Impressum

Autor
Amadeo Gandolfo (Berlin)

Aufsatztitel
Do The Collapse. Final Crisis and the Impossible Coherence of the Superhero Crossover

Journal
Closure. Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung #9.5 (2023) – www.closure.uni-kiel.de

Empfohlene Zitierweise
Amadeo Gandolfo: Do The Collapse. Final Crisis and the Impossible Coherence of the Su-
perhero Crossover. In: Closure. Kieler e-Journal für Comicforschung #9.5 (2023), S. 96–117.
<http://www.closure.uni-kiel.de/closure9.5/gandolfo>. 14.08.2023.

Gastherausgeber_innen
Elisabeth Krieber, Markus Oppolzer, Hartmut Stöckl

Redaktion
Constanze Groth, Kerstin Howaldt, Susanne Schwertfeger

Technische Gestaltung
Sandro Esquivel

Kontakt
Homepage: http://www.closure.uni-kiel.de – Email: closure@email.uni-kiel.de
Do The Collapse
Final Crisis and the Impossible Coherence of
the Superhero Crossover

Amadeo Gandolfo (Berlin)

Introduction

The origins of this article stem from a twofold obsession of mine: with the works of Grant
Morrison and with the concept of the superhero crossover. Grant Morrison is one of the
most important writers in contemporary comics. They have introduced a plethora of con-
cepts and ideas from artistic vanguards and post-structural theory, mixing them with pop
culture, while working on every major superhero belonging to DC Comics and on some of
the most notable ones coming from Marvel.1 Morrison is recognized both for their work on
superheroes and also for their independent titles. They have legions of followers willing to
analyze and deconstruct everything they publish, looking for clues for connections between
their works. They can be rightfully called an auteur.
The second obsession concerns that strange beast called the superhero crossover. This
narrative form, which takes all the characters of a certain superhero universe and puts them
together, fighting to save the world, their lives and usually the entire universe, is a much-
hated part of the reading experience of the genre. Meant to sell issues and make people buy
as many comics as possible, it has become an unwieldy behemoth which pops its head once
or twice (sometimes thrice!) in the course of a year, derailing self-contained stories in each
title and making readers buy series they do not want in order to understand the intertwined
story, or out of mere completism. As a corporate marketing gimmick, it represents the exact
opposite of comics as an art form and auteurs as creators. However, one of the hallmarks of
being a best-selling writer in superhero comics is to be given the task of writing that year’s
crossover. As such, these pieces of narrative benefit from an association with marquee names
whilst remaining a commercial enterprise that is meant to promote a universe, not a par-
ticular author or character. The juxtaposition of commercial practices and creative impulses

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inside a superhero universe has always been a fascinating topic for me, and the terrain of the
crossover seems particularly apt for a discussion of tensions between aesthetic and profit-ori-
ented considerations.
In this article I will analyze Final Crisis, written by Morrison and published by DC
Comics in 2008–2009, in light of these conflicts but also to consider the question of coher-
ence. Relying on the concepts of ›general arthrology‹ as proposed by Thierry Groensteen
and of ›narrative collapse‹ as developed by Douglas Rushkoff, I aim to analyze Final Crisis
as the logical endpoint of a tendency in superhero crossovers to slide towards incoher-
ence. Nevertheless, my proposal here is that these theories need to be complimented by a
historical perspective and an analysis of the production side of comics, particularly when
we are dealing with genres, like superhero fiction, whose aims include the maximization of
profit. Therefore, this article will also propose a genealogy and brief history of superhero
crossovers, and will consider Final Crisis’ production difficulties and place in the history of
the genre as a postmodern comic. Accordingly, it relies on works like Of Comics and Men
by Jean-Paul Gabilliet and Mark ­Rogers’ article Political Economy. Manipulating Demand
and The Death of Superman.
Some of the questions I address here are: What do superhero crossovers purport to do?
How is Final Crisis related to Crisis on Infinite Earths and to the decades-old debate about the
DC Comics multiverse? What ideas about superhero stories does Final Crisis propose? How
did the process of its production impact its themes and the reception by its audience? How
can arthrology actually ›work‹ in a superhero crossover, which by its very nature is meant to
connect with the entirety of a fictional universe across multiple titles?

Groensteen and Rushkoff ’s theories of coherence in relation to the superhero genre

Groensteen’s arthrology has been widely discussed and applied in a multitude of analy-
ses, from Eddie Campbell’s Alec (Fischer and Hatfield), to webcomics (Jacobs), to Tintin
(Carpintero) and to the Walking Dead (Round). It has also been challenged (Cohn 2010).
It could be argued that it is the most influential semiotic theory of comics in the early 21st
Century. Groensteen’s is a theory of linking, of networking, of making sense. It treats com-
ics as an art form with a definitive start and ending, a discrete unit2 from which certain
meanings and connections can be extracted. It also presupposes that the primary func-
tion of comics is narrative. Groensteen pays particular attention to the image, since »every
panel exists, potentially if not actually, in relation with each of the others« (Groensteen,
146). As he puts it: »comics is not only an art of fragments, of scattering, of distribution; it
is also an art of conjunction, of repetition, of linking together« (Groensteen, 22). And it is
also a theory of reading, because it presupposes, quoting Jan Baetens and Pascal Lefèvre,

