What... Uh... Huh? Whatever. @#$% It.

Grant Morrison is not a storyteller. Storytellers write comprehensible tales with beginnings, middles, and ends... sometimes even climaxes. Grant Morrison just pukes ideas into a word processor and lets them fall in whatever order they come out of his brain. Therefore, please enjoy the following review of Final Crisis as Grant Morrison himself would have written it: Pure thought diarrhea.

Flex Mentallo 2.0 plus his JLA Darkseid story mashed together with the faintest sprinkle of All-Star Superman. Superman Beyond was only absolutely necessary and nothing makes sense without it. Wait, something makes sense with it? Why not just call it a 9-part series? Or Make Superman Beyond 3 parts. Of course, more than likely, nothing that happened in this mess will actually have any effect on the DCU continuity, especially since the Deus Ex Machina that brought it to an end was Superman simply wishing everything back into existence. As if the story isn't confusing enough, he can't even make things happen in the order they happen. It's just a jumble of snapshots throughout time. Mandrakk the vampire watcher, I mean monitor, is doing what exactly? Captain Carrot. Batman is now a caveman who crashed in Superman's rocket at the beginning of time. More interesting than Secret Invasion, or just more offensive? Started off intriguing... Libra? Was there a point? Apparently Hawkman is dead and Aquaman is back. Who knows? They both happened in one panel. What happens when evil wins? Norman Osborn, whoops, Lex Luthor saves the day. It's like the story you would make up with your action figures as a kid, but you wanted to use toys from different lines so you made up dumb reasons why they were all in the same universe and different sizes. The whole theme of this is that it's a commentary on the power of storytelling. Why not tell an actual story? (D)

The Quick Stack

All-Star Superman #10
Holy crap, I thought they stopped publishing this. Glad they haven't though as this looks to soon be the only buyable book DC is putting out. It's also the greatest Superman story ever told... not that there's a lot to pick from. While it seems that the confines of DC continuity have shackled Grant Morrison to sinking ships with Batman and the Crisis, this All-Star re-imagining of Kal-El has allowed him to thrive on A.S.S. (A+)

Also, Frank Quitely needs to draw everything.

X-Men Legacy #209
And here I thought this was going to be twelve issues of flashbacks in a comatose Xavier's mind. The art and writing are solid, but it's still not exactly exciting and there aren't any characters I actually care about... you know, except Cargill. Wait, who? (B)

New Avengers #39
At least Hawkeye gets some tang in this one. The rest of the story is sort of a good prologue to SI as well. (B)

Mighty Avengers #11
You know, this whole arc might have been a little more enjoyable if it happened six months ago when it was supposed to. What with it having pretty much nothing to do with the big looming Secret Invasion, it's kind of hard to care. Also, it's pretty dumb and pointless and Bendis gives homage to his own story. (D)

New Warriors #10
Poop popsicle. (F)

Editor's Note: Haven't gotten around to Daredevil, Green Lantern, or Ultimates Spidey and Human yet, but it seems like they're all primed to be weak issues of normally strong series.

New Comic Book Day XVIII

There looks to be a decent amount of goodness this week with mystery Marvel beatdowns at Camp Avengers, a triple dose of Marvel Matt Fraction, more Marvel mutants getting their @$$es handed to them, and the marvelous Legion of Doom reenacting the final season of JLU. The most anticipated book of the week award goes to Grant Morrison's batty take on an Agatha Christie classic in Batman #669. And while the writing's good, this one gets the prize for JH Williams III's ridiculously good design. His art is pretty fantastic, but his layouts make your elbows jiggle. If you're into that sort of thing.