Review: Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3-D #1

There’s only one guy who can do what Grant Morrison does.  And that’s Grant Morrison.  That’s probably why a lot of the Final Crisis tie-ins feel somewhat disconnected from the main story.  (That and the fact that no one at DC seems to have any idea what’s going on in the main story except for Mr. Morrison.)  As the only tie-in actually written by Morrison, Superman Beyond may as well be Final Crisis 3.5.

You could write a paragraph analyzing every panel of this book if you were inclined to do so (which I’m not).  Every image is filled with the kind of big, crazy ideas Morrison is known for.  Like a lot of Morrison’s work, there’s so much to digest that it can be overwhelming on first read-through.  But that’s kind of the point of reading Morrison.

Before I go any further, let me stop and admire the art.  It is, after all, the first thing you’ll notice.  Doug Mahnke is the most underrated penciler in comics today.  I’ve long held this belief, but after reading this issue I now consider it to be an undisputed fact.  His superior artwork on FC: Requiem elevated it from a well-intentioned missfire to a solid read in my book.  With Superman Beyond, Mahnke delivers a masterpiece,  If it was possible to steal the show from Morrison’s mind-bending tale, Mahnke would do it.  Fortunately, they merely compliment one another instead.

As for the 3-D effects, yes, it feels a little reminiscent of some of the gimmick comics of the 1990s.  But it also fits the trippy nature of the story and it’s well executed.  So, as long as I’m not being asked to shell out extra green for 3-D (I’m sorry, 4-D) glasses on a regular basis, I’m good.

Unlike most of the Final Crisis tie-ins, Superman Beyond fits right into the main story.  When last we saw Superman in Final Crisis, he was standing over his wife’s hospital bed keeping her heart beating.  And that’s right where we pick up in Superman Beyond.  And then, time stops.

A monitor has arrived.  She’s got the kind of offer that only Grant Morrison can make work.  Something along the lines of “Save the cheerleader, save the world” but on a multiversal scale.  Even though there’s something really fishy about the monitor’s offer, Superman has no choice but to accept.  Together they head off into the Beyond, the Bleed, the Unkown or what-have-you.  You’ll know you’re not in Kansas anymore because the pages are in 3-D.

(And yes, the ship they are travelling in sure does look an awful lot like a certain yellow submarine.  Maybe Libra is a Blue Meanie?)

Superman finds himself working side-by-side with numerous incarnations of himself from various worlds as they travel through the multiverse.  Each page of the trip could be spun into a Search For Ray Palmer style special and I applaud DC for not subjecting us to that this time.  Instead, we get just a taste of each encounter.  It’s a far more satisfying approach than what was done in Countdown.

I couldn’t help drawing comparisons to Countdown when the Supermen reached Earth-51.  Countdown spent several issues detailing exactly what happened to “the graveyard universe”.  It was a big hairy mess that also managed to be incredibly boring.  Morrison and Mahnke paint a much more compelling picture with just a few panels and captions.  The final caption reads: “I don’t want to know what happened here.”  (Amen, Mr. Morrison.  I wish I didn’t.)

The Supermen eventually arrive in Limbo, where heroes go when the world has forgotten them.  Pretty darn meta, right?  We’re deep in the area of meta-fiction here.  What we are presented with is essentially the origin of the Monitors.  But the story can be read on so many levels.  Morrison is obviously writing about story-telling and the power of myth.

This isn’t you’re average super hero comic here.  We’re light years beyond Civil War, Secret Invasion or Infinite Crisis.  This is the rare comic book that has the ambition to defy the conventions of the genre.  It aims higher than any comic book I’ve read in a long time.  And it delivers.

Tags: DC Comics, Doug Mahnke, Final Crisis, Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, Grant Morrison, Superman