Results tagged “Grant Morrison” from Birmingham Mail - Speech Balloon

COLLECTIONS OF DC's premier superhero group books reviewed.

JLA: Rock of Ages
By Grant Morrison & Howard Porter/John Dell et al (DC/Titan)

The Justice League of America is a superhero team that leads by example, following in the traditions established by the earlier Justice Society. However, they have more raw power and tactical ingenuity than any other group. They also take lesser talents and younger, rawer, super-beings and make men and women of them. They're a lean, occasionally mean, fighting machine that wages war on world villainary at large.

The write up on the back of this collection's book jacket reads like more happens than actually does - unless that story was bleached out by original editor Dan Raspler who I rarely heard anyone ever have a good word for.

Regardless, Rock of Ages starts half way in as anti-revenge squad type hard light hologrammic dopplegangers of each of the JLA fight them but lose. In reality it's the latest incarnation of the Injustice Gang (I still prefer the Secret Society of Super-Villains, despite its daft name it just means more) lead by none other than Lex Luthor who's applying his corporate takeover acumen to the proceedings (dirty double deals under the table).

Luthor's big mistake here is not knowing that the Batman is Bruce Wayne and can play the same game: paying the Mirror Master off, employing Plastic Man etc. Meanwhile, Aquaman, Green Lantern and the Flash get zapped to the future courtesy of a guest interruption by Metron of the New Gods - Darkseid's taken over Earth in 15 year's time and all's doom and gloom, with the few superheroes remaining alive acting as pitiful resistance. Suffice to say, the fat's pulled out of the fire, our heroes go back and together save the day there too.

Morrison knows that for time travel stories to work you have to mount paradox upon paradox for an ever-changing perspective on your own version of reality (first noted in comics by Steve Englehart on his run on The Avengers in the 70s where they went up against Kang). It's a comment on the recycling of idea in mainstream US superhero comics too and mythology at large - we retell the same stories, invert or dress them up; clothing/retooling them for the here and now of our own time so that readers purchase them. This is why monthly comics work the way they do - it is the immediacy of them, already there are signs that the style and feel within these comics are looking old: The art poses in a late 1990s manner, the words shout, temper-tantruming to be seen and heard for a shallower surface stuff, but fortunately Morrison ensured there was also depth, especially when dealing with groups.

There are still some shake-ups. A lot happens off panel, and occasionally you have to imply it yourself on behalf of the story. The philosopher's stone subplot is more of a red herring than anything else and Morrison closes the door by getting the group to fold after its metaphorical greatest hit!

Morrison doesn't bring his eclectic bag of writing tricks so much as his interest in technology and philosophy to the writing table to harness this into a workable mainstream adventure with dips into the outré. He notes himself in a point about Scotsmen that they can be sentimental - he knows there's people read the original Fox/Sekowsky JLA stuff (like him) as much as Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire run - he plays with that, uses it honed to his natural writing temperament and established himself as a best selling comic book writer in the US market

JLA: Earth 2
By Grant Morrison & Frank Quietly (DC/Titan)

Once upon a time there were a zillion Earths that had appendages such as 1, 2, X, B and what have you. DC Comics used to have the Justice League and Society of America visit, fight against or save them from destruction about once a year. Marv Wolfman and George Perez' neo classic Crisis on Infinite Earths from the 80s was supposed to put an end to all that, make life simpler - if only for potentially new readers and the traffic management style American comic book editor.

It's ironic that DC Comics labels its superhero books with the imprint The DC Universe when once they had the whole of the multiverse to play in.

Still, characters never stay buried forever. Good and bad alike, they always return to crop up in the most unlikely places - someone, somewhere has a fondness for the Mind-Grabber Kid and he'll be back, but until then Grant Morrison reveals in this collection that in an anti-matter universe there's still a bad version of the JLA going under the name of The Crime Syndicate - For every Superman there's an Ultraman, for a Green lantern a Power Ring - mirror images in personality. There's also a Lex Luthor and he's the only costumed-up good guy on this Earth.

Chance happenings on the JLA Earth and a meeting with the good Lex send the good guys into the bad ones' world and, initially, their Black Ops terrorist (did everyone get the illegal American invasion analogy here?) activities make it look like its going to be just hunky dory and they'll win no problem - Only what's morally right in this reversed world? And is it in fact all a secret ploy by the Crime Syndicate anyway?

Quietly's art is quietly powerful in most cases although I don't care for his pug-nosed faces, especially on characters like Wonder Woman and Superwoman.

There is a certain predictability to the whole thing but then near the end a few surprises come to the forefront.

It's a moral fable that has Morrison again evoking those early Fox/Sekowsky JLA/JSA crossover stories as a plot device, then appropriates the early snap, crackle & pop attitude Milligan & McCarthy gave Paradax, loads up on the negative in your face emotions surfing over Watchmen, and presents it all in a cumulative manner that balances the now-old with his own admirably.

JSA: The Return of Hawkman
By David S Goyer, Geoff Johns & Stephen Sadoski/Mchael Bair + (DC/Titan)

A well-packaged book that fills us in on cast members featuring the original superhero group founded in All Star Comics back in the 1940s and thankfully going strong again.

It's been done a fair few times before (not least in JLA: Rock of Ages to some degree) but there's a hefty plot that thickens gradually, stirring adventures - most of the action taking place with a new Injustice Unlimited pulling a fast one on the JSA, but they didn't bargain on Black Adam returning to his original heroic nature.

Somewhere in between all this we're fast-shunted to ending chapters where Hawkman (thought dead) gets reincarnated. What this book does is put all the mish-mash contradictions of DC continuity together into a cohesive whole. Entertainingly so.

