Final Crisis #3 review

Know Evil

Frankenstein and SHADE invade the Dark Side Club finding the remains of Darkseid's human host. The Question, who was in the club, bugs out and Frankenstein watches a little desktop PC pointer hand scrawls "Know Evil" on a wall. While this is happening, NAZI Supergirl from one of the 52 Earths falls to Earth 1. Renee Montoya, the Question, is captured by SHADE at this point. We run over to that recently expelled and now human Monitor get fired from his fast food job. THEN we hop on over to Jay Garrick talking about his recent encounter with Barry Allen at the end of last issue, racing to stop the time bullet that killed Orion. He explains how he lost track of Barry and Wally West when his knee gave out. THEN over on to Libra ,Lex Luthor and the Human Flame. Libra pops some helmet on the Human Flame which seems to have the affect of giving him some major bloodlust. Libra puts it to Luthor, accept his offer or lose all free will when Apokolips comes to Earth. THEN we pop on over to Clark Kent at Lois's bedside in the hospital when some mysterious woman, probably from the future, comes and says the only way to save Lois is to follow her (cue Legion of Three Worlds mini). THEN we pop on over to the JLA. We see Hal in shackles get carted off to OA. Wonder Woman, Alan Scott and Black Lightning talking about the threat they're facing when Alan Scott gets the bright idea to invoke an old law from World War II, a super-hero draft, to collect an army of heroes to stand against.....someone! THEN we pop over to Mister Miracle Shilo Norman and Super Sumo get attacked at an airport in Japan but then rescued by the Super Young Team. THEN back to Wonder Woman on the outskirts of Blüdhaven along with the Atomic Knights. Going in to examine...stuff...they're attacked by Mary Marvel. Wait, holy shit, something's happening. Hey look, Mary Marvel's getting whored out some more. Mary Marvel takes out one of the Atomic Knights while her and Wonder Woman go at it. Wonder Woman gets the advantage and puts Mary on her knees. Mary reveals that the Gods of Apokolips are inhabiting human bodies (not news to the reader) and the fight was a distraction so that Mary could release a virus making Wonder Woman the carrier. While Wonder Woman is getting infected, Mokkari, one of Darkseid's people, releases emails the entire world what I presume to be the Anti-Life equation. Oracle makes a last ditch attempt to, uh..."kill the net" but it's too late. We pop on over now to Barry Allen and Wally West coming out of the Speed Force after failing to stop the time bullet. It's a few weeks into the future now.Wally is still in a bit of a shock at seeing Barry again. While Barry is lamenting his inability to save Orion, we see behind them a monsterfied Wonder Woman and crew ready to kill.

The issue is called "Know Evil" but I would have called it "LOL, Whut?" Seriously, can someone explain to me what the hell is going on? Three issues in to a seven issue miniseries and it feels like the world's longest prelude. Man, this series is turning into a fucking joke. I still hold out hope, Grant Morrison could still knock us on our asses here, but...wow. On the one hand, glad I picked up those Seven Soldiers of Victory TPBs, otherwise I would be more mystified then I already am by characters like Frankenstein showing up. But that's the problem with this series, it's been nothing but a random series of events taking us nowhere. Five pages of Alan Scott gathering a super-hero army for...what? The world just got taken over by Darkseid in the blink of an eye. Complete waste of time. Two pages of Clark Kent? Look, we all know about the Legion of Three Worlds and Superman Beyond, man, no need to set it up in this series. And NAZI Supergirl? The only reason I even know who this character is is because I read it here.

This series is one WTF moment after the next, ending at the point where issue #1 should have ended. Earth has been taken over, great, and? I feel that, maybe, there's some huge joke I'm not getting. That maybe this whole series is supposed to be a satirical farce that maybe I'm just taking too seriously. Grant Morrison getting all his little Silver Age obsessions out of the way so he can go back to doing serious and interesting stories at Vertigo again? A high minded, heavy handed "artistic" attempt at deconstructing the oft used summer event series? I just have no idea. All I know is three issues in and it's crap. Maybe issue #7 ties it all together into a rather impressive story but right now it stands as crap. Seriously. DC just handed Marvel a huge sales victory. It's not like Secret Invasion (the main series) is any better, hell, it suffers similar problems, but Marvel has certainly handled their big event infinitely better in regards to the overall story and the tie-ins. DC has a bunch of tie-in mini-series and one-shots coinciding with this one, but only a couple of them have been released so far and I'm coming to the understanding that Rogue's Revenge is less Crisis oriented and more like Geoff Johns wanting to wrap up some stuff from his run on The Flash. But I guess that's all related to something that's been lingering in the back of my mind which is what is DC trying to accomplish with Final Crisis? Grant Morrison has called it the Lord of the Rings of the DCU, whatever the hell that means.

I don't know, the longer this series goes on, the more burned I feel by the whole thing. Secret Invasion doesn't piss me off as much as this series, only cause I never had any expectations for that event. Could be good, could be crap, who cares? Final Crisis was a series I had expectations for and it's failing spectacularly. Three wasted issues, little progress. A hundred ideas are being bounced around, but the direction is severely lacking. The art is the lone saving grace at this point and JG Jones is kicking ass in that department, but it's not enough.

This series...skip it. I'm locked in myself at this point. Most of the series has been solicited, and the way my dealer works means I'd be on the title through issue six as it is so why not get all seven by this point? But as it stands, I can't recommend this book.