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FINAL CRISIS: SUBMIT
Submit
Written by GRANT MORRISON; Art by MATTHEW CLARK & NORM RAPMUND; Cover by MATTHEW CLARK; Variant Cover by RODOLFO MIGILARI
DC Comics, December 2008, Color, 40pgs, $3.99
In a world overrun by Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation and his relentless storm troopers, do you choose to SUBMIT? As the lines between Super Hero and Super-Villain become blurred, the ultimate odd couple of Black Lightning and Tattoo Man, in what could be their final adventure, battle against the odds to save a family from the great darkness.
Commentary
Morrison demonstrates what a Final Crisis tie-in issue would have looked like had it actually crossed over into the DC's monthly titles (and been written by a competent writer...), giving us an extended action sequence that fills in a few gaps from the series proper. With its two black protagonists, hordes of zombie Justifiers and seige mentality plot, there's clearly a Night of the Living Dead influence here, probably filtered though John Carpenter's classic Assault on Precinct 13.
Clark's art is passable if inconsistent. It looks like either he or inker Norm Rapmund might have had to draft in a few extra pairs of hands to help get the issue out on time (though it was originally solicited for October 1st 2008 and didn't appear until October 22nd). Despite this, his Image-esque stylings are probably a better fit for an extended action sequence like this than the more mannered art of someone like J.G. Jones or Doug Mahnke.
Submit is a refreshingly straightforward read after the dense plot dynamics of the first three issues, though there's precious little here that advances the overall plot, and consequently very little to annotate. Outside of Superman Beyond, its the only Final Crisis tie-in actually written by Morrison and hence the only one that actually engages with Morrison's story, and the only one with a pay-off in the main series that's more than a couple of panels at best.
Annotations
Page 1 - Our introduction to the Tattooed Man's family, his daughter Laurel and unnamed wife. His son Leon also makes his debut in this issue. They look to be holed up in in a high-school somewhere.
Page 2-3 - As we'll see issues of the series proper that follow the Flashes jump forward in time, Darkseid and his Justifiers have replaced all advertising hoardings, TV transmissions and basically any sort of corporate marques with Anti-Life anti-motivational sloganeering.
Before becoming Black Lightning, Jefferson Pierce was an Olympic decathlete. There are allusions to the origins of the modern decathlon, the Pentathlon of classical Greece, throughout the story.
The ancient Pentathlon consisted of the long jump, javelin throw, and discus throw, followed by the stadion (a short foot race) and wrestling. Presumably here we are seeing an analogue to the stadion.
Page 10 - The 'Bludhaven Here We Come!' headline references the assualt on Bludhaven coming up in Final Crisis #4. As we'll learn there, the Daily Planet has become the only media outlet on Earth not subsumed by Anti-Life.
Page 11 - This exchange between Black Lightning and the Tattooed Man over burning the Origin of the Species book recalls scenes in Morrison's Invisibles and Zenith where the protagonist would deflate portentous moments like these with a well timed barb. Basically, the Tattooed Man makes Black Lightning look like a judgemental berk. Morrison clearly can't resist a cheesy nod toward this sequence in the issue's conclusion.
Over the course of this issue Morrison writes some very deft characterisation of the Tattooed Man, presumably with an eye on the character 'breaking out' as an urban anti-hero post-Final Crisis. Unfortunately what followed was Eric Wallace's poorly received Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink, and the character has not been seen since.
Page 13 - With the school bus escape plan and shadowy figures bearing down on the protagonists' unsecure hidey-hole, this page is especially evocative of John Carpenter's original Assault on Precinct 13.
Page 15 - Black Lightning's two daughters were first featured as children in Mike W. Barr's Batman and the Outsiders series but, of late, have both taken up super-heroing. Anissa Pierce is Thunder from the Outsiders and Jennifer Pierce serves with the JSA as Lightning.
Though not named in the comic, the big green guy is probably Batman villain Killer Croc, created by Gerry Conway and Gene Colan in 1983's Detective Comics #523. An interesting choice of villain for this issue as, although it's hard to tell from looking at him, Croc is actually black.
Page 20 - With its smokestacks and giant Darkseid's head statues, the evil New Gods are slowly turning the Earth into a New Apokolips.
Page 22 - In another nod to the classical Pentathlon, Black Lightning throws the discus.
Page 23 - Black Lightning, a man of many talents, was also a high school teacher and, in an unlikely turn of events, the Secretary of Education in President Lex Luthor's administration.
The colleague he is trying to rescue was probably Oracle.
"shoulder to the wheel" is an allusion to one of Aesop's fables featuring Hercules and the wagoner
A carter was driving a wagon along a country lane, when the wheels sank down deep into a rut. The rustic driver, stupefied and aghast, stood looking at the wagon, and did nothing but utter loud cries to Hercules to come and help him. Hercules, it is said, appeared and thus addressed him: "Put your shoulders to the wheels, my man. Goad on your bullocks, and never more pray to me for help, until you have done your best to help yourself, or depend upon it you will henceforth pray in vain."
The moral of the story - "The Gods help those who help themselves."
Page 25 - Referencing another zombie classic, the 'trapped in a tunnel' scenario appeared in a very similar form to this in Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later
Page 26 - Suicide Slum first appeared in Simon and Kirby's Star Spangled Comics #7, starring the Guardian and the Newsboy Legion. When Kirby took over the Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen series in 1971, he relocated it from New York City to Metropolis. Its been part of the landscape of Metropolis ever since and is officially named Hob's Bay.
Its not very clear where Black Lightning gets the sigil from that he gives to the Tattooed Man. Kamandi? At this point in the story, the only people who have it are Anthro, Kamandi (though whether that's the same Kamandi trapped in Bludhaven is open to debate) and Shilo, none of whom have met Black Lightning yet...
Page 28 - Black Lightning's daughter Thunder was given a super-hero identity by Judd Winick and Tom Raney in 2003's Outsiders #1. The Omega Initiative is the assault on Bludhaven referred to in the Planet headline earlier this issue, which we'll see more of back in the series proper
Page 29 - The "S" painted on the window mirrors the Justifier's "J", as seen in Final Crisis #4. In Kirby's original Forever People series, Glorious Godfrey would have his Justifiers paint "S" for "scapegoat" on buildings housing his enemies.
Thanks to gentleman and scholar Andrew Hickey, I now know that Justifier Black Lightning's speech here echoes 11th Century Bishop Gregory Bar Hebraeus' account, probably largely fictional, of Caliph Omar, the 6th Century companion of Mohammed, who led his Islamic army to victory against the Persians and the Eastern Roman Empire. Upon his invasion of Egypt, he ordered his men to burn the books of the Library of Alexandria stating: "they will either contradict the Koran, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous." A variation on this quote also appears in the proto-Final Crisis JLA arc, 'Rock of Ages'
Morrison gives us a suitably unsubtle conclusion for this action-orientated issue, with Justifier Black Lightning burning the Origin of the Species and demonstrating his total subjugation to Darksied. Little does he know that, as implied by the book, it will be man's adaptability and limitless potential that will be Darksied's undoing...
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