The Mole Man
The Fantastic Four's first villain, the Mole Man's modus operandi switched up from attacking humanity because they weren't monsters to one of ecological conservation, trying to get humanity to leave Monster Island alone and stop bringing the monsters therein to the brink to extinction. Who can't get behind that? He's like a shorter, uglier Al Gore who just happens to command an army of near-unstoppable genetic accidents. If we just let him win, who knows what kind of era of ecological paradise we could be letting ourselves in for?

Zoom
The second Reverse-Flash, Hunter Zolomon was a former police criminal psychologist who became unstuck in time and mind after an accident involving the Flash's Cosmic Treadmill. Obsessed with making heroes "better" by forcing personal tragedies on them so that they'll try harder, he's the poster boy for tough love... But he really is trying to make the world a better place, albeit in a twisted manner. Instead of beating him up for that, why not try and just convince him to soften his methods and let him run free? What's the worst that could happen? Well, besides him trying to kill your family as motivation, of course.

Lex Luthor
For years, Lex has been telling us that, if Superman would just get out of the way, he's turn the world into a beautiful utopia, curing diseases and ending all problems with science. Hell, he's even managed to cure cancer before, even if it was just a ploy to lure Superman into a false sense of security. All I'm saying is this: Would Superman really mind that much if we just asked him to step aside for a bit and let Lex run things his way? If nothing else, the recent Superman/Batman: Public Enemies movie suggested that he could sort out this whole financial disaster thing within weeks...

Magneto
All he wants to do is end genetic persecution! Is that really so wrong? Sure, you can argue with his ways of going about it - I don't think anyone here would be fully supportive of his controversial "enslave and destroy the human race" agenda - but the man's lived through Nazi concentration camps, been acquitted by an international court of evildoing and, if nothing else, is fully dedicated to his beliefs. Is there really any proof that a world controlled by Magneto wouldn't be one less filled with hate? We don't think so... even if it's because most of us would be dead.

Doctor Doom
Those unconvinced of Victor Von Doom's leadership potential need only look to his kingdom of Latveria for the proof: Crime is nearly non-existent! Illness equally so! And the people love their leader (Admittedly, because to admit otherwise may result in death, but still: Details, people). Sure, evidence also points to our having to put up with a merciless police force of Doombots and having to dress and act like Eastern European villagers from the late 19th century, but aren't those prices we're willing to pay for a reduction in crime and illness? Admit it: Maybe we could all benefit from being ruled by an iron (clad) hand or two.

Darkseid
Last year's Final Crisis showed a world under self-styled Ultimate God of Evil Darkseid's will-sapping regime, and aside from the complete absence of free will and slow devolution of the planet into a red-skied radioactive wasteland patrolled by mutated dogs and men with tiger heads, we can't help but notice that those submitting to the Anti-Life Equation seemed much less in emotional turmoil or upset about the direction that their lives had taken - In fact, they seemed confident and assured, unlike those who'd chosen to resist. And, yes; those who resisted eventually assisted in the recreation of existence itself, but still. Isn't having even will-sapped piece of mind about your place in the world worth some sacrifice?

Universo
Here's one we know works from experience. Futuristic hypnotist Universo managed to hoodwink the entire planet under his command in the 1987 Legion of Super-Heroes storyline "The Universo Project," and the result was a peaceful planet where superheroes weren't needed at all. Easily the best case scenario we've seen, it didn't even involve Darkseid-esque worldwide mind control - Only figures of authority (and some superheroes) were hypnotized, meaning that the common man and woman would happily have freedom to toil and work for The Man as usual, without knowing that it was a different The Man all along. Win win!

Taken as individual issues during their initial release, Final Crisis felt weirdly insubstantial, as if they needed to be experienced as a whole to gain the weight that you were somehow convinced that they secretly had, hidden away somewhere - and, to an extent, that's true... It's just that the whole they need isn't the whole that DC's new collected edition gives to you. Yes, the handsome $29.99 edition collects all of the Grant Morrison-written issues of the storyline, and puts them all in chronological order, but in doing so it entirely disrupts the experience of reading either the core Final Crisis storyline or the Superman Beyond tie-in series that's also included here (There's a third story, the one issue Submit, but the less said about that, the better; when placed beside the other stories, it feels even more unnecessary and inconsequential than it did originally).

