Warworld Saga – Then and Now

Superman has been here before. Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s emotion, darkly lavish Warworld Saga has Superman facing a time in his life that he’s never seen before, but the setting is familiar. As the saga reaches its midgame, it’s an interesting time to look back at a previous epic-length story that covered a bit of this ground before, how they compare, and how they differ.

In 1989, the creative minds behind Superman took a big gamble, moving the hero off-planet for an unprecedented span of time. That storyline, aptly referred to by an early issue’s title, “Superman in Space,” had Superman serve a self-exile from Earth for a whopping 13 issues, plus a bit of the issues before and after. Crossing three titles, it was a full six months in which Superman was not seen on our planet in his solo books, years before the death storyline, before any comparable story had removed a signature DC character from their main setting for so long.

The relevance of that story to Johnson’s current one is in the time they both spend on Mongul’s Warworld. While “Superman in Space” was a much longer storyline than this one, it devoted considerable prelude to many preliminary events and adventures before getting to Warworld, a place first introduced in a 1980 multi-issue arc in DC Comics Presents. It also gave large parts of its issues – including one entire issue with no appearances of Superman at all – to the supporting players back in Metropolis, developing those characters in a way that set up the subsequent Triangle Era’s storytelling that made Superman just the lead character in an ensemble cast.

In the early issues of Superman’s exile, he teleported from one venue to another, visiting no fewer than six different planets, spending some time in three different spaceships, and otherwise menaced while in deep space by alien amoebae, an asteroid bombardment, and one star that he got too close to. Some of these were full-fledged adventures, others more momentary experiences to get the man reflecting on his past sins and his traumas. In the big picture, what that storyline did was take the post-reboot farmboy Superman and give him just a pinch of the space-faring worldliness (universeliness?) of his Bronze Age self. It was a success for developing the character, though certainly a failure of his plan to remove himself from any situations where he needed to handle his powers responsibly.

Almost half of the story, however, involved Warworld. Quite unlike the premise of Johnson’s story, 1989’s Superman was taken there alone and against his will, picked up while unconscious by the pilots of a scavenging spaceship and auctioned off as cargo.

At that point, however, the stories to a considerable extent converge in theme. Superman awakes to find his fellow captives looking to pilfer items of value from his person. His powerful physique leads his captors to choose him as a contestant to fight in Warworld’s combat arena. And he finds, among Warworld’s captives, a surprising and important link to Krypton’s past. Though a mere captive, he becomes a symbol of resistance and hope that upends the social order of Warworld from the bottom up. These are all shared between the 1989 story and Warworld Saga. For that matter, those themes are mostly shared by the 1960 historical fiction film Spartacus. And if you want to trace these things further back, there’s the 1950 film Ben-Hur and the actual slave revolt in Ancient Rome. Perhaps equally stirring, the screenwriter of Spartacus was the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, and the public success of that film helped to end blacklisting, a triumphant irony of which Trumbo was surely aware.

Warzoons Scavenge Superman, 1989 and 2021

And so, some of the moments and images of the 1989 story are being repeated now. This is neither borrowing nor homage but sequence. Warworld was characterized a certain way in the past, and so was Superman, and so the stories have to cover some common ground. Not every reader of Warworld Saga has read the 1989 Superman titles, nor will many who have remember them 32 years later with crystal clarity. But revisiting the older story is worth it, to see how they align but more importantly how they don’t.

The 1989 Superman was a man who exiled himself because his psychological vulnerabilities made him recognize that he was a danger to the people of Earth. His values, sense of self, and identify were still being shaped. He was near the beginning of a career in which a Kansas farmboy was way out of his element. It was only in issue #22 of Superman, vol 2 – John Byrne’s last issue – in which his execution of the Pocket Universe Phantom Zoners began Superman’s cycle of uncertainty and regret that led to his self-exile in the hands of other creators. Along the way, he suffered a rather disturbing psychological breakdown, operating under a different identity, unbeknownst to himself, during a fugue state. Imagine how you’d view a local police officer who did that – probably not someone whom you’d wish to see remain on the job. In 2021’s context, for his earlier mistakes, he would already have been cancelled. (In fairness, Superman was beset by extraordinary hardship, psychic invasion, and actual voodoo before breaking down in the way that he did.) 1989’s Superman was unsure of himself, what sort of code of conduct he should follow, whether or not he had the needed self control, and moreover was ignorant even of the facts of his Kryptonian upbringing, with those prerecorded messages from Jor-El only going so far. This was a Superman far from the super-capable demigod of the immediately preceding pre-Crisis era. The Superman in Space story of 1989 sought to take that flawed hero and rebuild him, taking him a few steps back towards the demigod Superman of 1985. This was a story of redemption and growth through trial, missteps, and improvement.

In these respects, the 2021 Superman comes to Warworld on completely different terms. He is in some ways even more self-possessed than the 1985 Superman ever was. He knows exactly who he is, and he came to Warworld not by accident but on a mission. He came not alone but with a team. He came not turned inwards on his self but on the needs of others. He may have miscalculated – badly – on the matter of tactics, but he hasn’t wavered for a millisecond on the intentions of his mission. That’s not where the 1989 Superman began. It was where, at the story’s end, he arrived.

To sum up succinctly the 1989’s story on Warworld, Superman was thrown into the arena to fight as a gladiator. He won all his matches, but refused to kill his vanquished opponents. (This marked an evolution from his execution of the Phantom Zoners and a rebuilding of his pre-Crisis vow never to kill.) Finally, he beat Warworld’s previous champion, Draaga (Rocky IV’s Ivan Drago, clearly the name’s inspiration, was then only a few years in the past). When he refused to kill Draaga, Superman drew the wrath of Mongul, who entered the ring to kill Superman, which was a massive political error. By violating the strict rules of the arena, Mongul initiated a campaign of unrest against himself. He also had mixed results in fighting Superman, as their three skirmishes in and out of the ring gave them each a close win over the other, then a result ambiguous to the characters but not to the readers when Mongul attempted to kill Superman with a ray blast from his amulet, but Superman was teleported away at the last instant, thus seeming to have died as far as Mongul knew. The two never met within the story again. Draaga himself fought Mongul and ultimately everyone fled the stage of the story – Mongul, overthrown, left to heal his wounds. Warworld itself teleported to some other part of the universe before Superman could return to enforce a revolution.

And in the story’s significant subplot, Superman learns a great deal of Krypton’s history from a Cleric who was on the planet long before the time of Jor-El. The Cleric was himself not a native of Krypton (enforcing the concept in 1989 that Superman was the last surviving Kryptonian). However, there was substantial backstory about Krypton’s evolution and how it went through dirtier and more sordid eras in its past before becoming the sterile world of Byrne’s – and Donner’s – visions. This also introduced the Eradicator artifact, a sort of power ring with a surly mind of its own, which has become an enduring feature in Superman’s storylines. It is intriguing that Warworld Saga also includes Kryptonians who come from a time before Jor-El, suggesting a role that they may play in changing Superman’s concept of his own origins, like the Cleric did in 1989.

It’s a pleasure and informative to re-read first the 1980 DC Comics Presents story that introduced Mongul and Warworld, and then the 1989 story before picking up Warworld Saga. Seen one way, it is one long ongoing story, representing three of the most essential of many Superman–Mongul stories. In Superman’s current stay on Warworld as in 1989, he is commanded to kill for Mongul’s pleasure, and as in 1989, he refuses. This commonality across the decades is true despite the fact that the continuity has rebooted, with the pre-Crisis Supergirl an essential part of the first story, and the Byrne characterization of Superman being an essential element of the second. There are little winks in Johnson’s writing to the past, such as Mongul declaring that he will go conquering “flying his cape from our spear,” just a little less brutal than the previous Mongul dreaming, in Alan Moore’s “For the Man Who Has Everything,” that he will place Superman’s head “upon a spike and goes out to trample a world, carrying it before him, his hideous standard.” 

But, beyond the shifts in continuity – the tweaks in the biographical details and history of the DC Universe – one sees an incredible increase in sophistication from 1980 to 1989 and from 1989 to 2021. Johnson’s first remarkable innovation in this story was when the Phaelosians conveyed that they saw their chains as an honor – a culture of slavery that runs so deep, is so bleakly enforced, that its own victims embrace their subjugation, calling it “wearing iron.” To the same effect, the refrain, “So say the dead” shows Warworld’s inhabitants perversely celebrating the premature and brutal death that awaits many of them. Johnson writes dialogue to the character’s mental world, with Chaytil referring to Superman as “The master of Starro! The master of Darkseid!” and in so doing says much about how existing DC characters are part of the culture of one another, and makes some interesting choices in doing so (e.g., Darkseid but not Brainiac). Likewise, Johnson’s characterization of Manchester Black, of Mac, of Midnight – these sparkle.

