DC COMICS
WRITER: Paul Dini, Keith Giffen, Seam McKeever
ARTISTS: Jesus Saiz, Jimmy Palmiotti
COVER: Adam Kubert

The final showdown between Darkseid and Jimmy Olsen.

This is actually a straightforward, slam-bang, all-action issue, making it one of the best in this miniseries so far. It starts with Darkseid facing off against a mutated Jimmy but eventually, a third party shows up who takes the story up a notch.

SPOILER ALERT...

It is Orion who has finally come for a showdown with his daddy.

The fact that this miniseries has to bring in a new character for their big climax just shows how muddled the writing has been. All the various plotlines seem to have led up to nothing except the Orion-Darkseid confrontation that wasn't even played up in this miniseries. What about the Monitors, Monarch, Superboy-Prime, Eclipso and all the other characters who were supposedly part of this story?

Frankly, it looks like the creative team was making things up as they go and that they didn't really have a cohesive vision. So they tried to please us with a big smackdown near the end.

But at least it was a suitably spectacular smackdown with Darkseid and son looking very menacing and formidable. It would actually be quite moving if we didn't know darned well that Darkseid will be back for the big FINAL CRISIS story in a few months.

The art captures the intensity of the characters quite well while making the battle between Orion and Darkseid easy to follow. The editors clearly saved the best artists for the last issues of this miniseries. For that, this issue gets three stars out of five although miniseries as a whole would just get two stars at most.