Blubberpuss: Five Comic Books That Made Me Cry As A Child (And.....As An Adult) Part 2

Continuing my cryfest.....

3.) FINAL CRISIS #6 (January 2009) "How To Murder The Earth "

Writer:  Grant Morrison
Artist: JG Jones

I'm a huge fan of genius Scotsman comic book writer Grant Morrison (BATMAN: ARKHAM ASYLUM,  ANIMAL MAN, THE DOOM PATROL, ALL-STAR SUPERMAN). His love and respect for the conventions and cliches of the superhero genre are evident in the wonderfully strange and baffling ways he tends to warp and twist them in new, inventive directions.

But, sometimes, some of his ideas are way too big to wrap one's head around....the scope is so epic, it appears fragmented....and one of his stories I'm still having trouble grasping is 2009's FINAL CRISIS, which outwardly appears to be just another in a long line of multi-title, heavily advertised crossover epics whose plot is supposed to shake up a company's status quo that seem to be published about once every six months these days....but, with Morrison involved, the shit gets deep...and weird, which is the least to say.

Darkseid: Multiversal Big Meanie

The overall premise of FINAL CRISIS is heady:  Darkseid, the Apokaliptian God of Evil from Jack Kirby's 1970s NEW GODS saga is attacking Earth again.....you may remember him being the bad guy from the last few seasons of the SUPER FRIENDS if, like me, you grew up in the 1980s....or, you may have heard talk about him if you've been keeping up on fan theories connected to the recent BATMAN V. SUPERMAN and SUICIDE SQUAD movies (the upcoming JUSTICE LEAGUE, also).  That weird shit nobody understood involving Lex Luthor at the end of BvS and the weird antlered monster?  That's supposed to be (spoilers) Steppenwolf,  Darkseid's uncle.....fuck it....just go Google "Jack Kirby " and "New Gods".  It's complicated,  to say the least.

Jack Kirby's THE NEW GODS #1 (1972)

Anyways,  Darkseid is murdering all the rest of his fellow New Gods in hopes of destroying the universe and recreating it in his image.  This involves a bunch of crazy shit....like the Flash out running Death to warn the superhero community of the bad guys plot, Batman shooting Darkseid with a bullet that travels back in time designed to kill deities,  a virus that mutates lower life forms into PLANET OF THE APES style anthropomorphic beasts, humanity driven mad 28 DAYS LATER-style, epic space battles involving the Green Lantern Corp....and Superman basically going to superhero heaven to play a cosmic saxophone that destroys alien vampires.

Like I said.   Weird.

The main problem many fans have with FINAL CRISIS is it's structure.  I tried to explain it to a friend of mine once: "It's fragmented.  Imagine each issue is 22 pages of the most awesome action scenes you've ever read, comic book-wise.  The only problem is, they're 22 pages from 22 different comics thrown together into one book with no rhyme or reason....in the first issue there's this epic two page scene of battalions of Green Lantern Corp members lead by Hal Jordan descending into a black hole in combat formations preparing to kick cosmic ass...and it immediately cuts to the Flash trying to outrun the Black Racer (the New God of Death....who manifests himself as a black guy dressed in a medieval suit of armor riding skis.    Again. ...I stress...weird. ).  There's no interconnectiveness (is that even a word ?) in the plot....no segueway whatsoever.   It looks awesome. ....but....what the fuck is going on?"

The Black Racer ( Jack Kirby's original)

Final Crisis interpretation

Well, needless to say, amongst all this world shaking bizarreness,  the standard MAN OF STEEL climax style property damage inflicting superhero brawl breaks out between the last heroes standing on Earth and the combined forces of an army of virus mutated humanity and animals (due to the aforementioned virus) led by Darkseid's son, Kalibak, and the female portion of  Captain Marvel's family, Mary Marvel...who has been corrupted by Darkseid and taken to wearing what looks like a vinyl fetish bondage wet dream outfit (did I mention "Weird" ?).  During this battle, Kalibak is confronted by one of the goofier additions to Captain Marvel's 1940s mythos, and a personal favorite of mine:  Mary Marvel's invisible pookah friend (nice HARVEY reference,  BTW) brought to life by the Power of SHAZAM....Mister Tawky Tawny.

Tawny,  for the uninformed,  is one of the sillier concepts bourne out of Captain Marvel's Golden Age days: an anthropomorphic tiger who has a tendency to wear bowties and bad plaid jackets...but I've loved him to death since I was a kid.