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»a reading capable of searching, beyond linear relations, to the aspects or fragments of

panels susceptible to being networked with certain aspects or fragments of other panels«
(Groensteen, 146).
Groensteen considers comics a combination of two subjects of expression (drawing and
writing) and a collection of codes which are simultaneously mobilized when they are
constituted (Groensteen, 6). As such, he proposes that the analyst must »find an access
road to the interior of the system that permits exploration in its totality so as to find
coherence« (Groensteen, 6). Groensteen divides the system of comics into the spatio-topi-
cal apparatus, the formal distribution of units and spaces which, for him, are »the prelimi-
nary conditions to every beginning, and the constraints that never cease to inform each
phase of creation« (Groensteen, 21). Inside this system there are relations between images
of a linear type, which he calls ›restricted arthrology‹, and relations which are more distant
and translinear, which are described under the concepts of ›general arthrology‹ and ›brai-
ding‹. Braiding is particularly important, as it takes images and sequences and derives a
series from them, defined by Groensteen as »a succession of continuous or discontinuous
images linked by a system of iconic, plastic or semantic correspondences«, as opposed to a
sequence which »is a succession of images where the syntagmic linking is determined by a
narrative project« (Groensteen, 146). Through braiding the analyst can access the themes,
topics and aesthetic callbacks which structure a comic beyond its narrative thrust.
Cohn’s criticism of Groensteen hinges on the lack of specificity that his theory of connect-
edness between the images in a comic has. He first points out that the amount of connections
within even a short comic would be too much for human memory to process (Cohn 2010,
138) and then proposes that Groensteen’s theories »have no substantial processes to describe
other than a vague sense of connectedness« (Cohn 2010, 142). His proposal, which would
be expounded at length in his first book (Cohn 2013), is that the processing of images by the
human mind »must be guided by explicit rules and constraints that involve hierarchic struc-
tures beyond linear and/or vague thematic relationships between panels« (Cohn 2010, 144).
My own criticism of the limits of Groensteen’s theory runs counter to what Cohn pro-
poses. I believe that coherence in comics is influenced by factors which are more encom-
passing than just the semiotic organization of the work. The history of a certain genre and
the place certain works have inside of it, the clichés associated with said genre, the political
economy of comics and the way the work force inside its industry is organized and exploited,
the reactions of its readers, all have an impact on the question of coherence. This mainly
sociological and historical approach to coherence will be the focus of this article.
Superhero comics, in particular, never end: there is always the next adventure, and this
adventure is also a commercial enterprise. The crossover takes this tendency to its apex: an
endless barrage of material handled by an army of writers, artists, inkers, colorists, letterers
and editors, involving hundreds of characters with their own convoluted fictional histories and

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complex interrelations. In theory, a crossover should be linked across all titles, should tell a
complete story, should be a grand opera in which all parts work in unison. But, in reality, what
we usually get is chaos, destruction, narrative incoherence, contradictions between different
series and versions of its characters, and, when it ends, it has usually raised more problems than
it solved. This failure becomes apparent in the usual practice after the crossover, which is the
relaunch, for which publishing houses retool their line, usually with new creators, promising
that characters and stories will be more accessible and their quality will be improved.
It is here that I think it is appropriate to introduce Douglas Rushkoff ’s concept of ›narra-
tive collapse‹. Rushkoff is a completely different type of thinker than Groensteen. He is an
essayist and media theorist who is concerned with the new social forms of interaction bred
by technologies. He used to be associated with cyberpunk culture and has written exten-
sively and critically on social media. In his 2013 book Present Shock: When Everything Hap-
pens Now Rushkoff turns his eye to the phenomenon of the acceleration of data input that
human beings are confronted with in contemporary times and to the simultaneity of events
impacting the lives of citizens all over the world. He divides this phenomenon into five dif-
ferent aspects: a) Narrative collapse: how pop culture narratives (and the narratives of our
lives) have lost all meaning and eschewed the traditional structure of introduction-conflict-
resolution: »The beginning, the middle and the end have almost no meaning. The gist is
experienced in each moment as new connections are made and false stories are exposed or
reframed« (Rushkoff, 27), which is particularly important because »Experiencing the world
as a series of stories helps create a sense of context. It is comforting and orienting« (Rushkoff,
15); b) Digiphrenia: »the way our media and technologies encourage us to be in more than
one place at the same time« (Rushkoff, 10); c) Overwinding: »the effort to squish really big
timescales into much smaller ones« (Rushkoff, 10); d) Fractalnoia: the loss of history and the
attempt to explain everything in terms of pattern recognition in the present tense; and finally
e) Apocalypto: the way this infinite present makes us think about and yearn for conclusions,
which is reflected in pop culture in our obsession with the apocalypse.
I will be focusing here on narrative collapse, but many of these phenomena are equally
applicable to the superhero genre in general and the superhero crossover in particular. Rush-
koff argues that »we tend to exist in a distracted present, where forces on the periphery are
magnified and those immediately before us are ignored. Our ability to create a plan (…) is
undermined by our need to be able to improvise our way through any number of external
impacts« (Rushkoff, 8). This is exactly the feeling of reading contemporary superhero com-
ics: nothing ever stands on its own, because the characters and authors are continuously
derailed by the impact of events and crossovers.
Many crossovers, Final Crisis particularly amongst them, thematize decay, crisis and
extreme situations which lead to a loss of meaning. They also deal with infinity: nothing
ever ends, no story is ever complete, each event generates anticipation for the next one. They

