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I'm about to be a bit scary and geeky here, so watch out.
I asked about older/more obscure Grant Morrison comics a while ago, and received a fair bit of helpful feedback.
Not that that thread answers most of your questions – I just thought it might be of some interest to you.
Zenith phase #1 was indeed supposed to be reprinted in August, but I believe there are legal difficulties (can't remember the specifics here) that have held this up somewhat.
In my opinion Zenith is well worth your time - I found that the constraint of having such a small amount of pages to work with at a time seemed to keep Morrison focussed, though I believe that some people disagree with this in regards to the third and fourth phases of the series, where things start to go pretty crazy.
Anyway - I'm very, very fond of this series as a whole, and I highly recommend it.
The first two phases are pretty straightforward - very moody and stylish, with what would become several of Morrison's key themes and concerns appearing in various forms throughout.
World War Two heroes, evil Lovecraftian beings attempting to break through into our dimension, superheroes who were pop stars and Tory MP's, a bizarre Richard Branson riff etc - it's a good laugh. Very 80's and very British, but in a charming way.
The third phase sees Morrison turn things up to eleven, with a lot of bizarre pop-culture sampling coming in as the was wages across multiple dimensions. It's my favourite part of the series, to be honest with you. Really great OTT fun from start to finish.
Phase four...well, I myself like it a lot. It's not as good as the previous three phases were, but it's very entertaining nonetheless. I won't get into plot details, as it's something you really don't want spoiled for you, but if you read the first three series then you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you want to read this one or not.
All of Zenith is graced with fantastic art from Steve Yeowell. It's suitably simple and dynamic, and I'm particularly in love with how it looks in black and white (the first three phases were all entirely printed this way, of course). There's something about Yeowell's work that really benefits from the starkness of this approach, though it does still look excellent in colour in Phase four.
Are you from the UK? If you are, then you can probably track this down fairly cheaply in old issues of 2000AD. Most places seem to have bucket-loads of the stuff, and I believe that Morrison's website has a list of what issues these stories ran in.
The previous printings of the collected editions seem to turn up on E-bay quite regularly as well.
Of Morrison's other 2000AD work I've only ever read Big Dave, which was written with Mark Millar and is... alright. It's pretty funny stuff about an English super-yobbo, but it's not really something that I'd recommend tracking down unless you're a completist. I don't really think it's reprint worthy, but then again, maybe that's just me.
The Swamp Thing issues he wrote (again, with Mark Millar) weren't anything special, but they were fun enough - it's a Swamp Thing story with some typical Grant Morrison themes thrown in, basically. I do recomend the bulk of Mark Millar's run on the title, by the way. There's a promise there that has very rarely been developed in his more recent work - good vertigo style horror.
I've never read the isue of Spawn that Grant Morrison wrote, but several friends of mine have, and they've all told me to stay well away from it. They're probably right.
I don't think there are any plans to trade Aztek, but I've read most of it and while I'm oddly taken with... something about the basic idea, you're not really missing much if you don't read it.
There were recent rumours about Doom Patrol being reprinted in its entirity, but I don't think there have been any concrete abbouncements about this.
Both Doom Patrol and Flex Mentallo are definitely among Morrison's finest work - I won't go on about either of them here, because if I did then I would probably end up writing a frightening amount, but needless to say, these are great, great comics, and I'd definitely recommend that you track both series down if you can.
Doom Patrol has always seemed pretty easy to get a hold of around my way, but Flex tends to take a little bit more effort.
FF1234 has been traded and is good, angsty fun. Like Morrison taking soapier side of the FF and butting up against some of his stock themes - I think it works nicely in this case, and while the pace gets a bit rushed towards the end, it holds together pretty well.
JLA/Wildcats was crap, yes. Don't bother with it.
Kill Your Boyfriend is another one of my favourite Grant Morrison comics. It's a black humoured kitchen sink drama that is both invigorating and satiric at once - I love it. Philip Bond's artwork is absolutely perfect as well - really simple and energetic and POP. Don't know how easy it is to find, though...
Have you ever read St Swithen's Day?
It's pretty amazing as well. Yet another favourite of mine, to be honest with you. A teenage boy plans to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in 80's Britain. Like Kill Your Boyfriend, it's short, very witty, and a perfect encapsulation of a mood.
Oni reprinted it a year or two ago, and it's another one of those comics that's pretty easy to find, I think, if you look about for it a bit. |
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