The only thing worse than a silly, posed cliffhanger page is a final payoff that doesn't make any sense. If your "big reveal" requires that the audience have an encyclopedic knowledge of comic book lore, it's not really much of a reveal. Not only does it alienate new readers, but it rarely makes sense in the story either. It's like the bit in the last Star Trek movie where Benedict Cumberbatch's evil John Harrison revealed that his real name was Khan; Trekkies totally get why it's a big deal, but nobody else does, and neither do the characters. What difference does it make what his name is? Same with Thanos at the end of the Avengers film, who knew what the point of that was except a select group of geeks? Most recently this unfortunate cliché appeared at the climax of DC's Forever Evil series (FYI, spoilers for Forever Evil). The "big reveal" at the end of that story was that a character called the Anti-Monitor was messing stuff up on the alternate Earth-3, where Darkseid - catalyst for all the Forever Evil stuff - was lying low. But the Anti-Monitor hadn't appeared at all in the storyline before that last page, and whilst the character's identified by name, no explanation is given. Is this guy a big deal? Should we recognise him? It's not a climactic flourish. It's just confusing.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