I have often reflected on how so many great works from DC emerged in the years after 1985, and set a high bar of creativity and quality that has not often been matched or exceeded. However, looking at this one story – this one place and setting, comparable situations – across 41 years, it’s clear that the monthlies now are capable of greater things than one of the better innovative stories from those very years just after DKR and Watchmen. Even if we suspect that we know where the plot may be going – that Superman will end Mongul’s rule – everything we’ve read so far suggests that the way Johnson gets his story gets to its end will be a pleasure to read.

Retro Review: The Sand Superman Saga

Imagine that Superman begins to lose his powers. A new Superman is on the scene and we’re not sure if the original, Kal-El, will ever be the same. That’s the situation in 2021, but what goes around comes around, and it also was true in 1971, half a century ago. Dennis O’Neil’s Sand Superman Saga, perhaps Superman’s first great alteration – at least, one that was written into the plot of a story – has just passed its silver anniversary.

Before there were cosmic reboots, when creative minds wanted to change a detail about a comic book character they just changed them. Sometimes they didn’t even seem to do so on purpose. If the readers noticed when the Daily Star suddenly became the Daily Planet, or when Superman could fly instead of merely jumping high, there was no Internet or even letter column to leave a record of reactions to those retcons. But another way to revamp a character is to write a change into the plot of the story, and and that’s what O’Neil did, changing Superman in unprecedented fashion.

This saga unrolled over the span of ten issues in 1971, but two of the issues in the middle – one written by O’Neil, one not – were not part of the larger plot. Thus, in eight issues, O’Neil, under the direction of editor Julius Schwartz, made bold and “permanent” changes to Superman, but most of the literal ones occurred, or began to occur, in the very first of those, Superman #233. In that one, bold issue, an experimental test of a new energy generation system destroyed all green kryptonite on Earth, Clark Kent became a reporter working on television rather than writing for a newspaper, and an epilogue teased the introduction of the nameless guest character who would do, basically accidentally, what hundreds of villains had attempted but failed – the permanent powering-down of the Man of Steel. However, the story did not fully culminate in one issue, nor could it have and been effective. Instead, O’Neil took Superman’s powers away, then gave them back, then took them again. In repetition that almost wears down the reader’s ability to keep track, Superman lost his powers partially or completely, sometimes one at a time, over and over, and in response became unsure whether he wanted them in full or at all. And keep in mind that two of these plot changes worked in nearly opposite directions: The elimination of kryptonite made Superman more potent than ever, while the varying loss of his powers and other injuries made him quite easy to defeat – and, moreover, to dislike.

Lest there be any confusion, this wasn’t simply Superman being written in a new style to the tastes of a new writer. This was a deliberate plan, with a flashy cover somewhat deceptively proclaiming “1” on issue #233, the first issue of the story arc: The amazing “NEW” adventures of Superman. The captions on the first page announced, “Beginning… a return to greatness!” and a subsequent caption called what was to follow “stunningly new.” Then, an extradiagetic splash page showed three panels of Superman flashily displaying his super powers while a suffering Superman in silhouette served as the black background for more introductory text, teasing that Superman has “a dark side” – a mention of his dark side on text written visually on his literal dark side! But as for style changes, there were those, too – beginning in this issue, Clark Kent’s previously-universally blue suit became brown.

But there’s real substance behind the style, so much so that a reader familiar with the series as it had been wouldn’t have been ready to read it the way O’Neil allows to unfold. After all the kryptonite on Earth is destroyed, Morgan Edge memorably questions whether the removal of Superman’s primary weakness is a good thing: “Power corrupts… and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But Morgan Edge was a pawn of Darkseid, and thoroughly unlikable in his best scenes; for Edge to say this begged for the reader to conclude the opposite, a sentiment which Superman soon enough articulated, saying that the destruction of kryptonite freed him up to do more good that ever. A reader who set down #233 for the first time would have to conclude that Superman was the moral compass to follow on this, or any other point. But by the last page of #242, that perspective had been definitively defeated.

Does absolute power corrupt Superman? In the scenes following the elimination of kryptonite, he casually knocks three criminals unconscious with blows to the head, when there’s seemingly no need for him to do so. His mental narration is full of hubris and self-celebration which is immediately followed by harsh contradiction from reality: twice, after Superman mentally celebrates his near-invincibility, he suddenly experiences the failure of his powers. This creates drama, but also makes the saga into a morality tale about pride coming before the fall. But after he loses those powers he regains them, then loses them again, for a total of four times in only the story’s first two issues. What this repetitive and disorienting gyrating accomplishes is to create dialectic and dialogue where previously Superman’s story was one of simple, fairy-tale moral certainties.

As Superman’s problems deepen, three issues – the saga’s second, third, and fifth – build up an impending sense of doom as Superman keeps losing his powers – one power or another, or all of them partially – as the mysterious Sand Superman flies by, with an origin, purpose, and even name unknown to Superman. In these three issues, Superman takes on the challenge of an erupting volcano, a callous business magnate, a vengeful and bitter man named Ferlin Nyxly who uses a (perhaps magical) device to steal Superman’s powers one by one, and eco-terrorists who try to use a seized geothermal power plant to bargain their way into greater power. By and large, the Sand Superman looms nearby as a mysterious added conundrum, though for some uncanny reason, he helps Superman defeat Nyxly (who was later referenced in Grant Morrison’s Action run). Throughout this string of predicaments, Superman suffers the consequences of lost power, as the Sand Superman – initially made of sand – slowly becomes more visibly his duplicate, costume and all. But while the plot and the action move along in these issues, the theme that was initially invoked with Morgan Edge’s “power corrupts” line goes largely unaddressed.

That changes in the saga’s fourth issue, #237. After Superman rescues the pilot of an experimental rocket plane, he finds that the pilot has been transformed horribly by germs originating in space. (Recall that this story was published less than two years after the first lunar landing.) Contemplating that he himself may have the same germs on himself after exposure to the pilot, Superman takes the step of flying up into Earth’s natural radiation belts in order to cleanse himself, thinking, “NO bug could survive exposure to these radioactive waves!” However, Superman is simply and smugly mistaken, and when he returns to Earth, the germs that he has carried back on his body infect an entire room of staffers at the Daily Planet. Moments later, he learns that Lois Lane, investigating a swarm of killer ants in Latin America, is in unrelated danger, and Superman becomes stricken with angst that he is unable to act normally to save her without spreading the infection to her and others, like those in the Daily Planet building behind him. Then the Sand Superman follows him on his way to try to save Lois, draining his speed and power. Superman tries to act from a distance, stopping a swarm of jungle ants but infects two of them, which makes them grow to the size of elephants.

Now the array of problems facing Superman – the worst of which appears to be his own fault –fills him with helplessness, guilt, and despair. He declares to himself, “I’m the worst enemy the planet has! … Should I fly away… lose myself in the vastness between the stars… and never return?” How the mighty have fallen! Only a few issues back, Superman exulted in being truly, absolutely invincible, with no weaknesses, free to solve any problem, and here, he finds himself worse than helpless, unable to save Lois, losing his own powers to a nameless doppelgänger who follows him around, and having spread a plague in Metropolis. However, as he floats in space despairingly, he carefully thinks over the day’s events, and decides that, in a twist, contact with the Sand Superman seems to have sterilized his right hand of the germs that he’s carrying. He deliberately seeks full contact with his erstwhile antagonist, and an explosion occurs, after which – he decides – he is now free of the germs. Superman saves Lois with a hint of anger in his tone, “I’m doing the same as I’ve always done – saving your silly, precious life!” Unable to fly, Superman holds Lois and the pilot of her plane and leaps with them to a place of safety, then with noticeable difficulty defeats a gang of bandits who had earlier menaced Lois. Then he confronts the Sand Superman (who was following close behind) and unleashes a verbal tirade at his unnamed nemesis and for the first time, the Sand Superman, who has now almost become identical to Superman in appearance, speaks, telling Superman in a cliffhanger that he is a being woven from Superman’s own mind, heart, and soul, that he is going to continue to drain Superman’s powers until he has half, until they are exactly equal, and that the process might kill one of them.

