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Din't really think about invoking Pratchett, either. Death was also recently seen anthropomorphised in Moore-O's Smax. And millions of other things prior.
Whether you thought of Pratchett or not is beside the point for me -- I was just using that as an example off the top of my head to indicate that this Death-chess thing seemed pretty tired, and you're backing me up on that if you've seen it in a million other places.
I thought Really and Truly was not just inane and lame, but actually an insult to me as a reader... even if Morrison didn't write it on E, it felt that way, and I think it takes the piss horribly out of fans to say "here's something I knocked up in 5 minutes, have fun". I like Rian Hughes' artwork a lot but to my mind, a writer shouldn't just palm off stuff he did for a lark and have it applauded as "Grant's having fun, great!" A professional comic book is not meant to be art therapy for its creators -- it's meant to serve the reader, not amuse the writer while he's necking Class A chemicals.
Forgot to add above that I also loved Flex, Hitler and Dare. Flex had some tragicomic panels, but it wasn't lightweight throwaway by any means. Dare and Hitler also had priceless jokes, like the make-up woman puzzling over Dan's trademark eyebrow, or John Bull giving Adolf pamphlets he'd done on his little printing set. Zenith had gags ("you know who's inside Robot Archie, don't you...Jeremy Beadle!" -- I paraphrase). Animal Man had banter along the lines of "You must be Robotman." / "You must be the guy who states the obvious."
But just as Morrison's big SERIOUS work on SERIOUS earth, Arkham Asylum, was pretentious toss, so his all-out "funny" stuff seems worthlessly light. All his best stuff, to my mind -- and there's a great deal of best stuff -- has rattling thriller-plots, high concept structure, jokes emerging from character and dialogue and, often, twists at your heart just when you've come to love those characters.
So this doesn't look like the kind of Morrison I'm into. It doesn't seem to exhibit any of the traits I like about his work. |
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