Pg. 1:
This would have to be a lost moment from BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON. As would the fourth panel on the next spread. Oh, Bruce, you hairy-chested love god.
Pp. 2-3:
"What The Butler Saw" is probably best known now as the title of a Joe Orton play, but it's a commonplace phrase dating to the early 20th century--one might have seen it, for instance, in this not-suitable-for-work machine. Appropriately enough for the salacious glimpse at the conception of Damian here.
This spread, in general, is a tribute to the Neal Adams-drawn period of Batman. The shirtless swordfight is a commonplace of Batman/Ra's stories--BATMAN #244, for instance. The wheelchair/shark/Joker bit is from "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," in BATMAN #251. The werewolf/Batman fight happened in BATMAN #255.
Pg. 4:
We're back in the Black Mercy-style fantasy from the end of last issue. That first fight with Man-Bat happened in DETECTIVE COMICS #400. Anyone able to name an early-'70s story in which something particularly horrible almost happened to Gordon? Alfred's still relatively young here... and why would milquetoast-Bruce be looking at "case files"? (Answer, as a commenter suggested: because, like his father, he's become a doctor.)
Pg. 5:
"Unlikely tales," you say?
"Chemical racketeers" again--this time connected to Boss Zucco from Robin's origin. Those chemicals, man, gotta watch out for them.
"I can't seem to get it out of my head": even the Kirbytech brainwashing can't expunge something this deeply rooted in Bruce's psyche.
Pg. 6:
Catwoman called herself Elva Barr in BATMAN #15, in which she enters a beauty contest for beauticians (!!). (What do you mean Batman never uses a gun? Just look at that cover.) (R.I.P. Eartha Kitt, by the way.) The glasses, as Uzumeri noted, make Bruce look awfully Clark Kent-like, but since when does he need corrective lenses? Mokkari is visible in panel 3.
Pg. 7:
We saw Bruce's mom starting to be overprotective last issue.
Pg. 8:
Might as well mention that Ace, the Bat-Hound, created by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff, first appeared in 1955's BATMAN #92.
Pg. 9:
I love the intimation that if Bruce's parents had never died, he'd have eventually become Batman anyway--!
Pg. 10:
Batman/Deadshot fight from DETECTIVE COMICS #474 (thanks for this and other issue references, David U.). For a good chunk of the '70s and '80s, Bruce Wayne lived in a penthouse at the top of the Wayne Foundation building, rather than at stately Wayne Manor; this was the period after Dick Grayson went off to college (and subsequently became Nightwing) and before Jason Todd became the second Robin. And that would be Jason in the final panel, from BATMAN #408. (Created by Gerry Conway and Don Newton, he had initially appeared in BATMAN #357 and became Robin as of BATMAN #368, but had his origin revised post-Crisis to be a tire-stealing punk.) (Wow--Morrison's really making a lot of references to "Batman Year One" and the issues immediately before and after it, isn't he?)
Pg. 12:
Batman and Jason fought the Scarecrow in DETECTIVE COMICS #571. The Joker killed Jason in BATMAN #427. "My watch has stopped": recalls Groucho Marx's line "either this man is dead or my watch has stopped."
Pg. 13:
The Batman Pieta, from BATMAN #428. (And now we know why Batman put his outfit up in the Batcave: to hurt more.) The Joker bit is from THE KILLING JOKE.
Pg. 15:
Tim Drake appears as Robin in BATMAN #442 in the top panel. (And apparently I was right about what tipped Batman off about Lump/Alfred.)
I'm guessing the fight with the Mad Hatter is the one that happened right near the beginning of "Knightfall," in BATMAN #492.
Pg. 16:
The backbreaking bit is from BATMAN #497; the Azrael fight is from BATMAN #510 or thereabouts. Yes, they've done the "Bruce can't be Batman any more" story before.
Pg. 17:
I think the first panel is just a generic image from the "No Man's Land" Bat-event of 1999; can anyone provide a specific reference? The Batman/Hush fight was from BATMAN #619; Batman comforted Tim after Jack Drake's death in IDENTITY CRISIS #6.
Pg. 18:
"What do you deserve?"--a riff on INFINITE CRISIS #7.
Pg. 19:
The payoff for all the chemical mentions we've seen.
Pg. 20:
"If you flinch" etc.: from 52 #30. We saw bits of Batman's Thogal experience in BATMAN #673 and elsewhere. Damian snarking is from BATMAN #656. The "zur-en-arrh" image here is from BATMAN #680.
Pg. 21:
Very shortly after the end of BATMAN #681, and a bridge to FINAL CRISIS #1. (Bruce is cowl-less here, as he appeared when he attacked the helicopter in #681; perhaps Alfred is bringing him a backup cowl.
"The bat-costume my father wore to the masquerade": the one that inspired Bruce's own costume, first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #235.
Back to Alfred's narration--although this seems to be the real one, as opposed to the fake Alfred from the beginning of last issue. Weirdly not-quite solicitations for this issue and last, compared to the actual content: #682 was described as "In his last hours, Alfred the Butler tells the life story of the Batman as you've never seen it before...," and this one was supposed to be "narrated by Sir Alfred Pennyworth." Maybe the "his" had a misplaced antecedent, but "sir"?
Pg. 22:
There was another scene (on pg. 16 of last issue) in which Batman put something important in his utility belt... and I am quite sure that bullet is going to turn up again.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Final Crisis: Revelations #4
Really not a whole lot to annotate this time out--to the point where this issue feels like nearly pure time-marking. Nonetheless! Ever onward!
Pg. 1:
"The things I don't could fill a book": is the Crime Bible a book of unbelief? (I'd still like to see the theology here disentangled and explained a bit more.)
Pg. 4:
"No God who would allow this to happen": the old omnipotence problem. And Cain being "condemned to an immortality of agony": first of all, the Genesis 4 business was just about Cain being protected via threat from anyone killing him, and second, if he really was masquerading as Vandal Savage all this time (without a visible mark), he sure didn't seem to be complaining about long life.
Pg. 6:
White guy forcing black guy to call him "master" loses some of its impact when the latter is now a chalky-white husk without the black guy attached to him. (And it appears that the story from last issue could just as well have picked up here.)
Pp. 12-13:
The Huntress, who is wearing a Bat-logo on the soles of her boots, was created by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton, and first appeared in ALL STAR COMICS #69 in 1977. (She was slightly revised post-Crisis.)
Pg. 19:
"Bat-Might": maybe she means Bat-Mite (since the character by that name got referred to as "Might" in Batman R.I.P.), but as it is this doesn't quite make sense.
Pg. 21:
Longinus's name came into Christian tradition via the Gospel of Nicodemus, several centuries after Christ. "Gaius Cassius" apparently got appended to that name in Louis de Wohl's 1955 novel The Spear. The WWII flashback here refers to incidents in ALL-STAR SQUADRON. Although, as commenter jgoldscher points out, what's the Earth-2 Superman doing here?
Pg. 24:
Catwoman, last spotted perching on a building last issue, has joined Cain's charnel cuddle-puddle; this all has to be happening long before they join the Female Furies seen over in FC.
Odd visual storytelling decision to see a speaker's back in three consecutive panels (and do three consecutive 180-degree turns on Cain). A director might say "cheat out."
Pg. 28:
So that's where the Statue of Liberty from FC #1 went!
See you in two weeks for BATMAN--it now appears that SECRET FILES has been bumped to Dec. 31. (Which means that REVELATIONS #3 may be the only FC-related title between, er, REVELATIONS #2 on Sep. 10 and the end of the year released on its originally announced release date--possibly RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS too, depending on how you're counting.)
Pg. 1:
"The things I don't could fill a book": is the Crime Bible a book of unbelief? (I'd still like to see the theology here disentangled and explained a bit more.)
Pg. 4:
"No God who would allow this to happen": the old omnipotence problem. And Cain being "condemned to an immortality of agony": first of all, the Genesis 4 business was just about Cain being protected via threat from anyone killing him, and second, if he really was masquerading as Vandal Savage all this time (without a visible mark), he sure didn't seem to be complaining about long life.
Pg. 6:
White guy forcing black guy to call him "master" loses some of its impact when the latter is now a chalky-white husk without the black guy attached to him. (And it appears that the story from last issue could just as well have picked up here.)
Pp. 12-13:
The Huntress, who is wearing a Bat-logo on the soles of her boots, was created by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton, and first appeared in ALL STAR COMICS #69 in 1977. (She was slightly revised post-Crisis.)
Pg. 19:
"Bat-Might": maybe she means Bat-Mite (since the character by that name got referred to as "Might" in Batman R.I.P.), but as it is this doesn't quite make sense.
Pg. 21:
Longinus's name came into Christian tradition via the Gospel of Nicodemus, several centuries after Christ. "Gaius Cassius" apparently got appended to that name in Louis de Wohl's 1955 novel The Spear. The WWII flashback here refers to incidents in ALL-STAR SQUADRON. Although, as commenter jgoldscher points out, what's the Earth-2 Superman doing here?
Pg. 24:
Catwoman, last spotted perching on a building last issue, has joined Cain's charnel cuddle-puddle; this all has to be happening long before they join the Female Furies seen over in FC.
Odd visual storytelling decision to see a speaker's back in three consecutive panels (and do three consecutive 180-degree turns on Cain). A director might say "cheat out."
Pg. 28:
So that's where the Statue of Liberty from FC #1 went!
See you in two weeks for BATMAN--it now appears that SECRET FILES has been bumped to Dec. 31. (Which means that REVELATIONS #3 may be the only FC-related title between, er, REVELATIONS #2 on Sep. 10 and the end of the year released on its originally announced release date--possibly RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS too, depending on how you're counting.)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Final Crisis #5
Well, jeez: now that Jog's done the very funny review and David's done his usual first-rate job with the notes, what's there left for me? Maybe a little bit of extra mop-up. Let's see.
Pg. 1:
Malet Dasim, created by Bob Toomey and Alex Saviuk, first appeared in GREEN LANTERN #130; he's a lawyerly type, and tends to switch off between prosecution and defense roles. (Athough it always strikes me as particularly odd that intergalactic justice is based on the Anglo-American trial system.) And you'd think that it'd have occurred to somebody to draw Hal's scar this issue.
Infallibility by decree: always a tricky thing.
Pg. 2:
Guy Gardner, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in 1968's GREEN LANTERN #59.
Ion/Kyle Rayner, created by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, first appeared in 1994's GREEN LANTERN #48.
Pg. 3:
Poor visual storytelling: what's happening in the third panel with the green armored dude & Guy? (David's explanation that they're ring-avatars to fight Kraken's caterpillars kinda makes sense, but why wouldn't they just fight them themselves?)
Pg. 4:
Krona hasn't been mentioned by name in FC until now, surprisingly enough, although he's a big part of the giant-hand-holding-a-galaxy creation-story imagery referred to in DC UNIVERSE 0 that goes back to 1965's GREEN LANTERN #40. (As David pointed out, the "Krona protocol" is to protect the battery against, say, being blown up the way Krona did in TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS.) He's also a significant part of TRINITY, of course, which might be why he's offstage here.
The dialogue here skirts around an idea that's been a major subtext of Green Lantern stories for a while (and has been more so under Geoff Johns): the relationship of the Lanterns' power to will being made manifest in the world. If that's connected to the Krona origin-story business, it's essentially voluntarism in the philosophical sense. The "ultimate technology" that Metron gave Anthro in the first issue is fire, which is in some sense the very most primitive form of the Green Flame--"a deadly plasma that responds to the dictates of pure will," if not very conveniently...
Pg. 5:
A good left cross beats an evil god every time.
Pg. 6:
Crumpled spacetime provides a good explanation for all the timeline weirdness around the FC project; might as well throw that chronology out the window, huh? (Although I'll probably still try to update it at some point.)
Pg. 7:
The M in M-theory "could stand for master, mathematical, mother, mystery, membrane, magic, or matrix." Or... Morrison! "Science speculation" is a little closer than "science fact" here.
The nu-OMACs are conveniently packaged à la OMAC #1. Checkmate as "the last move in the human game"; interesting, if kind of pumping up its significance. (But it's worth noting that the original Checkmate started as The Agency, which was founded by Amanda Waller!)
Do they want Renee to be part of it because of her significance within the Crime Cult, per REVELATIONS? (Which appears to be happening some time earlier than this, crumpled spacetime aside?)
Pg. 8:
Those scars on Wonder Woman's back: cree-py.
Pg. 10:
Donna Troy finally gets a speaking line, so I might as well note that she was created (as Wonder Girl) by Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani, and first appeared in 1965 in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #60.
Pg. 18:
The Spanish-speaking guy is Iman, created by Oscar Pinto, F.G. Haghenbeck and Giovanni Barberi, who first appeared in 2000's SUPERMAN ANNUAL #12. His dialogue translates roughly as "What hit me? Ah, $&#*! My armor's useless. Weighs a ton... what would Superman do...?" (I might be wrong about that last bit.)
Frankenstein on a motorbike, sword in his right hand and gun in his right, quoting Milton's Satan. This is why I read superhero comics. (The Paradise Lost line is followed, a few lines later, by the more familiar "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven.")
"Wait for the lightning to strike": obviously this is the Marvel Family lightning, but the lightning business is also echoed by the Flash and Legion angles to FC. The solicitation for this issue included the line "Does the secret of humankind's salvation lie in a mysterious cave painting and a bolt of lightning?"
Pg. 20:
Mary Marvel is of course possessed by Sakker-Masokk, one of the lesser-known Kirby-created Darkseid henchmen. (And of course her dirty new power word would be an acronym for a different group of new gods, right?)
Pg. 21:
"You're not facing Freddie this..." --well, he's drawn like Freddie! Is someone else possessing him?
Pg. 22:
The mute cube-solver seems to be the version of Metron from SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE. Points to David for noting the "different... unforeseen" bit as a reference to Metron's self-description in NEW GODS #7.
"Nobody ever did it in less than 18": well, that's a mighty poor explanation of God's number. It's not the minimum number of moves to solve a Rubik's Cube (that would be 0), it's the minimum number of moves to solve a maximally scrambled Rubik's Cube.
Pg. 23:
"If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real": this is as good an explanation of magic as any--you have to have a will, and inscribe it in some symbolic way, before you can turn it into reality. "Rings only work if you can think!"
The cube image also echoes the cubes and dice that turn up all over SEVEN SOLDIERS: a two-dimensional act of imagination (like Nix's drawings, or a comic book) that becomes a three-dimensional thing (entering the world).
Pg. 24:
Not Mokkari, but part of the Mokkari-cult he was boasting about earlier in the issue.
Pg. 25:
The Calculator, created by Bob Rozakis and Mike Grell, first appeared in 1976 in DETECTIVE COMICS #463; he was obsessed with Oracle in BIRDS OF PREY. And yes, it sure looks like Luthor was the one who betrayed the villains (he wasn't too keen on knuckling under in #3). Treason to Darkseid is loyalty to humanity, and if there's one thing Luthor thinks he stands for, it's humanity--that's why he hates Superman. Although he looks uncharacteristically remorseful about having thrown the Calculator under a bus.
"If you show willing": it's odd that a panel as closely analyzed as this one includes this grammatical error. But there's the idea of "will" again.
Pg. 26:
Now we know what happens in the next issue of Batman! Darkseid's crew had been begging him not to kill them earlier in the issue: BZZT all around.
"The idea of a god is a god"--Alan Moore
Pg. 27:
"Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star": Paradise Lost I, 745. (The dropt one was Mulciber/Hephaestus.) I love how compassionate Supergirl is.
Pg. 29:
The President would have to be Jonathan Horne, per #2.
The current population of Earth is about 6.7 billion, so what are the other 3.7 billion up to? Or have they already died for Darkseid?
Pg. 32:
Nix Uotan as Vykin the Black from FOREVER PEOPLE, sort of, except with Rubik's Cube surveillance headgear (the transparent images I can make out seem to be panels from this issue)--the person who's able to step outside the narrative and see it all at once.
OK--what'd I miss?
Pg. 1:
Malet Dasim, created by Bob Toomey and Alex Saviuk, first appeared in GREEN LANTERN #130; he's a lawyerly type, and tends to switch off between prosecution and defense roles. (Athough it always strikes me as particularly odd that intergalactic justice is based on the Anglo-American trial system.) And you'd think that it'd have occurred to somebody to draw Hal's scar this issue.
Infallibility by decree: always a tricky thing.
Pg. 2:
Guy Gardner, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in 1968's GREEN LANTERN #59.
Ion/Kyle Rayner, created by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, first appeared in 1994's GREEN LANTERN #48.
Pg. 3:
Poor visual storytelling: what's happening in the third panel with the green armored dude & Guy? (David's explanation that they're ring-avatars to fight Kraken's caterpillars kinda makes sense, but why wouldn't they just fight them themselves?)
Pg. 4:
Krona hasn't been mentioned by name in FC until now, surprisingly enough, although he's a big part of the giant-hand-holding-a-galaxy creation-story imagery referred to in DC UNIVERSE 0 that goes back to 1965's GREEN LANTERN #40. (As David pointed out, the "Krona protocol" is to protect the battery against, say, being blown up the way Krona did in TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS.) He's also a significant part of TRINITY, of course, which might be why he's offstage here.
The dialogue here skirts around an idea that's been a major subtext of Green Lantern stories for a while (and has been more so under Geoff Johns): the relationship of the Lanterns' power to will being made manifest in the world. If that's connected to the Krona origin-story business, it's essentially voluntarism in the philosophical sense. The "ultimate technology" that Metron gave Anthro in the first issue is fire, which is in some sense the very most primitive form of the Green Flame--"a deadly plasma that responds to the dictates of pure will," if not very conveniently...
Pg. 5:
A good left cross beats an evil god every time.
Pg. 6:
Crumpled spacetime provides a good explanation for all the timeline weirdness around the FC project; might as well throw that chronology out the window, huh? (Although I'll probably still try to update it at some point.)
Pg. 7:
The M in M-theory "could stand for master, mathematical, mother, mystery, membrane, magic, or matrix." Or... Morrison! "Science speculation" is a little closer than "science fact" here.
