The latest DC Direct Channel newsletter has more shipping changes for Final Crisis.
Final Crisis #4 has been pushed back again to October 22, and the next few issues have been rescheduled accordingly. That puts Final Crisis #5 on November 26, and Final Crisis #6 on December 31. (FC6 isn’t on the list, but the new date is on DC’s website.)
So it looks like December will have an issue of Final Crisis, after all.
In January, DC’s villains will take over the entire line for Faces of Evil. Each regular DC title will spotlight a villain for the month — much like the Rogue Profiles that Geoff Johns did during his run on The Flash, or the “New Year’s Evil” specials from 1998. The project was inspired* by the de-motivational posters DC has been running this year, and by the Final Crisis slogan, “The Day Evil Won.”
This might explain why December’s Flash #247, the conclusion of “This Was Your Life, Wally West,” was not solicited as the final issue of the series even though we know the book will stop for Flash: Rebirth. Even if Rebirth starts right on time in January, they could still run a one-shot focusing on, say, Zoom. Though I’d rather see a villain who hasn’t already had a spotlight issue in recent years.
Of course, I’m still holding out for the book to reach #250. So few series reach that milestone, and it would be sad for it to stop two issues short.
*Cynically, it occurs to me that this allows an extra month to finish Final Crisis before the entire line shifts from just before to just after the world-changing event.
I’m beginning to think that Final Crisis should have been an original graphic novel, not a miniseries.
I understand there are many reasons to do a big event as a miniseries. People are more willing to spend $3.50 a month for 7 months than to drop $20-25 all at once. And they’re more willing to pick up a first issue to try it, knowing that if they don’t like it, they don’t have to pay for the rest of the series (while with a book it’s all or nothing). It’s easier to schedule tie-ins. Plus it keeps the hype engine going for longer.
But those are all business reasons. Let’s look at artistic reasons. Specifically this one: it’s clear that Final Crisis will read better all at once than in serialized chapters.
After the contention that the series requires the reader to be a walking encyclopedia of arcane DC knowledge (a claim with which I disagree), the biggest complaint about Final Crisis is that it isn’t clear what’s going on. There’s a sense that you need to have read interviews and annotations just to follow it.
It seems like readers want an inverted pyramid structure to their comics. Establish all the players up front, then jump into the conflict. Which is certainly a valid way to tell a story, except that:
Movies and novels frequently tell stories where they give you only pieces of information, bit by bit, and slowly assemble them into a whole so that by the time you get to the end, or three-quarters through, or half-way through, you know what’s going on. Before the sequels soured people’s memories of the first film, The Matrix was massively popular — but it takes a long time before Neo — and the audience — find out what’s really happening.
And really, people don’t want everything spelled out ahead of time. They want to be surprised. They want the rush of a cliffhanger ending. And when you spend an entire issue establishing the situation and players, like in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, they complain that it’s all setup, and it’s like “reading a Wikipedia article.”
The problem is trying to mix the story structure Grant Morrison is using for Final Crisis with the serialized format.
A movie can spread out the exposition because it’s a whole work intended to be watched all at once. A novel can get away with it because it’s perceived as a whole work, not as series of connected stories. You can pause reading a novel and know that you can read the next part, which might explain more, anytime you want. When you have to wait a week for the next episode of a TV show, or a month (or two, or more) for the next chapter of a serialized comic, waiting for things to make sense can be a much more frustrating experience.
So doing it as a graphic novel would solve that problem. Have the whole thing come out in one volume. People can sit down, read it at their own pace, and follow the pieces as they come together. They can see how the story works as presented on the page, and then if they want to look deeper into symbolism, see how it connects to 70 years’ worth of shared universe stories, or do a literary analysis, then they can look up the annotations.
Accodring to DC’s website*, Final Crisis #4 has been pushed back another two weeks to October 15.
Now, it could be worse: This was the planned “skip month,” after all, where they planned a 2-month gap between issues #3 and #4. Of course, they were supposed to have the various tie-in one-shots in between — Submit, Resist, Superman: Beyond, and Rage of the Red Lanterns — and only one of those has come out so far. (And it’s the one that ended up running two issues instead of just one.)
Interestingly enough, this schedule makes October 15 a big week for Final Crisis, as it will have:
*While there are many things that annoy me about DC’s new website design, one thing I really like is that they’ve finally gotten on top of keeping the schedule (a) accurate and (b) up to date.
DC ships the middle issue of the three-part Rogues’ Revenge by the fan-favorite Flash team of Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins. Also related: Teen Titans Year One, Justice Society of America, and two hardcovers collecting JLA and The Brave and the Bold.
Written by Geoff Johns; Art and covers by Scott Kolins
Life was easier when the Rogues had Barry Allen for a foe – or at least it was a bit more fun. Now, hunted by Libra and the Secret Society for refusing to worship the impending evil that is prophesized to claim Earth, Captain Cold and his crew find themselves attacked on several fronts . . . and that doesn’t sit well with the Rogues. Plus, a bizarre twist for Inertia!
Newsarama has a 5-page preview.
Team books and collections after the cut: Continue reading
Grant Morrison on Final Crisis (from an interview at IGN):
I think of it like dance music, and how they just took pop music to a place where there was nothing left but the bass and the drum and the build-up and release, and I kind of wanted a comic that would throw out all the boring conversations and fights and keep only the stuff I like to read. You know, to create the crack cocaine of superhero comics. [laughs]
Also worth noting, for anyone who’s confused about how the monthlies line up with Final Crisis:
Pretty much every storyline that’s currently running in a DC book is happening before Final Crisis, because the events of Final Crisis are so big, that we didn’t want to see its influence destabilizing major stories already running in the other comics. The whole story of Final Crisis is in that one book and its few tie-ins, and then when Final Crisis ends, the entire range of DC books will be dealing with the aftermath. So if you look at it that way, everything that you’re reading that comes out during Final Crisis tends to be happening the week before the story takes place.
There’s a lot of other interesting stuff in there — it’s worth a read if you have the time.