Grant Morrison S/D

Zenith is really good, probably my favourite thing of his. What I read of "The New Adventures of Adolf Hitler" was great too.

Chuck, I have Adolf as a PDF file on slsk if you want to download it; my user name is "servoret".

The rest of the discussion is here:

Grant Morrison: S&D

More 'meh' but still enjoyable: The Filth, Arkham Asylum, his Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight miniseries, his Fantastic Four mini

S: Doom Patrol (except around issues 40-50); the Hellblazer two-shot; Gothic; Animal Man; Recent New X-Men
D: Invisibles, "Disco Dad" tendencies

S: Kill Your Boyfriend, Flex Mentallo, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, Zenith, New Adventures Of Adolf Hitler
Only Worth Buying For The Artwork: The Filth, Arkham Asylum, Mystery Play
D: Marvel Boy

The Invisibles, much as I like bits of it, is too patchy to fall into any of the categories.

There's a handful on ebay at the moment in the US at around $5, plus a Frank Quitely signed Dynamic Forces hardback for 10 Euros...

Other Zenith Bks, New X-Men, Invisibles = definitely worth reading.

The rest of his stuff is patchy, still good compared to most people.

Did anything ever 'come' of Bizarre Boys?

And did he do Bible John? Or was that John Smith?

His character work here is really fantastic and heartfelt, it seems to me. The liberal arts drop-out "-ism" dropping gets a little tiresome, but who am I to complain if it brings with it monkeys vs. robots and brain-in-a-jar vs. brain-in-a-jar?!

I have to take back what I said about The Invisibles and Sebastian O up top. Andrew is right, I think, in his claim re: uniform brilliance. Everything makes sense, seen in the context of Grant's work as a whole. I think the system of "magick" that he's worked out through his books is both valid and totally genius as a method of working out and disseminating a deeply personal mythology. It's amazingly lucky for us as readers that he's been able to popularize his work through the medium of mainstream comics.

(he's been saying so for ten years but apparently has written some of it now)

I am secretly glad he has never come out with this novel because I do not want to hate him for it.

Classic(ish): Doom Patrol, Flex Mentallo, The Invisibles (I'm the only volume 3 fan). Half the ideas in New X-Men, when it didn't get bogged down by rushed art or half-assed ideas with the Shiar. The Filth is good as a collection of ideas and reads better the second time through. It's part of Grant's "feel sorry for my dead cat" genre. We3 is necessary, when collected I hope it sells a bajillion copies. Marvel Boy is carried on half story, half art and is practically a blueprint for the style of Marvel's Ultimate line of comics.

Close to dud: Arkham Asylum, Mystery Play
Ambivalent: St. Swithin's Day, Seaguy.

I still haven't read any of his mainstream DC superhero stuff! Animal Man is the closest I've been. Any suggestions on anything that's particularly outstanding?

DC Superheroes: No point in pissing about, go directly to JLA. The first collection is called 'Brave New World', I think.

Or JLA Earth2, the graphic novel drawn by Frank Quitely.

If only Seaguy #3 wasn't so horribly dark, I would have given in to everyone in the world. My partner now refuses to read any Grant Morrison after she read that. If I do end up interviewing Cam3ron St3wart, I'm going to dictaphone record him saying, "Hey Sheila, Chubby is really still alive."

OK, that's enough rambling on like a mad nutter. But anyway, I don't think that anything he does is bollocks at all, even though some parts of his work (like feeling sorry for dead cats) are perhaps less symbolically significant than others. There's a doctoral thesis in there somewhere for whoever wants to be the first Grant Morrison scholar in Cultural Studies, I tell you.

"All I want is the answer to one simple question before I run screaming back to the BUGHOUSE: Is this REAL or isn't it?"

I think there's a tension about Grant's use of "magick" that shows up in his work repeatedly. Not just in the statement quoted above, but in characters like the rock star in Flex Mentallo, and of course Feely/Slade in The Filth as well as the convergence that Grant claims happened between writing The Invisibles (and writing himself into it as an idealized character) and the events that happened in his real life at the same time. The question is whether "magick" is real or whether it's shite, and I'm willing to bet that, using the tripartite thing, it's neither-- it's really a use of A. Moore's "idea space" from Promethea, i.e., memetics, i.e. as the Chief puts it when confronted with The Book with No Title, "It might help to consider the Zen KOAN, 'First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.'" So of course, it's both real as well as unreal, as Jane puts it to Cliff two pages before the page in DP #21 with the quotes given above- it works functionally, but to think it works because of some "magickal" power or essence is dumb essentialism, so no, it's not real also. Stuff like this plus the "Buddhismo" bad interpretation of Buddhism from The Filth and the similarly wrong one-toothed masturbating Buddha of pleasure thing from The Invisibles makes me think that Grant is on to something deep and he knows it, too.

OK, sorry to bother you guys with all this, but I thought it and felt like I had to write it out for someone to read if they cared. And now I'm late for my movie, so I've got to go. If anyone else here has thoughts on all this, I'd like to read them.

okay some questions:

(1) I don't have flex mentallo. is this really his best thing ever? Same with Zenith.

(2) are they going to collect the remaining doom patrol issues?

(3) what do you guys think of this whole magic thing? Although it's interesting (like that interview where GM says he could beat up Alan Moore in a magic war), I can't always take its BSy, DISINFO tone that seriously. But for a lot of people, that's what they seem to like best.

(4) People who hate GM--why? I had an hr long discussion (i.e. "argument") with my comic shop owner about this and it seemed like the exact things he hated about GM (discursiveness, wackiness, fucking around with conventions) were the things I liked. My impression is that people who don't like GM are precisely the people who are "real" comic book fans--conservative continuity hounds who rightly note that GM is screwing up his continuity facts and doing his best not to repeat the satisfyingly boring old Darkseid-takes-over-earth story. I told my sister (who read the Kubert/Lobdell X-men out of a crush on Gambit) about Morrisson's Xmen (Beast as Beast from Beauty in the Beast; Beast as gay; etc.) and she said "Those people who loved X-Men before must hate this." Am I wrong?

(5) GM seems like he's in this intermediate tier--famous and obscure in all the wrong places. Fanboys like X men and JLA (I think Rock of the Ages is the best paced superhero comic I've ever read) but don't really know about the Invisibles, but neither the snobby I-only-read-comics-I've-heard-about-in-the-new-yorker crowd or the Sandman franchise Gaiman fanclub really know about his work either. Gaiman once said in an interview that GM would be as famous as him (and invisibles as well read as Sandman) if only the invisibles had been collected earlier. He predicted that once it was in book form, there'd be a Sandman-like GM worshipping. But this hasn't happened, as far as I know. Is it because Sandman caters to pre-existing niche crowds (like goths)? Or because Sandman has sweet life-affirming stories, fairy tales about love and death, and Invisibles has the giant floating afterlife head of John Lennon, Archon conquerors in 2012, and Russian anarchist buddhas? And The Filth isn't exactly the kind of comic you take home to your mom. It's possible that Sandman is a richer, more flawless work, but Invisibles is way more relentlessly interesting, intense, and challenging. what do you think?

Flex is interesting in that it presages JLA and The Filth with the final issue with the invisible superheroes that have gone fictional/memetic in order to protect humanity. I guess it's also a loving tribute to reading superhero comics during the Silver Age when one could feel that superheroes were a force that existed to protect normal folks and the peaceful mundanity of their everyday lives. That's a theme that comes up in Morrison just as much as the radical utopian stuff does, it seems (maybe part and parcel of the whole superhero concept, but not necessarily--look at the earliest Superman stuff for radical superheroism in action): The Doom Patrol, The Invisibles (arguably?), The Hand all have this function of protecting the prosaic from incursions of the irrational (it took me a while to get the pun of "anti-person"-- anti-persons are always megalomaniacs trying to rock the boat 44r0nHz-style, they're anti-people-in-general). I dunno, I guess if you go through the personal transformation advocated in the end of Flex, you've done what Morrison's trying to prompt you to do through The Invisibles, so maybe Flex is the best thing he's ever done 'cause he gets where he's going in only 4 issues?

