4 Comments | Posted: July 31st, 2011 | Filed under: What I've Been Reading | Tags: grant morrison
Grant Morrison’s book on superheroes and their place in our culture is:
- Schizophrenic, sometimes swinging from memoir to analysis in the space of a paragraph.
- Bereft of any footnotes that would help solidify some of his more dubious points.
- Full of his usual crazy-man jibber-jabber about his hallucinogenetic* past, further fueling the sort of people who like to say “he’s on drugs” when they can’t offer up any real analysis of his works.
- Utterly addictive reading. It could have been twice as long and I’d have enjoyed it five times as much.
*You can use that one. It’s on me.
1 Comment | Posted: June 4th, 2009 | Filed under: The Rundown | Tags: batman and robin, becky cloonan, cameron stewart, frank quitely, grant morrison, ignition city, jeff parker, seaguy, vasilis lolos, warren ellis
1.
Grant Morrison had two DC comics today that couldn’t be further apart in tone even as they both bear the hallmarks of Morrison’s approach to the superhero meme, expanding upon the metacommentary he’s slipped into various comics over the last two decades. Batman and Robin‘s debut and the final issue of Seaguy: The Slaves Of Mickey Eye invoke common themes of DC’s superhero comics without any of the pastiche that marks the usual superhero comic book treatment of such material. As much as I enjoy comics like the original Squadron Supreme and Astro City, I really appreciate it when people use the past as a springboard to something new, and Morrison does that in style with Batman and Robin.
While Morrison’s run on the mainline Batman title let him indulge in some good old-fashioned silver age fetishism, this tite’s mandate seems to be “You know the basics, what can we do now?’ Batman and Robin #1 is extremely new-reader friendly (throwaway lines explain pretty much everything to a neophyte,) but the way that Morrison plays with the myth of Bruce Wayne’s Batman and what that means to Gotham is very satisfying in this meaty-yet-fast-paced first installment. Special note, of course, should be made to Frank Quitely’s art. It’s very rare that Morrison’s collaborators are able to keep up with him, but Quitely manages to kill in each and every panel, just as he did in his rightly-lauded Flex Mentallo and All-Star Superman.
Just as Batman and Robin manages to do something new with a 70+ year-old icon, Seaguy’s second adventure’s climax features our hero teaming up with others of his ilk, a quest for true love, an imaginary friend, and a villain who gets his comeuppance because that’s what happens to bad guys. Taken on their own, these events aren’t anything significant, but the way that Morrison layers them one on top of the other, letting the reader absorb them as matter-of-fact moments in the narrative, is close to masterful. Cameron Stewart is the perfect artist for this sort of project, able to be just cartoonish enough to sell you on Seaguy’s technicolor world but with a solid hold on anatomy and keen storytelling abilities. I’d love to see a collection of his concept work for the two Seaguy stories so far; while Morrison’s imagination is clearly at work, it Stewart’s ability to sell the ridiculous and sublime that makes me appreciate the title that much more.
2.
I read a comic with Buffy in the title, but it had nothing to do with Joss Whedon’s world (outside of one reference to a stalker) and everything to do with Becky Cloonan’s uncannily easy scripting and Vasilis Lolos’s art. This story of teenage boredom and vampires would fit very nicely alongside any of Becky Cloonan’s minicomics, where it’s apparent that she’s had a solid grasp of dialogue and storytelling that has gone underappreciated, particularly in lieu of her high-profile creative partnerships with writers like Brian Wood. Maybe this, alongside the forthcoming Pixu will get more exposure for her writing talents. (If you’re at MoCCA, you should see if she has her Minis book in stock. It’s a solid collection of her very early work that I found surprisingly good.)
3.
I have bought three comics by Jeff Parker in the last two weeks. It’s just my way of repaying him for his pinup in The Rack: Year One (Mostly). It doesn’t hurt that they’re all really readable, particularly Agents Of Atlas, which I feel like I should write more about sometime. It’s a dense comic with some pretty inventive writing in unusual places.
4.
Oh, oh, oh, I remember. I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed Warren Ellis’s Bastard Cop With A Jetpack in Ignition City. There’s a very casually-used bit in there about how he uses people’s first names when speaking to them, a cheap salesmen/law enforcement trick that I pick up on every time it’s used against me and hate. I love that it went unnoted by other characters, but if you were there, it would have rankled something fierce.
5.
