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Underground > Comic Books >

Grant Morrison Bites

  
  

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Grady Hendrix
11:51 / 22.10.06
Dude, what's happening to Grant Morrison? I know that good things come to those who wait, and the floppy format is hell on story arcs, and fools rush in, and you shouldn't judge someone based on one issue, but while all those things make sense they aren't stopping me from saying: Grant Morrison sucks.

Seriously. I just read THE AUTHORITY and WILDCATS and they were booooring. Maybe they're leading up to something great. Maybe I should just be patient and figure that he's got something good up his sleeve, but I like making snap judgements and you can only fight your gut for so long before your gut fights back.

I love Morrison's BATMAN - it's downscale superheroics with Morrison doing hacky work-for-hire scripting which is turning out to be a hell of a lot of fun. Goodbye meta-concepts, hello pulp superheroics and manly chest hair and the result is ding-a-ling groovy. And All-Star Superman is tops in my book, if I had a book. Just a pity it only comes out when the moons have sunk below the horizon 18 times and the wolf cry echoes off the frozen vales and the jujub moss is in flower. But other than that - fun!

Heck, I even like his contributions to 52. If they are his contributions. I think they're his contributions. But that's the great thing about 52: you can decide which writer is doing what in your head so that the writers you like are responsible for all the good stuff and the ones you don't are the ones pouring on the clunky.

But, seriously, if anyone reading this knows Mr. Morrison then please, go to his house and make him stop. The ending of SEVEN SOLDIERS so far was just a big yawn. Some of the series were terrific but they all seemed to get a little soft over time. No problem. He's just over-extended. But then he went and did THE AUTHORITY and WILDCATS. And what did they read like? THE AUTHORITY read like bottom drawer Ellis. And WILDCATS read like bad, tough-guy posturing. A few nice captions on the first three pages but that's it.

Does Grunt really need money this badly? Is there a way to stop him from spreading himself so thin? I used to love Robert Kirkman and Mark Millar but the more they write the more their material reads like first draft pages yanked out of the laser printer while still hot and fired off to the editor, stat. If these guys had more of a Silver Age, pulp-ponic style of dizzy-making fun zapping out of their fingers like lightning bolts then I wouldn't mind, but for both Millar and Kirkman their default "too busy writing" writer mode seems to be: grim, meaningful, pompous.

To my mind, Millar has botched the end of THE ULTIMATES thanks to pressure from the many projects he's been bragging about taking on in the last 6-8 months, and Kirkman has diluted the joycore of WALKING DEAD and INVINCIBLE by taking on a zillion B-string Marvel titles all at once. Now Grant Morrison is taking on the WILDSTORM EXCITING DID ANYONE REALLY CARE THAT MUCH IN THE FIRST PLACE UNIVERSE and he seems to have gone a script too far and hit his own, private tipping point.

Is it just me? Or can someone give the Scots Tornado a hug and a breather?
 
 
Spaniel
17:25 / 22.10.06
So, you're not keen on the first issues of the Authority and Wildcats, and you don't like some of Seven Soldiers although you concede that much of it has been rather good, and you're loving Superman and Batman.

I'm not sure I see the problem here. Maybe your expectations are too high - it's not like you're always going to love everything the man ever works on.
 
 
The Falcon
20:07 / 22.10.06
It's a very short list of comics he's done that I think are pretty much merit-free.
 
 
Spaniel
20:43 / 22.10.06
Agreed, but I'm sure you see what I'm saying.
 
 
andrewdrilon
21:51 / 22.10.06
he'll pull it off. i have faith. i know, right now, it's like my favorite writer got up on the tightrope and announced that he'd start juggling seals while spinning plates on his tongue and blinking morse-code 'happy birthdays' with his eyes. but i have faith in Grant's brilliance, as do a lot of people, and if that doesn't fire up his sigils and wire him some creative magic, he's still got the super-brain, technical skill, experience and the big-hot-cojones to make it happen. the rare few times he's let me down, it's still been in the most interesting ways. but he won't this time. he'll pull it off.
 
 
Triplets
23:00 / 22.10.06
Is being 15 hard, Grady?
 
 
Tom Coates
23:37 / 22.10.06
As someone who feels a bit overstretched himself at the moment I think you have to ask how on earth he's managing to do all this stuff and when it's going to start falling over. There's nothing wrong with the stuff of his that I've been reading at the moment - it all feels polished, smart and professional - but I would have to agree that the first issues of Authority and Wildcats felt... odd. Very un-Grant. I don't doubt that they'll be good, but I agree with the sense that there's way too much Morrison coming out at the moment. Maybe it just feels that way because we're waiting for projects that took him ages to write to come out all at the same time? Seven Soldiers is relatively old, ASS may have been written a while back...?
 
