FINAL CRISIS ANNOTATIONS PART I

[RED SKIES AT SUNSET]

DC Universe #0 - "Let There Be Lightning"

• We see Darkseid's astral form fall from the carcass of the fourth world down to New Earth.
• There was a War in Heaven, and Evil won. We saw this back in 7S Mister Miracle, where Metron selected Shilo to be the champion of Genesis to war against the forces of Evil after the New Gods defeat.
• Libra meets with a group of villains in an abandoned strip club in Central City. He preaches the creed of evil, the Religion of Crime, the faith of Darkseid.
• If they follow Libra, they will be granted their heart's desire...
• Barry Allen, absorbed into the Speed Force, fuel of the Multiverse, makes his own descent back to ego, back to self, where he remembers that he must return.  He sees the whole fall of Darkseid.

Final Crisis #1 - "D.O.A: God of War"

• Metron visits Anthro, cave boy, giving him the knowledge of fire, which he uses to defend his tribe from the Blood Wolf Tribe of Vandar Adg.
• Dan, Terrible, Turpin is on the hunt for six gifted missing kids. He finds the body of Orion in the dumpster.
• Orion says that the New Gods did not die, "but he is in you all...", Darkseid is the God of Evil incarnate, so his descent infects humanity.
• The Black Racer hovers over his body.
• John Stewart is alerted, 1011: deicide.
• The Question, Renee Montoya, gives Turpin a lead on the kids. A trail that leads to the Dark Side Club. The kids were also positive for the meta-gene.
• Boss Dark Side was seen in 7S, he ran a club where captured gods fought each other to the death.
• The Guardians put a gravity well around Earth to seal off the crime scene as they try to solve Orion's murder. Locate the weapon...
• Minor heroes Empress, Sparx, and Mas y Menos find the Mobius Chair in a junkyard, but they get jumped by Doctor Light and Mirror Master who grab the chair for Libra.
• The JLA are distracted by a supervillain protest for hero brutality.
• Libra, now on the chair, makes the same sales pitch to the big bads of the DCU, but they don't bite. Human Flame backs up Libra, who ends up proving his talk by killing the freaking Martian Manhunter!
• Bludhaven is still a wasteland after Infinite Crisis. Reverend Good preaches, "you can rassle the mutations out of your backyard..."
• Mark Richards, the new Tattooed Man, takes Turpin to the Dark Side Club.
• Boss Dark Side looks a lot older than he did in 7S, which he attributes to God-souls wearing out meat bodies.
• His bodyguards are Kalibak and Kanto.
• He gave the kids to Granny Goodness, inflicting them with the Anti-Life Equation. They attack Turpin.
• Justice League mobilizes to find the Dark Gods. The Alpha Lanterns arrive and place an emerald cage around the Earth.
• Here come the Monitors!
• The New Earth is the foundation stone of all existence.
• The Multiverse Machine, the Orrery of Worlds.
• Earth-51 suffered a Great Disaster. Nix Uotan failed to save it, but he believes there was sabotage.
• "When did we become so severe..."
• 'stripped of 'word of attention', banished to live as a mortal germ, die to feed the Orrery...
• Prime Monitor Tahoteh, Weeja Dell, Zillo Valla, Rox Ogama...
• Monitors were faceless once, now have names and stories. They've never had feelings or emotions, now they have rage like Tahoteh and love like Weeja.
• Ogama believes the Monitor race to be infected by contact with the narrative of the Multiverse. Through them, time has entered the timeless Nil.
• Ogama looks at us, the readers, telling us that his Uotan's exile allows him to proceed with designs...
• Anthro draws the symbol of Metron on a boulder when he is met with a vision from the world of the Great Disaster! Kamandi comes from Command D requesting the weapon Metron gave him against the Gods. Is the weapon fire? The symbol? Some other knowledge?
• Could this be Kamandi contacting Anthro from #7? Or is this before we see him in #2?
• Nix Uotan wakes up in the narrative of New Earth.
• Broadcast shows Green Arrow and the heroes reacting to the death of J'onn J'onzz.

Final Crisis: Requiem - "Caretaker of Mars"

• Nice little piece of apocrypha for the death of the Manhunter from Mars. I enjoyed the added sequence where he struggles with the villains before he dies.

