Doomsday Clock: Carver Colman

A significant degree of screentime in Doomsday Clock has been devoted to the integration of a sideplot (Carver Colman). Dr. Manhattan has indicated that Carver Colman figured large in his thoughts. What role does the Colman sideplot play in relation to the main story?

Colman is tied directly to the main plot. He lived in the New 52 DCU timeline in which Doomsday Clock begins. He was born circa 1912, moved to Hollywood as teenagr in 1928, and starred in the Nathaniel Dusk films from 1943 to 1954, dying in a mysterious murder that mirrors the original Nite Owl's death in Watchmen. In the meantime, he had at least one encounter with Dr. Manhattan that significantly altered that being's perspectives because Carver Colman "was once full of hope" before dying.

I emphasize dates because there are at least three significant connections to be made that have not, so far as I have seen, been made online yet. Two of these involve the McCarthy "Red Scare" witch hunt that has been intertwined with the Justice Society backstory since 1979 and other ways in which Colman's timeline intersects with the DCU superheroes'.

1. Colman's death occurs in the early hours of June 9, 1954. This is not an arbitrary date. In the real world, an Army attorney named Joseph Welch had an encounter with Senator Joseph McCarthy on that date which famously ended public and political support for McCarthy. The pivotal quotation, which many have heard in Welch's Iowan accent culminated with, " Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

We know that Colman's life intersected with the Red Scare because Ring Lardner Jr., the screenwriter of his third movie – a real man from the real world – was part of the Hollywood Ten, a group that was prosecuted criminally and blacklisted by Hollywood for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Lardner returned to screenwriting decades later and won an Oscar in 1970.)

We know from discussion in Johnny Thunder's retirement home that Colman is remembered as a deviant by some and a hero by others. What was so polarizing?

The timing suggests that Colman's "hope" was extinguished just hours before McCarthyism was otherwise eliminated. He had eaten dinner with Hollywood power brokers shortly before his murder. Presumably, they learned that he had views that were dangerous to them during the reign of McCarthyism. It seems likely that he died on the last possible day before his views, sympathetic to Communism or, at least, hostile to McCarthyism, would have become acceptable. Colman's death seems to be a key trigger for Dr. Manhattan, making him experience feelings, such as he has them, of futility and abandoning hope, a path that has taken him into encounters with Firestorm and, eventually, Superman, with a dangerous disregard for the worthwhileness of human life.

Perhaps incidental to the story, Colman's death reminds me, in certain ways, of that of George Reeves, the actor who once played Superman on TV. Like Colman, Reeves was a Hollywood actor who played a hero, and after socializing with other Hollywood figures, and died somewhat mysteriously, with an official ruling of suicide but some suspicion that the shooting was actually a murder.

2. Dr. Manhattan's brief biography of Alan Scott highlights that Scott spoke before HUAC (another arm of McCarthyism, although McCarthy was a member of the Senate, not the House, and did not belong to HUAC) on January 8, 1950 and "refuses to implicate anyone in his employ." Aficionados of JSA lore may recall that Scott and the JSA spoke before HUAC and refused to cooperate with them, and at that point retired from their superhero identities, another loss of hope.

However, this is not the same event. Back in 1979, a story in Adventure Comics #466 explained the backstory of the Justice Society, who had retired before Jay Garrick met Barry Allen in Flash #123. (To be precise, Jay claims to have retired in 1949.) According to Adventure #466, the JSA appears, led by Alan Scott, before HUAC on October 13, 1951, and rather than unmask themselves, leave the proceedings and retire from their superhero roles.

The January 8 event, however, took place over a year earlier. This is not the hearing involving the JSA, but rather one involving the professional role of Alan Scott as a businessman, and it is depicted in the 1993 Elseworlds work The Golden Age with the same date. It is not clear if the events, in Dr. Manhattan's timeline, are the same as depicted in The Golden Age, but it is, strikingly, this meeting before HUAC that Dr. Manhattan cites, not the one involving the JSA. In the new timeline, Dr. Manhattan visits Alan Scott's grave on January 1950, ten years after Scott's death and at the time he would have – but in the new timeline – meet with HUAC. Subtly, then, Dr. Manhattan is twice motivated by events involving McCarthyism.

Why did Dr. Manhattan kill Alan Scott? These details imply that he was profoundly disturbed by the outcome of the January 8, 1950 meeting, but it is not clear why, and we can't be sure that the events of The Golden Age, leading to a showdown with the Ultra-Humanite, are part of the timeline in question. It is probably impossible for us to guess why Alan Scott's testimony so disturbed Dr. Manhattan, but it seems likely that some unanticipated consequence of his heroic stance led to the defeat of "hope" and that Dr. Manhattan canceled the entire timeline by killing Alan Scott, just to prevent that outcome. In the new timeline, Colman Carver becomes a new source of hope before he dies. And now Superman plays that role. Maybe Superman will demonstrate hope that cannot be defeated, and redeem the DCU for Dr. Manhattan.

What is Veidt's plan? The cover of Doomsday Clock #8 shows Veidt manipulating Superman and Dr. Manhattan as marionettes. The best we could say for Veidt is that he is orchestrating the meeting between them because it will end with Dr. Manhattan concluding his experiments in the DCU, and will lead to Dr. Manhattan returning to the Watchmen Universe to save it. This would amount to Superman providing the hope that Alan Scott, in an earlier time and earlier timeline, could not.

Doomsday Clock #10 vs. Showcase #4

3. The cover of Doomsday Clock #10 shows a boy on a farm whose mailbox reads "Colman." The boy is reading All Star Comics #3, the comic book issue that in our world introduced the Justice Society. However, this has a major twist: Dr. Manhattan is seated at the table with the Justice Society. Obviously, no such event ever took place in any DC timeline that we've ever seen. A cover is not bound to narrate fact, but this cover is asserting something – what is it?

