Grant Morrison: S&D

I don't really rate Arkham Asylum, the plot is a bit hackneyed.

Zenith is really good, though. Nazis, superheroes, Lovecraftian gods, parallel worlds - what's not to like?

zenith (steve yeowell)

st swithins day (paul grist) was great. found my copy again at the weekend funnily enough. edited by one mr skidmore btw

kill your boyfriend (philip bond)

steed and peel (ian gibson)

doom patrol 50 (jamie hewlett. i actually have the original hewlett art for the pinup from the back of this issue)

arkham asylum (dave mckean). best joker art ever.

dare (rian hughes)

new adventures of hitler (steve yeowell again). great colouring in this one. and morrissey in the wardrobe.

destroy:
that fauves 7" i have. 8)

i didn't get on with the invisibles..

andy

Search: Doom Patrol, Zenith bk III (the others were a bit eh), JLA and DC One Million (grebt fun), Flex Mentallo

Destroy: Kill Your Boyfriend, a couple of other things stank too but I've forgotten them. He has a bit of a 'disco dad' streak when it comes to the young folk doing the crazy things.

Everything else is worth looking at if you like him. Basically the less ambitious he's being the better he is I think.

also, andrew farrell to thread!!!

Search: everything else.

I didn't like Steve Yeowell's art when it was inked by Dick Giordano that much, but other than that, Classic.

I like his ambitious stuff, but that sholdn't be confused with stuff, like the current Filth, where he's just putting down a hundred ideas a minute without bothering about the plot. Though I also love that stuff.

His Imagination Unlimited can also really power his superhero writing. I've heard him described as the second coming of Jack Kirby, and I'd agree except that I think he writes better dialogue.

I love the story in the introduction to first Animal Man collection (next one due in 2012!) about him suddenly having to write a continuing series about a character that he picked to do a quick, short, story with. He sat up all night writing what he was convinced was terrible drivel that would get him laughed out of the business, and instead used to handily win Best Issue Ever polls ("The Coyote Gospel").

I actually think (though I've had this argument with Tom and DV already) that contrary to the last Animal Man, he's one of the best finishers in comics. That issue, the heartbreaking last two issues of Doom Patrol, the end of Flex Mentallo, and esp the JLA and him'n' Mark Millar's year on Flash.

I don't have the words to describe what the Invisibles means to me, but related to me and Tom and DV's conversation, the Anarchy for the Masses guide to the Invisibles has some interviews with him about the last few issues, and he's going "Yeah, this is the bit where it's all supposed to come into focus, and it doesn't really show it, does it? Fucking Ashley Wood. I think I'm going to have to get him to draw it again from scratch before we release the Trade."

Though all the artists for New X-Men are great (oh for a world where Frank Quitely could actually draw a regular series), it must be great to be coming back to comics from a while away and find that there's an X title (X-Statics) written by Peter Milligan and drawn by Michael Allred.

Igor Kordey's the fill-in artist of choice in Marvel these days. I think I heard that his art hasn't appeared in less that four books any given month this year.

And! The collection of the first few New X-Men issues (E for Extinction) comes with the original proposal for the series. You can pretty much see the editors jumping up and down yelling "he gets it! he really really gets it!"

I need to start a thread re: recent non-hero comics, though, just for the sake of it, because damned if I can find anything on the shelves I enjoy that doesn't involve six-pack abs and nth metals and ionic energy.

Quote from him over dinner a few months ago, and you have to imagine this with a very heavy Scots accent: "The whole last storyline I did in JLA was just me metaphorizin' my depression and sayin': 'Superman--help me! Batman--help me!'"

I wasn't sure if I liked Kill Your Boyfriend while I was reading it, it definitely has it's really over the top moments (as opposed to the rest which is merely over the top), but somehow liked it a lot when I was done with it. One thing about all his work, it's great at creating an atmosphere or an encompassing mood that sticks with you for awhile after reading.

