In Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #2, Grant Morrison brings together just about everything that people either love or despise about his writing: abstract concepts, meta-textual commentary, obscure references, and speed of light pacing.
First though, a brief summary: the story picks up where #1 ended, with Ultraman possessing the Infinite Book and swearing allegiance to Mandrakk, the Dark Monitor. The forgotten heroes of Limbo begin fighting the forces of Mandrakk which are composed of machines the size of cities as well as the shadow creatures from Crisis on Infinite Earths. Meanwhile inside Zillo Valla’s ship The Ultima Thule, Billy Batson talks the Nazi Superman out of killing Valla, who, recognizing the strength and purity within Billy gives him back his magic word. Captain Adam, after setting his mind completely free splits into (presumably) infinite copies of himself and gains insight into the fundamental laws that govern the multiverse: “No Dualities, only symmetries.” He brings together Superman and Ultraman, between whom the slightest contact would bring about the destruction of either one’s universe, but in Limbo, a place where “there is no material thing to be destroyed,” the combination produces only vast energy. Captain Adam sends this energy to the receiver on the Monitor home-world; the ultimate weapon against Mandrakk—the Superman statue from issue #1—the remnant of the first contact between the Monitors and the Multiverse which is “a thought robot activated by tremendous energies unleashed during collisions of fundamental opposing qualities.” The combined consciousness of Superman and Ultraman awakens inside the monolith and prepares to battle the “ultimate enemy,” Mandrakk. In Final Crisis: Secret Files, we learn that Mandrakk is actually Dax Novu, the first son of the original Monitor and the being who first mapped the Multiverse. Novu’s contact with the Multiverse infected him and twisted him into “the ultimate threat,” Mandrakk. The monolith Superman sees on the Monitor world the Orrery of the fifty-two worlds in the Multiverse which is under attack by dark Monitors; minions of Mandrakk led by Ogama, the Monitor responsible for Nix Uotan’s exile to Earth (Final Crisis #1). Mandrakk himself emerges from his prison, holding a vial of the Bleed, the substance Kal-el needs to save Lois’s life. Their battle begins and at last we see completely what we only caught glimpses of in the first issue; the final, desperate fight between Superman and Mandrakk for the destiny of all creation. Superman overcomes Mandrakk with the aid of Ultraman's pragmatic advice: while Kal-el has sworn to protect all life, Mandrakk is the opposite of life and so Superman casts him into the Overvoid. The Superman consciousness leaves the decaying monolith and returns to Limbo where Kal-el joins with the other Supermen and destroys the invading armies of Mandrakk. Meanwhile Ultraman who was abandoned on the Monitor world is approached by Ogama and given part of Mandrakk's energies to become a “Vampire Superman,” the ultimate fate of whom we do not yet know. After the battle in Limbo is over, Kal-el is returned to the moment in time when he first left. During the last battle in Limbo he did not speak to the others because he was holding the drop of The Bleed inside of himself and once he arrived at the hospital he passed it on to Lois with a kiss. She immediately wakes up and appears completely healed. Lois tells Clark that she saw what he engraved on his “grave” on the Monitor world and knew everything would be ok. As for what she saw? To be continued.
Wow, hard to know where to begin with this one. In my summary I focused on the conflicts as they are presented. From this point I’m going to look at the things below the surface and maybe offer an interpretation or two. The Borges influence that informed the first issue gives way somewhat to the ideas and writings of the late great Robert Anton Wilson, whose ideas, particularly in the books Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology blended theories of quantum physics and the supernatural with the human psyche into something Wilson termed “Maybe Logic.” Once Captain Adam frees his mind and awakens to his true potential he splits into an infinite number of copies of himself and sees for the first time, the mechanics of his reality, that things aren’t broken up into dualities—good, evil, matter, antimatter--and that each thing is part of the whole unbroken world. Everything both is and isn’t.
The world and the existence of the Monitors has been both created and destroyed by stories. Stories made the Monitors who they are and stories destroy them as well. Morrison says of The Monitors that they “were once faceless until exposure to the struggles of human life changed their nature. Until narratives formed around them like crystals in solution.” Dax Novu, first son of the first Monitor mapped the Multiverse in full and saw it for what it was: a collection of stories, and this knowledge corrupted him and turned him into Mandrakk, yet it was his initial contact with the Multiverse that created the weapon which would one day be used to destroy Mandrakk—the Superman monolith. The conflict between the Dark Monitor and the monolith is described by Superman as a self-assembling hyper-story, or as I see it: a story created by itself and for itself with the outcome already decided. Superman goes on to say “I’ve never known such perfect certainty. This is my reason to be.” To me it seems as though Superman is not only battling at the edge of the fictional universe but also within the universe of creativity or imagination and even within the collective consciousness of receivers (readers). The battle scenes rendered in 3D are especially effective in conveying the latter, with the fight breaking through not only the panels on the page, but the page itself. During the fight, Zillo Valla tells Mandrakk that his existence is based on the beliefs of the other Monitors. Valla then tells Mandrakk that another, stronger story exists, “the story of a child rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet.” This story, Valla says was “created to be unstoppable, indestructible,” which of course brings us to the entire purpose of this story.
Not only is Final Crisis: Superman Beyond the story of Kal-el and his desperate attempt to save not only his wife but the whole of creation, it is also about the role of the Superman archetype in the (DC) multiverse. After all, it’s the story of Superman from which everything else in the DC universe has come. The myth of Superman is the foundation not only of the DC universe but the whole of superhero fiction as well. The various interpretations of the Superman archetype gathered together in Superman Beyond differ in the ways great power is applied to the outside world, whether totalitarian order, for immense greed, for deep understanding of the mechanics of the universe, on behalf of faith in things beyond the concrete world, and last but certainly not least, for truth and justice. Larger than life concepts to be sure, and throughout both issues of Superman Beyond, the text is littered with a lot of prefixes and descriptors like “over," “ultimate," “hyper," etc... as a means to conveying just how grand a story it is.
From the first issue of Final Crisis to now and even into the next few months, it has been an amazing and often very controversial ride. I have to applaud DC for taking a chance on such an unusual and at times complex story. I almost don’t want it to end. Almost.
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