Personality Crisis

In case you were wondering, I bought the second issue of Final Crisis last night. And it rocked.

"But Dylan, just how much did it rock?" you ask?

My answer to that would be "It rocked most egregiously, my good friend. Most definitively, even."

But what is the rest of the Internet saying? At least the non-fanboy knuckle-dragging Newsarama trolls, that is. Well, the always-illuminating Jog has a review up, there's another by Graeme McMillan over at The Savage Critics, Douglas Wolk has his annotations up, as does Funnybook Babylon.

I'm still trying to understand the hate for the first issue. I mean, it's Grant Morrison, people. What were you expecting? Seriously, have you not read any of his other work? Because this is boiler-plate "first issue Morrison comicbookery" here. Glimpses of the big, epic threat. The feeling that you're almost understanding what's going on. Touching on all the threads that will come together before this is all through. An overture of sorts. This is not summer multiplex blockbuster comics. Leave that Michael Bay stuff to Marvel, this is epic Kubrick comics; a fairly cerebral affair with slow builds, layered symbolism and not a lot of explanation for the slow kids. You're going to need to pay attention and put some pieces together. There will be a quiz. We have a lot of time and not a lot to get through.

Wait.

Scratch that. Reverse it.

This is Morrison's JLA genetically crossbred with Seven Soldiers in an underground laboratory while The Invisibles look on, reading New X-Men out loud to pass the time.

[ sigh ]

Too bad it will all be retconned in five years time so we can go back to how it was back in the day and we can all feel so warm and snuggly all wrapped up in our nostalgia, just like a comfort blanket, just like mommy's womb.

In the meantime, I would suggest we enjoy the ride and hope we get a crazy awesome Grant Morrison-scripted Fourth (Fifth?) World/New Gods comic out of this. However, I wouldn't recommend anyone hold their breath for such a comic, as I'm still waiting on a Frankenstein! (or anything, really, but a Frankenstein comic would be aces) comic to come out of the explosion of radness that was Seven Soldiers.