Also - Doomie to thread! ;)

I can now confirm that this has happened. Except he got someone else to draw it.

coming to "the invisibles" with that background, i have to say it's freaking great!!! is doom patrol this good, too??

Also a point against it is that the foreshadowing etc are all related to the same plot.

Anyway, can't wait to read it.

as far as his recent output goes: We3 was pretty to look at/mildly clever, Vinarama was pretty great, Seaguy was baffling/kinda pointless.

Don't know if the Doom Patrol TV show is being talked about, I'm five episodes in and it's surprisingly wonderful. It draws heavily on the Morrison run without being at all slavish to it.

i love it!

Yeah, a real and unexpected success.

Are any of the other DC shows on a similar level?

Wondered if this revive was for this recent story - interesting in the light of discussion on the Invisibles thread:

https://comicbook.com/irl/news/grant-morrison-non-binary-revelation/

The nurse in the background of this video felt like a bit of a clue

https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/2323

Amazing

OMG amazing to see the old original Rat Records in the Virginia Galleries, good memories!

Breakfast of Champions! https://t.co/taKBmvQLFj

— Grant Morrison (@grantmorrison) January 17, 2023

one of the best self-contained superman series!

Yes, if only it could get the attention of a director already attached to a Superman movie ...

a twelve-chapter movie with every frame photographed individually by a scottish bloke named vince

just saw the tweet full-sized and the binding is giving me heart palpitations

I re-read the first volume of The Invisibles over the weekend. It was good to be immersed in that world and the riot of Morrison's mind but I'd forgotten just how scatty it was. The Shelley section was probably my least favourite but I can't remember how it blossoms so we'll see.

This will depend on your Rushkoff tolerance but I enjoyed this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5McAIWdHtg

In the interview, he mentions his writing for Happy and Brave New World. Has anyone seen these? Worth watching?

former had some moments although I didn’t finish it until much later. the latter was, to my recollection, a pretty straightforward modernized and streamlined version of Huxley’s novel and I found it passable-to-entertaining

Happy! was an adaptation of a Morrison comic that kind of felt like he was doing a Garth Ennis/Mark Millar madcap violence shtick for some reason

Really cool episode of QAA recently with guests Ben Clarkson and Matt Bors talking about Grant Morrison and chaos magick. In additionally to selling me on their own book, Justice Warriors, it got me curious about Morrison's Batman run.

The Batman run is good! Gets hijacked at the end by some weird scheduling and working around the fact DC was in the middle of one of their multiple continuity reboots at the time. But by that point, the main plot arc was done and it was basically bonus Damian/al Ghul content that was a sidebar in the main story

Happy! was an adaptation of a Morrison comic that kind of felt like he was doing a Garth Ennis/Mark Millar madcap violence shtick for some reason

They. Morrison is enby.

2022, referring to 2020:

“I said that if I had been doing now what I was doing back in the 1990s I would be viewed as non-binary or gender queer. Suddenly it was taken up by the fan press and I was awarded the label ‘they/them’. I never asked for it. I come from a generation where that just doesn’t matter, even being labelled at all is anathema to me.”

Morrison has since come around to preferring "they," but

October 2023:

“When I see people online correcting others for using the ‘wrong’ pronouns in relation to me, I’ll admit I recoil.”

The Shelley section was probably my least favourite but I can't remember how it blossoms so we'll see.

xxp my bad! I either forgot or did not realize

Has Morrison written anything good recently? I've lost touch with his output since DC derailed his Batman stuff with their stupid universe reboot #47.

(This is not me snidely saying he's no good--at one time he was my favourite comics writer--just that I'm out of touch!)

Thanks for the Happy/BNW info, mh!

I don't know that I would ever call Morrison a master of tone, but the Shelley stuff is hard to fathom beyond 'here's a bunch of stuff I read about'. I guess his sex cult thing is a mirror of De Sade in some way but eh.