Final Crisis... or something else altogether?

So I'm starting to formulate what I'm sure is an entirely off-base, probably nonsensical theory about Grant Morrison's Final Crisis. [1] This idea of mine comes both from some history of Morrison's and from, of all places, statements by trade dress designer Chip Kidd and artist Gene Ha, who doesn't even have anything to do with this book.

Let me 'splain.

I'll start with Ha's comments, which were made last September in passing as part of an explanation for the huge delays behind his and Morrison's run on The Authority:

"First off, I don't think The Authority #3 by Grant Morrison and Gene Ha is ever coming out. Grant is busy redesigning the DC Universe and I've moved onto new projects."

I think that's the first place I'd seen reference to that idea of Morrison "redesigning the DC Universe," or at least put quite in terms quite that specific. We knew even then that Final Crisis was going to be another epic multiverse-shaking story, but little was known about what sort of result the series was going to have. (Honestly, we still don't know that much about it; DC's been doing a damn good job of not letting that particular secret slip.)

So we know (or can at least theorize with some degree of certainty) that when Morrison's done, the DCU will have been changed in some way, likely with his particular brand of highly imaginative neo-retro fusion. (Really, if you were going to redesign or modernize/futurize a comics universe from the ground up, wouldn't Grant Morrison be on or close to the top of your list of creators you'd want involved?)

The second bits of info which got my neurons rubbing together to form this wild-ass theory came from Chip Kidd when discussing the distinctive, if thus-far uninspiring, FC trade dress:

NRAMA: So what went into the process for Final Crisis’ look?

CK: Well, to start with Final Crisis - the big thing that no one would be able to know yet, and I won’t get too specific here, but for the people that think it’s a generic look – wait. By the third issue, you’ll start to get it. Basically, the trade dress dissolves. So, it’s starting out as something now, and by the second issue, it will be slightly different, the third issue, even more different, and between the third and fourth issue, I hope people will get it, and understand what we were doing all along. It might not make people like it any better, but they’ll at least understand what I have in mind. It’s an evolving trade dress. ... There are people who are in the talkbacks saying that DC is just riffing off Civil War, but again – wait and see. By the fourth issue, you’ll realize that’s not what we’re doing. We’re doing something else.

So the trade dress is going to start to dissolve and turn into something else which will be apparent -- or at least the direction will -- by the third or fourth issue. This implies to me either the current dress and logo will "fall away" to reveal something new underneath, or will degrade and reform into something new over the last half of the series' seven issues.

I don't think what's revealed or regrown will be simply a reworked presentation of what came before. I think it will be something entirely new.

I think the title of this series is going to change halfway through, or perhaps begin to change only to be complete at the end of the series.

Title and trade dress are important to Morrison. When he took over X-Men in 2001, he changed the name of the book to New X-Men precisely because he'd designed a logo for it which could be rotated 180 degrees and read the same. He had Marvel redesign the trade dress for all of the X-Men books to make them more visually distinct from the rest of Marvel's line. I think to him these elements of comic books have more meaning than beyond the simple graphic appeal of them -- while I'm not willing to say for sure it ties into Morrison's interest in magic, it's possible that it does, but at the very least ties into his penchant for meta-story. The trade dress of many of his books say something about the books themselves.

So I'm looking at the words "Final Crisis." And I know that Morrison is building a new DCU. And I know the trade dress is going to change. And I know that there's a tremendous battle halfway through the series which, I speculate, is going to result in the deaths of most or all of the DC heroes. And I know that Morrison's using Jack Kirby's Fourth World creations extensively in this series.

And while I can't say for sure exactly what's going to happen...

...I want to note that it wouldn't take a lot of work visually for the word "Crisis" to evolve into the word "Genesis." (New Genesis, remember, is Kirby's "good twin" of Darkseid's evil planet Apokalips.)

When this series becomes Something Genesis by issue #7, launching the shiny new Morrison-ized DCU, I want you to remember where you heard it first.

[1] That's not to dismiss the work of artist JG Jones, by the way; it's just that this particular notion of mine lies along the story and meta axes, so it's much more in Morrison's court than Jones'.

DC To Marvel: Gimme A Hand With This Can Of Worms, Will Ya?

Allen had a point related to DC's upcoming Final Crisis yesterday:

DC has always seemed to work much more in a cyclical fashion than Marvel has, and I think twenty (or so) years since the last universal shakeup probably means it's about time for the cycle to end and begin again...

