Final Crisis Post Mortem: Rogues' Revenge

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge, by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins, was probably my favorite of the tie-ins, though I'm liking Legion of 3 Worlds a heck of a lot (I will cover that series once it's completed). Though I have read complaints that Rogues' Revenge was not tied in to Final Crisis enough, I would argue that it was tied in just enough. While it isn't essential to the main series, Rogues' Revenge does follow a logical tangent from it that comes out of the first few issues without contradicting them. This makes for the best kind of tie-in to a major event like Final Crisis: the main series has created a space for a story like this, yet it can also stand on its own, as the reader is given all the necessary exposition. And the story is told in a tight three-issue series.

The primary purpose of Rogues' Revenge seems to be bridging the gap between, on the one hand, the death of Bart Allen, Salvation Run, and Countdown (the Pied Piper and Trickster plot) and, on the other hand, the upcoming Flash: Rebirth series. That may seem like a lot of continuity to keep up with, but this is one of the things Geoff Johns does well: tie together continuity threads while still managing to tell an entertaining story.

And Rogues' Revenge is a lot of fun. During his run on The Flash, Johns understood the importance of these villains to the series, and he had managed to flesh out their backstories to make them more interesting characters and to give a clear motivation as to why they would work together (they are mainly held together by the strict leadership of Captain Cold, who understands each rogue's damage enough to keep them in line).

Rogues' Revenge opens with the villains on the run for some time after the events of Salvation Run. They are being pursued on two fronts: the heroes want them for their responsibility in the death of Bart Allen, and the villains are after them because they refuse to join Libra's new society of villains. They choose to fight the society while also evening the score by killing Inertia, the villain truly responsible for Bart Allen's death.

Johns is a straightforward, entertaining storyteller who uses continuity as a launching pad for new stories. In this sense, his style contrasts that of Grant Morrison on the main series. Though I find both approaches to comic storytelling equally valid, I can see why many readers preferred Johns's more accessible approach. I'm entertained by Johns's comics (though I don't quite understand his obsession with traumatic arm loss), and I tend to follow whatever he does. However, it's also clear that we have a lot of the same touchstones when it comes to the comics of our youth, and that may very well be influencing my enjoyment of his stories.

To look at one particular characteristic of Johns's storytelling style, I'm using a couple of scenes not from Rogues' Revenge, but from Final Crisis: Rage of the Red Lanterns, a tie-in that many readers cited for its failure to connect to the main series.

Early in the book, the reader is reminded by the following image that the Guardian known as Scar is connected in some way to the Sinestro Corps, as indicated by the Yellow Lantern symbol that appears in her pupils (the Black Lantern symbol also appears there in an earlier panel).
Later, when Green Lantern John Stewart questions how the Sinestro Corps managed to ambush them, we get a cut to another panel showing Scar's pupils.
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On the one hand, this is just clear storytelling, repeating information in order to make sure the reader is following along and can continue to follow. On the other hand, however, this is an unnecessary repetition that doesn't account for readers' intelligence or attention to the details of a comic that takes less than 15 minutes to read from cover to cover. In Final Crisis, Morrison would not have cut back a second time to Scar's eyes, as the first shot pages earlier should have done the trick.

I will say one more thing about Rage of the Red Lanterns: despite the claim on page one that "these events take place between Final Crisis #1 and #2," that connection seems unlikely. Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and the Alpha Lanterns have a pretty tight continuity in Final Crisis, and there is just not enough time for these events to occur. That being said, Rage of the Red Lanterns is still an entertaining story regardless of where it fits in relation to Final Crisis. It probably would have been best, however, if DC had left off the "Final Crisis" label from this book.

DC has recently solicited some of the Final Crisis collections. Here's the copy for the Rogues' Revenge collection:

FINAL CRISIS: ROGUES' REVENGE HC

Written by Geoff Johns, art and cover by Scott Kolins.