I looked at this cover many times, supposing that the blonde boy there was a young Carver Colman, but the timeline doesn't fit. Colman would have been 28 years old in 1940 and working as a man in Hollywood, while the boy in the picture is much younger. Although timeline manipulation is part of the story, it seems that the boy is not Colman. It is, more likely, Barry Allen. Compare that cover with the first two panels depicting Barry Allen back in Showcase #4. Though Barry here is a man, not a boy, and the details are provided in two panels rather than one, it shows similar composition and intent, with the "real" superheroes appearing fictional on a comic book cover, and Jay Garrick part of the cover in both cases. However, given that Barry Allen's youth has remained fixed since 1956, we can no longer posit that Barry was alive and reading comic books in 1940, so it could be that the Allen boy seen here is not Barry but Barry's father or even grandfather. That would match the claim made by Wally that the watch was once owned by Barry's grandfather.

This scene likely could not have happened in any of the timelines we're familiar with but it does assert a few remarkable things. Strikingly, it suggests that in at least one timeline, Dr. Manhattan tried to "find a place among them" by serving as a member of the Justice Society. One imagines that this may have gone badly, with the squeaky-clean and optimistic Golden Age Heroes clashing with Dr. Manhattan, a clash that may have ended with his murdering them and terminating that timeline. However, that is, given the previous discussion, likely not the reason why Alan Scott and the JSA were eliminated from the New 52 timeline. That is due to some combination of Alan Scott's HUAC testimony, Johnny Thunder using his Thunderbolt "trying to protect them" from their testimony before McCarthy (who, again, was not a member of HUAC; this detail may be a mistake), and Dr. Manhattan going back to July 1940 and killing Alan Scott.

However, it does suggest, strikingly, a connection between Barry Allen and Carver Colman. There may be no way to make the timelines work nicely anymore and match the current Barry Allen to any kid who would have been alive and reading comic books before 1950, but there is one more reason to suspect a significant connection between Carver Colman and Barry Allen – a watch.

One detail of Colman's death is that his watch was missing. A watch is, of course, the metaphor that runs throughout Watchmen, beginning with the first syllable of its title. It is also what we see first and last in DC Rebirth, but the watch there, as signified by the inscription, "Every Second is A Gift," belongs to Wally West. That watch, or so Wally believes, belonged to Barry Allen's grandfather. The cover and the "two" watches suggest a link between Colman and the past of Barry Allen (and further, on to Wally West). Furthermore, as Colman's family is from Indiana, as the farm location reinforces, that provides a plausible geographical link as well to the pasts of the Allen and West families, who are Midwestern.

Additionally, Colman is tied plausibly to the JSA and Golden Age superheroes, and could even be one of them, living a life where timeline manipulation, say by Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt, may have placed him safely in a life where the HUAC showdown in 1951 would not affect him. Because his bio associated the phrase "tick tock" with him, and a fascination with clocks, I repeat my earlier supposition that Carver Colman is Rex Tyler, "Tick Tock" Tyler, the Hour-Man, hidden in an alternative life. Born in 1912, he would have been 28 in 1940, a fine age for a scientist–superhero to begin his career. Sadly, both of his lives turned out poorly, from some level of analysis, with Hourman retiring due to HUAC pressure in 1951 and, in the new timeline, Carver Colman being murdered due to political reasons in 1954. Dr. Manhattan is aware of this, was physically present in the life of Colman, and feels hopelessness due to the poor ends that Tyler-Colman inevitably met.

This would provide an interesting additional thread of connection, for a chain of continuity involving time-based heroes if Hourman passed a watch to Barry Allen who passed it to Wally West. Time and watches/clocks thus serve as a symbol, as they did in Watchmen, but here the generations of superhero become the "hours" that tick by: Golden Age, Silver Age, and then on to the generation of Wally West (though he debuted in the Silver Age).

Furthermore, Colman had an association with John Law, the Golden Age superhero known as Tarantula, who was present for the culminating battle in January 1950 in The Golden Age. Law was a writer in his original formulation and, in the end-notes of DC #3, a screenwriter, and therefore also plausibly entangled in the Hollywood-HUAC mess that brought down many real people as well as some in this story.

I don't think the entire story and reveals to come can be guessed with certainty now, particularly as there are timelines involved that we've never seen, but the Carver Colman story will take, at least, the loose outlines of this form, and in so doing provides thematic support to the main plot, and even a direct role in the JSA-HUAC-timeline part of the story that's largely been hidden from us.

The case of Carver's biography aside, Carver Colman is tied to a completely different sideplot – the plot of The Adjournment, the Nathaniel Dusk movie whose action has been shown to us directly in several scenes. The plot of a story within a story has no logical requirement to correspond to the main story in any way, but it is not for nothing that Johns has chosen to devote a few pages. In my next post, I'll ask what roleThe Adjournment  plays in Doomsday Clock.

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Final Crisis Retro Review Part II: The Darkseid Plot

Overview

The simplest superhero stories have this plot: There is a villain on the loose, and only the superhero is able to stop them. The villain evades capture long enough to keep things interesting, then eventually loses. Slightly more complicated is this: The villains get organized, and start by attacking the heroes first, to try to clear their path to victory. After some initial success, the villains still lose.

Final Crisis shows a world in which the villains win – really win – and take control of the world: Not just the most powerful villains, but the worst ones, dedicated not to mere wealth, but to absolute power and absolute evil. As in many older superhero stories, the villains begin by subduing the superheroes.

It's a vision we've seen before. Most literally, Grant Morrison had a subplot about Darkseid conquering the world in his JLA story "Rock of Ages." There are few literary works more compelling than George Orwell's "1984," in which the politics of control meld with science fiction and subject the Earth's population to control over thoughts as well as over their physical bodies. Orwell's novel had its own forebears including the historical example of the Nazi domination of Europe and Stalinist domination of Russia and Eastern Europe.

Darkseid was, from Kirby's original work, deliberately patterned on Hitler. Final Crisis shows what happens when Darkseid wins, making Darkseid's Apokoliptan regime an analogue for Nazi Germany and the Darkseid-occupied Earth an analogue for Nazi-occupied Europe. A few weakened and isolated superheroes and other characters fight back, serving as an analogue for, say, the French Resistance, until finally the A-list superheroes retake the field and wipe Darkseid's rule away in a matter of minutes; here, those superheroes serve much the same role that the U.S., U.K., and Canada played in liberating Western Europe.