The nu-OMACs are conveniently packaged à la OMAC #1. Checkmate as "the last move in the human game"; interesting, if kind of pumping up its significance. (But it's worth noting that the original Checkmate started as The Agency, which was founded by Amanda Waller!)
Do they want Renee to be part of it because of her significance within the Crime Cult, per REVELATIONS? (Which appears to be happening some time earlier than this, crumpled spacetime aside?)
Pg. 8:
Those scars on Wonder Woman's back: cree-py.
Pg. 10:
Donna Troy finally gets a speaking line, so I might as well note that she was created (as Wonder Girl) by Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani, and first appeared in 1965 in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #60.
Pg. 18:
The Spanish-speaking guy is Iman, created by Oscar Pinto, F.G. Haghenbeck and Giovanni Barberi, who first appeared in 2000's SUPERMAN ANNUAL #12. His dialogue translates roughly as "What hit me? Ah, $&#*! My armor's useless. Weighs a ton... what would Superman do...?" (I might be wrong about that last bit.)
Frankenstein on a motorbike, sword in his right hand and gun in his right, quoting Milton's Satan. This is why I read superhero comics. (The Paradise Lost line is followed, a few lines later, by the more familiar "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven.")
"Wait for the lightning to strike": obviously this is the Marvel Family lightning, but the lightning business is also echoed by the Flash and Legion angles to FC. The solicitation for this issue included the line "Does the secret of humankind's salvation lie in a mysterious cave painting and a bolt of lightning?"
Pg. 20:
Mary Marvel is of course possessed by Sakker-Masokk, one of the lesser-known Kirby-created Darkseid henchmen. (And of course her dirty new power word would be an acronym for a different group of new gods, right?)
Pg. 21:
"You're not facing Freddie this..." --well, he's drawn like Freddie! Is someone else possessing him?
Pg. 22:
The mute cube-solver seems to be the version of Metron from SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE. Points to David for noting the "different... unforeseen" bit as a reference to Metron's self-description in NEW GODS #7.
"Nobody ever did it in less than 18": well, that's a mighty poor explanation of God's number. It's not the minimum number of moves to solve a Rubik's Cube (that would be 0), it's the minimum number of moves to solve a maximally scrambled Rubik's Cube.
Pg. 23:
"If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real": this is as good an explanation of magic as any--you have to have a will, and inscribe it in some symbolic way, before you can turn it into reality. "Rings only work if you can think!"
The cube image also echoes the cubes and dice that turn up all over SEVEN SOLDIERS: a two-dimensional act of imagination (like Nix's drawings, or a comic book) that becomes a three-dimensional thing (entering the world).
Pg. 24:
Not Mokkari, but part of the Mokkari-cult he was boasting about earlier in the issue.
Pg. 25:
The Calculator, created by Bob Rozakis and Mike Grell, first appeared in 1976 in DETECTIVE COMICS #463; he was obsessed with Oracle in BIRDS OF PREY. And yes, it sure looks like Luthor was the one who betrayed the villains (he wasn't too keen on knuckling under in #3). Treason to Darkseid is loyalty to humanity, and if there's one thing Luthor thinks he stands for, it's humanity--that's why he hates Superman. Although he looks uncharacteristically remorseful about having thrown the Calculator under a bus.
"If you show willing": it's odd that a panel as closely analyzed as this one includes this grammatical error. But there's the idea of "will" again.
Pg. 26:
Now we know what happens in the next issue of Batman! Darkseid's crew had been begging him not to kill them earlier in the issue: BZZT all around.
"The idea of a god is a god"--Alan Moore
Pg. 27:
"Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star": Paradise Lost I, 745. (The dropt one was Mulciber/Hephaestus.) I love how compassionate Supergirl is.
Pg. 29:
The President would have to be Jonathan Horne, per #2.
The current population of Earth is about 6.7 billion, so what are the other 3.7 billion up to? Or have they already died for Darkseid?
Pg. 32:
Nix Uotan as Vykin the Black from FOREVER PEOPLE, sort of, except with Rubik's Cube surveillance headgear (the transparent images I can make out seem to be panels from this issue)--the person who's able to step outside the narrative and see it all at once.
OK--what'd I miss?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Batman #682
[ETA: comments now enabled! Don't know what was going wrong there.]
It's been a while, and the schedule keeps on slipping slipping slipping--check out the schedule post for details. Fortunately, there's a tremendous issue today...
Pg. 1:
The "that's it" is a quote from Batman's origin as first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #33 (you can see the image here): the bat flies in the "open window," and Bruce exclaims "A bat! That's it! It's an omen. I shall become a bat!" (He's even wearing a green jacket.)
In this version, taking after Frank Miller's depiction of that event, the bat actually smashes the window; Bruce has been cut by flying glass, I initially thought, but then saw David Uzumeri pointing out that it's after the undisguised Bruce has been beaten up in BATMAN #404. (Which is why it always pays to look at Funnybook Babylon before hitting "post.") I don't know what that thing on Bruce's arm is, though.
Pp. 2-3:
Bruce Wayne, sybaritic playboy, ringing a little bell to summon the butler. I love it. "The Butler Did It" is a cliché of crime fiction that seems to have started circulating in the late '20s. It also has to be a reference to the widely circulated theory that Alfred, one way or another, is the force behind everything that's been going awry in Batman's life in the Morrison run. (White gloves, Black Glove...)
Worth mentioning, too, that Alfred was created by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson and first appeared in BATMAN #16 in 1943; it was established in BATMAN #131 that he likes to write stories about what might happen to Batman and his associates in the future. Like, say... Bruce giving up being Batman and Dick taking over.
Pg. 4:
Yeah, nobody ever thinks about what happened to the poor bat.
Julie Madison, created by Gardner Fox, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, was introduced in DETECTIVE COMICS #31 as Bruce Wayne's fiancée. She went into film acting (hence her departure for Hollywood later this issue), and called off the engagement in DETECTIVE COMICS #49, since Bruce was evidently never going to make anything of himself.
"I need a disguise": this is the moment before the bat shows up, rendered in DETECTIVE #33 as "I am ready... but first I must have a disguise."
Pg. 5:
Panel 3 imagines if Bruce had chosen a much stupider Bat-outfit (whose goggles recall the Third Batman from the earlier parts of Morrison's run); panel 4... Snakeman? ETA: Commenters point out that this is a variation on a bit from BATMAN #256, which RAB has kindly reproduced here.
Pg. 6:
This is Doctor Death, as seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #29 (and #30 and then not again until 1982, although he did turn up on Oolong Island in 52); this panel is a variation on the first panel of the Batman story in #29.
Owlman is the evil Batman analogue of Earth-3/the antimatter Earth, although it's worth mentioning that Robin became an Owlman when he grew to adulthood in BATMAN #107. I can't imagine why Morrison keeps alluding to all these stories about Robin growing up and taking over a Batman-like role...
I don't know of a Skeleton/Phantom Skeleton in any Batman stories.
Pg. 7:
Commissioner Gordon, created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #27; the panel with him is in fact a slight paraphrase of a panel from that story. (In the original, Bruce is smoking a pipe and is wearing a really horrible plaid jacket.)
Panel 3 is Generic Death-Trap #84, I think. Is there a better reference?
Pg. 8:
I know I recognize that top image from somewhere; anybody?
Anybody know when it was established that Alfred had been the Waynes' butler when Bruce was a kid? Is that a post-Crisis thing exclusively?
Pg. 9:
Apex Chemical was the chemical corporation from DETECTIVE COMICS #27.
Pg. 10:
This is the Bat-Gyro, which predated the Batplane, first appearing in DETECTIVE COMICS #31. It's actually a sequence from DETECTIVE COMICS #33, "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom."
Oh, Bruce, you heartbreaker. ("I'll just put this with the notes from all the other jilted socialites, shall I?")
Pg. 11:
The fight with two big dudes is a scene from BATMAN #1. Bruce's trip to the circus is Robin's origin, from DETECTIVE COMICS #38.
Pg. 12:
"My parents were killed by a criminal, too": slightly altered from DETECTIVE #38.
Pg. 13:
"Blitz of a boy": a quote from Charles Causley's poem "Timothy Winters." Not previously applied to Robin, as far as I know.
Pg. 14:
I don't know of a vintage Batman story involving quotes from Hamlet (the Joker is quoting Laertes; Robin's not quoting an actual line)--this is Alfred's memories (of being a failed Shakespearean actor) bleeding into the story. And if anybody knows where the Joker-Copter appeared in this form before, please tell me. (I also don't know of a "laughing contest" story, but I wouldn't be surprised.) The thing Batman's holding in panel 4 is the Bat-Radia as it originally appeared in BATMAN #113.
Arkham Asylum seems like it's always been part of the Batman story, but in fact it first appeared in BATMAN #258 in 1974.
Note that we can't see Batman's chest insignia through most of this sequence--it's unclear here when it went yellow and when it changed back, exactly.
Pg. 15:
Ace the Bat-Hound finally makes an appearance! This is where we've veered off of continuity a bit; this isn't quite like how Batwoman's career went in her original '50s-'60s appearances.
The giant typewriter Robin's perched on, a.k.a. the archetypal Bill Finger prop, is from BATMAN #115.
And the other Ace, the chemical company, is the one where the Red Hood fell into the vat of chemicals and became the Joker, per DETECTIVE COMICS #168.
Pg. 16:
The Batgirl he's referring to isn't the Barbara Gordon one, but the earlier Bat-Girl who was Batwoman's niece, Betty Kane. The extraplanetary adventure with Batwoman really did happen, in BATMAN #153.
Pg. 17:
Ace in the background again. "I was a circus kid. I knew about Katy Kane": Kathy-with-an-H Kane was a "circus daredevil performer." A very, very rich circus daredevil performer.
"Hugo Strange"/"Monster Men": another reference to BATMAN #1. The isolation experiment was in BATMAN #156, "Robin Dies at Dawn," another story that's been pretty significantly echoed in the Morrison run--yes, two extraplanetary adventures in three issues. Those were different times.
Pg. 18:
Ah, the Lump--another Jack Kirby creation, first seen in MISTER MIRACLE #8, which is discussed at length here.
Alfred apparently died in DETECTIVE COMICS #328 (which inspired Bruce to start the "Alfred Foundation" in his memory), then became the Outsider and bedeviled Batman for a while starting in DETECTIVE COMICS #334, then came back to life in the rather Batman R.I.P.-themed DETECTIVE COMICS #356 (at which point the foundation became the Wayne Foundation we know and love).
"Pop Criminals": love it.
Pg. 19:
Dick became Nightwing in TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44 in 1984, which means we've just skipped over about 20 years' worth of stories.
One of these things is not like the others. That would be the Eraser, from BATMAN #188. It's almost as if Bruce's subconscious is trying to tell him something, you think?
Pg. 21:
I'm guessing what Bruce is looking at in the top panel is Jason Todd's costume, after Jason's death. "Say goodbye to the Batcave" recalls the cover of BATMAN #217.
What gave Alfred away, I suspect, was that in DETECTIVE #356 Bruce tried to make sure he'd never learn about his time as the Outsider.
Pg. 22:
...And the Waynes never got killed, so Bruce never did anything much with his life. Note that the beginning of this scenario is pretty much identical to his Black Mercy fantasy in the imperishable SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11.
The Joker threatened to poison the reservoir in BATMAN #407--that was the final scene of "Year One."
Pg. 23:
Thus, we loop back around to where Batman was in FC #2. And we'll pick up the threads again next week, although I should note that the phrase "Grant Morrison's recent run on Batman" from the next-issue box is oddly inconclusive.
It's been a while, and the schedule keeps on slipping slipping slipping--check out the schedule post for details. Fortunately, there's a tremendous issue today...
Pg. 1:
The "that's it" is a quote from Batman's origin as first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #33 (you can see the image here): the bat flies in the "open window," and Bruce exclaims "A bat! That's it! It's an omen. I shall become a bat!" (He's even wearing a green jacket.)
In this version, taking after Frank Miller's depiction of that event, the bat actually smashes the window; Bruce has been cut by flying glass, I initially thought, but then saw David Uzumeri pointing out that it's after the undisguised Bruce has been beaten up in BATMAN #404. (Which is why it always pays to look at Funnybook Babylon before hitting "post.") I don't know what that thing on Bruce's arm is, though.
Pp. 2-3:
Bruce Wayne, sybaritic playboy, ringing a little bell to summon the butler. I love it. "The Butler Did It" is a cliché of crime fiction that seems to have started circulating in the late '20s. It also has to be a reference to the widely circulated theory that Alfred, one way or another, is the force behind everything that's been going awry in Batman's life in the Morrison run. (White gloves, Black Glove...)
Worth mentioning, too, that Alfred was created by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson and first appeared in BATMAN #16 in 1943; it was established in BATMAN #131 that he likes to write stories about what might happen to Batman and his associates in the future. Like, say... Bruce giving up being Batman and Dick taking over.
Pg. 4:
Yeah, nobody ever thinks about what happened to the poor bat.
Julie Madison, created by Gardner Fox, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, was introduced in DETECTIVE COMICS #31 as Bruce Wayne's fiancée. She went into film acting (hence her departure for Hollywood later this issue), and called off the engagement in DETECTIVE COMICS #49, since Bruce was evidently never going to make anything of himself.
"I need a disguise": this is the moment before the bat shows up, rendered in DETECTIVE #33 as "I am ready... but first I must have a disguise."
Pg. 5:
Panel 3 imagines if Bruce had chosen a much stupider Bat-outfit (whose goggles recall the Third Batman from the earlier parts of Morrison's run); panel 4... Snakeman? ETA: Commenters point out that this is a variation on a bit from BATMAN #256, which RAB has kindly reproduced here.
Pg. 6:
This is Doctor Death, as seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #29 (and #30 and then not again until 1982, although he did turn up on Oolong Island in 52); this panel is a variation on the first panel of the Batman story in #29.
Owlman is the evil Batman analogue of Earth-3/the antimatter Earth, although it's worth mentioning that Robin became an Owlman when he grew to adulthood in BATMAN #107. I can't imagine why Morrison keeps alluding to all these stories about Robin growing up and taking over a Batman-like role...
I don't know of a Skeleton/Phantom Skeleton in any Batman stories.
Pg. 7:
Commissioner Gordon, created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #27; the panel with him is in fact a slight paraphrase of a panel from that story. (In the original, Bruce is smoking a pipe and is wearing a really horrible plaid jacket.)
Panel 3 is Generic Death-Trap #84, I think. Is there a better reference?
Pg. 8:
I know I recognize that top image from somewhere; anybody?
Anybody know when it was established that Alfred had been the Waynes' butler when Bruce was a kid? Is that a post-Crisis thing exclusively?
Pg. 9:
Apex Chemical was the chemical corporation from DETECTIVE COMICS #27.
Pg. 10:
This is the Bat-Gyro, which predated the Batplane, first appearing in DETECTIVE COMICS #31. It's actually a sequence from DETECTIVE COMICS #33, "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom."
Oh, Bruce, you heartbreaker. ("I'll just put this with the notes from all the other jilted socialites, shall I?")
Pg. 11:
The fight with two big dudes is a scene from BATMAN #1. Bruce's trip to the circus is Robin's origin, from DETECTIVE COMICS #38.
Pg. 12:
"My parents were killed by a criminal, too": slightly altered from DETECTIVE #38.
Pg. 13:
"Blitz of a boy": a quote from Charles Causley's poem "Timothy Winters." Not previously applied to Robin, as far as I know.
Pg. 14:
I don't know of a vintage Batman story involving quotes from Hamlet (the Joker is quoting Laertes; Robin's not quoting an actual line)--this is Alfred's memories (of being a failed Shakespearean actor) bleeding into the story. And if anybody knows where the Joker-Copter appeared in this form before, please tell me. (I also don't know of a "laughing contest" story, but I wouldn't be surprised.) The thing Batman's holding in panel 4 is the Bat-Radia as it originally appeared in BATMAN #113.
Arkham Asylum seems like it's always been part of the Batman story, but in fact it first appeared in BATMAN #258 in 1974.
Note that we can't see Batman's chest insignia through most of this sequence--it's unclear here when it went yellow and when it changed back, exactly.
Pg. 15:
Ace the Bat-Hound finally makes an appearance! This is where we've veered off of continuity a bit; this isn't quite like how Batwoman's career went in her original '50s-'60s appearances.
The giant typewriter Robin's perched on, a.k.a. the archetypal Bill Finger prop, is from BATMAN #115.
And the other Ace, the chemical company, is the one where the Red Hood fell into the vat of chemicals and became the Joker, per DETECTIVE COMICS #168.
Pg. 16:
The Batgirl he's referring to isn't the Barbara Gordon one, but the earlier Bat-Girl who was Batwoman's niece, Betty Kane. The extraplanetary adventure with Batwoman really did happen, in BATMAN #153.
Pg. 17:
Ace in the background again. "I was a circus kid. I knew about Katy Kane": Kathy-with-an-H Kane was a "circus daredevil performer." A very, very rich circus daredevil performer.
"Hugo Strange"/"Monster Men": another reference to BATMAN #1. The isolation experiment was in BATMAN #156, "Robin Dies at Dawn," another story that's been pretty significantly echoed in the Morrison run--yes, two extraplanetary adventures in three issues. Those were different times.
Pg. 18:
Ah, the Lump--another Jack Kirby creation, first seen in MISTER MIRACLE #8, which is discussed at length here.
Alfred apparently died in DETECTIVE COMICS #328 (which inspired Bruce to start the "Alfred Foundation" in his memory), then became the Outsider and bedeviled Batman for a while starting in DETECTIVE COMICS #334, then came back to life in the rather Batman R.I.P.-themed DETECTIVE COMICS #356 (at which point the foundation became the Wayne Foundation we know and love).
"Pop Criminals": love it.
Pg. 19:
Dick became Nightwing in TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44 in 1984, which means we've just skipped over about 20 years' worth of stories.
One of these things is not like the others. That would be the Eraser, from BATMAN #188. It's almost as if Bruce's subconscious is trying to tell him something, you think?