In the face of Final Crisis, Johns and Kolins revive the most ruthless Rogues Gallery of them all! At times, they've been laughed at, ridiculed and hunted -- but The Flash Rogues Gallery has had enough. The team of villains decides to remind the world why they're not to be messed with in this hardcover collecting their return in Final Crisis: Rogues Revenge #1-3 as well as a couple of their greatest hits from The Flash #182 and #197.

144 pages, $19.99, in stores on July 15.

It's nice that DC is padding the collection out with two of Johns and Kolins's best single issue stories from The Flash: the origin of Captain Cold and the new Zoom, respectively. I would say that Flash 182 is the best issue of their entire collaboration. However, due to the importance of Weather Wizard's son to the story's climax, I would have liked to see Flash 175 and 176 added as well, which established the relationship between father and infant child.

I'll have more on these collections in a later post, along with my comments on Final Crisis: Revelations.

Dr. K's Top Ten Superhero Comics of 2008, Part 2!

Tonight, we continue my top 10 list with my top 5 superhero comics of 2008. As an added bonus, I'm typing tonight's post with a cute snuggle kitty named Zoe on my lap!


5. Final Crisis

Like Batman: RIP, Final Crisis has been another Grant Morrison series that many readers have complained is too confusing. However, with the last couple of issues, the pieces have started to fall into place, and Morrison's plan has become evident. If Batman and Final Crisis teach us anything, it's that Morrison does have a plan, and persistence and attention will be rewarded.

In this case, the series started off slow, with DC's superheroes following small clues that point to something going on with the New Gods. However, What Morrison has done is launch us, and the heroes as well, into a scenario where, no matter how quickly they put the clues together, it is already too late. The sense that the heroes have failed before they have begun gives this universe-spanning crossover its weight.

Plus, there are moments, like when one of the Guardians tells Hal Jordan that he has "24 hours to save the universe," that genuinely give me goosebumps and remind me why I still get a kick out of superhero stories.

Nonetheless, this series will ultimately be a flawed masterpiece for Morrison due to the inconsistent art and publishing schedule (though the latter won't matter when the collected edition comes out). I wish J. G. Jones had been able to finish the series himself because he has already proven with the Marvel Boy series that he gets Morrison. Alternately, Carlos Pacheco's pages in issue 5 are fantastic, and he would have made a fine artist for the entire series.

4. Action Comics

It's been a very long time since I was excited about Superman comics. But the work of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank on this series have been consistently good from the "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" arc to the "Brainiac" story. In each case, Johns has taken some convoluted continuity and made sense out of it, which is basically his stock in trade. But he's also telling great stories, with entertaining twists on some old concepts. Johns's script and Frank's art combine to give us Superman in his purest form: noble, heroic, but also human. And that "humanity" gets further explored in the "New Krypton" crossover, where Superman has to deal with the presence of 100,000 Kryptonians on Earth.

Also, the latest issue saw the return of the Creature Commandos and G. I. Robot, and we all know how I feel about those characters.

3. Catwoman

This year saw several good series get cancelled by DC, including Manhunter, Birds of Prey, and Blue Beetle. But no cancellation was more regretable for me than Catwoman. For 2 1/2 years, since DC's "One Year Later" bump, this has been one of the most consistently well written and drawn series from DC. Even when it was saddled with unfortunate crossovers, like this year's for Salvation Run, the Catwoman issues proved superior to the main series. And it was one of only two monthly series for which I had a real sense of anticipation every month. The reason for that anticipation is two-fold. First, writer Will Pfeifer made Catwoman a morally complex character genuinely worth caring about, making scenes like the one where Selina gives up her baby a real emotional shot to the gut. No other comic this year gave me the same emotional reaction. Second, Pfeifer knows how to write action, and almost every issue ended with a real cliffhanger that I couldn't wait to see resolve.

And, I would add that Pfeifer writes the hell out of Batman. Every cameo Batman made was a gem, especially because the situation with Selina and her baby brought out a side of Batman that does not get explored in his own books.

