The Morning Review - Final Crisis: Requiem
Up for review - Final Crisis:Requiem
Writer: Peter J. Tomasi
Penciler: Doug Mahnke
I normally try to be professional on my reviews, but I’ll give you some words of advice to save you a lot of wasted time and effort: get $4 out of your wallet, walk outside your house, and proceed to feed the money into the nearest storm drain. You’ve lost $4, but at least you haven’t had to read this stinking turd of a comic!
For those of you who want more of a review, I guess I can muster one together. Remember how in Final Crisis #1 the Martian Manhunter was killed in 2 pages, well, this book takes about 15 pages to show the same scene occurring. Changes are also made to the original scene, such as the fact that J’onn tries to save himself by making the villains think that their nemeses are attacking them. Then, the scene where Libra simply burned J’onn is replaced by one where he burns him, then struggles with him, finally stabbing him repeatedly with a dagger Vandal Savage hands him. Weird!
I was expecting this issue to show us how the villains captured J’onn, but that is left hanging in the air. For those of you who don’t remember: J’onn was left on the prison planet on the other side of the universe. Oh well, I guess things don’t need to make sense. As J’onn is dying he sends out a psychic burst which causes all his best friends to set on fire with psychic flames. Nice one mate! I hope I set on fire when my best friend dies. There is a really tacky scene where Batman sets on fire in the Batmobile and calls Alfred (WHY?) and says “Alfred, I seem to be on fire”, Alfred replies “May I suggest you put out the flames Sir?”, to which Bruce retorts “After I’ve caught these villains Alfred”. Well, that was logical I guess
Later in the issue J’onn’s best friends all wake up in their sleep and write out J’onns history, which is narrated to the reader. This was a boring waste of space where Tomasi pretty much reprints the Wikipedia article for the Martian Manhunter. Superman then takes a pyramid from the Gobi desert to serve as Jonn’s tomb, and flies to Mars with it. Everyone else then heads to Mars for the funeral, courtesy of the Green Lantern Corps, and the heroes all leave a book on The History of Mars that they all transcribed in their sleep. Except, you know, it is a history of J’onn J’onzz, not Mars. I’m not really sure that J’onn would be vain enough the make his best friends transcribe his life story after his death, but there you go. Oh yes, the crowning achievement of the tackiest comic I have ever read: Batman stays behind at the end to put a chocco (Oreo) biscuit on J’onn’s tomb! CHEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSYYY!
Grades:
Artwork: 8 out of 10 - Doug Mahnke actually does a very good job here, despite the fact that his J’onn J’onzz looks a little anorexic
Story: 0 out of 10. A new low!
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Yeah… I’m not really a fan of Pete Tomasi, and I’m afraid this issue did not improve my opinion of the man as a writer. :/ Too bad… the Manhunter deserves better. One of the most poorly utilized characters in the history of the DCU!
Amen to that. The Manhunter could have been salvaged easily with the right writer. But DC gave him so many poor quality relaunches over the years that I think everyone just stopped caring. Plus they always pushed the last son of Mars angle. In recent years he has just come off as a mopey version of Superman. Oh well, I am sure he will be back within about a year. Resurrected, or retconned, or something else that will make me want to tear out my hair!