The plot of Final Crisis, for those who missed the original serialization, is essentially that Earth is invaded by Darkseid and his minions, the few remaining "New Gods" from the 1970s Fourth World comics by comic great Jack Kirby, and that Darkseid takes over the world, eradicates free will, and in doing so, brings about the end of everything. Included within this are sequences about divine intervention bringing fire to humanity, Superman transcending reality to save the love of his life and the universe - in that order - the return of the Flash and the death of Batman, amongst many others, and if that description makes it seem very scattered and overly busy, then that's not entirely an unfair complaint (Add in that deadlines on the original publication meant that multiple artists draw the core Final Crisis series, and that their styles aren't always a good match for each other, and you have another complication, although I admit that this particular one didn't bother me at all).

Sadly, one of the things that saved the series in its original format - the consistency of tone, despite the (intentionally) choppy storytelling - is sacrificed here, as Final Crisis itself takes a break after three issues for the Submit and Superman Beyond issues; while Submit is in keeping with the increasingly bleak, disturbing feel of Crisis, Superman Beyond is a much more inspirational story, and ends with a moment of triumph entirely at odds with the continuation of Crisis that immediately follows (In its original release, Superman Beyond's conclusion was released concurrently with the final episode of Crisis, which makes more sense, tonally); reading the collection straight through, there's a wrench going into, and coming out of, Beyond that damages the coherency of the overall story in a way that it struggles to recover from for a long time afterwards.

Like the majority of Morrison's superhero work, this isn't a story that will satisfy fans of the literal; it's very much an allegorical, lyrical story (Literally, on that last point, by the time you reach Darkseid's final confrontation with Superman), with narrative clarity sacrificed on occasion for artistic effect - It's very much a story you feel as much as anything, and because of that, re-reading it becomes a strange celebration of the successful moments with an increasing awareness of its faults; you notice the plots that disappear, or moments that defy sense more clearly, but throughout the entire thing, there's something so ambitious and self-aware about its own superhero comic nature that you can't help but be won over at times nonetheless (The amount of times may rely on how much you enjoy the melodramatic dialogue patterned after Jack Kirby's, or the importance of the spectacle over the minutiae, however). Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream, as one of his heroes once advised, and you'll be fine.

(A word or two about the art: Morrison has spoken, since the series ended, about the shift from original artist JG Jones to Doug Mahnke, who went from the Superman Beyond two-parter to the final chapter of Final Crisis, saying that he felt that the change was organic, and that Mahnke's art suits the more dynamic conclusion as much as Jones' more realistic style suited the downbeat, mundane beginning. He's right, and there are scenes at the end that I can't imagine working under Jones' more photo-realism-tinged brushwork. Although the discontinuity between the artists - and additional artists Carlos Pacheco and Marcos Rudy, lending hands in between - is the kind of thing that'll annoy some purists who'd rather imagine what could have been, everyone involved in the art in this collection offers amazing work, bringing their own strengths to the page without overshadowing anyone else, and Alex Sinclair's coloring throughout manages to hold everything together without becoming too obvious on the page.)

It's difficult to wholeheartedly recommend Final Crisis, especially in this particular form; I wish that they'd placed Superman Beyond later in the collection (Between the fifth and sixth issues of Crisis, perhaps), and can't help but feel that pushing the "Director's Cut" extra material of the original script to Final Crisis #1 to the paperback Final Crisis Companion is a cynical marketing move that lessens this collection, as is the weird inclusion of only a few pages of the Final Crisis Sketchbook preview, which reads as if they just needed some filler material to close out the book and grabbed some pages at random. It's certainly not anyone involved's best work, nor even Morrison's best superhero work (His Seven Soldiers cycle is much, much more successful, although the Mister Miracle arc pretty much belongs at the opening of this story). But, at the same time, there's enough of interest, and enough raw ambition and unfulfilled potential, here that I can't help but feel as if it's something approaching a (at times severly) flawed masterpiece. It's a story, and a collection, that will entertain, inspire, frustrate and potentially even move you, and for that alone, I find myself loving it, even if it's not what it could have - and should have - been.