Quite true, but why? Why is it always DC and never Marvel that finds itself in that paradox: being in a cycle of trying to break the cycle, where each big shakeup is intended to be the Last Big Shakeup? Look at the titles alone: DC's following up a series called Infinite Crisis (which implies that there is no end) with one called Final Crisis (which implies that there actually is an end, and this is it).

The simplest answer is that DC had a nice little Golden Age headstart on Marvel proper, from Superman's debut in the late thirties until Marvel got their ball rolling with Fantastic Four over twenty years later. Stan and Jack (and later Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and others) quickly realized this apparent deficit was actually an advantage. They could see the future through DC's innovations and also through the continuity minefields DC blindly strolled into first.

Around the time Marvel began picking up steam with FF and then Spider-Man, DC was putting the finishing touches on its perfectly circular universe. Barry Allen met Jay Garrick, the Justice League met the Justice Society, about fifteen multiversal cans of worms opened wider and wider, and DC found itself having to answer questions they never expected from their audience. An audience that had only gotten older and weren't about to let DC loose from their commitment to continuity.

I bet Stan Lee read "Crisis on Earth-2", went to the office, burned all evidence of his Brand New Captain America concept, and asked Jack Kirby for his thoughts on drawing icebergs.

40-something years after Flash met Flash, DC's still trying to get those worms collected and re-sealed, while some Marvel editor is asking why all those sealed cans are sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

^{"I CAN'T EVEN TELL WHICH SUPERGIRL THIS IS AND I'M FREAKING SUPERMAN!!"}

Will "Final Crisis" Begin the Cycle Again?

As you've no doubt seen by now, DC released their first teaser image for next year's Final Crisis event yesterday. The tagline -- "Heroes Die, Legends Live Forever" -- certainly implies to me some kind of large-scale DCU reboot might be coming at the end of what I sincerely hope is the least line-wide crossover for awhile. It's obviously too early to know what could be coming up in Final Crisis, but I've got some half-assed speculation going on in my head already. To wit:

• I think we can all agree that those Sinestro Corps villains will play into the story in a big way. It's obviously not a coincidental conglomeration of characters, since it just happens to feature the Big Bads of the last twenty years worth of major DC "reboot events." Clearly putting all of them together in one massive batch of evil will mean some bad, bad things for the DCU. In fact, I'm thinking that...
• The result of all of that combined evil will be a sort of Ragnarok for the DCU. DC has always seemed to work much more in a cyclical fashion than Marvel has, and I think twenty (or so) years since the last universal shakeup probably means it's about time for the cycle to end and begin again. My hunch is that most or all of the DCU heroes (and probably villains, too) will die, most in a valiantly manner, showing why they're heroes. (Another hunch: most of this will be kicked off with the death of a character that would seem to be on the "but you can't kill HIM/HER!" scale, showing that nobody will be above the Crisis.) Only Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman will be left standing at the end to face what's left of the Sinestro Corps; having lost everyone and everything, we'll see their true heroism rise as they manage to defeat the bad guys in one final universe-ending gesture, paving the way for...
• A new Earth, possibly a new Earth-1 in the newly-created multiverse. [1] This Earth will differ radically from the current one, rather than simply tweaking a couple of relatively minor points of history. You know how different the new Earth-2 looks from the original (from the one small image we've seen of it in 52 #52)? We're talking that kind of different, at least in some ways. Anything that they want to fix/change will be fair game, creating a "DC Universe for a new generation" or some such. This might be the long-rumored "Ultimization" of the DCU, or this might just be an opportunity for a massive continuity cleanup (hey, Kurt Busiek is the rumored writer for Final Crisis, and he's already proven he can straighten out mucked-up continuity with Avengers Forever). And this new Earth-1-or-Whatever -- that's where we'll get this new brighter, more heroic Earth we were promised we'd get as the result of Infinite Crisis (which we clearly don't have right now). The final heroic sacrifice of the Big Three will somehow imprint on the very nature of the newly-created Earth, and heroism will be brought more to the forefront of the new universe.
  

When all is said and done, you'll have a nicely refreshed Earth-1-or-Whatever (one which will hopefully focus more on heroism and less on the darkness which has pervaded the DCU for so long), with a newly-defined single history (one which will hopefully be explained to us, unlike those minor changes to the current history mentioned above), and a newly-created multiverse where all kinds of other stories can be told. And this will be the last time DC does this kind of thing... at least until someone else is in power in DC editorial 20 years from now and has 20 years worth of continuity cleanups to do.

[1] I'm assuming the multiverse is going to stick around, since DC went to a lot of trouble to set it back up and haven't even played with it properly yet. Plus, they're spending a lot of time during thisCountdown era exploring how it works and what's out there. So the multiverse stays.