Grant Morrison S/D

Mr Miracle was far worse than Shining Knight (the art in SK was completely incoherent but pretty, whereas MM is merely incoherent, combined with being inconsistent thanks to DC [also censored])

I thought MM was incoherent the first time I read it too. Then I went back and re-read the whole thing, with some help from the discussion on Barbelith. A friend of mine asked me what the hell was going on in #4, and I sent him this:

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!

yeah I know what *happens* in it (though that's way more detailed than I'd bothered to pick up on a single bimonth-by-bimonth reading), it's just that the art's rubbish, making it painful to try and parse! (and all that about the restriction of the page etc SO UNDERLINES the stupidity of DC censorship)

Wait, the "censorship" you're talking about is the Metron double-page spread that was originally going to have hands holding it visible at the bottom? Do we know that that was a DC corporate decision and not a late-in-the-game Morrison decision, or have any idea why DC would do that?

yeah, I'm attributing it to DC because I have no idea why Morrison would do that, especially given the thought-balloon-reading and panel-tearing that happened in the next two SS issues that came out (I probably go on about this upthread somewhere!)

no I don't, but I bet I'm grumbling away on some Seven Soldiers thread

Which is probably where you'll find me pointing out that people who hate the art don't deserve eyes.

The first filler art guy was pretty wretched, but the one after him was fine. I'm not sure if I get the "picture plane" stuff on the cover of MM #4 that Douglas mentions, but I'll go back and have a look.

Can we talk more about "The New Adventures of Adolf Hitler"? I never saw it all, but it has some of my favourite ever bits in comics, like AH being followed by a bus, or him imagining that his cup of tea is the Holy Grail (and then wishing that Jesus had been born in Bavaria because he would have looked good in Lederhosen).

Can I ask a question or two about Mr Miracle? What happened to Scott Free? And what was the situation of the New Gods before this GM comic?

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.

(x-post insert: SS is post-Finite Crisis, so who knows about Scott Free and New Gods and history of Shilo.)

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)

kit, two of my friends did the colouring on NAOAH and afaik you're the first person to EVER notice or remark on the incredible job that they did - my fave page is the one w/ a gigantic pic of manson in the b/g, swastika carved into his forehead - colouring as commentary!

kiss them for me! I've been adoring that since I was 13 or whatever (were they even credited?)

i think so - st*ve whitak*r and n*ck abadz*s, plus another pal of n's helping 'em out, tho maybe they all took a joint psuedo-credit - all done pre-computer, obv, i remember them spending hours on fiddly hand cutouts and whatnot - sadly the fuss w/ Cut and that knob Pat Kane kind've overshadowed everything else abt NAOAH (which I agree is one of Morrison's best strips)

Hey, how does one get a copy of this?

The guy who did Hugo Tate? Coool.

New Adventures of Hitler? Need to find a digital copy, likely. Never seen it in the states.

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

This is my real email address. I'm just saying.

Same here. Except for the, uh, "uh."

Me3

I dare say it was a pseudo-credit, I probably would have noticed Ab@dzis' name when I re-read it in the '90s sometime.

I fucking had this, I know I did. And when I went looking for it to forward it, where is it?

I too am interested in this New Adventures of Adolph Hitler. I'm a casual Morrison geek and hadn't heard of it until this thread.

ran in CRISIS #46-49:

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

I've got it, I can sort something out tonight if people are still HUNGRY FOR HITLER.

I only read bits of it in "Cut" (in colour, I think), and then was in my skint phase when it appeared in "Crisis", so I've never read it all.

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

hi tom, I am hungry for hitler!!

I'm craving Adolph myself.

I think I might put him in a hidden bunker webpage.

Ditto. (xp!)

I'm on antibiotics (root canal) and the prescription clearly reads "Take With Food (Hitler, pref.)"

If you don't let me in on the secret Hitler site, MAGGOT WILL DIE!

i remember the hitler thing fondly if only for the stencil-buffer effect they used for the colouring (ie the patterns remained static despite the character moving, if you see what i mean) (oh, xpost kit brash 2 days ago...)

Can I please put in a Hitler request too?
Also, while I'm here, as this is my first post, I'd just like to say that I've been lurking for a couple of weeks, and some of the discussions here are the funniest things I've read in ages. My first encounter with ILC was the 'My CBR Shame' thread, and lordy do I know that feeling.

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

Hi James! Don't forget...
Welcome and introduce your geeky self, you nerd!

er, actually:
All New Introduce Yourselves thread!

I know of no Hitler.

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

Achtung! Donkey Shane!

Ach! Probably wouldn't be prudent to do this at work.

Making a note of the URL might be advisable. Also renaming to .cbz

Tom, yer a star.

"Alois has hairy ears. I covet them."

Tom, you are indeed a star. I thank you much.

Well, that was rather good. Though I'm worried by the amount that he seems to have pinched from Beryl Bainbridge's great novel, 'Young Adolf'. Though I'm probably far from the first person to notice that connection.

I accidentally posted this over on the old ILE Morrison thread, but I found all four issues of Flex Mentallo for eight bucks at a store down in Georgia. Which is about as exciting as the time I found a still shrinkwrapped copy of the Monks album for a buck. Haven't read it yet, but no matter how good it is it'll be hard to resist the temptation to flip it for fifty or so bucks over on eBay.

Wow, I'm starting to think I should take better care of my copy of Flex Mentallo after looking at ebay! That's one hell of a find for $8, though, congrats.

I think the Monks album's a LITTLE more exciting!

So...I guess I've come around to liking Quitely.

Welcome to the cool table, Huk. Now go kick your nerd friends in the crotch.

I still think the lips in Earth-2 were too much, though. Should I kick my own crotch?