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[TL:DR - fairly standard multi-dimensional scrag match. Decent artwork. Links to Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. Final Crisis works well as a standalone.]

... and finally reached the end of Final Crisis.  I say finally because of the time spent wading through 52 and Countdown to Final Crisis.  After the bafflement I felt reading Infinite Crisis the first time, I figured it was worth working through the prequel material.

Taking Final Crisis as a piece on its own, it's a bit difficult not to be distracted by Morrison's 'go to' plot devices.  A borderline omnipotent multi-dimensional creature wants to recreate reality in his own image?  Teams of heroes and villains pulled together from across different dimensions?  Is it just me, or is this the plot of Zenith?

That said, it is told with panache.  Can't fault the artwork either.  It hangs together quite nicely and you could probably get away with reading it without picking through 52 or Countdown.

Treating it and Infinite Crisis as linked stories works quite well too.  One of the nice things about 52 is the fielding of characters that don't often get much attention.  With the 'big 3' (Superman, Batman and Wonderwoman) out of the way, so much more rests with players that would to a large extent be consider B or even Z listers.

Countdown does see the return of the big 3 but not to a massive extent.  There is also a growing focus on the antics of the Monitors as well as Apokalips.  So it is really only towards the end that they come into play.  We also see nods towards Identity Crisis so there is quite a bit to unpack.

Overall it's not a bad read, whether in isolation or as part of the larger whole.  Personally I felt it worked better being familiar with Identity Crisis and the other pre-Infinite Crisis series. 

They do suffer from repetition though.  Big-bad-multiversal threat ... all got to gang together ... bit of a deus-ex ending ... Other than that, they are slightly above a lot of the output of the Big Two (Marvel and DC).

TL:DR - fairly standard multi-dimensional scrag match.  Decent artwork.  Links to Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. Final Crisis works well as a standalone.

[Part 5]

Part 5

Where to find it

Liberty Meadows doesn't seem to be as available as it once was. It's all been collected but I'm not sure it's all still in print and some seem to be getting a bit pricey. I'm not sure the collections are available digitally either?

One thing I've noticed since the pandemic is that graphic novel prices have risen quite a bit on the 2nd hand market.  Used to be that they were cheap as chips and easy to track down.  Now though, you see crazy prices being asked.

Some of this is the print runs towards the end of series.  That's not always the case though.  I do wonder how much of this is algorithms slowly pushing prices higher and higher.

Lou Gossett Jr is one of those criminally under-rated actors who appeared in so much back in the day.  Totally agree with Angry Vince on Enemy Mine.  That was a cracking film. 

The other series I remember him for is the Iron Eagle films.  An absolutely bonkers idea, that a teen could effectively steel a fighter jet to go after his dad after he'd been shot down in the Middle East.  Back in the day when pretty much everyone was making "America is the greatest military nation in the world" films with whatever bat-shit crazy idea they could angle in to it.  Crazy as it sounds, it worked.  Largely because a) LGJ and b) nobody took it too seriously.

With Jim on this one.  Not read the original source material beyond the first book which I found boring as hell (and this is speaking as someone currently working through the Oxford History of England!)

That said, this aspect of the storyline really didn't gel.  I'm not sure what the writers were thinking at this point. Making sense of the multiple story arcs didn't figure though.

It was up there with Lost as a series that ran out of steam.

What are you bribing Tharg/Royal Mail with to get all these Saturday Progs?

Given we're getting our progs (and Meg which is amazing) of a Saturday, it is clear that the bribes are on a randomiser. 

[Dredd's]

I'm with Colin for the most part on this prog.  There's definitely a lot to like about the quality of what we're being given.

Dredd's a cracking, albeit predictable one-shot.  Visitors to MC1 fall foul of the law. We've seen it from dimensional, alien, chronal ... pretty much every type of traveller going.  The city is stark staring bonkers and the Judges top the list.  Currie's artwork though really lifts the piece.  Loving the European vibes with shades of Moebius.

Full Tilt Boogie back on the core issues at play makes a little more sense after the last few weeks.  Well, insofar as we're sat staring at whatever is at the heart of the quest our protagonist has been gulled into.