(2)Dunno, since all the subsequent issues have Flex Mentallo in them I thought it had the same problem with DC wimping out over the Charles Atlas plagarism that collecting the mini-series does.

(3)I dunno how seriously Grant takes it! Look at the end of The Filth, which is really ambiguous over how seriously we're supposed to take Greg/Ned's adventures into magick-shiteland a la the ending of Videodrome. Then there's the "Pop Magick" thing, where he goes on about how being a magician is all about pretending to be the person that you really want to be, and how picking fictional characters as your personal deities is probably the best choice (like Alan Moore worshipping whatever Roman fraud he claims to worship). And his "I got abducted by aliens who told me the secret of the universe because I went off to get abducted by aliens" thing. I guess, to the extent that I'm not agnostic about it, that I just see it as memes/Joseph Campbell-style symbollogy, and I don't sweat the fact that I'm not up on the hidden meanings of all the Crowley-derived magick stuff that Morrison and Moore are up on. I don't think that literal "magic powers" are what Morrison's aiming for his readership to attain, that rather it's really a rejection of dogmatism and rigid belief structures that he's after. The pretensions of the "magickal workings" crowd actually annoy me-- I think that stuff's outdated and can be too much like wish-fulfillment fantasies. I don't really think that the universe is so cuddly that you can get anything you want from it if you just ask for it hard enough-- I think that way lies madness, and that Morrison explores this somewhat in The Filth, with its potentially psychotic protagonist. (And hey, look at the last issue of Doom Patrol, where Grant seems to argue that, yes, literal belief in this stuff is crackers, but that letting "reality" kill your soul isn't a viable option either.)

(4)No, I agree. I think they hate him because he's got his own personality and he's working on his own themes all the time. He's not into producing soap-opera product to feed these people's addictions-- he's trying to subvert those very habits in them by introducing his material to these people, and they pick up on that and hate him for it. They don't want to be challenged by this shit-- they treat comic books as comfort food, and find some sort of solace in the way that they can master the "facts" of the material and construct order out of comic-book flotsam in a way that they can't do in their real lives. Polar opposite of Morrison's intentions-- he seems to want to use this fictional material to inform his (and others') real lives, not try to make the fictional into some sort of reality that can be lived in as an escape (although he shows nostalgia for this type of escapism in Flex among other places, the point of that series is to move beyond this as a person).

(5) Yeah, I think The Sandman is way more middlebrow and unchallenging, comfort food style, than The Invisibles. The personification of death is the cuddliest character in the series, for crying out loud. And at the same time, it's a lot less slapdash than Invisibles, reads better, has better production values and better art. The Invisibles reads like somewhere along the way Morrison ripped up the original plan that he'd made for the series and just started cramming that material in where he could, meanwhile recycling good bits of dialogue from his earlier series (the "stop a conversation stone dead" thing, among others), and getting very seat-of-the-pants in his writing style, which started annoying me in a serious way during Volume 2 and led me to literally throw away the last two series worth of comics after I'd bought them (sort of a mistake-- I should look at the last series again sometime). I think that Sandman was built to last as a literary enterprise, whereas The Invisibles was just written to explore and disseminate some of the material Morrison was working on/up to at that point (the "secret of the universe" shaman thing that I alluded to in an earlier post and that is also found in Flex) and is ultimately disposable in a way that Sandman is not (supposedly touching on great truths in a mythopoetic way also, but in a more classical fashion). The Invisibles is also more of a explicitly personal work than The Sandman (at least I think it is-- as far as I know Gaiman didn't write himself into his comic directly as a character, etc.) so it's harder for it to find a mass audience, sort of like Burroughs compared to Kerouac (who, yeah, writes semi-autobiographically in On the Road, but writes about the mythology of the open road, etc., easy stuff for Americans to sympathize with compared to Burroughs's personal issues with homosexuality, drug addiction metaphors, paranoid fantasies about social control, con men, etc.)

People don't like Grant Morrison because while he takes comics as seriously as they do he doesn't take the characters as seriously. A lot of his stuff is as openly sentimental as the biggest superhero soap but the sentiment comes from his and your relationship to the material, not from the character interactions themselves. GM's characters tend to be *very* broad, New X-Men is probably the time he's tried hardest to 'do' characterisation and even then it basically falls to bits halfway through the run.

He doesn't have the serious following of a Gaiman because he can tell superhero stories very well indeed and loves doing it: people who distrust superheroes don't like that. Maybe an Iain Banks/Iain M Banks rebranding would have helped, who knows.

A lot of his stuff is as openly sentimental as the biggest superhero soap but the sentiment comes from his and your relationship to the material, not from the character interactions themselves.

Do you mean that it's broader 'heroes are brilliant stuff' rather than overly emotional characters? JLA seemed like a collection of superhero firefighters at times (Green Lantern excepted)

New X-Men is probably the time he's tried hardest to 'do' characterisation and even then it basically falls to bits halfway through the run.

Doom Patrol is down this end of his range as well, and I think it work brilliantly (or I think that I think this - hurry up with the reprints, Vertigo!). Cliff and Jane anyway, if falls away a bit after from that (mostly for plot reasons).

The JLA thing - the big sentimental moments in that are huge saves-the-day widescreen stuff, which yes is a third category of sentimentality but still isn't really much to do with character interaction.

morrison's 'position': does he cultivate it? can you ever imagine him actually escaping it?

i don't really read for characterisation (or at least i certainly don't read comics for characterisation) so when i actually find a character interesting often as not it is a broad type (e.g. i find morrison's version of the beast GRATE but anna karenina a bore)

I can think of maybe Peter David, DeMatteis, BK Vaughn, Bendis, Alan Grant...

Okay, that's quite a few, but still...

I don't think GM is bad at characterization, I just think that (1) it doesn't interest him and (2) comics are a serial medium so characterization doesn't work the same way as in a film or novel. So (1) his interest is clearly in creating action movies of ideas and probably plots and thinks this way too. (Are there enough ideas-per-page, etc.?) If ideas = intellectual, then there is a way that characterization is anti-intellectual, in that it requires plodding plot construction. In this way, GM is similar to Kafka, Borges, and Murakami, in that he's less interested in the literary homework and more in just getting right to the metaphysical candy. (2) The problem with serial comics (I might be plagiarizing this from a hellblazer forum) is that the protagonist is really a shared convention, so you can't really change him that much w/o abandoning the conventions of the series. In this sense, GM does great characterization, but it's a serial (or comics) specific form of characterization, where charactization means people being always themselves: the people are all unchangeable icons. In that sense, his Batman, Lex Luthor, Jean, Cyclops, Wolverine, white queen, etc., for example, seem to perfectly embody their archetypal selves. But they never change and we never really know their interior life. Since superheroes are so uncomplicated in the first place, I'm pretty happy with this Silver Age version of charactization; I think when people don't do this (like some of the people you mentioned, such as peter david) characterization just ends up meaning mundane stories filled with unfunny jokes. GM's way seems more like mythology: we don't know the characters aside from what they do in the story, but we have a pretty good idea of what kinds of things they would and wouldn't do.

That said, there's usually the obligatory "John Constantine goes to the bar or confronts his dead father" issue and GM hasn't written anything like that as far as I know. I think the problem is that his emphasis on ideas makes him a sort of shallow writer, in the sense that he doesn't ever give his characters texture or subtext. Usually, I love that, b/c the stories end up sleek and graceful. But it can make his characters too generic (king mob and fantomex).

(Thanks for the great posts--especially chris!)

If I'm restating something from before, forgive me (esp. Ken, as this might be what he's getting at), but GM's knack for characterization seems to be his ability to get at charcter details while (or by) painting in these broad archetypal strokes. cf. those moments in JLA when the universe is going to shit and Batman has this one line that embodies his Batmanness (as GM sees it) so perfectly while at the same time not distracting from the grandeur of the moment happening around Batman's one line. Or, hell, that line from Emma Frost near the start of his NXM run - something like "The whole world is watching; we must be nothing less than fabulous." That's her right there.

