Books: Marvel Boy

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Marvel Boy
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by J. G. Jones
2001




Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/


How can you not love a comic that starts with a multi-coloured computer voice warning: "Two hundred million parallel realities and counting!"?

So. I have been meaning to write about Marvel Boy for a long, long, long time now. I've had this blank saved un-published post run sorta sitting there in my blog posts drafts folder for - what? - over a year. But I've just never had enough - I dunno - get up-and-go to actually sit down and write it. Thinking about it I'd say a big part of that is the due to the formatting of all the copies we have in Islington (sorry Islington): there's another copy I've read where the first few pages are laid out in a different way [1] - so instead of opening with a double-page spread the first page just hits you by itself (which you can tell is what was originally intended by the way the picture of the spaceship extends over from page 2 to page 3 - and if what I'm saying isn't making much sense (sorry) then looking for the spaceship is probably the best way to understand what I'm talking about) and then (with the other copy I've read) the page that says "sole survivor" has a page next to it which is completely black which - all-in-all - makes the opening impact that much harder and makes the Islington copies seem a bit like - I dunno - a cheap copy: like watching a film someone's taped off the TV [2]. Of course once you get past those opening pages (altho - wait it does do it again much later with: "what's so funny" - but let's ignore that) and on to Noh-Varr striking his best Jesus Christ pose and "Hello Cruel World" plastered across the side - it's all the same - but - yeah - it's not so great when you reading something that fluffs the start just so that - what? - it can skimp on two pages - and I guess I've just been waiting for Islington to realise their heinous mistake and replace their cheap copies with the prestige format before I posted this post. But - shockingly - this hasn't happened (oh well).

But let's try and forget all that and start again: superhero comics for all their countercultural bluster are often fairly conservative when it comes the values that they represent - by which I mean to say: Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and all the rest often use their time and energy to try and preserve the status quo rather than attempting to upset it. The idea behind Marvel Boy (Grant Morrison: "We`re always being told that super hero books are nothing but adolescent power fantasies. Fine. Here comes the ultimate adolescent power fantasy!") is: wouldn't it be fun to have a comic where the guy [3] with the all superpowers was less Johnny Upstanding Moral Citizen Dedicated To Truth, Justice and The Betterment of All Races, Colours and Creeds and more - well - Johnny Rotten [4]: someone who just wants to smash stuff and who instead of seeing the masses of humanity as something worth protecting - sees them more as something to fight against? There's that little speech Michael Caine gives in The Dark Knight ("Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.") and while obviously we can all agree that that isn't the type of person that we would want to invite around for a polite little dinner party - it does sound like someone who it would be fun getting a few voyeuristic kicks from: because looking around at the apocalyptic entertainment we all like to spend our time on - alien invasions, zombies, nuclear war, etc - there's a part of all of us that just wants to watch the world burn [5]. 

Of course because it's Grant Morrison there's a little more to it than that - and for me - a big part of the thrill of reading Marvel Boy is the cool and crazy and outrageous ideas that he manages to drop in every other page - I don't want to sound too much like a drooling fanboy but there's stuff here that could be used to sustain a whole movie (altho: with the paucity of ideas in most modern movies that sounds more like a cuss than a compliment) but these guys squeeze all they can from it in just a few pages before they're moving on to the next thing: which left me feeling almost giddy the first time I read it. 

Also - after the ordeal of Mark Millar's Wanted (which is still number one in the "comics which left a nasty taste in my mouth" list) it's nice to see J. G. Jones using his powers for good instead of evil: there's a brilliant sharpness and clarity which he brings to all his artwork that makes taking him in as easy and pleasurable as drinking a cold glass of lemonade. 

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[1] And just to be clear: when I say "different" I mean "better."

[2] For anyone that doesn't understand this reference: shut up and stop making me feeling old.  

[3] I guess "Marvel Girl" would have been a step too far. 

[4] Fun fact: The name Johnny Rotten apparently - and man what could possible be more English than this? - comes from the fact that John Lydon's teeth were so bad ("his lack of oral hygiene led to his teeth turning green").

[5] For me - the gold standard of this type of comic would be Alan Moore's D.R. and Quinch (first published in the year I was born) - where: not only are the two punkish leads evil teenage extraterrestrials - but they manage to beat 99% of all the other bad guys out there and blow up in the Earth in their first 6 page appearance (and it's not even like they were doing it on purpose either - rather it's just a revenge prank gone horribly right). But - yeah -basically you should read it.

