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Interesting to do an issue that could be read as a call for "Captain" Alan Moore to please, please come back and resurrect the genre in the style of one of Moore's earliest comics. The Reversible Man (art by Mike White, in 2000a.d. No. 308, 1983) tracks one man's life from his death to his birth, as if it were the natural course of events. Just a perfectly ordinary, regular guy, nothing remarkable about him whatsoever. And yet, over the course of 4 pages, damned if you don't learn to love him. It manages to do what similar stories (it's a riff on F. Scott Fitzgerald's Benjamin Button, of course) always manage to take too long to do, without saying nearly as much about life and death. http://www.againwiththecomics.com/2009/05/man-reversible-moores-alan.html
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Nov 29, 2014 08:54
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McSpanky posted:Yeah that's real clever and everything but I'm getting a little tired of clever writers making sure that nothing good can ever be enjoyed without reminding us that the society of the time wasn't perfect. And really, putting those kinds of details into a setting derived from Golden-Age Fawcett is about as fair as Infinite Crisis rewriting history so that the Silver Age was so goofy and carefree because of rape and mindwipes. The issue with the deconstruction that Morrison does is that he's already done it, multiple times, and, well, what's he trying to say exactly? Deconstruction (used in the loose critical sense) relies on laying bare the internal contradictions inherent in the assumptions made in a work or an ideal. He's not actually doing that. He's playing with some late night ideas, wrapped around a tent pole story about how thinking too hard or criticizing is the devil's work. Jog's review of issue 1 from back in August was remarkably prescient: http://www.tcj.com/this-week-in-comics-82714-52-is-an-artificial-limit-and-other-obvious-statements/ Morrison's put himself in a very safe position here by incorporating goal post moving into the comic itself: if you think about it too hard, you're the problem. If you criticize the work, you're the villains. If you try to take it as simply dumb fun, well, here he is in the interview claiming that his light and fun issue is really full of haunting dark overtones that you didn't pick up on (just like all those old 40s and 50s comics we love to deconstruct). Well, which one is it? Am I supposed to read it just intelligently enough to pick up on {this or that reference to old comic} but not critically enough that I notice metafictional stories have been a thing since at least the comedy of the 1940s (or earlier: off the top of my head, 1666 gives us Cavendish's Blazing World, and 1759 Sterne's Tristram Shandy), and is hardly new ground or enough of an idea to stand on its own, rather than as backdrop for the real story? Jack Kirby and Stan Lee attended the wedding of Sue Storm and Reed Richards. Nova visited Marv Wolfman's office to complain about the quality of his comics, and both Wolfman and George Perez made appearances throughout Teen Titans. Kurtzman and Wood did most of the commentary in Superduperman back in 1953. But then, here I am, part of the problem. I'm not supposed to criticize the reason I want to criticize the comic and its author, or else I'm a monstrous floating eyeball or the evil clockhouse from Nextwave. For example, I liked the Charlton issue, but it doesn't replace Watchmen by any stretch. It doesn't even replace the Action Heroes Archives vol. 2 that has all the original adventures of those characters. The Generation Me one didn't do anything for me, and barely had anything to say about that era of comics -- far from being weary and worn out, they were an era of constant crisis and upheaval, and a stronger commentary would have been, for example, to replace the entire cast every few pages, with the violence getting worse and worse each time. If the point was that superheroes don't need to exist in that world (until they do?), it was made, I guess. What am I to do with this knowledge? The Reichsman issue was borderline offensive, trying to have its cake and eat it too, keeping Superman as a tortured ideal of tolerant values rather than properly exploring what a Nazi Superman would be like and the idea of a literal superman with offensive ideas who lacks the perspective to see otherwise (plus, glossing over the Holocaust, as if it could have happened in just 3 years while Superman was gone, with nothing on either side of those years, to keep him as a "sympathetic protagonist"... Suffice to say that that displays a great lack of WWII history knowledge). The ideas are there, but they seem like first draft ideas. They needed more work, better editing, more actual story... Putting out issue after issue of unfinished feeling Elseworlds that will never be expanded upon by anyone else is just a retread of the same fallow ground he already plowed thoroughly with Seven Soldiers. One or two good issues, and a couple good pages or ideas, doesn't make a good 9 issues miniseries. There are parts I enjoy, and Morrison is a writer I want to like. I own almost everything he's written. When he's on, he's on. And when I don't like something he's written, I always feel like I'm pissing in people's cornflakes when I say that didn't really enjoy it or that it didn't really work for me. Abandoning transitions, expecting readers to pick up on things, respecting your audience, those are fine, of course. But where's the story to match the work? Where's the idea beyond "Look at all these cool characters! This Superman is slightly different!" ? Dude is capable of better. Society of Superheroes was excellent! He shouldn't be wussing out by building in a criticism escape hatch into his first issue. He ain't Zeb Wells or Kyle Higgins or something. A series a quality writer has been talking about doing for 5-10 years should be knocking me on my rear end, not leaving me wondering if he should leave my "always buy" list of authors. Alan Moore is doing monthly comics again. It's time for the A-game.