Superman’s hubris in viewing himself as invincible has at this point been well-developed. He tries to hide his loss of power from the world, telling himself that this it to avoid emboldening criminals, but he hides it also from Lois Lane, and he seems to be full of shame as well as self doubt, which escalates heading into the saga’s final three issues. This is introduced by the cover of Superman #240 where an angry crowd lambastes Superman, who holds a Daily Planet proclaiming, “SUPERMAN FAILS!” and the titular hero tells the Earth’s people, “You miserable ingrates – I’m through with you!” This foreshadows the issue’s first sequence in which a weakened Superman is no longer able to disguise his relative loss of power: While saving people from a burning building, he tries to support the skyscraper from structural collapse but visibly fails while the fire department and crowds watch. With the building now too heavy for him, Superman is knocked to the ground by the falling structure, and is photographed walking away in shame. In the following day, as his enemies conspire to take advantage of his weakened state, crowds mock his loss of strength, and Superman stews with antagonism, bitterly thinking of the public as “ingrates” who don’t appreciate his “years of service… of sacrifice” in which he “denied [himself] the comforts of home… family” while helping people. In a true turning point, Superman has not merely lost his physical power (which is, after all, as old a plot point as kryptonite itself) but has begun to lose the will to continue on his mission, turning his back on a bank robbery with the thought, “it’s no concern of mine! The smug citizens can solve their own problems!” Moments later, he relents and engages the bank robbers, but is momentarily struck down and humiliated by their military weapons. After he succeeds partially in defeating them (their leaders escape), he privately reflects, “as a Superman, I’m a wash-out!”

At this point, and for the remaining duration of the saga, I-Ching enters the story. An O’Neil invention from his concurrent run on Wonder Woman, the Chinese sage and mystic arrives to counsel Superman on the loss of his powers and how he can and should regain them. By unhappy coincidence, just as I-Ching places Superman under a trance, criminals who had surveilled Clark Kent arrive and strike at the unconscious Superman as well as I-Ching. A nearly fully depowered Superman wins a fistfight with the criminals after taking painful blows to the head and chest, which concludes with Superman deciding that perhaps, if he can win a fight without powers, he’s not sure that he cares if he ever regains them. At the beginning of issue #241, Superman shares this thought with I-Ching that he would like to remain powerless, and rid himself of the “responsibilities… the loneliness… of Superman.” The mystic man, however, talks Superman into reluctantly accepting his help in regaining his lost powers, and after a brief ceremony in which an astral form of Superman finds and power-drains the Sand Superman, the titular hero awakens with his full powers intact… seemingly the end of his troubles, but here things soon reach their darkest and strangest point.

As the issue continues, Superman finds that his physical powers are at their usual, maximum state, but his behavior, a reader can’t help but notice, is increasingly erratic, egotistical, and hostile to others. As I-Ching and Diana Prince notice from the news, Superman makes destructive mistakes in the use of his powers, and moreover makes reckless decisions that inconvenience good people while punishing evil doers. I-Ching determines that the cause is the blow that Superman earlier took to the head while depowered. Here, the story becomes a curious sort of sci fi / fantasy parable about mental health, with Superman angrily denying that he has a problem while his friends – Diana Prince and I-Ching – try to get him to accept help. Here, for the first time, the reader receives an explanation of what has been going on, as I-Ching’s magic reveals the nature of the Sand Superman.

Here, O’Neil introduces us, through I-Ching and the Sand Superman, to a dimension called the Realm of Quarrm, a “state of alternate possibilities, a place where neither men nor things exist, only unformed, shapeless beings” – sounding a bit like Plato’s conception of forms, superior to the things in our real world. We learn that the explosion at the outset of the saga created a rift between Superman’s world and the Realm of Quarrm, bringing one nameless creature through who assumed, through proximity to Superman, a link to him that caused the creature to take his form and begin to drain his essence and powers.

In performing a ceremony that procured this information, I-Ching, however, has made a serious mistake, opening a new rift between the DC Universe and Quarrm and allowing a second spirit to enter our world. This one animates the statue of a Chinese war demon, which then begins wreaking havoc in Metropolis. As the saga’s penultimate issue concludes, the odd trio of I-Ching, an unpowered Diana Prince, and the Sand Superman hope to cure Superman of his mental impairment, while the real but ill Superman is knocked out in battle by the War Demon, which drains most of his powers into itself.

As the finale begins in Superman #242, a pair of malevolent street criminals find that the War Demon will follow their orders and, after beating a now-depowered Superman mercilessly, they utilize the War Demon as a sort of evil genie on a rampage of crime. Doctors operate to repair the brain damage suffered by the fully-depowered Superman while the Sand Superman, possessing by its own calculation just a third of Superman’s original powers, fails to vanquish the War Demon.

In time, the War Demon turns on his masters, killing them, then is drawn to the hospital where Superman is recovering, seeking to kill him, too. But, in the presence of Superman, power flows back from the War Demon into Superman until the two of them are equal, and fight to a stand-off. Then the Sand Superman arrives on the scene and joins the original Superman in battle against the War Demon, which – outnumbered – flees back to Quarrm.

Now that the battle’s three are down to two, the Sand Superman declares that he wishes to take the place of the original Superman. With each possessing half of Superman’s power, they decide to fight a duel to the finish to see which will survive to continue as the only Superman. Over the course of a few pages, their super duel causes devastating damage to the Earth’s interior. Within six minutes, the strain placed on the planet causes massive earthquakes and eruptions that wipe the planet clean of all life… or so we see. I-Ching then reveals that he has simulated the battle in the minds of Superman and his double, when actually no battle at all has taken place.

Then the saga concludes with stunning suddenness. The Sand Superman decides to return to Quarrm to avoid such a conflict. When I-Ching proposes that he could perhaps return the stolen half of Superman’s power back to him, Superman refuses this, saying, “No! I’ve seen the dangers [of] having too much power… I am human – I can make mistakes! I don’t want – or need – more…” And in a shadowy final panel, Superman stares off into the distance, alone in his thoughts, with half the power he had when the saga began.

The sense behind having Superman renounce half his powers doesn’t quite add up. When he makes mistakes in this story, none of those would be avoided by reducing his powers by half. If Superman decides to leave a car atop the Empire State Building, or if he accidentally infects people with an extraterrestrial germ, those things occur just as easily with half his powers as full. Moreover, in a DC Universe with many highly-powered beings, Superman just demoted himself relative to many villains such as the Phantom Zone inmates, Solomon Grundy, Bizarro, and others. In fact, in the series’s next issue (scripted by Cary Bates), Superman notes that “it would take a hundred Supermen many life-times to solve all [Earth’s] problems.” In the subsequent issue, again penned by O’Neil, Superman is knocked down by an energy monster and declares, “I’ve never been hit that hard…” Well, it would have been nice to have the other half of your powers back, then, wouldn’t it, Supes?

Numbers aside, O’Neil’s saga injected some thoughtful characterization to DC’s flagship hero, and measurably powered up the maturity of the title. First, it shifted the black-and-white morality of the series to add some shades of gray. Superman could be wrong, not only about matters of fact (that the elimination of kryptonite made him invincible), not only making serious mistakes in the use of his powers (that a particular radiation exposure would kill the alien germs on his body), but it also showed that he was fallible in tone, aggrieved and bitter, subject to humiliation – in other words, human. This was a far bigger change to the character than twiddling his power levels in some meaningless way. And, for all the story’s quirks, it brought Superman down to our level – in character as well as sometimes in power level – by showing the folly of the sin of pride, a story arc right out of Greek mythology.

An irreplaceable way to gauge the impact of story is to look at what came before it, and what after. Twelve issues before the Sand Superman saga began, the cover of Superman showed a morbidly obese Superman bursting out of a telephone booth and calling himself, in language that is shockingly insensitive, “a super-fatso” with the story title, “The Two-Ton Superman.” Five issues after the saga ended, Elliot S. Maggin’s highly-regarded “Must There Be A Superman?” story ran in issue #247, elaborating on the saga’s themes, as Superman must decide for himself when to intervene in human affairs and when not to intervene. That is quite a “before and after” comparison, showing a 1970 title with nothing of value to say and a 1972 title that was, if not high literature, at least asking questions with some relevance to real-world society, morality, and personal responsibility. We might gauge the impact of the story – both O’Neil’s capacity as writer and Schwartz’s as editor– in the increasing years in the age of the target reader rather than in how much Superman could lift or how fast he could fly. The Sand Superman story was part of the character maturing, and gave the series a creative direction it followed for nearly 15 years before its next big transformation.