Final Crisis is released today, and available in all good - and some evil - comic book stores.

Comic books are full of men and women with amazing superpowers and uncanny abilities, but what about those even more powerful? Take a look at some of our favorite cosmic entities, quasi-deities, and a couple who just ought to be:

1. Darkseid (DC Comics)
Okay, so maybe his debut appearance was in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen (not exactly the most impressive of origins), but he's come a long way since then. Once the second in line to rule dystopian torture-planet Apokolips, Darkseid is now pretty much officially the most powerful of the New Gods - and, in the recent Final Crisis, someone who managed to destroy reality as we know it. Not only ridiculously strong and annoyingly indestructible, he's also telekinetic, telepathic, and a pretty darned impressive military strategist. (He also no longer looks like Jack Palance, who was said to be the original inspiration for his appearance. This is only debatably an improvement.)

2. Apocalypse (Marvel Comics)
As if just being called Apocalypse isn't enough, this Egyptian science geek has a list of powers longer than he rightfully ought to (like shapeshifting, teleportation and invulnerability). Not to mention the immortality. And technology from onetime creators of humanity, the robotic Celestials. And the intelligence and wisdom that you can't help but gain from being over 5000 years old. Maybe you could try to claim that he isn't exactly a "cosmic entity," but I wouldn't say that to his face. (Besides, his name is Apocalypse. So. Hardcore.)

3. Lodovica (Sky Doll, Soliel Productions)
Lodovica is the leader of one of the two warring papacies in this very strange (yet strangely beautiful) comic, which has been released in English translation by Marvel. According to Wikipedia, she's:

The power-mad ruler who strives to keep the faith of the populace through any means possible, whether by creating the illusion of divine power or by distracting them with the erotica of the Sky Dolls.

Hey, when you're the pope (or papess) of your own religion whose main weapons are false divinity and distracting erotica, you're not doing too bad. And even if you aren't technically divine, if you can convince everyone you're a deity, you're close enough.

4. God (Battle Pope, Image Comics)
First off, there's no denying God his deity status; he's kind of the guy that invented it. Set in after the Final Judgement, life is literally Hell on Earth, and all God's really got to protect us from the demon hordes is the Pope, a cigar-smoking womanizer. God himself, however, is delightfully sardonic and has a seemingly endless flowing beard. He also isn't afraid to get into a cosmic smackdown with the Pope if he feels the need, and seriously? That's pretty awesome. Plus, God can pull out the whole deus ex machina act and get away with it. And he doesn't even need the machina. (Additionally, Jesus is an endearing slacker type to the point where you almost expect him to take up bowling and carry around some Creedence tapes.)

5. Mr. Mxyzptlk (DC Comics)
Sure, all these guys have nigh-unlimited power, but Mxyzptlk here is the only who seems to have so much fun with his. Call him what you will - jester, imp, trickster - but this derby-hatted fellow from the fifth dimension has a ball messing with our world here in the third dimension, especially at the expense of poor Superman. His power is essentially unlimited and basically (but not technically) magical, and the only way to (temporarily) send him back home is to trick him into saying his name backwards. Lucky for us, we're just his playground.

Runner-Up: Lobo (DC Comics)
Okay, Lobo's no deity or great cosmic entity, but he'd probably like to think he is. Besides, he'd fit pretty well into a bunch of Norse myths, what with the killing and the violence and the dismemberment and all. More than that, however, he became an Archbishop of First Celestial Church of the Triple-Fish God, where he wears an awesome get-up and hangs out with space dolphins. Of course, he killed the fish god, so he basically wins all around.