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are also a form likely to induce narrative collapse in the way that they sprawl over a huge
number of titles and demand substantial previous knowledge from readers. Crossovers have
become increasingly metafictional in recent decades, commenting on different eras of the
superhero genre, rejecting and trying to fix what they see as violations and transgressions
of the ›correct‹ concept of the masked crusader. As Rushkoff observes, when talking about
Pulp Fiction: The movie forces »the audience to give up its attachment to linear history
and accept instead a vision of American culture as a compression of a multitude of eras, and
those eras themselves being reducible to iconography as simple as a leather jacket or dance
step« (Rushkoff, 29). Crossovers do the same thing, repeating certain narrative themes and
figures until they are devoid of meaning: the apocalyptic threat, the invasion, the ›dark-
est before the dawn‹ moment, the cavalry to the rescue, the deus ex machina. These are
expressed via iconographical short-hands, such as the image of crashing earths, the symbols
that represent certain heroes and the juxtaposition between the graphic and narrative con-
ventions of different eras of the superhero genre. Avengers vs. JLA, for example, is a comic
whose final set-piece hinges on an image of Superman holding both Thor’s hammer and
Captain America’s shield. Another example, Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, mines the iconog-
raphy and characters from the original Crisis without doing comparable narrative work. The
iconography and the characters are just there because they signal ›crisis‹.
Utilizing Rushkoff ’s concept of narrative collapse as a cultural theory, we can leave behind
the closed off space of the page and the graphic novel to engage with the social sphere, in
which these heroes and their tribulations dialogue with the wider world. This concept is par-
ticularly useful because it was developed to deal with postmodern narratives, and I believe
Final Crisis to be an example of such, as is a great deal of Morrison’s work. As Marc Singer
has put it: »Morrison’s comics harness superheroes, fantasy, and other popular genres to for-
mulate self-reflexive critiques of these genres’ conventions, histories and ideological assump-
tions, as well as more wide-ranging examinations of the ethics of writing« (Singer, 4).

A brief typology of crossovers

I think it is pertinent, before delving into the work at hand, to try and create a brief concep-
tual and functional typology of the crossover, even though there are bound to be exceptions
and mixed cases:

A) Character-based crossovers: they usually spin off of a plotline belonging to a certain

character or group which becomes so important that it affects others in the universe.
They usually take place in the present and serve as narrative climaxes for the main heroes
involved. Examples: The Mutant Massacre, The Death of Superman, The Clone Saga.

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B) ›Reality-based‹ line-wide crossovers: they enlist the entire line of superheroes against a
looming threat, but do not put the nature of the shared universe in question. Sometimes
they can have a ›political‹ or ›ethical‹ bent. Examples: Invasion!, Final Night, Civil War,
Secret Invasion.

C) Cosmological crossovers: they affect the entirety of the universe, and usually of the mul-
tiverse. A common threat menaces and changes the fabric of said universe or multiverse.
These are the crossovers I am interested in here. Examples: Crisis on Infinite Earths, Final
Crisis, Secret Wars.

The ones in this last category usually have a dual objective. On the one hand, they perform
a narrative function, trying to establish continuity and to tie loose ends. They are like shears
meant to prune the garden and leave it in better shape. On the other hand, they usually
function as some kind of reset button for the line. Afterwards, new number 1s are launched,

Fig. 1: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, the original image of earths clashing together. Cover by George Perez, 1985.
© DC Entertainment.

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creative teams are reshuffled and new characters are introduced and given their own titles.
This is usually considered a good ›jumping-on point‹ for new and lapsed readers alike.
However, this fresh start coincides with the aftermath of the crisis. The consequences of
the event loom large, and characters frequently spend the next few months discussing it,
confusing new readers and signaling to them that they missed something. Furthermore, it is
not as if these events wiped the slate completely clean. There is still history and continuity to
be acknowledged and dealt with.
Finally, we come to this complicated word: continuity. Continuity, in a nutshell, means
that there should be coherence and an interconnection between texts in a particular story-
world. New titles should acknowledge where characters are, what their current status is, how
the powers and politics of a particular world are organized and which narrative develop-
ments led there. Crossovers of the cosmological type usually aim to tidy up continuity, solve
loose ends, but also rework and launch new ones. As William Proctor writes:

[it] signals to potential new readers that a functional entry-point has been opened, a direct invitation to
those who might have been put off by the improbability of catching up with fifty years of continuity. This
illustrates the double logic of rebooting, one that aims to address the maelstrom of contradictions to ap-
pease fannish demand for cohesion and consistency, while also operating as a way to entice new readers
with the promise of a blank slate. (227)

The problem is that these fixes never last, for the same reasons that superheroes are in a
state of constant flux: because there is always more product to put out. Moreover, we have
to account for personal reasons: superhero comic books engender the weirdest loyalties and
fixations: any lasting change will probably be abhorred by a particular creator, who will then
try to ›put things right‹.
A brief look at the state of Flash comics in 2022 is illustrative. The Flash franchise has
been in the doldrums for more than a decade, and the main reason is that different interest
groups cannot agree on who the Flash should be: Wally West or Barry Allen. During Crisis
on Infinite Earths Barry Allen died to save the multiverse from the Anti-Monitor. After Crisis
the Flash comic was relaunched starring Wally West, Allen’s nephew. In a run that lasted
from 1986 to 2006 Wally West became the official Flash of the DC Universe and made legacy
an important thematic underpinning of the character: there should always be a Flash, while
it does not matter so much who he or she is. A sort of superhero dynasty was established,
which also solved the problem of how to renew and refresh the book from time to time. This
was a strategy that DC employed throughout the 1990s, turning several of its landmark char-
acters into legacy characters, sons, protegés and friends who took up the mantle.
In 2006 DC embarked on one of its cosmological crossovers with Infinite Crisis. It was
billed as a continuation of COIE and, as such, it included the death of a Flash, Wally West.
From there on Bart Allen, Wally’s sidekick and Barry Allen’s grandson, took up the mantle in a