In FC, the bad guys do more than conquer half the world; they get virtually everything, and it is nearly to the point of destroying all reality. There is resistance remaining led by some scattered superhero groups under Mister Terrific, Alan Scott and Black Canary, by various governmental agencies, by a few survivors in Japan led by Shilo Norman and Sonny Sumo, and a couple of upstart supervillains. None of them stand much of a chance. Then, one at a time, DC's biggest heroes face off against Darkseid and take him down like a quintet of bowling balls hitting one pin.

The Darkseid plot of Final Crisis is, essentially, a very common, simple story with all of the variables set to their maximum values: The worst villains do the worst things and inflict the worst damage before the best heroes set things right with the best tools in the best way. This is a superhero-vs-supervillain story refined to its purest essence.

Themes

There are several interesting motifs common to past Morrison stories and his major influences shape the Darkseid plot:

• A time loop: Darkseid dies sometime around 2008 but falls into the past and is reborn on Earth for Seven Soldiers around 2005.

• A second time loop: Darkseid fires a bullet in FC #7 that goes into the past, exploding in Orion's brain in FC #1, then burying itself under the sidewalk 50 years in the past. John Stewart gives it to Batman, who uses it to shoot Darkseid in FC #6.

• A third time loop: Kamandi tells Anthro that people in the future will need the symbols he got from Metron. Thereby, Anthro writes them on a cave wall, and those symbols are ultimately passed on to save the day in the Final Crisis.

• A fourth time loop: Batman appears in the cave way back in Anthro's time, bringing with him superhero emblems that he turns into cave art, to put the superhero idea into humanity

• A fifth (!) time loop: Brainiac Five gives Superman knowledge of the Miracle Machine, which was based on the diagram on Metron's costume all the way back in FC #1. Superman takes that into the LSH's past, his own present, and uses it to save the future.

• Sneak attack: After the September 11 attacks, several Morrison stories feature villains making a sneak attack that circumvents defenses rather than a full frontal attack that tries to overwhelm the superheroes by force. Darkseid builds an organization that establishes his presence on Earth, recruiting allies and planting spies, before covertly taking out key threats and finally assaulting Earth's freedom in one, swift blow.

• A scattered team: In Seven Soldiers, the heroes are never present in the same place at the same time. This is also true in the victory of the biggest heroes at the end of FC, with Batman, the two Flashes, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern making their attacks in that order.

• References to unheralded stories from the Silver Age, including The Human Flame (1959), the Miracle Machine (1968), Superman making the entire world's population safe while a catastrophe is resolved comes from "The Man Who Murdered the Earth!" (1972), Libra (1974), the Flash winning a race for his life with Superman as the finish line (1977, more details below) and the Manhunters as a corps of pre-Green Lantern servants of the Guardians (1977), now re-imagined as Alpha Lanterns.

As the ultimate DC superhero–supervillain story, the Darkseid plot it gives us start-to-finish, alpha-to-omega, big-picture views of superhero history organized in multiple fashions:

• Publication history: FC has multiple categories of hero, representing different eras of comic books, including ordinary detectives like Dan Turpin, Golden Age heroes who came and went, government agents like Checkmate, Kirby's gods, second-tier superheroes, and the first-tier superheroes. Their success in opposing Darkseid correlates closely with their prominence in DC history. So, Batman strikes a crucial blow whereas the vastly powerful but never highly popular Martian Manhunter dies.

• Sources of superpowers: Extra significance is given to magic words, magic signs, and will-powered machines. While many comics accept these old ideas with no fanfare, FC presents the ideas over and over as though they are incredible and new.

• Past to future: FC spans human history from Anthro to Kamandi, and they are used as bookends who bracket the larger story, and briefly meet.

The Attack

Darkseid's attack is multipronged:

Preparation

• Glorious Godfrey is an African-American televangelist undermining public sentiment.

• Mokkari and Simyan are creating genetically engineered versions of soldiers based on tigers.

• Granny Goodness possesses an Alpha Lantern, Kraken.

• Desaad possesses Mary Marvel.

• Mad Hatter technology is used to build mind-control helmets.

• The Dark Side Club, as shown as the evil force in Seven Soldiers Mister Miracle subplot, is kidnapping children and subjecting them to the Anti-Life Equation.

• Libra recruits supervillains as a prophet converting them to a religion of crime.

Initial Strike

• Orion is killed by a gunshot from the future.

• Libra kills Martian Manhunter to impress supervillains.

• John Stewart is attacked as he investigates Orion's murder scene.

• Hal Jordan is implanted with a suppressor chip to hide Granny's presence.

• Hal Jordan is framed for Orion's death.

• Batman is subdued and captured by Granny / Kraken.

• Lois Lane is injured critically, forcing Superman to remain at her bedside.

Takeover

• The Anti-Life Equation is broadcast globally, turning most people into slaves.

• Mary Marvel attacks Wonder Woman, infecting her with Morticoccus.

• Armies of Justifiers and other Darkseid slaves try to finish his conquest.

The Long Story

As I noted in my Kirby Fourth World retro review, a lingering mystery regarding the entire body of work is: Why Earth? With such a cosmic scope, why would gods trouble themselves so much with one planet? Morrison gives us a long story in which this makes sense, a literally biblical, literally cinematic story sketched in extremely broad strokes, in which Earth has always had the potential to produce the gods who will surpass the Fourth World's evil gods.

Metron arrives in his chair before Anthro, the first boy, and plays a role synthesized from many different myths: This is Early Man receiving technology from the aliens (2001: A Space Odyssey); this is Prometheus receiving fire from the gods; this is the angel telling shepherds that the savior will be born.

