First of all, let me get something out of the way: I hope DC has a gigantic underground vault somewhere where they've locked up a list of 250 Grant Morrison issue titles in the event of a nuclear disaster, because he's still on fire here:
- The Ghost in the Fortress of Solitude
- Superman's Mission to Mars
- Superman At the End of Days
- The Second Death of Superman
- Superman and the Fiend From Dimension 5
- Superman's Last Stand (okay, this one's kind of weak)

I'll take these over another goddamn storyline called "Endgame" or "Finale" any day, thanks.

Anyhow, this is a bit of a muddled ending. I really like the handling of Vyndktvx here - the idea of a fifth-dimensional imp like Mxyzptlk (I almost didn't have to Google that) who's out to destroy Superman instead of just mess with his day is genuinely scary, and the art team does a great job of selling his menace (Morrison a little less so), whether in the Little Man disguise he's assumed throughout the story or his final, nightmarish multi-faced spider-creature form. Weirdly, as someone who will go to bat for most of Morrison's work, I think his dedication to this crazy storytelling contrivance of his - Superman's timeline becoming fractured as Vyndktvx closes in - is what undoes this storyline. It's too hard to follow, and there's not nearly enough clues for someone reading it to be able to figure out what's going on. The introduction of the Legion of Super-Heroes time-traveling in from the future only exacerbates the problem.

I do have to tip my (burning bowler) hat to what Morrison accomplished here though - there's a lot of great detail here. I reread the first two volumes after I read this collection through for the first time and felt totally lost, and I was pleasantly surprised how much stuff connected together from the obvious (the homeless person talking about the "white dog" ending up being a reference to Krypto watching over things from the Phantom Zone) to the "wow, how did he plan that" (the three people looking for Clark in the first or second issue that we never see have to be the time-traveling Legion). Then again, there is some stuff that just doesn't make sense still (Are there two super-hunter guys that the Little Man tries to use against Superman? If not, why does he show up for the same super-hunter guy twice to cut a deal?)

Overall, this is a good end to a great storyline - just don't come into this cold expecting to understand it all (and even if you don't come into it cold, maybe don't expect to understand it all). ( )

I was so confused during the first half of this book. But, then I changed my perception filter to "timey-whimey" which makes so much more sense.

Mxyzptlk? Really? Least favorite Superman villain of all time. But now he's not a villain. I think. Did he give his hat to the King-Thing knowing he would be killed? But then he becomes the King-Thing and is handed the hat from the imp.
And Superman's landlady is Mxyzptlk's wife, but also Clark's guardian angel?
Vndyktvx is an interesting idea for a bad guy, until its application. He's a god, but not a god. Can be all times of Superman's life but from his perspective it's all the same time. I get that he might not understand time, except that Vndyktvx is also a human named Ferlin who does understand time. I just hope this character is now gone for all time.
I will grant that the Multi-spear/the Multitude was pretty cool, and also what really got me thinking "timey-whimey". ( )