Like a lot of people, I'm not 100-percent sure of everything that's taking place in "Final Crisis," but that's actually a good thing. This isn't a beefed-up Super Friends situation. Writer Grant Morrison is setting up something seriously dark and unsettling, and it isn't playing out the way I assumed an Event Comic would.
(Spoilers ahead!)
Issue No. 1: Martian Manhunter is murdered in one panel. The end. Issue No. 2: Det. Dan Turpin is seen beating the living shit out of a cowering, broken Mad Hatter. I mean, this is a savage, blood-on-the-walls beatdown, one that the reader is totally unprepared for. What does it mean? Who knows? I didn't even mention the opening sequence in Japan (presumably Tokyo), where Sonny Sumo rips out the heart of an idiot robot who challenges him to a fight. Before heading to the bathroom, Sumo leaves the guy's extracted heart on his drinking glass. Um, wow. And I don't care that it wasn't a total surprise: That last panel of the Flash (Barry frickin' Allen!) sprinting back from the dead was thrilling.
Morrison's also working his nonlinear voodoo on "Batman," and I think it's intriguing. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to (maybe) find out what happened after Bruce Wayne collapsed and Alfred was brutally attacked in the Bat Cave.
Phew. Morrison's stuff is cardio for the brain.