Metron says, "Have no fear. Here is knowledge." That line closely echoes the New Testament's angel visiting shepherds, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people." (Luke 2:8-20). Metron gives Anthro fire and two symbols. The symbol on Metron's forehead is a vaccine against the Anti-Life Equation. The symbol on Metron's chest is a diagram for the Miracle Machine and we see it directly in the design when Brainiac Five shows it to Superman in the 31st Century. Fire is to Anthro's people precisely what the idea of tools is to the primitive men in 2001 and they promptly use it to win a battle while Metron's other knowledge plays a role, like the spacecraft in 2001 in the distant future.

Kamandi speaks across time to Anthro, telling him that they need the symbols. Thereafter, humans on Earth have the promise of future greatness. Darkseid's final battle for domination of the universe therefore takes place on Earth, and his forces show an awareness of this when Granny asks, on Oa, if the central power battery is the gift that Metron gave humanity. Ultimately, we see heroes born on Earth, plus Superman who was raised there, as the humans raised above gods who are the ultimate winners.

Liberation

The timeline isn't very precise, but Darkseid's forces control the Earth for "a few weeks" and then, from a position of absolute victory, he's taken down and out in what must be a matter of mere minutes by DC's A-list superheroes, who not only defeat him, but also erase him and his deleterious effects on the world completely. There are essentially five DC superheroes who are winners in this story while all the rest – the Hawks, the Atoms, Green Arrow – are B-listers who make a good show but don't quite measure up. Of the Big Five, four smack down Darkseid while the fifth eliminates Mandrakk. Those five, the top tier of DC superheroes are:

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern.

It's a little more complicated that that because we have, in the end, multiple Supermen, two Flashes, and multiple Green Lanterns. But if we see each hero as a "brand," those are the five brands that come out on top, the winners.

Contained within FC's main plot are subplots for each of the Big Five. The obvious intent here is to give each of them a plot that is very refined as a sort of pure, refined version of the character's stories over the years. These are highly personalized subplots: We don't see, for example, Wonder Woman on trial and the Flash pulling something out of a utility belt. Morrison puts the Big Five into cliched versions of their most stereotypical stories because these are, ultimately, what made those characters so endearing and so popular. The plots are as follows:

• Wonder Woman is made captive, which renders her helpless. When she is freed, she turns the tide, in turn making the villain her captive. "It was Wonder Woman who bound Darkseid's body. With her lasso of truth, she chained the god of evil. And no one was hurt." What a beautiful line, particularly the final note, for a character associated as much with love and peace as with being a warrior. What that line communicates, poetically, is that Darkseid's hypnotic grip over 3 billion people was commanded to end by Wonder Woman with her lasso – a peaceful solution that nobody else could have brought about. We also see her comforting children both before and after the main action of the story. Though she spends most of the story as one of Darkseid's Furies, her star turn as one of the heroes saving the day is inspired.

• Batman is also made captive, and is put into a slow-acting death trap, from which he escapes to rain hell from inside the villain's own headquarters. Mokkari and Simyan attempt to clone Batman and make an army of Batman warrior, but Batman uses his own memories as a weapon, punishing the Lump, who is psychically transferring Batman's thoughts to the clones, and causing the clones to perish spontaneously. Batman psychically convinces the Lump to set Batman free, and then Batman uses Mokkari's abandoned gun to confront Darkseid. Pulling the almost ridiculously right thing out of his utility belt at exactly the right time, Batman uses the bullet that killed Orion to shoot Darkseid. The purest historical example of this ridiculous rightness of Batman's accessing a gadget might have been in the movie Batman (1966) when Adam West deals with a shark by pulling a can of Bat Shark Repellent out of his utility belt. As elaborated upon in Morrison's issues of Batman, Batman shooting Darkseid literally changes the entire nature of heroes facing evil. We can contrast this Fifth World event with the Fourth World confrontation between Mister Miracle and Boss Dark Side, in which Darkseid shoots Shilo Norman in the head, calling that his "first and last lesson in cosmic Realpolitik." In Batman's version, it's Darkseid getting shot (after, quite pleasingly, Batman cuts Darkseid off with, "Do I make myself clear?") and Batman gets his revenge for the month he'd spent in the Evil Factory. "Gotcha."

• As revealed on the last page of DC Universe #0, Barry Allen returns from the dead and his passage through sci fi / spiritual realms gives him knowledge regarding Darkseid's plan. Allen has to outrace death, and lead the Black Racer to a time and a place where death personified claims Darkseid instead of himself – killing two birds with one stone. Of course, it's no surprise that the Flash prevail by winning a race. In the execution (pun intended), this may be a conscious or subconscious reference by Morrison to a Silver Age story in Flash #249 in which a deadly super-powerful disembodied fist is following Flash, keeping pace with him, and will inevitably kill him when he tires and it catches him. Allen leads the fist to Metropolis, runs (vibrating at super speed) right through Clark Kent, and allows the fist to punch Superman harmlessly, and thus ending the threat. The tactics are very similar to the race that ends in Final Crisis #7, also running right by/through Superman and (look closely) through Darkseid so that the Black Racer continues the death of Darkseid set in motion by Batman's gunshot in the previous issue. Flash's race is also one of community, having been begun with Jay Garrick, continued with Wally West, having a break so that Barry can reunite with Iris, and is his reintroduction to the Justice League as Superman sees the red blur and comments, "Barry Allen?" A particularly nice ambiguous line is when the Flashes' arrival is announced with, "And then it seemed as if the sun had risen in the West." (as if the son had risen in [Wally] West). As with all other aspects of Final Crisis, the Flashes' race is not a twisty or arbitrary plot but simple, even clichè, and even predictable. When one reader posted on a message board that they wondered, after Final Crisis #2, what was coming next, I responded, "I know what's coming. The Black Racer's win-loss record in races is 9,378,621 to 0 but it's about to be 9,378,621 to 1 because now he's racing Barry #^!#!$& Allen." All of these superhero subplots, in isolation, were equally predictable if you knew that Morrison was giving us them at their most typical and finest.