As for continuity-related boggins, I think some of it (the unintentional stuff) has been publically classified by GM as communication breakdowns between Marvel editors and him, like the bit in "Return to Weapon X" where Sebastian Shaw talks about reading minds.

Otm

um..?

(but make it the first one)

re: INVISIBLES, I thought the beginning was great, got a little flabby in the middle and shaped up nicely at the end. And Chuck, the whole point of King Mob was to be a wet dream of cool. But it's okay, he gets better at the end.

I'd say Doom Patrol or Animal Man are the best starting points, but I might be biased because that's where I started.

I'd agree that DOOM PATROL is the best place to start with Morrison. It stats out as a semi-traditional superhero work, but doesn't stay there for very long at all. Morrison's kinda tough to sell to non-superhero readers, as a lot of his best work has been firmly set in that genre/trope/whatever.

I read all of INVISIBLES when I was far older than that, mostly for the first time, too. Held up in spite of that.

Sooooo glad to read that! Someday I might gather the courage to go back to it...

But if I was forced to say at least one thing I could do without, that would most probaby be his Spawn mini.

And, yeah, Arkham Asylum hasn't aged well either.

I'm reading Doom Patrol now as the trades come out, and loving it.

And I have to re-read Invisibles complete someday.

ROB'S ON ANOTHER PLANET
Jessica Callan, Eva Simpson And Caroline Hedley

ROBBIE Williams is expecting a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.

The 31-year-old singer reckons an extra-terrestrial invasion is inevitable, saying: "I've been dreaming every night about UFOs, every night. I can't wait to go to sleep because my dreams have been so brilliant.

"I think they are definitely on their way, seriously. Mark my words. From now until 2012 - watch out, kids."

Haven't we already seen this somewhere?

We killed Chubby by not buying enough of issues of Seaguy to ensure the whole story gets told.

it quite often veers into prog rock album cover territory, and everyone talks in post-modern slogans

Was this your first time reading a Morrison series, Joe? (Sorry, I just found this amusing.)

Was this your first time reading a Morrison series, Joe? (Sorry, I just found this amusing.)

-- Chris F. (nieman...), September 21st, 2005.

Ha ha, that could actually be an unkind summary of his entire career, couldn't it? I've actually read quite a bit of Morrison, and I do prefer his less self-indulgent, more narratively traditional work (Zenith, Invisibles Vol 1, Seaguy), staid old square that I am.

Plus, I think it's time for me to do a reread on the last issues of Doom Patrol. The issues after that last Mr. Nobody story arc never sat well with me, but I was flipping through them today and found that I liked them better in the context of thinking about this stuff as of late. The Case/Woch art team maybe wasn't the best, but it still kinda works. Also, I think I'm over resenting GM for the less savory ways that his stance on mental illness in DP #63 can be interpreted ("a world where everything is alive and significant" is not always better than the alternative), especially in light of The Filth.

The actual worst part of the Grant DP run was the Happy Harbor sex men story just after the Pentagon stuff (& the TOTALLY CLASSIC Beard Hunter one-off), that was dreadful and really felt like wheels spinning. Then the second brotherhood stuff was OK, the silver age issue was meh, I LIKED the Rebis moon issue though have never convincingly understood it, and after that it was plot plot plot and fite fite fite but those issues do read better now than at the time.

I read a GM thing last night - his "World Shapers" story for Doctor Who Monthly! Not exactly vintage stuff and John Ridgway was having a serious off-day but there were a couple of moments that were immediately Morrison, that thing he does where the reader and character 1 see something big and weird, and then character 2 treats it really matter-of-factly (which of course just increases the sense of wonder for the reader)

Yeah, agree and agree (the Beard Hunter was the issue that I started back up with!). The Shadowy Mr. Evans was supposed to be Red Jack pt. 2 or something but just came off as a boring manic asshole, Gnostic Christ or not. I guess you're right that the series needed a change of pace anyway, since when GM got back to the Weird Menace thing with those issues, it didn't work anymore (because he was bored with it? There's that Weird Menace red herring/autocritique bit that I think happens right before the Sex Men issues).

1) Your ass must be a beautiful place.
2) IT'S ON SON!

I am very mad at Quitely for the super package.

I just looked at this, and you're beyond right: some chimp has copy-and-pasted an on-model S-shield over the redesigned one that Morrison and Quitely designed! It's Kirby's Superman-faces all over again.

(And then, destroy, destroy, destroy...)

I'm glad you were able to find some good drugs in Mke, Chris. :>

Amazon dopes hate it b/c it violates narrative conventions: the story interrupts itself halfway through and goes in a completely different direction and it's the most Morrisony JLA trade, in terms of the density, Invisibles references (Darkseid invades in 2012, the same year of the end of earth in Invisibles and Terrence McKenna, etc.) and lyrical weirdness (GL is on the grail quest and, standing in a forest of dead superheroes made out of stone, and he tells the new Hourman that he dreamt he was in a field where all his desires have come true, but then notices that everything is green).

Yah, this city is great-- I'm so glad that it's my home town! (I'm a Cancer, BTW-- and yes, reading your horoscope in the weekly paper for shits and giggles sometimes is a part of dopey Morrisonmania.) Pt. 2 of My Greatest Adventure today has been even more exciting so far-- I just got back from hiking through the labyrinth at Grant Park down on the South Side. It happens to be the case that one of the Seven Bridges there is down for repairs, so I decided to hack my own way out on the hike back...

personally i think the art is awful and the story is terribly paced (no tension, all release) but there's some neat stuff in it for sure.

Yeah, the camp aspect is part of the fun of Grant Morrison, storyteller. I'm reminded of something Morrissey said in interview on the New York Doll DVD-- everybody has one artist that hit them at the right time growing up and who can never disappoint them. GM is certainly it for me, but that doesn't mean that I'd make his comics mandatory reading for everybody on the planet, or even everybody on ILC (though I don't know if there's anyone here who doesn't read his stuff at this point).

Which ones? I wanna read his Batman just because I'm thinking that his take on it is going to avoid the sort of "fascist" exclusion-from-the-human-race thing that Tuomas seems to be so worried about in regards to superheroes. I bet it's going to be fun-- hopefully they're'll be more "Batman thinks of everything" hijinx as well as science closet goodness.

Animal Man
Seaguy
We3
most of New X-Men
one trade of Doom Patrol
one or two trades of JLA
the first half of the Filth
one trade of the Invisibles
Arkham Asylum

In other news, it feels like I'm embarking on a mature reading of DP finally as I wade through this stuff. "Exegesis" is stupid though-- it's better when it's unpacked but still not made explicit. Mum's the word from me on this shite from here on out, except to say that I'm cool with the ending of #63 again.

Morrison's hit-and-miss for me, so I tend to pick up his comics only if it sounds like an interesting idea. I liked the idea of Seven Soldiers' structure, the 7 interlocking mini-series, but I never heard much about what it was actually about. I tend to only buy comics that I'm definitely interested in - I'm also a cheapskate. I picked up the first issue of Shining Knight after hearing good things, but I didn't think it was all that good, so I stopped there. I'll probably read Seven Soldiers if the library gets the trades, but I'm not going to buy them.

Cover: Note that, as with the other #4 issues in 7S, MM is escaping. ("Free at last": talk about polyvalent.) Note also that the perspective is really wonky: what we are seeing is not an angle shot, but an _angle shot of_ an angle shot--that is, a 2-D look at a 2-D image that has been rotated away from us. The picture plane is really important here, as it is in e.g. Zatanna.

Pg. 1: Young Shilo, before his brother's death, practicing escapism. Hmm. Escapism.

Pg. 2: Crippled, castrated Fisher-King Shilo, ODing on pills.

Pg. 3: Following Shilo's death, Omega shows him another life path (in which Aaron never died and he never became an escape artist).