Pg. 21:
I'm guessing what Bruce is looking at in the top panel is Jason Todd's costume, after Jason's death. "Say goodbye to the Batcave" recalls the cover of BATMAN #217.
What gave Alfred away, I suspect, was that in DETECTIVE #356 Bruce tried to make sure he'd never learn about his time as the Outsider.
Pg. 22:
...And the Waynes never got killed, so Bruce never did anything much with his life. Note that the beginning of this scenario is pretty much identical to his Black Mercy fantasy in the imperishable SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11.
The Joker threatened to poison the reservoir in BATMAN #407--that was the final scene of "Year One."
Pg. 23:
Thus, we loop back around to where Batman was in FC #2. And we'll pick up the threads again next week, although I should note that the phrase "Grant Morrison's recent run on Batman" from the next-issue box is oddly inconclusive.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Final Crisis: Resist
Today it somehow feels like Darkseid has already been defeated. Although, as Matthew Perpetua notes, Prop 8 is pretty close to the Anti-Life Equation.
Of course, this issue's story (in which events begin at Camp Oswald in the Antarctic on "day 0," or day 6 of our timeline, Castellan is captured immediately, and Mr. Terrific and Taleb stay at Oswald for 26 days before settling loose the OMACs) would seem to contradict FC #4, in which Mr. Terrific, Taleb and Castellan are in Switzerland holding out against the Justifiers sometime around day 20. Another one to chalk up to the fall of Darkseid, I suppose.
Looks like somebody forgot to include the credits in this issue--and in fact there are a few pages near the end that don't look particularly Ryan Sook-like. Curious. Maybe those were pencilled by Marco Rudy? Anybody know how this issue breaks down?
Pg. 1:
Tommy Jagger, the son of the first Judomaster, was created by Greg Rucka and Jesus Saiz, and first appeared in CHECKMATE #1 in 2006. Fire, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon, first appeared in SUPER FRIENDS #25. Ice, created by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire, first appeared in JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #12.
The "code zoo" was first mentioned in CHECKMATE #13, I believe; I don't think the "arcane locker" has been mentioned before.
Like the idea of more Greg Rucka-written comics about government agents set in Antarctica? May I direct you toward the excellent WHITEOUT?
Pp. 2-3:
Entertaining to see just how fast Rucka and Trautmann can kick their CHECKMATE sandbox over. Trautmann has noted that Castellan's "tailgunner" is a reference to TAILGUNNER JO.
Sasha Bordeaux, created by Greg Rucka and Shawn Martinbrough, first appeared in 2000's DETECTIVE COMICS #751.
Valentina Vostok, formerly Negative Woman, was created by Paul Kupperberg and Jim Aparo, and first appeared in 1977 in SHOWCASE #94. I don't think she's the Negative Woman killed in the attack on Blüdhaven in FC #4.
Maks Chazov first appeared rather recently, in CHECKMATE #22, although the Rocket Reds, created by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton, first appeared in 1987's GREEN LANTERN CORPS #208.
Jessica Midnight, created by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber, first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #773.
Pg. 4:
Gideon-II is here. As for the Thinker... well, it's complicated: Hyperborea has the whole story, but it's an AI program whose lineage goes all the way back to 1943's ALL-FLASH #12.
Pg. 5:
"I can't see you": Michael is invisible to technology.
Pg. 6:
Lucas "Snapper" Carr, created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, first appeared in 1960's THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #28. He developed the ability to teleport by snapping his fingers in the course of INVASION!; later, in (I think) HOURMAN #20 and #21, he lost his hands (and his powers), then got new hands (which didn't have those powers). He was revealed to have been involved with Checkmate for a while as of 52 AFTERMATH: THE FOUR HORSEMEN #3, but does anybody happen to know how and when he got his powers back? Rucka writes that "Snapper had his 'portin returned courtesy of Keith Giffen," but the only time he teleports in the course of FOUR HORSEMEN isn't under his own power, it's via a JLA transporter. Is there a story I'm forgetting?
"War garden": not the plucky British kind, apparently.
Pg. 8:
Oh, now he asks if he can use lethal force. Whoops.
Pg. 9:
Wouldn't it have been nice if everybody had gotten straight what technology works and doesn't work under the Darkseid regime? Firehawk, created by Gerry Conway and Pat Broderick, first appeared in 1982's THE FURY OF FIRESTORM #1.
Pg. 10:
"All the memories that brings back": Snapper was the League's mascot in the early days, but fell out with them after he was manipulated into betraying them in 1969's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #77.
Pg. 12:
We saw Cheetah in passing in FC #1 (as part of the "protest march"), but I think this is the first time she's gotten a speaking role here, so I'll note now that she's an updated version of a character created by William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter who first appeared in 1943's WONDER WOMAN #6. (I feel compelled to link to the next issue's cover too.)
"A right old-fashioned gutting": the current Cheetah, Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva, is British.
Pg. 16:
What's up with those babies?
Pg. 17:
Barbara got her powers from a plant god called Urzkartaga, per the George Pérez-written WONDER WOMAN #28. According to the Rucka-written WONDER WOMAN #222, he's a cat god. And now he's a fertility god (or that's just a superhuman-type pickup line)... and the old gods are having a tough time of it at the dawn of the Fifth World.
Pg. 21:
"Bloodhound survey": I wonder if this has something to do with BLOODHOUND?
As of THE OMAC PROJECT #5, there were 1,373,462 OMACs; where'd the other ten million come from?
Pg. 22:
"Brother Eye... has been dealt with": rather inconclusively, across various issues of INFINITE CRISIS, its associated OMAC PROJECT special, BRAVE NEW WORLD, OMAC and COUNTDOWN.
Pg. 30:
Jeez, people, put on some warm clothing first, will you?
REVELATIONS #4 and BATMAN #682 have both been bumped to December, so I'll see you in three weeks for #5, cross fingers.
Of course, this issue's story (in which events begin at Camp Oswald in the Antarctic on "day 0," or day 6 of our timeline, Castellan is captured immediately, and Mr. Terrific and Taleb stay at Oswald for 26 days before settling loose the OMACs) would seem to contradict FC #4, in which Mr. Terrific, Taleb and Castellan are in Switzerland holding out against the Justifiers sometime around day 20. Another one to chalk up to the fall of Darkseid, I suppose.
Looks like somebody forgot to include the credits in this issue--and in fact there are a few pages near the end that don't look particularly Ryan Sook-like. Curious. Maybe those were pencilled by Marco Rudy? Anybody know how this issue breaks down?
Pg. 1:
Tommy Jagger, the son of the first Judomaster, was created by Greg Rucka and Jesus Saiz, and first appeared in CHECKMATE #1 in 2006. Fire, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon, first appeared in SUPER FRIENDS #25. Ice, created by Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire, first appeared in JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #12.
The "code zoo" was first mentioned in CHECKMATE #13, I believe; I don't think the "arcane locker" has been mentioned before.
Like the idea of more Greg Rucka-written comics about government agents set in Antarctica? May I direct you toward the excellent WHITEOUT?
Pp. 2-3:
Entertaining to see just how fast Rucka and Trautmann can kick their CHECKMATE sandbox over. Trautmann has noted that Castellan's "tailgunner" is a reference to TAILGUNNER JO.
Sasha Bordeaux, created by Greg Rucka and Shawn Martinbrough, first appeared in 2000's DETECTIVE COMICS #751.
Valentina Vostok, formerly Negative Woman, was created by Paul Kupperberg and Jim Aparo, and first appeared in 1977 in SHOWCASE #94. I don't think she's the Negative Woman killed in the attack on Blüdhaven in FC #4.
Maks Chazov first appeared rather recently, in CHECKMATE #22, although the Rocket Reds, created by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton, first appeared in 1987's GREEN LANTERN CORPS #208.
Jessica Midnight, created by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber, first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #773.
Pg. 4:
Gideon-II is here. As for the Thinker... well, it's complicated: Hyperborea has the whole story, but it's an AI program whose lineage goes all the way back to 1943's ALL-FLASH #12.
Pg. 5:
"I can't see you": Michael is invisible to technology.
Pg. 6:
Lucas "Snapper" Carr, created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, first appeared in 1960's THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #28. He developed the ability to teleport by snapping his fingers in the course of INVASION!; later, in (I think) HOURMAN #20 and #21, he lost his hands (and his powers), then got new hands (which didn't have those powers). He was revealed to have been involved with Checkmate for a while as of 52 AFTERMATH: THE FOUR HORSEMEN #3, but does anybody happen to know how and when he got his powers back? Rucka writes that "Snapper had his 'portin returned courtesy of Keith Giffen," but the only time he teleports in the course of FOUR HORSEMEN isn't under his own power, it's via a JLA transporter. Is there a story I'm forgetting?
"War garden": not the plucky British kind, apparently.
Pg. 8:
Oh, now he asks if he can use lethal force. Whoops.
Pg. 9:
Wouldn't it have been nice if everybody had gotten straight what technology works and doesn't work under the Darkseid regime? Firehawk, created by Gerry Conway and Pat Broderick, first appeared in 1982's THE FURY OF FIRESTORM #1.
Pg. 10:
"All the memories that brings back": Snapper was the League's mascot in the early days, but fell out with them after he was manipulated into betraying them in 1969's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #77.
Pg. 12:
We saw Cheetah in passing in FC #1 (as part of the "protest march"), but I think this is the first time she's gotten a speaking role here, so I'll note now that she's an updated version of a character created by William Moulton Marston and Harry G. Peter who first appeared in 1943's WONDER WOMAN #6. (I feel compelled to link to the next issue's cover too.)
"A right old-fashioned gutting": the current Cheetah, Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva, is British.
Pg. 16:
What's up with those babies?
Pg. 17:
Barbara got her powers from a plant god called Urzkartaga, per the George Pérez-written WONDER WOMAN #28. According to the Rucka-written WONDER WOMAN #222, he's a cat god. And now he's a fertility god (or that's just a superhuman-type pickup line)... and the old gods are having a tough time of it at the dawn of the Fifth World.
Pg. 21:
"Bloodhound survey": I wonder if this has something to do with BLOODHOUND?
As of THE OMAC PROJECT #5, there were 1,373,462 OMACs; where'd the other ten million come from?
Pg. 22:
"Brother Eye... has been dealt with": rather inconclusively, across various issues of INFINITE CRISIS, its associated OMAC PROJECT special, BRAVE NEW WORLD, OMAC and COUNTDOWN.
Pg. 30:
Jeez, people, put on some warm clothing first, will you?
REVELATIONS #4 and BATMAN #682 have both been bumped to December, so I'll see you in three weeks for #5, cross fingers.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns
So. Everyone keeping track of the schedule goings-on? Most of the FC books seem to be falling into place to conclude by the end of January, so that they can be "reflected in the books starting in March"--hmm; there seems to still be a safety cushion built in there. LEGION OF 3 WORLDS, on the other hand, appears to have fallen off a cliff; #3 is now due out in mid-January (and #4 in late December, but I imagine that'll get fixed sometime soon), and #5 still isn't on the schedule. Although if the lightning rod is going to tie into FLASH: REBIRTH, it's going to have to be out by April, isn't it?
If FINAL CRISIS is, as Morrison puts it, "a doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in," then RotRL is as metal as it gets--although, as several people have pointed out already, it has next to nothing to do with FC proper. (Johns made the claim that "you'll see events in FINAL CRISIS have motivated the Guardians...," but any reference to that seems to have not made it into the final script.) I'm surprised, though, that after taking such pains to explain or at least cue everything about the Legion in Lo3W, Johns has basically written this issue as a slightly longer issue of GREEN LANTERN for people who've been following it already.
Pg. 1:
Between #1 and #2? I guess that means that the GL storyline this "prologue" cliffhangers into happens between those issues too. Which means, as the sloth mugged by a gang of vicious snails put it, it all happened so fast! Except wasn't the deal in FC #1 that the Alpha Lanterns had cordoned off the planet, no one gets in or out, etc.? So what are Hal and John doing zooming off to outer space? Or do they get the "space cop" exception?
[ETA: As fcfanatic points out, at this point Hal's scar from FC #1 should be visible, and it's not. What's interesting is that most of the close-ups of Hal's face in this issue specifically don't show his left temple--and the ones that do almost all have some kind of patch of shading in that area. I suppose it's possible that Davis put the scar in there, and Hope didn't know it was supposed to be there... or maybe everyone just forgot/didn't know.]
Also, I've updated the timeline.
"Inversions" has to be a reference to Qull of the Five Inversions from "Tygers," the Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill story in TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS ANNUAL #2 that keeps on giving. [ETA: This point is explicated at greater length in the recent GREEN LANTERN #33--they're the survivors of the Massacre of Sector 666.]
Pg. 2:
For Atrocitus and Sector 666, see notes for DC UNIVERSE 0, pp. 15-16.
Ysmault is another throwaway thing from "Tygers."
The Guardians' android police force was the Manhunters--the kind created by Jack Kirby that first appeared in 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #5, rather than DC's many other flavors of Manhunter. According to GREEN LANTERN #33, they went all "the crime isss life, the sentence isss death" on Sector 666.
Pg. 3:
Man, that oath may scan right, but it's sure ungainly--"so freshly dead"? Wouldn't "ripped from a body freshly dead" seem more natural? (Answer: yes, but then it wouldn't be able to include the extremely metal word "corpse".) Nice how the page's layout echoes the design of the Red Lantern insignia, too.
Pg. 5:
Jim Jordan, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in 1961's GREEN LANTERN #9. (Note the "Kane St." in the background of the first panel; "Dooley Ave." probably refers to Kevin Dooley, who was editing the series during the "destruction of Coast City" period.) Cowgirl (Jillian Pearlman), created by Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver, first appeared in 2006's GREEN LANTERN #4.
Coast City's population would make it the fourth-largest city on the U.S. of Earth-Prime, bigger than any but New York, L.A. and Chicago. Not bad for a place that was a ghost town only a couple of years ago.
Pg. 6:
Korugar, Sinestro's home planet, first appeared in 1961's GREEN LANTERN #7.
Pp. 7-8:
"The last time the Guardians thought they stopped Sinestro...": This is not quite accurate: in 1988's THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #223 and thereabouts, Sinestro was sentenced to death, and managed to survive by putting his "essence" into the Central Power Battery. (Which made it stop working.)
Parallax, uh... Yes, right! Parallax. Next question, please?
Pg. 9:
This scene follows up on a plot thread from GREEN LANTERN #27. This Guardian was burned by the Anti-Monitor in GREEN LANTERN #25 (which is also where A-M got, uh, de-husked), and that sure looks like a Black Lantern/Black Hand insignia in his (or her?) eyeballs.
Ash, created by Ron Marz and Tony Harris, first appeared in 1993's GREEN LANTERN CORPS QUARTERLY #7.
Pg. 10:
Zamaron is the home planet of the Violet Lanterns we saw in DC UNIVERSE 0. And... now Scardian has yellow-lantern eyes.
Pg. 13:
Wouldn't executing a recidivist perpetrator of genocide count as deterrence as much as punishment?
Pg. 16:
Bleez and Vice are both new. Ranx, the Sentient City, is yet another "Tygers" bit, although it showed up at length in the course of the Sinestro Corps War. Laira, in the bottom panel, was created by Ruben Diaz and Travis Charest, and first appeared in GREEN LANTERN CORPS QUARTERLY #6.
Pg. 17:
I don't think we've seen space sector 543 before, although the Vega system has been established as being in sector 2828. The Controllers, created by Jim Shooter, Mort Weisinger and Curt Swan, first appeared in 1967's ADVENTURE COMICS #357. Okaara was mentioned a bunch in Marv Wolfman and George Pérez's early NEW TEEN TITANS stories, and the Warlords of Okaara first appeared in person in TALES OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS #4. (Ah, the days when Pérez was drawing two comics a month...) And what light is it? It sure looks like orange light, representing greed, hence the "No! It's mine!"--which I believe we also saw back in DCU 0.
Pg. 18:
That would be Salakk, not Saalak; created by Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton, he first appeared in 1982's GREEN LANTERN #149. Kilowog, the big guy in the middle panel, was created by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton, and first appeared in 1986's GREEN LANTERN CORPS #201, but stole my heart with the cover to GREEN LANTERN CORPS #208. I cannot for the life of me remember what the Lantern who looks like a 100-sided die is named. [ETA: Chaselon. Thank you, rwe1138!]
Pg. 19:
Anyone want to guess what Hal's question was going to be?
Pg. 20:
Arx, created by Dave Gibbons and Patrick Gleason, first appeared in 2006's GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1.
Pg. 24:
The Red Hairball Lantern is apparently called Dex-Star, although if he's named this issue I overlooked it. I thought the Sinestro of Sector 3 was Bedovian, but I don't think the hairball victim here is him.
Pg. 30:
Saint Walker, not to be confused with Christian Walker, first popped up in the "War of Light" image in GREEN LANTERN #25.
If FINAL CRISIS is, as Morrison puts it, "a doom-laden, Death Metal myth for the wonderful world of Fina(ncia)l Crisis/Eco-breakdown/Terror Trauma we all have to live in," then RotRL is as metal as it gets--although, as several people have pointed out already, it has next to nothing to do with FC proper. (Johns made the claim that "you'll see events in FINAL CRISIS have motivated the Guardians...," but any reference to that seems to have not made it into the final script.) I'm surprised, though, that after taking such pains to explain or at least cue everything about the Legion in Lo3W, Johns has basically written this issue as a slightly longer issue of GREEN LANTERN for people who've been following it already.
Pg. 1:
Between #1 and #2? I guess that means that the GL storyline this "prologue" cliffhangers into happens between those issues too. Which means, as the sloth mugged by a gang of vicious snails put it, it all happened so fast! Except wasn't the deal in FC #1 that the Alpha Lanterns had cordoned off the planet, no one gets in or out, etc.? So what are Hal and John doing zooming off to outer space? Or do they get the "space cop" exception?
