I wasn’t going to pick this until I saw the cover with Libra sitting on his throne. Another Final Crisis tie-in that is helping to maintain my wallets trim physique. I’ll admit I am interesting in gaining more knowledge of the DCU as I do not read a whole lot of books. But, this book I could have done without. I would have been better off if Libra’s origin remained a mystery.

For being such an evil bad ass, his upbringing was incredibly mild. Call me crazy, but if you have a character who believes evil needs to win in order to balance the universe shouldn’t that character have a really sadistic childhood filled with all kinds of traumatic events that would make CNN puke with disgust? But what do I know. The rest of the origin was ok. How he got his powers and how he met Darkseid were pretty interesting, but nothing that made me like this character more.

The dialogue was too normal, too casual I guess. I understand its Libra’s origin and he doesn’t exactly have his super villain persona down, but even what Darkseid’s minions were saying was weak. With the exceptions of Submit and Resist, (I haven’t read those), the Final Crisis tie-ins have been great. It would have been nice if a slightly better writer had been assigned this project.

The art was good for the most part. The layout was not confusing and a most of it was enjoyable to look at. My only beef was with how Libra was shown without his costume. Without the costume he had a kind of chubby emo kid look and with the costume he looked like a badass mother. That kind of difference between costume and no costume really stuck out for me and I lost for a little respect for Libra’s inability to keep his hands off the Oreos.

So overall, it was an okay read. I wish I hadn’t read it and would not recommend it because it takes away some of the mystery of Libra and without that mystery about him Libra is a little less cool.