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Now it’s actually starting to feel like a real Crisis.

Lately I've been thinking about the books I enjoyed as a kid. They tended to be loud, brash, colorful and full of power-trip characters having power-trip adventures. And they also even occasionally challenged me with characters I didn't know or stories I didn't fully understand. Roy Thomas wrote great superhero stories but Steve Gerber, Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart were writing something else-- they were telling something more than just "superhero stories." I didn't understand those stories but I still enjoyed them as the "superhero stories" they were at their simplest and most basic level.

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #1 is the kind of book I would have enjoyed as a kid. Building off of Final Crisis #3, Grant Morrison throws Superman head first into a true Crisis. The story involves Shift Ships (see Warren Ellis's Planetary if you need an education is Shift Ships,) the 52 universes, alternate universes' ultimate heroes (one of whom is only a step away from being Doctor Manhattan,) Merryman, limbo, and a Monitor with less-than-desirable hungers, all of which combine to finally give the Final Crisis event a much needed injection of energy and madness. While the ideas may be all over the board in Final Crisis, the actual execution of the story, while good, hasn't been reminding fans of any previous Crisis (... On Infinite Earths or Infinite...)

This story actually happens between the panels and heartbeats of Final Crisis #3 and could have been dubbed Final Crisis #3.5. Whisked away from the side of Lois Lane's hospital bed by the female Monitor, Superman finds himself travelling across universes in the Bleed aboard a Shift Ship. Joining him on this adventure are Ultraman from the Crime Syndicate world, the Captain Marvel of Earth-5 and Captain Allen Adam, a version of Captain Atom via Alan Moore's Watchmen. It's the ultimate powerful but completely dysfunctional team up of characters and it only makes sense that they've visit one of Morrison's favorite playgrounds-- DC's Limbo, which is filled with decades worth of forgotten characters.

Paired with artist Doug Mahnke who's quickly becoming one of my favorite artists working today, Morrison lets his imagination run wild in this book. We even get an explanation of the true threat of Final Crisis as Morrison re-writes the original Crisis On Infinite Earths, telling the story through the one and only book that's in a library in Limbo. The story borrows heavily from Morrison's earlier writing on Animal Man and JLA while also riffing on everything from Marvel's Civil War to Alan Moore's Watchmen to Ellis's Authority and Planetary. Morrison brings it all together, injects Superman into the middle of it and creates one wild ride through DC's multiverse, a ride that it feels like we've been waiting years to actually take.

Even as Morrison re-imagines Crisis on Infinte Earths as only he can, Morrison reminds us what was cool and fun in the original Crisis-- the anything-can-happen attitude that Marv Wolfman and George Perez had in that series. Reading those twelve issues, you never knew what was going to happen on the next page. And after the deaths of Supergirl and the Flash, no one was safe in the second half of that series. Morrison recreates that same sense of danger and fun here once you realize that basically he's written Doctor Manhattan into this issue. Suddenly the entire DC publishing history becomes fertile ground for Morrison to pillage for this story. From that early moment, Morrison's in full control even as it seems that the story is completely out of control.

In many ways, this issue finally took me back to the original Crisis, drawing heroes and villains together from across the multiverse to battle a foe they neither knew or understood. The main Final Crisis issues have been full of slow and deliberate ideas, carefully building up its story. Superman Beyond barrels ahead, abandoning caution as Morrison and Mahnke plunge Superman straight into the heart of the Crisis.

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Penciled by: Doug Mahnke
Inked by: Christian Alamy w/Rodney Ramos, Tom Nguyen, Walden Wong & Doug Mahnke
Colored by: David Baron
Lettered by: Steve Wands

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