[ETA: As fcfanatic points out, at this point Hal's scar from FC #1 should be visible, and it's not. What's interesting is that most of the close-ups of Hal's face in this issue specifically don't show his left temple--and the ones that do almost all have some kind of patch of shading in that area. I suppose it's possible that Davis put the scar in there, and Hope didn't know it was supposed to be there... or maybe everyone just forgot/didn't know.]
Also, I've updated the timeline.
"Inversions" has to be a reference to Qull of the Five Inversions from "Tygers," the Alan Moore/Kevin O'Neill story in TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS ANNUAL #2 that keeps on giving. [ETA: This point is explicated at greater length in the recent GREEN LANTERN #33--they're the survivors of the Massacre of Sector 666.]
Pg. 2:
For Atrocitus and Sector 666, see notes for DC UNIVERSE 0, pp. 15-16.
Ysmault is another throwaway thing from "Tygers."
The Guardians' android police force was the Manhunters--the kind created by Jack Kirby that first appeared in 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #5, rather than DC's many other flavors of Manhunter. According to GREEN LANTERN #33, they went all "the crime isss life, the sentence isss death" on Sector 666.
Pg. 3:
Man, that oath may scan right, but it's sure ungainly--"so freshly dead"? Wouldn't "ripped from a body freshly dead" seem more natural? (Answer: yes, but then it wouldn't be able to include the extremely metal word "corpse".) Nice how the page's layout echoes the design of the Red Lantern insignia, too.
Pg. 5:
Jim Jordan, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in 1961's GREEN LANTERN #9. (Note the "Kane St." in the background of the first panel; "Dooley Ave." probably refers to Kevin Dooley, who was editing the series during the "destruction of Coast City" period.) Cowgirl (Jillian Pearlman), created by Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver, first appeared in 2006's GREEN LANTERN #4.
Coast City's population would make it the fourth-largest city on the U.S. of Earth-Prime, bigger than any but New York, L.A. and Chicago. Not bad for a place that was a ghost town only a couple of years ago.
Pg. 6:
Korugar, Sinestro's home planet, first appeared in 1961's GREEN LANTERN #7.
Pp. 7-8:
"The last time the Guardians thought they stopped Sinestro...": This is not quite accurate: in 1988's THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS #223 and thereabouts, Sinestro was sentenced to death, and managed to survive by putting his "essence" into the Central Power Battery. (Which made it stop working.)
Parallax, uh... Yes, right! Parallax. Next question, please?
Pg. 9:
This scene follows up on a plot thread from GREEN LANTERN #27. This Guardian was burned by the Anti-Monitor in GREEN LANTERN #25 (which is also where A-M got, uh, de-husked), and that sure looks like a Black Lantern/Black Hand insignia in his (or her?) eyeballs.
Ash, created by Ron Marz and Tony Harris, first appeared in 1993's GREEN LANTERN CORPS QUARTERLY #7.
Pg. 10:
Zamaron is the home planet of the Violet Lanterns we saw in DC UNIVERSE 0. And... now Scardian has yellow-lantern eyes.
Pg. 13:
Wouldn't executing a recidivist perpetrator of genocide count as deterrence as much as punishment?
Pg. 16:
Bleez and Vice are both new. Ranx, the Sentient City, is yet another "Tygers" bit, although it showed up at length in the course of the Sinestro Corps War. Laira, in the bottom panel, was created by Ruben Diaz and Travis Charest, and first appeared in GREEN LANTERN CORPS QUARTERLY #6.
Pg. 17:
I don't think we've seen space sector 543 before, although the Vega system has been established as being in sector 2828. The Controllers, created by Jim Shooter, Mort Weisinger and Curt Swan, first appeared in 1967's ADVENTURE COMICS #357. Okaara was mentioned a bunch in Marv Wolfman and George Pérez's early NEW TEEN TITANS stories, and the Warlords of Okaara first appeared in person in TALES OF THE NEW TEEN TITANS #4. (Ah, the days when Pérez was drawing two comics a month...) And what light is it? It sure looks like orange light, representing greed, hence the "No! It's mine!"--which I believe we also saw back in DCU 0.
Pg. 18:
That would be Salakk, not Saalak; created by Marv Wolfman and Joe Staton, he first appeared in 1982's GREEN LANTERN #149. Kilowog, the big guy in the middle panel, was created by Steve Englehart and Joe Staton, and first appeared in 1986's GREEN LANTERN CORPS #201, but stole my heart with the cover to GREEN LANTERN CORPS #208. I cannot for the life of me remember what the Lantern who looks like a 100-sided die is named. [ETA: Chaselon. Thank you, rwe1138!]
Pg. 19:
Anyone want to guess what Hal's question was going to be?
Pg. 20:
Arx, created by Dave Gibbons and Patrick Gleason, first appeared in 2006's GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1.
Pg. 24:
The Red Hairball Lantern is apparently called Dex-Star, although if he's named this issue I overlooked it. I thought the Sinestro of Sector 3 was Bedovian, but I don't think the hairball victim here is him.
Pg. 30:
Saint Walker, not to be confused with Christian Walker, first popped up in the "War of Light" image in GREEN LANTERN #25.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Final Crisis: Submit
Very minimal annotations this time out. (Although the "two weeks" comment was helpful in updating the FINAL CRISIS timeline.)
Pp. 2-3:
Before he was Black Lightning, Jefferson Pierce was an Olympic decathlete, and over the course of this story we see him doing a few decathlon-type things--this, I suppose, would be one of the sprinting events...
Pg. 4:
...and this would be the hurdles.
Pg. 5:
As Evie points out, the "that's right" is a very blaxploitation gesture.
Pg. 15:
Jefferson's two daughters are Anissa (Thunder of the Outsiders) and Jennifer (Lightning of the JSA).
Pg. 22:
Here he is throwing the discus.
Pg. 23:
Jefferson was also a high school teacher for a while, and later the U.S. Secretary of Education under the Lex Luthor administration.
Who was the colleague he was trying to rescue? From FC #4, it looks like there were already a bunch of his colleagues at the Hall of Justice. (But he might not have known that; information-transmission is at a premium, obviously.) ETA: commenter Smurph indicates that it was probably Oracle.
The origin of "shoulder to the wheel" appears to be Aesop's fable of Hercules and the wagoner.
Pg. 26:
Suicide Slum was first named in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #7, although Kirby relocated it from NYC to Metropolis in JIMMY OLSEN #133. (Its official name is Hobb's Bay.)
"I learned it by watching you!"
Pg. 28:
Thunder, created by Judd Winick and Tom Raney, first appeared in 2003's OUTSIDERS #1. She seems to have gotten better after her brain injuries in recent issues of OUTSIDERS.
Incidentally, there's a real-world Omega Initiative!
Pg. 29:
Not exactly subtle to be burning a copy of Darwin... but this issue is not about subtlety. I'm wondering what the "S" painted on the window and the wall means, as opposed to the Justifier "J" we see in FINAL CRISIS #4 itself. [ETA: Several commenters have pointed out that it stands for "scapegoat"--see the Kirby image about three-quarters of the way down this page.]
Andrew Hickey points out that what Jefferson is saying echoes Gregory Bar Hebraeus's probably apocryphal account of Caliph Omar's order to burn the books of the Library of Alexandria: "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."
Pp. 2-3:
Before he was Black Lightning, Jefferson Pierce was an Olympic decathlete, and over the course of this story we see him doing a few decathlon-type things--this, I suppose, would be one of the sprinting events...
Pg. 4:
...and this would be the hurdles.
Pg. 5:
As Evie points out, the "that's right" is a very blaxploitation gesture.
Pg. 15:
Jefferson's two daughters are Anissa (Thunder of the Outsiders) and Jennifer (Lightning of the JSA).
Pg. 22:
Here he is throwing the discus.
Pg. 23:
Jefferson was also a high school teacher for a while, and later the U.S. Secretary of Education under the Lex Luthor administration.
Who was the colleague he was trying to rescue? From FC #4, it looks like there were already a bunch of his colleagues at the Hall of Justice. (But he might not have known that; information-transmission is at a premium, obviously.) ETA: commenter Smurph indicates that it was probably Oracle.
The origin of "shoulder to the wheel" appears to be Aesop's fable of Hercules and the wagoner.
Pg. 26:
Suicide Slum was first named in STAR SPANGLED COMICS #7, although Kirby relocated it from NYC to Metropolis in JIMMY OLSEN #133. (Its official name is Hobb's Bay.)
"I learned it by watching you!"
Pg. 28:
Thunder, created by Judd Winick and Tom Raney, first appeared in 2003's OUTSIDERS #1. She seems to have gotten better after her brain injuries in recent issues of OUTSIDERS.
Incidentally, there's a real-world Omega Initiative!
Pg. 29:
Not exactly subtle to be burning a copy of Darwin... but this issue is not about subtlety. I'm wondering what the "S" painted on the window and the wall means, as opposed to the Justifier "J" we see in FINAL CRISIS #4 itself. [ETA: Several commenters have pointed out that it stands for "scapegoat"--see the Kirby image about three-quarters of the way down this page.]
Andrew Hickey points out that what Jefferson is saying echoes Gregory Bar Hebraeus's probably apocryphal account of Caliph Omar's order to burn the books of the Library of Alexandria: "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous."
Final Crisis #4
Final Crisis #4
Q. How metal was this issue? A. ALL THE METAL. And I am far from the only person to have noticed that the neon gauntlets Darkseid is all but audibly clanging together on the portrait cover look like they say DC.
As usual lately, I am late to the mark. (And covering this issue before SUBMIT, although it clearly happens immediately after it. I'll try to fix up the chronology tonight or Friday.) David Uzumeri got to a bunch of stuff first, of course...
Pg. 1:
Carol Ferris, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in SHOWCASE #22 in 1959.
Pg. 2:
The top panel is the London Underground. The cab is indeed probably in New York, but who's the passenger in the fedora? And should I recognize the cabbie?
Pg. 3:
That J might be for "Justifier" (see notes on the S-for-scapegoat in SUBMIT, above). The Ray appears to be the Ray Terrill version, who first appeared in 1992's THE RAY #1, created by Jack C. Harris and Joe Quesada (rather than the S.H.A.D.E. operative Stan Silver from UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS); he's a variation on a character created by the mighty Lou Fine, who first appeared in 1940's SMASH COMICS #14.
I kind of don't understand how Ray dragged the Tattooed Man in here...
Pp. 6-7:
The narration is Turpin's, apparently. The slaughtered Blüdhaven force includes Negative Woman, Director Bones and Count Vertigo, all Checkmate operatives.
Pg. 8:
This raises the question of who the "powerful, noble spirit" of Darkseid's previous fleshly incarnation was. The quotes around "incubation phase" are very Kirby.
Pg. 10:
Apparently Barbara did manage to unplug the Internet after all!
Pg. 11:
As David points out, the Ünternet was created by Kurt Busiek and introduced in ACTION COMICS #853. But who would the "highly placed informer in Libra's secret society" be?
Pp. 12-13:
Hawkgirl is fighting Silver Swan (III). The grid is: Ravager, Starman, Blue Devil (M.I.A., perhaps, because of REIGN IN HELL?), Huntress, The Atom, Enchantress (when was she injured?); Uncle Sam (corrupted how?... besides the obvious, I mean), Wildcat I, Wonder Woman (who should by rights be M.I.A., as David pointed out; maybe this is Hippolyta?), Superman, Batman, Cyborg (we don't know how he went missing), Martian Manhunter; Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Hourman, Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, Dr. Fate (also maybe missing because of REIGN IN HELL), Power Girl, Wally West/The Flash; John Stewart (who now has a mysterious scar just like Hal did), Sandman, Black Canary, the Kingdom Come Superman (!), Robin, Red Tornado, Phantom Lady; Starfire (when'd she get captured?), Liberty Belle, Green Arrow, Black Lightning, Aquaman, Firestorm and Kyle Rayner. (Thank you, David.)
Castellan is Carl Draper's title as of 2007's CHECKMATE #17; Draper was Deathtrap, although here he apparently claims not to have been the Master Jailer, which he was pre-Crisis.
Pg. 14:
There was a Warmaker who appeared alongside Sarge Steel in SECRET AGENT #9 (check that Dick Giordano cover!), but this is the one from the International Ultramarine Corps, created by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter, who first appeared in DC ONE MILLION #2. Superbia is their city/HQ in the sky. And Watchtower 4 is Gorilla City; is that Freedom Beast or B'wana Beast?
Pg. 15:
Black Adam, created by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck, first appeared in THE MARVEL FAMILY #1 in 1945. (As for where his throne room is--why, it's on the cover of 52 #45, of course.) August General-in-Iron and the rest of the Great Ten, created by Grant Morrison and I think J.G. Jones, first appeared in 52 #6.
Pg. 16:
This leads directly out of SUBMIT. Yes, he looks like Metron now, with the circuit, but he also looks a bit like one of the Metal Men, don't you think? Remember, in Grant Morrison comics, bald men always save the universe!
Pg. 17:
Wonder Woman/Bernadeth is "Wunda," Giganta/Stompa is "Gigantrix." "Flash fact," I believe, was a phrase from Silver Age FLASH comics that explained some scientific (or occasionally pseudoscientific) principle; I forget which of the writers on Wally's series retconned it to be something Barry used to say to Wally by way of education. [ETA: thanks to commenter msinger for pointing me toward Morrison's use of "Flash Facts" in JLA #3--scroll down a bit to see it.]
"Original costume": Wally originally (briefly) wore a smaller version of Barry's costume, then switched to a predominantly yellow costume, which he was still wearing at the time of Barry's death. He's been wearing the red one ever since, but Barry obviously hasn't been around. [ETA: several commenters make the argument that this is more likely to be a reference to Barry having seen Wally's shinier '90s variation of the Flash outfit in his earlier returns--which raises the question of whether this version of Barry is younger or older than the one seen in his two previous returns.]
Pg. 20:
Uzumeri, you can't depend on me like that! The League were in a similar pose on the cover of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #4, and vaguely similar situations appeared on the covers of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #26 and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #147, but none of those seem quite right. The version of J'onn in the bottle has his long head, which is doubly confusing...
Pg. 22:
Yes, I also want to see Morrison write Green Arrow forever.
Pg. 25:
For "day of holocaust," see SUPERMAN BEYOND #1.
Pg. 27:
I like the "speed force as life equation" idea--what happens when you plug 3X2(9YZ)4A into Self = Darkseid? "Sorry I was late": the running joke in the early days of Barry's FLASH series was that he was incapable of being on time to anything. Or maybe that's just a reference to this issue's ship date.
Pg. 29:
I don't get why Shilo's colored pink here (unless this particular heroic bald guy isn't actually him), but he's also gotten out of worse before--see SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY #1. Note also the Metron circuit appearing on the heroes' faces.
Q. How metal was this issue? A. ALL THE METAL. And I am far from the only person to have noticed that the neon gauntlets Darkseid is all but audibly clanging together on the portrait cover look like they say DC.
As usual lately, I am late to the mark. (And covering this issue before SUBMIT, although it clearly happens immediately after it. I'll try to fix up the chronology tonight or Friday.) David Uzumeri got to a bunch of stuff first, of course...
Pg. 1:
Carol Ferris, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in SHOWCASE #22 in 1959.
Pg. 2:
The top panel is the London Underground. The cab is indeed probably in New York, but who's the passenger in the fedora? And should I recognize the cabbie?
Pg. 3:
That J might be for "Justifier" (see notes on the S-for-scapegoat in SUBMIT, above). The Ray appears to be the Ray Terrill version, who first appeared in 1992's THE RAY #1, created by Jack C. Harris and Joe Quesada (rather than the S.H.A.D.E. operative Stan Silver from UNCLE SAM AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS); he's a variation on a character created by the mighty Lou Fine, who first appeared in 1940's SMASH COMICS #14.
I kind of don't understand how Ray dragged the Tattooed Man in here...
Pp. 6-7:
The narration is Turpin's, apparently. The slaughtered Blüdhaven force includes Negative Woman, Director Bones and Count Vertigo, all Checkmate operatives.
Pg. 8:
This raises the question of who the "powerful, noble spirit" of Darkseid's previous fleshly incarnation was. The quotes around "incubation phase" are very Kirby.
Pg. 10:
Apparently Barbara did manage to unplug the Internet after all!
Pg. 11:
As David points out, the Ünternet was created by Kurt Busiek and introduced in ACTION COMICS #853. But who would the "highly placed informer in Libra's secret society" be?
Pp. 12-13:
Hawkgirl is fighting Silver Swan (III). The grid is: Ravager, Starman, Blue Devil (M.I.A., perhaps, because of REIGN IN HELL?), Huntress, The Atom, Enchantress (when was she injured?); Uncle Sam (corrupted how?... besides the obvious, I mean), Wildcat I, Wonder Woman (who should by rights be M.I.A., as David pointed out; maybe this is Hippolyta?), Superman, Batman, Cyborg (we don't know how he went missing), Martian Manhunter; Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Hourman, Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, Dr. Fate (also maybe missing because of REIGN IN HELL), Power Girl, Wally West/The Flash; John Stewart (who now has a mysterious scar just like Hal did), Sandman, Black Canary, the Kingdom Come Superman (!), Robin, Red Tornado, Phantom Lady; Starfire (when'd she get captured?), Liberty Belle, Green Arrow, Black Lightning, Aquaman, Firestorm and Kyle Rayner. (Thank you, David.)
Castellan is Carl Draper's title as of 2007's CHECKMATE #17; Draper was Deathtrap, although here he apparently claims not to have been the Master Jailer, which he was pre-Crisis.
Pg. 14:
There was a Warmaker who appeared alongside Sarge Steel in SECRET AGENT #9 (check that Dick Giordano cover!), but this is the one from the International Ultramarine Corps, created by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter, who first appeared in DC ONE MILLION #2. Superbia is their city/HQ in the sky. And Watchtower 4 is Gorilla City; is that Freedom Beast or B'wana Beast?
Pg. 15:
Black Adam, created by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck, first appeared in THE MARVEL FAMILY #1 in 1945. (As for where his throne room is--why, it's on the cover of 52 #45, of course.) August General-in-Iron and the rest of the Great Ten, created by Grant Morrison and I think J.G. Jones, first appeared in 52 #6.