Will Pfeifer and David Lopez did manage to end the series on a classy note, including cameos of themselves in the last issue. DC is continuing to collect this series in trade paperback, so anyone who missed out on it can still check it out.

Also, this was Zoe's favorite series this year as well, and she threatened to jump off my lap if I didn't place it higher on the list.

2. Captain America

2008 was the year that comics made me care about characters for which I had little past interest. This was especially true for Marvel Comics. I have long been primarily a DC reader, but this year I read more Marvel series than I ever have. Hercules, Sentry, Iron Fist, Iron Man--thanks to writers like Jeff Parker, Matt Fraction, Paul Tobin, Greg Pak, and Fred Van Lente, I'm enjoying the heck out of a lot of Marvel comics. But no series this year kept me more excited from month-to-month than Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Captain America, which spent most of the year working through the latter 2/3 of the epic 18-part "Death of Captain America" story. Brubaker has made Bucky an interesting character as the new Cap, and he has also filled the series with a great supporting cast and a collection of formidable villains.

In addition, Brubaker was extraordinarily prescient to come up with a story where the Red Skull manages to attack America by creating a banking and mortgage crisis. Cap has always been best when he's relevant to the current state of American culture, but this plot was nothing short of uncanny in its currency.

I've also especially appreciated that this book has kept outside of the larger Secret Invasion crossover that has dominated Marvel this year. Brubaker got to take his time with a long story, and yet it managed to stay well-paced and exciting throughout the year.

1. All-Star Superman

With this list, it's going to look like I'm in the tank for Grant Morrison. But All-Star Superman is a true masterpiece, and it will go down in comics history as one of the great works of the superhero genre. It doesn't necessarily transcend the genre, but that is not a bad thing because Morrison is clearly trying to create the definitive Superman story here. And unlike Batman: RIP and Final Crisis, this series hit with a clarity of purpose from issue 1. The premise was simple: Superman was dying, and he had to complete 12 labors before his life came to an end. But within that simple framework, Morrison created some mind-expanding superhero stories.

And also unlike Morrison's other work this year, he was working with an artist in Frank Quitely whose imagination and talent can keep pace with the writer's wild ideas (Quitely is on a short list of artists, along with Cameron Stewart, J. G. Jones, Doug Mahnke, Chris Weston, Richard Pace, and Charles Truog, who seem to "get" Morrison's scripts in a way that a lot of other artists seem to struggle with). Quitely's art is just stunning on this series. Though I like Gary Frank's realistically muscular Superman in Action Comics, I also enjoy the sheer hugeness and solidity of Quitely's Superman. This is a book that just gets better with each reading.

Like I said in the previous post, 2008 was a great year for superhero comics, and there were a lot of series that would have made the list in any other year, including The Immortal Iron Fist, Invincible Iron Man, Green Lantern, Booster Gold, and Secret Six. I expect the latter three series will be strong in 2009, especially Booster Gold, which would have made the list if not for some pretty mediocre fill-in stories. True Believers was another series that almost made the cut, but the later issues didn't quite live up to the promise of the first, though I still enjoyed it.

As always, suggestions for series I may have missed this year will be greatly appreciated. I'll be back soon with my thoughts on some graphic novels and indy comics from 2008.

Creature Commandos Return!

Reader werehawk pointed out something that I missed in the solicitations for DC's December releases:

The Creature Commandos are coming back, along with J.A.K.E.-2--the G.I. Robot!

According to the solicitation copy for Action Comics 872, Superman finds the original Creature Commandos and their robot buddy held captive on board Brainiac's ship. This may mean that Brainiac found the WWII-era misfit heroes somewhere in outer space, which, in turn, may mean that this story, which I covered during last year's Halloween Countdown, is in continuity.

If so, then I hope writer Geoff Johns references the fact that Robert Kanigher was on board the rocket, too.

And speaking of the Halloween Countdown, I'm gearing up for another during October. So, posting is going to be light for the next two weeks as I prepare material for another 30 days of horror comics and films!