Final Crisis #2 - "Ticket to Bludhaven"

• Generational warfare between Rising Sun and the new wave of Japanese Super-teens.
• Big Science Action, The Super Young Team, Most Excellent Super-Bat...
• Sonny Sumo from the Forever People book.
• Megayakuza, Atomic Lantern Boy...
• Shilo Norman returns! We last saw him busting out of the grave in Seven Soldiers. He heals Sumo with his Motherboxxx.
• Shilo wants to put together a Fifth World version of the Forever People!
• Sonny Sumo, who by all rights, went back in time and lived and died in feudal Japan is suddenly running around with a Shilo Norman, who doesn’t remember being Scott Free’s apprentice. What gives? Well, read on...
• Nix tries to guess his attention word. He draws images of Overman from E-10, Captain Atom from E-4, and even Mandrakk!
• Turpin has seemingly escaped the Anti-Life kids from last issue and is beating the crap out of Mad-Hatter for info on the same kids he already found. Some kind of amnesia? He knows something is wrong with him, his aggression, his physical deterioration.
• Hatter made some mind control hats for Boss Dark Side or Libra...
• Reverend Good preaches for the Bludhaven recovery program.
• Turpin buys a ticket to Bludhaven (roll credits!)
• Funeral of J'onn. Nerds cry.
• Luthor still doubts Libra. Him and Sivana want an alliance against Libra's new wave, but Savage is intrigued on this new chance to end the boredom.
• Libra wants to show Human Flame what he owes him...
• JLA analyzes the corpse of Orion before it sublimates back to the source.
• Bats sends Flash to investigate a lead to link the killings.
• Alpha Lantern Kraken...
• Bats says Orion was shot with a bullet that left no trace of passage besides internal evidence of detonation within Orion's heart.
• Diana reaches out to Kraken, and there's some Kirby Krackle around her shoulder...
• Lantern Opto, we saw him in 52 saving Adam Strange and Starfire.
• John Stewart finds the bullet, which has been buried for 50 years... a Radion bullet, the god-killing element...
• Opto is distracted and John's ring is drained, he's attacked by a hooded adversary.
• Hal Jordan is accused and taken in by Kraken.
• Bats and Supes doubt Kraken's judgement, but they don't have time to prove her wrong before they're cornered by the forces of evil...
• Refers to Parallax as the Fear-Thing.
• Kraken resists possession for just a moment, Batman sees John's ring print on her palm. Batman is taken down and transported through a boom tube by Kraken, who is actually Granny!
• Turpin arrives in Bludhaven, found by Reverend Good (obviously Godfrey), who refers to him as "Great One".
• We see Atomic Knights riding dog-steeds, no doubt results from the radioactive fallout of Chemo's descent. The military base of Command D has been overtaken by the Gods of Evil, turned into the new Evil Factory by Simian and Mokkari. Bludhaven is now the cradle for Darkseid's rebirth in Dan Turpin! His mind is warped, he's even bleeding out his ears!
• The Kamandi situation: was the flashback last issue him on E-51 talking to Anthro, and then he's captured to New Earth because of the barriers between universes thinning? Or is he from New Earth and just ends up on E-51 at the end of the story?
• So everybody else gets crazy new bodies, but Simyan and Mokkari stay the same? Or did Simyan get a monkey body? Kalibak gets a Tiger body.
• As we know, he’s able to restore them all to life even after they’ve been killed, so what we’re seeing in Final Crisis is something similar. I’m playing Darksid’s allies more as emanations of His Will, like shades in the spectrum of his absolute Evil.
• Batman is placed in this big tube VR thing.
• Clayface and the villains blow up the Daily Planet, most likely to prove to Luthor the pitch is real!
• Jay and Wally go to the strip club the Society has been operating out of, which is actually where Barry and Jay met.
• Wally pitches Jay the theory he and Batman had for Orion's death: a bullet fired backwards in time from the future, kills Orion now, and then embeds itself in the past 50 yrs ago.
• Jay Garrick, the first Flash, activates the Mobius Chair with his lightning...
• The chair opens a boom tube/temporal wormhole, and a hero returns...
• It's Barry Allen chasing the god bullet while being chased by death the Black Racer!

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #1 - "No More Running"

• Nice fill in for the Bart Allen Flash run I didn't read.
• Apparently the Rogues got tricked by Inertia into breaking their one rule and killing Bart Allen.
• They choose not to join Libra's Society which pisses him off.
• Inertia is freed from Iron Heights by Zoom, who wants to make him the new Kid Flash.
• The Rogues want to kill Inertia.
• Pied Piper is doing some stuff I don't really care for related to James Jesse, who died in Countdown?

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #2 - "No More Rogues"

• The Rogues kill some impostors sent by Libra who found his father. Heatwave incinerates him.
• Zoom trains Inertia to be the new Kid Flash.
• Libra wants the Rogues on his side because the Flashes are the biggest enemy during a Crisis: he wants the Rogues to prep for the eventual arrival of the Flashes by killing Inertia as practice.
• Libra thinks he can convince Weather Wizard to join the Society by using his son as a bargaining chip.