• Going back to his original conception, three hallmarks of Hal Jordan are (1) Perpetually getting into trouble, (2) Fearlessness to the point of flippancy, (3) Winning effortlessly against impossible odds. While gods are dying, civilization is disintegrating, and Hal himself is framed for murder, Hal Jordan reacts to the Final Crisis like it's not even a big deal, telling Wonder Woman after his arrest, "I'll be fine." While even the other A-listers are battered, chased, enslaved, and besieged, Hal comfortably walks through the paces of his arrest and trial, knocks down one of the evil gods with a non-power-ring punch as the first significant win by any of the heroes, holds out his palm to get his power ring returned to him like a kid getting candy on Halloween, and shows up on Earth in time to strike the final winning blow. Hal's turnaround on Oa is so quick, so absolute, so effortless, I called it my second-favorite scene of the decade. As I note there, Hal manages to beat Kraken despite being the only person in the room who doesn't have a power ring and wins the same matchup that Batman had lost in FC #2. Hal's plan for what his strike force will do to Darkseid when they get to Earth is "kick his ass." He doesn't even need everyone's help, just "anyone who wants to." He's the god of confidence, cowboy cool reimagined as a flying spaceman. He doesn't believe merely that the Final Crisis is winnable, but that it isn't even going to be that hard. Ultimately, Hal and the Green Lanterns show up in time to defeat Mandrakk, not Darkseid, but as far as Hal is concerned, and as far as we get to see, he might have been able to win everything all by himself.

  

• Superman is the Alpha Hero on the A-list. His devotion to others is his vulnerability, so he is made hostage at the bedside of his injured wife, Lois Lane. After triumphing on two massive side adventures, Superman appears late in Final Crisis #6, after John Stewart and Supergirl note that the heroes need "more firepower" in the form of her "big cousin." When Superman does appear, enraged by what he sees, his flight to Darkseid's command center leaves heroes and villains falling in his wake. Without pausing at the door, he smashes his way in with one punch – his only use of direct force in the FC title itself – and for the duration of the story does no more than utilize his voice and his craftsmanship as a super scientist. His dialogue articulates the appropriate tone of horror in response to Darkseid's madness; then, when the slain Darkseid lingers as a malevolent ghoul intending to use the Miracle Machine against him, Superman dissipates Darkseid like a puff of smoke by singing a super-loud musical note. The construction of the Miracle Machine is Superman's greatest contribution to dealing with Darkseid, giving him one wish to fix the damage, a wish which was ultimately, "only the best for all of us." As important as Superman was to the Darkseid plot, he is absolutely central to the heroes winning in the Monitor plot, which is the topic for my next FC post.

Simplicity, Complicated

The Darkseid plot of Final Crisis has as its backbone one of the simplest superhero story ideas: Bad guys attack the superheroes, succeed initially, victimize innocent people, and then the superheroes turn things around. Morrison amplifies those simple things in scope and extent, and twists and tangles it up with five or so time loops, but he never deviates far from the formula. Along the way, he tells the story of pulp detectives, many different eras of costumed adventurer, and the basis of superheroes' superpowers. We see that some heroes are more potent than others, and that the worst evil, Darkseid, is greater than most heroes, but not equal to the top tier of DC's pantheon

Most of the seven issues of FC narrate the Darkseid plot, and it's not hard to imagine a relatively clean edit that eliminated the Monitor plot and left simply the Darkseid plot. That would have been a pretty good event. I think almost every reader, with a little effort, "got" the Darkseid plot. A standalone Darkseid plot without the Monitor plot might have been better received by many readers, for whom the Monitor plot was perceived as a confused and unnecessary add-on. A version of FC like that would have been a fine story, but it would have been something very much less than Morrison's intention. It would have been a very big story, but not the Final Crisis.

In my next FC post, I'll break down the Monitor plot. I don't think the majority of readers really "got" it. Some very thoughtful readers have posted many insights, but they don't agree that much on what the Monitor plot meant; there is no clear and detailed consensus. But I believe this: There is a reading of the Monitor plot that is extremely clear regarding Morrison's intentions. It is not a random add-on to the Darkseid plot. It is not a vague message about stories and readers and writers: It is a wonderful and unforgettable and essential storyline. It is a story to make you smile and cry and a story to love. It has an exceedingly specific point. It is for a very specific reason and a very good reason that Mandrakk appears right after Darkseid is defeated. I think that any reader who becomes aware of this reason will never forget it and will enjoy Final Crisis much more than they did before they were aware of it.  And that's my cliffhanger. Coming very soon (Doomsday Clock #3 will get my attention in the interim): My breakdown of the Monitor plot.

ADDENDUM: I thought I might add this to the Monitor post, but it may best belong here: The Element X that Superman obtains from Metron's chair comes from Forever People #7. It is not necessarily the Worlogog, although the art makes it look, ambiguously, similar.

Button Part One Analysis: Batman #21

The opening scene of The Dark Knight Returns uses a sporting event – a car race – to describe in symbols all the major events of the entire story. The car (world) goes out of control and the driver (Batman) is the only one who can control it. It looks like he dies, but he escapes certain death.

Batman #21 begins with a similar sporting event, whose actual event (a hockey player dies in a fistfight) is probably not as significant as the symbolism that Tom King – almost certainly working under the vision of Geoff Johns – provides. The contest is between Metropolis and Gotham City with "two heavy hitters" confronting one another, and if you need to be told who those two cities represent, you've probably never read a comic book. If you still don't get it, the Metropolis team's colors are red and blue while the Gotham team wears black and yellow. And if you're wondering what the outcome will be, the Gotham team is named after a deadly weapon and the Metropolis team is named after an extinct species. And if this fight is meant to be prophetic, the Batman surrogate beats and literally kills the Superman surrogate.

We're not the only ones to get the symbolism. Saturn Girl, in Arkham Asylum, has privileged knowledge about the future, and she lets it slip that she's not talking about more than what we see in the hockey game when she says "They're going to kill him." Not the one person – "he" – that we see on television, but "they." Maybe the hockey game is tragic in its own right, but Saturn Girl sees something else – "Superman won't come. Our friends will die. The Legion will die." If the hockey fight represents a superhero calamity to follow, Superman will somehow be sidelined by Batman, and will therefore be unable to save the lives of the Legion and their friends (present-day superheroes?). Remember, Geoff Johns used Saturn Girl's fellow Legionnaire Star Boy in an almost identical fashion after Infinite Crisis, with the now Star Man taking over the role of the eponymous member of the Justice Society and providing ample quantities of foreshadowing along with mental illness.

