the middle of the story, which sees most of the powerhouses of the DCU out of commission, with the GLs trapped off earth, Superman away engaged in a pretty hard to follow adventure, batman captured and wonder woman turned. It’s all due to Darkseid, who I am partially familiar with as one of those uber-powerful bad guys. He’s using the anti-life equation to drag the prime earth of the 52(ish) in existence down into some sort of hellish pit. The build-up to this is pretty good and the main story where B-List heroes have to fight turned A-listers to protect the unaffected population is pretty effective.
My main issue is that it’s all a bit impenetrable for those unfamiliar. The superman beyond tie in is almost impossible to follow and many other parts are obviously set for dramatic entrances or appearances, where really, as someone unfamiliar I’m left wondering “Who?” It still makes for pretty good reading, as Alan Moore was definitely trying to do something a cut above the standard summer blockbuster. Sadly it is pretty hard to follow, particularly the superman bits, which are pretty impenetrable. The ending is also a bit of a Deus Ex Machina.
I suppose it’s not really fair to Judge Final Crisis from a new(ish) reader perspective. I am clearly not the target audience. For DC fans this may have been a huge payoff, I hope it was. For me, it was definitely better written, with more wild ideas and imagination than the slugfest of Secret Invasion, and it definitely has better pacing (Which even reading in full Secret Invasion is a mess) and better art. In fact, in just about all aspects, save approachability, this is definitely a better book than SI. But it’s not for new readers.
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