| |
|
Daniel Johnston - No More pUshing Joe Around
Everybody's been burned - the Byrds
If the Grant being asked about is Grant Morrison, it's an interesting question. Often, and indeed in the discussion about this very thread, "Grant Morrison" and "the Invisibles" get mixed up and conflated, which certainly does the former few favours, if not necessarily the latter. I might go further and suggest that this is the first part of a road of identification that leads to Oddman, basically - believing that Grant Morrison is King Mob, and thus that to be his friend and to be a mogickal ninja assassin are pretty much identical conditions, and both to be aspired to.
The whole process by which one reads the Invisibles and decides that one should be, or simply is, a psychic warrior seems to be oddly determined to miss the point. It's like watching The Incredible Journey, being inspired by it, and deciding that, rather than seeking to use teamwork to achieve goals, or take the ties of friendship and family seriously, or even seek to make friends with people who might be expected not to be a friend of yours, one will instead be inspired to become two dogs and a cat, or embrace the spontaneity of Discordianism by memorising and repeating lines from the Principia Discordia.
Conversely and contrariwise, I think I learned a lot more from Zenith, and was more affected by it. Looking back, and having read around more, you can see the influences far more clearly, and the plots seem less intriguing and more prone to random deus ex machina. However, the style - which owes a lot to the dark, monochrome expressionism of Steve Yeowell's art, of course - had a great impact, as did the generally downbeat mood, the explicit identification of the world of the superhuman characters with the same depressing, Thatcherite world the reader inhabited and the amorality, interrupted with occasional bursts of altrusim, of the notional heroes. Zenith staggering into his flat, drunk, singing "The Queen is Dead" is such a perfect evocation of what being young in London is like that the London of the Invisibles seemed a bit picture-postcard and artificial by comparison (deliberately, no doubt - considering that it was aimed at an American audience and, even at its roots, approached its kitchen-sink realism in a highly stylised fashion).
Zenith also taught me that you didn't need many story elements for a satisfying story. Possibly my favourite single piece (unless you count Phase 3) was the Maximan interlude, where the simple depiction of one man feeling futile, missing his home and doubting whether the men he served with liked or respected him used the existing understanding of the backstory and the progression of the modern-day narrative to achieve a very satisfying and saddening emotional effect.
What I have learned is mainly about the structure of comics, and how his best work - in my entirely subjective opinion, Zenith, Kill Your Boyfriend, arguably St Swithin's Day, the Rock of Ages and Ultramarines stories in JLA (Classified) and Seaguy - is economical with its concepts, doesn't try to explain everything, and communicates a lot of emotion with relatively little verbiage. One telling thing about his work is how little people say, and how those things are often garbled, muttering, non sequiturs or fragments of speech. When somebody is settling down to explain for several pages what is going on - variously in Arkham Asylum, The Invisibles, in Zenith Phase 3 or The Fiilth, in particular, it feels like the air is being let out of the narrative. However, the wordy, weirdy, if-Alan-Moore-can-do-it-so-can-I bits I loved when I was an easily impressed young 'un, and I can see there appeal. They are just not something I feel I learn from much these days, in terms of style or imparted knowledge. |
|
|
