I can't thank Big Al (over at the Spider-Man Crawlspace forum) enough for introducing me to that Tumblr blog, "Hellz Yeah the Web-Wielding Avenger," because there are quite a number of posts here that feature a series of harsh and honest reviews criticizing Dan Slott's Spider-Verse event. It's originally posted on a website called "examiner.com" (now changed to "axs,com"), but those reviews no longer exist for some reason.
Anyway, there are so many great quotes that call out on the nonsensical nature of Spider-Verse and Slott's writing in general, but here's one from a review of ASM Vol. 3 #11 that catches my attention today:
"What drags this issue down below mediocrity is how the story seems to enhance certain characters and concepts while degrading others, all in service to the editorial and corporate overlords without even the pretense of if being for other reasons. For example, not only is the young Spider-Man who is currently starring in “Ultimate Spider-Man” and “Web Warriors” on Disney XD a member of the assembled cross-universe Spider-Men, but he gets to have a notable team up with Miles Morales and the original animated Spider-Man from 1967. By sheer coincidence, Disney owns the rights to the original 1967 cartoon and that was the cartoon most adults in their forties (and up) consider their first exposure to Spider-Man. In contrast, readers should recall that the animated versions of Spider-Man which came a generation later - those from “Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends” and “Spider-Man Unlimited” - were dispatched and insulted with all the dignity of a used paper towel in “Amazing Spider-Man #7”. Predictably, while writer Dan Slott personally promised death and slaughter to everyone’s favorite versions of Spider-Man to promote the event, he’s apparently lost some nerve when it came to bruising the current animated version nor the version from his childhood. Those aren’t the scripts that imply a brave or innovative storyteller, but a self promotional hypocrite."
Ohhhhh snap, that's brutal, man. lol Brutal, but oh so true. So much for Slott's gloating that "I'm going to slaughter all your favorite Spideys!" at Comic-Con. It's just one of the many hypocrisies Slott has said over the years, his own words backfiring at him in the most beautiful fashion.
I'm long bored of Spider-Verse at this point, but it's juicy reviews like this that keeps me reading to see how stupid the writing can become.
It sounds like Dan Slott has done for you what Grant Morrison did for me with Batman; create a direction for the character not interesting. Once Batman & Son ended, I knew the new direction wasn’t for me. I haven’t read a current issue* of Batman since September 2006. Once I dropped the Bat-titles, I bowed out of reading DC titles.
* for the podcast, I did read all of the #1 issues (aside from the Batman issue) when we reviewed the relaunch the universe under the nDCU.
Matt, thanks for mentioning Morrison's run on Bats on this thread. I couldn't agree more. I've just started reading some trades of his stuff and I find him to be one of the most annoying writers ever. His writing is often filled with clever ideas but he also often doesn't seem to care if those ideas actually add up to a satisfying and entertaining (as opposed to interesting in the most clinical sense) story. To me, Morrison can be great, but he's also the writer most likely to "muddy his waters to appear deep". I'm currently reading the trade for his Final Crisis and his two tie-in issues of Superman Beyond were almost enough to put me off from reading the rest if not for the wonderful art and the plethora of characters mixing it up. I know some people enjoy puzzling over deliberate inscrutability but for me, it's usually just pretentious and if you give short shrift to the characters and why I should care (imo Morrison often does), I won't care. On that note, I should also point out that I dropped out of mister miracle many issues ago for similar reasons. Musing over what's real and what isn't while very little (or the same thing) happens isn't my idea of a fun time. (And I say this as a big Tom King fan.)
I liked his JLA run, but beyond that, I feel like Morrison writes for himself. Especially when he disregards stuff to write his story.
The only thing I found more irritating then his run on Batman was when people told me it was the best Batman they’ve ever read. Then advised they didn’t read Batman beforehand. That implies they’re a Morrison fan, not a Batman fan. Although I recognize everyone to have an opinion (even if I don’t agree with it), I just assess the amount of value to it.
I liked his JLA run, but beyond that, I feel like Morrison writes for himself. Especially when he disregards stuff to write his story.