Pg. 4: This life is zooming toward its conclusion (the kids are older)...

Pg. 5: And faster. Rabbi Dezard is of course Desaad; Shilo's granddaughter is Ms. Miracle... and of course the menorah is a commemoration of a miracle, & of something that lasted much longer than it should have... but Shilo realizes this isn't his life. Death, again, is the escape from the Life Trap.

Pg. 6: Back to Pg. 1 scenario. Several years later, Shilo sees Aaron killed (this is shortly before Shilo was introduced in Jack Kirby's Mister Miracle #15). That _is_ Shilo's real life.

Pg. 7: Sort of Shilo's real life: he and Dina worked on the Slab. But not his real life: he wasn't the warden.

Pg. 8: Oracle is the all-seeing one who appeared in Justice League of America #100-102 (the original Silver Age Seven Soldiers story, also alluded to in Bulleteer #2 etc.). "The spear" may be "the spear that never was thrown" (see Guardian #4 and Bulleteer #4). The chained god was also talked about in Klarion #4 and Guardian #2.

Pg. 9: The God Exterminators are Darkseid and Desaad, of course.

Pg. 10: "Aurakles": cf. Shining Knight 3, and the bit about the Sword of Aurakles.

Pg. 11: Shilo gives his life to free Oracle.

Pg. 12: Mother Box's soul escaped into Shilo, who is still going through "the life trap": one life after another...

Pg. 13: ...like this one: Infinite Crisis, and dead superheroes everywhere. Then a flashback to the Pg. 1/6 scene, then back to the aftermath of IC: Shilo's dead. Then another life trap, in which Shilo's been shot in the head. Back to the Shilo-as-kid scene.

Pg. 14: Much speculation on Barbelith to the effect that "the fundamental force that is restriction" is the comic book page...

Pg. 15:... and the printed page's picture plane is "the prison you can never escape." (Check out the Metron scene in #1 again: lots of freaky picture-plane stuff going on there, of the same kind we see in Zatanna #1 and 4.)

Pg. 16: More "continuities," more deaths for Shilo: drowning in a car; dying as an infant; a heart attack; throwing himself in front of the bullets that killed Aaron; old age... but as he says "you're right here with me," he's in precisely the same pose he was in in MM #1, pg. 3, panel 2.

Pg. 17: "Representing something that's in all of us": superhero comics characters are about escape!

Pg. 18: One more life: Shilo _younger_ than he was when Aaron died, completing his initiation at the hands of Metron. Guilt, as we learned in Shining Knight, is a Sheeda mind destroyer; overcome it and you escape the trap.

Pg. 19: Same dialogue in Panel 1 as in #1 pg. 6. So yes, in the final "continuity" he has been in the black hole for the seven days 7S takes place over, but he's ALSO been having all of these lives during his initiation--which is how e.g. he encountered the cab from Klarion and Jake Jordan making his marriage proposal in MM #3. (Note that he didn't _affect_ any of that stuff, but it was happening; as of now, he was no longer present during those events.) And now his "true life" begins.

Pg. 20: The "big storm" is Hurricane Gloria/Gloriana.

Pg. 21: Back to the pg. 1/6/13 thing: looks like he got out, and his brother bought him that chocolate sundae he promised him. Note that this is the first page of the ENTIRE SERIES that isn't dark and/or dark-bordered, and how this compares to the final pages of previous chapters, all full-page splashes: #1 is in a rotated picture plane (w/ same weird perspective trick as this issue's cover), surrounded by darkness, even!

I just reread all but the last two Seven Soldiers comics, and loved them far more on a reread than first time - the intricacy of the interlinking is breathtaking, and I hope the ending does the job.

NAOAH is in the Top Three Grant Morrison Comics Ever, and possibly the best-coloured comic I have ever read (even more amazing because IIRC it was originally going to be in b&w in Cut! though I guess that's why the Crisis colourist felt free to go wild and paint shit through the entire background of a panel or fill things with wallpaper patterns or whatever)

Which is to say, if anyone has it and wants to mail it to little old me, please get in touch. Ta.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/08/Newadventuresofhitler.jpg/180px-Newadventuresofhitler.jpg

The controversy around it was half the fun. It's always great watching po-faced twunts get excited about things.

Nice to know there are plenty of other people out there who keep reading some of these damn series despite the lack of rewards.

(This post will be deleted at some point this weekend by the way).

Does this guy have any kind of game in comic collector circles? I ask because while tidying up the attic last week, I found a copy of "near myths", a brit comic anthology zine from the late '70's. As well as an episode of Bryan Talbot's "Luther Arkwright", it contains an episode of Morrison's "Gideon Stargrave". I believe Morrison resurrected the character in recent years. It is really, really bad. But kind of entertainingly so.

Should I haul it up on ebay, or just stick it back on the shelf, dear ILC-ers?

OH YEAH

perhaps you may even get offers from ILComickers

Oh man!

I have just discovered that they retconned out of existence the big twist from GM's New X-Men.

Which one... the everybody-will-be-mutants one? Or another one?

I thought they'd retconned the lot. Presumably because it left a bunch of X geeks and casual readers who'd just seen the movie all going "WTF? We don't want actual ideas in our comics."

Most of them. Although they retconned Xorn within, like, days after GM's run ended. Evidently they didn't understand the entire concept.

"The Filth is good as a collection of ideas and reads better the second time through. It's part of Grant's "feel sorry for my dead cat" genre."

Can anyone explain this to me?

Which bit?

The Filth is good as a collection of ideas - it's certainly a collection of ideas, and I really like the ideas in the collection.

reads better the second time through - this is self-explanatory, though I haven't given it the second read.

It's part of Grant's "feel sorry for my dead cat" genre." - as seen in Animal Man, he's not above using the projection that humans place on lower lifeforms to get an emotional response, as part of the effect he's trying to generate with his stories.

I actually think that The Filth's insistence that sympathy for non-humans is an essential aspect of humanity is pretty interesting. It's Feely's love for his cat that keeps him from returning to his old life. It's certainly heavy-handed, and something GM's perhaps done a little too much (both in Animal Man, and at least once in The Invisibles), but it is a pretty effective near-universal experience to tap into.

Also, yes, The Filth is certainly better second time through.

...he's not above using the projection that humans place on lower lifeforms to get an emotional response...

-- Andrew Farrell

Perhaps it's exactly as cynical as you suggest, but based on Animal Man, The Filth, We3, Seaguy, I get the impression that the issue is a bit more personal for Mr. Morrison. I.e., he's not coldly exploiting a projection so much as sympathetically exploring the emotional consequences of loss -- using personal experience as a tool. Loved The Filth the first time through, and no more (no less) the second.

Servoret posts from way upthread are so damn great.

Maybe it's not a big issue in The Filth, but I thought Animal Man and WE3 made it clear Morrison cares about animals and animal rights as such, so it's not always just about projection. WE3 is all about not seeing animals as mere intruments to satisfy human needs.

wHAT tUOMAS AND sUGGEST bAN pERMALINK SAID. Sorry, typed without looking with caps lock on.

question - somewhere in volume two of the invisibles, they all draw straws to decide what their role in the group is in terms of elemental symbolism. sadly this comes across as an excuse for the artists to start drawing ragged robin in leather, but the idea is still sort of interesting: does anyone know where morrison got it from?

Maybe he just came up with it himself? The idea of switching roles/responsibilities from time to time to avoid internal hierarchies from developing is quite common in anarchist-oriented grassroot politics, something which Morrison no doubt is familiar with. And combining that with elemental symbolism seems like a typically Morrisonian idea.

hey tuomas is back!

i heard a thing on npr the other day about how during harold washington's (1st black mayor of chicago) campaign, racist supporters of his opponent would sometimes wear blank white badges.

didnt read the thread but marvel boy is his best thing

Has anyone ever checked out that Invisibles' guidebook "Anarchy For The Masses?"