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botched attempt at a relaunch that lasted for only 13 issues. Then came an editorial mandate to
kill Bart and to bring back Wally West. And afterwards, Geoff Johns and DC editorial decided
that the way to move forward was to bring back Barry Allen, in a move to appease a dwindling
group of nostalgists, thus ›betraying‹ the trust of those who not only wanted Wally West to
continue as Flash but who had had hopes that Bart’s tenure was permanent, to continue with
the theme of legacy. This happened in 2008 and, ever since then, the Flash has been in con-
stant flux, with the question of what to do with Wally West, now that his raison d’etre had been
stripped from him, constantly hanging in the air. The book has been unable to move forward.
But let’s go back to Crisis on Infinite Earths. In a lot of ways this is the ur-text when it comes
to cosmological crossovers. Published between 1985 and 1986, written by Marv Wolfman,
drawn by George Perez, inked by Dick Giordano, with colors by Anthony Tollin and letters
by Gaspar Saladino, it was supposed to fix all the problems that had been accruing within the
DC multiverse in its 50-year history. These problems did not only result from the stories that
had been told, but also from the acquisition of a series of fictional universes and characters by
DC, which it had then integrated by giving each their own earth.3 Some quotes from the most
important creators involved help to explain this. Marv Wolfman commented:

As a fan, I had always wanted to see DC continuity across the board, and had dreamed of one character
uniting DC’s heroes in one large story that would fix everything. (…) I began seriously thinking about it
again, and started talking this old project over with Len Wein and some other people as a special series
for DC. They loved it, because they saw it as a way of getting around all the convoluted, confusing series
of universes and Earths and futures and pasts. (Waid, 24)

Dick Giordano, inker and also editor in chief of DC, noted at the time:

New readers will be able to understand what is happening in our Universe without having to understand hun-
dreds of cross references (…) Things will change. Some of our heroes will go away forever, some new ones will
be introduced. We will end up with a Universe that can take us through the next 50 years. (Peel, 54)

This was achieved through the destruction of the DC multiverse and its restructuring into
one single earth with one history, which was then chronicled in the two volume History of
the DC Universe, also by Wolfman and Perez. DC went as far as offering a timeline, which
was supposed to be definite.
But continuity problems started as soon as the event was over. Many projects which were
meant to relaunch certain characters meddled with the timeline. Some important characters
were taken off the board, wreaking havoc with related properties. The connection between the
JSA and the Second World War was kept and it would continue to cause problems to the new
DC Comics timeline. The practice of redrawing the boundaries of the universe and of going
back and forth between one universe and a multiverse became a living and thriving tradition of
DC throughout the years.

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Fig. 2: The timeline of the DC Universe/Multiverse. Made by the author.

Final Crisis: the best laid plans of mice and men

And thus, we come to Final Crisis. This book was supposed to accomplish several missions
at once:

a) First, it was the summer tentpole blockbuster from DC Comics and, as such, it had to
relaunch the line.

b) Second, it was an event heavily steeped in the Fourth World characters and mythology
developed by Jack Kirby for DC in the 1970s. These characters have historically been both
a bug and a feature of the DC comics universe. On the one hand, they have been heav-
ily incorporated into the mythology of the main universe, and in certain ways Darkseid
has been made its primordial villain. On the other hand, they have always been a difficult
sell on their own. Final Crisis, according to its writer, was supposed to usher in ›the Fifth
World‹, a relaunch with a new spin.

c) Third, it was the continuation of stories and preoccupations running through Grant
Morrison’s writing from the mid-1990s onwards. It continued threads started in JLA
and DC One Million (Morrison’s previous crossover) and it served as a sequel of sorts
to Seven Soldiers, the crossover-which-is-not-a-crossover that Morrison wrote during
2005–2007.

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It had to do narrative work for the universe, a particular group of characters and the author
at the same time. When consulted what it was about, Morrison answered with the follow-
ing elevator pitch: »It‘s very simple. It‘s the day when evil wins in the DC Universe« (Phil-
lips 2008b). But he also pointed out the tendency in crossovers towards incoherence, and
the impossible task of continuity: »It‘s not about servicing that aspect of the business, where
we‘re trying to set things right and fill in continuity gaps. I don‘t care about that stuff. Con-
tinuity gaps are always going to happen, because these stories and characters stretch over
decades. It‘s never going to all fit together« (Phillips 2008b). Morrison seemed to be willing
to sacrifice continuity to preserve the narrative aspect of it.
Confronted with the same questions, publisher in chief Dan DiDio explained: »It plays
through multiple times, multiple timelines, multiple universes, multiple characters, and at
the heart of it is everything that I believe makes the DC Universe unique and great« (Phillips
2008a). This sort of hucksterist explanation, which channels Stan Lee via TED Talk, could
have been said of a myriad other crossovers: it has no specificity and it does not reveal any-
thing that makes Final Crisis stand out. At the same time, this statement stresses the idea that
the universe is what matters.
Commenting on Crisis on Infinite Earths, Tom Kaczynski describes DC’s universe thus:
»DC, with its much longer history, had a stable of popular characters, but no stable Uni-
verse«. He states that »COIE also helped solidify a business model: narrative universe as
product. The idea of a universe, of multiple interlocking titles that shared a common nar-
rative space, which emerged out of decades of comic book continuity, reified into a specific
business model« (Kaczynski). This is the type of business model that DiDio was hyping with
his comments.
Final Crisis was heralded in by mini-series and special issues which were meant to
bridge the gap between the new event and the state of the DC slate of titles in 2006–2007.
One particularly important piece was Countdown, a weekly series consisting of 52 issues,
which was renamed Countdown to Final Crisis at the halfway point. This title followed the
model cemented by 52, the previous DC weekly series which had been written by Mor-
rison, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns and Mark Waid and had Keith Giffen doing artistic break-
downs for each issue. That series had been a complete success, mainly because of the talent
assembled. But DC learned the wrong lesson from the experience: they believed that the
format was the winner, and that fans would buy any weekly series despite its contents or
artistic team. Countdown, then, was primarily written by Paul Dini with a rotating roster
of writers which included Jimmy Palmiotti, Sean McKeever, Tony Bedard, Adam Beechen
and Justin Gray. Breakdowns were once again provided by Keith Giffen, but the finished
art was created by a diverse group of artists. Countdown ended up contradicting a lot of
the events shown in Final Crisis, and deflated anticipation for the series. It was messy,
absurd and overhyped. Just like superhero comics usually are. The team behind it kept try-

