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Umm...and a re-imagining of British pop culture from the last 40 years with the inclusion of superheroes; an attempt to marry the fictional and 'real' world; a coherent and brilliantly mapped fictional world;
These are all the same thing.
Re-imagining British culture with the inclusion of superheroes is marrying fiction and reality -- and it's that process that creates a coherent fictional world.
I wouldn't go too far with this one either as the pre-1980s material in Zenith is very skimpy. There were a couple of WW2 interludes and the 1950s/1960s were covered in extremely brief (sometimes one panel) flashbacks.
Just because Zenith gets drunk at the Limelight club and Archie shags Britney Spears doesn't mean this is an especially ambitious world-building... the references to contemporary pop culture are really just name-dropping, semi-satirical references.
So, you've got a single point here, that Morrison sketches an interesting historical background for his 1980s-1990s adventure -- a history that occasionally comes back to haunt the present. That's really the least I'd expect from a decent superhero narrative. As Morrison is working within a new "Zenith universe" here he has to create a past for his characters, because obviously there isn't the pre-existing background he had when he inherited the DCU heroes. It's satisfying but I wouldn't call it another "level" that he gives some background to the present-day story.
a blending of Lovecraftian mythos, Nietzschean uber-theory,
I wouldn't push this one... I don't think the Nietzchean references in here are especially profound. Having a genetically-created Nazi called Masterman and his British counterparts is about the limit of it, unless you can correct me.
I don't really know Lovecraft but again, if the use of that mythos goes beyond the naming and representation of the Dark Gods, please correct me here too.
and british comics of all genre;
I think this was Morrison's great achievement, certainly.
a classic 'anti-hero' in the form of a pop star; robot Archie riding a fucking dinosaur...
Yes, these are some of the aspects that make Zenith a fantastic comic, but I don't think they add "depth" or "levels". They contribute to it being a pop culture classic and provide some of its best moments -- but I might as well say "Penny Moon wearing a Fall badge", "a pious Christian soldier called Hotspur", "Peyne regressing from old age to embryo" make the story deeper and more complex. I would say these are just neat, memorable ideas.
Please don't get me wrong because I love the whole Zenith saga (up to Phase IV, where it loses steam, anyway) but I don't think we have to exaggerate its complexity or multiple meanings to celebrate it. As you say, it's an episodic story in a weekly comic, and it's one of the best things Morrison has ever done, but why can't we praise it as an intelligent, rewarding superhero story without having to make out that it has the layered, half-hidden meanings of Ulysses? Why does a superhero story have to be "deep" or contain ideas that aren't immediately obvious to be a great superhero story? |
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