Final Crisis

Title: Final Crisis

ISBN: 9781401222819
Price: $29.99
Publisher/Year: DC, 2009
Artists: J.G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Jesus Merino, Marco Rudy, Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy
Writer: Grant Morrison
Collects: Final Crisis #1-7, Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #1-2, Final Crisis: Submit #1, Final Crisis: Sketchbook #1

Rating: 2/5

I'll be the first to admit that I have never been a big fan of DC superheroes, but I do enjoy a good storyline. I remember buying the entire Doomsday crossover series leading up to the death of Superman as well as the entire Knightfall series when Bane broke Batman's back and Jean-Paul Valley (aka Azrael) became the new Batman for a while. Good stories that kept me interested for a while until DC decided to bring back both Superman and Batman.

And I really love epic crossover storylines, such as DC's Identity Crisis and Marvel's Civil War. The storyline changes the entire face of the respective universe. The original Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars began my love of such storylines, even though back then the stories weren't the best. Those were the days. I think that's why I love collecting graphic novels and trade paperbacks over single title series. It's a lot easier to collect an entire series or crossover storyline when it has been collected for you.

I was really looking forward to reading Final Crisis because I had heard good things about the story. I didn't read Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis or 52 prior to picking up this trade. Maybe it would've helped if I had read all of those before trying to read Final Crisis. As you can probably already tell, I didn't much care for this particular trade.

I have read of works by Grant Morrison and I thought they were alright. This trade was not one of his better pieces of writing. There were so many times where I felt myself being lost and asking too many questions. There was a period of time where I thought that Darkseid was inhabiting Batman's body and that why he was taken prisoner. After seeing Batman being tortured and screaming to "Warn everyone!", I don't remember seeing him again until the moment he comes upon Darkseid. What happened between those times? How did he get free? Where did he get the gun?

With all the various artists in this trade, I was afraid that continuity was going to be a huge issue or that there was going to be glaring differences. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. The art was very uniform and I didn't even think that there were more than a single artist involved. If the writing would have been more like the the art, this would have probably been a better book.

After completing this trade, I figured out that one of the reasons that I never really cared for the DC superheroes was the idea of their multiverse. Too many Supermen, Wonder Women and Green Lantern's for my taste. I like the concept but bringing them all together is just way too much. My recommendation is don't bother picking this trade up unless you're a big fan of DC and are up-to-date on the storylines leading-up to Final Crisis. That might make the difference.