Grant Morrison S/D

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So, uh, what was GM's contribution to this?

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 14:49 (eighteen years ago) link

Writing a treatment for a series of interlocking storylines involving Angel Robbie, Devil Robbie, Naked Robbie, and Gorilla Grodd?

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 15:00 (eighteen years ago) link

Gorilla Grodd is revealed to be Gary Barlow in disguise.

― O'so Krispie (Ex Leon), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 15:11 (eighteen years ago) link

I seem to remember RW crashing a GM signing in LA.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 16:50 (eighteen years ago) link

"crashing"

― kit brash (kit brash), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 02:14 (eighteen years ago) link

so i've never read any morrison - should i start with one of the doom patrol books?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 05:05 (eighteen years ago) link

you could do much worse!

(but make it the first one)

― kit brash (kit brash), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 08:14 (eighteen years ago) link

I'd say start with Invisibles. The first volume (collected in the first three trades, I think) is ace, but be prepared for a decline in quality halfway through the second.

― chap who would dare to thwart the revolution (chap), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 11:40 (eighteen years ago) link

i recently finally read the invisibles in full (having read bits & pieces earlier, years ago)... i mostly liked it but boy does it ever spiral into wtfness.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 12:23 (eighteen years ago) link

I am one of those rare people who thinks that the first couple of books of The Invisibles are pretty weak (if necessary to understand the later stuff) but that it keeps getting better and better as it goes along, and that the end is unbelievably brilliant.

― Douglas (Douglas), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 14:25 (eighteen years ago) link

I'd like to read it, but the main character (King Mobius?) has such a nerd's-wet-dream-of-cool-look, it's always put me off.

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 15:35 (eighteen years ago) link

haha

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 7 September 2005 21:49 (eighteen years ago) link

Williams was indeed at that signing/talk/thingy. I didn't recognize him at first. He looks so much taller on TV...

re: INVISIBLES, I thought the beginning was great, got a little flabby in the middle and shaped up nicely at the end. And Chuck, the whole point of King Mob was to be a wet dream of cool. But it's okay, he gets better at the end.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Thursday, 8 September 2005 14:25 (eighteen years ago) link

I loved the Invisibles, though I read the whole of it before I turned 20 years old, and I did all of my re-readings before I turned 21; now I'm 25 and the trouble is I loved it so much that I'm afraid of going back to it and finding it dissappointing. But it's a great mind-opener, to say the least.

I'd say Doom Patrol or Animal Man are the best starting points, but I might be biased because that's where I started.

― iodine (iodine), Thursday, 8 September 2005 16:09 (eighteen years ago) link

I read all of INVISIBLES when I was far older than that, mostly for the first time, too. Held up in spite of that. Now, SCOTT PILGRIM, on the other hand...

I'd agree that DOOM PATROL is the best place to start with Morrison. It stats out as a semi-traditional superhero work, but doesn't stay there for very long at all. Morrison's kinda tough to sell to non-superhero readers, as a lot of his best work has been firmly set in that genre/trope/whatever.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Thursday, 8 September 2005 16:26 (eighteen years ago) link

I would de-recommend The Invisibles, JD - some of my least-favourite Morrison ever.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 10 September 2005 11:09 (eighteen years ago) link

I'll re-recommend it then:) It's basically the main Grant Morrison story, that all the others are chipped off.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Saturday, 10 September 2005 15:51 (eighteen years ago) link

Can I rederecommend it then? Or dererecommend or something...? (Andrew is right - I'm sure it's the one Grant would most wish anyone to read - but I still don't like it all that much.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 10 September 2005 16:05 (eighteen years ago) link

SO MANY better places to start than Invisibles

― kit brash (kit brash), Saturday, 10 September 2005 21:06 (eighteen years ago) link

Is his full run on doom patrol fully collected by now?? i have money coming my way and i want to sort of go nuts on a whole series

― dave k, Saturday, 10 September 2005 21:32 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't think so, but they are bringing them out. I think they're only a few volumes in, but I might be out of touch.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 10 September 2005 21:49 (eighteen years ago) link

I think they are in the middle of the whole thing. Next volume should be the trickiest one: Flex Mentallo, My Greenest Adventure, etc.

I read all of INVISIBLES when I was far older than that, mostly for the first time, too. Held up in spite of that.

Sooooo glad to read that! Someday I might gather the courage to go back to it...

― iodine (iodine), Saturday, 10 September 2005 22:53 (eighteen years ago) link

Destroy: I wouldn't really destroy anything by Grant because I agree with Chris F., for better or worse, all of his works have something to add to the big picture.

But if I was forced to say at least one thing I could do without, that would most probaby be his Spawn mini.

And, yeah, Arkham Asylum hasn't aged well either.

― iodine (iodine), Saturday, 10 September 2005 23:17 (eighteen years ago) link

so should i just start at the beginning of his run on doompatrol then? his three-issue run on spawn was the first stuff of his i read - well before i had heard of him; i thought of him as just a fillin - and it was pretty rub, but the art was pretty good,

― dave k, Saturday, 10 September 2005 23:40 (eighteen years ago) link

This is the first I've heard of the Spawn thing!

