Oh sure, they plan ahead a lot. As in, which events they will have next year, which "new directions" certain characters will take, etc. But it's obvious by now they don't really plan it in detail. Their attitude is, "we'll think of something when the time comes."

Evidence: Infinite Crisis being rewritten at the last moment; 52 forgetting its purpose (to setup the One Year Later issues) until right before the end; Countdown also being rewritten midway due to low sales; and now, the Final Crisis snafu.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, events like Civil War, World War Hulk and Secret Invasion, are planned much better years ahead, thanks to editors working more closely with the writers (conflicts still happen, but they are not as big as in DC.)

It's amazing DC's events sell at all. I guess completist syndrome still affects many fans. But that can't last forever....

It would be very surprising if Final Crisis #5 has been written yet or exists in anything other than an outline on airline cocktail napkins. #4 is probably pushing it.

This said, I think he is one of the most consistently enjoyable writers in comics. He's just not, you know, able to let anybody know what he's going to do in advance (because he hasn't yet decided himself).

The final scripts are often very beautiful, but nobody sees them until very very late in the process, like too late. I don't know that anyone is allowed to edit him. I doubt it. I think they just run through it real fast to make sure there are no cuss words or nipples.

It's possible no one saw Mister Miracle, because, well, you read it. Sort of worried about Final Crisis having to do with it, because, well, you read it.

Still, far more successes than failures.

I think the term you want is "high-falutin' ".

Huh?! GMo is notorious for his pretentious and impenetrable scripts. Have you ever read the script for 'Arkham Asylum'?

That contradicts with his famously wordy dialogue and narration.

So, though DC editorial is (in)famously, unforgivingly inept and seemingly maliciously ignorant, the most sinister crew of ham-handed villains ever assembled, worse by far than even the chattering ignorants on the message boards, they were probably not in a position to know what was coming.

Their sin was pretending they did

Agreed, else how to explain Liefeld selling 40,000 copies of a book after all these years.

Thanks for supplying all the confirmation needed that most comic book buyers are complete idiots. Quite frankly, i'm not surprised that a lot of you are decrying Morrison in this post then.

I hated Countdown (but stupidly bought it all), but I quite enjoyed Death of the New Gods. Though I would have been pissed off to be Starlin and have the two most interesting characters have their final showdown in Countdown. It will look like crap in trade.

You know what though. I am treating that as a completely separate story to Final Crisis. A what if? If you like.

DC just bit off more than they could chew leading in to this event, by trying to tie it all together. It didn't work out well, and Didio has admitted as much. Going forward they won't be crossing stuff over as much, which is just fine with me.

The point of Death of the New Gods was to get rid of the OLD New Gods. The New Gods are being re-imagined.

Well, I could be wrong since my opinion is based on what I saw in the FC Sketchbook & FC#1, but I don't see any "re-imagening"; just redesign.

Giving Metron, Orion, Darkseid & Black Racer a new custome is no different (in my eyes) than when Aquaman got his "blue wavey" suit, or Superman got electric powers. In the end, we are still talking about the same characters.

When Jack Kirby created the Fourth World, he also created the Third World with a whole set of Old Gods (see Wotan, Arzaz & Gog); then stuck them in the "Source Wall". In other words, The third world weren't old versions of Darkseid, Orion and Metron; they were entirely different characters all-together.

And thats what Kirby established. That if the New Gods were to die, a Fifth "Entirely Different" World would take its place... with no Metron, Darkseid, Orion and certainly no Glorious Godfrey.

To say that the new Silver Surfer Metron is the new reincarnation of the old "new gods" is to miss the point of the New Gods entirely.

So yeah, I'm glad I didn't read Death of the New Gods. The way I see it, they are alive & well; and Morrison is going to continue writing the story he started in Seven Soldiers: Mr. Miracle. (By the way, Shilo has been around since 1973 and he even appeared in JLA as Mr.Miracle when Scott Free was presumed dead.)

But Ultimately, there are no "New New Gods" here; it's just the same old "New Gods"... but written better!

There are arguments for both sides of the coin, editorial messed up but Morrison should have been willing to alter scripts OR they should have given him some sort of consultant role on Countdown (The comic not the popular British quiz show although Carol Vorderman writing out the Anti-Life equation seems like a fun idea.)

But it's not his job to make sure all the dots connect. His job is to turn in a good book, continuity or no. If DC is worried about making sure everything hangs together, that's what editors are for. Editorial dropped the ball (or didn't pick it up in the first place). I can't blame Morrison for being annoyed by people blaming him for it.

Dini actually seems to be going out of his way to pay lip service to what's happening - he namedropped Jezbel this past issue, for instance (with the rather logical point that Bruce's romantic life is, to say the least, screwed up at the moment).

As for Final Crisis... I maintain that DC Editorial was replaced by Skrulls moments before Johns submitted the script for Infinite Crisis #1. 52 was just something left over from the previous regime.

If you'll let me make a poor anecdotal point that is revealing in its own way, X-Force #1 was one of the best selling comics of the year and I don't think that's because of the pretty decent workmanship by Yost/Kyle.

I think Morrison is probably miffed because a lot of the FC #1 chatter has revolved around these inconsistencies rather then the story itself. Rather then people saying "wow, the Green Lanterns have a code for Deicide that they've never had to use before" (which is pretty cool, BTW), people just wanted to know why the code hadn't been invoked when the first New God (Lightray?) died. I can understand why he'd be miffed: his creative efforts are being overlooked for continuity problems he had nothing to do with.

Someone above made a very good point about Darkseid's apparent fall through time in DCU #0 not coming across on the page at all, which I think is a very good point. Morrison has become increasingly esoteric since his JLA run, culminating in the almost unreadable (IMHO) last issue of Seven Soldiers. He's so busy being vauge with his Big Ideas that they often don't translate across the page at all. Part of me wonders if the reason no one's been really able to explain the premise of Final Crisis succinctly is that no one understands it....

The reason that companies keep having to resort to big crossovers and other stunts is because that's the only thing that puts asses in the seats. After Infinite Crisis, the DCU books were largely left on their own to sink or swim. What happened? They largely sank. Look at Marvel-- they begin to put most of their drive behind the Avengers family of titles. What happens? They take off, but now X-Men sales begin to sink, and fans complain that there's no "attention" being paid to them. So Marvel runs a big story through all those books. But now the Ultimate line is fading....

It just bugs me that fans constantly moan about the event driven nature of modern comics, but contiue to support the events and not the good books that stay self contained. We only have ourselves to blame.