October 30th, 2009: When I realized that Superman III wasn’t just a bad movie, it was a really bad movie. God bless you, Christopher Reeve, for putting up with this.

The cover of the Batman/Superman annual number three. I just really like the idea of a Batman/Superman composite hero. So goth it hurts.

DC is bringing back Adventure Comics! And issue number zero (available now) is totally kicking it old school.

Adventure Comics was a big deal for a long time… it’s one of those staples of comic book history, like Detective Comics, Action Comics and the like. The fist issue came out in 1935. That’s a long time ago!
The last issue of Adventure Comics actually hit newsstands the day I was born… August 10th of 1983. That’s kind of weird, right? One of the benefits to being born on a Wednesday, I suppose.

I just decided that I’m going to buy every comic that comes out during the week of my kid’s birth. Then I’ll stash them away and they’ll make a great 21st birthday present (when the kid is old enough to appreciate that sort of gesture). I just hope that print media holds up long enough for me to have kids!

After finishing Final Crisis #7, I was a bit confused. Mainly about why it was at all necessary. I mean, some parts were cool… such as the event shown in the panel above. But, really, I thought the whole thing was patchy at best. Then I read this great summary over at Comic Book Resources that made me realize the whole thing was remarkably thoughtful…

Let’s just pause a minute to appreciate the arrival of Captain Carrot and company. True, they don’t actually do anything other than show up and pose before the final assault, but their appearance in this comic shows the scope of Morrison’s plan. He embraces the variety of the DCU, not to sterilize it and cut it down to size like Marv Wolfman did, but to celebrate its diversity. While Darkseid chants of “one body. One mind. One will. One life that is Darkseid,” Morrison gives us a range of different heroes, of all shapes and sizes. They may all be based on the first Superman — the first “superhero story” — but they are not identical. Their differences matter. Life matters. Multiversal chaos will overcome singleminded order any day, and though a new order is established at the end of “Final Crisis” — an order based on hope and rebuilding a status quo that’s not all that different from what came before, the explicit declaration at the end of “Superman: Beyond” #2 appears again in “Final Crisis” #7, in a slightly different guise.

Superman’s “To Be Continued” epitaph is rewritten in the series finale as a drawing on a cave wall.

When I was first reading the story, I though “What the fuck? Is that Captain friggin’ Carrot?” Now, rereading it, I think “God damn, this is awesome.”