Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

Morrisons JLA-run

04:39 / 27.04.05

I'd like to have a peek at Morrisons JLA-run, but don't know where to start. Which TPBs are worth getting? Are they self-contained or linked stories?

05:22 / 27.04.05

a few threads run throughout morrison's run on jla (but don't start approaching noticeable levels until around "rock of ages") but for the most part each tpb should offer just pure jla fun.

if you just want a taste, go with jla: new world order (the first tpb of morrison's run). it's the big iconic seven as they should be, and it's big dumb fun, morrison-style. the next two tpbs (jla: american dreams and jla: rock of ages) are fantastic, but have electric superman in effect, and then rock of ages has to acknowledge the (obviously temporary) death of wonder woman. they're excellent, mind you, but might be jarring.

actually, i think all the tpbs are worth getting. but if you want to test the waters, going in order is a pretty safe bet.

lonely as a cloud...

07:37 / 27.04.05

You might want to get the first two (New World Order and American Dreams) in one go, as they're both kinda slim. I was lucky enough to find 'em both in a second-hand comic store on Portobello Road in London, and I was hooked straight away.

14:35 / 27.04.05

They are all self-contained and they (those collecting actual issues of JLA and not oneshots, minis, Classified) tell one big, sprawling narrative, though in a much looser sense.
I'd suggest starting after the first two, mainly because they're thin for their price, and I don't really enjoy Morrison's first JLA arc as much as, say, 'Rock of Ages' or 'Crisis Times Five' (collected in 'Justice for All').
Morrison starts his JLA fairly simple, spreading a mostly two-theme story over a handful of issues, then jumps over to single-issue stories with some overlapping elements. Don't get me wrong, I do like these stories, and they have some witty, amazing bits and lines, and in a culture that likes to pretend away its Christian undercurrents (and a comics universe that likes to play up demons and the devil, but not the other side of the equation) an actual slugfest with angels is quite pleasurable.
The art is mostly by someone that... not a lot of vocal Morrison-JLA fans seem to like. He's not got the best composition or narrativising skills, and I get the feeling, reviewing the whole body of work, that Morrison probably started writing to accomodate Porter's strengths and weaknesses, after a certain point.
Quite a bit of the JLA stuff has undercurrents of 'The Invisibles' running all through it, from the significant (Barbelith/Mageddon, Queen Bee/Death-Madonna, time dilations) to the silly (San Francisco scenes with 'Now' captions uniting two series) to the purely 'pillaging the same source(s)' (David Icke/White Martians, Hell/Heaven as micro/macro).
Really, the ambience of saturday morning cartoon with infinite budget, written by a madman ascending through rippling brilliance and splash is the real impetus to buy. J'emm and the holograms, what it's like for Batman to punch a man with Lou Gehrig's Disease, and Barda as a mother-goddess-of-war stand out as some significant attractions to me, but that's just me. Plus, women turning into icecream and melting, Supes wrestling an angel while Diana beats up their flying fortress, a shaved Shaggy Man, reasons why Lex Luthor should change his underwear more frequently.

21:42 / 27.04.05

I kind of dig the sheer narrative hubris of the run. Sure, a lot of writers try to end their tenures by building up to a big cathartic send-off; but over the course of Morrison's JLA run we get not one, not two, but THREE climactic cosmic-level apocalyptic end-time conflagrations (in Rock of Ages, JLA: 1,000,000, and World War III, respectively). Little rough on the adrenal glands if you're easily stimulated...

22:47 / 27.04.05

The JLA: Earth-2 graphic novel with Frank Quitely is great. Gorgeous art and fine storytelling, but it's not really a part of his JLA run. I guess.

Yeah, I've got the New World Order trade, and I loved it. It's got some fantastic moments. Haven't read the others, though, but I intend to get around to it.

08:08 / 28.04.05

Which TPBs to get?

