Now That's More Like It!

Everything that was good about Final Crisis # 1 - the artwork, the complexity of the story - showed up again in the 2nd issue, along with a ton of improvements that made it a much, much more entertaining read than its predecessor!

I found the first issue quite slow, but Morrison makes up for that here as he delivers punishing blows to Batman, Superman, Green Lantern (two of them), and then closes out with one of the great full-page shots of the year: Barry "Flash" Allen is racing out of a vortex, straight toward the other two Flashes (and the reader), with Death - in the form of the Black Racer - on his heels, and Barry's screaming, "Run!" Goosebumps, baby!

We get a much better idea of what the story's about - which means, we can see about 10% of the picture now instead of the 1% that we got from the first issue - but more importantly, stuff happens that makes you go, "Ooh, that's gotta hurt!" I could've done without the Japanese superhero scenes that open the book, but once we got past that, it was pure gold for me.

I'm definitely going to have to read this sucker a few more times, but my first impression was, "Wow!" All of a sudden I'm kind of bummed that this is only a 7-part mini-series, as I think there's going to be too much going on to cram into just five more issues.