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Mar 26, 2015 06:25
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When I ask "What does it all mean?" or "What's he trying to say?" I don't mean in the plot point sense. I understood the issues just fine. Y'all make some salient points and good analysis, and I'm very interested in reading more of it. My problem is, what's the bigger point other than "Don't stop reading comics because they are good"? A lot of them aren't. Most comics are crap. A lot of the writers and artists working today are terrible. Same with in the past. Part of good criticism is taking the ones that are excellent, that are worth reading, and pointing them out, championing the ones that have been overlooked and tearing down the ones that are overrated. It's much more apathetic to simply consume and consume than it is to engage and demand better. What's he trying to do other than play "last word" with someone who stopped responding 30 years ago? Miracleman is excellent, and holds up quite well today. It doesn't mean you can't write Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil and still have it be just as great. The fiction doesn't threaten me at all. It never has, despite all of Morrison's attempts to show that our world, Qwewq, is attempting to destroy the fictional one whenever it turns into Neh-Buh-Loh, and needs an injection of superheros to keep it from turning evil. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is one of the best short stories ever written, but it's from the 1940s. There's nothing inherently wrong with trying to do this as a comic story (hell, Ales Kot is doing it in Secret Avengers right now, too), but if you're going to bring up another story, you need to make my remembering that story worth it. By the very nature of doing multiple styles of comic, you end up commenting on those styles and eras. Why choose that particular era or mode if you don't have something to say about them, or aren't using them as a symbolic stand in for what you're actually talking about? (i.e. Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado has almost nothing to say about Japan, and everything about Victorian England, it's target audience) The Alan Moore comparisons end up being inevitable. This feels a lot like the America's Best Comics line, with a little Supreme tossed in on top, only rather than doing actual arcs and stories, he's tossing out single issues and hoping you'll imagine the rest of the issues for him. I can imagine all the comics I'd like to read without paying Morrison for the privilege. Moore started doing his turn on the "Comics shouldn't all be dark and gritty" thing 20 years ago. Where's the response to that? All this emphasis on how intrinsically important superheroes are makes me feel like I'm reading Geoff Johns or J. Michael Straczynski. A better argument for the necessity and viability of comics would be actual series of these comics. The best argument against that particular Batgirl cover was the comics themselves. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 16:26
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wizardstick posted:Post-Invisibles his party line that he gave in interviews and the Discordian manual of black Magic was 'Don't protest, join the evil mega-corporations and infect them with good from the inside.' From: http://ifanboy.com/articles/exclusive-image-expo-happy-from-grant-morrison-darick-robertson-at-image-comics/ "For numerous reasons, I think it’s important for any writer in the comics business to maintain a healthy portfolio of creator-owned material and IPs and I’m encouraged and inspired by the fact that companies like Image exist to provide that platform and permit a level of creative self-expression that’s hard to find in other media." I'm also curious to see if his attempts to be Mark Millar and write movie storyboard comics (i.e. Happy!, Dinosaurs vs. Aliens, Joe the Barbarian, etc.) end up having any effect on his usual output. Thus far he's struck out trying to get We3, Sinatoro, and 18 Days made into films, and considering how much he hates Millar, it must gall to see how easily he ports his Millarworld stuff over to the screen.
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Mar 28, 2015 04:49
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bairfanx posted:People getting sick of the dark spectacle and moving on isn't valid criticism? Let me rephrase it then: this thing is unoriginal, there are 500 other comics that present [dark spectacle] every month, and it's gotten commonplace and rather boring. Oh, this event is going to CHANGE THE UNIVERSE FOREVER? Blah, heard it last week. Add in that I have to assume Intellectron was chosen because the name screams that he represents the "these are graphic novels not comics" attitude, and I think there's a case for that all being pretty valid criticism. But the internet commentary (perhaps from the Comic Cosmos Forums seen in Multiversity #1?) that starts to bring him down is "The villain is a giant egg with bat wings? That's so stupid!" before he recalibrates to absorb wasted time and energy. Not quite the same level of criticism... But then here we are again: by criticizing that the ending of the book doesn't quite work during a commentary about book endings not working, we summon and give power to Intellectron and are hence part of the problem. But the issue isn't with Intellectron's shape or character design (which I think is pretty cool, personally, and some very fine work by Doug Mahnke, David Baron, Gabe Eltaeb, et al), and shouldn't be with spending time discussing a comic which is intentionally written to be discussed and analyzed...   
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Mar 28, 2015 17:44
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Effectronica posted:Is this from an interview? Because I don't get where this is coming from, textually. Intellectron's line: "This is only silly comm-ix-makes no sense-" after it turns out that the kids need Rex Ultraa to protect them from the thing in the box that couldn't escape until Ultra brought the box to their headquarters that they'd been defending from the forces that want to keep the box outside. How would they know they don't want the thing when they have no idea what's inside? If Ultraa is powerful enough to eat Ultra, why hasn't he retrieved the box himself? Intellectron is released only after a certain level of convolution is introduced into the narrative, and mocks the story for doing so.
