Final Crisis

This post was prompted by this thread on my LCS's message board.

At this point (and it's still early) i'm not interested in Final Crisis. It's a "boy who cried wolf" thing. Infinite Crisis was going to change things in a big way, and for the better, yet it didn't. OYL was going to set a new, better status quo, but it didn't. 52 was mostly good, but again, didn't set the new tone, or truly refresh/rejuvinate the DCU. I've been waiting for the new DCU for years now, and all i've gotten is this intentionally mishmashed thing that feels very temporary. So, even though Morrison is involved, i have to assume that Final Crisis will continue the well-established trend. I'll buy whatever individual series appeal to me, but convincing me to follow the "big story" at DC will be a hard sell.

Maybe it's a phase i'm going through, maybe it's more, idk, but i'm less and less concerned with long-term continuity. It's fine by me that Batman and Spiderman exist in timeless worlds where they never age and where elements of their histories just fade away after a while. As long as the core of their characters are consistent (i.e., personality, motivation, etc.) and short-term continuity is consistent, it doesn't bother me that, say, this month's fight between Batman and Ras Al Ghul doesn't jive with the fight they had in 1974.

Since Continuity (and other metatextual issues) is what all the "big stories" have been about lately, that makes them an even tougher sell.

What's more, i think that any comics that will have a wide appeal to a non-specialty market will not be concerned with long-term continuity.

Long-term continuity in comics is kind of like the alignment rules in D&D. It's useful in certain special situations, but most of the time can be ignored, and contributes more to arguments between hardcore afficianadoes than to enjoyable stories.