Fifty years later, while the character, and DC superhero comics as a whole, have been through numerous alterations, and the plot points of the Sand Superman saga are entirely unrelated to current continuity, it may be argued that the Superman title never took a bigger step up in maturity than it did in and around that story. Indeed, remembering that it appeared at the same time as a pivotally thoughtful story about control and rebellion in Teen Titans #31 and during O’Neil’s monumental Green Lantern/Green Arrow run – the story about Roy Harper’s drug addiction appeared just after the Sand Superman saga ended – 1971 might be the year in which DC Comics grew up the most. In the fifty years since, have they grown up any more?

Final Crisis Retro Review Part III: The Monitor Plot

We Don't Get It

A major fraction of Final Crisis is devoted to the subplot I'll call the Monitor plot. Based on Marv Wolfman's characters who are central to Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Monitors are beings who monitor activity in the 52 Earths of the Multiverse. The Monitors go through a great deal of drama on their own plane, interacting with beings in the Multiverse on a few occasions. The Monitor plot consists of a few scenes in Final Crisis proper, plus the entire two issues of Superman Beyond. In this third and final installment of my FC review that begins here, I'll focus on the mysterious Monitor plot.

It's easy enough to understand the Monitor plot on the surface level: Who says and does what, when. It is much harder to understand what the point of it all is: Why are these things happening? How does it relate to the Darkseid plot? What rules are at work? What is Morrison trying to say with this story?

At the risk of overgeneralizing, I don't think readers, overall, "got" the Monitor plot, at least not in detail. I think for some readers, the portions of the Monitor plot in FC proper were a path to nowhere: A lot of things happening, some of them apparently very important, but with no clarity as to what was happening or why, or what it meant. Reading online reviews, I find some readers regretting FC's complexity and indecipherability. Some readers seem overall pleased with FC, but discuss only the Darkseid plot, as though the Monitor plot just didn't happen. And though many very astute readers pierce the veil of allegory and get a general read on Morrison's overall intentions, they still seem, as I did, doubtful about the details, such as who, exactly, does Mandrakk represent? We had no explanation as to the Whys of this story: Why does this stuff happen? Even the cause-and-effect relationship between the Darkseid plot and the Monitor plot seems like a riddle: Did Darkseid's attack somehow prompt Mandrakk's attack on Superman? Or did Mandrakk's desire to attack somehow use Darkseid as his pawn? And Morrison once said that when we read Final Crisis we will realize why this is the final crisis: Did anyone come away with that understanding in concrete terms?

Between 2009 and 2017, I re-read Final Crisis many times. I enjoyed many portions, particularly, the Big Five superheroes' victories in the Darkseid plot, and I grasped, in general terms, how the Monitor plot illustrated Superman's victory on some high cosmic level, but the pieces didn't fit together very well, and I felt that something remained unexplained. Then, something clicked. I saw a pattern on one page that seemed to fit, and when I considered wider portions of the story, those seemed to fit as well. I believe there's a key to Final Crisis' Monitor plot, and once one sees it, the whole story becomes more explicable: One can see Morrison's intended message, and the logic of the Monitor plot goes from murky and arbitrary to exceedingly clear. Ultimately, one can see not only why Mandrakk appears after Darkseid's defeat, but understand that the choice of page and even the exact panel where he appears are not arbitrary. I hope that those who read this post will find Final Crisis much clearer than they found it before, and that they see the final showdown with Mandrakk to be a remarkable climax in its own right, one of the most thrilling victories of Superman and his allies.

Just The Facts

There is a surface level to the Monitor plot, in which the Monitors are powerful beings in the DC Multiverse. As the surface level is fairly clear and the basis of the deeper level, I'll begin by laying out its facts.

In the distant past, a group of Monitors, initially one and then more, began to oversee the Multiverse. Long ago, the best of them, Dax Novu, became corrupt and, as the hideous evil Monitor, Mandrakk, was exiled to a crypt where he must wait for a Doomsday Clock to reach zero.

A surreptitiously evil Monitor named Rox Ogama frames a good, young Monitor named Nix Uotan for the destruction of his world, Earth-51. Disguising his own guilt, Ogama pretends to defend Uotan. Uotan, to the chagrin of his lover, Weeja Dell, is punished by being exiled to the "germ world" of Earth-0. A Monitrix named Zillo Valla consoles Weeja Dell, offering a brief summary of how contact with the germ worlds have introduced time and story, beginnings and endings, amongst the Monitors themselves. Uotan lives as an ordinary young man on Earth-0, trying to regain his previous status.

Zillo Valla summons several of the Multiverse's Supermen to help her and her world escape the wrath of Mandrakk. After a chase through Multiversal space, leading to Limbo, the Supermen find an infinite book that contains all stories, including the history of the Monitors mentioned above. Ultraman, who celebrates evil, triumphantly announces that the book ends with destruction: Evil wins in the end. Superman, joins his opposite, Ultraman, in inhabiting a Thought Robot in the Overvoid. In this form, Superman defeats Mandrakk, who recklessly destroys Zillo Valla during the battle.

Captain Marvel voyages the Multiverse, eventually joining up with the Question, Renee Montoya, to form a cavalry of all the Supermen. Rox Ogama transforms into a new incarnation of Mandrakk and recruits Ultraman, transforming him into a Vampire Superman.

Rounded up during Darkseid's occupation of Earth, Uotan is transformed into a new kind of Monitor/hero dubbed the "Judge of All Evil." When Darkseid is defeated, Mandrakk and Ultraman arrive to confront Superman, having just dispatched Supergirl, the Radiant, and the Spectre. Superman activates the Miracle Machine and fixes all the damage done by Darkseid's forces. The Supermen of the Multiverse arrive along with Hal Jordan's force of Green Lanterns. Nix Uotan takes over, summoning an army of angels, the animal heroes led by Captain Carrot, and the Forever People of the Fifth World. With heat vision, the Supermen lay waste to Mandrakk and Ultraman, with the Green Lanterns delivering the final blow.

Back in the Monitor's plane, Nix Uotan is vindicated and acquitted, and he commands the Monitor to stop interfering with the characters on their worlds. He is reborn, again, as the young man back on Earth-0.

Index of Prominent Monitors

Earth-6: Marvel Universe. Monitor: Weeja Dell. (In Multiversity, this Earth's number changed to 8, while Earth-6 became Stan Lee's Just Imagine universe.)

Earth-31: Dark Knight Returns Universe. Monitor: Rox Ogama (or Zillo Valla; the syntax is ambiguous). (Before Multiversity, Grant Morrison removed the entire Dark Knight world from the Multiverse at Frank Miller's request.)

Earth-43: Blood League universe of vampire superheroes, based on the Batman-vs-Dracula story, Batman: Red Rain. Monitor: Zillo Valla (or Rox Ogama).

Earth-51: According to Countdown, originally like Earth-0 until Batman killed the Joker; the whole universe was ultimately destroyed. Remade as a Kamandi / Kirby world. Monitor: Nix Uotan.

Earlier, unspecified Earth, perhaps pre-Crisis Earth One: Monitor: Dax Novu.

Meaning

It's clear that Morrison did not create the Monitors as just another group of DC characters. As readers noticed, the story hints, and Morrison confirmed, they represent storytellers; their names, in fact, are all derived from the gods of writing in different mythologies. To understand the story, then, we have to understand which real people the Monitors represent, and how their interactions in the story convey a message.