While Smallville has a long and shameful history of taking classic DC characters and, well, screwing them up - Brainiac, anyone? Zod? - it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Sure, the show may not have the flamboyance or budget to bring Darkseid to the screen in the way that we'd all want to see him, but that doesn't mean that they can't come up with a version that doesn't make fans run screaming from their televisions. This is how we'd do it:

Steal from today's comics. Okay, actually from a couple of months' ago, but it's close enough. As part of the opening of Final Crisis (and, actually, in the Mister Miracle series from a few years back), Darkseid is shown as "hiding" in human bodies. Sure, his godlike presence tends to cause them to burn out very quickly, requiring a lot of replacements, but a succession of threatening guest-stars is probably cheaper than having someone come up with a believable way of bringing his traditional stony-faced, purple-clad look to the small screen.

Keep him lowkey. More than even Lex Luthor, Darkseid doesn't get his hands dirty; he has an endless supply of minions to do all the messy jobs for him, and they'll all happily die for him. But when it comes time for the inevitable showdown, remember that he's no slouch when it comes to either a fight or melodramatic rhetoric when either are absolutely necessary.
Remember that Darkseid thinks big, but acts small. The basic idea of Darkseid is very, very simple: He wants to eradicate all free will in the universe, and replace it with his will, and there's something on Earth that will make that possible. So, if he does appear on Smallville? He'd better not be someone who falls for Chloe and then decides to get even when she decides that she'd rather hang with Jimmy, is all I'm saying. But don't take that to mean that he's all about the grand gestures; Darkseid prefers to do things so that no-one notices. Like Final Crisis's kidnapped children, or Forever People's funpark that doubles as a torture chamber. He's creepier and more meticulous than most Smallville villains - and in a genuine way, not a Lionel Luthor smiles to himself while drinking a glass of whiskey kind of way.

There is, to be honest, no reason why Darkseid couldn't work well on the small screen - His methods and, thanks to Final Crisis, disguises are well within network budgets, after all. But what worries us more than anything else is the almost inevitably bad decisions made by Smallville's producers and writers when it comes to coming up with ways of bringing fan-favorites into their show (turning unstoppable monster Doomsday into a hunky medic, for example?). So much so, in fact, that it's almost a given that, if we do see Darkseid come up against a young Clark Kent, he'll have become a goth teenager working at McDonalds who has a crush on Lois and likes to wear a lot of black while sneering at everyone.

Consider this a challenge, Smallville staffers: Give us something approaching the real Darkseid: A new god worth Superman's time - and our own.

They're the core characters behind DC's summer extravaganza Final Crisis, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily know who Darkseid, Orion, Metron or any of the rest of the New Gods actually are. Before "evil wins" in the DC Universe, here's a quick primer to let you know just what a Fourth World actually is, anyway.

There came a time when the old gods died! The brave died with the cunning! The noble perished, locked in battle with unleashed evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!

Those were the words that started the first issue of The New Gods, one of three comics from the 1970s that formed the core of creator Jack Kirby's Fourth World line of books (The line had theoretically started earlier when Kirby had taken over Superman spin-off title Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, but that book - as enjoyable as it is - is at best peripheral to the main Fourth World storyline. Although it does feature Don Rickles). Kirby, who had co-created the majority of Marvel Comics' big names - essentially, everyone except for Spider-Man, and there's even some doubt there -had jumped ship to main rivals DC in 1970 as a result of increasing frustration at lack of creative or legal control over his creations, and immediately started work on what came to be possibly his greatest achievement: One sprawling, epic, story that gave the old mythical gods new life as technological, alien creatures locked in a war that threaded through multiple comics running simultaneously and could be read on multiple levels.

The story of the Fourth World is deceptively simple: Darkseid, personification of evil and despotic ruler of the planet Apokolips, has come to Earth in order to find The Anti-Life Equation, a mythical concept that will enable him to destroy all free will in the universe and finally win the ongoing war between Apokolips and New Genesis, another planet that happens to be a utopia led by the kind and loving Highfather. There was a lot more to it, of course (Each issue was filled with new concepts - each character could travel through a Boom Tube, which created a tunnel between two points in space, and they each had living computers called Mother Box, who could understand and meet their needs without being asked - and introduced new characters, almost too quickly for the reader to make any sense of what was happening), and that's where each of the three series came into their own. Those series were:

The New Gods: Also titled Orion of The New Gods, this series concentrated on the adventures of New Genesis' greatest warrior, Orion, and his friend Lightray, as they dealt with Darkseid's latest schemes on Earth. In a move that foreshadowed George Lucas' movie franchise, Orion was revealed to be actually the son of Darkseid; he and Highfather's son had been exchanged as babies to be raised on each others' home planets as the result of a (failed) peace treaty. In many ways, this series was WWII-veteran Kirby's chance to deal with war as both an idea and a reality; as well as the sacrifices Orion has to make in order to fight Darkseid (including literally changing his face from handsome to a more natural monster-like appearance; subtlety wasn't Kirby's strong point), there are moments where a pacifist son confront his veteran father over Vietnam, or we see Highfather deal with the loss of his wife, killed as a result of the conflict with Apokolips. Kirby's strengths were always ideas and art, and so the rawness of the writing can sometimes betray the depth of the intent, but nonetheless, this was groundbreaking stuff in 1971.

Mister Miracle: The second of the three series focused on Highfather's son who, after having been given to Darkseid as part of the same pact that brought Orion to New Genesis, had run away from Apokolips to become Earth's Greatest Escape Artist... Well, you'd probably do the same thing in similar circumstances. Mister Miracle - or Scott Free, as he had named himself, mid-escape ("Let me be Scott Free - And let me find myself!") - also ran across Darkseid's plans on a regular basis as the stories demanded, but was much more of a lover than a fighter, especially when his own lover (and, by series' end, wife) Big Barda was involved (Barda had also run away from Darkseid's clutches, abandoning life as a soldier for true love). In some ways the most fanciful and whimsical of the three series - Never mind the hero called Scott Free, check out his dwarf sidekick Oberon - this was also the longest-lived; maybe there was something about series' almost Saturday Morning Cartoon "death trap of the issue" set-up that made people want to stick around, or perhaps kids just wanted to read that it didn't matter about nature or nurture - if you were a good person, it'd find a way to show through somehow.

The Forever People:, Appropriately, given such a hippie-friendly name, this series focused on. essentially, cosmic flower children who rejected the fight between good and evil altogether and just wanted to, like, just be, man. With names like Beautiful Dreamer, Big Bear and Mark Moonrider, there was no escaping the hippie nature of Kirby's intent, even though it came four years after the Summer of Love; they even tuned in and turned on thanks to their "cosmic cartridges," which gave them insight by temporarily making them one with the universe until their mellow was harshed, dude. Nonetheless, these were the only characters who actually came across the real Anti-Life Equation (more than once) in what was possibly commentary on the belief that Kirby felt in the potential of the younger generation of the day.

All three titles were cancelled midway through their planned runs due to claims of low sales, but the characters refused to go away, being revived and making guest-appearances in other series for years afterwards, but all without their creator's involvement; Kirby became disillusioned with DC in the mid-70s following the commercial failure of these and other books, and returned to Marvel.

By the mid-80s, a new market had opened up to comic publishers - A niche "direct market" that would pay more for comics, and could support smaller print-runs. As a result, DC started offering higher-quality reprints of fan-favorite books, and one of those was New Gods. To celebrate this - and also tie-in with the Fourth World characters appearances in the Super Friends TV show of the time, Jack Kirby was invited back to DC to complete the story the way he had originally planned for this series. He accepted and ended up creating a standalone graphic novel, The Hunger Dogs, which... wasn't really what anyone expected. Instead of bringing everything to a pulse-pounding, explosion-filled conclusion, Hunger Dogs is a sad story about technology corrupting everything, even the nobility of war, that ended with no one side truly victorious but everyone having lost, in some way. It's a wonderful book, but hardly likely to sell more Super Powers figures.

Despite having been revived multiple times since - and even having a series called Death Of The New Gods published last year - the entire Fourth World concept has essentially remained in a holding pattern since Kirby's involvement until this year's Final Crisis series, which started with the discovery of Orion's corpse and promises to finish with some kind of resolution for all of the New Gods. The story centers around Darkseid - now hiding in human form as "Boss Dark Side" - finally finding the Anti-Life Equation, and it allowing evil to finally "win," although it remains to be seen just what will happen after that; writer Grant Morrison and others at DC have talked about the series re-examining Kirby's characters and creating the "Fifth World" for them to live in, after all.