I'm reading Doom Patrol now as the trades come out, and loving it.

― Jordan (Jordan), Sunday, 11 September 2005 01:34 (eighteen years ago) link

He just did an unheralded fill-in run with Capullo on the regular title, within a year of the four "guest star" issues (maybe 16-18, to the others' 8-11?). As unmemorable as most of Moore's multifarous Spawn series.

― kit brash (kit brash), Sunday, 11 September 2005 05:21 (eighteen years ago) link

I remember him telling me about it - they paid him an absolute fucking fortune, over £100,000 I believe he said, and he did the work in one day.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 11 September 2005 09:08 (eighteen years ago) link

I don't agree completely with Arkham Asylum, I read it recently and I think it's pretty good. It's something weird for Morrison, because it's him doing all the "grim n gritty Batman" that followed the DKR but it's okey. I agree that is far from his best work, but even middle of the road Morrison is better than most anything else.

And I have to re-read Invisibles complete someday.

― Amadeo (Amadeo G.), Monday, 12 September 2005 04:43 (eighteen years ago) link

sigh, i wish i had lots of spending money, so i could buy something like the complete invisibles, which i don't think i'll love based on the first tpb but am certainly curious about how it all turns out

― dave k, Monday, 12 September 2005 05:13 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm surprised no one has mentioned We3 on this thread yet. I'm a big Morrison fan, but I was very pleased to see him cut back on his wordiness and stick to a tight story arc, as opposed to the babbling sprawl of the Invisibles.

― elmo (allocryptic), Monday, 12 September 2005 20:22 (eighteen years ago) link

Well that's because everybody loves We3 by default (me included)

― iodine (iodine), Tuesday, 13 September 2005 15:14 (eighteen years ago) link

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/3amcontent/tm_objectid=16150717%26method=full%26siteid=94762-name_page.html

ROB'S ON ANOTHER PLANET
Jessica Callan, Eva Simpson And Caroline Hedley

ROBBIE Williams is expecting a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.

The 31-year-old singer reckons an extra-terrestrial invasion is inevitable, saying: "I've been dreaming every night about UFOs, every night. I can't wait to go to sleep because my dreams have been so brilliant.

"I think they are definitely on their way, seriously. Mark my words. From now until 2012 - watch out, kids."

Haven't we already seen this somewhere?

― iodine (iodine), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 13:04 (eighteen years ago) link

Grant you bad man.

― Tom (Groke), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 13:09 (eighteen years ago) link

I've just finished re-reading The Filth, and I still don't know quite what to make of it. There's some stunning imagery (the giant sperm, the desert of dead skin) and memorable characters (Slade/Feely, that space monkey), but it quite often veers into prog rock album cover territory, and everyone talks in post-modern slogans.

― chap who would dare to thwart the revolution (chap), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 14:42 (eighteen years ago) link

If only Seaguy #3 wasn't so horribly dark, I would have given in to everyone in the world. My partner now refuses to read any Grant Morrison after she read that.

We killed Chubby by not buying enough of issues of Seaguy to ensure the whole story gets told.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 20 September 2005 16:19 (eighteen years ago) link

Leave me out of that "we", maestro-- I bought the series in singles AND the trade. I sure wish it wasn't true, though, as I'd much rather have had six more issues of Seaguy than the forty issues of Seven Soldiers we'll be getting, judging from the way things've been going so far. Shining Knight was utterly useless, Guardian was really only good for Stewart's art, Zatanna's been pointless, and Klarion's been pretty good, except I keep forgetting what I read in the last issue by the time the next one comes out. Come to think of it, Vimanarama was utterly shit, too. I think GM's been overextending himself in his effort to be a one man Stan Lee/Jack Kirby idea factory or whatever it is he's trying to be (other than employed) with all this production. Not that I'm not used to him overreaching himself by this point anyway, but it's still been utterly depressing to have spent all this money on new GM stuff only to realize that I don't really care about ANY of it. Plus, I've read lots of Weisinger Superman and I've read Flex Mentallo already, so I dunno what the point of my reading All-Star Superman will be either. It seems like The Filth was the last thing GM did that was really worth reading, cat/dog/rabbit interactions from We3 aside. As the halcyon days of Animal Man and Doom Patrol get farther away, I'm starting to relate less to his writing as a fan, and ironically enough it's since he's entered the "mature" phase of his career and his personality foibles and Weltanschauung have become most prominent in his writing. I'll be interested to see what his next "serious" project is, but I guess I'm no longer enchanted with him as a writer. Dunno if I've just outgrown that attitude, or if I've outgrown giving a shit about what he does at all, or what. Nevertheless, the day I sell/throw out/give away my fricking GM Doom Patrol collection will still be the last day I ever read a comic book.

it quite often veers into prog rock album cover territory, and everyone talks in post-modern slogans

Was this your first time reading a Morrison series, Joe? (Sorry, I just found this amusing.)

― Chris F. (servoret), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 03:14 (eighteen years ago) link

Vimanarama was great!

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 03:18 (eighteen years ago) link

The Filth was completely over-the-top bizarre anti-narrative stuff. But the chapter on Satan's jizz is all sorts of awesome.

