Final Crisis is hard. It's huge, it's confusing, and it's filled with so many obscure references you'll either love it off the bat for the complete comic book encyclopedia that it is, or hate it because unless Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman or Green Lantern are on the page you won't understand who or what anyone else is. Each cover features one of DC's main heroes in a sexy or powerful pose... These are probably the only characters you will know in the whole series. Grant Morrison seems to have gone through every DC title over the past 30 years and taken any and every character he could find to put into this series because he wanted to show just how epic this story is. How epic is this story? Too Epic. There is way too much going on that it kind of becomes rediculous. There's also a tiger wearing a tailored suit, and Wonder Woman rides around on a giant dalmation.The story revolves around an Anti-Life equation that starts hitting the internet causing anyone that comes into contact with it to pretty much give up on life. It starts showing up after Orion, one of the Gods is found murdered, one of the big heroes is murdered, and another is framed for murder. It's up to the Justice League to discover where all this stems from and stop it before they get brought down from the inside out. The villains in this story do everything they can to break down every aspect of humanity all in order to resurrect Darkseid. which is helped by the nifty Anti-Life equation which turns most of the planet into Darkseid's henchmen. The League gets split up early on, with some stuck in space and others trapped in Bludhaven (Gotham's sister city) and each of them has their own mission they have to get through. What got me through this series can be summed up in 2 words: "Batman Dies"
It's not a spoiler. You knew it was coming; it was DC's big event for the year, it's even on the cover of the collected series. They teased it for so long and when it finally came...... Eh? It was confusing. Time travelling magic bullets, revived characters for some reason, and an ending that I find to be such a cop-out. I really wanted to like this series, but it was just too hard to do so. It looks great, there's some awesome artwork, and so much to look at in every panel and when the Anti-Life equation starts taking over, it gets truly horrifying on a few pages (creepy undead children show up too). I think where Morrison went wrong was trying to shove the entire DC Universe into 7 issues. I understand it was a stand alone story, but when you put so many damn characters into one comic series, you're going to have to explain some stuff; like who are they, and what are they doing there? I really like Grant Morrison, but I can't help but think he wrote this story for himself, and then gave it to DC to publish as an event because he saw it as a love letter to comics and knew they'd love it just as much. I mentioned before that I read through all of these because I was reading Batman at the time and when he wasn't killed off in R.I.P I realised I'd have to read Final Crisis; even though
I had no real interest in the Justice League (I never really liked Batman in space, just didn't seem right). Why they decided to kill him off in this I don't understand. Batman is this amazing, iconic character, and he's having his long-awaited death in an ensemble comic book. I get that Batman should go out in firey glory, but this was too much, and it kind of took away the significance of his death. I'm just bitter I suppose. I figured he deserved better. Luckily for us all, Morrison went on to write the awesome Batman and Robin series running at the moment. It's a lot less crazy, and it's good to see the focus on just a few characters as opposed to about 50. If you do happen to read Final Crisis, just be sure to have Wikipedia open, you'll probably need it at some point; and if you don't do that, then I commend you, because you, sir/madam have far superior comic knowledge than I.