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Mar 28, 2015 22:57
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Effectronica posted:Because the whole setup is a trap to allow Rex Ultraa to eat superpowers so that he can use the multiverse gate to go home. Everything we're told until UC figures it out is a lie. But the gate itself is a trap to allow Intellectron bodily entry from the Bleed. We've seen this trap before, back in JLA Classified.  Where it released the Nebula Man, Neh-Buh-Loh, who is also the universe of Qwewq, our universe. It appears in All Star Superman and Seven Soldiers too, in various forms. This time it's been co-opted by Intellectron, a very savy comics creator. So savvy, in fact, that he gets to serve as narrator of our issue, creating Ultra Comics, and addressing us directly. He doesn't tell us he's Intellectron until after the box has been opened and the trap sprung.  Intellectron before...  ...and after, addressing the reader directly in both forms. He needs comics to be gritty and realistic, to be a part of the real world. Note that the group of Ultras assembled includes Ultra the Multi-Alien, who regularly made Wizard's list of "Dumbest Super Heroes", and it is he who forces UC into the Oblivion Machine. They are a joke, a symbol of what's wrong with comics. That load of unanswered questions and convoluted back story each issue comes saddled with nowadays, like the dump of info that Gary Concord Jr. gives us about Time Tyrant Tor and Epoch, Lord of Time, that are utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of the issue, as meaningless as the barely seen Reborizzon. All of Ultraa's dialogue is meant to make you remember who he is, who Maxima is, all those issues of Superman he showed up in, the exact opposite of the "Simple straight forward action story" the comics message board commentators were asking for. Intellectron has sent Ultra to help him wipe all of this out, so he can move in and start harvesting. This has been a perennial theme of Morrison's, daring back to Animal Man traveling to Limbo to meet all the old pre-Crisis characters and have one last romp before going back to the very "realistic" world of John Byrne Man of Steel Superman and Frank Miller Batman. The line "Rex Ultraa was all we had to protect us -- from the thing inside the box!" makes no sense, as I pointed out above. The Neighborhood Guard (remember that Multiversity #1 was subtitled "Cosmic Neighborhood Watch") have been fighting off mutated versions of familiar superheroes to keep possession of the box, even if the can't move it, heroes who "always say the same thing", are static and old, as immovable as the box itself. The comics they have are missing pages, so they can't know that Intellectron is waiting inside. They aren't powerless; they've been fighting off an invasion for years now. They have 4 other superheroes with them, heroes powerful enough to subdue Ultra. And even if this is all a lie, why even bother in the first place, since it was Intellectron who put Ultra Comics into the trap, and who already had him thoroughly trussed up and ready for sacrifice at the very beginning shortly after his birth? He could get in by writing "Intellectron slides through the void and sideways slips into the open portal Tor carelessly left open in his hubris. Lightning crackling from his wings, begins to harvest the minds of the Time Troopers gathered about the room", but he chooses not to. He reveals himself once the story can't cohere anymore. It was always going to break down.  If Intellectron is from our universe, has made a comic which you are holding in your hands right now, and has repeatedly made you obey his every command throughout the issue, who actually won? The comic might end, but the discussion hasn't. Intellectron will live on electronically and mentally, as this is a comic designed to encourage discussion, especially of a calibre slightly higher than "A 5-Dimensional evil egg! Lol!" (even there, a not insignificant line: Morrison has established in both his runs on Batman and Superman that the 5th dimension is imagination, and Intellectron is a creation of his imagination) What does it say about our world that the cosmic being is invading the fictional space the cannibalize the dreams of fictional children? If the idea is to (literally) capture the reader's attention, the Gentry already did that from the moment you purchased the comic. It's not like you were actually going to quit reading halfway through, is it? And since the creator of this comic is Grant Morrison, who is doing a work for hire job at a large commercial entity about Why Superhero Comics Matter, what does it mean that the superhero creator and storyteller in this comic is revealed to be just a flesh suit worn by the villain, the one who appears to be the leader of the Gentry? Is the message "don't read those ugly gritty non-super hero comics"? "Don't think about them too hard?" Because surely he can't mean the former, and the latter is an awful message. What will this egg hatch?  If we're supposed to forget all about this wonder and joy draining villain, to keep him from destroying the super hero universe, why did Morrison write about him in the first place? A mimetic villain can only be destroyed through forgetfulness, not dissemination. But then there I am, draining the wonder and joy from the comic by over-intellectualizing it, by not just letting it be fun allegory or a neat romp, and not being swept up in the narrative and enjoying the ride, because I'm too busy concentrating on the villain and his implications. Perhaps I was infected early on, and this is just the latest expression of that infection? Going by that, yu shouldn't take me 2 seriously. Keep reading and discussing, cmcs fns.
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Mar 29, 2015 06:57
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just_a_guy posted:Does anyone know what happened to the multiversity annotations over at comics alliance? They were taking Doogz forever to get right due to the density of references that Morrison was packing into each one, so he might still be in the research phase. You could probably ask him on Twitter if more are forthcoming.
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Jul 23, 2015 19:09
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