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ing to guess and build a story that was supposed to connect with a series that had not even
been fully conceived. In mid-2008 Grant Morrison would complain bitterly about the way
this was handled:

Back in 2006, I requested a moratorium on the New Gods so that I could build up some foreboding and
create anticipation for their return in a new form … instead, the characters were passed around like
hepatitis B to practically every writer at DC to toy with as they pleased, which, to be honest, makes it very
difficult for me to reintroduce them with any sense of novelty, mystery or grandeur. (MacDonald)

This statement was jarring in its sincerity and vitriol, but it expressed a feeling that was not
uncommon amongst creators tasked with shepherding the entire universe throughout the
summer. In contrast to these declarations, Dan DiDio argued the following:

What happened with Countdown, the biggest change was that we decided to move the entire DC Uni-
verse continuity together. Every month, the stories would match. It sounds great on paper [laughs], it
sounds like what everyone wants, but the reality is, it was extremely difficult to pull off because what you
did is you had to force so many different people and stories to move at different speeds in order to accom-
modate the greater good. (Phillips 2008a)

This explanation seeks to do away with the narrative dysfunctions that arise from a desire to
publish contradictory spin-offs and tie-ins as part of a punishing production cycle through a
discourse of good intentions: ›we just wanted what’s best for the universe and our readers, we
wanted to make sense of things‹, when in actuality the effect these spin-offs created was the
exact opposite: confusion.
The tussle continued after Final Crisis was published, when a visibly annoyed Morrison
would offer a fascinating look behind the scenes:

To reiterate, hopefully for the last time, when we started work on Final Crisis, J.G. and I had no idea what
was going to happen in Countdown or Death Of The New Gods because neither of those books existed at
that point. The Countdown writers were later asked to ›seed‹ material from Final Crisis and in some cases,
probably due to the pressure of filling the pages of a weekly book, that seeding amounted to entire plot-
lines veering off in directions I had never envisaged, anticipated or planned for in Final Crisis. (Brady)

These narrative and logistical problems were aggravated during the publication of the story
itself when J.G. Jones, the artist who was supposed to draw all seven issues, failed to meet
deadlines and was able to draw only half of #4 and #5, a couple of pages for #6 and none for
#7. This caused the publishing house to call in the help of artists Marco Rudy, Carlos Pacheco
and Doug Mahnke, who finished the series.4 At first, it was thought that Pacheco would fin-
ish the pencils, but he jumped ship to Marvel, necessitating Mahnke to step in, who is known
for his speedy and timely work. This rotation of fill-in artists contributed to the incoherence
of the series as a whole.

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Another factor that added to the confusion was the reading order. During publication,
DC put out a series of tie-ins, some of which were closely related to the series, and some
which told parallel stories that took place during Darkseid’s takeover of earth. Having
been disappointed by Countdown, many fans wondered which series ›counted‹ and which
did not. Morrison also took the opportunity to close down some narrative strands he
had been following in Batman, which he also wrote at that time. The end result was that
the correct reading order for Final Crisis included everything Morrison wrote: all seven
issues plus a one-shot (Submit) plus two issues of Batman plus the mini-series Superman
Beyond. This has been respected in every subsequent trade paperback publication of the
series, but at the time it was incredibly confusing for readers.
Final Crisis hops between genres
and modes of narration, something
which also accounts for its postmod-
ern condition. In this way, it chal-
lenges the traditional master narra-
tives of the superhero crossover.
It starts as a murder mystery
around the death of the New Gods,
then it morphs into an apocalyptic
survival story, as Darkseid takes
over the earth with the Anti-Life
Equation. Meanwhile, an important
tie-in, Superman Beyond, explains
the metatextual element of the story
when it reveals the history of the
Monitor civilization: first there was
a void, which doubles as the primor-
dial blank page, and then this void
got infected with stories. The pri-
mordial Monitor split into two and
sealed the wound of narrative inside
the multiverse. Then, the monitor
civilization sprang up as a way to
control these new worlds. Eventually,
the once heroic original Monitor
turned into Mandrakk, the multi-
versal vampire who wants to suck all Fig. 3: The origin of stories in the DC Universe. Superman
meaning out of stories (fig. 3). Beyond #1, Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones.