If Morrison has a problem with his Marvel/DC work it is that he regards too much stuff.
The entire point of Hypertime was to allow every previously printed DC story to exist within continuity. Likewise his Batman was designed to acknowledge all prior forms of Batman as legitimate. His new 52 Superman was an attempt to return the character to his socialist roots (likely in response to Eco's Myth of Superman essay that cast Superman as a capitalist myth).
His X-Men run is thematically very close to Claremont's, but his presentation made some people miss that - for example the most criticised aspect, secondary mutations, were just putting a name to a Claremont meme.
I think the real problem is that unlike Moore, Morrison can get so obsessed with his references and subtext, he sometimes forgets to put a text that makes the comic work even if you don't care about the clever continuity commentary he's performing.
Brack, I like your description of what Morrison's real problem is, especially when comparing him to Moore. Sometimes I will hear Morrison defenders make a straw man argument and accuse his critics of "wanting to be spoon fed" or something similarly glib. I always bring up Moore when that happens.
Regarding what Matt was saying about Morrison disregarding too much stuff, I can see both of your points. As you said, Morrison's goal is to reclaim all this very old stuff, but in order to do that, he will disregard, at the very least, the tone established over the last 40 years in exchange for stuff from 40+ years ago. So while he does bring in all these old (and sometimes goofy) Batman characters back into continuity, the tone of the Batman comic changes significantly becoming less "realistic" and more "silly". ( How one feels about these changes is subjective of course.)
For example, in Batman Incorporated there were numerous attempts to make Batman more "fun" by casting him as a sort of international playboy/James Bond. Many fans obviously enjoyed this but I can see others hating it (there's also Moriruson's tendency to become inscrutable for an entire page for no discernible reason.) Similarly with All Star Superman and his New 52 Superman, Morrison jettisons the tone and style of superman stories of the past 30 years in favor of a 1950/60s superman and 1930s superman, respectively. For what it's worth: I really liked his new 52 superman, but found All-Star's return to Mort Weisinger-era storytelling too "goofy" to get through.
I'm currently reading Final Crisis and, as usual, with Morrison, I find some of hus ideas wonderful and other portions -his 2-part Superman Beyond tie-in- unreadable.
I know Morrison finds the entirety of comics equally "silly" to whatever he comes up with, but I find that thinking dismissive and glib. Anyway, just my opinion.
I'm currently reading Final Crisis and, as usual, with Morrison, I find some of hus ideas wonderful and other portions -his 2-part Superman Beyond tie-in- unreadable.
Superman Beyond is my favourite part of Final Crisis.
The only thing I found more irritating then his run on Batman was when people told me it was the best Batman they’ve ever read. Then advised they didn’t read Batman beforehand. That implies they’re a Morrison fan, not a Batman fan. Although I recognize everyone to have an opinion (even if I don’t agree with it), I just assess the amount of value to it.
I've read a lot of Batman over the years, and while I wouldn’t say Morrison’s Batman run is my absolute favorite, I do like it quite a bit.
So while he does bring in all these old (and sometimes goofy) Batman characters back into continuity, the tone of the Batman comic changes significantly becoming less "realistic" and more "silly". ( How one feels about these changes is subjective of course.)
Personally, I think there’s plenty of room for a little more silliness in superhero comics.
For example, in Batman Incorporated there were numerous attempts to make Batman more "fun" by casting him as a sort of international playboy/James Bond.
The Brave and the Bold was my favorite comic series as a kid, and Batman Inc. was a definite nod to the Haney/Aparo take on Batman—it’s a big part of why I like the book so much.
Similarly with All Star Superman and his New 52 Superman, Morrison jettisons the tone and style of superman stories of the past 30 years in favor of a 1950/60s superman and 1930s superman, respectively. For what it's worth: I really liked his new 52 superman, but found All-Star's return to Mort Weisinger-era storytelling too "goofy" to get through.
