Saturday, January 31, 2009

Final Crisis: Revelations #5

Right. This one.

Pg. 1:

Genesis 1:1-3 in the King James Version. Just to state the obvious.

Pg. 4:

She's technically praying to Mary.

Pg. 7:

I'd hoped that at some point this series would have a clever reversal involving Cris's sons, but no. I know I keep saying this, and I know they're both apparently alive as of the end of the issue, but just one more time for the record: In INFINITE CRISIS AFTERMATH: THE SPECTRE #3, the issue that is the impetus for this entire story, the Spectre killed Malcolm Allen, not Jake Allen. Really.

Pg. 9:

"Shalt" is actually used only for the second person. I shall, thou shalt, God shall. "Tastes like mutton" is a good line, though: the blood of the Lamb!

Pg. 20:

If I am reading this correctly, the bum-rushers of Cain here are the dudes who killed the Radiant when she was a person, although the storytelling is mighty unclear.

Pg. 21:

"Longinus cured the blind": this is a new one. Longinus, remember, doesn't actually show up in the Bible--he's in the apocryphal 4th-century Gospel of Nicodemus. According to Jacopo da Varagine's 13th-century "Golden Legend," Longinus was himself blind (a blind centurion?), and was healed by a drop of Christ's blood. But the only thing that he did that resembled healing the blind was that the provost who tortured and killed Longinus went blind, then repented and regained his sight. The Spear wasn't involved.

Pg. 22:

"No question": a nice twist on the "good question" formula (which we'll see again at the end of this issue).

Pp. 24-25:

Everybody's celebrating and beating back the Justifiers, the Statue of Liberty is restored, etc.: isn't it a little early in the timeline for this?

Pp. 26-27:

So much for the crime cult. "You have been judged and found wanting": a riff on Daniel 5.

Pg. 30:

No safety? No safety from what, if he can't be harmed? "I'm not going to kill you, I'm going to do something worse: people will throw stuff in your general direction!"

Pg. 31:

Tears coming from the tip of the spear, as we saw in the fragment of the Book of Lilith in FC SECRET FILES. And the Spectre and the Radiant evidently head off to get noshed on by Mandrakk in time for FC #7.

See you next week for Lo3W #3!

11 comments:

Brian Hibbs said...

Here's one I was hoping you'd comment upon...

I don't have the book handy, so no page #s, but in the sequence where Spec wipes out all of Cain's followers, doesn't it appear that he also kills Batwoman and Catwoman?

-B

Douglas Wolk said...

Nope, he specifically says that he "can neither save nor rebuke" those who submitted against their will--including, e.g. Batwoman and Catwoman. It's just the Cain cultists he zaps.

Brian Hibbs said...

Well, then, where are they? They kinda just disappear, while scores or hundreds of cultists burn up...

Meh, I'm just nitpicking!

-B

David Uzumeri said...

I really thought Philip Tan's storytelling got less and less comprehensible as it went on; I did not enjoy the art in this issue *at all*, which lines up with your complaints, Brian.

I'm honestly kind of frightened to see what kind of page layouts he does on Green Lantern, which is a book that should probably look... cleaner... than this.

Anonymous said...

I think his Green Lantern stuff will be more traditional, and less ... spooky gothic noir. Cleaner lines, etc ...

But really, I think the ungodly amount of inks are what makes the art in Revelations a little unclear.

Still, the resolution for Renee and Cris of going from Gotham detectives to legacy superheroes ... seems complete (although in the case of the Question ... there's never really such a thing as "complete" or "answered").

Batwoman and Catwoman were Anti-Life slaves. The Cultists are voluntarily evil. Is this the end of the Crime Bible? Perhaps ...

Although Libra did end up getting away ... and he preached the Crime Bible.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. But I'm still confused. How did Cris's son come back to life? How can they seem him at the end?

What did Renee do for him/Radiant?

Anonymous said...

Any chance you do the annotations for the recently announced Final Crisis Aftermath books?

Douglas Wolk said...

If somebody pays me to, maybe!

Douglas Wolk said...

As for how Cris's son comes back to life--well, I wish I could make a lolcat (or lolspear) that says "MAGICAL SPEAR IS MAGIC."

That's the snarky answer. The snarkier answer is that he wasn't dead in the first place...

Anonymous said...

Aren't you gonna do L3W?

Anonymous said...

This never happened. I never bought this. I never read it. This never happened. I never...