Yeah, I have it. Well, it's actually in LA, along with my run of THE INVISIBLES, with a friend of mine who's had them for too long. I recall it illuminating a few points here and there but not quite as meaty as I'd wanted it to be. Maybe I'm already steeped in esoterica, so some of it was old news.

Despite his reputation for including various esoteric matters into his comics, I think Morrison is actually quite good at making them into an organic part of his stories and explaining them within the story, so I've never felt I'd need the help of some external reference guide. I've read some texts where various Morrison stories are interpreted via spiral dynamics, but I don't think knowledge of that theory is in any way necessary to understand what he's writing about.

The only thing in The Invisibles that was quite strange to me was The Hand of Glory (at first I thought it was something Morrison came up with himself), and even with that one, knowing it's an ages-old concept isn't really necessary for understanding what it does in the story. Of course there are some subtle in-jokes and references in his comics that require some outside knowledge to decipher (like Miss Rimbaud in the Miracle Man miniseries), but mostly they're just small details that make the whole richer, not something you need to get in order to understand the story.

Great News!

Flex Mentallo hardcover coming this fall!

http://vertigo.blog.dccomics.com/2011/01/04/flex-mentallo-is-back/

"Beautiful deluxe edition" = time to start calling in all the debts yer owed.

I hope they kept the essays.

Still have the singles. Which I got for less than twenty bucks (piecemeal).

I'm waiting for DC to decide to release THE COMPLEAT GRANT MORRISON LIBRARY editions of everything after THE INVISIBLES gets the Absolute treatment.

ahhhhhhh

xp -- could def. see that happening by mid-decade, assuming no Alan Moore-style falling out w/DC

Oh wow, this is the best news in ages! Now I don't have to squint at those cbr files ever again.

Great!

Now Zenith too, please

Is his new(ish) batman run any good? Pretty much the only time I'm not all abt morrison is his batman stuff - really couldn't get into arkham asylum at all fr example.

It's probably the least cohesive (and my least favourite) of GM's mainstream superhero projects, but it's still pretty good. I'd try Batman #700, which is a fairly accessible done-in-one, and should give you an idea -- tonally, at least -- of what the rest of his run is like.

It starts pretty weak, but some parts of it are very good, especially Batman RIP and the Final Crisis related material. Basically, I don't think Morrison is at his best when trying to write "street vigilante" or "dark knight detective" stuff, but the more mind screwy bits of his run are quite fine. Actually, it's kinda odd that Morrison has stayed so long with Batman, as Batman is seemingly the character least suited for him among DC's major superheroes.

thankfully it's just a "deluxe hardcover", not ABSOLUTE (so far as I can tell) so hopefully not more than $25 retail

really enjoyed the Batman Morrison run; maybe it's because he's so unlikely to be a good Batman writer that it was so fun, especially as Tuomas says, the RIP/FC material. I loved the whole tone of the Black Glove arc, and even the constantly changing art teams still managed to work with the material, though I wish they could've kept Kubert or Williams on the whole thing

most of the artists who aren't Williams do a lot of damage to anything in the "Batman" title (bar some bits of #700, and did John Van Fleet do that painted Joker one early on?), but Final Crisis is all good, and there are only three issues of Batman & Robin with shitty art, and even that's nowhere near as shitty as Tony Daniel. (Slightly shittier than Kubert.)

I think Batman Inc. is a lot of fun, and I like Yanick Paquette's (Kevin Nowlan-esque) art. Morrison seems to come up with a lot of ideas that seem nonsensical or out of character (like having Bat-partners around the world), but work anyway just from sheer energy level and the fact that he doesn't let the pace lag long enough to give them much thought.

Paquette's biting Nowlan's shading on faces, don't see too much else Nowlanesque in his layouts or spotting. The grotesquely OTT T&A in #1 almost put me off the series completely, but a combination of him reining it in a bit and me being braced for it helped #2 go down easier.

Morrison seems to come up with a lot of ideas that seem nonsensical or out of character (like having Bat-partners around the world), but work anyway just from sheer energy level and the fact that he doesn't let the pace lag long enough to give them much thought.

― earnest goes to camp, ironic goes to ilm (pixel farmer), Wednesday, January 5, 2011 3:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

love the bat-partners around the world bit, but largely because it's so unexpected. i'm completely sick of the "one dark & driven borderline bat-psycho going it alone against a fiendish web of crime (and his own inner demons!)" shtick. nice to see someone take the character in a new direction without sacrificing his basic essence.

Did love final crisis an awful lot. P. much agree with tuomas that batman isn't particularly well suited for him. Strange though because i generally do like morrison even more when he's reined in a little bit. His x-men run is probably my favourite thing in all of comics.

Fittingly, Flex seems to have a visual basis in Morrison's father.

The Talking with Gods documentary was a bit amateurish, but it's well worth a watch if you're interested in where Morrison's ideas come from. His father seems to have been quite an interesting person (a WWII veteran who became a peace and anti-nuclear activist), and a dapper fellow too. No wonder Flex was based on him.

It was also interesting to see and hear so many Morrison collaborators talk onscreen, I hadn't seen any footage of most of them. Never would've imagined J. H. Williams III looks like that.

Is this worth watching? I'm concerned that if GM's on-camera persona is too embarrassing, it might plague me while I'm reading the comics. I mean, I've seen him on two-minute Newsarama videos, but a whole movie?

GM comes off as a pretty affable and straightforward chap, so there's not much embarrassing stuff there. There's a few of occasions when he starts talking mumbo jumbo about magic and cosmic stuff, but if you've read The Invisibles none if should come as a surprise. Mostly it's just Grant and his colleagues talking about his work, which seems like a good form for a documentary like this.

Also, the movie has the Official Origin Story (or at least Grant's version of it) of the beef between him and Alan Moore, which was totally new info to me. Seems like the feud dates back to mid-80s when Moore vetoed a Marvelman script by Grant which would've otherwise been published in Warrior.

yeah that was summarized upthread, I'd never heard that before.

does seem like a bit of a dick move by Moore.

there was a bit on Dr. Casino's Animal Man recap/blog thing about how Moore and Morrison have fundamentally different ideas about superheroes (Moore = BAD! Morrison = Great!) which seems to speak to a major difference in their approaches and worldviews - Moore seems much darker/cynical/nihilistic and Morrison is sorta the opposite

There's a pretty long bit of Morrison speaking on one of those disinfo dvds that's pretty decent.

I was reading a roundup of things that happened in 1981/1991/2001 as a retrospective, and I was kind of shocked to realize that Grant's New X-Men run started back in 2001. It doesn't seem nearly that long ago!

I was reading a roundup of things that happened in 1981/1991/2001 as a retrospective, and I was kind of shocked to realize that Grant's New X-Men run started back in 2001. It doesn't seem nearly that long ago!

― mh, Friday, January 7, 2011 12:13 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i was saying this on another thread! it's shocking to me imo

fundamentally different ideas about superheroes (Moore = BAD! Morrison = Great!)

Moore LOVES superheroes!

I think he used to, but hasn't in a long time.

Tom Strong, Top Ten?

ok, sub "five or six years" for "a long time"

moore is crap if that helps.

love from hell and watchmen but it's still a pretty good challops.

I believe Moore's position, which he summed up in his MR. MONSTER intro, was "Superheroes are fine, but they should know their place. And that place is off my lawn, dammit!"

i wouldn't want superheroes on my lawn either.

I just finished reading GM's entire Batman run from "Batman and Son" to "Batman Inc" (via Final Crisis) on and it's somehow revealed itself as one of my favourite Morrison things ever -- makes so much more sense (and is so much more fun for making more sense) read in one big swoop rather than month-by-month.

Complaint (because this is the internet, and there must be one): Paquette's art is pretty hideous.

so very far from the worst art on the run though! grrroosss T&A but at least it reads

I still have no fucking idea what happened in the last issue of ROBW, but I rolled with it. Maybe on the re-read.

