Reactions to Reactions to Final Crisis

My thoughts on two recent Final Crisis critiques and analyses I ran across online in the past week:

1. Thom Young at Comics Bulletin praises Final Crisis for its postmodern structure and take on the meaning of symbols. He writes (responding in part to another reviewer on the site):

...Language and symbols have the power to transform reality (or our perception of it, actually), which leads us to being able to conceive of ideas and concepts. It’s a significant distinction because it’s the essential difference between a Modern view of language and a Postmodern view of language (and the primacy of language is the foundation of Postmodernism).

The Modern and Aristotelian view is that ideas and concepts come first and are then expressed through language (which is what Dave stated). The Postmodern view is that language (or symbol system) comes first, which then allows us to organize our perceptions of the world around us--leading to concepts or ideas that otherwise could not exist before the introduction of linguistic structure.

Aside from our difference of opinion regarding the emphasis on words, names, and other symbols in Final Crisis, I agree with Dave’s emphasis on the importance of those aspects of the fifth issue. They are the various paraphrases in that chapter that have branched off from Morrison’s initial theme phrase: The magical power of symbols to structure our perceptions of reality.

There's no doubt that Grant Morrison uses postmodern literary techniques in Final Crisis. The series is often meta-textual and self-aware that it is a comic book. But I disagree with the notion that FC's thesis is one of symbolism's dominance over meaning. Sure, symbols are shown to have much power throughout the story, but that power can always ultimately be traced to some theoretical root source. For instance, Metron's circuit did not spontaneously appear and somehow give birth to the concept of freedom. Its power derived from the fact that Metron, a being on a higher plane, expressed his concept of knowledge to Anthro through it.

It may be that Morrison was actually going for a postmodern take on symbolism, intending for Final Crisis to place the medium over the message. If so, I'd say that the absurdity of such an idea ultimately bore itself out in the text, whether intentionally or not. But if I had to place money on it, I'd venture to say that this is not exactly what the writer had in mind.


2. In his "Permanent Damage" column at Comic Book Resources, Steven Grant rakes Final Crisis over the coals for having an immature view of mythology. To quote:

FINAL CRISIS shares the weakness of its inspiration, Jack Kirby's "Fourth World," and of most comics. It fixates on good and evil, where we're all now very aware, even if we don't admit it, that the concepts are basically nonsense.
...
In a world of moral relativity – and, yes, that is our world, and, really, always has been – we need better terms than those.

While I think Mr. Grant is dead on in his interpretation of what Final Crisis was trying to accomplish, I couldn't disagree more with his opinions on it. One has to wonder why a person so jaded to the notion of good and evil would have even a passing interest in superhero comics, much less want to write about them.

One of the things I love most about Grant Morrison's DC superhero work is that, despite his obvious fringe philosophy on a number of subjects, he completely understands and reveres the moral center that has kept the superhero going strong as a genre for the better part of a century. It may be masked behind an avant-garde approach to storytelling, but Morrison sure knows how to tell us a tale where the good guys win.