Pg. 16:
This leads directly out of SUBMIT. Yes, he looks like Metron now, with the circuit, but he also looks a bit like one of the Metal Men, don't you think? Remember, in Grant Morrison comics, bald men always save the universe!
Pg. 17:
Wonder Woman/Bernadeth is "Wunda," Giganta/Stompa is "Gigantrix." "Flash fact," I believe, was a phrase from Silver Age FLASH comics that explained some scientific (or occasionally pseudoscientific) principle; I forget which of the writers on Wally's series retconned it to be something Barry used to say to Wally by way of education. [ETA: thanks to commenter msinger for pointing me toward Morrison's use of "Flash Facts" in JLA #3--scroll down a bit to see it.]
"Original costume": Wally originally (briefly) wore a smaller version of Barry's costume, then switched to a predominantly yellow costume, which he was still wearing at the time of Barry's death. He's been wearing the red one ever since, but Barry obviously hasn't been around. [ETA: several commenters make the argument that this is more likely to be a reference to Barry having seen Wally's shinier '90s variation of the Flash outfit in his earlier returns--which raises the question of whether this version of Barry is younger or older than the one seen in his two previous returns.]
Pg. 20:
Uzumeri, you can't depend on me like that! The League were in a similar pose on the cover of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #4, and vaguely similar situations appeared on the covers of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #26 and JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #147, but none of those seem quite right. The version of J'onn in the bottle has his long head, which is doubly confusing...
Pg. 22:
Yes, I also want to see Morrison write Green Arrow forever.
Pg. 25:
For "day of holocaust," see SUPERMAN BEYOND #1.
Pg. 27:
I like the "speed force as life equation" idea--what happens when you plug 3X2(9YZ)4A into Self = Darkseid? "Sorry I was late": the running joke in the early days of Barry's FLASH series was that he was incapable of being on time to anything. Or maybe that's just a reference to this issue's ship date.
Pg. 29:
I don't get why Shilo's colored pink here (unless this particular heroic bald guy isn't actually him), but he's also gotten out of worse before--see SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY #1. Note also the Metron circuit appearing on the heroes' faces.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #2
The big question about this series, obviously, is: when is Arm-Fall-Off Boy going to show up? I just read THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES IN THE 31ST CENTURY #16, an entire issue devoted to his legacy; I think his non-appearance thus far here needs to be addressed.
As for Lo3W #2 itself, both Michael Grabois and Tim Callahan have gotten to this issue already, so there may not be much left for me to do but plagiarize and synthesize. But let's see what I can add.
Pg. 1:
A fade-in from white, mirroring the endings of several incarnations and sub-incarnations of the Legion series.
This is Shikari, created by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Olivier Coipel, who first appeared in LEGION LOST #1--she's a variation on Dawnstar. She's an L(II)-era character.
Pg. 2:
The official name of Sorcerer's World is actually Zerox. Not kidding. (And it was established in 1987's AMETHYST #1 that Zerox was formerly Gemworld.)
The White Witch here, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Curt Swan, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #350; this is the L(I) version. We're seeing L(II)'s Dreamer rather than the L(I) White Witch's sister.
In panel 4, the speaker is the L(III) version of Star Boy, whose original version, created by Otto Binder and George Papp, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #282. He's with the L(III) versions of Lightning Lad and Light Lass; the statue is of the dead version of Nura Nal/Dream Girl from that incarnation. "The light of the Legion": one of those prophetic phrases Johns likes so much.
Superboy-Prime, besides being the ultimate graf writer, is modifying the "L" of the Legion flight ring into his own S. Wow, Johns also likes stories about rings, huh? The power ring, the flight rings, the Flash costume ring...
"Keep your hands away": the return of the hand motif from DC UNIVERSE 0? Mordru, by the way, was created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, and first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #369.
Pg. 3:
Blok/White Witch and Wildfire/Dawnstar were couples. Of sorts.
Pg. 5:
Rond Vidar, here, was created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, and first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #349, as did Universo. Rond was revealed as a Green Lantern in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #50 in 1988, but at that point Green Lanterns were banned from all United Planets territory. Too bad he doesn't mean this Rip Van Winkle.
Rond's power ring was destroyed by Mordru in the course of the first long storyline in the Five Years Later LEGION. (That was followed by Celeste Rockfish absorbing Lantern energies, etc.)
It's probably also worth mentioning Xenofobe here. He was a 30th-century Green Lantern of space sector 2814 (at the same time as Rond? Who knows?), who made one appearance, in SUPERMAN #295. Which of course Michael has written about too, but the short version is that it's the first comic to tie together the Time Trapper and the Great Disaster/Kamandi timeline. Which sure sounds like it'd be relevant to FINAL CRISIS. In fact, it was supposed to have been reprinted in that SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE GREAT DISASTER collection that vanished from DC's publishing schedule a while back.
Pg. 6:
Weird that Mordru claims he killed Glorith (who was actually killed by the Time Trapper), Dragonmage (who's from post-Five Year Gap L(I) continuity, curiously enough) and Evillo; none of those happened on-panel, anyway. I guess 31st-century reanimatees aren't as impressively scary as Black Lanterns.
Pg. 7:
And here he's taking credit for turning the White Witch from "that hag into a beautiful mystic," which Dream Girl actually did in ADVENTURE COMICS #351. Rond's ring isn't magic, although Alan Scott's was... curious that Rond's "knight time" joke comes out the same week as the "naptime" bit in ROGUES' REVENGE #2.
Pg. 8:
As Michael notes, when did Rond beat Mordru before? (And of course a magician would use a Green Lantern's entrails for a spell involving willpower. Brrr.)
Pp. 9-10:
I'm not going to reproduce the lists Tim and Michael compiled here (especially since Michael noted the apparent continuity glitches of this scene). But doesn't Neutrax, in the upper left corner, look a bit Metronish?
Pg. 11:
Flashbacks to the Sinestro Corps War.
Pg. 12:
Prime helped Superman fight the Anti-Monitor back in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The Legion code, as you might gather, prohibits killing.
Pg. 14:
The Persuader, created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #352 (the same goes for Emerald Empress and Validus, later in this scene). I like Prime's "I read all about you"--of course he would have, in pre-Crisis comic books...
Pg. 15:
Yeah, I guess Rokk has indeed given up his relationships--see Night Girl's perturbed expression in the background, beneath that spectacular beehive.
Pg. 16:
The "lethal force enabled" thing happened in the course of the Sinestro Corps War. Lazon, created by Gerry Conway and Joe Staton, first appeared in SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #253 (ditto for Titania, seen on the next page). Storm Boy, created by Jerry Siegel and John Forte, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #301.
Pg. 17:
Black Mace, created by Jim Shooter and Win Mortimer, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #374. Beauty Blaze, created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #355. Earth-Man, formerly Absorbency Boy, created by Cary Bates and Mike Grell, first appeared in SUPERBOY #218.
Pg. 18:
As Vidar, Universo had been a Green Lantern; THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #295 revealed that the Guardians de-ringed him when he tried to see the origin of the universe (and that ring was later passed down to Rond Vidar). As Tim points out, the "snap" bit alludes to Projectra killing Nemesis Kid in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #5 in 1984.
Pg. 19:
As Michael notes, Rond had a daughter with Laurel Gand, not a son.
Pg. 21:
Here's that lightning rod from "The Lightning Saga" again... and Chameleon Girl, created by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, first appeared in THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #287.
Pg. 22:
And now we're on Oa, where there's apparently a statuary devoted to great Lanterns of the past, as well as Guy Gardner. Ah, Mogo. Has any other throwaway six-page gag story ever had that kind of afterlife?
Pg. 23:
Curious that the original Happy Harbor cave headquarters of the JLA, subsequently used by the Doom Patrol among others (and apparently terraformed after that by the Martian Manhunter in 52 #24) has been returned to the way the JLA had it. ("Curry, Arthur" was Aquaman).
For more on this particular crystal ball, see notes for DC UNIVERSE 0, pg. 5, panel 9.
"The Subs' satellite" is the former JLA satellite (now occupied by the Legion of Substitute Heroes), which I guess didn't become Brother Eye after all.
Pg. 24:
Hooray for the Time Institute! And it's the return of the Legion Espionage Squad, or something like that... Mon-El is of course a Daxamite, as is Sodam Yat.
Pg. 25:
The Tornado Twins are Barry and Iris Allen's children Don and Dawn (that must've made things fun around the house); the "three-Legion" story involving them has never been told.
FROM BEYOND THE UNKNOWN was an actual DC series, reprinting earlier DC science fiction shorts. That Statue of Liberty can't catch a break.
XS here is Jenni Ognats, the daughter of Dawn Allen from L(II); she was created by Mark Waid, Tom McCraw and Jeff Moy, and first appeared in LEGIONNAIRES #0 in 1994. Gates, created by Mark Waid, Tom McCraw and Lee Moder, first appeared in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #66.
The "kra-KOOOM" is exactly the same sound effect we've seen for Flash-related lightning in ROGUES' REVENGE, I believe. But it's curious that the crystal ball exploded before the scene from DCU 0 in which it's intact.
Pp. 26-27:
L(III) on the left, L(II) on the right, other folks' annnotations have done the heavy lifting here.
Pg. 28:
Jazmin is Kid Quantum from L(II)--created by Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer and Lee Moder, she first appeared in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #82, based on an earlier character from the same run, created by Tom & Mary Bierbaum and David A. Williams, who first appeared in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #33. She also made a one-panel cameo in INFINITE CRISIS, being found by Shikari on Earth-247 (ha ha). The guy in the iron mask talking to her is Ferro from L(II), an updated version of the character created by Jim Shooter and Sheldon Moldoff who first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #346.
Pg. 30:
Beg pardon, but doesn't "S" have a minimum of four points?
Pg. 31:
Ooh, a black power battery, just like in DCU 0! The clear coffin Rond Vidar is in looks a lot like Lightning Lad's coffin from ADVENTURE COMICS #308, doesn't it?
Pg. 32:
Ah, Sodam Yat--further proof that Alan Moore's merest whims can rattle the ground of the DCU for decades. He's a Daxamite Green Lantern, created by Moore and Kevin O'Neill, who first appeared in 1986's GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #2; he's subsequently become a major character in GREEN LANTERN CORPS (and taken on the Ion identity). A version of the character identified as Sodal Yat beat Superman to death in Moore's never-realized "Twilight of the Superheroes" proposal.
As for Lo3W #2 itself, both Michael Grabois and Tim Callahan have gotten to this issue already, so there may not be much left for me to do but plagiarize and synthesize. But let's see what I can add.
Pg. 1:
A fade-in from white, mirroring the endings of several incarnations and sub-incarnations of the Legion series.
This is Shikari, created by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Olivier Coipel, who first appeared in LEGION LOST #1--she's a variation on Dawnstar. She's an L(II)-era character.
Pg. 2:
The official name of Sorcerer's World is actually Zerox. Not kidding. (And it was established in 1987's AMETHYST #1 that Zerox was formerly Gemworld.)
The White Witch here, created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Curt Swan, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #350; this is the L(I) version. We're seeing L(II)'s Dreamer rather than the L(I) White Witch's sister.
In panel 4, the speaker is the L(III) version of Star Boy, whose original version, created by Otto Binder and George Papp, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #282. He's with the L(III) versions of Lightning Lad and Light Lass; the statue is of the dead version of Nura Nal/Dream Girl from that incarnation. "The light of the Legion": one of those prophetic phrases Johns likes so much.
Superboy-Prime, besides being the ultimate graf writer, is modifying the "L" of the Legion flight ring into his own S. Wow, Johns also likes stories about rings, huh? The power ring, the flight rings, the Flash costume ring...
"Keep your hands away": the return of the hand motif from DC UNIVERSE 0? Mordru, by the way, was created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, and first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #369.
Pg. 3:
Blok/White Witch and Wildfire/Dawnstar were couples. Of sorts.
Pg. 5:
Rond Vidar, here, was created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, and first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #349, as did Universo. Rond was revealed as a Green Lantern in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #50 in 1988, but at that point Green Lanterns were banned from all United Planets territory. Too bad he doesn't mean this Rip Van Winkle.
Rond's power ring was destroyed by Mordru in the course of the first long storyline in the Five Years Later LEGION. (That was followed by Celeste Rockfish absorbing Lantern energies, etc.)
It's probably also worth mentioning Xenofobe here. He was a 30th-century Green Lantern of space sector 2814 (at the same time as Rond? Who knows?), who made one appearance, in SUPERMAN #295. Which of course Michael has written about too, but the short version is that it's the first comic to tie together the Time Trapper and the Great Disaster/Kamandi timeline. Which sure sounds like it'd be relevant to FINAL CRISIS. In fact, it was supposed to have been reprinted in that SHOWCASE PRESENTS THE GREAT DISASTER collection that vanished from DC's publishing schedule a while back.
Pg. 6:
Weird that Mordru claims he killed Glorith (who was actually killed by the Time Trapper), Dragonmage (who's from post-Five Year Gap L(I) continuity, curiously enough) and Evillo; none of those happened on-panel, anyway. I guess 31st-century reanimatees aren't as impressively scary as Black Lanterns.
Pg. 7:
And here he's taking credit for turning the White Witch from "that hag into a beautiful mystic," which Dream Girl actually did in ADVENTURE COMICS #351. Rond's ring isn't magic, although Alan Scott's was... curious that Rond's "knight time" joke comes out the same week as the "naptime" bit in ROGUES' REVENGE #2.
Pg. 8:
As Michael notes, when did Rond beat Mordru before? (And of course a magician would use a Green Lantern's entrails for a spell involving willpower. Brrr.)
Pp. 9-10:
I'm not going to reproduce the lists Tim and Michael compiled here (especially since Michael noted the apparent continuity glitches of this scene). But doesn't Neutrax, in the upper left corner, look a bit Metronish?
Pg. 11:
Flashbacks to the Sinestro Corps War.
Pg. 12:
Prime helped Superman fight the Anti-Monitor back in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The Legion code, as you might gather, prohibits killing.
Pg. 14:
The Persuader, created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #352 (the same goes for Emerald Empress and Validus, later in this scene). I like Prime's "I read all about you"--of course he would have, in pre-Crisis comic books...
Pg. 15:
Yeah, I guess Rokk has indeed given up his relationships--see Night Girl's perturbed expression in the background, beneath that spectacular beehive.
Pg. 16:
The "lethal force enabled" thing happened in the course of the Sinestro Corps War. Lazon, created by Gerry Conway and Joe Staton, first appeared in SUPERBOY AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #253 (ditto for Titania, seen on the next page). Storm Boy, created by Jerry Siegel and John Forte, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #301.
Pg. 17:
Black Mace, created by Jim Shooter and Win Mortimer, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #374. Beauty Blaze, created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #355. Earth-Man, formerly Absorbency Boy, created by Cary Bates and Mike Grell, first appeared in SUPERBOY #218.
Pg. 18:
As Vidar, Universo had been a Green Lantern; THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #295 revealed that the Guardians de-ringed him when he tried to see the origin of the universe (and that ring was later passed down to Rond Vidar). As Tim points out, the "snap" bit alludes to Projectra killing Nemesis Kid in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #5 in 1984.
Pg. 19:
As Michael notes, Rond had a daughter with Laurel Gand, not a son.
Pg. 21:
Here's that lightning rod from "The Lightning Saga" again... and Chameleon Girl, created by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, first appeared in THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #287.
Pg. 22:
And now we're on Oa, where there's apparently a statuary devoted to great Lanterns of the past, as well as Guy Gardner. Ah, Mogo. Has any other throwaway six-page gag story ever had that kind of afterlife?
Pg. 23:
Curious that the original Happy Harbor cave headquarters of the JLA, subsequently used by the Doom Patrol among others (and apparently terraformed after that by the Martian Manhunter in 52 #24) has been returned to the way the JLA had it. ("Curry, Arthur" was Aquaman).
For more on this particular crystal ball, see notes for DC UNIVERSE 0, pg. 5, panel 9.
"The Subs' satellite" is the former JLA satellite (now occupied by the Legion of Substitute Heroes), which I guess didn't become Brother Eye after all.
Pg. 24:
Hooray for the Time Institute! And it's the return of the Legion Espionage Squad, or something like that... Mon-El is of course a Daxamite, as is Sodam Yat.
Pg. 25:
The Tornado Twins are Barry and Iris Allen's children Don and Dawn (that must've made things fun around the house); the "three-Legion" story involving them has never been told.
FROM BEYOND THE UNKNOWN was an actual DC series, reprinting earlier DC science fiction shorts. That Statue of Liberty can't catch a break.
XS here is Jenni Ognats, the daughter of Dawn Allen from L(II); she was created by Mark Waid, Tom McCraw and Jeff Moy, and first appeared in LEGIONNAIRES #0 in 1994. Gates, created by Mark Waid, Tom McCraw and Lee Moder, first appeared in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #66.
The "kra-KOOOM" is exactly the same sound effect we've seen for Flash-related lightning in ROGUES' REVENGE, I believe. But it's curious that the crystal ball exploded before the scene from DCU 0 in which it's intact.
Pp. 26-27:
L(III) on the left, L(II) on the right, other folks' annnotations have done the heavy lifting here.
Pg. 28:
Jazmin is Kid Quantum from L(II)--created by Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer and Lee Moder, she first appeared in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #82, based on an earlier character from the same run, created by Tom & Mary Bierbaum and David A. Williams, who first appeared in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #33. She also made a one-panel cameo in INFINITE CRISIS, being found by Shikari on Earth-247 (ha ha). The guy in the iron mask talking to her is Ferro from L(II), an updated version of the character created by Jim Shooter and Sheldon Moldoff who first appeared in ADVENTURE COMICS #346.
Pg. 30:
Beg pardon, but doesn't "S" have a minimum of four points?
Pg. 31:
Ooh, a black power battery, just like in DCU 0! The clear coffin Rond Vidar is in looks a lot like Lightning Lad's coffin from ADVENTURE COMICS #308, doesn't it?