That’s kinda it. I’ve not even opened my copy of Side B or that DC Comics Classics Library: Roots Of The Swamp Thing collection that Danny Levitz was going on about in last week’s picks. In fact, outside of Design Fetish and the usual self-promotion hijinks, this blog’s going to be pretty silent until Tuesday. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the rest, really.
1 Comment | Posted: May 7th, 2009 | Filed under: The Rundown | Tags: agents of atlas, batman, cameron stewart, fing fang 4, grant morrison, jeff parker, roger langridge, seaguy
1.
Seaguy: Slaves Of Mickey Eye #2 featured more of exactly what I like about the Seaguy universe: straight-faced surrealism that celebrates the superhero. I’ve heard people complain about the opacity of this work, but I figure they’re overthinking the whole thing. While symbolism is rife and Morrison’s scratching his usual meta-fiction itch, the story and events are presented in an extremely straightforward manner. Cameron Stewart’s art is, as usual, too good for mere words. I’ll just gesticulate for a while instead, making cooing sounds.
2.
One of the main reasons I love reading Jeff Parker’s Agents Of Atlas month to month is how it is that rarest of things: the single issue that feels like a proper dose of story. Combined with Parker’s whip-smart dialogue and way it effectively makes use of the Marvel Universe’s history without requiring a degree in Continuitology, this is easily my favorite ongoing Marvel title of the moment.
3.
I really did enjoy Fing Fang 4 Return, but that’s a comic that you were either already looking forward to or that you shoved aside in your haste to pick up whatever Marvel’s telling you is important this week, so there’s not much to add. It’s great that Langridge is getting so much well-deserved attention lately.
4.
The scene in which burglars are exiting police headquarters carrying the Batsignal is not the stupidest moment in the latest DC Comics Classics Library installment, The Batman Annuals, but it may be the funniest. I understand the rending of cloth that has accompanied the $40 price point on these, but if you’re paying that much you’re not much of a shopper, are you?
1 Comment | Posted: January 2nd, 2009 | Filed under: What I've Been Reading | Tags: final crisis, garth ennis, grant morrison, incognito, punisher, steve dillon, winter men
Incognito #1
As with Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillip’s Sleeper, a familiar noir trope is getting a superpowered rerub: the former supercriminal Zack Overkill, now drugged into normalcy and on parole, is struggling with his government-enforced rehabilitation and longs for the power he once possessed. As with Criminal, the plot and story are onlyhalf of the pleasure I get from reading Brubaker’s script; the construction is frequently elegant in its simplicity and the way he manages to surprise even when tinkering with the hoariest of clichés is envious. Phillips and Staples, again, serve as the perfect counterpart to Brubaker’s script, deceptively minimal, reinforcing the point that less is more: murky swaths of digital watercolor underpins Phillips’s strong composition to help tell the story better than any amount of Photoshop gradient ever could.
The Winter Men Winter Special
It’s been two damn years, people.  I’m going to have to find my back issues before I even think about reading this thing I brought home. I’m frankly a bit surprised that Wildstorm even bothered to put this out; I can’t imagine it’s sold enough to pay for its print run at this late date, but I’m sure they’d rather placate the few thousand buyers who’d whine about a collection containing a conclusion they weren’t able to buy off the stands. (In other words, expect to see an unread copy show up at Goodwill or the like during my next big purge.)
Final Crisis: Secret Files
If I’d looked beyond the very nice cover by Frank Quitely and realized that the majority of this special revolved around Len Wein giving a proper origin to Libra (who I think was used by Morrison because he was a blank slate, serving his story needs as required while giving the instigator of Final Crisis the sort of tie to the universe at large that a lot of DC fans expect,) I wouldn’t have purchased it. It’s a great deal of “What went on before” for a character that really didn’t need it. There’s also two text pieces (Grant Morrison “explains” the Anti-Life equation in a very ugly page that’s facing a page from the Crime Bible) and some sketches by J.G. Jones and Morrison.
Punisher War Zone #4
Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon could burn my home down and as long as it formed the shape of the Punisher’s skull emblem, I’d be OK with it.
29 Comments | Posted: October 27th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking About Comics | Tags: david mamet, final crisis, grant morrison
1.
A disproportionate number of existing superhero comic book readers – they who use the term “civilian” to describe those who don’t hit up their local establishments on weekly basis, as if they’re in the front lines in Iraq – want their stories spoon-fed to them, leading to an equivalent percentage of superhero comic book “stories” that aren’t worth the electricity it took to email the files to Quebecor.