Some readers have suggested a very tight interpretation of the Monitors, where each Monitor stands for one particular writer, and wherein the Monitor plot, then, tells the story of specific comic book writers. Moreover, some readers have suggested that Mandrakk stands for Alan Moore, and that Nix Uotan stands for Grant Morrison himself. Meanwhile, it would be logical to suggest that a few of the remaining Monitors who represent specific Earths of the Multiverse represent the writers who created those worlds; e.g., Rox Ogama is Frank Miller, and Doug Moench would be Zillo Valla, and Weeja Dell is some writer associated with Marvel Comics. I'll say in the early going that there are excellent reasons to make those associations. I will offer, however, that it is difficult to map the entire Monitor plot according to those precise identities. For one, there are far too few named Monitors with sufficient screen time to tell a very rich story about writers. And if Morrison wanted to tell a story about writers, would he really make Doug Moench one of the principal figures and leave no space for, say, Jerry Siegel, Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Len Wein, Dennis O'Neil, Cary Bates, Elliot Maggin, Marv Wolfman, John Byrne, and Geoff Johns, to name just a few? I also find it extremely unlikely that Grant Morrison would assert that Frank Miller is a bad guy who is framing good writers for crimes they didn't commit. To play it on the safe side, I will suggest that each Monitor be seen as a school of thought, a movement among writers, editors, and/or fans, a style of approaching the stories, and in cases where a movement can be reduced to only one writer, so be it: There are certainly scenes where we can seem to pin a Monitor's identity down to one writer, but I will suggest that, even then, the message is intended to be broad.

So what is that message? Clearly, there are bad Monitors whom we root against: the two incarnations of Mandrakk corresponding to Dax Novu and Rox Ogama. There are good Monitors whom we root for: Nix Uotan and Weeja Dell. Zillo Valla is perhaps between the two or plays different roles at different times. Reader analysts and Morrison offer many tidbits about what is good and what is bad here, but we have to be careful not to overgeneralize and call the bad side all instances of dark, grim and gritty storytelling. Recall that Final Crisis itself has a lot of dark stuff in it, ranging from J'onn J'onzz catching a flaming spear through the chest to supervillains discussing the rape of female superheroes. And no matter how we interpret what is "bad" storytelling according to this parable, what bearing does that have on Morrison's promise that this is the truly final crisis?

There is a key that will make the Monitor plot instantly comprehensible, but before explaining what that is, I will need to include a couple of interludes that provide necessary background.

Interlude: Alan Moore's Superman Stories

In a short span of time, Alan Moore gave us two of the most highly regarded Superman stories of all time. "For The Man Who Has Everything," in 1985's Superman Annual #11 and "Whatever Happened To the Man of Tomorrow?" published in two issues in 1986 had a tremendous impact on the publication history of Superman. These stories, like many of Moore's works were good – very good. If you consult various best-of lists, you'll find both of those high on the list of best Superman stories ever. Moreover, the unpublished Moore concept Twilight of the Superheroes would have been another monumental Superman story, and a story, Kingdom Come, arguably inspired by Twilight of the Superheroes, is also on many such best-of lists.

FTMWHE and WHTTMOT have a surprising amount in common, and an obvious precedent that seems to have gone unmentioned. First, both result in the destruction, or deconstruction, of Superman, though neither shows his biological death. In each, Superman is shown alive, but not as Superman, and in both cases, he is an ordinary man with a wife and children. In the one case, Superman chooses to end his own superhero career, and in the other, he reveals his fondest wish to be an alternate reality in which he never began it. They both have further similarities: They show Superman hurting someone with his heat vision. They discuss, but do not depict, Superman's death. They both have main action set in the exact same place, Superman's Fortress of Solitude, as Superman faces off against enemies he cannot physically beat. WHTTMOT also shows Superman abandon his oath never to kill; not only does he deliberately kill Mxyzptlk (with the admittedly excellent excuse of needing to save the world), but he is willing to kill the Legion of Supervillains, as the mind-reading ability of Saturn Woman reveals. Moreover, in WHTTMOT, Superman not only decides that he needs to retire; in the identity of Jordan Elliot, he looks back on his time as Superman, and denounces the entire idea of his ever having been Superman: "He was over-rated and too wrapped up in himself." Fans should take this line like a sock to the jaw; why would a Superman book portray Superman calling himself over-rated?

As a sidebar, and a check regarding Moore's originality, both of them owe a debt of gratitude to 1980's then-recent Superman II, which also shows Superman facing an enemy he cannot physically beat, and also shows a principal showdown in the Fortress of Solitude, and also shows Superman renouncing his powers so that he can settle down as an ordinary man with Lois Lane. However, Moore's story reverses the chronology: In Superman II, Superman realizes that he is needed by his world. In Moore's stories, Superman decides, consciously or emotionally, that he is not. To a considerable extent, if you rearranged the order of Superman II so that he defeated Zod, then gave up his powers to be with Lois Lane, you'd have an Alan Moore story.

The destruction of Superman is not a plot trajectory that Moore happens upon by happenstance. Notice that FTMWHE also shows us Batman receiving his heart's desire, and Batman also wishes that he had never been Batman. And as seen in Watchmen, the Green Lantern story "Tygers", The Killing Joke and elsewhere, Moore shows superheroes self-destructing – morally, tactically, and fatally – because that is the end that Moore desired.

Twilight of the Superheroes is a story that was proposed by Moore in 1987 but never written. I discuss it here, but suffice it to say, it also destroys Superman and DC's other superheroes. Not only does Superman abandon his role as a superhero, to make himself one of many factions ruling Earth like a superpowered Game of Thrones, but he ultimately chooses to kill his rivals, in a battle to the death with J'onn J'onzz and then is himself killed, by Green Lantern Sodam Yat.

It was very soon after those monumental Moore-Superman stories that Time Magazine, in a 1988 cover story, had Superman say that while he's beaten every villain in his stories, turning fifty years old may be his greatest challenge yet. Note that it is the in-story Superman who has beaten his villains, and it is the Superman who exists as a fictional entity in our world who was turning fifty and facing the challenge of maintaining his legend while also retaining relevance. The Time article notes that Superman's current challenge was "a deplorable element that might be called adultification, in which a figure created for children is subjected to adult concerns." Moore took adultification to the extreme, in which Superman could no longer be Superman, morally or otherwise. For Moore, Superman had to forego his principles. For Moore, Superman had to stop being Superman and die. And in the immediate wake of Moore's stories, the world saw that Superman might eventually face an existential challenge. It was on the cover of Time magazine.

Lest there be any doubt, Final Crisis is in part a response to Moore's Superman stories, and to Moore in general. The three aforementioned stories are each quoted by Final Crisis, verbally or visually, whether through direct intent by Morrison or by the freshness of Moore's work in Morrison's memory as he crafted a response to it. Some of the shout-outs include:

• In FTMWHE, Mongul says that the Black Mercy gives its victims their "heart's desire." In FC, Libra uses that same phrase, and Luthor later repeats it twice.

• The title of Twilight of the Superheroes is remixed by Libra on the very same page: He promises "An end to the age of superheroes. A full-on, no bull&@%& twilight of the gods." And note very carefully: We do not see Libra's "heart's desire" emerge from a drawing of Libra but from the image on the screen of a cellphone brand-named DAMRUNG, which is a pun on "Samsung" but also an abbreviation of the German (via Richard Wagner) word "Götterdämmerung" which means "Twilight of the Gods." It is the author of Twilight of the Superheroes who tells us that the destruction of the superheroes is one's "heart's desire." Note that this makes two references to Moore's Superman stories in the same panel. I will also add that Libra was created by Len Wein, who brought Moore onboard at DC. And, though I saw several reviewers note the significance of the phrase, "twilight of the god," I haven't seen anyone link it to Moore's title.

• In WHTTMOT, Superman witnesses the violent death of one of his friends and is attacked by deadly force in the Daily Planet newsroom, an attack that leaves him physically unharmed but standing in the newsroom in his Superman costume after his Clark Kent clothes have been blasted off of him. This also happens in Final Crisis #2, and the art is quite parallel. (In WHTTMOT, Superman's Clark Kent identity is thereby destroyed forever. In FC, nobody is left conscious to see Clark revealed as Superman.)

• In FTMWHE, Jor-El is a broken, bitter old man who is disgraced by his failed prediction of Krypton's destruction. When Mandrakk confronts Superman, he opens with the taunt, "Your father failed to save his world."

Further references to Moore works include Morrison's take on Dr. Manhattan in Superman Beyond, a particular reference to Swamp Thing, the Superman derivative hero named Supreme, and a possible reference to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that I'll mention later.

However, the similarities and shout-outs go still deeper yet. And this brings us to one more interlude that turns into an explanation of exactly how these works are related.

Interlude 2: Substory S

Imagine, if you will, the following plot elements occurring within a comic book story. The events jump around a bit in their relatedness, so it is more of a sub-sequence of a story than a subplot. I'll call this Substory S.

1) Brainiac 5 knows that Superman is going to fight a battle for his and the world's survival.

2) Brainiac 5 shows Superman a machine that can win the battle for Superman. Brainiac 5 does not give Superman the machine; he simply has him look at it.

