The End Of Everything...

DC's most ambitious "event" title - Final Crisis - has come to a conclusion, leaving the bulk of its readers either baffled or disappointed.

While it's still in a different league to Marvel's steaming pile of crappola that was Secret Invasion, Grant Morrison's multi-textured love song to his favourite characters was a victim of its own ambition.

I just about managed to hang onto the plot threads for the first five issues, but began to get concerned with the perceived wobbles in the sixth (when Batman died) when I feared the wheels might be coming off the story.

I don't think it helped that the equally-obtuse Superman Beyond 3D two-issue tie-in was run as a separate story (Superman as 'thought entity' battling vampire-monitor) as the plot of that title - as far as I could understand it - was integral to Morrison's finale in Final Crisis.

You can't deny Morrison's gift for imagery, but while the psychedelia of the early issues made for mind-expanding reading that just carried you along on waves of wonderful ideas, by the end of issue seven I was just left with a headache.

The defeat of Darkseid and Mandrakk (the vampire-monitor) were easy enough to grasp as stand-alone incidents, but it was trying to tie it all together - and with everything else that was going on - that allowed confusion and slight bewilderment to seep in to the equation.

It was also a shame that none of the events depicted in this series were played out (yet) in DC's main titles, which gave the Final Crisis event a disjointed feel that also detracted slightly from its gravitas. When you have a major storyline showing the heroes defeated and the world fallen under the heel of Darkseid, you'd kind of hope to see that reflected through the company's whole line of titles.

Perhaps it will all be explained soon.

Dissecting Final Crisis may ultimately become a degree-level challenge, piecing together the obscure minutiae that Morrison has sown through its pages (and throughout the DC Universe), but perhaps we will only fully grasp and appreciate what he has done in hindsight, several years down the road.

I might not have understood it, but I'd rather be intellectually challenged by this than mentally insulted by the likes of Secret Invasion any day.

Another sad loss from the DC Universe this month was The Legion of Super-Heroes.

I don't know what behind-the-scenes problems they were having with Jim Shooter - although sales figures were very low on the title - but the series wrapped up abruptly with issue 50 and now, except for the only unfinished Final Crisis tie-in (Legion Of 3 Worlds), we will be bereft of new Legion material for the first time in decades.

This final issue wrapped up the on-going story that Shooter had been working on since his return to the team that launched him into comics at the age of 13.

However, the grand assault on the known universe by 'virtual beings' from another universe, which had been building for months, was resolved disappointingly quickly.

While DC made the effort to give the final issue of the title a nice wraparound cover, you'd have thought they could have allowed Shooter a double-sized issue (at least) to finish off this grand story he was telling.

As it was a strike force of Legionnaires got sent over into the 'virtual universe' and with Brainiac 5's assistance back in the 'real universe' managed to, effectively, "switch off" the virtual invaders with a couple of panels of technobabble.

Even the happy ending - Brainy bringing his gal back to life - was rather abrupt.

Given the glory that is Legion Of 3 Worlds, I hope DC isn't abandoning the Legion and very soon we will see this amazing team reborn in a recognisable format (preferably written by Geoff Johns and drawn by George Perez!)