Comics Events Month

On the surface, the title of Final Crisis feels like a misnomer. How can there even be a “final” crisis? There will always be a DC Universe, there will always be earth-shattering dangers, and there will always be heroes to ensure the end is never really the end. But the strength of Final Crisis lies in that it recognizes this, and uses this fact as the crux of the entire event: the promotional tagline was, after all, “Heroes die. Legends live forever.” The characters and stories of the DC Universe are timeless, never-ending, and very much alive in the way that language can be said to be alive. It’s from this angle that writer Grant Morrison attempts to comment on and interact with DC’s complex and often unwieldy history. While Final Crisis is not the final challenge these characters will ever face (because nothing ever will be until the day DC stops publishing — and at this point that’ll likely be the same day CNN puts it “Nearer, My God, to Thee” video to use), one walks away from it feeling like they’ve just experienced the ultimate in everything the DC Universe was, is, and will be.

Uncanny X-Men #210″Mutant Massacre”, a storyline running through various issues of Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor and New Mutants (as well as Thor, Power Pack and one loosely-connected issue of Daredevil) in the fall of 1986 is superhero comics’ first crossover event storyline, a style of storytelling that, following the success of “Mutant Massacre”, became a recurring device used by Marvel and DC, so much so that nowadays, these events are annual occurrences, with the entire lines of superhero comics from both companies impacted by their narrative gravity. Thus, “Mutant Massacre” represents not only a significant occurrence in the narrative of the X-Men, but for superhero comics as a whole.