Best of Both Worlds

It's more than just a landmark album by two of the world's foremost musicians, it's a pillar of sonic perfection that shows mankind what they should strive to be. So maybe that's a bit over the top, but it's a great catch phrase to yell out at parties and such and it works for what this blog is all about, writing reviews over the best, or worst if I feel something needs to be called out for sucking ass, that music and comics has to offer.

The idea here is going to be pretty simple, at least in my vision. I actually have no idea what Hanson is planning on putting together for his first post. The way I see it working is that I will be posting a goodly amount of comic reviews and a few music reviews and of course my hilarious observations about life will be thrown in there from time to time as well. Hanson will most likely be posting mostly music reviews using words that he learned from "Word a Day" emails, so bring a thesaurus. Of course I only make this unfair jab because I know my writing is going to be severally lacking in comparison for a while due to a lack of practice and my distaste for proofreading.

But that's enough musing for now. I'll get to my first review, which is completely biased, unfair, inaccurate and under researched.

Final Crisis #2:

Written by Grant Morrison
Art by J.G. Jones
Spoiled by A bunch of hack writers that DC apparently has no control over

This issue is definitely better the more I read it, I figured that might happen since it is Morrison and I really have to let a lot of his ideas rattle around in my head before I am able pull them all together and enjoy them. I remember reading the Filth, an excellent maxi series by Morrison which I might write more about later on, and having to force myself to take it slow so I could really enjoy the twists as they came about.

Final Crisis will probably be the best major event that DC has had in awhile, but honestly, that is not saying much. The last one I really enjoyed was Identity Crisis and that was because it was a great story driven by well established characters that Brad Meltzer did a great job of making you empathize with. Every major event since then has been a cluster fuck filled with more double spreads of D list characters locked in a pointless battle then actual good storytelling. That's more of less why I'm constantly amazed by Dan Didio terrible decision making ability. Here is a company that is continuing to lose major market share to Marvel and has some of the most iconic and well established characters in comics and yet DC ends up bringing in more and more throw away characters to fill in the stories instead of focusing on the heroes that fans buy the books to read about. I do admit that there is a certain amount of joy to be had in learning about where all these random characters came from, but at a certain point I don't give a shit and just want to see Batman batarang somebody in their fucking head.

Final Crisis is finally starting to address some of these concerns by bringing in characters that a lot of readers may not be too familiar with but still having a healthy amount of the story focused on the heavy hitters. My major concern with this issue is the reappearance of Barry though. I'm not sure if this was Morrison's decision or not, as I haven't had the chance to read the 1,001 interviews he has done about Final Crisis, but I would be inclined to say it wasn't. He is almost mocking the state of superhero deaths by throwing in the "Hope for a resurrection" line that Superman uses at the funeral of the Martian Manhunter. I just don't see how bringing Barry back is relevant anymore. Close followers of DC comics would probably be able to list the myriad of ways that Wally and Barry are completely different characters, but the average person who picks up a comic won't care because they wear the same costume and can both run really fast.

So that's a lot of words to finally get to the actual issue, which is actually quite good. If you have the patience to put together the puzzle that is going on here, the payoff is pretty sweet. I don't know if I will care enough to read any of the other mini series, but I'll keep my eye out for this one for the time being.