I'm currently reading Final Crisis and, as usual, with Morrison, I find some of hus ideas wonderful and other portions -his 2-part Superman Beyond tie-in- unreadable
I put All-Star Superman behind only Alan Moore’s two Superman stories and Loeb and Sale’s Superman: For All Seasons as the best Superman work out there.
Nweathington, the Brave and the Bold - albeit mostly post Haney, when the Nemesis backup had started- was also one of my childhood faves and I actually like some aspects of Incorporated (esp the meta-textual stuff - the Kathy Kane issue was a fave except for about two pages of patented Morrison inscrutability near the end), but I can't say I ever thought of the similarities between the 2 until you said that. Well done.
I'm liking some of Final Crisis esp his tribute to Alfred and Batman's mental "super" power in his 2 part Batman tie-in.
I was thinking specifically when he gave Batman a kid (one of the many reasons I walked from reading the book). It spawned out of Son of the Demon, but Morrison decided Talia raped Batman. He admitted to not reading the book, so was unaware it was consensual.
He had the notion that the Waynes engaged in sex parties, the “clearly Batman killed Joker” in the Killing Joke, and that Batman is a gay character. I recall reading his first TLoTDK arc where he floated the concept of Bruce was a victim of pedophilia in grammar school. One of the teachers was a child molester.
I do want to add, I enjoyed how Morrison wrote the character in JLA, but I think that’s because he was dealing with several “star” characters instead of only one.
Matt, I also don't care for Morrison's groundless conjectures and worse, his insistence that they are correct. I knew about the gay thing and "clearly killed the joker in killing joke", but wow these other things are even more outrageous. I remember hearing Kevin Smith try to be polite on his podcast as he tried to convince himself Morrison was being insightful as he insisted on the Killing Joke thing.
On some level I think Morrison fancies himself a "provocateur" which IMO is pretty obnoxious and self-important in and of itself. Certainly anyone who would come up with The New Adventures of Hitler probably takes some glee in ruffling feathers. For what it's worth: he also seems to have said/done things that drove Alan Moore to verbally attack him in public and Moore is generally - at least to my knowledge - not someone who bad mouths other creators (although his long-standing contempt for the Big 2 and Hollywood is legendary.)
To each their own, of course, there is no right or wrong to this. But for me, Morrison's work doesn't always land, but much more often than not it is memorable, and interesting, and usually fun.
I guess part of my enjoyment of his run on Batman, and his All Star Superman, is that those characters are so enduring, and durable, and have so many flavors and kinds of stories coming out (including in the same months issues of those titles saw print) that I am especially game for someone to try something. Because, to me, no single writer at any time is doing "THE Batman" or "THE Superman", nor is any idea put forward "THIS IS BATMAN FOREVER AND EVER". It is just some fun with Batman and ideas around Batman, and only one outlet of what are going to be many, across a bunch of different media, at that time. To me, that is not him being dismissive of the characters. Rather, it is humility: He knows that the primary ideas of Batman and Superman are so much bigger and more durable than any story he will ever tell about them, so why not go for it, you know what I mean?
I'm less of a Superman fan (in fact, I would say All Star was one of the few Superman stories I have enjoyed) but I have been loving and reading Batman for as long as I can remember. And while I wouldn't want every Batman title or thing to be done the Morrison way, I did enjoy a lot of what he did. (And he helps that he had some pretty amazing co-authors along the way, like Kubert, Williams, Burnham, Daniel, and others.
To each their own, of course, there is no right or wrong to this. But for me, Morrison's work doesn't always land, but much more often than not it is memorable, and interesting, and usually fun.
I think Moore is the better, more consistent storyteller, but Morrison takes more and bigger risks in his storytelling, and I really appreciate that about him. It means some of Morrison’s stories fall flat, but when they work, they really sing.
For what it's worth: he also seems to have said/done things that drove Alan Moore to verbally attack him in public and Moore is generally - at least to my knowledge - not someone who bad mouths other creators (although his long-standing contempt for the Big 2 and Hollywood is legendary.)