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For Morrison, story, in a fictional universe, equals life. The apparition of narrative doubles as
the Big Bang. And for an unlimited intelligence such as the Monitor, with no conception of
the structure of stories, it also equals madness. The presence of an immense statue of Super-
man above the multiverse is also a symbolic representation of the start of superhero stories
with his creation. The conflation of a multiverse of superhero worlds with the structure of
comics is also made apparent when Superman and his crew of multiversal analogues (travel-
ling in a spaceship that is reminiscent of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine) enter The Bleed, the
amniotic substance that fills the hole between earths in the DC universe, and the page shows
them as if they were inside a comic book panopticon, with each panel representing a world
(fig. 4). This, of course, is how superhero comics are experienced by readers, who can switch
earths simply by switching the magazine they are reading.
The last issue of the series, #7, is set inside a dark hole where stories lose their meaning. It
is mostly a collection of brief vignettes and scenes whose transitions increase in abruptness,
seeking a disorienting effect. Darkseid, the original villain of the piece, is done away with

Fig. 4: Superman travelling the Multiverse as if it were a comic. Superman Beyond #1, Grant Morrison and
Doug Mahnke.

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almost as an afterthought: Superman defeats him with a song. The story becomes allegorical
and archetypal. Story beats lose importance in favor of thematic beats. Then there is a battle
scene in which the villain is defeated by a large assemblage of heroes, some of which have not
appeared before in the series, because that is how these stories must end.
This continuous feeling of deconstruction, in which tropes of the crossover are presented
and then discarded, in which resolutions hinge more on the confrontation of two primal
forces than on character development, in which the subtext which underlies creation is
turned into text, is typical of Morrison’s themes and preoccupations. Marc Singer argues that
Morrison employs »visual modes of signification to bypass the symbolic deferrals of verbal
signs« (16). This means that his superhero comics are filled with
characters who serve as physical incarnations of fears, desires, or abstract concepts (…) These characters
generate meaning through the concretizations and personifications of hypostasis rather than the abstrac-
tions of conventional figurative language: unlike metaphors, which defer their meanings onto absent
signifiers (Mellard 159), or allegories, which refer to meanings quite separate from their allegorical vehi-
cles (de Man 189), Morrison’s hypostases embody the states they represent through their behaviors and,
frequently, through their uncanny anatomies. (16)

Hypostasis, as Singer uses the term, is related to personification. Superhero characters

embody concepts that encapsulate what they do in their stories. The genre is based on action
and adventure, and has its most characteristic narrative mechanism in the fight scene. Morri-
son usually employs this action-based simplicity of the genre, and its spectacular visual pres-
entation, to stage clashes between concepts personified as certain characters. In Final Crisis,
Darkseid is depression, in the way his psychic takeover preys on the fears and doubts of his
host, and fascism, because his ultimate goal is to wipe out free will. Superman, as is usual in
Morrison’s comics, is a personification of hope, but also of scientific ingenuity and explora-
tion, which leads to better conflict resolution. This is explicitly presented in visual form when
he triumphs over Darkseid by singing a song. Singer, however, does not have kind words
for Final Crisis, which he calls »a relentless and repetitive metacommentary« (277) whose
»potential themes remain strictly potential« (279) and that »rarely delivers on the revolution-
ary changes it promises« (281).
Many of these criticisms are undoubtably true. Final Crisis is important inside of the con-
tinuous narrative of Morrison’s DC work, but its in-universe consequences did not last, and its
ultimate metacommentary, as Singer explicitly points out, is aimed at defending the sprawling
narrative nature of superhero universes, its potentially absurd confrontations and resolutions.
Singer was not the only one to criticize it. This was a common response at the time, when it was
attacked both for its perceived hermeticism and incoherence. Some reviews are illustrative:
Characters are surprised and shocked to find one of the New Gods dead in the street, but didn‘t Count-
down to Final Crisis over the course of the last year have that event happen over and over again? (McEl-
hatton)

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It has been a real struggle to write the reviews for Final Crisis. Every time I pick up the book, I get angry
over what I am reading, but then after a while, my blood stops boiling and I give it a second, third, and
more often than not, a fourth and fifth reading to come to some kind of understanding with what Mor-
rison is trying to accomplish. (Schleicher)

Final Crisis #1 is in no way new reader friendly. It seems like every story thread here spins out of some
other story, with most of the details left out. (Joel)

If this issue is meant to be an exercise in experimental comic book creating, using mainstream superhe-
roes as a pallet, then this issue is a success. But if this series is meant to impact the modern DC universe
and satiate a reader’s appetite for DC superhero stories, then this issue is slightly above being a failure.
(G.)

