FINAL CRISIS #4 pg 30 by J.G. Jones (Darkseid Title Splash Page)

FINAL CRISIS (2008)

by Grant Morrison & J.G. Jones

Issue 4, Page 30: Darkseid Revealed

Splash Page / Final Page / Title Page

Graphite and ink on board

Signed by Grant Morrison 

11" x 17"

Few people are as good at weaving intricate, massive plots as Grant Morrison. With FINAL CRISIS, he literally had total control over every character in the DC Universe, and he utilized them all. And some of them didn’t make it. Not just insignificant sidekicks, either. Even though people had been warned by an ad campaign advertising the results, the shock that came with the death of Bruce Wayne was resonant. It was a full scale media event that brought the public at large into the comic book hobby for a bit, until the next real-life crisis would bump it out of the spotlight. 

When you consider that this death was being set up in not one, but two series (Morrison was also writing Batman on a monthly basis), the richness of his multiple narratives is beyond commendable. It’s difficult to express the scope of a battle that involves all the characters on all the worlds in every dimension of a pantheon from a publisher that has printed billions of comic books for more than 75 years. But not for Grant Morrison –and certainly not under the sure pencils of J.G. Jones, who had previously illustrated Mark Millar’s WANTED. Jones is the go-to guy for “awesome.”

This is a full page splash featuring the villain behind the events of Final Crisis. This is the actual moment of revelation —the moment to which the entire previous year of DC comics was leading: Darkseid is made flesh again.

This is the first glimpse of the God of Evil in the context of the events of Final Crisis. His thumb, symbolically turned down, indicates his plans for the Universe. And this event has been captured by one of the best artists in the business as a splash page. As a mere illustration, it is phenomenal, but when weighing the importance of the event depicted, it represents an integral piece of comic book history, as scripted by one of the all-time greats.

In a conversation back in 2020, Jones told me, "This page almost killed me."