3) Superman must face off against a being of pure evil at the command of godlike power.

4) A shield is placed around the scene of Superman and his enemy's upcoming battle. Other superheroes, even very powerful ones including Captain Marvel, cannot break the shield open.

5) Other characters present in immediate proximity to this battle include Batman, Wonder Woman, Luthor, and Supergirl; it is made clear that Supergirl has recently been vanquished.

6) We are reminded of Superman's oath not to kill.

7) Superman and Lois Lane have a conversation immediately before the ultimate showdown.

8) As Superman prepares to use the machine that Brainiac 5 mentioned, the evil godlike opponent announces that he will destroy Superman.

9) Superman responds to the threat with "That's right" / "You're right about that" but it is an ironic response; Superman does not believe that the villain is right, but that he himself will vanquish the villain definitively rather than vice versa.

10) Superman delivers the fatal blow to the villain, and the villain is destroyed.

11) Even though the godlike evil villain is destroyed, Superman now faces a threat to his continued existence.

That's a very specific list of events and situations. Do you know in which story those events occur? Trick question. Substory S – every one those details – occurs during the end of Final Crisis and Substory S – every one those details – also occurs during the end of Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" This is not a coincidence. At the final showdown, even the page layout matches, closely. Click to zoom in on how the climactic scenes align.

That illustrates how points 8, 9, and 10 line up on a single page, but alignments between the two stories go back to the first scene of FC #6, when Brainiac 5 shows Superman the Miracle Machine, mirroring the way in WHTTMOT, Brainiac 5 gave Superman a statuette with the Phantom Zone projector. The alignment between the two stories is so detailed that in neither one does Brainiac 5 give Superman the machine, and this is highlighted with the dialogue in FC when Brainiac 5 says, "Look at it, Superman! Just look!" In WHTTMOT, Lois Lane similarly tells Superman, regarding Brainiac 5's gift, "Take another look at it, Superman! Look at what it's holding!"

The stories align in far more ways than could possibly be coincidental, taking us from Brainiac 5 showing Superman a machine, "Look at it, Superman!", to a conversation with Lois Lane, Captain Marvel trying to help, Superman's "That's right," and then the final zap of the colorfully glowing god-villain. Morrison obviously wrote many details into FC with Moore's story in mind.

The end of Final Crisis, with the Darkseid plot concluding and the Monitor plot coming to a head, is a response to, sequel to, and a rewrite of Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Morrison's handling of Substory S is key to understanding his intentions with the Monitor plot. By putting Superman in the same situation that Alan Moore put Superman in to end him, Grant Morrison shows us how the story should go – how Superman's story really goes.

Compare and Contrast

Given the great degree of similarity between Moore's and Morrison's versions of Substory S, we should pay attention to the differences between them, because therein is the heart of Morrison's message.

In Moore's story, Superman is isolated from his allies by a barrier. In Morrison's story, Superman bashes his way through the barrier with one punch at the end of FC #6. In Morrison's story, therefore, Superman has assistance from his allies, most notably Batman (who, inside the compound, had already shot Darkseid with Radion), the Flashes, Wonder Woman and even Luthor and Sivana.

In Moore's story, if Superman kills, he must renounce his superpowers and give up being Superman forever. FC has Darkseid articulate this, taunting Superman: "Kill me, Superman. Kill the frail old man [Turpin] upon whose soul Darkseid fed and fattened! How can you hurt a foe made of people? … Kill him. Kill me and you kill everything!" This is the predicament. Superman can physically kill Turpin's body, but then – because this is a remake of Moore's story – Superman would actually lose. But that's not how it goes, because Batman already fired a gunshot that specifically doomed Darkseid while leaving Turpin alive. And then the Flashes show up, bringing Death personified to take Darkseid out of Turpin. In Morrison's story, Superman is not alone, and the importance of alliance and loyalty is spelled out in Wally West's dialogue, "Think I'd leave you to do this on your own? Together, Barry! We're going in together and we're coming back together!" And so Batman, the Flashes, and then Wonder Woman all do their parts to reduce Darkseid to nothing more than a disembodied presence glowing like a neon sign that, as it happens, looks a bit like glowing Mxyzptlk in WHTTMOT.

In Moore's story, once Superman has beaten Mxyzptlk, he faces an even greater threat: Moore writing Superman into a self-defeating renunciation of himself and his powers. In Morrison's story, Mandrakk, representing Moore, shows up and demands that Superman give up and be devoured.

At this point, we can explain a few events in FC that happen so quickly that they seem incongruous with the narration. First, we see Supergirl slung over Ultraman's shoulder, though we never saw them fighting. Second, we see the Spectre and the Radiant (who excused themselves to go handle other business at the end of FC: Revelations) on the ground.  These jarringly abrupt appearances of Supergirl and the Spectre, both already defeated, translate directly onto the previous use of those characters by Moore. The almost bizarrely abrupt appearance of the vanquished Supergirl represents her bleak cameo in WHTTMOT, in which her then-recent death in Crisis on Infinite Earths was on Superman's mind when a much younger version of Supergirl visited him along with the Legion of Super-Heroes. It was to make these stories parallel that Morrison showed us Supergirl and not, say, Hourman or Alan Scott on Ultraman's shoulder, and why we didn't see Mandrakk and Ultraman defeat Supergirl in battle; Mandrakk was showing Superman his defeated cousin, but he didn't defeat her.

And, when Mandrakk arrives, he throws the Spectre and Radiant to the floor, and says that he "fed on these 'servants of God,' defenders of this universe. Drained now. Meaningless." That last word highlights that Mandrakk is not just some big, bad supervillain of the DCU; he's a writer who can make characters weak or meaningless. And why the Spectre? In ordinary terms, the Spectre is the most powerful character among DC heroes, almost impossible to defeat. But Alan Moore defeated the Spectre. He did this in Swamp Thing #50, when his Great Evil Beast drains the Spectre and leaves him lying limp on the ground. Compare the artwork. But for the addition of Final Crisis: Revelations' The Radiant, the art showing the Spectre prostate is similar in the two stories. As with Supergirl, the introduction of powerful characters already beaten comes across as jarring and unforgivably brief to a reader expecting conventional superhero storytelling. We see Supergirl and the Spectre already beaten because they were already beaten when Moore tried to kill off Superman.

But Final Crisis and the Monitor plot are not simply responses to one specific story. There are suggestive connections to other Moore stories. Captain Marvel, J'onn J'onzz, Green Lanterns, and Batman all have key roles in Twilight of the Superheroes. In that story, Superman thinks he can trust Captain Marvel, but near the end, he finds out that who he thought was Captain Marvel had actually been J'onn J'onzz the entire time; Superman and the Martian Manhunter fight until Superman kills the Martian, then a Green Lantern, Sodam Yat, kills Superman. Finally, it's revealed that Batman has been a key player in staging all of this bloodshed. In Final Crisis, Superman tells Mandrakk, "I counted on Captain Marvel of Earth-5 to come through." Earlier, Superman delivers the eulogy on Mars, beginning, "J'onn J'onzz was my friend. Always there, always strong, always reliable… He was someone I could confide in." Superman holds what seemed to have been Batman's body in body language recalling the Pietà. And finally, Green Lanterns are part of the cavalry who finally slay Mandrakk. Are these points all intended to address, very specifically, the beats in Moore's unpublished story? Maybe they're intended. On the other hand, if accidental, they highlight the striking difference between how Morrison writes the characters and how Moore does. In Morrison's version, the heroes trust one another, fight for one another, and believe in one another. In Moore's version, a physical barrier keeps them apart in one case, and their animosities lead them to a bloody massacre in the other. That sweeping difference is not accidental.

But the main characters in this final showdown are Superman and Mandrakk. Hearing Mandrakk's demand that he die, Superman says no. Then, using a power we've never known him to have before (shining light from his hands), Superman powers the Miracle Machine and wishes for "the best for everyone." Superman's allies, the Green Lanterns led by Hal Jordan and the Supermen of the Multiverse led by Captain Marvel of Earth-5 show up. Then, having heard Superman's wish, Nix Uotan arrives and – note the narration boxes – becomes the narrator of the rest of the story. Nix Uotan, the Monitor, represents the writer of this story, Grant Morrison, and declares, "This is between Monitors now," meaning that the fight is between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Uotan says, "Mandrakk! At my right hand stands Superman himself." "Right hand" is a possible pun on "write hand" and an indication that Superman and the writer stand allied against the threat.