No, Moore doesn’t usually trash talk, but in this case I think Moore was more in the wrong than Morrison.
Morrison vs Moore debates are always unfair to Morrison because we are judging his entire career and only judging Moore through the mid 90s because no one reads anything that he's produced since then (aside from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which comes out once in a great while).
Morrison vs Moore debates are always unfair to Morrison because we are judging his entire career and only judging Moore through the mid 90s because no one reads anything that he's produced since then (aside from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which comes out once in a great while).
Hey, I bought three issues of Dodgem Logic! As talented as Moore is as a writer and raconteur, he's perhaps a little too undiscerning as an editor...
Anyway, Morrison brings it on himself with things like All Beard vs No Beard in Seven Soldiers and Captain Adam in Superman Beyond and Multiversity (where he manages to take on two old enemies at the same time in Pax Americana).
Now, I love all of that measuring himself against his peers he indulges in (Thunderworld Adventures' I enjoyed even more), but I can see how it won't work for everyone.
I haven’t read the first two issues yet, but I love his work. I'm glad he’s doing interiors again.
So far it's not as clear storytelling as his recent Avengers run. But that might also be an effect of coming after Russell Dauterman.
Could be. Perhaps Del Mundo is trying to continue a kind of visual style, but not succeeding.
There's a panel in issue 2 with Balder and The Executioner bumping around Hel in a monster truck. That should have been fun. Unfortunately, the blacks are so muddy that it took a while to figure out what was going on.
I haven’t read the first two issues yet, but I love his work. I'm glad he’s doing interiors again.
So far it's not as clear storytelling as his recent Avengers run. But that might also be an effect of coming after Russell Dauterman.
Could be. Perhaps Del Mundo is trying to continue a kind of visual style, but not succeeding.
There's a panel in issue 2 with Balder and The Executioner bumping around Hel in a monster truck. That should have been fun. Unfortunately, the blacks are so muddy that it took a while to figure out what was going on.
That’s a shame. Usually his pallette is so bright. It’s one of the things I like about his work.
I haven’t read the first two issues yet, but I love his work. I'm glad he’s doing interiors again.
So far it's not as clear storytelling as his recent Avengers run. But that might also be an effect of coming after Russell Dauterman.
Could be. Perhaps Del Mundo is trying to continue a kind of visual style, but not succeeding.
There's a panel in issue 2 with Balder and The Executioner bumping around Hel in a monster truck. That should have been fun. Unfortunately, the blacks are so muddy that it took a while to figure out what was going on.
That’s a shame. Usually his pallette is so bright. It’s one of the things I like about his work.
The difference might be that on issue 2 Del Mundo's regular collaborator on colour, Marco D'Alfonso, isn't mentioned in the credits. There's definitely a drop in quality between issue 1 and 2. But also the type of action changes, so it might not just be the lack of D'Alfonso.
Having just finished Final Crisis, I would agree that Morrison's work is "more often than not, memorable" and "interesting", but those adjectives can be described to Ed Wood's work as well. I'm kidding but I would say that the level of "fun" will vary radically depending on what you're looking for. When he's at his most Morrison-esque (or moving a lot in that direction like he did with Final Crisis), I hesitate to call what he's doing a story in the traditional sense. It's more like several issues of OHOTMU (or whatever thing he happens to be into at the time) shoved into a story. For something like Final Crisis, I assume the fans who enjoy it, must enjoy it in the same way one enjoys figuring out a Rubik's Cube/reassembling fossil bones.
While I liked some of Final Crisis and was able to figure out what was going on (except for Superman Beyond which I just gave up on after I had grown numb to all the high concept ideas which were flung at me and tossed aside just as quickly to make room for the next 4 high-concept ideas), the fact that it confused so many hardcore comic book fans (presumably most of the people who listen to CGS are really into the medium) that CGS did several podcasts - large chunks of which were devoted to explaining what the heck was going on, makes me think he really needs to be heavily edited if the goal is to appeal to a larger comic book audience. To each his own, but in the case of Final Crisis I just can't bring myself to call something a good story when significant chunks of the primary fan base it's catering to can't always understand what's going on.