Pg. 32:
Ah, Sodam Yat--further proof that Alan Moore's merest whims can rattle the ground of the DCU for decades. He's a Daxamite Green Lantern, created by Moore and Kevin O'Neill, who first appeared in 1986's GREEN LANTERN ANNUAL #2; he's subsequently become a major character in GREEN LANTERN CORPS (and taken on the Ion identity). A version of the character identified as Sodal Yat beat Superman to death in Moore's never-realized "Twilight of the Superheroes" proposal.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #3
Again, there's not a lot to annotate here--as opposed to Lo3W, which I won't be able to get to for a day or two. I'll note that the whole thing appears to be happening on day 5 of the timeline below, since the ultimate unsolicited e-mail hasn't happened yet.
Pg. 1:
Fairly close to an accurate quote--and Twain again! The actual sentence, from Twain's Autobiography, is: "That idea pleased me; indeed there is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort." And yes, it was Weather Wizard's brother's observatory, as everyone but me figured out.
Pg. 2:
You know, describing them as "blue-collar" is pushing it, given that Mardon's brother appears to have had his very own observatory.
Pp. 4-5:
I'm out of the country at the moment and don't have my back issues at hand: when did the Top build Speedrebro in the observatory?
Of what state is Central City the capital? I mean, I realize the DCU U.S. is so big it's got two presidents at any given time...
I love Mick's "Can I burn it? Huh? Can I burn it?" routine.
Pg. 6:
Inertia's real name is Thaddeus Thawne, and who wouldn't turn to a life of destruction with a name like that?
Pg. 7:
Zoom's motivation is kind of fantastic, but it always makes me think of that routine from the Sacred Wars: "You know what builds character, don't you? Conflict! PRAISE conflict!"
Pg. 12:
Mirror Master not only killed the Pied Piper's parents in (I believe) FLASH #174, but framed him for it. Guess McCulloch is a homophobe too.
Pg. 13:
Why does Libra think that's blasphemy? It was established--by Desaad, I believe--in COUNTDOWN #10.
Pg. 14:
Wasn't Iris Allen taking care of Josh for a while? How'd he go from that to "bouncing around"? (According to Josh's Hyperborea page, Chyre had wanted to adopt him too.)
Pg. 19:
Persuasion doesn't quite cut it as Libra's power, especially since we've seen so many people resist him (like Luthor, for instance). It also doesn't quite make sense why Libra utters his little expository speech here about speedsters being "the breakers of the Bleed"...
Pg. 20:
"He won't have a gun" is a callback to FLASH #197, I believe. Grodd growling is from the sequence where Hunter was crippled in FLASH #193.
Pg. 21:
"Honor among thieves": the formulation goes back to Cicero, but one of the first documented uses of something similar in English is from Peter Motteaux's early-18th-century translation of Don Quixote: "The old proverb still holds good, Thieves are never rogues among themselves."
Heat Wave established last issue that he can melt the Flash's boots. What was the first story where he did that, though? [ETA: Kris Weberg points out in the comments that it was FLASH #266.]
Pg. 24:
"Year": really? Let's check the chronology--specifically, the DCU Timeline. The "year" would have to begin with the death of Bart, which coincided with "The Lightning Saga," which appeared to begin around U.S. Thanksgiving time. That coincided with the first dozen or so issues of COUNTDOWN, but COUNTDOWN didn't take place over a year--more like a few months--and SALVATION RUN, which takes place over the course of about five weeks, starts midway through it. So it's been a brutal five months for them, let's say.
Pg. 25:
Zoom "was to be the messenger of Darkseid"? A guy with boom tubes needs messengers?
Pg. 28:
"The one place no speedsters will look": wait, what?
Pg. 1:
Fairly close to an accurate quote--and Twain again! The actual sentence, from Twain's Autobiography, is: "That idea pleased me; indeed there is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort." And yes, it was Weather Wizard's brother's observatory, as everyone but me figured out.
Pg. 2:
You know, describing them as "blue-collar" is pushing it, given that Mardon's brother appears to have had his very own observatory.
Pp. 4-5:
I'm out of the country at the moment and don't have my back issues at hand: when did the Top build Speedrebro in the observatory?
Of what state is Central City the capital? I mean, I realize the DCU U.S. is so big it's got two presidents at any given time...
I love Mick's "Can I burn it? Huh? Can I burn it?" routine.
Pg. 6:
Inertia's real name is Thaddeus Thawne, and who wouldn't turn to a life of destruction with a name like that?
Pg. 7:
Zoom's motivation is kind of fantastic, but it always makes me think of that routine from the Sacred Wars: "You know what builds character, don't you? Conflict! PRAISE conflict!"
Pg. 12:
Mirror Master not only killed the Pied Piper's parents in (I believe) FLASH #174, but framed him for it. Guess McCulloch is a homophobe too.
Pg. 13:
Why does Libra think that's blasphemy? It was established--by Desaad, I believe--in COUNTDOWN #10.
Pg. 14:
Wasn't Iris Allen taking care of Josh for a while? How'd he go from that to "bouncing around"? (According to Josh's Hyperborea page, Chyre had wanted to adopt him too.)
Pg. 19:
Persuasion doesn't quite cut it as Libra's power, especially since we've seen so many people resist him (like Luthor, for instance). It also doesn't quite make sense why Libra utters his little expository speech here about speedsters being "the breakers of the Bleed"...
Pg. 20:
"He won't have a gun" is a callback to FLASH #197, I believe. Grodd growling is from the sequence where Hunter was crippled in FLASH #193.
Pg. 21:
"Honor among thieves": the formulation goes back to Cicero, but one of the first documented uses of something similar in English is from Peter Motteaux's early-18th-century translation of Don Quixote: "The old proverb still holds good, Thieves are never rogues among themselves."
Heat Wave established last issue that he can melt the Flash's boots. What was the first story where he did that, though? [ETA: Kris Weberg points out in the comments that it was FLASH #266.]
Pg. 24:
"Year": really? Let's check the chronology--specifically, the DCU Timeline. The "year" would have to begin with the death of Bart, which coincided with "The Lightning Saga," which appeared to begin around U.S. Thanksgiving time. That coincided with the first dozen or so issues of COUNTDOWN, but COUNTDOWN didn't take place over a year--more like a few months--and SALVATION RUN, which takes place over the course of about five weeks, starts midway through it. So it's been a brutal five months for them, let's say.
Pg. 25:
Zoom "was to be the messenger of Darkseid"? A guy with boom tubes needs messengers?
Pg. 28:
"The one place no speedsters will look": wait, what?
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Final Crisis: Revelations #3
And we're back! Hey, wasn't there just an issue of REVELATIONS last time? Well, yes, and according to the original schedule we were supposed to get FC #4, Lo3W #2, ROGUES' REVENGE #3 and SUBMIT between then and now. Oh well. There's very little to annotate this time out--this is a very straightforward/non-metatextual issue--but next week we get the Geoff Johns double-header, so I imagine I'll be linking up a storm.
Pg. 1:
"Kane, Betty" has the same hairstyle as Bette Kane, a.k.a. the Flamebird of present continuity (see, e.g., 2000's BEAST BOY #4). That character's derived from Betty Kane, the Bat-Girl who first appeared in BATMAN #139 in 1961. So this might signify something, or it might just be a little Easter egg.
The antithesis of life, in case you were wondering, is stepping on multiple kinds of MP3 players in a single panel.
Pg. 2:
"Claire Coeur" would be bad French for "clear heart."
Pp. 10-11:
I don't know of any DCU "Westbrook" (or town with a name along those lines) that's a suburb of Gotham City. And once again the Cain plot leaps forward substantially in time while the Montoya plot advances a few hours at most...
Pg. 15:
Why does Cris still think that Jake is the son of his who died?
Pp. 16-17:
This is a little splotchy, but I think I see Midnight, Bane, a Man-Bat, Mystek, a very tall Jawa, Commissioner Gordon, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy in the crowd here. (Note: I am wrong about a couple of those. But corrections/additions are welcome.)
Pg. 18:
Hey, is that the Crimson Avenger at the left of the third panel? Or maybe it's the Black Lantern Crimson Avenger, since he apparently died in DC COMICS PRESENTS #38. Or it's the Black Lantern Jonah Hex Purple Crimson Avenger, judging by his mouth and costume. Or there's just something I'm missing, which is the likeliest scenario.
Pg. 19:
Catwoman seems to be lurking in panel 4. Cool.
Pg. 21:
The interpretation of Genesis going on here is enough of a stretch that I'd go so far as to call it a total inversion: the mark of Cain was actually an act of mercy. If you don't believe me, read the actual passage in the translation Claire is quoting. God passes sentence on Cain (to be "a fugitive and a vagabond," and "cursed from the earth"); Cain says "my punishment is greater than I can bear," because his life is now in danger from anyone who finds him; God responds by putting the mark on Cain, to protect him, stipulating that "whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." (The Spectre is not mentioned in the original text.) Cain goes off, gets married, has a kid and starts a city. Hardly something he'd want to take vengeance for, even though there's been a perfectly good comic book about getting revenge on God before.
Pg. 22:
Okay, when exactly was Renee at the Checkmate castle after the Big Button-Pressing? And now Cris worries about Malcolm... Daria was Renee's girlfriend in the GOTHAM CENTRAL days.
Pg. 1:
"Kane, Betty" has the same hairstyle as Bette Kane, a.k.a. the Flamebird of present continuity (see, e.g., 2000's BEAST BOY #4). That character's derived from Betty Kane, the Bat-Girl who first appeared in BATMAN #139 in 1961. So this might signify something, or it might just be a little Easter egg.
The antithesis of life, in case you were wondering, is stepping on multiple kinds of MP3 players in a single panel.
Pg. 2:
"Claire Coeur" would be bad French for "clear heart."
Pp. 10-11:
I don't know of any DCU "Westbrook" (or town with a name along those lines) that's a suburb of Gotham City. And once again the Cain plot leaps forward substantially in time while the Montoya plot advances a few hours at most...
Pg. 15:
Why does Cris still think that Jake is the son of his who died?
Pp. 16-17:
This is a little splotchy, but I think I see Midnight, Bane, a Man-Bat, Mystek, a very tall Jawa, Commissioner Gordon, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy in the crowd here. (Note: I am wrong about a couple of those. But corrections/additions are welcome.)
Pg. 18:
Hey, is that the Crimson Avenger at the left of the third panel? Or maybe it's the Black Lantern Crimson Avenger, since he apparently died in DC COMICS PRESENTS #38. Or it's the Black Lantern Jonah Hex Purple Crimson Avenger, judging by his mouth and costume. Or there's just something I'm missing, which is the likeliest scenario.
Pg. 19:
Catwoman seems to be lurking in panel 4. Cool.
Pg. 21:
The interpretation of Genesis going on here is enough of a stretch that I'd go so far as to call it a total inversion: the mark of Cain was actually an act of mercy. If you don't believe me, read the actual passage in the translation Claire is quoting. God passes sentence on Cain (to be "a fugitive and a vagabond," and "cursed from the earth"); Cain says "my punishment is greater than I can bear," because his life is now in danger from anyone who finds him; God responds by putting the mark on Cain, to protect him, stipulating that "whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold." (The Spectre is not mentioned in the original text.) Cain goes off, gets married, has a kid and starts a city. Hardly something he'd want to take vengeance for, even though there's been a perfectly good comic book about getting revenge on God before.
Pg. 22:
Okay, when exactly was Renee at the Checkmate castle after the Big Button-Pressing? And now Cris worries about Malcolm... Daria was Renee's girlfriend in the GOTHAM CENTRAL days.
Monday, September 22, 2008
An attempt at a Final Crisis timeline
I've been curious to see if the whole Final Crisis project has a consistent chronology, so I've been piecing it together. Here's a stab at a timeline, with thanks to Chris Miller (whose Unauthorized Chronology of the DC Universe is mightily entertaining, and very useful for figuring out how Countdown et al. fit into continuity) and David Uzumeri, both of whose helpful suggestions I have totally ignored. (Last updated 12/27/08)
40,000 years ago:
In what will one day be New York City, Anthro meets Metron, who gives him fire. Vandal Savage attacks Anthro's tribe; Anthro fights back. (FC #1)
Slightly less than 40,000 years ago:
In the NYC of the distant past, Anthro draws the Metron diagram and has a vision of Kamandi. (FC #1)
Sometime before Day 1, I'm guessing:
Superman catches the "rip cord back to the 31st century" (Lo3W #1). (He seems to be in a pretty good mood when he's called in, so I assume it happens on a day before everything goes to hell.)
Day 1:
Turpin finds Orion in the garbage in Metropolis. John Stewart is called in to investigate. The Question meets with Turpin and gives him a Dark Side Club flyer. The Guardians seal off Earth. Dr. Light and Mirror Master retrieve Metron's chair during the "protest march against vigilante brutality." (FC #1)
(There could be a time-gap of a day or more in here, but it doesn't seem like either John Stewart or Dan Turpin would delay their investigations if they didn't have something else really pressing going on.)
Day 2:
In Gotham City, the end of the BATMAN R.I.P. storyline happens on the night between Day 1 and Day 2, per BATMAN #683. Batman heads back to the cave and talks to Alfred; he's just gotten a call from the Justice League, probably about Orion.
In Central City, Dr. Light and Effigy carry J'onn to Libra. (REQUIEM) Libra stabs the Martian Manhunter. (FC #1) Then he fights for a while longer (REQUIEM) before his heart explodes (per FC #2). Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hal Jordan and Gypsy get psychic vibes from J'onn as he's dying. This seems to be a nighttime scene, so maybe it happens after the Justice League's meeting, but I figure it might actually be very early morning. (REQUIEM)
Turpin goes to New York City, where the Tattooed Man takes him to the Dark Side club and he meets Boss Dark Side and the sharp-toothed little kids. The Justice League meets in Washington, DC; the Alpha Lanterns arrive. In the Monitors' realm, Nix Uotan is exiled, and Zillo Valla and Weeja Dell talk. (FC #1)
RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS happens here--between FC #1 and 2, per its opening caption, and Hal's narration indicates that it happens the day after the Code 1011 goes out.
In New York City, Nightwing discovers J'onn's body at the Rose Center. His body is brought to Washington, DC, where Hal and Ollie discuss the situation. Batman, Superman, Hal, Gypsy and Black Canary--who's in Happy Harbor for some reason--write down J'onn's memories. (REQUIEM) (Batman's dressed as Bruce Wayne, which would make the Black Glove's announcement in BATMAN #681 that "the next time you wear [the cape and cowl] will be your last" not literally accurate, but whatever--otherwise he'd have been in the costume for two days straight immediately after R.I.P. Let the guy have a night's sleep in his pajamas.)
Day 3:
In Central City--I'm guessing that's where he is, from the fact that he seems to get local news from the same town as Iris Allen in FC #3--Nix Uotan wakes up in a human body to find the death of the Martian Manhunter being reported on the morning news. (FC #1)
(Again, it's possible that there could be a break of a day or more here, but not likely.)
In Tokyo, Megayakuza challenges Sonny Sumo and gets what's coming to him, while Super Young Team gawk. Shilo Norman, cued by Motherboxxx, comes to Tokyo to talk to Sonny. In Central City, Nix goes to his job at Big Belly Burger and draws pictures of otherworldly super-folks. In Metropolis, the possessed Turpin beats up the Mad Hatter and buys a ticket to Blüdhaven. (FC #2)
In Washington, the Green Lanterns arrive to transport everyone to Mars, and Superman flies J'onn's pyramid there from the Gobi Desert. You'd think if the Alpha Lanterns had quarantined the planet, the very last people they'd want leaving for a little while would be super muk muks, but oh well. (REQUIEM)
On Mars, Superman gives J'onn's funeral oration (FC #2), which is simulcast in Metropolis (REVELATIONS #1). Then everyone stands around for a while. After the GLs fly most people home, the transcribers say their final goodbyes. (REQUIEM)
In Central City, Libra and crew (still including Mirror Master and Weather Wizard) meet again. In Washington, the Justice League talks to Kraken; Batman suspects a bullet was involved. In Metropolis, that night, John Stewart and Opto investigate Orion's murder, and John finds the god-bullet and gets attacked. (FC #2)
That night, in an unknown location, Dr. Light has a little party, and gets melted by the Spectre. Somewhere, Sister Clarice flatlines. In Hollywood, the Spectre melts Effigy. (REVELATIONS #1)
We now encounter a weird little glitch, if we're going to count JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #27 as canonical to FC: the Shadow Cabinet is in the Hall of Justice and the JLA satellite stealing Dr. Light's mortal remains ("an old candle"), and they're met by a crew including John Stewart (and Superman), and Batman is Bruce. #30 appears to be the first post-FC issue; I have no idea where the story in #27 could have time to happen.
Somewhere in here, the League has to locate and rescue the injured John Stewart, who is holding the god-bullet (FC #2). Batman collects the bullet and sticks it in his utility belt (BATMAN #683).
Day 4:
In Coast City, very early in the morning, the Alpha Lanterns arrest Hal. In Washington, Superman and Batman confer, Batman fights Kraken, and Kraken throws him into a Boom Tube. In Blüdhaven, Turpin finds Rev. Good, who leads him to Command D, where he sees Kamandi and the restrained Batman. In Metropolis, Clark Kent turns in some copy, and Clayface-as-Jimmy blows up the Daily Planet. (FC #2)
The events of ROGUES' REVENGE #1 have to happen here--Luthor at least gives the Rogues the impression that he's "eating out of Libra's hand" (although he doesn't seem to have ever really gotten with Libra's program), Libra is still in the Central City club, and Barry's not back yet. The final scenes of the issue happen around 3 AM; the tingling the twins feel probably has to do with Barry's return. (ROGUES' REVENGE #1)
That night, Wally and Jay investigate Libra's HQ in Central City and find Barry. (FC #2)
Also that night, in New York, S.H.A.D.E. hits the Dark Side Club, where they find Montoya and Boss Dark Side's corpse. Überfraulein falls out of the sky; S.H.A.D.E. tells Montoya to come with them. (FC #3)
Day 5:
In Central City, Nix gets fired, and Jay brings Iris and Wally's family up to date. (FC #3).