And while reading FINAL CRISIS #6, and it began looking like Morrison was writing in a direction that was gonna have Tawky die at the hands of Kalibak....I can remember seeing a panel of Tawky bloodied and down...and physically dropping the comic onto the floor.

I walked away, cursing Morrison with watering eyes, and actually saying aloud, " Do not do this, Morrison. Do not kill Tawky Tawny....not for the sake of your "epic miniseries"...."

It took a full 20 minutes to recollect myself and work up the courage to continue reading,  bracing myself by just accepting whatever may happen in the story....

....only to be immediately relieved to see Tawny come back and defeat Kalibak  Via disembowelment,  no less.

Yayyyy! He gutted him!

My emotional distress over the well being of a make believe cartoon tiger made me weep, throw a physical tantrum, and leave the room....at the age of 35 (which was how old I was when I read it).

  Now, either I suffer from an extreme case of functional arrested emotional development. ...or comic books are telling complex and moving stories, no matter how goofy the premise may be.   You be the judge.

DC LEGACIES #4 (October 2010) "Snapshot:  Remembrance "

Writer: Len Wein
Artist:  Joe Kubert

I've never particularly been a fan of war comics.  It seems to be a genre whose popularity had waned just prior to my birth.  And, admittedly,  most read like every old episode of COMBAT! you've ever seen, but....

I've always carried a strange love for the war comics of the Silver Age DC and Marvel variety, for fairly eclectic reasons.

As a genre, war comics pretty much had their start in excellent storytelling hands, over at the E.C. Comics offices in the early 1950s under the pen of Harvey Kurtzman.  His title, TWO FISTED TALES, was approached with the same visceral drive as E.C.'s more popular horror and sci fi books (notably TALES FROM THE CRYPT and WEIRD SCIENCE). Kurtzman (who would later co create MAD MAGAZINE with E.C. publisher Bill Gaines) was a WW2 veteran, and each of his war comics depicted combat in a very brutal, terrifying realistic manner....."war is hell" was his dogma.

Now, D.C.' s Silver Age war book stars approached their stories in the same manner, usually under the guidence of writer Robert Kahnigher and artist Joe Kubert (you may recognize the name. ...he's considered one of the last century's greatest comic book artists....and there's that whole deal of the school that he ran and is named after him). War was hell for D.C.'s soldiers (especially SGT. ROCK and ENEMY ACE, two signature Kubert characters), but as I did mention eclectic,  I always dug it when D.C. added elements of the fantastic to the mix: THE HAUNTED TANK, G.I. ROBOT, THE CREATURE COMMANDOS. ...and all those soldiers that ended up on Dinosaur Island in THE WAR TIME FORGOT.

But, SGT. ROCK was D.C.'s flagship soldier.  In the 1970s, fans eager to learn of the fate of Frank Rock and Easy Company after the close of the war bombarded the letter columns of his book, to which Kahnigher replied with what was to become an unwritten editorial edict amongst D.C.'s offices:

"As far as I'm concerned ROCK is the only authentic World War II Soldier. For obvious reasons. He and Easy Company live only, and will eventually die, to the last man, in World War II."

For years, it was hinted that Rock was to be considered the last man killed by the last enemy bullet fired during WW2.

And, in DC LEGACIES #4, in the back up story entitled "Snapshot: Remembrance ".....this was finally depicted.

The scene is a small bar in Washington D.C., the evening of July the 4th, 1976.  As the nation celebrates the Bicentennial,  a small group of veterans gather together to talk of old times.    They are revealed to be Capt. Storm of THE LOSERS, Gunner and Sarge (sans the late K-9 friend, Pooch), Native American air ace JOHNNY CLOUD, and African American commando codenamed GRAVEDIGGER.  They mention the whereabouts of former Haunted Tank commander Jeb Stuart (he's teaching now), which leads to the realization they're only truly missing one man at this party:  Frank Rock...and they begin to tell the sad tale why.

The armistice has been called...and either the German soldiers haven't been informed, or they don't care.   There's a child trapped by the crossfire. ....and, well,   Rock does what he always does:    be a good soldier.  Sgt. Rock dies, the last man struck down by the last bullets fired in anger. 

The shock of finally seeing what comic book readers had been told for years would happen was just a little bit too much for this then 36 year old fanboy.

Two poignant side notes, the bartender, "Bob" in the story is depicted by Kubert to resemble the late writer Robert Kahnigher,  and if I'm not mistaken in my research, this is the last story featuring Rock and Easy Co. Kubert would illustrate prior to his own passing about a year and a half later in 2012.