Some fan-ish comments and concerns pertaining to Final Crisis #1

—I don’t like the redesigned Black Racer. I think the New Gods are more awesome (literal definition; not colloquial) with a certain degree of goofiness to them. A dude in the sky with skis gripping ski poles just looks more wrong and out of place in a this-guy-might-be-some-kinda-new-god-like-entity to me then one without ‘em. Looking at the “new” Black Racer in the couple longshots J.G. Jones gives us of him, I wouldn’t even know those were skis if I wasn’t familiar with the Kirby design; I would just assume he’s a guy with really long feet, which looks more completely stupid than goofy.

—It was cool to see John Stewart in his civilian clothes, at his day job, changing into Green Lantern in a supply closet all Clark Kent-style. We always hear about Stewart being an architect—any time a new structure is built for a superhero in a DC comic, they always seem to mention John Stewart designing it—but that’s the extent of his professional life.

I was kinda surprised to see him changing in a closet though. He has a secret identity? I wonder how he keeps it, considering he doesn’t wear a mask of any kind and never has, was married to an alien for a while, and was in a wheelchair for a while and then suddenly not?

—Like everyone else, I was really perplexed by Stewart, Hal Jordan, The Guardians and then the JLA talking about how rare a “deicide” or the death of a New God is. Wasn’t Orion like, the last New God to die? I didn’t even read Death of the New Gods (guest-starring Superman, Green Lantern and the JLA) or Countdown (ditto), but I saw a couple of ‘em die in my regular reads. You couldn’t walk around the DCU this past year without tripping over a New God corpse.

—Also, it was unclear to me if Stewart and Jordan had never seen Orion before, or if they didn’t know that the other had, or…what. But the whole, “Recognize him?” scene seemed off. It even ended with Stewart telling Jordan that these New Gods came with bad gods.

—I love Signal Man’s cape.

—Libra’s dis on Vandal Savage was pretty cool. He does seem pretty pathetic for a supervillian with a goal of world domination, give the fact that he had a 50,000-year head start over the Ra’s al Ghuls and Lex Luthors of the world.

—J’onn J’onnz’s “death” was so abrupt and presented in such a way that I didn’t even really care, despite really digging the Martian Manhunter. Actually, I don’t really see any reason to believe he is dead at this point; all I have to go on is a TV news report. But if Barry Allen’s coming back in this story, and I have to assume most of the New Gods will as well, I see no reason to worry about J’onn dying.

Or be emotionally invested in the scene at all, actually.

—Note that Superman leads the four-panel JLA meeting, and the engraved gavel is in front of his seat. So much for being chairperson, Black Canary.

—Shouldn’t Red Tornado be a holographic head floating around, and not a physical body sitting at a seat? Isn’t that what’s going on in JLoA these days?

—I wish Jones woulda drew symbols on the back of the Justice Leaguers’ chairs.

—I’m afraid I just can’t make sense of the timing of Seven Soldiers in the context of this story. Seven Soldiers had to have occurred before Countdown, and this seems to be occurring after Countdown.

Even if we allow for the appearance of some of the Seven Soldiers in Infinite Crisis as either their pre-Seven Soldiers selves (Frankenstein would have been hero-ing before his miniseries for example; which Mister Miracle that was who cameoed was ambiguous, etc.) or mistakes (Klarion II and Shining Knight II both appeared briefly in IC; Bulletteer in 52), there’s just too many chronological problems to excuse.

Shiloh Norman is Mister Miracle in Firestorm, which occurs before the events of Countdown, since Countdown continues a story thread from Firestorm. Klarion II appeared both in Robin and Countdown, and hadn’t been to the surface world before his own Seven Soldiers mini.

All of the New Gods appeared in Countdown and/or Death of the New Gods, which occurred over a year after Infinite Crisis. Does that mean there was a war in heaven in which Darkseid triumphed, the New Gods were all cast down, reborn as mortals (in the pages of Seven Soldiers), then resumed their familiar shapes, only to lead to another “war in heaven” in which Darkseid triumphed and the New Gods were all cast down, reborn as mortals (in the pages of Countdown, Death of the New Gods and Final Crisis)?

And how do Scott Free and Shiloh Norman relate at this point? Is the latter the former reborn? Or are they two distinct people as they were prior to Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, or…what?

I still enjoyed Final Crisis, but this bugs me a bit, as it seems to be an indication that this isn’t going to be the panacea for all of the DCU’s woes that the company seems to be hoping it will be.