Final Crisis and Blackest Night

[sdelmonte]

I found both of these in the library in the past month.

Final Crisis, despite great art and a few very interesting character beats, is a wreck. Morrison tried to come up with something different, but failed miserably. I read enough interviews with him to see what he wanted to do, but none of it made it to fruition. The convoluted, confusing and ultimately boring plot overwhelms the reader, and make any chance we have to enjoy Morrison's work writing Batman, Superman, Hal Jordan or Barry Allen. What's more, the story had no impact at all on the rest of DC's comics aside from Batman. You can skip this. You can even skip looking for summaries of it. For all intents and purposes, it never happened.

Blackest Night - and the related issues of Green Lantern - were, to my surprise, a very good read. Some of the things I was expecting, in terms of the gore and violence and playing with the reader's emotions, were there, but were not as bad I expected. And while the plot would probably unravel if I poked at it enough, it seems to work well enough that the strengths of the story shine through. Johns does a great job with a number of characters, including two that he doesn't seem to handle as well in their own books, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. He also lets the heroes be heroic from start to finish, ending the trend that marred Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. The art by Ivan Reis is also quite amazing. And there are some utterly fantastic moments along the way that made me go "wow."

I suspect that if you are not a hardcore DC fan, much of Blackest Night won't make sense to you. And we are very much in hero vs. villain territory, with the lives of normal folk pretty much off the table. But as a large scale action blockbuster story with a great cast and a lot of heart and a lot of fun (which I didn't expect), it works well for me. I can't say I am upset that I didn't buy it when it came out, but I am glad I got caught up.

Comments

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

I tend to agree with you on all of this. Final Crisis did lead to one or two good tie-ins, such the Legion of Three Worlds miniseries, but the main series itself was incomprehensible and affected almost nothing (the "death" of Bruce Wayne" the only thing I can think of that kept going from the series). In a way, I wish Blackest Night had been Final Crisis instead.

[sdelmonte]

I loved Legion of Three Worlds, but it was a tie in in the loosest sense of the term. I liked the tie in with Renee Montoya and the Spectre, even though it was part of the trend to make the Spectre irrelevant at the first opportunity. And I liked the Rogues tie in because the Rogues are cool.

But none of them really added anything to the main story. Or required reading the main story, either.