Review: Final Crisis Aftermath – Escape #1 (of 6)

Or – “By Hook, Or By Crook, We WILL.”

Tom Tresser has spent a lot of time in a lot of different portions of the DC Universe.  Those who only know him as Wonder Woman’s beau have missed a lot of things, including his war against organized crime, a couple of runs in Amanda Waller’s Suicide Squad, and a general badassery that many heroes could only wish they commanded.  After the events of Final (really more of a Penultimate) Crisis, Tom Tresser is about to wake up in the worst situation he’s ever faced…

Previously, on Final Crisis – Escape:  During Final Crisis, it became clear that Grant Morrison worshipped the work of Jack Kirby.  Darkseid and the New Gods?  Kirby.  Terrible Turpin?  Kirby times two (Dan Turpin was a character out of New Gods, but as a child he was Brooklyn of Kirby’s Boy Commandos.)  The faceless members of the Global Peace Agency?  Kirby.  The army of OMACs?  Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, Kirby…  Heck, if Etrigan the Demon wasn’t all tied up with Reign in Hell, I’m sure that he would have put in an appearance as well.  Coming out of Infinite Crisis, the people of the world weren’t sure what had happened with the heroes and the red skies and the GLAYVIN, but coming out of Final Crisis, it’s the READERS who have been left mostly in the dark.  Can this miniseries, and it’s accompanying books give the DCU the rejuvenating boost that Final Crisis itself could have?

The book opens in Tresser’s apartment, on an average morning.  He feeds his cat, takes a drink of milk… and collapses on the floor.  He could have at least gotten thunder and a dramatic high-speed drive at the camera, the way these things usually start.  Tom awakens in bed, dressed in his Nemesis uniform, faced with three identical women offering his favorite breakfast (black coffee and a florentine omelet) and identical plastic smiles.   “You’re nice.  I’ll be your friend,” drones the dead-eyed trio, and my reference sense suddenly starts tingling.  Tom escapes using hit wits and a table knife, only to catch a fleeting glimpse of Amanda Waller in the hallway, but before he can grab her, he is laid low by some sort of sonic/electrical attack.  when he awakens, a faceless man in a uniform with a “GPA” badge greets him.  “You can’t see it, but I’m smiling at you,” sasy the stranger, professing himself a fan of Nemesis and his work.  Tresser suddenly sees Rick Flag behind the stranger, and races after him, only to be felled again.  When he awakens again, he is in a holding cell with Count Vertigo, (another Suicide Squad survivor) Cameron Chase, (DEO operative) and a strange man in a black and white piped blazer. about whom something seems… familiar. 

After such an unceremonious arrival, Tresser’s head is ringing like the chimes of Big Ben.  Count Vertigo is likewise out of sorts, barely able to recite his A,B and C’s but is lucid enough to attack, intiating a free for all. Schizoid man that he is, the Count’s powers leave everyone reeling, and the general expectation isn’t for many happy returns.  Luckily, Cam still has her power to disrupt metahuman abilities, and ends Vertigo’s dance of the dead with a checkmate: her fist in his face, like hammer into anvil.  Tom takes the brunt of the attack, and tries to thank her, but Cam  informs him that he’s just another name without a face to her, in effect teling him, ‘It’s your funeral.”  A change of mind later, Nemesis hallucinates Rick Flag, Amanda Waller, someone who resembles the original OMAC, and his girlfriend Wonder Woman as another creepy inhuman automaton.  “Do not forsake me, oh my darling!” he cries, but there’s no living in harmony with the girl who was death (or even the girl who was plastic.)  Tresser wakes up again, with the strange unnamed man in his room.  Once upon a time, he had a name, says the stranger, but now even HE doesn’t know who he is.  In the blink of Tresser’s eye, the man disappears, replaced by the OMAC.  “The door is not locked,” says the creature, “Your actions are your own.”  The man in the black and white blazer runs, opens the door, and the fallout begins, as he is disintegrated by the hostile forces outside.  Fallout, part two comes as Chase and Tresser stare uncomprehendingly at the alien landscape beyound the door…

Upon my initial reading of this book, I kind of hated it.  A lot…  Some time has passed since that assessment, and rereading for this review has revealed some charms that my first pass missed.  The references to a certain British television show are interesting, and the trippiness of Marco Rudy and Mick Gray’s art is a selling point.  The use of existing DCU references like Cameron Chase, Rick Flag, et al, puts it squarely in continuity, but the series borrows liberally from Jack Kirby’s original OMAC series from the early 70’s.  The old cliche of pitching “X meets Y with a touch of Z” feels a bit true here, but overall it’s not a bad issue.  The surprise ending kills off the character I found the most compelling though, and 28 pages of Nemesis passing out feels less like a superhero comic and more like the middle chapters of Elvis’ auto-biography.  Final Crisis: Escape #1 is better than it could have been, but not as good as a book as I wanted it to be, earning a hopeful but somewhat disappointed 2 out of 5 stars.  With a main character this good, and a pedigree of influences of this caliber, I hope that the next 5 issues knock it out of the park.