These events are the kick-off to the big DCU / Watchmen crossover event that's coming, as symbolized by the hockey commentator's phrasing: "We're down to the final minute here, folks." (FYI, hockey overtime isn't one minute.) And then, "Here we go."

There are visual symbols galore as well, and if you're wondering why the Reverse Flash is involved in this story, one starting point is that his symbol – like the hockey visual in the first panel – looks like the Comedian's bloody button, for a big visual case of "Coincidence? I think not." (When Batman spits blood onto the Reverse Flash's yellow-masked face, it produces a mirror image of the same design.)

But there are important plot points, too. Reverse Flash remembers the Flashpoint universe in which Thomas Wayne was Batman, and he speaks to the no-longer-living Thomas Wayne in a mocking tone, enjoying how the elder Wayne died and how it hurts both Waynes when Thawne rips up the letter that Thomas sent to Bruce. The carrier of that message (a la the Roman god Mercury, who inspired the Flashes in many ways) was Barry Allen, so it's very appropriate that the message is destroyed by the Reverse Flash, un-doing something that the Flash did.

Like Saturn Girl, the Reverse Flash has information that allows for a very Johns-ian lookahead, and he tells us that some power resurrected him. This is undoubtedly for a reason and there are only so many possibilities. In this issue, the Reverse Flash beats the tar out of Batman, rips up the note from the Flashpoint universe, vanishes into a blue glow, returns speaking of God, and dies. And, I would caution the reader: We don't know if they actually occurred in the simple linear fashion that we thought we saw. If we take the events on their surface form, this Reverse Flash has come to this world from the world of Flashpoint, which makes him as well as the letter alien objects in this timeline, and if his purpose was to destroy the letter, and whoever revived him wanted to eliminate the connection between this Earth and the Flashpoint timeline then it's logical that Thawne needed to die after destroying the letter. It appears as though he did, but maybe something trickier happened. Reverse Flash was thoroughly splashed with blood before he vanishes, but when he returns, there is no sign of blood. Maybe he went through a physical experience that removed the blood (along with a fair bit of his own flesh), but maybe the timeline is trickier than it seemed, and the Reverse Flash who returned might be from a very different moment in his timeline than just a little bit after his fight with Batman. Otherwise, why make it so complicated as to have him disappear and reappear, instead of just burst into a blue flame and die? Note also that he disappears when the button is in his hand, but he returns with no apparent trace of it. Perhaps it just got lost in the violence of the moment, but given that the story is named after this object, it seems odd for it to be misplaced as a small detail.

There's another important reference/recurrence here: In Crisis on Infinite Earths, Batman sees a dying version of the Flash (Barry Allen) who is jumping in and out of time from later in the story. A dying Reverse Flash also appears before Batman here, which makes for the second reference to COIE, the other being Psycho Pirate's mask. All told, we have four objects from other timelines: The button, the letter, Thawne, and the mask. At the end of this story, two or three of these objects have been eliminated, leaving possibly just one. Clearly, someone is trying to eliminate connections between worlds, or at least certain connections. Perhaps the person pulling the strings is Dr. Manhattan, perhaps Mr. Oz (who also took Tim Drake "off the board" for presenting a similar threat). Perhaps the multiple, quick actions in this story were taken by more than one player, with someone wanting to get rid of the letter and someone else wanting to get rid of the button.

Whatever the case, more action is afoot in Superman #21, where someone who looks just like The Comedian deliberately summons up something that looks a lot like the giant cephalopod from Watchmen appears. Quite possibly, we have seen in short order, the handiwork of at least three major players from Watchmen, along with one artifact and one killer apocalyptic bio-weapon. If that many Watchmen characters are now in the DCU, it recalls the line:

At midnight, all the agents and superhuman crew go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do.
 -Bob Dylan

Multiversity: Ultra and the Flash

We are still months away from the publication of Ultra Comics, the finale of Grant Morrison's Multiversity mini-series, but we've already seen some five pages' worth of the material, including the cover. That's a preview of some considerable length. It takes the form of homages to other stories, so it’s a lot deeper than a few pages of art, nearly without text, might ordinarily be. What we see in the previews of Ultra Comics, in overview, is:

1) A direct and obvious homage to the cover of Flash #163 (seen at right), a cover that Morrison also referenced in Final Crisis #2.

2) The title character is from JLA #153. However, his appearance has been altered significantly, to make him more directly resemble the Flash, Barry Allen.

3) An event which very closely resembles the attempted murder of Captain Atom in Pax Americana.

The Flash is obviously important to this story, and Morrison has said so in interviews: Barry Allen read about an alternate Earth in comic books, then traveled to it, and he’s being homaged in two ways on the cover of Ultra Comics. When we follow the trail through old Flash comics, we see themes in Multiversity that reference the old Flash stories that created the DC Multiverse. This in particular includes:

4) Showcase #4, the first two panels in the origin of Barry Allen.

5) Flash #123, the meeting of the two Flashes, “discovering” the Multiverse.

Let’s break these down:

Flash #163: In this story, the Flash begins to disappear, gradually, from his own world. He is confronted by a villain who explains that a person’s existence depends upon other people thinking about them. He has arranged to make everyone in Central City forget about the Flash, a process that will end in the Flash ceasing to exist, permanently. Before he is gone, Flash writes a pamphlet about himself and distributes it around the city at super-speed. With people thinking about him, he becomes completely real again.

The cover twists this around: The Flash tells the reader that if they don’t think about him, he will die. But this is actually true: If enough readers stopped caring about (and buying) the magazine, he would cease to exist, just like Jay Garrick did when his title went out of print in 1949 (a fact which is referenced in Flash #123).