The Dis-Info video is also available off a Google video search, at least that's where I saw it (Mr. Morrison drinking sloppily and all, in stunning TECHNICOLOR!) Have TALKING WITH GODS on my list to watch sometime, but since I'm writing and not lettering, I can't have movies on in the background while pounding on the keyboard.

Unfortunately, reading his more recent (say, after ALL-STAR SUPERMAN) monthly comics in the monthly form is often frustrating. I've been reading BATMAN AND ROBIN in chunks when say six or more months have backed up. Much more satisfying. Didn't care for INC until the last issue flipped my lid.

I have this theory about the fundamental differences between messrs Moore and Morrison being explicated through their view of magic (which is nothing more than another way to interact with the outside world.) Mr. Moore is heavily steeped in obscure arcana and Mr. Morrison says "Well, just find something that works."

comics in the monthly form is often frustrating. I've been reading BATMAN AND ROBIN in chunks when say six or more months have backed up.

this is crazy, his previous run was a frustrating mess chapter by chapter but B&R is supercharged thrillpower. the cliffhangers in those Frazer Irving issues!

PS BTW B&R finished over six months ago! You should have read it all by now!

I read it awhile ago. I get it pulled but still don't read it month-to-month. Hell, I don't read most things month-to-month. No patience for it.

also you missed out on reading Return Of Bruce Wayne and Batman & Robin concurrently, where each issue of each series was dropping hints for the next issue of the other series. so much fun!

also lol you are buying six months of a Fabian Nicieza comic that you are not even reading

I still have no fucking idea what happened in the last issue of ROBW, but I rolled with it. Maybe on the re-read.

Similar sentiments - that double page spread made my corporate comic month, though. Oh, and I liked how I began that ish in a state of desultory disillusion w/ GM and ended thinking "Man, he should write Wonder Woman next!"

It is interesting how common a reaction to GM comics is "I had no idea what happened there". Sometimes this is in a good way, but sometimes I get the idea that he ought to work a bit more on his plots. This may mark me out as a GM agnostic.

I think I accidentally picked up one B&R issue post-GM. Remember, Batman Inc. is the one to buy, now!

Anyone have a good recommended reading order for the B&R/ROBW issues? I want to have a friend read them, either in collected form or as cbr files, and think going through each individually wouldn't work as well.

DV, my impression has always been that GM comics are always tightly and impeccably plotted, but that plot elements are often revealed in the tiniest and easiest-to-miss ways. A sideways glance or a gesture made by a character in the background of a panel might reveal something hugely important; blink and you'll miss it. I usually miss it.

sometimes though he just writes some nonsense that is incumbent upon having some knowledge of his subject's history in order to get it (yes I am looking at you, Mister Miracle portions of Seven Soldiers)

haha yeah my drummer complained about that and then I loaned him my Fourth World Omnibus volumes

been keeping away from post RIP Batman stories as I was all event'ed out and wanted a break. Now it seems we are coming to the end of Morrisons batman run.

Now I've snapped and bought a load of TPBs online, looking forward to them coming.

I've accepted there will be no uber-compendium of this stuff, so just going to get stuck in.

will let you know how I get on. Should I go for ROBW first?

Wait until the last collection of the B&R material is out, then alternate reading the two.

Now it seems we are coming to the end of Morrisons batman run.

wha?

and yes, alternate ROBW and B&R issues

read the first ROBW last night. he needs to say "oh boy" after every time jump...

that's my only criticism.

and I think I remember reading that Batman Inc. had taken the character to where Morrison wanted to leave him, and Morrison was off to pastures new. but I think there are probably some golden handcuffs going on where he can do what he wants in DC as long as he brings in the interest & sales in Batman.

Batman Inc is Morrison's own ongoing, he's said he thinks he's got a year or two of stories left in him. (And that everytime he thinks he's getting near the end of Batman, he gets more ideas.)

(Also, Matt Seneca on the gayness of the opening issues.)

Big agnostic on Batman Inc after all that -- especially re: Bruce's new playboy character styling -- but that fourth issue was v. v. excellent. I like that Grant's been on Batman for almost five years, but hasn't done a "traditional" Batman story since Gothic.

I normally quite enjoy reading Matt Seneca, but (with respect!) I think he's confusing "queer" with "kinky". At any rate, that comment from "Automatic" is somewhat OTM.

I don't think he is... As he points out, there's is a long tradition of queer readings of books/movies/comics/etc to highlight queer subtexts in texts that appear heteronormative on the surface level. And (whether or not you agree with his intepretation) that's exactly what he's doing there. The way he interprets those panels, they're not just "kinky" (what does that word even mean?), but definitely queer.

Eh, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with reading against the grain, just that Seneca's "Hmm, that kind of looks like a cock!"-level analysis wasn't very deep, and I sort of expected better from him.

Besides, I think Grant puts the queer/kinky/sexy stuff front-and-centre anyway -- I mean, he's just re-outfitted with a giant codpiece. That's not very subtext-y.

Outside of the fact all the characters portrayed are costume fetishists, I don't think there's any "kink" to be had there, it's all pretty gay.

Besides, I think Grant puts the queer/kinky/sexy stuff front-and-centre anyway

He does - with the characters he himself created, or characters which are minor enough to be (re)made queer without DC objecting to it. But as Seneca points out in his article, Batman and Robin are way too big to be queered on the level of the actual text, DC would never allow it. Hence the subtext.

how is grant morrison's subtextual 'queering' any diff from the subtextual queerness of every other batman comic ever (cf fredric wertham)?

Morrison is know to be pro-queer, unlike many/most other Batman writers. Hence details like those mentioned in the article can more easily be interpreted as intentional, not accidental.

how do you know 'most other' batman writers are not 'pro-queer'?

I'm not saying they're absolutely not, but Morrison is one of the few who's publically known to be one.

Historically, queer readings of subtexts in "straight" texts have often been informed by the knowledge that one or more of the persons behind the text are queer themselves.

dunno, just seems like a contradiction to me - that 'queerness' can be deduced from a 'close reading' that relies so heavily on extratextual knowledge about an author's private life and feelings and intentions (and of course, what's said in public discourse isn't ALWAYS 100% honest, accurate or reliable.)

dunno, just seems like a contradiction to me - that 'queerness' can be deduced from a 'close reading' that relies so heavily on extratextual knowledge about an author's private life and feelings and intentions

Why do you think this is a contradiction? Seems pretty obvious to me that a person's private life affects his art, and authors are known to put all sorts of subtexts into their work.

He does - with the characters he himself created, or characters which are minor enough to be (re)made queer without DC objecting to it. But as Seneca points out in his article, Batman and Robin are way too big to be queered on the level of the actual text, DC would never allow it. Hence the subtext.

no way. Batman and Robin are the most queered characters (and the recipients of queer readings) of any comic book figures. Their entire dynamic (that way precedes Morrison taking them on) is their homoerotic relationship. It's totally silly to say that somehow only Morrison has the courage to queer them.

http://indiana.bilerico.com/2008/07/BatmanRobin.gif

x-post

it's not v subtextual if you're depending on the word of the author to validate the supposition that these 'hidden' meanings are there, or are intentional

i don't think this is good criticism because it automatically confers the status of 'truth' on an author's words, and assumes 'intention' is always clear, knowable, speakable. If another Batman writer doesn't publicly declare their 'pro-queer' values, then it seems to negate the possibility that their work is as 'interesting' or subtextually rich as the author who TELLS us so.

has anyone seen the cartoon adaptation of All Star Superman...?

Yeah, it's good. McDuffie (RIP) did a great job with the adaptation.

He does - with the characters he himself created, or characters which are minor enough to be (re)made queer without DC objecting to it. But as Seneca points out in his article, Batman and Robin are way too big to be queered on the level of the actual text, DC would never allow it. Hence the subtext.

no way. Batman and Robin are the most queered characters (and the recipients of queer readings) of any comic book figures. Their entire dynamic (that way precedes Morrison taking them on) is their homoerotic relationship. It's totally silly to say that somehow only Morrison has the courage to queer them.