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Links: Graphic Content Article: The Future Is X-Rated: Marvel Boy, The Modern World And The History Of The Marvel Universe / Graphic Content Article: 28: Reconsidering Noh-Varr Post-Morrison, The Comics Reporter Review, Collected Editions Review.

Further reading: The Authority, Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Batman: Year 100, JLA: Earth 2, Black Summer, The Boys, Irredeemable, Wanted, D.R. and Quinch, X-Men: New X-Men, The Avengers: The New Avengers: Illuminati.

Profiles: Grant Morrison.

All comments welcome.

Books: Final Crisis

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Final Crisis
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by J. G. Jones and Marco Rudy
2009




Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/


My theory about why so many people tend to write stuff about Grant Morrison is that the stuff he writes is so much fun to write about. Observe: The following quote (taken from this interview below) sums up both everything that's great/awesome/stupendous and everything that's oh-so deeply wrong/muddled/bad with Final Crisis (you ready?): "superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?" The end result of this philosophy is a mainstream superhero comic book that feels like a crazy avant garde experiment - reading it feels like trying to make sense out of several stories all playing over the top of each at the same time - as you struggle (fruitlessly) to hold on to any small scrap of sense or meaning before being awashed by the noise (it's DC via Merzbow!). I keep getting visions of myself running through empty fields chasing a manically laughing Grant Morrison (played for some reason by Spider Jerusalem?) as he sits upon a magic cloud dangling the small thread of "story/character motivation/understanding what the hell is going on" in front of my face - my hands swiping frantically as it bounces this way and that in the wind - each time never quite managed to grasp it - each time cruelly yanked away by the giggling Scotsman above me - before he finally decides he's had enough and ascends into sky - leaving me below - dejected and alone. That's the best way (the only way) I can describe my experience of reading this book. And - honestly - I still don't really know what I though of it. I don't know if I enjoyed it. Or if it angered me. Or upset me. Or what. I just know that it was something that happened that I didn't quite understand. An experience. An event of my life that is now over (although I do sometimes still get crippling flashbacks - but c'est la vie).

Moving on - I guess I could try and tell you what it's about - or at least as much as I could understand (see above). In 1985 - DC comics decided that their 50 years of comic book history (that's the history inside the comic book universes instead of the real life history of the comic books) needed a clear out - so they came up with Crisis on Infinite Earths - that as far as I could tell (I've never read it - and am probably never going to): made more of a mess than the thing it was trying to clear up - in that it was followed by Zero Hour: Crisis in Time (in 1994) then Identity Crisis (in 2004), Infinite Crisis (in 2005 and 2006) and then - finally - Final Crisis (2008). My own personal opinion about all of this (and I'm sorry if this offends any of you DC fans out there) is that all this getting bogged down by continuity stuff isn't really what stories are about - and hey - as long as the stories are good - who cares? And - anyway - I'm more of a Doctor Who kinda guy when it comes to continuity stuff - where the motto is generally - if it feels good - do it. (for full lovely discussion read this - it is awesome). But anyway. I don't know if reading the other big DC Crisis events would help any - but that's at least the history leading up to it. Plus - there's this evil guy called Darkseid (pronounced "Dark-side" - but you knew that already right?) who's an evil all-powerful New God dedicated to being really really evil - all the time (from Jack Kibry's New Gods series - that you probably should also try and read before this) - he's less a character - and more just something for the superheroes to fight against - you could switch all his appearances with the word "EVIL!" standing in his place and you'd have pretty much the same effect. Also - most importantly - you mustn't forget that running up to - and into this - before getting lost somewhere in the middle: you also have Grant Morrison's run on Batman - that was taking place at the same time and that has important information that will help you make sense of this (or was that the other way round? It's so hard to tell with these things).

