Final Crisis Review – “Final Crisis: Revelations”

This gets the Final Crisis reviews finally up to date.

General Information

Title: Final Crisis: Revelations

Author: Greg Rucka

Illustrator(s): Philip Tan (pencils); Jonathan Glapion, Jeff de los Santos and Walden Wong (inks); Nei Ruffino and Ian Hannin (colours)

Cover Date: October 2008 – February 2009

Cover Price: $3.99 US, or $19.99 US for the collected edition.

Premise

Darkseid is doing what he can to take God’s place. The followers of the Crime Bible fall in on his side, and he seems able to remove certain individuals from God’s influence. This leads to a crisis (or is that Crisis?) of faith for the Spectre, Mercy, the Question, the Huntress and Batwoman.

High Point

Mercy: Your service will long be remembered.
Huntress: Yeah, I got stabbed real good.
Question: Not as good as me.

Low Point

Batwoman is a major player in Renee’s past. Getting touched on so lightly feels like a disservice. She should have either had more time on the page, or been left out entirely.

The Scores

The originality is tough. This is essentially an integration of two continuities. The existence of the Spectre has long established Christian “mythology” (for lack of a better term) as a part of DC’s history. Doing so raises a lot of questions about how different religions fit together, as Wonder Woman establishes Roman mythology, Krona establishes a different take on the moment of creation, and so forth. Paramount among these is Kirby’s set of New Gods with the fourth world, and this miniseries essentially breaks down the interactions and combinations of the Christian lore with Darkseid’s latest operation. There are chances in store for the Spectre, as well. Still, that means there’s a lot of material similar to what we’ve seen in other Christian influenced material. I give it 3 out of 6.

The artwork is excellent. Phillip Tan is one of the most dependable artists for clear yet detailed line work, and we get a lot of that. I give it 5 out of 6.

The story connects the dots from A to B, but there’s a lot of predictable “have faith in God and He’ll have faith in you” kind of stuff here. That made it feel pretty draggy, and this feeling wasn’t helped by the amount of exposition required for those of us who didn’t read the Crime Bible series. Yes, I needed it to make sense of the story, but there’s so much of it that the series gets really “talky.” I give it 4 out of 6.

The characterization is pretty strong. One thing about having a lot of talking in a series is that there’s a lot of opportunity to use unique voices for the characters. I give it 5 out of 6.

The emotional response is bland. I don’t feel any particular attachment to the Christian texts, nor have I read the Crime Bible series. The Question’s sarcastic streak amused me, but otherwise the strongest emotional response I felt was an interest in reading the origin of the Cris Allen Spectre, briefly recapped here. That sounds like a good one. If the reader repeatedly thinks about how much more interesting it would be to read the story you’re referring to than the story you’re telling, you’re doing something wrong. I give it 3 out of 6.

The flow is smooth enough. There’s no time delay whatsoever between scenes, so this entire series probably covers events that take an hour or two to elapse, and the narrative structure (with each issue narrated by a different character) helps keep it all glued together. I give it 5 out of 6.

Overall, this is one of the easiest tie-in series to pass on. I give it 3 out of 6.

In total, Final Crisis: Revelations receives 28 out of 42.

Final Crisis Checklist

2 replies on “Final Crisis Review – “Final Crisis: Revelations””

  2. That’s one of the features that’s still being restored. Until that happens properly, e-mail Dave or myself (or both, or any other authors who choose to share their e-mail addresses for this purpose) and we’ll deal with them that way.

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