The Cranky Old Reader

...what the &*(# was that?!?I've enjoyed Grant Morrison's work in the past, but Final Crisis feels like an experiment gone wrong. It's incoherent and lacks even one memorable scene. Call me stupid (you won't be the first), but I couldn't make any real sense of it at all. Reading it felt like work, but there was no payoff. All it did was make me feel that the entire superhero genre is tired and outmoded.Basically, Grant seemed to feel it necessary to try to amp up the tired old "heroes save the universe" plot into "HEROES save the MULTIVERSE!!!!!!", but ended up creating a confusing mess. Maybe it's time to stop trying to save the universe, and move towards a storyline a little less full of s---. Something that relates a bit more to the human condition.I mean...it seems to me that Final Crisis is a good example of a real problem with the comics industry, or at least with the Big Two. The stories just don't have any connection to the real world any more. It's just the same old stuPENDOUS, tiTANIC WORLD-SAVING!!! And seriously who gives a f--- any more?The fantastic is integral to superhero comics, just as sugar is integral to ice cream. But a comic book that consists of nothing BUT the fantastic, with the same old fantastic plot that has been done to death a million times over, is like ice cream made of nothing but sugar.It'll rot your teeth. And the only people who'll like it are those with very simple tastes. Since TV serves the simple-tastes market cheaper and better than comics can*, this isn't an approach that bodes well for the future of comics. And frankly, Grant Morrison is capable of better.If there's nothing that connects a story to the reader, if there's no actual human element in the story, only rabid fanboys with undiscriminating tastes will buy your books. And where's the future in that? That's not an audience that's going to grow. It's not like fanboys have a high reproduction rate! And I should know - I was one.---------------* See "Minimum Wage and the Prices of Comics" - http://www.vonallan.com/2011/08/minimum-wage-and-prices-of-comics.html