― Leeeeeeeee (Leee), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 03:19 (eighteen years ago) link

Vimanarama was bomb fuckin' awesome.

― kit brash (kit brash), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 03:30 (eighteen years ago) link

it quite often veers into prog rock album cover territory, and everyone talks in post-modern slogans

Was this your first time reading a Morrison series, Joe? (Sorry, I just found this amusing.)

-- Chris F. (nieman...), September 21st, 2005.

Ha ha, that could actually be an unkind summary of his entire career, couldn't it? I've actually read quite a bit of Morrison, and I do prefer his less self-indulgent, more narratively traditional work (Zenith, Invisibles Vol 1, Seaguy), staid old square that I am.

― chap who would dare to thwart the revolution (chap), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 13:46 (eighteen years ago) link

Kit & Chuck OTM, Vimanarama was hot Bollywood sci-fi. I've been meaning to re-read it all at once.

― Jordan (Jordan), Wednesday, 21 September 2005 16:37 (eighteen years ago) link

Ah, I just felt like he was phoning it in way too much on Vimanarama, one of those cases where his need for bombass artifice and up-to-date poppiness leads him too directly toward stylistic effect, so the book wound up being about GM thinking he was writing hot Bollywood rom-com sci-fi instead of being a living example of said hot Bollywood rom-com sci-fi, just too slight and genre-conscious and "cool dad" relevant for me to give a shit, playacting at an imagined result instead of delivering the goods. The same problem really tainted my enjoyment of We3 (way too intentionally "cinematic"), and I thought it infected Guardian as well even though there it's a device that fits with the themes of the storyline so maybe I'm more cool with it then I first believed. I dunno, I guess he's still experimenting with form, but it feels like things have gotten too self-reflexive at this point. He's always been up his own arse, so maybe I'm just finding it less fun these days. Still, he managed to have Mister Miracle meet no-mind (or nihilism, or adulthood, depending) in this week's installment, so I'm a little less peeved about the series as it stands. And I'm sure I'll wind up giving ASS a try, all bitching about retread "stealth" projects and pointless nostalgia aside.

― Chris F. (servoret), Thursday, 22 September 2005 09:04 (eighteen years ago) link

We3 cinematic?! you are smoking rocks, it's the most comics-formalist thing he's ever done!

― kit brash (kit brash), Thursday, 22 September 2005 12:09 (eighteen years ago) link

Am I? I meant "cinematic" in terms of narrative feel, due to aping specific formal effects. Similarly, I suppose I shouldn't have said "up his arse" when I meant "talking out of his arse", as he's only "up his arse" occasionally (like half the time on The Invisibles), but his right to be expressively self-indulgent is one of the major themes of his work (like in the last issue of DP, for instance). Is it just me, or does he really owe a lot to the influence of the KLF, self-promotional bullshit and utopian vision (I don't think it's a coincidence that Mr. Nobody finds himself in the white room) both?

― Chris F. (servoret), Friday, 23 September 2005 05:15 (eighteen years ago) link

Er, that should be "NOT due to aping specific formal effects"! I dunno, this "hypercondensed" storytelling just rubs me the wrong way. It feels too forced and aware of itself-- really, it's the comics-formalism that's become the problem!

― Chris F. (servoret), Friday, 23 September 2005 05:33 (eighteen years ago) link

Vinamarama seemed the least forced thing he's done lately, just a simple story without Grant Morrison's Themes, but still loved by Grant Morrison's brain. As opposed to Mister Miracle, which really does seem like an Invisibles retread.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Friday, 23 September 2005 10:47 (eighteen years ago) link

!? I thought that it was full of Themes, especially in the last issue. Plus the bad guys are sort of proto-Sheeda, aren't they? Hmm. I'm looking at the issues now, and I think I was probably being too harsh with the thing anyway, like I kind of gulped it down without really reading it. Maybe Seven Soldiers will make more aesthetic sense on reread also. Not that I want to do a total Lesterbangsian flip-flop here or anything-- I still am not convinced that it's that great.

Plus, I think it's time for me to do a reread on the last issues of Doom Patrol. The issues after that last Mr. Nobody story arc never sat well with me, but I was flipping through them today and found that I liked them better in the context of thinking about this stuff as of late. The Case/Woch art team maybe wasn't the best, but it still kinda works. Also, I think I'm over resenting GM for the less savory ways that his stance on mental illness in DP #63 can be interpreted ("a world where everything is alive and significant" is not always better than the alternative), especially in light of The Filth.

― Chris F. (servoret), Saturday, 24 September 2005 06:24 (eighteen years ago) link

The ones after Mr Nobody are where the comic regains the plot, no? There's that irritating Rebis one-shot about the moon, and then it's all I Luv Cliffhangerz till issue 63, right?

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Saturday, 24 September 2005 14:41 (eighteen years ago) link

And "Asleep"!

― Chuck_Tatum (Chuck_Tatum), Saturday, 24 September 2005 14:56 (eighteen years ago) link

there's the five-issue space snoozefest that starts at a circus

― kit brash (kit brash), Saturday, 24 September 2005 22:32 (eighteen years ago) link

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