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #3 - "No More Rules"

• Very dynamic and important next phase to Geoff Johns's larger body of Flash work.
• Inertia becomes Kid Zoom, killing Weather Wizard's child and reverting Zoom back to his self before the cosmic treadmill blew up in his face.
• Rogues team up with Pied Piper and kill Kid Zoom. They reject the Society and Libra once more, but decide to stay as Rogues after learning that Barry Allen has returned.

Final Crisis #3 - "Know Evil"

• Frankenstein leads a SHADE squad into the Dark Side Club.
• Boss Dark Side's body is a dried up corpse, most likely from Darkseid's soul jumping into Turpin's body.
• Montoya is already there, probably conducting her own investigation.
• The Hand of the Source, the Uni-Friend, revamped as a digital cursor for the Fifth World. It spells "Know Evil" (roll credits!)
• Father Time of SHADE is colluding with Taleb Beni Khalid of Checkmate! Things are happening in Bludhaven; they know about Command D getting hijacked by the Gods of Evil.
• They also want Montoya for the future of global law enforcement...
• Renee leaves the club only to see Overgirl of E-10 fall out the sky.
• Her German translated: is the sky bleeding? Hell is here...
• The barriers between universes weaken...
• The Multiversal structure of parallel worlds is collapsing. Darkseid’s fall has broken the Multiverse basically and he’s pulling everything that exists down with him into Hell
• Renee gets picked up by SHADE.
• Cave Carson and his team unearth Anthro's cave painting from #1 in the bowels of Gotham city.
• Nix is fired from his job, Zillo Valla watches him...
• Jay tells the Flash Family about what happened: him Wally and Barry try to catch the bullet before it kills Orion but fail. Black Racer stops to witness Orion's death, then leaving to chase the Flashes through time.
• Jay can't keep up and falls out to the present, but Barry and Wally outrun the Racer by going the speed of light. Jay confirms that it was Barry!
• At the swamp Legion of Doom headquarters, Libra tricks Human Flame and forces the Justifier Anti-Life helmet on his dome. Luthor gets there to try and neutralize Libra, but they're surrounded by Justifiers. Libra gives him one final opportunity to surrender by pledging allegiance to Darkseid and renouncing science.
• Zillo Valla meets with Clark in Lois's hospital room to initiate the tie-in!
• Hal gets taken in by the Alpha Lanterns, but submits since he can't remember where he was during the death of Orion and the attack on John Stewart.
• Alan Scott proposes activating Article X, the super-human draft Roosevelt used to gather heroes to go to war during WWII.
• Oracle is the hub at the Hall of Justice. She recruits the new Aquaman (most likely a counterpart from a parallel universe)
• Freddy Freeman is depressed since Billy's gone and Mary has disappeared. Tawny tries to cheer him up.
• The group of heroes preps to deal with the situation in Bludhaven.
• Now that Orion, God of Fight is dead, we’re seeing DC heroes subtly losing their combat edge and confidence.
• Sumo walks Shilo to his private jet as he's about to leave Japan, but they are attacked by Justifiers. Salvation comes in the form of the Super Young Team, Fifth World version of the Forever People (they even have their own Wonder Wagon).
• Wonder Woman accompanies some Atomic Knights into the wasteland of Bludhaven.
• The US built Command D is a gene weapons site in the wreckage.
• The SHADE squad sent to liberate it has been massacred by Mary Marvel, now corrupted by the Gods of Evil.
• Mary reveals that the Evil Gods have been hiding in human bodies, which is why they couldn't find them. She infects Diana with some kind of airborne contagion, using her as a delivery system. Don't know what the virus is or what makes it different from the ALE.
• As we’ll learn, it’s a variant on Morticoccus, the death virus introduced by Jack Kirby in Kamandi and used recently to destroy life on Earth 51.
• Mokkari sends an email with the ALE to every address on the planet. Oracle and Terrific try to kill the net but they're too late.
• Barry and Wally escape death and land weeks in the future. They are surrounded by corrupted Diana, Batwoman, Catwoman, and Giganta, the new Female Furies! 

[TWILIGHT OF THE SUPERHEROES]

Superman Beyond #1 - "Previously!"