ALL! OF! THEM!!!!(He said, frothing at the mouth.)
Gave up on superhero comics during the mid-90's. Picked up JLA # 12 on a whim, read it and had a fanboy geekgasm, and began rabidly collecting the series. Spent TWO years inserting "JLA ROCKS" into every conversation i had with my peers and confirmed my fatbeardedness for all time. My favourite super hero stuff EVER.
Also got me into collecting Invisibles and from there i branched out into other comics genres.
But man, EVERY time i go thru my Morrison JLA stuff i get a big old smile on my face.(Said in my best Michael Wincott impersonation.) The coolest Batman, the most heroic Superman, and Wonder woman and Aquaman, and his use of Kyle as p.o.v. character was great. Hell, he made all the characters shine. His expanded JLA roster is still the best team roster ever.
GAWD, i could go on all day. For @#$%'s sake someone poor some cold water in my face.

lonely as a cloud...

08:10 / 28.04.05

I dunno about the art in Earth 2. Sometimes, Quitely's characters all look the same to me, facially - they all seem to have the same slightly squashed faces, and smug expressions. Don't get me wrong, I think Quitely's a fantastic artist - especially WE3, and the covers he did for Bite Club and BOM: Life During Wartime, but I thought Earth 2 and his work on The Authority was a bit samey...

14:29 / 28.04.05

I second that emotion - I love ALL of Grant's work on JLA. And I can't honestly say that about Grant's X-Men, which I feel floundered just a bit at the end.

15:42 / 28.04.05

Earth 2 seemed a bit rushed, which is strange, especially when you consider Grant was talking about it in late '98. I recall a comics magazine from that time where Grant was talking about his plans for JLA, and then mentioned that he was working on a JLA hardback graphic novel with Quitely that would go into the darker side of superheroes. He said he was going to get into more adult topics than he was allowed to do in the regular series. Then, a little over a year later, the hardback finally came out. I enjoyed it, and as usual loved Quitely's art, but the book didn't live up to the promise it was given in Morrison's interview. Maybe he was held back by editorial constraints, but there was some "darker" stuff smattered about, particularly the SuperWoman/Jimmy Olsen relationship.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

16:43 / 28.04.05

It starts getting a bit cocked up towards the end, but I think that's because Grant has to strain to accomodate what was going on in the various characters own titles at the time. You don't really notice that Flash is absent from almost all of the last story, but when he shows up it does seem a bit deus ex...

But there's some clever uses of powers which beats anything I've seen in the individual titles, Supersparky using his powers to give the moon magnetic poles and so stop it crashing into the earth, or being uniquely vulnerable to Dr Light's powers, my favourite being Joh'n using his shapechanging powers to make himself as nuts as the Joker and then his telepathy to force the Joker to become temporarily sane...

18:42 / 29.04.05

'Earth 2' tortured some mainstream supertights fans, when it came out, though. Check old messageboard or newsgroup posts from around the time of release. Loads of 'They made Jimmy Olsen a perv! What does that add? That's not the character I love,' even though it was an evil version from an evil fucked up alternate reality. Or about how the evil versions of the JLA were too evil and shouldn't be written like that. The old Syndicate never had rape/slaugher bits or anything vaguely seedy, so why should this new group of utterly evil and unrepentent versions of our standard, upstanding, super-good good guys?
Anything more evil, probably would have pushed someone over the edge and resulted in carnage.
Funnily enough, these were some of the same fanboys who love the DCUniverses dark and meaningful tales of the moment.

19:29 / 29.04.05

I think the reason I didn't find Earth 2 all that "dark" was because I'd recently read Rick Veitch's ultra-twisted "Bratpack" -- I don't think DC could or would ever print something THAT dark!!

19:56 / 29.04.05

You mean the Fan boys we're complaining that Grant had twisted their normal innocent golden age Jimmy Olsen http://www.superdickery.com/seduction/2.html ?

21:47 / 29.04.05

Go to that link, click next...

Can anyone explain to me what 'Batman's Boner' is all about?

01:26 / 01.05.05

But... but... but... Jimmy never got off on his disguises. Jimmy the pure would never be involved in anything vaguely seedy like kissing a monkey while all dragged up and trying to seduce a mobster... unless he had a perfectly good and wholesome reason to do so.
These are the same people who thought Quitely-Supes was trying to seduce them with his special Super-metetextual power.
Then there are the fanboys who're convinced Supes did seduce them, then used his super-amnesia kiss to make them forget it happened.
And, no, 'Earth 2' characters were not nearly as vile as they could have been, but for some people's sake, maybe it was better that way.