Thinking About Final Crisis

Normally, I'd be watching football right now, but Arizona's pants-crapping against the Vikings has removed any desire for that. So on to other business. Now admittedly, I'm not buying Final Crisis, or anything currently associated with it*. I give it a lookthrough in the store, and there's plenty of places to read about it online, so that's what I'm working from here.

OK, so there's something about a singularity and Earth. I'm unclear if the singularity is around Earth, or if Earth is actually collapsing and becoming the singularity itself. I know the approaching Lanterns are going into the singularity to get to Earth, for what that's worth. If I understand this correctly, the singularity is actually the "weight**" of Darkseid's evil collapsing space***. In the meantime, he's brought about 3 billion people under his will, and appears to have been adding more all the time, and as of the end of #5, they're mimicing his words and actions, which is meant to represent their devolution to mere extensions of Darkseid. I think.

OK, so Darkseid has one world pretty much under his control, and he has it inside a singularity, which I imagine makes getting there a tad difficult. Sure, it's easy enough to just let the gravity draw you in, but you've got to survive the experience, right? Not everyone has a power ring.

I know the story isn't done yet, but does this seem a little small-time for Darkseid? I was under the impression he wanted to bring order to the universe, with the caveat that "order" will be best achieved if he's the one running everything. Which, OK fine, everybody should have a dream. But one planet is not a universe. I suppose that if one has Boom Tubes it isn't too difficult to get around a singularity, so he can always keep spreading the word if he wants, and his base would be somewhat difficult to approach. Still, they seem to be making a pretty big production out of his conquering one world. I understand it from our perspective, since the world is Earth, and it always winds up being the focal points of these sorts of things, but from his perspective, it's not that big of a deal, is it?

I was talking to Jack at the store, and he thinks that Darkseid's soul is dying and he's trying to take the universe down with him. I guess reducing existence to nothingness could be considered a form of order, but I thought Darkseid had been stabilized. His body has settled into its usual rocky state, as opposed to decaying as the body he had at the start of Final Crisis did. Or is it that he exists simultaneously in all the people who serve his will now? Either way, eh doesn't seem to be in any immediate danger of keeling over, so I'm not sure about that interpretation.

* Unless you count Batman & the Outsiders through the tenuous "RIP will carry over into Final Crisis, and BatO is currently tying into RIP".

** Or should it be mass, since weight only exists in the presence of gravity and can gravity actually interact with evil?

*** The first time I read that statement, I thought it was idiotic. Sure, I could believe Darkseid's cronies have a device that could somehow make Earth massive enough it could create a singularity. I mean, they've got Boom Tubes, so why not? Then I remembered that in some of the manga I've read, the protagonists occasionally run across a character who is so powerful, or evil, or just inhuman (emotionally speaking), that they're rooted to the spot. They can't bring themselves to move. So if Darkseid is supposed to be so incredibly evil, then I guess he could do that. I'm willing to roll with it, anyway.