Grant Morrison S/D

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.