• Superman, vested in cosmic armor, battles an unknowable enemy between the heartbeats of Lois Lane.
• He's recruited by Zillo Valla, Monitrix. She stops time to recruit Superman for a save all of reality type mission.
• Are the 'final moments of a civilizations decline' referring to the current fall of New Earth or the fall of Nil? I guess it has to be the fall of Nil if it results in the ensuing decline of the rest of reality.
• Universal medicine, the secret substance of life itself: Bleed, Ultramenstruum.
• The multiverse is a womb!
• Because time works differently in higher dimensions, Clark can return in a heartbeat.
• The Destroyer, Echo of Midnight.
• An overshadow cast from outside, could that be the reader's shadow cast as we read the book?
• The Ultima Thule, Monitor shift-ship.
• The bleed is capable of healing or annihilation, only Monitors can hold it.
• 4-Dimensional Vision.
• Overman from E-10, Captain Marvel from E-5, and Captain Atom from E-4.
• Billy pilots the shift with a big harp device, tying into the vibrational aspect of the multiverse.
• Atom says the multiverse is like a symphony composing itself.
• Ultima Thule departs E-0 into Bleedspace, the arteries between universes.
• We see the carrier from The Authority emerging from their own door!
• The Echo of Midnight unleashes Shadow Demons.
• Ultraman is trying to kill the destroyer's death ray. He uses the super-people of E-13 as weapons.
• They drift into E-6, a counterpart for the Marvel Universe, which is currently in their own Secret Invasion.
• Billy says the drifting is either bc the ship is out of tune, or the universes are themselves. The ship tunes itself to access the parallel earths just like Flash did in the multiverse stories.
• Zillo Valla wants to use the graveyard universe of E-51 as a place to crash the destroyer.
• She's feeling weak...
• They drift into E-20; Doc Fate and Lady Blackhawk.
• E-17: Atomic Knights ride dog-horses.
• The destroyer is flung into E-51, formerly guarded by Nix Uotan. Morrison says the Morticcoccus virus ravaged the planet.
• The Ultima Thule tumbles through Bleedspace.
• Captain Atom is on drugs...
• Zillo claims that her heart powers the shiftship, only one way to refuel...
• Ultraman references him and Supes from the E-2 graphic novel.
• They still play by the rules of no touch matter + anti-matter or annihilation.
• Overman is guilt ridden from the Nazi victory of WWII in his universe.
• Atom says they're outside the Orrery, outside the local Multiverse. They land on Limbo!
• Was Billy looking for the piece of the Rock? Was that Valla's bargaining chip for him?
• The Book of Limbo, every book ever written, by the Monkey of Limbo!
• They want the Thule to read it and download its own repair manual.
• HERE WE GO BABY, ORIGIN OF EVERYTHING!
• Previously!
• There was only Monitor, the blank page. Then it found a flaw, a blotch of ink, a story...
• It makes a concept to contain the flaw, and then examines it to realize it is a narrative, the never ending story of superhero comics! The infinite multiverse!
• The Monitor is a conscious living void, an infinite intelligence.
• The Book of Limbo contains the story of everything, so it contains all other stories.
• Monitor extends a Probe (the original Monitor from COIE?) The Probe Monitor witnesses (and participates?) in the events of COIE.
• The Probe is split in two, leaving behind the Cosmic Armor Superman.
• The flaw of narrative is contained within the Multiverse Machine, the Orrery.
• The presence of the Cosmic Armor Superman infects the Monitor-Mind with story virus, birthing a civilization of Monitor species around it.
• A prophecy of the end of the Monitors, the Final Crisis, where creation is attacked by greed and loathing from beyond...
• The MONITOR intelligence can turn its thoughts into reality within the Void; it’s the ultimate state of being, a gigantic self-aware Miracle Machine. This is evident in the scene where the Monitors evaluate the big Superman robot; it becomes a doomsday machine because they decide it is, not necessarily because Novu created it as a doomsday machine.
• Before the fall, the Monitors believe the armor to be a weapon to defend from their eventual end. Only at the fall will we know the secrets of Novu's gift (Dax Novu or some other Novu? I'm 100% ignoring the Snyder/Tynion mythology).
• Dax Novu, first Monitor; is he the Monitor from COIE, or the Probe that split in two?
• ALERT! NON-CHRONO INTERVENTION!: So Multiversity Guidebook says that the first Probe splits into the COIE Monitor and the Anti-Monitor. Then there's another probe called Dax Novu who ventures into the Multiverse to study it and also splits in two, forming the Cosmic Superman Thought Robot Armor.
• So: Dax Novu was the Probe that entered the Multiverse, witnessing the chaotic viral nature of the superhero story. He cataloged the worlds and laid the blueprints for the Monitor race, sharing the knowledge and riches of the bleed. But he split in two and wrestled the contamination of the story virus, becoming Mandrakk, confining himself to the sepulcher of the plague pit.
• I'm assuming that the sequence we see play out in the panels is actually what happened right before Zillo Valla escaped to recruit the Superman squad. The multiverse is hemorrhaging, the Bleed weeps crimson sangue.
• Rox Ogama approaches the Sepulchre of Mandrakk and opens the door!
• OR: maybe it's just Dax Novu entering the Sepulchre to banish himself?
• Clark and Billy are shocked back by revelation, Billy reverting to his child self, unable to remember his magic word.
• "The thing most despised will save the best beloved, ultimate good is ultimate evil..."
• Just realized the brilliant irony: men of action in the world where nothing happens! I love you Grant Morrison!
• So Atom uses drugs to dampen his quantum senses; a parody of how Manhattan is always bombarded by his non-chrono vision.
• Zillo Valla drinks Overman's blood! Cosmic vampires! She promised him the location of Overgirl (we know she's with SHADE and Renee)
• Maybe Superman-blood is similar to the Bleed, after all Superman is the hero who started it all!
• So the destroyer was sent by Mandrakk, and since he's the dark god he can see through all of them?
• A list of Monitor vessels: carriers, destroyers, tankers, explorers...
• Ultraman wields the book of limbo! He's sold out the Superman squad as Mandrakk's destroyers arrive over them!