The writer is infinitely powerful, so he summons an unbeatable team of heroes, including the vengeful angels of God, the Green Lanterns, the Supermen, the Zoo Crew of Captain Carrot (speaking of lighthearted storytelling), and the Forever People. Mandrakk recognizes Uotan and says, "My son?" which is a probable pun on "Morrison" being "Moore's son." Declaring "There is no limit to what I can do" (because he is, after all, the writer), Nix Uotan has his unbeatable team burn Ultraman and Mandrakk with heat vision and the Green Lanterns spike the vampire Mandrakk through the heart. Uotan tells Mandrakk and the now-skeletal Ultraman that the Multiverse has natural defenses that he cannot imagine: Superman's and his allies' goodness will not allow Alan Moore or any other writer to kill them off. End of story.

In summary, the climax of FC #6 and #7 shows events that closely parallel Moore's previous stories, particularly "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Regarded in 1986 as one of the greatest stories of all time, it did not, as Moore intended of that story, Watchmen, and Twilight of the Superheroes, spell the end of inspirational happy-ending superhero stories. The Monitor plot in Final Crisis was written, in large part, to rebut Moore's message and Moore's intentions, and the close parallels between Moore's and Morrison's scenes show us a large part of the meaning of Final Crisis in considerable detail, not as vague and open-ended as readers' analyses in the past saw it. However, the climax of the Monitor plot is only one part of the whole story, and with that in hand as a kind of Rosetta Stone, let's look at the whole Monitor plot to decipher all of Morrison's points.

The Monitor plot, Decoded

As the Alpha Lanterns seal off "New Earth" (which is Earth-0), looking down on it, the Monitors are on a still higher plane, looking down on them. Concerned about the loss of Earth-51 (off-screen, supposedly in Countdown, but we don't know what form of disaster Morrison actually had in mind), the Monitors repair the orrery of worlds (an orrery is, in its main sense, a moving model of the solar system). The loss of Earth-51 is really Rox Ogama's fault, but Ogama pretends to speak in Nix Uotan's defense. This scene is, first of all, a close parallel to Hal Jordan's trial by the Guardians. When Zillo Valla, via Rox Ogama, says that the Monitors have been contaminated by the life forms on the germ worlds, it may be that they got the idea of framing an innocent Monitor from the Alpha Monitors, whom they were just watching, and who were in the process of framing Jordan. However, Uotan lacks Jordan's grace, and actually gets punished, exiled to Earth-0.

Given what we learned about writers above, what does this mean? If we cram that storyline into the existing framework to fit the facts, we have Rox Ogama (Frank Miller and/or Doug Moench and others writing stories where our heroes become antiheroes and some heroes get ruined) bring us to a state where Nix Uotan (DC writers who celebrate the heroic nature of heroes) have trouble thriving, but Weeja Dell (Marvel writers like him) support him from afar. Clearly, Morrison chose the worlds of the Monitors with care, and in an interview, he found those choices "somehow appropriate." I think something like the above is Morrison's statement, but we don't get a lot of elaboration. In FC #2-4 all we see of the Monitor plot is a few panels that show Nix Uotan failing in his fast food job while he draws comics (Final Crisis itself; this is, for now, Grant Morrison) seeking a purpose. The good writer is out in the world, trying to learn from it, but not making clear progress.

We can also interpret Zillo Valla's comment that "Time has entered [their] timeless world. Beginnings and endings." Is it plausible that comic book writers once had no time in their lives, no secrets or lovers? No, I'm sure they had those in the Thirties. But what didn't have time, beginnings, or endings were the old-time stories. As I have discussed here, DC stories in the early days largely operated on cyclical time, with nothing much ever changing. It was a gradual process from about 1959 to 1969 in which the narrative shifted from cyclical to linear, culminating with marriages (first: Barry Allen), deaths (first: Ferro Lad) and growing up (first: Dick Grayson leaving for college). The stories suddenly had beginnings and endings. And with that, the world of DC stories became a place where heroes could die, introducing mature storytelling, perhaps, but also creating a place among writers for would-be Mandrakks.

Then, in FC #5, Nix Uotan is thrown in a cell with a few fellow outcasts, people who aren't susceptible to the Anti-Life Equation. Somehow, by seeing things differently, by believing in a better world (inspired by Weeja Dell = Marvel?), Uotan and his fellow outcasts (one of whom is Metron in disguise) are capable of extraordinary things, like beating the record at Rubik's Cube, and their imagination seems to have great power. This begins the Fifth World and makes Nix Uotan a super-capable writer, the Judge of All Evil, who sees comic book panels all around him in 360° vision. This seems to show that some writers, Morrison included, just get it in a way that the people caught up in the storytelling of Moore don't. Comic books aren't about trampled rights, torture, and degradation. The real world has plenty of that for its outcasts. Comic books are about the way out for the dreamers and believers in heroes.

Within the pages of FC, this paves the way for Substory S, in which Moore's temporary victory over heroism eventually fails. And when it's over, the leaders of the Monitors who sought to exile Uotan (writers preferring heroism) now take direction from them and decide to let the heroes be heroes, without writers trampling them as Moore and Miller both did to Superman, in order to make their own fame.

Now if this is the story of writers, it covers an era from Moore's heyday around 1987 to 2008, by which time Morrison and Johns had brought back Silver Age greatness, with the JLA and Batman each getting Morrison's treatment, and Green Lantern getting Johns', with the Barry Allen Flash returning in FC itself.

Back at the beginning, Libra explained that the superheroes win "because they truly believe their actions are in accordance with a higher moral order." Moore's and Miller's brand of storytelling took away the higher moral order, and this not only meant that the superheroes could lose (literally die, as Moore wished) but the whole superhero comics industry could lose. The Final Crisis is about the superheroes facing this threat, from writers (and editors and fans). But in Final Crisis itself, we only see a single instance of the threat, with the heroes prevailing between 1986 to 2008. What about the far future? That was the topic of Superman Beyond, which in Superman perception took place during FC, is actually set logically long past it, in an indefinite future yet to come.

In Brightest Day: Green Lantern(s) in Final Crisis

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Darkseid plot implicitly breaks the heroes (superheroes, detectives, and government agents alike) into different groups, with the Big Five standing out as the only superheroes to strike effective blows against the big villain(s). There's an asymmetry, though, in that Green Lantern and his allies ultimately play no role in Darkseid's defeat, but show up to deliver the final blow to Mandrakk. This violation of the pattern, I think, reflects the particular publication history of Hal Jordan.

Hal Jordan, as noted earlier, has a history of getting into trouble with the Guardians. This cycle repeated over time and escalated, with Hal being punished at reduced powers on Earth (in the acclaimed 1970s run of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams), sent into exile in space (in the early 1980s, making him absent from Crisis on Infinite Earths), and later a murderous villain in the guise of Parallax, ultimately killed off and removed from the DC lineup. Hal got the full Alan Moore treatment, deconstructed and eliminated.

But it didn't last. Hal returned to life and the DC lineup a few years before Final Crisis, and in the hands of Geoff Johns, rapidly became a top seller, with the Green Lantern title and its related events contending, at least temporarily, with Batman and Superman for the most popular DC character. And this, I would offer, is why Hal earned a special role in facing off against Mandrakk. Hal's story, as well as any character's, showed that Alan Moore's thesis that optimistic superheroes had run their course was wrong. Ultimately, Hal makes a better hero than he does a villain. And the character who had lost his solo title a few times and was completely killed off came back to show that his story as a hero is one that people want to read. When the Green Lanterns are almost back to Earth, they see Monitor ships representing the higher plane of writers. Hal tells Guy, "Whatever they are, they're our way in!" Ultimately, writers put Hal back into the story, and that was his victory.

Another possible tidbit: In Superman Beyond, there is a panel that summarizes, with one picture, the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The superheroes we see include Superman, Dawnstar, and Hal Jordan. Hal didn't actually appear in COIE, a fact made more striking when one considers the huge number of obscure characters who did appear. The panel in Superman Beyond may be a glitch; then again, it may be a pointed retcon. We could take that panel as an indication that the early, 1980s, phase of Hal's fall from grace didn't happen, and that from here on out, we can consider him to have taken part in that huge adventure after all.