 
Eskay Uno
07:31 / 23.10.06
GM's stories are often very personal explorations, or very public experiments. He is a philosopher and mystic as much as he is a storyteller. His stories almost always offer more than just simple entertainment, in fact people tend to complain when they don't! Sometimes though, it's clear GM just wants to have some fun (Wildcats, Authority, Vampirella & Swamp Thing with Millar), and what's wrong with that?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:34 / 23.10.06
Well, according to Grady Hendrix, above, that some of the series you have mentioned aren't very good. Perhaps it would be worth reading the posts in this thread and then responding to them?
 
 
Grady Hendrix
10:20 / 23.10.06
I want to have faith, too. But it's hard. I started out being so excited about SEVEN SOLDIERS and wound up feeling just kind of "whatever" about the whole thing. That may be more me than the books, so I gave it a pass. As much as I have faith that THE AUTHORITY and WILDCATS are going somewhere I have a voice whispering in the back of my head: "Did the first issue of DOOM PATROL, or ALL STAR SUPERMAN or BATMAN feel this pedestrian?" And the answer is: no.

Like Alan Moore, Morrison has earned our trust but I felt like my trust was a little mis-used by WILDCATS and AUTHORITY. He's got a brand now, and to service that brand he needs to be on top of his game with every issue. And these two issues were boring, only getting a pass because Morrison is coasting on his name.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
11:52 / 23.10.06
I think it's possibly over-egging the pudding to say the guy who's currently doing two comics that you love (Bats and Supes... sorry, JB) "bites", though, isn't it?

Haven't read the WS pair yet, but I've heard mixed things about them- question is, are they actually bad, or are they just not as good as George can be? Cos those're two very different things.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:52 / 23.10.06
I've read The Authority, but not WildCATS. It felt very slow, very domestic - something akin to Best Man Fall or even St. Swithin's Day. This is, as Joe Damage-I-You says, either a genius strategy which will only intensify the pulse-pounding thrills of the Authority's arrival, or a very bad idea. On the plus side, it can't be as bad an idea as "Kev", so that's something.

I sort of admire the courage of relaunching the Authority with a story that not only does not feature the Authority, but also abjures everything that might previously have induced people to fork over money for The Authority. The logic is presumably that between the people who will buy anything with The Authority on the cover, plus the people who will buy anyhing with Glen Morkinson in the credits, and the people who, having read it, are interested enough to buy issue 2 anyway, there's a fairly stable reader base.

I'm intrigued, at least, although strangely undriven to buy WildC.A.T.S, which might be the first time I haven't been eager to get a Morrison comic in about fifteen years. The art on The Authority really was a bit bad, though.
 
 
Billuccho!
14:46 / 23.10.06
Hmm. I thought the Authority art was really good-- and I liked the issue even if it was Anti-Morrison. It was better than Wildcats or Batman, anyway.

That said, I don't think G-Mozz suddenly sucks so much as he's stretching himself too thin, what with four ongoings, Seven Soldiers, and 52.
 
 
Quantum
14:57 / 23.10.06
Let's be fair- wildcats and the Authority had turned shite by the time he got there. You can only reinvent crap successfully so many time before you get tired.
But so what? Unless you consider GM to be a pseudo-deity, who cares? I don't like ASS or Bats either but I can always re-read we3, eh.
 
 
Grady Hendrix
15:52 / 23.10.06
Yeah - it's probably a bit much to say he sucks. What idiot said that? Oh yeah...

But I haven't been this disappointed in a long time and I worry for the future and the future of our children!
 
 
grime
21:44 / 23.10.06
i was really disapointed with the new issue of the authority. i DID buy just because it was morrison writing the authority and expected the logically assumed wickedness. instead i got a boring story about characters i don't care about.

it would be nice if this was the first step in an epic tale. i'lll never know, though, because i won't be getting #2.
 
 
Mark Parsons
23:25 / 23.10.06
My all-powerful explodo verdict is still out on Authority, which I may catch in trade. Wildcats was okish-cool, although Lee's artwork is not my cuppa. I'd vastly prefer GM to have been working on mainline DC stuff like FLASH or ATOM (or Adam Strange, or Dr Fate), but Wildstorm fans deserve some excitement in their corner of the DCU too.

Can't wait for GM's NEW GODS thing, or the nextwave of Vertigo minis (assuming they're going to happen).
 
 
Sniv
12:45 / 24.10.06
Wildstorm fans have had their fun. It was called the 90's (oooooooh, burn....).