The Rogues find Gambi; the "new Rogues" tell them to "report back to the club." Zoom is training Inertia. The old Rogues dispense with the new; Iris is crying with happiness after getting the update from Jay. (ROGUES' REVENGE #2)
In Portsmouth, England, Montoya fights the Bible Crew and jumps onto a boat. (Perhaps S.H.A.D.E. gave her a lift there, off-panel.) The Spectre goes to the Central City Community Center to meet up with Libra, who's conferring with the Hangmen; the Spectre kills the Hangmen and vanishes. (REVELATIONS #1) Morrison has suggested that Libra relocates because the Flashes compromised the Central City hideout, but I suspect the smoking midair corpses of the Hangmen were a much more significant compromise...
At the Hall of Evil in Florida, Libra puts the Justifier helmet on Mike, and Luthor notes that Superman "hasn't answered a single emergency call for 18 hours." (Perhaps Libra figured that the HQ wasn't the best place to be with all those dead Hangmen there.) Libra says that the Big One is coming "in less than 24 hours." (FC #3) Libra, still at the Hall of Doom (see the establishing shot at the top of the page), confers with Grodd; his monitor board has lots of shots of what's happened to a bunch of characters and... anticipates what's going to happen to Wonder Woman. (ROGUES' REVENGE #2)
In Central City, the Rogues head to the Observatory, then fight with the Zooms; Libra shows up with the kid. A big fight transpires, and the Rogues drop off Kid Zoom's body in Keystone City, then return to the basement of the Flash Museum. (ROGUES' REVENGE #3)
Back off the coast of England, the Cultists find the Spear of Destiny and fight Montoya. Cris goes to his son's grave--although, actually, the grave he goes to is Jake's. Which is strange, because Jake Allen isn't dead; Malcolm is the son Cris-as-the-Spectre killed in CRISIS AFTERMATH: THE SPECTRE #3. I guess we can chalk that up to Darkseid's fall too. Anyway, the Spectre proceeds to teleport himself to where Montoya is to judge her. (REVELATIONS #1) They fight, then the Spectre teleports them away... (REVELATIONS #2) ...and the first big internal continuity hiccup of the project happens here. See Day 6 for details.
In Metropolis, Superman is by Lois's side, and Jimmy notes that "Superman hasn't been seen since yesterday." Zillo Valla walks in and gives Clark "one ultimate chance." (FC #3) She freezes time, which apparently gets unfrozen sometime after that, and she and Superman head off for nutty parallel-Earth adventures. (SUPERMAN BEYOND #1) In Washington, Alan Scott and Wonder Woman suggest it's time to invoke Article X. (FC #3)
Day 6:
Oracle, Aquaman, Freddie Freeman, Supergirl, Green Arrow and Black Canary get their draft notices delivered on paper (Ollie and Dinah seem to be getting theirs in the morning). Alan Scott assembles the forces. We can assume everybody gets where they're going by some kind of fancy JLA teleportation-type device. (FC #3)
In Tokyo, Shilo's about to leave Japan when he and Sonny are attacked, and rescued by Super Young Team in the Wonder Wagon. Wonder Woman investigates Blüdhaven and gets attacked by Mary Marvel, who gives her a disease. At 5:30 PM EST (per FC #4), also in Blüdhaven, Mokkari sends the ultimate spam message out. In Washington, Oracle tries to pull the plug on the Internet (FC #3), and actually succeeds, per FC #4.
Here's that first continuity hiccup: we have to assume that the Spectre teleported Montoya mid-word from Day 5 to Day 6, as well as from the boat to Gotham City. The scenes with the Spectre and the Question together in REVELATIONS #1 and 2 clearly happen continuously, and occupy five or ten minutes at the very most; in the meantime, Wrack gets the Spear of Destiny back to shore, then gets the word out, summons the forces, heads to wherever Vandal Savage is located (which sure doesn't look like it's anywhere near the coast of England), stabs him and turns him into Cain. [Perhaps this is one of the "time distortions" mentioned in FC #5.]
So. Having jumped a day into the future, Cris and Renee observe Batwoman, and then the Radiant shows up. Cris cries over the son he didn't kill, rather than the one he did. Cris, Montoya and the Radiant talk theology. The Gotham Central Anti-Life Crew attacks. The Radiant teleports Montoya away, and she's attacked by Anti-Life Batwoman. (REVELATIONS #2)
The Spectre and the Radiant fight Anti-Life legions; Montoya fights Batwoman. Vandal Savage/Cain leads his crew along the tree-lined coastline, and... lickety-split, they're in the U.S., gazing upon the strung-up bodies in Westbrook (or whatever that suburb of Gotham is called). Maybe he's got some kind of magical teleportation powers. In Gotham City, Montoya, the Radiant and the Spectre take refuge in a cathedral, while hordes of Darkseidians attack outside (and Catwoman is hanging out outside too). Cain shows up and stabs the Spectre. (REVELATIONS #3)
[Weirdly, Montoya asserts that "what's happened in Gotham, it's happened everywhere... I was at the Checkmate castle. I've seen it." It's hard to imagine when that might have happened; she was in S.H.A.D.E.'s custody late on Day 4 and early on Day 5, and turns up at the castle on Day 20, below, but there's no space in the story between the Ultimate E-Mail and this sequence for her to get there and back, or indeed to find out what's going on anywhere other than her immediate surroundings.]
Cain has split the Spectre from Cris. Montoya fights Cain; then the Huntress shows up. The Radiant protects the church, and explains the Spear of Destiny to Montoya. Then she confronts Cain, who makes the Spectre recite the Anti-Life Equation and declares victory. (REVELATIONS #4)
Meanwhile, in Antarctica, Ice shows up and attacks the Checkmate outpost; Mr. Terrific and Taleb hunker down in the bunker, and Sasha Bordeaux shuts down. (RESIST)
Day 10:
At S.T.A.R. Labs in California, Snapper Carr destroys the bioweapons, then returns to Antarctica. (RESIST)
Day 11:
Snapper goes to the Watchtower to confront Firehawk and sees the Cheetah. (RESIST)
Days 17, 20, 25, 27, 29:
Snapper keeps up the resistance (RESIST).
Day 31:
Snapper gets busy with the Cheetah, then gets attacked by Justifier-Grodd and teleports himself and the Cheetah back to Camp Oswald. (RESIST)
Day 32:
Mr. Terrific does something hand-wave-y involving the Code Zoo and Sasha. A zillion OMACs attack the bunker, and Mr. Terrific, the Cheetah, Taleb and Snapper head off with some OMACs. (RESIST)
Day 36 or so:
In Washington, DC, Black Lightning, en route to rescue somebody from the Hall of Justice and deliver some papers, runs into the Tattooed Man (who's been protecting his family for "two weeks"), and they have a brief adventure together that ends badly. (SUBMIT) (It would actually have to be longer than two weeks to fit the timeline of RESIST--Mr. Terrific has to get back to the Checkmate castle in Switzerland by this day. Call it a time distortion if you like. But where are the OMACs? Who knows?)
Shortly thereafter, the Ray rescues the Tattooed Man and drags him into the Hall of Justice, which is under attack. Black Canary, the Flash family, the Ray and the Tattooed Man teleport to the JLA satellite, and Green Arrow gets captured.
In Blüdhaven, the Checkmate attack force has been slaughtered, Turpin is fighting off Darkseid's influence, and Kalibak is chowing down on Opto309.
In Switzerland, the Checkmate castle is under attack, and Amanda Waller is about to show Montoya something; then the Wonder Wagon arrives. At the Fortress of Solitude, adorable tykes and a printing press are around. Superbia is falling. Gorilla City is under attack. (FC #4)
In Central City, the Flashes encounter the new Female Furies, then go off and rescue Iris. (FC #3-4)
Turpin/Darkseid gives the thumbs down. (FC #4)
In Blüdhaven, Batman is having his memories strip-mined by the Lump, Simyan and Mokkari. He fights it off. S & M's experiment fails spectacularly, and they shoot the Lump, then run away as it trashes the lab. (BATMAN #682-3)
Hal Jordan is tried on Oa; Guy and Kyle show up and fight Kraken. There are mentions of time distortions on Earth, which would suggest that time is passing much more slowly off Earth, so this could be shortly after day 4 relative to Hal's experience.
At the Checkmate castle, Waller and Khalid show Montoya the Biomacs.
In Blüdhaven, the Female Furies (who've gotten back there somehow...) are suiting up. Simyan, Mokkari and Godfrey are petitioning Turpin/Darkseid, who sends the Furies out to "end it all."
At the Castle, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Alan Scott, etc., are fighting Justifiers. Mr. Terrific arrives where the Wonder Wagon has crashed, and Sonny Sumo shows off Motherboxxx. The Castle's "shields will fail in 15 minutes."
In Blüdhaven, Kalibak and the Tiger-Men ride out, and the cavalry arrives at the bridge.
Wherever Nix Uotan is, he's thrown into a holding cell with the mysterious hooded guy and the Metron-avatar who solves the Rubik's Cube; he remembers Weeja Dell.
Somewhere, Libra is about to hang the Calculator, and has words with Luthor.
In Blüdhaven, John's ring isn't working right. Turpin/Darkseid kills his minions. Supergirl and Mary Marvel start fighting.
The Green Lanterns, approaching Earth, "freefall into the singularity."
In Washington, DC, the Justifiers have found the President's bunker.
Darkseid arrives, and so does Nix. (FC #5)
1000 years from now:
Prime roasts the faux Kents and busts up the Superman Museum, and the Legion of Super-Heroes does their Legiony thing. (Lo3W #1 and 2)
The End of Time:
The Time Trapper complains about bugs. (Lo3W #1)
I'll be updating this as future issues come out, but comments and suggestions are very welcome.
40,000 years ago:
In what will one day be New York City, Anthro meets Metron, who gives him fire. Vandal Savage attacks Anthro's tribe; Anthro fights back. (FC #1)
Slightly less than 40,000 years ago:
In the NYC of the distant past, Anthro draws the Metron diagram and has a vision of Kamandi. (FC #1)
Sometime before Day 1, I'm guessing:
Superman catches the "rip cord back to the 31st century" (Lo3W #1). (He seems to be in a pretty good mood when he's called in, so I assume it happens on a day before everything goes to hell.)
Day 1:
Turpin finds Orion in the garbage in Metropolis. John Stewart is called in to investigate. The Question meets with Turpin and gives him a Dark Side Club flyer. The Guardians seal off Earth. Dr. Light and Mirror Master retrieve Metron's chair during the "protest march against vigilante brutality." (FC #1)
(There could be a time-gap of a day or more in here, but it doesn't seem like either John Stewart or Dan Turpin would delay their investigations if they didn't have something else really pressing going on.)
Day 2:
In Gotham City, the end of the BATMAN R.I.P. storyline happens on the night between Day 1 and Day 2, per BATMAN #683. Batman heads back to the cave and talks to Alfred; he's just gotten a call from the Justice League, probably about Orion.
In Central City, Dr. Light and Effigy carry J'onn to Libra. (REQUIEM) Libra stabs the Martian Manhunter. (FC #1) Then he fights for a while longer (REQUIEM) before his heart explodes (per FC #2). Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Hal Jordan and Gypsy get psychic vibes from J'onn as he's dying. This seems to be a nighttime scene, so maybe it happens after the Justice League's meeting, but I figure it might actually be very early morning. (REQUIEM)
Turpin goes to New York City, where the Tattooed Man takes him to the Dark Side club and he meets Boss Dark Side and the sharp-toothed little kids. The Justice League meets in Washington, DC; the Alpha Lanterns arrive. In the Monitors' realm, Nix Uotan is exiled, and Zillo Valla and Weeja Dell talk. (FC #1)
RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS happens here--between FC #1 and 2, per its opening caption, and Hal's narration indicates that it happens the day after the Code 1011 goes out.
In New York City, Nightwing discovers J'onn's body at the Rose Center. His body is brought to Washington, DC, where Hal and Ollie discuss the situation. Batman, Superman, Hal, Gypsy and Black Canary--who's in Happy Harbor for some reason--write down J'onn's memories. (REQUIEM) (Batman's dressed as Bruce Wayne, which would make the Black Glove's announcement in BATMAN #681 that "the next time you wear [the cape and cowl] will be your last" not literally accurate, but whatever--otherwise he'd have been in the costume for two days straight immediately after R.I.P. Let the guy have a night's sleep in his pajamas.)
Day 3:
In Central City--I'm guessing that's where he is, from the fact that he seems to get local news from the same town as Iris Allen in FC #3--Nix Uotan wakes up in a human body to find the death of the Martian Manhunter being reported on the morning news. (FC #1)
(Again, it's possible that there could be a break of a day or more here, but not likely.)
In Tokyo, Megayakuza challenges Sonny Sumo and gets what's coming to him, while Super Young Team gawk. Shilo Norman, cued by Motherboxxx, comes to Tokyo to talk to Sonny. In Central City, Nix goes to his job at Big Belly Burger and draws pictures of otherworldly super-folks. In Metropolis, the possessed Turpin beats up the Mad Hatter and buys a ticket to Blüdhaven. (FC #2)
In Washington, the Green Lanterns arrive to transport everyone to Mars, and Superman flies J'onn's pyramid there from the Gobi Desert. You'd think if the Alpha Lanterns had quarantined the planet, the very last people they'd want leaving for a little while would be super muk muks, but oh well. (REQUIEM)
On Mars, Superman gives J'onn's funeral oration (FC #2), which is simulcast in Metropolis (REVELATIONS #1). Then everyone stands around for a while. After the GLs fly most people home, the transcribers say their final goodbyes. (REQUIEM)
In Central City, Libra and crew (still including Mirror Master and Weather Wizard) meet again. In Washington, the Justice League talks to Kraken; Batman suspects a bullet was involved. In Metropolis, that night, John Stewart and Opto investigate Orion's murder, and John finds the god-bullet and gets attacked. (FC #2)
That night, in an unknown location, Dr. Light has a little party, and gets melted by the Spectre. Somewhere, Sister Clarice flatlines. In Hollywood, the Spectre melts Effigy. (REVELATIONS #1)
We now encounter a weird little glitch, if we're going to count JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #27 as canonical to FC: the Shadow Cabinet is in the Hall of Justice and the JLA satellite stealing Dr. Light's mortal remains ("an old candle"), and they're met by a crew including John Stewart (and Superman), and Batman is Bruce. #30 appears to be the first post-FC issue; I have no idea where the story in #27 could have time to happen.
Somewhere in here, the League has to locate and rescue the injured John Stewart, who is holding the god-bullet (FC #2). Batman collects the bullet and sticks it in his utility belt (BATMAN #683).
Day 4:
In Coast City, very early in the morning, the Alpha Lanterns arrest Hal. In Washington, Superman and Batman confer, Batman fights Kraken, and Kraken throws him into a Boom Tube. In Blüdhaven, Turpin finds Rev. Good, who leads him to Command D, where he sees Kamandi and the restrained Batman. In Metropolis, Clark Kent turns in some copy, and Clayface-as-Jimmy blows up the Daily Planet. (FC #2)
The events of ROGUES' REVENGE #1 have to happen here--Luthor at least gives the Rogues the impression that he's "eating out of Libra's hand" (although he doesn't seem to have ever really gotten with Libra's program), Libra is still in the Central City club, and Barry's not back yet. The final scenes of the issue happen around 3 AM; the tingling the twins feel probably has to do with Barry's return. (ROGUES' REVENGE #1)
That night, Wally and Jay investigate Libra's HQ in Central City and find Barry. (FC #2)
Also that night, in New York, S.H.A.D.E. hits the Dark Side Club, where they find Montoya and Boss Dark Side's corpse. Überfraulein falls out of the sky; S.H.A.D.E. tells Montoya to come with them. (FC #3)
Day 5:
In Central City, Nix gets fired, and Jay brings Iris and Wally's family up to date. (FC #3).
The Rogues find Gambi; the "new Rogues" tell them to "report back to the club." Zoom is training Inertia. The old Rogues dispense with the new; Iris is crying with happiness after getting the update from Jay. (ROGUES' REVENGE #2)
In Portsmouth, England, Montoya fights the Bible Crew and jumps onto a boat. (Perhaps S.H.A.D.E. gave her a lift there, off-panel.) The Spectre goes to the Central City Community Center to meet up with Libra, who's conferring with the Hangmen; the Spectre kills the Hangmen and vanishes. (REVELATIONS #1) Morrison has suggested that Libra relocates because the Flashes compromised the Central City hideout, but I suspect the smoking midair corpses of the Hangmen were a much more significant compromise...
At the Hall of Evil in Florida, Libra puts the Justifier helmet on Mike, and Luthor notes that Superman "hasn't answered a single emergency call for 18 hours." (Perhaps Libra figured that the HQ wasn't the best place to be with all those dead Hangmen there.) Libra says that the Big One is coming "in less than 24 hours." (FC #3) Libra, still at the Hall of Doom (see the establishing shot at the top of the page), confers with Grodd; his monitor board has lots of shots of what's happened to a bunch of characters and... anticipates what's going to happen to Wonder Woman. (ROGUES' REVENGE #2)
In Central City, the Rogues head to the Observatory, then fight with the Zooms; Libra shows up with the kid. A big fight transpires, and the Rogues drop off Kid Zoom's body in Keystone City, then return to the basement of the Flash Museum. (ROGUES' REVENGE #3)
Back off the coast of England, the Cultists find the Spear of Destiny and fight Montoya. Cris goes to his son's grave--although, actually, the grave he goes to is Jake's. Which is strange, because Jake Allen isn't dead; Malcolm is the son Cris-as-the-Spectre killed in CRISIS AFTERMATH: THE SPECTRE #3. I guess we can chalk that up to Darkseid's fall too. Anyway, the Spectre proceeds to teleport himself to where Montoya is to judge her. (REVELATIONS #1) They fight, then the Spectre teleports them away... (REVELATIONS #2) ...and the first big internal continuity hiccup of the project happens here. See Day 6 for details.
