I've updated the FC chronology and the schedule to reflect current information. It's maybe worth noting that of the 14 comics with "Final Crisis" in the title (plus two relevant issues of BATMAN) solicited for release between Sep. 17 and the end of 2008, exactly one--REVELATIONS #3--actually hit its initially announced ship date.
Also, the contents of this issue aren't particularly close to what was solicited. For future reference: "Written by Grant Morrison and Peter J. Tomasi; Art by Frank Quitely and various; Covers by Frank Quitely and Jim Lee and Scott Williams -- Finally, the secrets of this year's most talked about event can be revealed! Witness how Darkseid's death shattered the Multiverse, creating continuity ripples throughout the DC Universe! Submit to Darkseid and read the full Anti-Life Equation! This is a book you cannot resist to buy!" ("Cannot resist to buy?")
Pg. 1:
Title ending in an exclamation point as the end of a line of dialogue? So EC Comics!
Pg. 2:
As far as I know, we haven't seen the name Justin Ballantine before. (Although this kind of puts paid to the "alien warlord" bit from JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #21.)
Pg. 5:
I haven't looked at my old STARMAN comics in a while, but have we ever actually seen Ted Knight teaching before? He was originally an unemployed playboy and later a more-or-less self-employed astronomer, right? And was it public knowledge that he had been Starman?
Pp. 11-15:
This is more or less a condensed version of JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #111.
Pg. 18:
Desaad, created by Jack Kirby, first appeared in FOREVER PEOPLE #2.
Pg. 22:
"Good and faithful servant" is an allusion to Matthew 25:23.
Pg. 24:
I suppose action figures on scales are better than action figure chess.
Pg. 25:
This is laid out to look like the pages from the Crime Bible in 52 AFTERMATH: CRIME BIBLE: THE FIVE LESSONS OF BLOOD. Until the spear weeps, huh? I wonder if the Spear of Destiny might have something to do with Bulleteer-as-"the spear that never was thrown" from SEVEN SOLDIERS. (Probably not.)
Pg. 26:
I love explanations of "math" that make no distinction between an equation and a proof.
Sonny Sumo: see FOREVER PEOPLE #5. "Billion Dollar" Bates: see FOREVER PEOPLE #8.
The Anti-Life Equation in humanoid form: this was Jim Starlin and Mike Mignola's COSMIC ODYSSEY miniseries in 1988.
"'Death' of the New Gods": Starlin's miniseries of the same name.
The Shilo Norman business was the plot of SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE.
See you in mid-January for FC #6.
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8 comments:
The Wein story is fine, but kinda disappointed with this one overall. I thought it was going to clear up some continuity stuff with Darkseid.
Yeah, it happened exactly the same to me. Like the Wein story, but expected the continuity stuff.
"Written by Grant Morrison and Peter J. Tomasi; Art by Frank Quitely and various; Covers by Frank Quitely and Jim Lee and Scott Williams"
Contents aren't particularly close to what was solicited? Try "Contents are totally different to what was solicited." Man I love me some Len Wein, and it was great to see him getting any kind of action from DC these days, even if its in that "Get Claremont to write the novelization of X3 to keep him sweet; we used all of his ideas" way.
Any ideas on what happened? You think maybe the original story had something about the 'final fate' of Batman that would have ruined #6? But then wouldn't they have just put it back again and put it out after 6 hit the stands?
Who knows... By the way, the more we see Morrison's notes for stuff like the sketchbook pages here, the more it seems like Dini and his cohorts took Morrison's actual FC plot, added some of Dini's own vices (Harley Quinn) and mangled it into Countdown.
Vampire Monitor? Check. Death of the New Gods? Check. Mystery Kamandi stuff? Check. Dead end Flash Rogues subplot? Check...
Been loving the annotations by the way, keep it up!
I like the evocative panel very much where young Justin gazes to the night sky but also at his reflection in the window (hands on his face; he's just been abused by his father).
I think Darkseid got humiliated when it was revealed in "Apokolips Classified Secret Files and Origins Confidential, the Untold Stories" #1 (of 1) that he does not actually know which way the horsey is allowed to move in Chess.
He's currently constructing a super-hero Candy Land game, so we can expect by Final Crisis #7 his grim declaration, "Go all the way back to Gumdrop, Barry Allen!"
Regarding the timeline updates: I forget which issue, but doesn't Barry tell Wally that they've run into the future? I'm sure its not a distant time in the future, but it would explain how the Furies are in two places at once. They presumably would have beaten the "resistance" led by Frankenstein and John Stewart and eventually gone after The Flashes once they got the order....but I could be wrong.
Thanks for the annotations -- enjoy them greatly. Not so much the main story, though I could like it more if I thought of it as a paean to the Silver Age style. You know, where scoundrels monologue to no-one in particular. And almost all dialogue ends with an exclamation point!
But I'd really love to see some stories on Earth-4 and Earth-20 (hoping they'd be well written).
You are a walking encyclopedia. How do you do it?
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