Superman Beyond #2 - "To Be Continued"

• Ultraman has found religion! He sheds his old Gods of Greed and embraces Mandrakk as the defiler!
• The denizens of Limbo, now inspired to action, battle the invaders.
• Valla uses the super blood she nabbed from Overman to power up the Ultima Thule.
• Overman survive the cosmic vampire neck hickey!
• Billy saves her from getting incinerated so she gives him his magic word back. I guess the hunger madness is temporary?
• Allen Adam tries to communicate with the Monitor Mind.
• Mandrakk’s attacking with Shadow Demons, which are I assume the result of Monitor technology, explaining their use by the Anti-Monitor in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Marvel is back, and Supes tells him to warn the multiverse of Mandrakk's coming.
• Adam gets his own revelation: let go of limits and expectations. He also gets some insight on the nature of the thought robot, activation from opposing/symmetrical qualities.
• He must return to his world, but he asks Supes to test his understanding of reality. He fuses Ultraman and Supes into enough energy to activate the cosmic armor.
• He can see us! He reaches out to our gaze!
• Nil, satellite world of the Monitor race, harbor at the edge of forever.
• Funeral Gardens of Yivaroth.
• Weeja Dell is the Monitrix of E-6, the Marvel counterpart earth we saw last issue. In Multiversity, it becomes E-8 and E-7 for the ultimate universe.
• Weeja Dell refers to Uotan’s exile as “long ago,” and the premises do in fact look a lot shittier than they did back in Final Crisis #1, so I assume much more time has passed for the Monitors than it has on Earth-0. (If, indeed, time really passes in the Void at all.)
• A Hyperfly! One of the fauna that grows in the gardens of Nil?
• Just as Cosmic Supes arrives, the enemy reveals itself...
• The Monitors shunned him because he showed them their true face, they are vampire gods! The Monitors feed off the realities they protect!
• Mandrakk, Dark Monitor! He siphoned bleed from the multiverse to power himself, dangling a precious bottle in front of Superman.
• They fight: ultimate good vs ultimate evil!
• Apparently Mandrakk's destroyers are targeting New Earth.
• So Mandrakk is the personification of the Monitor race's fear and self-hatred, but Valla believes they can reject this story for another, the story of Superman!
• Mandrakk kills her; apparently they loved each other. Even ultimate evil couldn't resist the clarity of love.
• Superman throws him off of Nil and back to the Overvoid. He grabs the Bleed vial.
• Could the staff that Superman impales Mandrakk with be the same one Dax Novu used in the single panel from last issue where he approaches the Sepulchre?
• Supes repairs the Multiverse machine and inscribes a final epitaph onto the grave.
• Supes and Ultraman tumble back down from Nil, but Supes joins the Supermen against the destroyers that wish to kill New Earth. They defeat the enemies and Superman returns to Lois.
• Ogama and Ultraman are banished to Limbo, where Ogama becomes a new version of Mandrakk. He turns Ultraman into a vampiric Superman. He steals the Book of Limbo and prepares for his revenge.
• Superman heals Lois with a Bleed kiss! She's seen the entirety of the clash in Nil as a dream, and she has a story to tell.
• We see Superman's inscription! To Be Continued! The story never ends!

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #1 - "Lightning"
Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #2 - "Saturn"
Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #3 - "Cosmic"
Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #4 - "Titans"
Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #5 - "Dawn"