That's as much background reading that I'm currently aware of (and yes - I'm well aware that what I'm writing is starting to disintegrate into the same sort of unfocused noise that I've been accusing this book of - but oh well): carrying on (and this is hopefully going somewhere - so hold on): I read somewhere once that the difference between reading Marvel and DC comics - is that the way that Marvel is written - you can pick up any issue at random - and even if you don't get all the references (and let's face it - you probably won't get all the references) - you can still understand what's going on and get involved: it's more inviting, more willing to do stuff to help get you up to speed, more kinda welcoming and friendly. DC - on the other hand - is more insular than a möbius strip - and writes stories that don't really care if you've just joined in: keep up or be left behind - this is serious stuff (hell - it's called FINAL CRISIS!) and we don't have time for laggers... So my point (haha! I have a point!) is that - although my experience of Final Crisis was all huh? and what? and I don't understand? and noise noise noise and general story-telling static: this stuff does make sense (apparently) and that there are whole blogs devoted to getting all of the many, many the references (take a bow final crisis annotations!) that is basically what makes up most of the noise. My expectations the first time round reading this was that it was gonna be a superhero blockbuster kinda thing that was all contained in one volume and could be enjoyed by everyone (DC's version of The Ultimates with an apocalyptic edge) - and well - it's not that. What I've given here is my experience of what it reads like - and if you're looking for advice on whether or not you should try it yourself. Well. I reckon the people who would get the most from it - the hardcore DC fanboys and girls who will nod their heads at every allusion and nod to past events and stories - have already read this back when it first came out. For the rest of us mortals - in which I include myself even tho I've read a fair few comic books in my time (well duh): it's still worth taking out from the library. There's small sequences that surface fleeting out from the rest of the book that are pure comic candy: "...at my other job" = awesome, the spread of the Anti-Life Equation is proper 28 Days style awesome, that moment with the rubix cube is action movie awesome and the Japanese superhero Most Excellent Superbat (self proclaimed power: "being rich" [1]) is - yes yes yes - very much awesome (does he have his own comic book? Because I would totally read the hell out of it). So yeah: "superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?" Ok then...

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[1] I have a theory that you can trace the slow decline (or hell - ascent - if you're that way inclined) of Grant Morrison from rebel underground cultural terrorist to - basically - mainstream corporate comic's spokesperson from the way he deals with the idea of money: there's a line from Bruce Wayne in Batman and Son that goes: "And while we're at it, let's make wealth compulsory. It would solve so many of the world's problems if everyone were a millionaire, don't you think?" Which - the first time you hear it kinda sounds like a good idea - until you think about it just a little bit and realise that - oh - actually: it's a stupid idea. I mean obviously for a rich person (and - spoiler alert: Grant Morrison is a pretty rich guy) the idea that money can solve everyone's problems would just seem obvious - but (for me at least) it doesn't really seem like the firm foundation for a properly moral outlook on the world... (I mean - let's not get too deep into all the ins and out of it but just leave it with the simple observation that money isn't always the best solution to things - yeah?).

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Links: Newsarama Interview with Grant Morrison, I Am Not The Beastmaster Review, Jog The Blog Review, The M0vie Blog Review, Savage Critics Article: Why I Loved Final Crisis, Mindless Ones Article, Teatime Brutality Article: Countdown to The End of Time, Parts 2-4: Nominating Yourself, IGN Interview with Grant Morrison, Comic Book Resources Review #7, Sean T Collins Review, The Hurting Article: Stuff I Read Final Crisis #7.

Preceded by: Batman: Batman and Son, Batman: The Black Glove, Batman: R.I.P..

Followed by: Batman: Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, Batman: Time and the Batman, Batman: Batman Incorporated.

Further reading: Jack Kirby's New Gods, Kingdom Come, Blackest Night, Justice.

Profiles: Grant Morrison.

All comments welcome.

Books: Wanted

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Wanted
Written by Mark Millar
Art by J. G. Jones
2004




Available now from Islington Libraries
You can reserve this item for free here:
http://www.library.islington.gov.uk/TalisPrism/

Hi kids! Do you like violence? Wanna see characters with names like "Fuckwit" and "Shithead"? Then Mark Millar is here with the comic just for you: Wesley Gibson is a lowly office drone who spends his life being depressed, miserable and downtrodden - until the day everything changes and he is catapulted in a world of supervillain assassins. Best enjoyed with your brain switched off. Some very cool ideas and nicely excited set-pieces contained within. Like most of Miller's work however - it does feel like it was written by a white, snotty teenage boy who has issues when it comes to - well - anyone different than him. But - wait - ooh - look - explosions!

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Links: Wit War Review, The Blog of Delights Review. 

Further reading Marvel Boy, Kick-Ass, Gravel, Incognito.

Profiles: Mark Millar.

All comments welcome.