Final Crisis: Resist #1 was a great comic book, especially for those readers who felt that Checkmate ended the moment Greg Rucka and Eric Trautmann stopped writing the book (and it became a bad mini-series guest-starring Checkmate), as this was essentially the last issue of Checkmate, and oh boy, it was neat.

Rucka even got me to sort of kind of like the stupid robot OMAC things!!!

So you KNOW it's good!

Like Final Crisis: Submit, Final Crisis: Resist is focusing in on one group of heroes dealing with Darkseid's conquest of Earth.

In this instance, it is the characters of Checkmate, as Rucka and Trautmann combine to tell the last story of that group of characters (I'm sure they'll be around in the future, but the way Rucka and Trautmann tell it, it might as well be their last story).

The art was by Ryan Sook, and as you might know by now, I really enjoy his artwork, and he did a great job with this book.

The basic gist of the plot is that Mister Terrific, Sasha (who goes "offline" to protect herself), Thinker, Thalib Beni Khalid, and Snapper Carr are holed up in a bunker as the last remnants of Checkmate, holding the fort against all the other folks, who have been turned to the dark side of Darkseid.

Snapper has been using his teleportation to travel the globe and get them supplies.

What Rucka and Trautmann do really well here is show us just how desperate the situation is, but at the same time, never letting the heroism of the characters fade, even when they are forced to make some horrible decisions (and even then, sometimes they can't let themselves abide by those decisions).

The standout figure in this issue was Snapper Carr, who was used beautifully. However, Mr. Terrific certainly had his moments to shine, particularly with the final decision by Terrific, which actually involved a clever usage of the OMAC Project (consider me impressed).

One thing that struck me as odd was the fact that Rucka has said that Sasha will be okay, provided there is a cure for the Anti-Life Equation (which obviously there will be). That seemed odd to me, as the story sure seemed to present it as a much more devastating situation than that, and that devastating nature made the scene extremely powerful, so if it really isn't all that devastating then, well, that's a shame. Not that I want Sasha to die or anything, just noting that the scene worked REALLY well as a death scene - not so much as a "shut me off until we save the day" scene. Ah well, not a big deal - the scene is still very good either way.

In any event, this issue, like Submit, perfectly showed what Final Crisis was all about - what do heroes do when evil wins?

They find a way to come back from the ashes, like Mr. Terrific in this issue, leading to a beautiful ending that leads directly into Final Crisis #5.

Recommended (this was easily the best non-Morrison tie-in to Final Crisis yet, and challenges even Morrison's tie-ins).