I'm not sure we want to keep going in this direction, it's starting to smack of Chinatown (the Film)

Morrison is about to run wild.

His ideas were to turn the New Gods into a Galactus-like presense instead of making them clowny super heroes. With the Death of the New Gods, Darkseid will come to Earth with 10 of his remade Dark Gods and conquer. No joke, New Earth is doomed..permanently.

The kicker seems to be that the ambiguous Earth 1(shown in Tangent and JLA#0 as identical to New Earth) is going to become the main setting of all DC's stories. I actually believe that some of the current ongoing stories are already taking place on Earth 1(this is how Kyle Rayner can be in Countdown and the Green Lantern arcs at once).

I believe that the stories such as Batman RIP, Green Arrow/Black Canary, and Superman are already Earth 1 stories. We have seen New Earth fading away over the past year. I believe that with the death of New Earth goes to the death of multiple continuity errors and confusing history. Earth 1 is a world born in this state with a near identical history, but lacking all the crisis changes and confusing canon.

I believe that Darkseid wins, just as they said. I just believe that the Trinity or certain heroes on New Earth will survive to become the Gods of Light to oppose Darkseid's dark Gods. They will become the Fifth World, one that oversees the other 51, and will be seen as the New Gods by everyone in Earth 1. Morrison has hinted this idea but said it was turned down. This is before they gave him creative control over Kirby's stories, though.

I do believe that Countdown has been severed from Final Crisis, but the original plan was for Kirby's Great Disaster to destroy New Earth, leaving Earth 1 to take over the stories. I just think DC saw how small this looked in print and disconnected the stories, making Earth 51 the fate of the Great Disaster...This change allows Final Crisis to tell its complete story.

As Morrion said in the recent interview, Batman RIP may be gently linked to Final Crisis, but Batman's "true end" will be shown in a two-parter following RIP and it will tie directly and strongly into Final Crisis. This is the proof that Final Crisis is the end of New Earth and everything we've read for the past few decades.

I don't fear the transition to Earth 1 because I sense that it has already begun. Since it's history is mostly identical, there won't be a hard transition in the stories to notice. If Earth 1 and New Earth follow identical paths except for the Crisis events, it makes sense that most of them have already transitioned to Earth 1. This is why so many of the books in DC this summer won't tie to Final Crisis. There's an epic event going on that won't be affecting most of the surrounding universe/books...this is because that surrounding universe has already transitioned to Earth 1 storytelling. I believe that the only current books still on New Earth are Countdown and Final Crisis. Everything else is already Earth 1, including Batman RIP. New Earth is on it's way out.

Let's see Hellboy/BPRD in 50 years...

HOLY ####!! HOLY ####!! HOLY ####!! =)

I noticed you guys were saying that Thomas Wayne actually isn't dead!! That makes the latest issue of Detective all that more interesting!! Hush cuts the bandages off his face and reveals who he is to Catwoman (before he cuts her heart out!!)...and she is totally shocked as to who it is!! Bruce even said, after Catwoman asked if Hush was Thomas Elliot, "not anymore"!! HOLY ####!! HOLY ####!! HOLY ####!!

(Started and ended with Holy ####, and used all the exclamation points, because as a Batman fan for 25 years...this would totally blow everything out of the water!! That, and Detective becomes an even more AWESOME comic book in my eyes!!)