I said DC wouldn't allow them to be queer "on the level of the actual text". Sure, there are plenty of queer readings of B&R comics, but they're always about the subtext. Or can you name a single official DC comic where Batman and Robin are explicitly queer? (The panel you posted is not such an example, because back in the day it was not uncommon to portray wholesome male heroes sleeping in the same bed in boys' adventure books and comics.)

Also, I didn't say "only Morrison has the courage to queer" Batman and Robin, I just said that "details like those mentioned in the article can more easily be interpreted as intentional" because of Morrison's previous queer-oriented work. Sure, there might've been other queer Batman writers who've done similar things, but Morrison is the only one I'm aware of.

it's not v subtextual if you're depending on the word of the author to validate the supposition that these 'hidden' meanings are there, or are intentional

i don't think this is good criticism because it automatically confers the status of 'truth' on an author's words, and assumes 'intention' is always clear, knowable, speakable. If another Batman writer doesn't publicly declare their 'pro-queer' values, then it seems to negate the possibility that their work is as 'interesting' or subtextually rich as the author who TELLS us so.

AFAIK know Morrison hasn't told anywhere that his Batman has a queer subtext - Seneca's reading is simply based on the knowledge that Morrison favours queerness in his works, not on any actual admission by Morrison. IMO taking into account the artist's former work and his background is a perfectly valid way of reading texts. If you remove the author and his intentions completely from the equation, you could read any text pretty much any way you want to, which would render any subtext meaningless. Taking the author into account has always been the most popular way of reading texts, and I'm sure most authors are well aware of that. (For example, the various Morrison avatars that appear in his comics are a subtext that would be pointless if we didn't know about Grant Morrison the person outside his comics.) To me it seems perfectly natural to be more attuned to queer subtexts in the works of Oscar Wilde or Tennessee Williams (to use Seneca's two examples) than, say, in the works of Ian Fleming, since you're more likely to find them in the former than in the latter.

Yeah, it's good. McDuffie (RIP) did a great job with the adaptation.

It was okay, but if you've read the comics it doesn't really add anything new to them, as it follows them almost verbatim, except for dropping a few subplots (such as the Bizarro planet one). Also, it doesn't include anything from "Neverending" (issue #10), which is kinda understandable, as that issue doesn't have to do with the main plot, but it's also sad because #10 is perhaps the best single Superman story ever.

That said, I think the movie actually improved upon the ending of the comic by changing Luthor's role in it in a small but significant way. I won't spoil it by saying anything more.

I want the Blu-ray just to hear Grant and Bruce Timm's commentary track.

Tuomas, I think we might (in part) be having a linguistic difference here, because I would never use the word 'subtext' to describe, say, the Morrison 'avatar' in Animal Man (and I think that character functions perfectly well without the reader needing to known anything about the 'real' Grant Morrison.) I still believe you're seriously overestimating the 'daring' or whatever of Morrison's 'queer Batman' - and you picked a very poor example in Ian Fleming, whose work is FULL of queer subtext (and foretext), more than almost any other 20th Century popular writer.

Also, 'reading any text pretty much any way you want to' is to my mind the whole pleasure and point of reading/writing abt other texts. Death to the tyranny of the author, here's to the reader's liberation movement etc etc

IMO those early Morrison issues are so lightweight that if he wasn't playing with some subtextual themes, they're borderline mediocre.

because I would never use the word 'subtext' to describe, say, the Morrison 'avatar' in Animal Man (and I think that character functions perfectly well without the reader needing to known anything about the 'real' Grant Morrison.)

The AM avatar is the only exception, IMO, because in that comic it is flat out spelled that he is Morrison, so he is an author avatar on the level of the text, not subtext. All his other avatar characters certainly function well enough on their own as unique characters (that's the surface level of the text), but the subtext is that they are also Morrison's avatars, and knowing that subtext makes many of those characters, as well as Morrison's whole body of work, more interesting. And my point was that it's hard to see that subtext unless you're at least somewhat familiar with Morrison outside his comics. Sure, you can say "death to the author!", but cases like this one prove that taking the author into account can provide for a deeper reading experience.

Anyway, I guess you're right that picking up Fleming as an counter-example was bad choice, because I've only read one of his books, and that was years ago. But my point still holds: it makes more sense to look for queer subtexts in the works of artists who are known to be queer, since you're more likely to find them there, and said subtexts are often more obvious too. I'm not saying you can't find such subtexts in the works of "straight" artists, my point was just that knowing Morrison's background makes it easier to interpret things like the panels Seneca pointed out as an intentional subtext.

read a galley copy of his new book over the weekend - mostly a very entertaining history/overview of American and British superhero comics. Some choice barbs for Alan Moore and the Image guys. I started to skip some stuff towards the end when it got into more auto-bio territory, but his take on the various periods are generally great, insightful, and really funny.

Didn't know about this. Any idea when it's coming out?

Yeah, I want this as soon as I can get it.

:: checks amazon ::

Supergods? July 19th?

later this summer I think...?

http://technoccult.net/archives/2011/04/30/supergods-grant-morrisons-book-on-super-heroes-gets-a-cover/

Cool. Will anticipate

Amazon has this to say about the upcoming Flex Mentallo

Collected for the first time, an early classic from the ALL-STAR SUPERMAN team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, newly recolored.

What's up with that? IIRC the colours in the original comic are perfectly fine.

different paper stock to blame maybe?

Pretty sure that they're recoloring it for the stock and to update it. I seem to recall that the same person who is recoloring WE3 is doing it, but might be misremembering. I'll be happy to have it all in one place but will treasure the single issues (and I can't say that about many books now.)

I currently treasure my .cbr's so i'll be happy to get a physical copy

That's how I read it first, actually. Also the first files I loaded onto my digital reading device thingy.

So has anyone been able to work out whether Batmoz is going to be completely fucked up by the new DC plans? It seems as though it can't help but be, despite various assurances otherwise.

Apparently Batman Inc will take a hiatus once it gets to the point of the reboot, and will then return in 2012 as a mini-series. It's unclear at the moment if Morrison can set the story in the continuity he established, or if the reboot changes will be in effect.

Apparently Dick is going to be Nightwing again? I don't know, it sounds to me like DC is fucking over Batmoz and he'll leave all the titles soon.

would rather have Inc continue than a new-continuity Superman title tbh

Bruce Wayne will be the only Batmang. I can't say that any of the Bat-teams really inspired confidence, aside from LEVIATHAN eventually happening.

I've liked most of Morrison's Batman run, but I'm still hella excited about his new Superman gig. IMO Supes, much more than Batman, is a character he was born to write. Have they confirmed the artist(s) for his Superman, though? (Obviously it can't be Quitely, since it's a montly title.)

This whole leviathan thing is going to be able to happen before DC fucks with the books, right?

After. DC reboot is September, Leviathan is next year.

:(

I have no problems with a reboot, but (viz. Wildstorm) just that they're wildly inept at them. Just need better creators and editorial direction.

from the intro to Big Perp's section of the chunky, clunky three-part Rolling Stone feature on Morrison:

This is a guide to the highlights of his career, with the exception of his fantastically strange Flex Mentallo series with artist Frank Quitely, which has not yet been collected in paperback due to complicated legal issues.

so he genuinely thinks Joe The Barbarian is better than Big Dave and New Adventures Of Hitler and St Swithins Day and Zenith and A Glass Of Water and The World Shapers and New Toys? pffffffffft.

Plus Flex will be back in print in a few months, right?

it's actually been in print in paperback in Europe for years, so that caveat doesn't even strictly hold. but I wouldn't believe anything about a DC collection until I hold one in my hands.

Is New Adventures of Hitler or Zenith collected in Europe? I've only ever had the chance to read bad scans.

Nope. I think there was a collection of NAOAH at one stage, but it is now out of print. There were several volumes of Zenith (but not the resolution of the long running story about The Plan) brought out by Titan, but they are out of print too.