I thought GM's WS stuff was okaaay, but I've seen a lot better, and a lot more accessible comics from the man. He should have realised that most of his readers wouldn't have read these characters before, and gieven them a bit more of a lead-in or context for newer readers. Wildcats read like the reasons I never usewd to buy X-Men - I have no idea who these second-rate characters are. They may have big tits, tiny waists and biceps that could cracka walnut, but they're as generic as fuck and Mozza did very little to set them apartfrom allthe other spandex bollocks I leave on the shelves every week.

Although, this could all be turned around in a few issues when this 'worldstorm' thing hits, and we get us a reboot.

But, as to the topic title, I don't think that GM is terrible by any stretch of the bar, or even that he's getting that much noticably worse. Remember that We3 was a fluke, and example of comics-as-art that I've never seen matched anywhere else (and arguably not even in the rest of the GM canon). It's hardly surprising that he's not still hitting those lofty heights, is it? I seem to remember similar comments in the vertigo-trilogy threads, and that's coming from one of his most inventive periods (I love Vimanarama, Seaguy and We3, I think they stand as a great little run of Mozza's). Both Seaguy and Vimanarama got a lot of flack at the time.

I'll put it this way, try judging the whole of the Invisibles after #1. And Doom Patrol, the firstissue of that was very sketchy and nowhere near as amazing as it would become (great though it was). I think he's a writer where the start of a run can't be begun to be properly appreciated without having read the ending first, and I'd saythis was true for almost all of the books of his that I've read.
 
 
Spaniel
13:58 / 24.10.06
I have no idea who these second-rate characters are. They may have big tits, tiny waists and biceps that could cracka walnut, but they're as generic as fuck and Mozza did very little to set them apartfrom allthe other spandex bollocks I leave on the shelves every week.

I think your first sentence there is key, John. The thing is, a number of these characters are a lot less generic than they might at first appear. Not that Mike did much to help disabuse you of that misapprehension.
 
 
Sniv
14:07 / 24.10.06
Yes, but shouldn't a #1 written by a popular artist for not-so-popular charcters be accessible to new readers? That is the point of the relaunch, isn't it? Revive a flagging series, get new blood in on the title. It wouldn't take much, and would make it a whole lot easier tofigure out what was going on. I could barely tell who was on what side. Case in point - Majestic. Now, I know who this is and what he looks like, thanks to his recent DC series (yes, I am that mainstream...). So he turns up with a big helmet on. Is this the same bloke? What's up with the helmet? Who was he talking to and why should I care? Even the last New X-Men story wasn't as dense with the newness/sparse with the exposition as this is.

That said, I'll still read it as I have faith in Mozz's skills as a writer, and it was a kinda fun comic, even if I know no-ones name or character. God bless wikipedia, eh?
 
 
Quantum
14:13 / 24.10.06
I should postscript that I'm still buying ASS because of Quitely, even despite GM's laboured writing. Maybe it'll get better.
Ironically, I read the third issue second and the second third by accident, and thought Grant was back on form by the second issue as he introduced the super-serum without preamble. 'Great!' I thought, 'That's more like it! Super Lois without any boring pointless explanation, Cool!' then of course reading the next issue I was sorely disappointed. Ah well. Great art.
 
 
Spaniel
14:27 / 24.10.06
Hey, won't get any argument from me, if anything I was reinforcing your point.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:01 / 24.10.06
ASS is "laboured"?

Blimey. We'll have to agree to disagree on that, methinks.
 
 
Spaniel
17:16 / 24.10.06
Yes we will.

ASS is love.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
17:29 / 24.10.06
There was a theory that All-Star was about the 12 labours of Superman.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
17:30 / 24.10.06
In my head, that was witty.
 
 
Quantum
17:31 / 24.10.06
Well I'd take it up in the thread but I don't know if I can be ASSed to read the hundred pages before and the thousand pages after Wifegate. I'm sure somebody's already said all I would. For example I liked Lex best but I thought he was caricatured, I loved the first few pages but it felt contrived, like someone was doing their best to imitate Grant's style and doing alright. But whaddawIknow? I don't have the detailed DC backstory knowledge required to grok the recent GM style, I am one of the excluded mainstream. Let's disagree.
 
 
Quantum
17:36 / 24.10.06
I love the way Dr. Quintum looks though, that's my next screen name.
 
 
Spaniel
17:37 / 24.10.06
Or let's just agree that you are Mr Wrong.
 
 
--
23:27 / 24.10.06
Maybe it's just me, or does GM seem a little less relevant now then he did, say, back in the 90's? I think a lot of his current stuff is okay, but a lot of it just seems kind of blandly professional... It doesn't seem, for lack of a better term, "world-changing". You could argue that one shouldn't expect something as simple as a comic to change the world, but it should at least make an impression...