At the same time, many commentators took to the internet to annotate Final Crisis and try to
»explain« to disappointed readers why it was good (Wolk). And, given time, it has regularly
popped up near the top of »best crossovers lists« (Harding).5
So: Is Final Crisis a great work of postmodern comics literature or is it just a mess? It would
seem that its reception has largely depended on readers‘ expectations, whether they saw it
as the work of an author or part of a larger publishing scheme. For readers who consumed it
thinking it would help them make sense of the continuity of the DCU, it was a mess. For many
readers who consumed it as part of the larger Grant Morrison oeuvre, it was consistent and
progressed the story Morrison had been telling since the mid-1990s with JLA. And nowadays,
removed from its immediate context of publication, it is perceived as an ›evergreen‹ title that
is extremely effective, on the one hand, at conveying dystopia and hopelessness and, on the
other hand, at showcasing great images and scenes such as Batman shooting Darkseid with a
gun, Flash outrunning Death and Tawky Tawny, Shazam’s tiger, beating a dark god. The mat-
ter of continuity has been put to rest and the story can stand on its own.
Rushkoff ’s conceptualization of narrative collapse, however, still applies to the story, but I
would argue that, rather than being a defect, it is strategically employed by Morrison and their
collaborators. This is particularly evident in issue 7. This is a book that starts with a scene set
on an alternate earth where Superman is black and the President of the United States. Shortly
afterwards a group of alternate Supermen from different corners of the multiverse arrive,
joined by a version of Steve Ditko’s objectivist hero The Question, who is actually Renee Mon-
toya, an ally of Batman who originally was created in the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series
and then made the jump to comics. After that, the action cuts to the last days of the Earth,
while it falls into a dark hole, and the only thing left is the JLA’s headquarters, The Watch-
tower, a lonely island against entropy. Captions, meanwhile, tell us the story of the Metal
Men from Earth 44, castaways from the Multiverse who went crazy when they arrived at The
Watchtower. Then, another scene change takes us to a confrontation between Superman and
Darkseid which chronologically takes place before the first scenes of the book. Interspersed
throughout this fight scene are single panels who check on the situation of different characters
such as The Flash, Aquaman and The Atom while the world collapses (fig. 5).

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As this summary makes

clear, there is a lot going on.
And this description only
covers the first four or five
pages. This is the narrative
tonality of the comic until it
ends. I recently came across
a tweet by comedian and
comic book writer Daniel
Kibblesmith that said: »A
lot of comic book fans
will get asked what a new
reader’s first comic should
be and suggest Watchmen
or Dark Knight or King-
dom Come when their own
actual first comic was part
9 of 17 of the most con-
fusing X-Men story ever,
a more accurate sampling
that also hooked them for
life« (Kibblesmith). I think
a case should be made for
incoherence and confusion
in superhero comics. They
are essential parts of what
makes these types of comics
attractive: they engender
questions in curious and
obsessive readers. Who is
this guy? Why does he have Fig. 5: An example of the rapid crosscutting between characters and
chainsaw arms? Why are scenes in the last number of Final Crisis. Final Crisis #7, Grant Morri-
there different earths? Why son and Doug Mahnke.
is this character so power-
ful? To give another example: growing up in the Global South, we did not have the amount
and variety of comics US readers had access to. First, we had to deal with translations, then
those translations were not evenly distributed, and sometimes one issue of one story would
make its way to Argentina, and then the following ones would not. Therefore, we had to

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reconstruct stories from pieces, or from information columns which spoke about comics
we would never have access to. This was normal, and it was a part of the excitement that
came with this detective hunt for meaning.
Many want to impose an Aristotelian view on superhero comics according to which the
most important part is that they make sense, that they should be discrete units of story fit for
consumption for even the most casual reader. Yet, superhero comics have never functioned
like that. They thrive on incoherence; they reward readers who are willing to dig deep and
delve in. This is a handicap, but it is also an invitation, because the readers that go down the
rabbit hole will develop a loyalty that usually withstands the test of time. What Rushkoff
rightly sees as a negative aspect of society as a whole can also be seen as a fascinating device
when applied to particular postmodern narratives.
I propose that Final Crisis willfully produces this effect, and that it is a great work of
deconstruction and willing incoherence. It is not incomprehensible, but it works hard to
destabilize meaning and produce a feeling of sensory overload, just as a good crossover
should, since crossovers are meant to have a number of things happening all at once. At
the same time, it deals with the literal breakdown of time and space, and all correspond-
ing categories of thought, including our narrative sense of the world and how we make
sense of it through stories. Morrison is not excluding readers; they are just asking that
they work harder and that they let their sense of disorientation be something that drives
their curiosity.
At the same time, I would argue, against Singer’s objections, that the thematic under-
tones of Final Crisis work really well. The book is built around uneasiness, darkness and a
feeling of impotence that is palpable and even prescient. When Darkseid conquers Earth
and everything becomes a huge factory of brainwashed workers manufacturing stuff for
the tyrant, it is impossible not to trace a direct analogy to jobs in retail, Amazon, and food
distribution. When Darkseid gives a rousing speech condemning free thought and exalt-
ing his will as the will of the masses, it is hard not to think of the slow slide most western
societies are experiencing towards populist fascism. Nevertheless, it is a work of obvious
fiction and simple solutions. In the end Superman and the DC universe triumph because
they must; they are the heroes, a luxury we do not have in the real world.

Conclusions

If one considers arthrology and braiding in the way that Groensteen originally conceptual-
ized them, as a semiotics of interconnectedness according to which every panel exists poten-
tially in relation to every other panel in the work, then one can find numerous examples of
it in Final Crisis. Examples of braiding can also be detected when one considers the through

