My first run-in with DC Comics was when I was maybe 9 years old, and got ill while staying with my gran in Devon.  To keep me occupied while I recovered, she dug out a box of comics that one of my uncles had collected, and I was soon immersed in a Justice League/Justice Society team-up.  I didn’t have a clue what was happening, but I found it captivating all the same, as brightly coloured characters run and flew around.

For some reason, some of the characters existed as two versions: the Flash for instance had one incarnation in which he wore a tin hat, while another version of him was helmet-free.  Apparently, the two Justice teams inhabited parallel worlds, and I latched on to the idea that people had alternate versions of themselves.  Maybe in another universe, there was a young Adrian who also wore a helmet.

This notion of a multiverse in which superheroes from different realities duked it out with cosmic evil sat pretty well with me, gorged as I already was on mythical characters from different cultures who in some ways seemed to be versions of each other.  The Greeks and Romans had gods and heroes who were comparable, so why wouldn’t there be more than one version of Superman?

And while my tastes in comics have grown more sophisticated over the years, it’s good to report that there are still creators who can tap into that kind of primal chaos and pull out new stories from it.  Grant Morrison is a master of this kind of stuff, and he has sussed that the trick to this kind of writing isn’t to pit good against evil and resolve it with zaps and thumps, but to create vast tapestries of ideas that only mighty heroes have the stature to play a part in.  Which is just what Final Crisis is all about.

There’s a breathless urgency to the writing: Morrison chooses to cut between different groups of players and not make the connective tissue as clear as some would prefer it.  A brave choice, and one that works for me: I want to be dazzled and mystified and not have everything spelled out for me in this kind of writing.  It’s absolutely appropriate for larger than life fiction that the concepts are too big to fit into your head the first time round.

I couldn’t begin to tell you who all the characters are who turn up for this adventure.  But plenty are needed, because the deadly deity Darkseid is recreating himself in every human on Earth through high tech villainy, and that surely calls for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman to get all their pals involved in the fight back against his tyrrany.

It’s mindboggling stuff, and thankfully the art team, headed by J.G. Jones and Doug Mankhe, are up to the task of conveying the multi-dimensional scale of what unfolds.  Just don’t ask me to explain it to you at this point: we’re a million miles away from credibly plotted linear tales at this point.  Instead we’re sailing close to the edge of comprehensibility, on a voyage of the imagination that’s only possible because of Morrison’s sure hand at the tiller.  He likes it here, in this heady space where men become gods and time and space buckle in response to the epic deeds that are done.

What grounds the story, for all its hi-falutin conceptual and linguistic/artistic fireworks, is Morrison’s ability to convey characters with recognisable emotions amid the stuff of legend.  You want to cheer on both the characters you’re familiar with, and you’re led to empathise with a character who’s used to being a bad guy but who joins the goodies given the scale of what’s at stake: his journey is convincing, involving, and that gives you an investment in the story.

I can’t pretend I get all of what’s in Final Crisis, but I was thoroughly entertained in reading it, and really that’s what counts.  Grant Morrison is an exceptional writer whose love for the comics form has provided some of the best reads in the last twenty years.  His ability to handle both epic and personal material with equal flair is unusual, and a mark of just how talented a creator he is.