In Metropolis, Superman is by Lois's side, and Jimmy notes that "Superman hasn't been seen since yesterday." Zillo Valla walks in and gives Clark "one ultimate chance." (FC #3) She freezes time, which apparently gets unfrozen sometime after that, and she and Superman head off for nutty parallel-Earth adventures. (SUPERMAN BEYOND #1) In Washington, Alan Scott and Wonder Woman suggest it's time to invoke Article X. (FC #3)
Day 6:
Oracle, Aquaman, Freddie Freeman, Supergirl, Green Arrow and Black Canary get their draft notices delivered on paper (Ollie and Dinah seem to be getting theirs in the morning). Alan Scott assembles the forces. We can assume everybody gets where they're going by some kind of fancy JLA teleportation-type device. (FC #3)
In Tokyo, Shilo's about to leave Japan when he and Sonny are attacked, and rescued by Super Young Team in the Wonder Wagon. Wonder Woman investigates Blüdhaven and gets attacked by Mary Marvel, who gives her a disease. At 5:30 PM EST (per FC #4), also in Blüdhaven, Mokkari sends the ultimate spam message out. In Washington, Oracle tries to pull the plug on the Internet (FC #3), and actually succeeds, per FC #4.
Here's that first continuity hiccup: we have to assume that the Spectre teleported Montoya mid-word from Day 5 to Day 6, as well as from the boat to Gotham City. The scenes with the Spectre and the Question together in REVELATIONS #1 and 2 clearly happen continuously, and occupy five or ten minutes at the very most; in the meantime, Wrack gets the Spear of Destiny back to shore, then gets the word out, summons the forces, heads to wherever Vandal Savage is located (which sure doesn't look like it's anywhere near the coast of England), stabs him and turns him into Cain. [Perhaps this is one of the "time distortions" mentioned in FC #5.]
So. Having jumped a day into the future, Cris and Renee observe Batwoman, and then the Radiant shows up. Cris cries over the son he didn't kill, rather than the one he did. Cris, Montoya and the Radiant talk theology. The Gotham Central Anti-Life Crew attacks. The Radiant teleports Montoya away, and she's attacked by Anti-Life Batwoman. (REVELATIONS #2)
The Spectre and the Radiant fight Anti-Life legions; Montoya fights Batwoman. Vandal Savage/Cain leads his crew along the tree-lined coastline, and... lickety-split, they're in the U.S., gazing upon the strung-up bodies in Westbrook (or whatever that suburb of Gotham is called). Maybe he's got some kind of magical teleportation powers. In Gotham City, Montoya, the Radiant and the Spectre take refuge in a cathedral, while hordes of Darkseidians attack outside (and Catwoman is hanging out outside too). Cain shows up and stabs the Spectre. (REVELATIONS #3)
[Weirdly, Montoya asserts that "what's happened in Gotham, it's happened everywhere... I was at the Checkmate castle. I've seen it." It's hard to imagine when that might have happened; she was in S.H.A.D.E.'s custody late on Day 4 and early on Day 5, and turns up at the castle on Day 20, below, but there's no space in the story between the Ultimate E-Mail and this sequence for her to get there and back, or indeed to find out what's going on anywhere other than her immediate surroundings.]
Cain has split the Spectre from Cris. Montoya fights Cain; then the Huntress shows up. The Radiant protects the church, and explains the Spear of Destiny to Montoya. Then she confronts Cain, who makes the Spectre recite the Anti-Life Equation and declares victory. (REVELATIONS #4)
Meanwhile, in Antarctica, Ice shows up and attacks the Checkmate outpost; Mr. Terrific and Taleb hunker down in the bunker, and Sasha Bordeaux shuts down. (RESIST)
Day 10:
At S.T.A.R. Labs in California, Snapper Carr destroys the bioweapons, then returns to Antarctica. (RESIST)
Day 11:
Snapper goes to the Watchtower to confront Firehawk and sees the Cheetah. (RESIST)
Days 17, 20, 25, 27, 29:
Snapper keeps up the resistance (RESIST).
Day 31:
Snapper gets busy with the Cheetah, then gets attacked by Justifier-Grodd and teleports himself and the Cheetah back to Camp Oswald. (RESIST)
Day 32:
Mr. Terrific does something hand-wave-y involving the Code Zoo and Sasha. A zillion OMACs attack the bunker, and Mr. Terrific, the Cheetah, Taleb and Snapper head off with some OMACs. (RESIST)
Day 36 or so:
In Washington, DC, Black Lightning, en route to rescue somebody from the Hall of Justice and deliver some papers, runs into the Tattooed Man (who's been protecting his family for "two weeks"), and they have a brief adventure together that ends badly. (SUBMIT) (It would actually have to be longer than two weeks to fit the timeline of RESIST--Mr. Terrific has to get back to the Checkmate castle in Switzerland by this day. Call it a time distortion if you like. But where are the OMACs? Who knows?)
Shortly thereafter, the Ray rescues the Tattooed Man and drags him into the Hall of Justice, which is under attack. Black Canary, the Flash family, the Ray and the Tattooed Man teleport to the JLA satellite, and Green Arrow gets captured.
In Blüdhaven, the Checkmate attack force has been slaughtered, Turpin is fighting off Darkseid's influence, and Kalibak is chowing down on Opto309.
In Switzerland, the Checkmate castle is under attack, and Amanda Waller is about to show Montoya something; then the Wonder Wagon arrives. At the Fortress of Solitude, adorable tykes and a printing press are around. Superbia is falling. Gorilla City is under attack. (FC #4)
In Central City, the Flashes encounter the new Female Furies, then go off and rescue Iris. (FC #3-4)
Turpin/Darkseid gives the thumbs down. (FC #4)
In Blüdhaven, Batman is having his memories strip-mined by the Lump, Simyan and Mokkari. He fights it off. S & M's experiment fails spectacularly, and they shoot the Lump, then run away as it trashes the lab. (BATMAN #682-3)
Hal Jordan is tried on Oa; Guy and Kyle show up and fight Kraken. There are mentions of time distortions on Earth, which would suggest that time is passing much more slowly off Earth, so this could be shortly after day 4 relative to Hal's experience.
At the Checkmate castle, Waller and Khalid show Montoya the Biomacs.
In Blüdhaven, the Female Furies (who've gotten back there somehow...) are suiting up. Simyan, Mokkari and Godfrey are petitioning Turpin/Darkseid, who sends the Furies out to "end it all."
At the Castle, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Alan Scott, etc., are fighting Justifiers. Mr. Terrific arrives where the Wonder Wagon has crashed, and Sonny Sumo shows off Motherboxxx. The Castle's "shields will fail in 15 minutes."
In Blüdhaven, Kalibak and the Tiger-Men ride out, and the cavalry arrives at the bridge.
Wherever Nix Uotan is, he's thrown into a holding cell with the mysterious hooded guy and the Metron-avatar who solves the Rubik's Cube; he remembers Weeja Dell.
Somewhere, Libra is about to hang the Calculator, and has words with Luthor.
In Blüdhaven, John's ring isn't working right. Turpin/Darkseid kills his minions. Supergirl and Mary Marvel start fighting.
The Green Lanterns, approaching Earth, "freefall into the singularity."
In Washington, DC, the Justifiers have found the President's bunker.
Darkseid arrives, and so does Nix. (FC #5)
1000 years from now:
Prime roasts the faux Kents and busts up the Superman Museum, and the Legion of Super-Heroes does their Legiony thing. (Lo3W #1 and 2)
The End of Time:
The Time Trapper complains about bugs. (Lo3W #1)
I'll be updating this as future issues come out, but comments and suggestions are very welcome.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Final Crisis: Revelations #2
EDITED TO ADD: A brief note on the chronology of this issue: it is weird. I'm working on an overall FC chronology, but it appears that all the Montoya stuff this issue happens more or less continuously, with no breaks of more than a few minutes. In the meantime, Sister Wrack recovers herself, gets back to shore, summons every "all of our order for a thousand miles" to wherever Vandal Savage is located, and turns him into Cain. That has to take a lot more time.
The one easy out for this is that when the Spectre teleports himself and Montoya to Gotham City, he also sends them a day into the future. That also means that the Spectre could've confronted Libra the day before Mokkari ended the Fourth World--which would explain why Libra (and the Headmen) were in the Central City strip club rather than the Hall of Doom, to which Libra relocated later that day.
Commenter Will Staples asks how this squares up with S.H.A.D.E. picking up Montoya in New York City at the beginning of FC #3. I figure she had a conversation with them and they dropped her off in Portsmouth in time for REVELATIONS #1, which would fit the timeline.
Pp. 2-3:
I see Renee has picked up Charlie's old habit of wisecracking while wearing the mask. Cris was killed in GOTHAM CENTRAL #38.
Pg. 9:
Ah, Batwoman. First appeared in 52 #7, created by... okay, this is a tough one, since so many hands were involved, but I'm going to provisionally say Alex Ross, Greg Rucka and J.G. Jones, and open it up for corrections; she's based on a character created by Sheldon Moldoff and (possibly) Bob Kane who first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #233. As per S.O.P., she's fighting what I'm guessing is one of Intergang's giant lizard critters.
Pg. 11:
As we saw in 52 #1, the Bat-Signal is within viewing range of Montoya's old apartment.
Pg. 12:
Gehenna is almost certainly not the character by that name who first appeared in VILLAINS UNITED #5, as entertaining as it is to consider that possibility. The Spectre appears to be using "Gehenna" to mean something like "unending horrors," but that's not quite what it signifies theologically. In Judaism it's where the wicked are punished and purified for a finite or infinite span; it's named after a dump south of Jerusalem where garbage was burned. Even when Jesus uses the term, it generally implies the fires of God's judgement. In other words, pretty much what the Spectre does already.
Pg. 13:
They made her their leader in 52 AFTERMATH: CRIME BIBLE: FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #5.
Pg. 14:
Called it on Clarice/the Radiant as the spirit of mercy!
Pg. 17:
The Radiant is quoting Matthew 5:39. Nice to know that God's agents like the King James Version best too.
Pg. 19:
Since basically every Biblical and quasi-Biblical name has already been used for a comics character, there's already a Lilith who first appeared in TEEN TITANS #25. The "original" Lilith, despite her reputation as Adam's first wife, doesn't quite turn up in the Bible itself, unless you count Isaiah 34:14, which is pushing it. In CRIME BIBLE #2, though, the sex cult affiliated with the dark faith was Lilith's Daughters, and Lilith figures prominently (as a teacher figure) in the Crime Bible and its faith; the text encoded at the beginning of each chapter of the series appears here. The relevant passage is the ending: "the gods once new now old will see the sign and know the time of their reckoning is come."
Pg. 20:
Maybe that's what everybody's computers look like after Oracle failed to unplug the Internet.
Pg. 22:
"And in the days between worlds" etc.: pseudo-Biblical prophecy--I think it's not from any previously seen text, although it might be from the Crime Bible. ("Between worlds," as in after the end of the Fourth World but before the beginning of the Fifth.)
Pg. 23:
So...Vandal Savage is Cain? Not the one who first appeared in HOUSE OF MYSTERY #175, who also killed his brother Abel etc. per SWAMP THING #33, but the marked one? And the Spectre gave him his mark? Which looks kind of like a set of scales?
Wait a second. Consult Genesis 4 (no, not GENESIS #4), in which the Lord Himself puts the mark on Cain--and does it to prevent anyone from killing Cain. Also, FC #1 is fairly consistent with the established history of Vandal Savage (he was a caveman from the Blood Tribe who became immortal after exposure to a meteorite); this isn't. Hmm.
Pg. 24:
Clarice is of course quoting from PICTURE STORIES FROM THE BIBLE: OLD TESTAMENT #3 here. I don't think I've ever previously come across the suggestion that the ram was actually Abraham's son. That's a little heterodox, theologically speaking.
Pg. 25:
Jonah entered the Lord's service in JONAH HEX #24. (I'm kidding. It actually happened in SUPERBOY #98. Although he first appeared on the cover of this issue.)
Stacy, who I don't think ever got a last name, was the perma-temp in GOTHAM CENTRAL whose job was turning on the Bat-Signal; GOTHAM CENTRAL #11 focused on her, although she appeared earlier too.
Pg. 26:
Captain Maggie Sawyer, created by John Byrne, first appeared in 1987's SUPERMAN #7.
Pg. 27:
This is the formulation of the Anti-Life Equation that first appeared in SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE #3.
Pg. 28:
And what would "the same force that spared Libra" be? Answer: "It's intentionally vague." Although commenter Astro over there notes that, per 2002's SPECTRE #19--and that is one freaky cover--the Spectre's not allowed to kill Darkseid.
No more new Final Crisis books for another four weeks, it appears--back on the first entry of this blog, I've been updating ship dates for everything. FINAL CRISIS #4, ROGUES' REVENGE #3 and LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #2 have all been bumped from Sep. 17 to Oct. 15; SUBMIT has been bumped from Oct. 1 to Oct. 8, the same day as REVELATIONS #3. So--it might be a busy mid-October! See you thenabouts.
The one easy out for this is that when the Spectre teleports himself and Montoya to Gotham City, he also sends them a day into the future. That also means that the Spectre could've confronted Libra the day before Mokkari ended the Fourth World--which would explain why Libra (and the Headmen) were in the Central City strip club rather than the Hall of Doom, to which Libra relocated later that day.
Commenter Will Staples asks how this squares up with S.H.A.D.E. picking up Montoya in New York City at the beginning of FC #3. I figure she had a conversation with them and they dropped her off in Portsmouth in time for REVELATIONS #1, which would fit the timeline.
Pp. 2-3:
I see Renee has picked up Charlie's old habit of wisecracking while wearing the mask. Cris was killed in GOTHAM CENTRAL #38.
Pg. 9:
Ah, Batwoman. First appeared in 52 #7, created by... okay, this is a tough one, since so many hands were involved, but I'm going to provisionally say Alex Ross, Greg Rucka and J.G. Jones, and open it up for corrections; she's based on a character created by Sheldon Moldoff and (possibly) Bob Kane who first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #233. As per S.O.P., she's fighting what I'm guessing is one of Intergang's giant lizard critters.
Pg. 11:
As we saw in 52 #1, the Bat-Signal is within viewing range of Montoya's old apartment.
Pg. 12:
Gehenna is almost certainly not the character by that name who first appeared in VILLAINS UNITED #5, as entertaining as it is to consider that possibility. The Spectre appears to be using "Gehenna" to mean something like "unending horrors," but that's not quite what it signifies theologically. In Judaism it's where the wicked are punished and purified for a finite or infinite span; it's named after a dump south of Jerusalem where garbage was burned. Even when Jesus uses the term, it generally implies the fires of God's judgement. In other words, pretty much what the Spectre does already.
Pg. 13:
They made her their leader in 52 AFTERMATH: CRIME BIBLE: FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD #5.
Pg. 14:
Called it on Clarice/the Radiant as the spirit of mercy!
Pg. 17:
The Radiant is quoting Matthew 5:39. Nice to know that God's agents like the King James Version best too.
Pg. 19:
Since basically every Biblical and quasi-Biblical name has already been used for a comics character, there's already a Lilith who first appeared in TEEN TITANS #25. The "original" Lilith, despite her reputation as Adam's first wife, doesn't quite turn up in the Bible itself, unless you count Isaiah 34:14, which is pushing it. In CRIME BIBLE #2, though, the sex cult affiliated with the dark faith was Lilith's Daughters, and Lilith figures prominently (as a teacher figure) in the Crime Bible and its faith; the text encoded at the beginning of each chapter of the series appears here. The relevant passage is the ending: "the gods once new now old will see the sign and know the time of their reckoning is come."
Pg. 20:
Maybe that's what everybody's computers look like after Oracle failed to unplug the Internet.
Pg. 22:
"And in the days between worlds" etc.: pseudo-Biblical prophecy--I think it's not from any previously seen text, although it might be from the Crime Bible. ("Between worlds," as in after the end of the Fourth World but before the beginning of the Fifth.)
Pg. 23:
So...Vandal Savage is Cain? Not the one who first appeared in HOUSE OF MYSTERY #175, who also killed his brother Abel etc. per SWAMP THING #33, but the marked one? And the Spectre gave him his mark? Which looks kind of like a set of scales?
Wait a second. Consult Genesis 4 (no, not GENESIS #4), in which the Lord Himself puts the mark on Cain--and does it to prevent anyone from killing Cain. Also, FC #1 is fairly consistent with the established history of Vandal Savage (he was a caveman from the Blood Tribe who became immortal after exposure to a meteorite); this isn't. Hmm.
Pg. 24:
Clarice is of course quoting from PICTURE STORIES FROM THE BIBLE: OLD TESTAMENT #3 here. I don't think I've ever previously come across the suggestion that the ram was actually Abraham's son. That's a little heterodox, theologically speaking.
Pg. 25:
Jonah entered the Lord's service in JONAH HEX #24. (I'm kidding. It actually happened in SUPERBOY #98. Although he first appeared on the cover of this issue.)
Stacy, who I don't think ever got a last name, was the perma-temp in GOTHAM CENTRAL whose job was turning on the Bat-Signal; GOTHAM CENTRAL #11 focused on her, although she appeared earlier too.
Pg. 26:
Captain Maggie Sawyer, created by John Byrne, first appeared in 1987's SUPERMAN #7.
Pg. 27:
This is the formulation of the Anti-Life Equation that first appeared in SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE #3.
Pg. 28:
And what would "the same force that spared Libra" be? Answer: "It's intentionally vague." Although commenter Astro over there notes that, per 2002's SPECTRE #19--and that is one freaky cover--the Spectre's not allowed to kill Darkseid.
No more new Final Crisis books for another four weeks, it appears--back on the first entry of this blog, I've been updating ship dates for everything. FINAL CRISIS #4, ROGUES' REVENGE #3 and LEGION OF THREE WORLDS #2 have all been bumped from Sep. 17 to Oct. 15; SUBMIT has been bumped from Oct. 1 to Oct. 8, the same day as REVELATIONS #3. So--it might be a busy mid-October! See you thenabouts.
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