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line of Morrison’s works. When read alongside JLA, Seven Soldiers, 52 and The Multiversity,
coherent topics and themes, callbacks and obsessions emerge. However, if one considers that
coherence in comics is not only a matter of semiotics, but also a matter of political economy
and social circulation, then arthrology fails to explain why this work was perceived as such a
complicated, confusing and even failed narrative at the time. Crossovers are made by many
hands and heads. Superhero continuity is actually the art of dis-continuity. This is particu-
larly evident in the way that three series (Countdown, Death of the New Gods and Final Cri-
sis) show three different versions of the fall of Darkseid, which are completely irreconcilable,
something which led a visibly annoyed Morrison to declare: »As it is, the best I can do is sug-
gest that the somewhat contradictory depictions of Orion and Darkseid’s last-last-last battle
that we witnessed in Countdown and DOTNG recently were apocryphal attempts to describe
an indescribable cosmic event« (Brady).
There was a disconnect between what DC presented as mandatory reading and what-
ever story creators were able to build out of the wreckage of editorial mandates, and also a
disconnect between the purposes of the work and reader expectations. There is a percent-
age of readers who genuinely expect crossovers to deliver on their promise, and complain,
usually on message boards and social networks, about what they rightfully perceive as
incoherencies that should be smoothed over. They believe in a general consistency of the
superhero universe, which simply is not true. As Rogers has pointed out: »Comic book
fans can be divided loosely into three groups: collectors, who value comics primarily as
commodity objects; readers, who use comics as a consumable; and reader-savers who
both consume and collect comics. Both collectors and reader-savers often fall into one of
two overlapping categories: completists and investor/valuationists« (155). Both readers
and collectors have important reasons to demand coherence from superhero comics: the
first group because they want their reading experience to be as pleasant and rewarding as
possible, the second group because a more coherent and artistically valid series has more
chances of becoming an ›evergreen‹ comic, which drives up the value of the original issues
and makes the process of collecting them feel worthwhile. Final Crisis’ process of and
difficulties with publication, with delays and several artists working on the series, had an
impact on why it was perceived as a ›mess‹.
However, if one considers thematic implications, this feeling of disintegration actually
contributes (at least for me) to the willfully chaotic feel of that last issue. And it also taps
into the narrative collapse proposed by Rushkoff as a hallmark of postmodern narratives.
Morrison is concerned with the nature of superhero stories themselves: how they can never
truly end, yet they must always reach some sort of provisional closure, and which narrative
mechanics make this possible. And he is attempting a particular sensation: a crossover which
deals with cosmological and metaphysical aspects of the universe thrown into chaos should
be disorienting, with too many things happening at once.

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Finally, I would propose a different reading of superhero comics, which takes into account its
many imperfections and particularities, and which calls for immersion and a sort of chaotic
detective work, following leads from title to title and character to character, letting confusion
and incompleteness be a joy and a spur towards the never-ending battle of understanding
them.

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Wolfman, Marv (W), George Pérez (A), Dick Giordano (I): Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12.
New York: DC Comics, 1985–1986.
Wolk, D. (2008, May 29). Final Crisis Annotations: Final Crisis #1. In: Final Crisis Anno-
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Table of figures
Fig. 1: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1, the original image of earths clashing together. Cover by
George Perez, 1985. © DC Entertainment.
Fig. 2: The timeline of the DC Universe/Multiverse. Made by the author.
Fig. 3: Superman travelling the Multiverse as if it were a comic. Superman Beyond #1, Grant
Morrison and Doug Mahnke. © DC Entertainment.
Fig. 4: The origin of stories in the DC Universe. Superman Beyond #1, Grant Morrison and
J.G. Jones. © DC Entertainment.
Fig. 5: An example of the rapid crosscutting between characters and scenes in the last number
of Final Crisis. Final Crisis #7, Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke. © DC Entertainment.

1] Morrison recently came out as non-binary and their preferred pronouns are they/them.
2] Even though Groensteen employs a wide range of examples, particularly from newspaper
strips, during the first chapter of The System of Comics, which concerns itself with the spa-
tio-topical system, subsequent chapters, which are concerned with the sequence and the
network, gravitate heavily towards examples taken from French-Belgian albums. One can-
not but feel that, when talking about a work which is braided and whose images are heavily
interconnected, Groensteen is thinking about a particular format: said Franco-Belgian al-
bum, a format of a certain tidiness and discretion. Pointedly, he employs no example from
superhero comics or manga.
3] The history of DC’s acquisition of competing publishing houses, characters and assets
started in 1956 when they acquired the rights to the Quality Comics library following its
decline and closure (Kooiman and Amash). Then it continued in 1972 when the company
licensed the characters from Fawcett Comics, namely Captain Marvel and its related ti-
tles (Hamerlinck). This company had been a major competitor of DC during the 1940s,
when Captain Marvel comics outsold Superman. As a result, DC had started a copyright
infringement case which dragged for the best part of a decade, contributing to the ­comics’
arm of the company closing down in 1953. In 1994 the rights were finally purchased. In
1983, DC bought the rights to the Charlton characters, which would go on to serve as a
template for the protagonists of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen (Cooke and

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Irving). Each of these groups were given their own earth: Earth X for Quality, Earth S for
Fawcett and Earth 4 for Charlton. The practice of incorporating rival companies’ stable of
characters and IP continued when they bought Wildstorm, an imprint of Image Comics
founded by artist Jim Lee, in 1999. Most of these characters have been incorporated, with
differing levels of success, into the main DC universe.
4] Alongside a veritable army of inkers. Final Crisis was inked by J.G. Jones during the first
three issues, by Jesus Merino over Carlos Pacheco’s pencils, by Christian Alamy over Doug
Manhke’s pencils and then, on issue 7, which was rushed into production, by Tom Nguy-
en, Drew Geraci, Christian Alamy, Norm Rapmund, Rodney Ramos, Doug Mahnke and
Walden Wong. Colors were handled by Alex Sinclair with help from Tony Avina and Pete
Pantazis on the last two issues. The number of new names called in to help signals a loss of
control over the publication of the series, which neatly corresponds to its theme of decay.
5] This, by the way, is the opinion of the author of this article.

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