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.)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Bat-Might was speaking more to Huntress's on-again, off-again bat-sidekick (acolyte?) status, even though it was probably also an obscured Bat-mite ref.

It took me a minute, but then I thought, "How does Renee know about Batman's hallucination?" and "What would Renee know about Huntress?"

Also, during No Man's Land, Huntress was masquerading as Batgirl/Batwoman and trading on Batman's name and rep.

David Uzumeri said...

Renee would know about Huntress for exactly the reason you brought up, No Man's Land - and while we don't necessarily ever see it on panel, I'm sure the Gotham cops love to gossip about who is and isn't cool with Batman these days. She'd know enough to call Helena a junior member of the Batfamily.

It's also interesting that Helena was the first candidate to take over being the Question that Charlie tried to recruit, back in Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood.

Douglas Wolk said...

Right, that's what I meant: "bat-mite" would mean "Batman-related pipsqueak" in this context...

jgoldscher said...

Did anyone else question the appearance of Superman in the WWII flashback? And the bulked-up Atom he's beating on looks a bit out of place as well?

David Uzumeri said...

Goldscher, I assumed that was just a nod to the fact that everyone from Earth-2 remembers fighting the war there, with Superman, rather than on New Earth without him. No idea why they drew Atom Smasher instead of Atom, though.

Anonymous said...

It's "Bat Might" because Huntress said something to the effect of, "Doing this might be a bad idea."

Get it? Thus, "Listen, Bat-Might!"

It's a wink wink get what I'm referencing here wink sort of thing