Infinite Mental Crisis

I have, of late, been feeling rather odd.

This whole week, in fact, has been a strange sensation of oddness. It started off mildly, but increased exponentially as the week continued. The oddness was an emotional one, a strange feeling that I couldn't really pinpoint but new it was not a pleasant sensation, and the feeling grew and grew, this odd oddness, and the more it grew, the more frustrated I became, annoyed that I couldn't pinpoint any cause or reason which would mean not knowing any solution or cure.

A few hours earlier, the oddness subsided, aided in some strange way by watching 'The Dead Poets Society' again. However, as the emotional oddness subsided, physical oddness has now taken its place -  I'm not sure whether I'm tired or ill, it feels like I'm either high or drunk but have imbibed no substances of any kind. In conversation I've been finding it harder and harder to maintain a flow of sentence, and even whilst typing this I know I am not doing so at my usual speed, constantly fixing numerous typos.

I have no idea where these waves of oddness are coming from. I have no clue as to the emotional underpinnings behind it all. I have no explanation for the physical oddness (apart from the possibility that Dominos once again either laced my pizza with illegal herbs and spices or some form of bodily fluid that I'd rather not know about). I have no idea where all this is coming from this week.

But I do know what doesn't help - reading 'Final Crisis'.

In an earlier post I had written about how I wanted to know how Batman has died in the DC Universe and picked up Batman R.I.P. thinking it would be the story of how Batman had finally kicked the bucket only to discover that it was the prelude to the actual event happening in a book called 'Final Crisis' which I picked up this morning, hoping that a dose of comic goodness would lift me out of this funk oddity.

I got home, did some work and proceeded to read it to discover the dawn of man, multiple earths, the death of J'Onn the Martian Manhunter (which happens off-screen, sorry, off-panel), good gods, evil gods, the destruction of all mankind, Japanese harajuku super hero teenagers, multiple Supermans, every Flash in existence, multiverse vampires and the enslavement of all mankind as they ride giant dogs.

And somewhere amongst it all, over two to three pages, Batman pops up out of nowhere, pulls out a super-gun, caps the dude that's behind it all but just before he gets shot, the super-baddy zaps Batman in the head with lazer thingeys and fries him. Batman turns to skeleton (though his suit is surprisingly intact).

As for Superman? He was too late to save the Bat. Because he was in the future, somehow. Or something. I have no fucking clue.

Superman had a huge story-arc dedicated to his upcoming death when he died back in the early nineties. Batman gets two to three pages and dies like a bitch. There's something wrong with all this.

I have read the book three times today because, like my emotional oddity, this book is like a puzzle that I can't seem to frickin' figure out. It reminds me of when I read Grant Morrison's 'The Filth', except somehow that was easier to accept.

Like almost every other comic book I've picked up recently after my hiatus of non-comic goodness, it feels like the only way I can truly appreciate 'Final Crisis' is if I've read every other DC comic that preceded it, the '52' books and every single character book that has a crossover with this - Superman, The Flash, Green Lantern, everyone. And it's frickin' frustrating. It's actually putting me off super hero comic books more and more because they seem increasingly inaccessible. Where am I going to get my sequential art fix now? I remember being super-excited every time I'd go to the comic book store - what wonderful stories would I read today? I now feel like every time I pick up a comic book it's as if I've walked in halfway through a movie.

Regardless, the oddness of feeling has finally subsided, perhaps due to the complete emotional, physical and mental draining that this book has endured upon me, and I have learnt three valuable lessons:-

1. I may be too old to pick up superhero comics now
2. I'm probably too dumb to understand anything Grant Morrison writes
3. I'm not that financially secure to waste more money on frustrating items such as these

Next book I buy is gonna be a 'Hellblazer' book. And if John Constantine disappoints me (which he never has) I'm afraid I'm going to have to say goodbye to comic books forever and start reading 'Twilight'.