Now Fall of Deadworld is an interesting one.  As the current run ends we find ourselves faced with issues that start to tie things together.  Ultimately this is about how Deadworld became the world we know from our first exposure to Judge Death.  Necropolis introduced us to the Dark Sisters who have featured significantly in more recent runs.  We see that they are far more significant to Death's development than we were first led to believe.

The 'errant sister, Enomia' is curious.  As the Greek goddess of law, good governance and order, it is curious that she is linked to Phobia and Nausea.  Then again, maybe it is worth considering that ultimately Deadworld is utterly devastated.  After all, the point of the Dark Judges is that they stand as completely opposite to Dredd's perspective and his world.

Certainly this is a series that merits a re-read.  There is a lot that just doesn't seem to work properly for various reasons.  Possibly because so much is going on?

As Colin says, Thistlebone delivers that earie, creepy, mind-alteringly queasy Hammer Horror style as always.  Davis is the perfect choice for this strip although Lee Carter would be a close second after his performance on Cradlegrave.  Where will this land?  Given the penchant of Eglington for rooting this series in deep, dark British mythology, my money is on plenty of blood and gore.

I'd be a little more excited about the return of Rogue Trooper if I knew the creative team but I think that is because we've had some absolutely dire runs over the years.  Here's to hoping it is up there with some of the stronger offerings we've had since they've tried to revise the strip. 

Overall though, this is a cracking prog.

Nah, pretty boring in all honesty.

(JBC, did you get the tickets to Stonehenge yet?  Know they're only one way and don't worry about luggage, so long as you've got your robes, you'll be fine ...)

Lorenzo makes an excellent point. Where were people like me while all this was going on in the past?

Personally I didn't really understand the situation, thinking it was some ancient and complicated religious feud I simply wasn't informed enough to comment on beyond the most basic blanket condemnations of human-on-human violence.

On one level this is not a wholly inaccurate understanding.  There certainly is that dimension to this conflict although it has grown inevitably far more complex over time.

There is the small matter of the Crusades to factor in as the massed ranks of European chivalry answered the papal call to 'free the holy lands' (again, this doesn't accurately describe events during this period).

If you skip forward several centuries, quite a bit of the current conflict is rooted in the machinations of the late 19th Century and the post WW1 dismantling of the Ottoman Empire.  This is where Britain really comes into its own as a villain of the piece with its chicanery around many of the nations currently involved in the conflicts and tensions of the region although America and France are equally implicated with their manoeuvring around oil.

Skip forward to the post WW2 decisions in the wake of the Holocaust and you add another layer of challenge.  The establishment of Israel once more as a distinct nation, rejection of a two state solution and general indifference towards Palestinians even among other nations in the region, coupled with the approach of Israel to how it approached Palestinians as well, is arguably the latest phase in this age-old problem.

Another jump to the tail-end of the 20th Century with the Iranian and Iraqi revolutions and the establishment of two nations implacably hostile to Israel ... well, you can guess how that worked out, really.  The obvious hostility of both nations to America, and by default to the nation they sometimes see as America's regional proxy (although in Iran's case there is also a profound thread of Anti-Semitism) has only really been tempered by the decades long feud they were engaged in.

In Iran's case though, taking a leaf out of the Russian and American playbooks, proxy fighting has become the preferred approach over the years.  As a relatively low-cost approach with limited exposure, provisioning 'freedom fighters' and other assorted groups has kept the conflict simmering.

Of course the rather aggressive approach of settler groups in Israel has not helped either.  To argue that this is all the fault of Iranian-backed groups misses this dimension.  In allowing such activity, the Israeli state has given credence to the grievances of groups like Hamas.  As circumstances in places like the Gaza Strip have become increasingly dire, Israel has almost become a recruiting sergeant for its own enemies.

Even this is a gross over-simplification of an insanely complex issue that the greatest political minds of the last few generations have been grappling with.  It is highly doubtful that these issues will resolve themselves shortly.

To be honest I've always preferred V for Vendetta over Watchmen.  The latter seems a bit pretentious at times, trying to do too much and be a bit too clever.  V, on the other hand, is far more nuanced.  Or maybe it is the way that it delves into the unsavoury aspects of the 'great and the good' of our nation.  Peeling back the covers on the hypocrites who claim to be our moral arbiters.  It also seems disturbingly prescient in the current climate.

