Of Turpin and Evil
When we last left off, the evil machinations of Libra and the deceased New Gods were rolling slowly into fruition. A dread unlike any that has infected the DCU is spreading and festering into tragedy and calamity. The Super Young Team and Sonny Sumo are joining Shiloh Norman in the battle for the Fifth World. A monitor is lost. Detective Turpin rages towards Bludhaven. The Martian Manhunter is dead. And Libra’s scales sway in favor of the ill intentioned. The stage of Final Crisis is expansive and stretches the length of the entire multiverse. No one seems safeguarded against the droning march of evil. If there is truly a day on which evil will win, has that day come and gone under our noses? Are we already lost?
The second half of Final Crisis 2 picks up with the Justice League examining the charred remains of the thought-to-be-immortal Orion. Batman, having enlisted the Flashes in his investigation of Orion’s death, must combat with the pretensions of a recently appointed Alpha Lantern. These superior emerald officers were transformed by the guardians into half-sentient beings, combining the free will of the Corps with the cold and calculating regimen of the long-decommissioned Manhunters. With gratuitous condescension and a disdain for the human, Alpha Lantern Kraken scoffs at Batman’s hypothesis that a New God was shot. Someone shot a God and left no wound? Ever certain of his instinct, Batman argues with the green officer, insisting that she trust in his dispensing of the Justice League’s finest to investigate the death of an immortal. Infuriated that he would dare give orders to a lantern (in this case, John Stewart), Kraken storms out of League headquarters, irate and fed up with the Trinity’s supposed ineffectual operations.
The scene shifts to John Stewart and Lantern Opto investigating the green-energy-chalk-outlines of Orion’s place of death. Detecting a great energy deep beneath the sediment of the city, John Stewart is blindsided by a faceless foe, nailed to the wood with ring-construct spikes. Unable to see the attacker, we are left to wonder who it is that John Stewart has just seen. My God. It’s you!
Far too quickly, the scene shifts to Hal Jordan’s bedroom, where Opto and a cadre of Alpha Lanterns interrupt his sleep to arrest him for the attempted murder of Stewart. Batman and Superman are left to assess his arrest, and both seem sure that there is something much larger going on, and that their colleague is indeed innocent. As Superman flies off to maintain his secret identity at the Daily Planet, Batman is left with Kraken and Orion’s sublimating body. Quivering and holding her head, Kraken seems unstable and sickened. Batman rushes to her side, only to be warned of the evil that inhabits her core. Help me. She’s eating my mind alive. As her hand stretches forward, Batman glimpses the indentation of Stewart’s last-ditch punch against his now-known assailant. Kraken, possessed and empowered, attacks Batman and prepares him for his coming trial. Did you think the Gods would tread lightly when they came among you? Into the boom tube with you. A new plaything for Granny. And thus Batman is at the mercy of the writhing dark Gods.
Bludhaven. Turpin slithers through the debris of a nuclear city. Atomic knights flash by, unheard and unknown. The pits of evil shake underground. As Turpin tries to make sense of it all, one Reverend Good, the oft-preaching representative for Bludhaven, intercepts him. Brought underground, Turpin bears witness to enslaved children, readied and weakened for the ways of Anti-Life. His ear begins to bleed. Darkness envelops his mind. What is happening beneath the singed earth of Bludhaven? As Turpin is brought down into a sub-basement, Kraken and an array of Dark-Gods-Incarnate gather around Batman’s body, as they place the caped crusader into a bizarre contraption reminiscent of an Apokolips death chamber. Is Darkseid within Turpin? My God. There’s someone in my head. And with his last free breath, Batman shouts a warning to Turpin, to the reader, and to the entire DCU: They’re coming to get us all. Warn the Justice League. Warn everyone!
The story commutes to Metropolis, where the denizens of Superman mythology discuss the happenings plaguing the heroes of New Earth. However, something is amiss. An all-too-contrite Jimmy Olsen passes by Clark, who swears that he just saw Jimmy in the concourse. As we see Olsen melt into the muddy appendages of Clayface, the Daily Planet erupts in fire and explosion. Glass and flames shoot out of the top floor. With her limp, shackled arm sticking out of the debris, Superman screams in horror. Is his true love dead?
The Final Scenes of this teeming episode switch to Wally West and Jay Garrick investigating the grounds of a familiar skin club. This team of Speedsters shuffles through a number of familiar artifacts. The Crime Bible and Metron’s mobius chair lay casually within the confines of the building. Wally hypothesizes that the items present are part of a comprehensive scheme to kill the New God Orion. What if the mobius chair was the scope of a temporal gun? What if the energy beneath the ground of Orion’s murder is where his deadly bullet, shot back through time and space, buried itself to hide its origin? These revelations are cut short, however, as the mobius chair indeed opens a rip into the space, loosing its inhabitants back into the multiverse. With classic wit and appropriate irony, Barry Allen, lamented speedster, barrels towards the two Flashes, pursed ardently by the Black Racer. Wally! Jay! Everybody! Run! And so the Final Crisis grows ever oblique. What fate awaits the seemingly helpless and unaware tenants of New Earth? Has Barry Allen really returned? Where are the fallen saints of New Genesis? Who is Libra? Where are the forever people? What chance does the world stand against an unpredictable, depraved evil that has somehow transformed the last vestiges of a forgotten world into a veritable war zone for their rebirth? How will we stave off the harrowing?
