Grant Morrison S/D

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.