To highlight Morrison’s awareness of this cover, it was also referenced in Final Crisis #2, whose first panel said, "Stop! You must be supercool to proceed! Your life depends on it!" This is the exact issue whose last panel brought Barry Allen back from his 22-year death.

JLA #153: Two Multiversity-related things happen in this story. First, five members of the JLA vanish from Earth-One and appear on Earth-Prime. This happens because of a (real) poll that asked readers to name their favorite JLA characters. (Incidentally, Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, was the runaway winner.) The power of readers' thoughts on Earth-Prime pulled the top five vote-getters across dimensions into Earth-One. Later, the Flash takes them back.

Second, the character Ultraa is introduced. His backstory is quite a bit like Superman’s, and he becomes the first superhero on Earth-Prime. Immediately, a super-villain appears who tries to kill him. He defeats the villain with the help of the JLA members, but he decides that his presence does more harm than good, so he decides to remove himself from his Earth. He does this not by committing suicide, but by following the JLA to Earth-One. So, there is a form of symbolic, but not literal, suicide.

Ultra is different from Ultraa. The name is slightly changed, but the appearance (see above) greatly so. His costume considerably resembles Barry Allen’s costume, and is nothing like Ultraa’s original costume. He also ends up with Barry Allen’s blonde hair instead of Ultraa’s long, flowing red hair and, like Barry, blue eyes.

The costume design and the way it is originally presented is very cleverly managed. A frontal view of Ultra's costume only superficially resembles Barry Allen's. But compare the cover of Flash #163 with the first panel of Multiversity #1 that shows Ultra Comics (the two are juxtaposed above). This cropping of Ultra's costume emphasizes the yellow point on a red field, with the point aimed at the hero's outstretched left hand. The cropping of that panel and the costume design are intimately related, to create the visual homage in that panel without giving Ultra Barry Allen's costume exactly. The original Earth-Prime superhero, Ultraa, has been deliberately transformed into an Barry Allen look-alike because of Barry Allen's pivotal role in navigating the Multiverse. We will also see later that Barry Allen, Captain Atom, and Ultra all seem to commit some sort of suicide / self-sacrifice as the target of a single particle in a physics-based apparatus for the good of their respective worlds.

One panel of Ultra Comics (at left) shows Ultra surrounded by tubes of red, yellow, and blue. Is this a transformation giving Ultra Barry Allen's costume, hair, and eyes? Or the primary colors of Superman? This is likely all deliberate. Ultra is changed from his original conception into something else. Something that resembles Superman, and something that resembles the Flash, who speaks to us in the real world before sacrificing himself to save his world. This transformation that Ultra will undergo will be influenced by the comic books in his world. The comic books in his world, Earth-Prime, are the same comic books we know: Superman, the Flash, and the rest of the Justice League.

 

Something Bad Happens to Ultra

Multiversity: The artwork in Ultra Comics shows an event (at right, click to enlarge) which is very similar to the attempted murder of Captain Atom in Multiversity. Ultra stands in front of a device which is aimed at his forehead. Some high-energy shot hits him, creating a flash of light, then darkness, centered on his head. Then we see an injured Ultra in another location, apparently teleported there by the shot. He now has a white hole in his forehead, and, like the Flash on that famous cover, he looks at the camera, noticing the audience and apparently speaking to them. This ends with a close-up of his eye, an image which has come up repeatedly in Multiversity. Somehow, the shot has teleported him, injured him, and this causes him anguish. The cover of Ultra happens after this. We see him with a tiny bandage over the point of the injury, and his words tell us something similar to the Flash’s message in Flash #163. He may not have realized what that shot would do to him, but he stood and took it voluntarily, so perhaps he was symbolically murdered, perhaps he committed suicide.

In The Just, Megamorpho commits suicide after reading comics, and we eventually see that Ultra Comics is one of those. Her suicide is presumably triggered by reading about Ultra’s maybe-suicide.

And Captain Atom was reading Ultra Comics right when a black hole was fired into his brain. This may be exactly what happened to Ultra. Captain Atom was aware this would happen. Depending upon the outcome, this may amount to a suicide on his part, although it may also be a failed attempted murder. Ultra's trauma seems to resemble Barry Allen's sacrifice. Later, Megamorpho commits suicide after reading about it, and Captain Atom experiences a murder or suicide or escape also patterned upon it.  The symbolic suicide spreading across stories, from Ultraa to Barry Allen in COIE, to Megamorpho and Captain Atom is one of the key examples of a scene being "carried" from one comic book to another.

I predict that we will see this happen in more detail when finally we read Ultra Comics. We will see exactly how a pattern in one story is read about and repeated by someone who reads it. Barry Allen may make an explicit appearance. We may also see scenes in Ultra Comics that predict why Al Pratt kills a man after reading the issue, Kyle Rayner feels the anguish of tragedy, and Alexis Luthor commits a betrayal, probably because these themes occur in other scenes in Ultra Comics. And the happy or at least hopeful ending that we're promised will also spread from one comic book to another. That's where Multiversity is headed.

Barry Allen and the Multiverse

These references to Barry Allen merit a closer look. The opening scene of Showcase #4 shows Barry reading an old story about the Flash, Jay Garrick. In the very first panel, he refers to Garrick’s “undreamed-of speed.” In the second panel, he says, “The Flash was just a character some writer dreamed up!” These metaphoric references to dreams come back six years later as an assertion about literal dreams. When Barry Allen meets Jay Garrick, he says, apparently referring back to those two panels:

“A writer named Gardner Fox wrote about your adventures, which he claimed came to him in dreams. Obviously when Fox was asleep, his mind was ‘tuned in’ on your vibratory Earth! That explains how he ‘dreamed up’ The Flash!”

In 1968, Cary Bates gave this an extra twist in the story that created Earth-Prime, making the readers and the characters equally real and equally fictional. When Barry Allen first travels to Earth-Prime, Ultraa’s future world, in Flash #179, a splash image asserts in a true/false quiz, “Flash is strictly a fictional character dreamed up for this magazine.” Later, he meets DC editor Julie Schwartz, who, disbelieving Barry’s story, tells him, “You didn’t have to dream up that wild story!”

