DC’s Final Crisis Is the Perfect Event (Here’s Why)

DC Comics is known for their Crisis events. The word “Crisis” has a lot of meaning to DC fans; as far back as the Silver Age of comics, it was used in the title to multiversal crossovers, which is why 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths was titled what it was. Since then, there have been several Crisis events — Zero Hour: Crisis in Time, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. These stories have had major repercussions on the DC Multiverse, each of them having their strengths and weaknesses, but one of them stands heads and shoulders above the rest. It’s also a story that has something of a contentious reputation among DC fans — Final Crisis, by writer Grant Morrison and artists J.G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco, and Doug Mahnke.

Grant Morrison is one of comics’s greatest creators, standing tall with legendary comic creators like Alan Moore, Gardner Fox, Otto Binder, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Denny O’Neil, and many more. Final Crisis represents Morrison’s ultimate word on superheroes. It is a difficult piece, one that uses Morrison’s love of meta commentary to tell a story of the ultimate battle against evil. Final Crisis is a perfect event book, and serves as something of a perfect endpoint for the DC Multiverse.

Final Crisis Shows Readers the Day that Evil Won

Final Crisis‘s origin is almost as interesting as the book itself. Morrison had been building a massive crossover since their days writing JLA, once that they tentatively titled “Hypercrisis”. Morrison was one of the creators of the concept of Hypertime, a way of looking at DC history that allowed everything that ever happened in DC history to have happened regardless of retcons, and was constantly introducing massive concepts related to the universal structure of the DC Multiverse. However, DC didn’t want “Hypercrisis” and that led to Morrison working on modifying the concept and getting the go ahead to do Final Crisis. DC started to build towards the story with 52, which rolled over into the next weekly DC book, Countdown, which would become Countdown to Final Crisis.

However, this build-up was bungled from the beginning, since Morrison had barely revealed any of their plans for the upcoming story and DC editorial had tight control over Countdown to Final Crisis. This meant that many things that the series built didn’t match up with Final Crisis. Final Crisis‘s plot was complex, and it hearkened back to the promise of Kirby’s Fourth World books. Darkseid’s body is killed in battle with Orion, and his fall causes the universe to deform around him. Darkseid, and the rest of Apokolips’s New Gods, are able to send their essences to Earth, taking over the bodies of other beings, and testing out the newly found Anti-Life Equation. Meanwhile, Darkseid and company are able to keep the Justice League off balance just long enough to unleash the Anti-Life Equation, taking over the Earth. This leads the heroes to their most desperate battle, one that is made even more difficult when the Monitors awaken an ancient force of evil, one that wants nothing less than the destruction of all things.

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Final Crisis is a superhero epic that only Morrison could supply. It was full of moving plots and rewarded readers who paid attention. It was also an example of Morrison critiquing the concept of the superhero comic, with the Monitors revealed to be bloodsucking monsters, who fed on the stories of superheroes for their power. This was meant to represent editors and corporate interests in creative businesses; only Morrison could get away with saying that their own editors were bloodsucking vampires with no creativity of their own. Final Crisis has the kind of massive battles that a Crisis event needs and does a tremendous job with the heroes and villains of DC, selling the quiet parts of the story as well as it sells the loud. Final Crisis sets out to tell the ultimate story of good and evil and does a masterful job of it. Darkseid, created by Jack Kirby to be the ultimate villain, finally reached his apex under Morrison and Morrison used the concept of Superman to represent the ultimate power of hope, something that would eventually become text in the DC Multiverse.

Let’s be clear — Final Crisis isn’t an easy read. Morrison is known for supplying convoluted narratives and Final Crisis is one of their most complicated. There’s also a massive part of the story missing from the book that was supplied in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3-D, a two issue series that’s included with reprints of the book. However, taken as a whole, Morrison and company do an amazing job with Final Crisis. The complicated, multi-layered approach to storytelling actually makes sense once one fully understands the story, as the evil of Darkseid deforms the very nature of the DC Multiverse. It also represents the perfect ending point to DC’s superhero story; while there are several little things that let readers know that this story came out in 2008, it never feels like a work of its time. Morrison used the more timeless elements of DC’s superheroes, instead of depending on heavily on the then-current continuity of DC. Final Crisis lives up to its name; one could choose this story as the end of their time reading DC Comics and it would fit perfectly. However, the book is also correct in its supposition that the battle against evil is neverending. It’s yet another complicated facet of the book — being an endpoint and yet another chapter in an endless story — and fits the comic very well.

Final Crisis Is a Difficult Yet Rewarding Read

Morrison has always had an innate understanding of what made DC Comics tick that many other creators just don’t. Morrison’s work has often been mature and sometimes dark, but Morrison also does a tremendous job of capturing the sense of wonder and humor that makes DC unique. Final Crisis is the perfect example of every one of their beliefs about superheroes, a massive good vs. evil battle that showed off the best and worst of human beings. It is not an easy story to read, all because there’s always the feeling that the reader is missing something; however, that’s a feature of the story, as every re-read reveals a new facet to the tale. Final Crisis is a perfect superhero story. It takes everything great about DC Comics and puts it on display, overcoming its growing pains to tell a story unlike any other.

Event comics can be a difficult mistress. The entire point of them is to give readers the biggest story of the year, but they can often miss for a variety of reasons. It’s hard to find a “perfect” event book, but Final Crisis is the perfect example of one. Final Crisis can be read on a surface level and be an enjoyable, yet confusing story. However, there’s so much more to the story, a commentary on superheroes, good and evil, the corporatization of art, and much more. It’s not one of the simple Marvel events that come out several times a year that demand very little from their readers. It’s not one of DC’s multiverse destroying/creating epics. It’s a beast all its own and one that needs to be experienced to be understood. Final Crisis is everything superhero comics should be.

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