Around the time he was setting up his FA website, Martin Skidmore mentioned that there was some talk of a new Zenith collection coming into print, but that does not seem to have happened.

Thanks to my local British Isles copyright library, I re-read all the Zenith collections they had last summer (for an article for FA I never got round to writing). I ended up thinking that it starts off well but that the loads of superheroes from alternate worlds get together to fight the Lloigor was not quite all that. It seemed a bit of a mess, plotwise, seeming to be an early case of the Grant Morrison problem (his writing stories that are very hard to follow for people like me of only sub-average intelligence).

I was a bit ambivalent about all the "oh there is that obscure British comic character" cameos in it... on the one hand, this is the kind of thing that annoys me about LOEG, but on the other, it was great to see some of those crazy characters get an outing again.

That said, I really hope that someone does bring out a complete Zenith collection. When it is good, it is amazing, and Steve Yeowell is a great artist on it.

Hitler's never been collected.

The first volume of a new to-be-complete round of Zenith collections was printed around ten years ago, sat in a warehouse for about eight years, then supposedly got pulped*. The Titan ones covered the first three "Phase"s of Zenith in five paperbacks; Phases 1 and 2 were also reprinted in 2000AD Super Specials or suchlike after the paperbacks went OOP; the colour stuff has never been reprinted.

*Morrison pointed out to Rebellion that Fleetway didn't actually own Zenith.

A shame that neither is readily available. I really enjoyed what I read and would gladly pay for nice editions of both.

This new deluxe version of We3 is really nice. I didn't really notice the additions, but the print quality and extras are great.

I do hope that movie gets made.

Reading that RS article--there's no way, on that evidence, that I'll be reading Supergods... and I LOVED Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Flex, Invisibles, AS Superman, etc etc

I'm planning to read the autobio stuff and barely skim his disingenuously inaccurate early-decades-of-superheroes stuff.

I haven't read the RS article but I liked Supergods!

his disingenuously inaccurate early-decades-of-superheroes stuff.

this was the part I preferred, tbh

wow

This review actually guarantees I'll be making my purchase of issue #8 (and soon - like after work) a priority.

haha that looks awesome!

RT @jollybaez: A glimpse at some of the new artwork from the expanded deluxe WE3!

this was the part I preferred, tbh

lying about Siegel & Shuster to shill for his employers during the lawsuit is gross to me, so

Wtf is that new WE3 panel? It doesn't even look like Quitely's art. And how does it fit into the story?

that's a joke, it's from the new issue of Inc

Ah, okay.

lying about Siegel & Shuster to shill for his employers during the lawsuit is gross to me, so

What did he say? I don't recall this at all, so I'm thinking I must have missed something potentially interesting.

yeah I don't recall that either...?

http://twiststreet.tumblr.com/post/7831373160

That's the dick move? I read that interview and it seemed pretty damn innocuous.

Whatever.

Even that quote doesn't seem like he's being a dick, only that he doesn't delve into the reasons why Bob Kane got a good deal at that point. Kane was the outlier, not S&S! I thought that was pretty clear when I read it.

I think he also mentions that Bill Finger was rather screwed over by history and finances.

it's the context of totally glossing over them being fucked, 1) while a lawsuit is going on that DC are paying lawyers more to file paper on every month than they ever paid S&S while they were alive, and 2) Grant is actively redesigning Superman's costume and origin to be potentially legally distinct from the S&S creation, while being 3) ickily disingenuous about their situation, that I find unpleasant.

So he's supposed to just avoid the franchise right now due to a lawsuit, or forever?

he can make whatever employment decisions he chooses, I'm not talking about that. I'm saying I personally find it distasteful to lie about the situation of creators of said franchise in this context, and thusly find his position on the backstage history of early superhero comics untenably compromised and proven inaccurate, so I'm unlikely to even read those aspects of the book.

So you're saying you haven't read those parts of the book, or what he actually said? I think he's a little vague, but I think people are stirring the bucket and reading more into it than is there.

I have really enjoyed Supergords, it's got everything you love about Morrison comics: big ideas, lots of heart inconsistently spread out, misdirected spite, and glossing over of elements he finds boring or inconvenient. Not surprised that he has little sympathy/empathy for S&S considering the jackpot he scored with Arkham Asylum, which succeeded more because it was published at the absolute height of Keaton/Burton Bat-Mania than on its own merits. As humble as his writing/cartooning beginnings may be, the ordeal of Siegel & Shuster beyond his imagination. Which is a pity, considering his fascinations.

Caleb Mozzocco stirs the bucket.

I wasn't super-impressed with that, actually

Morrison to put the sex back into Wonder Woman comics --

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/10/13/grant-morrisons-wonder-woman-series-planned-for-2012-or-thereabouts/

Just finished Supergods. Overall, I thought it was entirely inessential. It seemed to me like two books rather poorly integrated; his life through and in comics, and an overview of superheroes. I enjoyed reading the sections where he talked about what inspired him along the way, but thought he gave little insight into his own work (except for his admitted chickening out on pushing Final Crisis as far as he had initially planned), and his overall "history of the superhero" is, um, unique.

Grant just got an MBE.

I wonder if he's gonna give the Queen the issues of Inivisibles where he honours the royal family...

On a more serious note, is he the first superhero comic writer to get one of those? Do Gaiman or Moore have one?

Moore would turn it down, surely. (but that then raises the question of whether he'd say publically he'd turned it down, which is bad form iirc.)

I've read it twice now, very slowly and carefully the second time, and I think Nameless is up there with his best stuff. Which is nice, given I thought he wouldn't produce anything that good again. A fair bit of the credit definitely goes to Chris Burnham, though.

ok lol
http://i.imgur.com/cmzDlhV.png

Wow! Is Morrison writing GL now, or is that just a one-off gig?

No, GM is writing one of the GL books. IMO it's not really lived up to the hype, some neat ideas but really doesn't hold together - it's more like a handful of 2000ad ideas in search of a character.

It's pretty silly but I like it! It's like Batman Incorporated In Space (although not quite as good as that sounds). It's the first thing he's done since Batman that I've enjoyed. although Liam Sharp doesn't really do anything for me - it's a bit sub-Gene Ha.

This cover sums it up really

https://files1.comics.org//img/gcd/covers_by_id/1237/w400/1237279.jpg

Great cover, eh?

Or, er:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/cmx-images-prod/Item/737712/737712._SX1280_QL80_TTD_.jpg

ASTOUNDING Sci-Fi style Green Lantern as dopey police procedural sums it up pretty well; I'm having a great time with it! The art is maybe overly florid in a Bart Sears way but it gets the job done.

would it be possible to execute the good and funny idea for a superhero cover any worse than they have done there?

(like, there are many ways that you could make it just as bad. but from art to trade dress to layout to lettering, every element collaborates to render the dynamism and joke utterly inert

not sure what the "'joke" is exactly but the covers seem like (occasionally witless) stabs at pulp homage more than anything. computer coloring certainly doesn't help.

the junkie cover is clearly a terrible defenestration of something that could have been much funnier

the god one tickles me, ugly fonts and all

It's Liam Sharp, guys, govern yr expectations.

Not that we saw this contextless cover itt with any expectations, but a) Sharp isn’t responsible for the rigid trade dress, right-to-left layout, bad balloon, awkward speech lettering, mixed fonts or font choices, and b) why do DC keep lumbering Morrison with primary artists who draw lumbering steroid cases & have no sense of humour or wit?

Case was a good match on Doom Patrol and Burnham was a gift from the heavens, perhaps the most “gets it” artist Morrison has ever had on any ongoing project, but apart from that the chasm between artists he brings himself and ones that DC assign to him is yawping.

See also: Quitely (obvs), Cameron Stewart

Quitely he brought himself; Stewart campaigned to get his Invisibles fill-in.

Just checked, and Morrison invited Burnham to do his first 7-page fill-in after seeing Officer Downe; DC signed Burnham to a 2-year contract after his first full issue. Shoulda figured.