Final Crisis at the Forbidden Planet Glasgow Book Group

I went along to the first meeting of the Forbidden Planet Glasgow Book Group this evening.  I think it was inspired by the success of the Plan B Books Book Group although the two are very different beasts.  The Forbidden Planet Group was held in the shop after close of business on Monday evening.  This had advantages and disadvantages.  It was slightly more intimate than Mono (which was good) although there was a lack of alcohol.  I think about 10 people were there (a couple of whom I had met at the Plan B group before).

The initial book was Final Crisis, a DC comics crossover story written by Glaswegian comic god Grant Morrison with art from JG Jones.  I had picked up the individual issues of the comic as they were released a few years back but I had only bought a copy of the trade paperback on Saturday.  I quickly re-read the series over a couple of hours before the group started.  I didn't get right to the end of the book but I managed to remind myself of the themes of the story and the construction of the book.

Final Crisis is not an entry level comic book.  If you had never read a superhero comic before and the first one that you picked up was Final Crisis I suspect that you would be disinclined to ever read another comic book.  Final Crisis is not easy for readers and assumes an in depth knowledge of 70 odd years of DC comics.  This is great for fanboys, with rich art providing many knowing nods for those in the know.  However, a comic book virgin (pun not intended) would find much of this unintelligible. In many ways, DC comics represent one of the greatest soap operas in existence with 75 years of constant publication of comics like Superman and Batman and dedicated readers probably deserve more sophisticated stories but at times Final Crisis is almost unintelligible.  While many of the attendees at the Book Group enjoyed Final Crisis nobody seemed to think that it was perfect.

Grant Morrison is a favourite writer of mine.  I pick up most of his comic books and I greatly enjoy much of his work.  Zenith was one of my favourite stories in 2000ad and it has provided a blueprint for much of his subsequent superhero output.  In Final Crisis he returns to many of the themes first seen in Zenith - Nazi superheroes, multiple parallel universes, apocalyptic evil gods.  Like a jazz musician Morrison brings out riffs he is comfortable with and deploys them at the right moment.  However I don't think that Final Crisis represents his best work.

One of the ideas raised at the group tonight was that Morrison may have been subjected to a certain degree of editorial interference towards the end of the Final Crisis series.  I don't know if this is accurate but it may explain the dip in quality and lack of coherence in the final episodes.  Several people said that they felt the book went crazy at the end.  Opinions varied as to whether this was intentional or not and, irrespective of intentions, whether this was a good feature of the book.

 So we had a good discussion about an average book.  People appeared to enjoy themselves and I will go again if I get a chance.