When I was a child..

My (spoiler free) thoughts on Final Crisis #7 :


You said it.

This comic (with it's one penciller and SEVEN inkers) really illustrates what a difference an inker can make.
I'm not sure who inked which parts, but I do know that while the whole thing essentially looked drawn by Doug Mahnke, the quality shifted wildly from inker to inker.
I know that has nothing to do with the story itself which is what people really want to talk about when it comes to Final Crisis (right?).

Well, as far as the story goes, I liked it.
Would I have liked to have seen more of some characters or to have had a little expansion of some of the scenes? Yes. Very much so. But I know that's not the kind of story Grant Morrison was trying to tell, and having read all of the interviews he's done about the book, I understand and appreciate what he was going for, so I can't fault him for the choices he made.
Well, I could, but I won't.
Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that I think Grant Morrison knows what he's doing a lot better than I do. I mean, I'd never even heard of "superluminal" speeds before Final Crisis.

Timothy Callahan has done a fantastic analysis of the entire series here, and if you're interested in intelligent comic discussion I definitely think it's worth your time. I generally feel that way about everything Timothy Callahan writes though, so maybe I'm biased.

The most pressing question on my mind now is how will DC follow up on all of the ideas Morrison introduced or concluded in this series. While I think that not running with some of the balls he was playing with (this was a terrible choice of metaphors) would be a huge waste, the idea of writers of a lesser quality or vision mucking up his ideas (read : Countdown) seems just as bad.

So where does DC go from here?

Thoughts?