The repeated use of the word and concept "dream" is curious, something that Gardner Fox and later Cary Bates seemed to recall and emphasize deliberately even with many years separating these stories. Morrison gives this concept a key role in Multiversity.

Incidentally, the first time one DC character was presented as a fictional comic book character in the world of another one was in November 1940, in All-America Comics #20. In that story, an urban housewife named Ma Hunkel was told by her kids about the comic book hero Green Lantern. This inspired her to adopt the identity Red Tornado, which eventually became a part of DC continuity. This began in the feature Scribbly, which was the semi-autobiography of writer/artist/editor Sheldon Mayer. So the interplay of real comic book creators and fictional characters becoming real began back then.

Dreams

These multiple references to dreams and comic books carrying messages between different Earths in the Multiverse is obviously a crucial device in Multiversity, and Morrison also adds drugs to the mix, with both the Luthor of Earth-23 and Captain Atom being under the influence of some unnamed drugs.

Dreams, however, are invoked by Doc Fate, who says that the idea of the Transmatter Symphonic Array came to him in a dream (it comes to Captain Carrot’s world via comic book). Chris Kent is apparently called upon to realize his potential greatness in a dream: “I fell asleep and it was this whole ultimate dreams of Superman thing. I dreamed of all the things I'd do if – well, if there was anything left to do. It was like ' A Chrismas Carol' -– but with Sandman.” And Kon-El paints a member of the Gentry, the Gray Lady, whom Intellectron calls Dame Merciless: “She am come in – KOFF – dream! Ugly art am good!”

Becoming a Bizarro, Kon-El prefers the ugly art of the Gentry to beautiful art. But is this corruption of his world, to advance their agenda, or is it a warning from someone doing good, someone who is also trying to help Doc Fate and assemble the Justice League of the Multiverse?

Dreaming up Reality

In one of DC Comics’ high concepts, Gardner Fox took the metaphorical sense of dream, imagining something, and turned it back into the literal sense, asserting that writers are like radio receivers picking up signals from other dimensions, taking real events from alternate realities and recording them as stories in their own worlds. Morrison has played with the same idea, including in Action #9, which is essentially the first chapter of Multiversity. The Clark Kent of an unstated world learns of the idea of a tulpa in Tibetan Buddhism: a being or object brought into actual existence through continued and applied mental concentration. This is exactly the dynamic from Flash #163. In that story, a villain tries to make Barry Allen cease to exist by taking him away from others’ minds. In Action #9, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy try to make a superhero start to exist by thinking about him. Creating and uncreating: Two sides of the same coin. Perceiving a being from another dimension and making an unreal thing become real: Two sides of the same coin.

Inasmuch as a black hole could destroy a physical object (an idea Morrison used in his Seven Soldiers story about Mister Miracle), Morrison uses it for its capacity to destroy information. Captain Atom and Ultra may be killed in their own worlds by the removal of their information. But this makes them appear in some other world.

So, without greatly disguising the fact, Morrison has worlds communicate with one another through comic books, and borrowing ideas from decades of Flash comics, so can dreams. Ultra Comics will bend the ideas of creation, reality, and dimensions. It is set on Earth-33, the equivalent of Earth-Prime, because it is our world. Morrison will use the captions of the comic and communication between the reader and the comic book, with Ultra looking right at us and talking right to us, to make Ultra real – sort of.

And how does this tie into the larger idea?

Buyer Beware

The cover of Ultra Comics, and the captions early in Multiversity #1, warn the reader not to read them. They assert exactly what the cover of Flash #163 asserted, but in reverse: They call upon us not to read, and say that “the world” and “your lives” are at stake rather than the life of the hero.

What happens to those who read it? Nix Uotan is turned vindictive and evil. Al Pratt abandons his principles, which makes his world vulnerable to invasion from an evil dimension. Megamorpho commits suicide. Kyle Rayner is traumatized by his past. Alexis Luthor invites a demonic invasion of her world. Bad stuff!

But this is all comic book plot. What actually happens? Earth-20 is ruined by menaces much bigger and sadder and sicker than it can handle. The comfortable existence of Earth-16 is led to turmoil, decay, betrayal, and suicide. The peace of Earth-4 is turned to tragedy. The Gentry are something outside these fictional worlds that wants to make them into something like itself. Something that ruins fictional worlds. The ultimate trigger of doom for Earth-20 is when someone spills the blood of an immortal. Vandal Savage isn’t used because he’s such an important character: He’s used because comic book characters were originally and inherently all immortal. They never died. The heroes came back issue after issue. Batman should be about a hundred years old by now, but he’s as young and spry in Scott Snyder’s stories as he was in Bill Finger’s. And after a long, long time, around the time that Alan Moore wrote Watchmen, they started to die. One of the first to die was the one so important to this story and its origins: Barry Allen. It should be noted that, just as Captain Atom seemed to in Pax Americana, Barry Allen died in a particle accelerator in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Barry Allen sacrificed himself to save his world, which may turn out to be the same with Captain Atom and Ultra. Watchmen killed off a whole world of superheroes, and in the intent of its author, tried to kill them all off.

Action #9 begins to develop Morrison’s use of the idea of ideas affecting reality:

Clark: The whole Superman thing was way too macho and aggressive anyway ­– we should think up a cartoon character kids can actually play with.

Lois: On the other hand, everyone will know our names after this.

Jimmy: They'll steal the idea if we don't sell it.

And so, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy sell the idea, and it turns into something too macho and aggressive that kills the cartoon characters that kids can actually play with. The same effect appears on Earths 7, 8, 20, 16, and 4.

The Gentry's attack moves between fictional worlds. In The Just, we see that it can move between comics, action movies, and art. Perhaps video games and horror movies, too. It certainly moves from one comic book to another. Clark Kent told us what the problem was. Multiversity is going to show us how the Justice League of the Multiverse can perhaps solve it and save the day.