Story about Story

As an overarching observation about the style of Final Crisis, note the rather intense nestedness of the storytelling. Dan Turpin is telling a story. Libra tells a story. Investigating the Orion crime scene, we have about a half a dozen characters trying to tell a story. And so on. In the climax of FC #7, Wonder Woman and Supergirl tell the story of FC itself to children waiting to be shrunk and saved. Speaking through the fourth wall, the incredibly miscellaneous quartet of Cassie Sandsmark, Red Devil, John Stewart, and a Morrison invention named Iman ("magnet") talk to us about Superman. In a world where superheroes inspire us, Superman inspires them. He's the superheroes' superhero.

And Lois Lane tells a story that appears in narration boxes on twelve different pages of FC #7. After that, Nix Uotan takes over. And do you know what story first had Lois Lane telling a story? Action Comics #1. That's the beginning. Nix Uotan, an avatar for Morrison, finished Final Crisis #7. This is the story of all our stories. And what it said along the way was that the best heroes come out on top. In fact, we see that Lois Lane's last story ends up following Batman into the past, so that he can bring the superhero symbols, his own included, into the future. This is yet another time loop, and a time loop is a story that has no ending. So the heroes live on forever and ever, in this case and many, many others. But a sideplot features a more universal story, one that goes beyond, and focuses on Superman. It's Superman Beyond.

Superman Beyond

As things are going almost literally to hell on Earth, Superman is called away by Zillo Valla who, if we interpret correctly, represents "dark" stories that mean well, like Batman: Red Rain, but that turn our heroes into monsters. See, there's a threat from Mandrakk that might destroy everything, Lois Lane included. And the threat in the real world is, nobody's going to like the comic books anymore if you kill all the good heroes, who brought them to the comic books in the first place.

And Superman Beyond leaves the comic book world of Earth-0. It's about something else, the higher level where the stories are stories. And there's not just one Superman; there are the Superman of one comic book company (Fawcett's Captain Marvel), and the Superman of another (Charlton's Captain Atom, here looking more like Dr. Manhattan in yet another Alan Moore nod), A Nazi Earth-10 (AKA, Earth X, the Roman numeral for 10) Superman who speaks German, and the evil anti-Superman Ultraman from Earth-3. These represent many instances of the Platonic idea of Superman.

The problem is, the echo of the harm that Alan Moore has done to the comics is threatening them all. This destroyer, Echo of Midnight, may destroy many pitifully vulnerable worlds like Earth-13 and Earth-20, later shown in Multiversity. The Supermen dump Mandrakk's echo on the destroyed Earth-51 and then go off-path to Limbo.

Limbo, as we can tell by the cast of characters, is where the characters who aren't being written about anymore end up. For Superman to end up here suggests that Superman is facing, eventually, the threat of being killed off by the ruin of heroic superhero comics.

Eventually, Captain Adam realizes that Limbo not being a place, the rules that would destroy Superman and Ultraman if they touched don't apply because nothing can happen. Merging them, we get for the first time the Platonic Superman, an invention of Dax Novu, and if Novu was the early Alan Moore, then I'm not sure how that fits into the comic history timeline; Moore's work on Supreme came later. Perhaps Dax Novu stands for all good, pre-Crisis writers, and then Dax Novu's creation of the Thought Robot Superman could be anyone's from Jerry Siegel onward.

Though Final Crisis #7 gets the last word, the battle between Superman and Mandrakk here is the real climax, because it's not Superman surviving one writer or another, it's the idea of Superman defeating the idea of killing him. If ever anyone wants to eliminate Superman, they're going to lose, because, as Zillo Valla (clearly not simply Doug Moench or Frank Miller) tells us, "the story of a child rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet" is "a better story, one created to be unstoppable, indestructible!" Being reminded of this, Mandrakk destroys Zillo Valla. In the real world, this means that in trying to destroy heroic superheroes, Moore and his ilk would destroy the darker, horror kind of comics that he likes, to his own chagrin, yet Superman, a better idea, and his target, will survive! This battle isn't taking place in 1986, 2008, or even 2017. It's taking place in an indefinite future. Always, Superman will be threatened by people who don't like the idea of him. Always, he will prevail and continue to be a story that inspires people. This is his ultimate, infinite, "beyond" victory, but it was published before, and sets the stage for, the victory over Moore and WHTTMOT's Substory S, that is the climax of Final Crisis.

At the end of Superman Beyond, Superman gets what he was looking for. It turns out that he can save Lois Lane just by being Superman, because that's what Superman does. He answers Mandrakk and Alan Moore that the story of Superman doesn't end (see below): It is to be continued.

He ends the story with a wink, which readers recall from the end of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" In fact, the wink is an older Superman story motif, primarily from animated/live media including the George Reeves TV series, the 1966 Filmation animated series, and originating, apparently, with 1940s Fleischer animation.

The Infinite Book!

In Limbo, the Supermen encounter an infinite book, one with every story in it. This is a wonderful cosmic idea, although, alas, one that the theory of computer science shows to be impossible. This is the subject of one additional likely reference to Alan Moore. Moore's cosmology of League of Extraordinary Gentleman is a world in which every story ever told is true. The connection between these two is suggested most strongly when Mandrakk, near the end of Superman Beyond #2, says, in the first panel of his last appearance, "The whole of existence in a single book." This is a strange point for Mandrakk to emphasize as he speaks to the camera. Time and time again, when a Morrison story presents a character uttering a nonsequitur, or an unexpected cameo, this is a clue of significance that deserves careful attention. In this case, it seems odd that Mandrakk would find the book to be a powerful weapon, though we may ponder if it is; I suspect that the significance here is likely yet another Mandrakk-Moore connection.

At the end of Superman Beyond #1, Ultraman reveals that the infinite book has an ending, and in the end, evil wins! I have to say, I found that pretty chilling as a reader. This book seems to carry the weight of authority, like the book of Destiny in older comics, and if it ends with evil, wow, our story is headed somewhere bad, isn't it? Ultraman sure thinks so. Superman says it merely sounds like a challenge to him.

As I finished my first and second and tenth readings of Superman Beyond, I never found a resolution to my concern. Obviously, we don't see evil win, so it seems as though the matter is simply ignored. It isn't. It's addressed on the last page, impossible to miss, in huge letters. Superman's answer to Mandrakk, and Grant Morrison's answer on Superman's behalf to Alan Moore, is "To Be Continued." Superman stories don't end. In Superman's universe, it is always to be continued, and we never get to the end of the book. But if we did, sure, evil would win in the end. That's how that book must end. But Superman's book loops on forever. And this is why, in interviews, Morrison can say that when you understand Final Crisis, you'll see why it is the final one. This is about how the heroes and their end interrelate. And the way they interrelate is that the big ones, at least Superman if not the entire Big Five, are all "to be continued."

In fact, the first word we read from the infinite book is "Previously!" That's not how a story starts; it's how a story continues. Put that and Superman's epitaph together, and you get a serial format, beginning each issue with "Previously" and ending each with "To be continued." Superman's story goes on. They never end. And, as Morrison defines Mandrakk in an interview:

"Mandrakk is actually the ultimate evil where there's no hope. The grave. He's entropy, I suppose. No matter how hard you try, this entity will consume the universe and you'll be sucked into the gaping, bulging Black Hole of Mandrakk."

By maintaining hope, by never entering the grave, by never being consumed, Superman thereby beats Mandrakk, not just the Alan Moore of 1986 but whatever other Mandrakks arise in the future. He emerges triumphant from every crisis, and that is the story of the Final Crisis.

To Be Continued

Since 2009, DC's continuity has been reconfigured twice. Final Crisis is well in the rearview mirror and its yearlong tour as DC's most talked about event has long since past. It stuck in my mind the whole time. And it felt like I didn't get it, and I didn't read anything suggesting that anyone else really got it. I hope this analysis, years after the fact, revives the story in at least some readers' minds, and enters the scattered trail of blog posts and sub-reddits to transform it into a story that people get, and that people enjoy to its fullest.

I believe that people who have seen the alignment of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" and Final Crisis will not be able to think of this story the same way afterwards. I invite people to read Moore's story again, then read Final Crisis again, and see if it isn't a new experience. I hope that people who shrugged off Mandrakk's bizarre appearance the first time around will see it now as an essential part of the story, the main part of the story, and see how Superman and his allies defeat Mandrakk as a wonderful victory. And if a story that ended nine years ago can enter readers' minds again, that would really prove the main thesis of the Monitor plot, that superhero stories don't really end, and that they are always To Be Continued.