2.
Obvious, I know, but I figured that the reiteration of the obvious is germaine to the discussion. I was just looking at a recent Hulk comic in which the first page served as a text recap: there’s two Hulks, one’s Green, one’s red, and the red one (given the idiotic portmanteau of “Rulk”) has done something really awful. The first page of the actual comic is narration: “Oh, hey, Bruce Banner here, I’m The Hulk! There’s another Hulk! He’s red! They call him the Rulk! He did something bad.” While I am, as regular readers know, all about making sure titles are as new-user friendly as possible, losing a page of storytelling at the front of a book (that’s cut into two halves right now, mind) to a recap means that you should go straight into the action.
3.
One of David Mamet’s better pieces of advice (and the man throws out many worth paying attention to) is that you can lose the first ten minutes of any movie, as they’re generally exposition and little else. By picking up a comic book or sitting into a seat at the multiplex, the audience has already said “I trust you. Give it to me.” Thus, by having Banner reiterate the situation, Jeph Loeb (a screenwriter by trade, it should be noted) oversells his goods and creates a moment where, consciously or not, the reader sees the puppet’s strings. Banner’s bemoaning the setup that’s just been recapped is the Marvel Comics equivalent of Jackie Chan making sure we see his face when he does those crazy stunts: it places the writer/performer ahead of the story. I’m more than happy to let Jackie Chan do his thing; that’s why I’m there. I’m not reading a Hulk comic to watch Jeph Loeb write dialogue circles.
4.
One of the reasons I enjoy Grant Morrison’s work with superheroes so much is that trusts the audience to follow along and very deliberately slices out narration and expository dialogue, letting the medium tell the story and exemplifying Mamet’s tenet. This is why Morrison’s reveals and relevatory moments are so memorable. “I can see you!” and “You’re Martians, aren’t you?” stand out because they’re organic and when they hit, chunks of the rest of the story suddenly make perfect sense. Morrison’s work may occasionally suffer due to artists who can’t quite pull off his scripts (Tony Daniel on Batman being an obvious example) but it’s obvious that he respects his audience more than contemporaries like Mark Millar.
5.
Morrison also trims the fat out of his stories whenever possible: rarely is someone seen walking out of a room or driving a car unless the narrative is furthered by it, and he’s fond of cutting off either end of those scenes to move to the next piece of the script. Very rarely do people sit and talk: they’re in motion. Witness the majority of “talky” scenes in his JLA run, or All-Star Superman #6, in which the Chronovore’s attack and the explanation of its importance to Superman’s life overlap, leading to a final moment that is better for the lack of outre sentimentality.
6.
Having to read and look at the art and think isn’t what the majority of the comic book audience wants to do, however. They’ll throw up any number of excuses or complaints, saying that it’s hard to follow or that they shouldn’t have to “work” to enjoy a story with Thor in it. I’m not going to say that Morrison is not without his opaque moments – his masturbatory opus The Filth, for example – but his superhero material places only the slightest of demands on the readers and is thus reviled by many, even as those in editorial (and snot-nosed, self-important bloggers) reward him for at least trying. When so little change is permanent in superhero comics, someone with the bravura of Morrison is to be admired. There’s a reason I’ll pick up anything with his name attached to it. Even when he makes storytelling choices I disagree with, it’s plain there’s thought behind them.
3 Comments | Posted: September 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: all-star superman, avengers, farel dalrymple, frank quitely, grant morrison, greatest hits, jeff parker, jonathan lethem, marvel adventures, omega the unknown, paul tobin, the sentry
Please note that these sort of reviews are going to be more sporadic going forward. I’m only buying a few titles a week and with people like Sims and Caleb writing nicely about the periodic titles, I just don’t see why you’d want me to bleat on very often.
Anyway.
The last issue of All-Star Superman is just about perfect. I won’t lie: I had a lump in my throat at least twice, but I am a soft damn touch when it comes to a well-done Superman story and this whole thing was exactly that. It was lovely to see a pair of creators who work so well together embrace the truly bizarre mythos attached to the character and use them for maximum effect while doing something new. While I’m certain I’ll enjoy upcoming Superman stories in the future, I’m also pretty sure that they’ll feel just the slightest bit hollow and sad in comparison.
The debut for Age of the Sentry features a flying corgi (complete with cape) and The Mad Thinker and The Terrible Tinkerer disguising themselves as directors shooting a series of public service announcements with a parasitic camera that sucks the title character’s strength and powers away. Yes, I’ll be reading more, particularly with Paul Tobin and Nick Dragotta involved.