I don't know, I've been re-reading "Doom Patrol" recently and I think that may of been his peak (as good as "The Invisibles" was, and I did love "The Filth" at the time, but I don't think it's aged well with me... killer art though). "Seven Soldiers" was okay as far as things went, but it didn't blow my mind or anything... It just seems to me like GM doesn't care all that much about his characters these days, like he did back in the day. I think the scene that moved me the most was when Nebulon man got killed, and when you feel more sympathy for the villian than most of the heroes, well, something's off (though I tend to prefer GM's "bad guys" to the good guys more often than not anyway).

I think one thing you have to remember is that this guy has written ALOT of comics for many years now, so it's probably not much of a surprise that his comics, IMO, just don't seem as revolutionary as they did back when he began his career. Maybe he should try out a new format or something... Like releasing that damn book already! (What was it supposed to be called again? "The If"?)

Anyway, I think the problem with GM's stuff now is that it's all a little too ironic, all style and little substance. The last thing he did that I really found impressive was "We3", because at the very least I got the impression that he cared about the characters. Of course, I could be wrong, maybe he does have deep emotional involvement with characters like Shining Knight, but somehow, uh, I don't think so.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
23:34 / 24.10.06
He took much acid circa 'The Invisibles', and then he got married.

Graham is agruably the Lennon of comics, but not even the original could survive that double whammy!
 
 
Hallo, Paper Spaceboy
00:20 / 25.10.06
Qu(i/a)ntum: 'Great!' I thought, 'That's more like it! Super Lois without any boring pointless explanation, Cool!' then of course reading the next issue I was sorely disappointed.

Er. You were disappointed and bored by the madness of Lois Lane? Really? I liked the Fortress issue more than the Superwoman issue - Lois having powers was wasted to a certain extent, although I loved her description of having them as they fade ("I can't smell the trees in Canada. I can't see all that gorgeous radio anymore...the stars have stopped singing like they used to.") - and I'm not sure that the exo-genes were worth being bugged about - they're mentioned briefly as a means of set-up and tied both stories together.

Sypha: Of course, I could be wrong, maybe he does have deep emotional involvement with characters like Shining Knight, but somehow, uh, I don't think so.

Maybe you read a different version of Shining Knight #2 than I did, and Justina's reactions to the Guilt creature. Felt fairly involved. And All-Star Superman is brimming over with emotional involvement, meditations on middle age, dealing with the Lois/Clark dynamic in a significant way. I've certainly got my problems with GM's work, sure, I'm not going to bother continuing with the Authority because it didn't really grab me, and Wildcats ain't my thing, but I'm not sure saying that he's got no emotional involvement feels right either.
 
 
This Sunday
20:12 / 25.10.06
I don't know that Morrison was ever excessively or manic-style relavent. He just wasn't. "The Invisibles" did not crack the head of every fan. Didn't have to. It was just there, and it was witty and fun and maybe you could see a bit of yourself in it, sometimes. That's all. Same for "The Filth" and "JLA" and his Vampi issues. They all had things to say, sort of, and sometimes that thing was just "Hey, look at me - I am the shit! Yes. Keep looking. Here is wisdom thing, it is pithy and possibly nonsensical, but it has a musical reference. I have changed the world. How? Um... look - DMT machine fairies!" and then, y'know, everybody just kinda ran away and did something else. And there were more musical references.

Which is lovely, and served us well.

And he's still doing it. These aren't guidebooks for life, and even if they were, nobody has to read them that way and abide. Entertainment, inspiration, commentary... but not fucking guidebooks. Not laws.

And, as for the Lennon comparison: post-Beatles Lennon was loads superior. The Plastic Ono Band, dammit. Great stuff. And it trumps any relevancy argument.

Now, if Morrison can be got to go around conventions telling people he's "the goddammed Lennon!" I'll be that much happier. But, the works still good as ever. It's all about the massing, and while things are amassing, there's the gorgeous pop moments, single issues, or sometimes just single panels, where it all gels like God on the bongos.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:15 / 25.10.06
So... based on this theory that George is rubbish now, who's NOT going to be buying SS#1?

Bueller?
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:35 / 25.10.06
Stoats, buying comics which you know will not be enjoyable is not a proof. It's a pathology.

Having said which, a) I will buy 7S1, if it actually tunrs up (although since I liked at least 64% of the Seven Soldiers, why not?) and b) I might get Wildcats 1, on the strength of Flyboy bellowing "IST TOD! IST TOD! IST TOD! DAS IST GRIFTER!" at me.
 
  

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