Continuing on the rather peculiar journey through DC's event stories with Zero Hour.  Dan Jurgens is a writer whose popularity / acclaim I've never fully grasped and this one is no exception.  It's definitely not in the same league as Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Storywise it sort of hangs together if you don't pay too much attention to what is going on and just allow yourself to be dragged along. There are references to what are probably relatively current events in the DC Universe at the time but you're dropped right into the story so if you don't have much familiarity with contemporary plot developments it can be a bit baffling.

Artwise it is about average for DC of that era.  Certainly nowhere near the nadir of John Bogdanove on Superman of that time but when you compare it to more recent stuff or some of Marvel's material of the time it is nothing special

Overall a fairly unremarkable piece of work.  If it something that passed you by then you've definitely not missed anything.  As an example of how to do a 'reset event' that doesn't really matter, it is probably a pretty good example, a bit like a lot of the crossover events that the big two have indulged in down through the years.

TLDR: decidedly sub-par piece of work that is probably a good one to forget.

It's a stone cold classic and quite possibly the best stuff to come out of Battle.  The effort Mills put into the scripting is crystal clear.  Colquhoun's artwork is unparalleled.  What's not to love.

As for editions.  Well, leaving aside the omission of the poppy on the one volume, the Titan books are quite possible the best in terms of format but the fact that the artwork has been retouched and colour pages are included makes it hard to ignore the new Rebellion edition.  Now if they had done those as hardbacks I'd have been in like a shot.

I've picked up brodart covers for the set and they take pride of place on the shelves.  All that is missing really is a good quality box set cover.  Then again, for a set that size it would probably need a couple (like the Fantagraphics Peanuts set, 2 books per box for a collection of 26 books ...)

The idea the Asterix jokes work better in French has been around for a long time.  They do work incredibly well in English as well.  If you've not dabbled, they are well worth it just for the sheer anarchy of the strip.  Always fun seeing what happens to the pirates each time they appear.

Just been working slowly through a re-read and they still hold their own really well.  Some of the later books slightly less so and I've not got to the post-Goscinny / Uderzo books yet (not read good things about them and a little bit unsure on that score but we'll see).

Recently gone back to Tin-Tin too as this was another series I dabbled in many moons ago.  Land of the Soviets is a fascinating piece as it is quite a stark contrast to the later books.  Tin-Tin is much more aggressive and gung-ho for a start.

Some real weirdos here

Aye, you don't want to know what some of them get up to with their iPods and a block of Wensleydale! 

It's also interesting to see how different people respond to the old thrills now, either through revisiting them, coming to them fresh, or remembering them nostalgically – rather than actually rereading them. There's a clear contingent of 'why did 2000 AD go woke?', holding up the 1970s comics as a bastion of quality. Then there are long-term fans who have an element of nostalgia in their thinking, but can approach the old comics critically and objectively.

I know what you mean.  There are a lot of old thrills that I still recall from the point of view of my 7 year old self with all the sensibilities that involves.  I think that's why I have such a soft spot for Death Planet, even though it is incredibly hackneyed.  It was one of the earliest stories that I connected with, partially I think because of that cover with the lead character. 

Robo-Hunter just blew my mind with the intricacy of the artwork.  The Verdus Gibson created was an amazing place, it just felt like a rabbit warren.  Then you had the insanely clear artwork of Gibbons and Bolland.  All this at a time when I'd just OD'd on the visuals of the first Star Wars film.

Yet re-reading those strips now it is clear that they've not aged well on some levels.  They were written for the age I and many others readers were at the time.  Some of the best strips are ageless.  Looking at them now there is still something that appeals to current generations at much as to those who first saw them.  Strontium Dog is, to my mind, a good example.  Tapping into that Western Vibe, giving it a Sci-Fi twist and adding in a dose of social commentary.  A lead character that was always a little removed but with a conscience that limited what he would accept ...

Tooth has definitely matured over the years and that has always been its strength.  Old characters have been revisited and occasionally, and with varying degrees of success, reimagined.  New characters have stretched our minds even further.  Even when tales don't quite click, they're still worth the while.

It will be worth the wait, I promise you.