David Tischman and Glenn Fabry’s Greatest Hits is so thunderingly obvious in concept that I’m shocked that I’ve not seen it before: Four British Pop Superheroes During The Sixties Operating As An Analogue To That Most Famous Of Pop Groups. It’s funny and savvy while offering further evidence that Vertigo’s slow reinvention of itself that began a couple years ago is a good thing.
Marvel Adventures Avengers continues to be the only iteration of that most favored of superhero team books that I’m reading. While Mighty Avengers and New Avengers (and soon, Dark Avengers, Nude Avengers and Diet Avengers) continue to ably serve as The Brian Michael Bendis Event Comic Backstory Hour, this comic actually – get this – has a team called “The Avengers” who go out and have adventures! This issue featured Luke Cage and His Momma and a story in which a cat from another dimension needed rescuing, along with a smartmouthed Hammerhead. That sort of thing is certainly more entertaining to me than Skrulls repeatedly cloning Reed Richards until one of the major plot holes of Secret Invasion gets filled in.
Finally, I found myself very much enjoying Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple’s Omega The Unknown despite my distaste for the author’s prose novels. It reads like a Jim Jarmusch superhero movie, sort of Ghost Dog meeting Spider-Man with enough truly Weird Shit to compare favorably with the original book that spawned it. Dalrymple’s art is as perfect a complement as I could imagine for the script: intentionally flat to the point that the surreal elements – a giant walking hand, for instance – pop that much more. Marvel’s $30 pricepoint may seem a bit high, Amazon has it for a very reasonable $20.
3 Comments | Posted: August 7th, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: criminal, darrick robertson, david lafuente, ed brubaker, final crisis, garth ennis, grant morrison, hellcat, kathryn immonen, kyle baker, patsy walker, sean phillps, special forces
The Boys #21
This is the first time anyone’s used 9/11 in a superhero comic in a way that didn’t make me feel like I needed to wash my hands afterwards. While Vaughan and Harris tried admirably in Ex Machina, Ennis actually manages to make the actions (and inactions) of the series antagonists the point of the story using the events of seven years ago as a plot point, not a crutch to lend a comic book more gravitas than it deserves. Robertson deserves a lot of credit here for his part: he uses some fantastic action shots and facial expressions (particularly the horror, frustration, and fear seen in the eyes of a F-16 pilot in the opening pages) that sell the story on its own merits.
Criminal Volume 2, #4
One of the reasons I like this book so much is that it feels like Brubaker and Phillips are running a bit of a scam on Marvel by making a series that’s so counter to the publisher’s usual hype and methodologies; it’s a dark-as-hell crime comic with backing essays and interviews. The opening salvo in the four-part “Bad Night” gives us the story of the man behind those “Frank Kafka, PI” strips that have cropped up in issues past: he was a bad man once, and he’s going to have to be one again if he wants to live. I don’t want to say it’s a perfect jumping-on point, because that’s the hoariest cliché in comics, but…
Final Crisis #3
I’ll refer you to Birdie’s review of the book while saying “I told people that it was like a ‘real’ book, not some Chuck Dixon paint-by-numbers plot.”
I got the Supergirl cover, which I quite like, despite the apparent pedo tone that I missed out on.
Patsy Walker: Hellcat #2
It’s easy to be lured in by the fun visuals David Lafuente (with colorist John Rauch) is cranking out – seriously, there’s a two-page spread that rivals Williams on Promethea – but Kathryn Immonen’s script for this second issue is a nice piece of workmanship on its own, trusting the reader to connect a few dots without ever making them feel lost and coming up with at least two laugh-out-loud moments. It’s hard to not like her take on Patsy Walker: a spunky, angst-free superheroine who seems to enjoy her job is a welcome breath of fresh air.
Special Forces #3
For some reason, I left the new Army@Love in my box for Sunday, but this will certainly tide me over in the subtle-as-a-bulldozer-filled-with-dynamite war satire comics department. Baker’s a cartooning wonder, he really is. Some preview images are up on his blog.
9 Comments | Posted: June 26th, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking About Comics | Tags: grant morrison, lil wayne, mark millar
I was having trouble deciding whether I should post these excerpts from Vibe’s Lil Wayne interview here, or collect the comments and do a post on Get Off The Internet, but Laura Hudson pointed out that comics could do with a little more of this sort of self-aggrandizing crazy, and I can’t help thinking she’s right:
Back in August, 50 Cent was talking trash about you jumping on everyone’s tracks.