Perhaps Kirby had it right the first time; gods clash, die, and always find themselves reborn, doing the same thing over and over again, just looking somewhat different each time.

Jack Kirby's Fourth World [DC Database Project]

Despite spinning out of his Seven Soldiers series of books, Morrison wants readers to know that you don't need to know anything about what's come before when you pick up the first issue:

I like to write things so you don't have to read anything extra... Obviously, it sells more books for me, so yes, everyone should go out and buy 'Seven Soldiers.' Particularly 'Mister Miracle,' which was the most hated of the 'Seven Soldiers' books and sold least. Stuff like that has little clues in it, but honestly, you don't have to read anything else. 'Final Crisis' is like picking up a book. It's like you're picking up any science fiction book or a fantasy book and starting from page 1. Everything you need to know about the characters will be in the book.

What would it really be like if bad gods turned up on Earth? Because as this story opens, the war between Good and Evil has been won by the wrong side and Evil is now in control of the DC Universe. And then we see what happens next as a result of that...The Gods are here to destroy everything that we hold dear, everything that has meaning to us, everything that has value for us. They want to utterly crush the human species and reduce us all to slavery and that's as big a threat as it gets. We wanted to do a primal superhero myth that would pit absolute evil against pure good in a way you don't see much of in comics these days so it's the story of the DC universe facing its apocalypse and only Darkseid could cut it as the main villain.

If you've got a favorite character, I am sure he's in it. Supergirl and Mary Marvel are in it. They have a big climatic battle to decide how femininity should be portrayed in superhero comics!

All-Star Grant Morrison 1: Final Crisis [Comic Book Resources]

Image Comics' Transhuman is a new series by Pax Romana and The Nightly News creator Jonathan Hickman and artist JM Ringuet that oozes potential joy for the faithful. A "mockumentary" about genetic engineering, superheroes and the effort to mass-market a combination of the two, the series looks set to confirm Hickman's reputation for both visually-arresting work and an ability to play well within the SF genre. If you want to know more, you can find a 5-page preview of the first issue here (PDF).

Another premiere that's worth paying attention to this week is the first volume of Flight Explorer, the kid-centric spin-off from popular anthology Flight - It may not all be science fiction, but with a new story about the top-heavy monster Jellaby, and another strip called Zita the Spacegirl, this should be considered for the childlike near you. Even if that happens to be you yourself.

(You can read some more about the book, including seeing preview pages, here).

The third book appearing for the first time on Wednesday is Star Trek: New Frontier #1, a new mini-series tying into the New Frontier novel series. Both the novels and the comics are being written by Peter David, allowing for both coherent continuity and full-on nerditry, both of which are heartily approved around these here parts.

Elsewhere, it's all about the collections. Marvel is putting out hardcover collections of their popular time-travelling 1980s Iron Man versus Doctor Doom stories in Iron Man: Doomquest and their not-so-popular "The Devil annuls Spider-Man's marriage" story in Spider-Man: One More Day.

Meanwhile, DC pulls in some of the best of their 1980s output with the complete run of Dan Jurgens' greedy jerk anti-hero in Showcase Presents: Booster Gold, and then reprints some comic history with the fourth and final volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus, which not only reprints Kirby's final stories starring Orion, Mr. Miracle and Darkseid, but also does its best to return Kirby's final work with the characters, graphic novel The Hunger Dogs, to the way it was before editorial forces demanded rewrites and changed the ending to make the production of more Super Powers figures that little bit easier. Previously unseen, reworked and re-inked art, and restored script and structure on the strip provides something like a Director's Cut version of one of the lost masterpieces of superhero comics by one of the greatest comic artists who ever lived... which has to be worth a look, right?

As ever, a full list of the week's releases can be found here, and the place to find your personal comics emporium can be found here. Now go and buy the Fourth World book and make a dead comic mastermind a happy ghost already.