Posts Tagged: Grant Morrison

comics — 1 Comment
2
Dec 08

Unacceptable conclusions about Batman R.I.P.

Batman R.I.P. has been making headlines, as DC Comics no doubt prayed it would. Mainstream comic sales dwindle yearly, and the only light at the end of the tunnel is the fact that film-making technology has now caught up with comic-making technology. No news is bad news as far as the big comics companies are concerned – Batman R.I.P. gets a few column inches (the BBC runs it, for god’s sake), DC shift a few more units and everybody gets to pretend that superheros are the thing.

It had its moments, but I’m not going to spread fairy dust on this mess that is Batman R.I.P. – Tucker Stone nails it completely when he says

… if the goal–and yes, this was the fucking goal make no mistake–was to do a Batman story that could stand alongside the hoary old classics, a story that could make good on the promise Grant showed for the character back when he said he wanted to bring back “the old Neal Adams hairy chested sex god Batman”… then hey, yes, no math required:  Batman RIP is a miserable failure, and it’s a miserable failure that actually sold out in stores in Wilmington fucking Delaware, because idiots read newspapers, and they thought this was going to be a big deal… Take a bow, squandered talent.  Make sure that you and your friend, lofty ambition, sign some autographs on the way out the door.  There’s a fucking line.

The problem is that the whole exercise is so transparent. Check out Mr Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth himself, writer Grant Morrison, quoted in the Times:

“It took me by surprise,” says Morrison, who writes the current series Batman RIP for American giant, DC Comics. “I thought a few people would sit up and take notice but 72 newspapers around the world picked up the story and suddenly there was all this excitement and nervousness.

That’s right, Grant. You didn’t have a clue that a plotline that claims to kill off Batman wouldn’t make headlines. Unlike the deaths of Superman and Captain America, both of which generated fairly hefty media interest, but neither of which helped to reverse the death spiral of the comics industry. Every single problem I have with the marketing of comics is summed up in the closing lines of that BBC article:

The storyline included clues which dated back to Batman comics from 40 years ago, [Morrison] added. Wayne may be dead, but publisher DC Comics shows no sign of bringing to an end the Batman franchise… It is not the first time a superhero has met an unfortunate end in the comic world. Last year, Captain America was killed after being shot by a sniper in New York.

Breaking it down:

  1. Literally nobody cares about clues dating back 40 years except comics bloggers, and even they’re not sure if they should care about them that much. Morrison’s writing is dense because it packs in so many allusions, but allusions only work if the readers can actually make the necessary connection. If they can’t, then they go away disappointed – and you’ve lost yet another reader to the Xbox.
  2. Everybody knows that the franchise isn’t going to end, and that means that everybody knows that the “death” of Batman is just sleight of hand, a cheap magic trick. The publisher is that man behind the curtain that you’re not supposed to pay attention to, because it’ll spoil the magic. But if the man behind the curtain is issuing press releases about the Death of Batman, then he’s not really behind the curtain any more – and any magic is pretty much screwed.
  3. Superheroes die all the time. Everybody knows this, at least since the Death of Superman storyline. However superheros never stay dead for very long, which everybody also knows – again, thanks to the Death of Superman (and wasn’t there a Superman film out last year?). So how are you every going to deliver on that promise you made to the public when you went to the newspapers – because, you know, there’s going to be another Batman film out in two years’ time?

If you treat the public with contempt – by promising them something that you won’t deliver, in a book that requires a fairly deep background knowledge to really appreciate, and in a really obvious way – they’re not going to thank you for it. They’re just going to ignore you even more than they were before, because they’ve got other things to do. In the long run, the comics industry doesn’t benefit from this kind of exercise – but if there’s one thing the comics industry appears to be good at, it’s repeating its mistakes over and over and over.

Quelle surprise.

art / comics — 1 Comment
12
Oct 08

Home is run. No. More.

One definition of genius is somebody who pursues a singular artistic or scientific vision that is recognisably and uniquely their own, a vision that remains broadly the same throughout their creative lifetime and around which all their work is wrapped. Their work continually plays and replays variations on that vision, the themes it unlocks, always finding new ways to unfold them in different patterns.

Okay, I admit it, that’s a very personal definition of genius. But it works for me.

By my lights, Grant Morrison is a genius. Unfortunately he’s also writes comics, which means that his work doesn’t reach the large audience it merits. From his earliest work on Zoids through Animal Man and Doom Patrol (which were like a crash course in postmodernism to my young mind) to the philosophical gangbang of The Invisibles all the way through to the fever dream that was Seven Soldiers. Morrison has chased that vision. If you want to know what that vision is, then you’ll just have to read the books.

So where does We3 fit into this scheme? It was one of three series that Morrison wrote at around the same time – the other two being the radio rental SeaGuy and the not-quite-as-insane Vimanarama – presumably as a way of excising some of the toxic byproducts generated by working on mainstream comics. Pop comics, each series three issues long, packed with hook moments and throwaway ideas woven together with some fantastic art – and none more so than We3, where the man Frank Quitely handles the picturing. And if you know Frank Quitely, expect some serious handling.

The short version: We3 is Plague Dogs with heavy weapons. Yet while the action sequences are some of the most visually stunning work I’ve ever seen, the scene that made the most impact on me manages to sum up the entire series in a single line. After unsuccessfully trying to save a man – and despite having earlier killed several – Weapon 1 (the friendly dog) takes the initiative to bring all 3 of the weapons to safety.

“Home is run. No. More.” makes me well up inside. That’s right, you insensitive jerks, even a mountain man such as myself can cry at a comic. For anybody who’s ever been in trouble of the deep and enduring kind, this is the definition of home – the place where you can stop running, the sanctuary that will sustain you. At the same time, that home doesn’t really exist – and that trouble that you found? It’ll always find you, even if it has to follow you home.

So we watch the weapons trying to find a place where they can stop running, even though we know they’ll never find it. The tragedy is that while they’re smart, they’re not smart enough to realise that; the twist of the knife is that we recognise ourselves in them. The tragedy at the heart of We3 is not something amenable to persuasion.

In fact I am wrong, as I frequently am. It turns out that We3 (or at least two of them) will find a place where they will run no more. The last issue of the 3-part series scales up the action with a battle sequence with the monstrous Weapon 4, but bottles out right at the end. Morrison is strong on closure – think of The Filth, with it’s last line of “We have love” – but he isn’t usually afraid to make that closure painful for the reader. We3 gives us a Hollywood ending – perhaps designed for the inevitable bidding war over movie rights – but as a result my disappointment was palpable.

I’ve got no fundamental objection to Hollywood endings, but if you’re going to flirt with tragedy, eventually you have to consumate the relationship. Otherwise you’re selling everybody short: readers, characters, yourself. We all need to know that the flaws in our personalities hold, that we don’t live happily ever after, that the battle is more important than the victory (because the outcome of the battle is a foregone conclusion).

So We3 makes me cry twice – once for the truth of Run No More, and once for the lie that the ending tells us, a lie that lessens the truth.