You talking about 50 Cent from G Unit?
Yes.
The big 50 Cent?
Yes.
Lil Wayne came out his mouth?
Mmm hmmm.
OH MY GAWD! I’M BIG! [sarcastic voice] I’m big, man! I didn’t know that dude knew me! What’s up 50? I got beaucoup 50 Vitamin Waters. He got the coldest one, the rest of ‘em are really nasty. For real – don’t get that Revise – that other purple one. Naaaah, you gotta get that Formula 50. I done been fooled like that plenty of times. 50 got like the best-tasting Vitamin Water.
So you don’t have anything to say in response to him calling you a whore?
A person like 50 Cent say anything about me, you gotta understand, that’s what makes them who they are. So me getting mad, that would be outta Lil Wayne’s character. There’s been plenty of recorders right here in my face saying, What you think about such-and-such saying…? Nothing! I don’t think nothing! That ain’t me, I’m from New Orleans, man, we kill, for real, I’m not gonna stress that!
Speaking of stress, let’s talk about the incident when the cops pulled you over after your show on July 22, 2007, at the Beacon Theater in New York.
When they locked me up in New York and they asked me about Jay-Z, 50 Cent, G Unit and no fucking gun or weed like they made it look like on TV? Ask me what I told them – Nigga, I’m from New Orleans! I will murder ya’ll up in this bitch! Fuck that, why would I murder a rapper?! I’m gonna listen to his shit on the way to go murder another nigga!
This special sort of crazy makes Mark Millar (erroneously?) boasting that Civil War was the best selling comic of the last fifteen fourteen years about as interesting as your dry cleaner winning Best of 2008. Hell, the man shames Grant Morrison, who I thought had hit a new high with:
Back in 2006, I requested a moratorium on the New Gods so that I could build up some foreboding and create anticipation for their return in a new form … instead, the characters were passed around like hepatitis B to practically every writer at DC to toy with as they pleased, which, to be honest, makes it very difficult for me to reintroduce them with any sense of novelty, mystery or grandeur.
Mainstream comics needs a Lil Wayne. They need somebody who doesn’t care if he ticks off other creators or the publishers because they’ve got game. They need somebody who doesn’t give a fuck. They’re not going to get it though, for one reason: comics creators want to be liked. They want validation. They want to read positive reviews and get fans who shake their hands and tell them how great that X-Men story was they did was. Deep down inside, so many of them1 want the acceptance that they may not have gotten elsewhere, if not from their peers, then from editors and publishers. With the barrier to comics lower than ever, I’d love to see the opposite of the usual happen: somebody who writes crazy, claims big, sells bigger, and then craps on everyone that steps up.
Of course, none of the bloggers or message board denizens would like that one bit though, would they?
Thanks to Lily for the heads-up.
1“Us?” I really don’t feel like one, even if I’ve written comic books before and I’m working on writing more.
2 Comments | Posted: June 25th, 2008 | Filed under: Reviews | Tags: final crisis, grant morrison, no hero, warren ellis
Final Crisis #2
Morrison continues slapping idea after idea onto the mound that’s piling up and starts using them to move his multi-headed beast of a plot forward. It’s interesting to compare the “let’s tell one story as a whole” approach that this title is using versus the crossover-dependent
Secret Invasion. The current audience’s demand for slam-bang action in their mainline superhero epics may make them impatient for Morrison’s holistic approach to the complete story unit, especially if the “competition” (really, does it have to be one?) is dropping helicarriers out of the sky and showing your favorite heroes punching Skrulls for plot beats in the main title and letting all of the character change and
story take place elsewhere. I know which one I prefer.
No Hero #0
Another metafictional superhero series by Warren Ellis, this time focusing on the toll that getting powers can take on someone? Really? Surprisingly, this one feels fresh. With Avatar, Ellis seems to be applying a more refined approach than previously, honing his clipped, precise scripting on a single target.
Black Summer asked “What happens when a superman who wants to make the world better takes it one step too far?”
No Hero‘s question is right in its tagline – “How much do you want to be a superhuman?” – with a brutal eight-page visit to the world that counterculture icon Carrick Masterson’s created and some backup material that, typeface aside, manages to fire a few new cylinders and opens up quite a few storytelling possibilities. For a buck, you could do much, much worse.
