I missed this on the Nu Newsarama website but Morrison talks Final Cri$i$ #1 and explains the death of Orion. Here is a snippet:

Grant Morrison:
Orion’s appearance on the docks and the Guardians’ response in Final Crisis #1 was written and drawn first. Jim Starlin then created Orion’s death scene in Death Of The New Gods to lead into the War God’s appearance in Final Crisis #1, so we refer back to Jim’s scene in Final Crisis #3. When I wrote that scene, Orion’s terminal injuries were a result of the mysterious bolt of light which Jim hit him with in Death Of The New Gods #6. By the time Countdown #1 came out, I was working on Final Crisis #4 and #5 and JG was drawing #3, so we were already well into our own story and unable to change it to match Countdown.

Forgive me but what th f**k did the the Editor do here? Remember when you were reading a comic and it had the little box telling you “This happens before Blah #X comic” from the editor? This was done in the books to avoid readers going WTF and being confused? IF — by Morrison’s account, DC / editor KNEW that this would be the case, why not tell the reader this RATHER than having us readers need to read this in an interview?! Are the editors / companies just getting lazy or what? This is about as a bad as World War Bunk when Dr. Strange had to go drink ZOM and fans were like WTF until the writers filled them in on an interview. Is that was we are to expect these days? Writers come in and fill in what happens if you too wacked out on crack to figure shit out like a Morrison script.

You can read more here on Nu Newsarama (if you can find it rather than being bored by all the crappy movie news):
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080609-MorrisonFC01.html