Buy Pile Report: The Heavy Hitters

Both of the big two companies had a book out today that fans have been waiting months for. They were both so big that I found time in my night here in the office to read them and have a slightly earlier Buy Pile Report than normal. Don't worry, in four or five hours I'll have an elongated one up too.

DC fans have been itching for Final Crisis #1 since they first heard Grant Morrison and JG Jones would team up and write a book. The events of the story have been shrouded in relative mystery, which has only increased the anticipation. For the most part, all we knew (or thought we knew) about this book coming into it was that this is the story of "The Day Evil Won." It was enough to make a fanboy wet himself.

Unfortunately, we knew a whole lot more than we thought, which made this first issue pretty worthless. If you've been living under a rock in the DC Universe for the past few months, this is a good book for you to catch up on. For the rest of us, who paid all that money for "Countdown to Final Crisis," "Death of the New Gods," and "DC Universe #1," you've seen all this already. Granted, Morrison does it all better here since it is more concise here, but the fact is we've seen most of this already.

Newsflash: The villains are gathering together under Libra's direction (who we already know is working for Darkseid).
Newsflash: The New Gods have gone the way of the Old Gods (which has paved the way for New New Gods).

The only part of this book that should have still retained some sort of value was the long-rumored death of J'onn J'onzz, since, you know, he's kind of a HUGE character in the DCU. But the death of the Manhunter was glossed over so quickly it was a literary crime.

Now, I'm not saying "Final Crisis" will be a wash. All told, I think by the end of issue #7, we're all going to have our jaws dropped with greatness. But this first issue was pretty darned bad. And, considering DC's sales of late, they really could have used a bandwagon-starting debut for this event.

Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1 was likewise long-awaited. The difference is, while everyone was waiting for the START of "Final Crisis," everyone has been waiting entirely too long for Joss Whedon and John Cassady to deliver the next and final installment of their X-Men Masterpiece. This 25-issue run took FOUR YEARS to come out!

But it will all be worth it when you go back and read the 25-issues cover-to-cover, because this finale was really pretty good. All your questions receive answers, and the X-Men are who the X-Men are — heroes.

And — SPOILER ALERT — it turns out the prediction I made back in the end of January after "Astonishing X-Men #24" came out turned out to be right on the money. Again, SPOILER ALERT. Kitty ends up saving the day by phasing the entire bullet through the Earth, but renders her unable to stop it and thus she is stuck on a runaway bullet for the foreseeable future. Joss Whedon turned his favorite character into a martyr.

Now, this wasn't the toughest thing to predict, either. So, why did is work so well? Because of a fantastic dialog mentally between Emma Frost and Kitty in Kitty's final moments. It brings the series full circle and reflects just how much Emma has grown in the past 25 issues. Whedon has turned Emma into something I, a staunch Jean/Scott guy, thought I would never be — a fan of her's. She is a far more mature character now, and it's because of Kitty and Scott's influence.

Oh, and by the way, Colossus' domination of all things Breakworld is something to see as well. Piotr and the X-Crew use the rules of the Breakworld (carefully laid out in past issues by Whedon) to outsmart and outmuscle the Powerlord Kruun all in one motion.

This was simply a satisfying finale to a series that has failed to satisfy at every turn only because of tardiness. I implore you all to go back and pile up this 25-issue run tonight and re-read it in it's entirety. There will be no wait in-between issues or anything. I promise you won't be disappointed this time.

Oh well, come back later for the rest of the Buy Pile, after I get out of work and have time tto read another eight books!