Sadowski is a pencil artist I'm unfamiliar with and he produces the bulk of the work within. He's good, pulling off that in-your-face action of today approach with classic storytelling layouts throughout.

The JSA are portrayed the good guys that those from the JLA on look up to as the noble example of what a superhero team should be. Okay, that's not the way of the real world, but it can be in fiction and there's no reason the real world can't learn from it.

I could do without the new Mr Terrific and JJ (the replacement to Johnny Thunder) having such badly designed costumes. How come the first black superhero, Marvel's T'Challa the Black Panther had a cool looking costume but his brethren since have had to suffer looking like multi-coloured pimp or failed rapper cast-offs? I liked the original Mr Terrific character - dumb outfit and all. It's good that the new guy's got a personality he needs it with what he's wearing. Check this book out. It has the new and the old bobbing along nicely together.

HOW TO get the best use out of a dead tree... Birch's Bark continues.

Supreme: The Story of the Year
By Alan Moore & Various (CheckerBPG)

This collection found Alan Moore moving on from his 1962 concepts and the odd conceit to clear the way for his ABC line of thinking. It's the tale of Superman (in all but name) given some modern spin.

The theme is faithful to the heart of what traditionally makes a hero and yet is clothed in new technology theories (reminding us perhaps of that age-old tale of The Emperor's New Clothes and the moral implicit within it?).

Where the story fails is Moore's overused plot device of the villain of the piece always being the person you'd least expect... simply because he or she has been standing next to you through thick and thin for several hundred pages! Still we fall for it the nine times out of ten that he uses this because we get carried along with the characterisations and never look for any other would be red herrings.

Visually, Rick Veitch gives a more than decent take on pre-modern American comic art styles for the flashback scenes produced within, but, curiously, Moore's words are best complimented by the various Image/Rob Liefield styled guys on this particular book. There is a downside to this, if what I hear is true, because I understand that apart from Liefield none of the creators have received monies from this particular collection.

Bruce Wayne: Murderer?
By Various (DC/Titan)

There's an old plot creaking away in this book, The Count of Monte Christie used it to some effect, among others. Basically, Batman's alter ego of Bruce Wayne is accused of killing a former lover. Did he, didn't he? That's the game the extended Batman family have to play within this collection and they do it well enough with Nightwing (Dick Grayson, the original Robin) getting the best lines.

The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel
By Various (iBooks)

The contents within were first published as a mini-series from Topps, and apparently previously collected by Bantam. They were also available for viewing online as a subscription service from Stan Lee's Sunday Comics on www.Komikweks.com.

You can't fault the standard of artwork; from Richard Corben to P Craig Russell it's all top-notch stuff. And Bradbury is a world-renowned science fiction author so there's little doubt that the book should at least attract the browser's attention.

The trouble is, while there's a star team on the bench they don't deliver the goods when they're out on the field.

I think the main problem is that these adaptations follow too closely Bradbury's texts, or at least the prose part of what comics is about. They linger and seek to resonate when they should allow the pictures themselves to activate and engage. Not always, but often enough to make it a less than a cohesive whole. Strangely, having just stated that, it's the more painterly artists like Jon J Muth and John Van Fleet whose work comes off as having least pretensions towards the conventions of what constitutes real art and actually take the stories to a higher plane.

The Story of Tao: 1
By Andy Seto and Ding Kin Lau (ComicsOne.Corp)

Mixing various Eastern cultures' ideals of heroism to bring about a manga style adventure of gods walking the earth kung fu-ing each other and seeking forbidden romance on the side. It doesn't always come off, and you probably need to see yet another 100 pages of what is no doubt an epic before really getting into it, but there are some interesting enough visual moments.

King Volume 3
By Ho Che Anderson (Fantagraphics Books)

What little I had seen of Anderson's art previously made me recall the poor man's painter division that developed in America after Bill Sienkiewicz's shift in art style after once being labelled a Neal Adams clone. This is opposed to the one year in art school swipers who got work in the UK once Simon Bisley made it big, by the way.

Anderson's artwork lacked definition. It was sketchy without style. Frankly, it did not move me in any way. He either got a lot better or I wasn't looking hard enough before. I'm still not enamoured of his art but it works well in tandem with the story he's telling in this volume.

The story is indeed a very terse one, because we know the inevitable outcome that will come in the final pages. I say "we" but sadly, do the young still know who Martin Luther King was and what he achieved?

Anderson doesn't portray King as a complete saint, but a man, that's what kept my interest.

Remembrance of Things Past: Combray
By Marcel Proust, adapted by Stephane Heuet (NBM Comics Lit)

Some consider Proust brilliant, others unreadable. Having never read him apart from in this graphic novel adaptation I have to assume it's somewhere in between with some good pruning by Heuet.

Proust lived between 1871 and 1922 so his wordy descriptions reflect those times and the bourgeois society he lived in. The book is basically a man remembering events in his youth, you keep expecting them to tie in to each other but they don't. And that's irritating. However, the passages do act as an interesting barometer to the social history of the times albeit that one feels like a voyeur. It never truly engages the reader, but it has its moments. The art follows the clear line European school method but it is only functional rarely doing more than illustrate the words.

The Invisibles Book 7: The Invisible Kingdom
By Grant Morrison & Various (Vertigo-DC/Titan)

The series may well have gone on too long but Morrison brought most of the bits together to play mind games for the Mission Impossible crowd one last time so that The Prisoner in each of us could break free to politely shout "Hooray!" for a genuinely satisfying climax. The changing tour of duty for the artists in the latter part of the book actually works better for me than the first part that is predominately drawn by Phillip Bond.