I know Morrison doesn't always write that way, but for me Final Crisis (and alot of Morrison's work) is as (unnecessarily) frustrating as it is fun. I'm tempted to say that Final Crisis would have been a lot less aggressively obtuse if it had unspooled over 12 issues instead of 7, but from what I know of Morrison and the way he writes, he would've just crammed 500 more ideas and storylines into those extra issues anyway.
I hear you. And I would say, while I am a fan of Morrison's work, and I enjoyed Final Crisis for what it was, if I were to rank all the work of his I have read, I would not rank it high on that list.
I agree FC would have been better if it had more issues to work with. And I also think one of the challenges of it was that it was a big event book, called Final Crisis. I feel like the expectations that come with being the big, line-wide event book, as well as carrying the mantle of being a Crisis, set people up to want a certain thing out of that book.
My memory of that book (and, again, I haven't read it since it came out so this is fuzzy) is that a lot of it ended up being chaotic, energetic fun, and largely featuring characters that were new to me (and maybe entirely new, or maybe from Fourth World or way back in the DC archives, I wasn't sure). And that is not what readers are used to when it comes to big event books, especially Crisis ones. Especially given that the prior Crisis title, Infinite Crisis, was so focused on the Trinity. And, unlike Crisis On Infinite Earths, it had a smaller cast, and did not see it as necessary to give some screen time to the length and breadth of the history of the DCU. Sure there were a lot of characters in Infinite Crisis, but not to the point that you could do the sorts of companion guidebook Crisis Tapes episodes that CGS does.
I think people may have given Final Crisis more of a chance had it been called something like Multiversity. Or felt more self-contained, like the interconnected Seven Soldiers of Victory minis.
Or, if people didn't want to spend that time with characters new to them, or knew they were not into Morrison, then they could have more easily skipped it. But being the heavily promoted event book, and being called a Crisis, I think a lot of people tuned in to see what the big news was going to be, and ended up wading through a style of storytelling that that was not for them. But they stuck with it because it had been positioned as the thing that was going to show you what was about to happen to the DCU, and ended up buying more issues of something they were not enjoying.
And I think that expectation doesn't play to Morrison's strengths. To me, what is Silver Age inspired about a lot of his DC and Marvel work, especially his long runs, is that it feels like he wants to go big, and try some crazy changes to everything, but when allowed to, he cleans it all back up at the end. This is the kind of thing that would have been done in a single issue in the Silver Age-- a character like Superman could be physically transformed, or have his whole status quo and reality change, and it would be restored by the end. And that kind of story could lend itself to a really bizarre and eye-catching cover.
The way Big 2 stories get published these days, instead of a single story, big changes are now played out across a whole trade, or several. But I feel like his desire was still to make a big mess, but tidy it up before he goes. For example, his plan was to kill Damien Wayne by the end of his time on Batman/Batman & Robin. It seems his intention was not to change Batman's status quo forever.
But DC editorial decided they wanted to keep the character around (to kill him later, and bring him back again later, and maybe kill him again sometime.)
So I think Morrison is just not who you go to for the hybrid narrative/editorial challenge that is a big event or Crisis book. He is not looking to be the brand manager of these characters, like a Johns or Bendis, rather he wants to just tell a fun story with them and explore them as ideas.
This is, of course, not to tell you that you or anyone should have enjoyed something you didn't. I totally get why a lot of people weren't into Final Crisis. (And I liked but didn't love it). I am just adding that I think part of the challenge to how that work was received was the programming and packaging of it, and the expectations that came with it.
I think people may have given Final Crisis more of a chance had it been called something like Multiversity. Or felt more self-contained, like the interconnected Seven Soldiers of Victory minis.
Or if it hadn't been preceded by a full year of a hot mess called Countdown to Final Crisis...
And 7 months of Death of The New Gods that unlike Countdown, is a good comic, but similarly didn't seem know exactly what it was a lead-in for.
So you had a unprecedented amount of pages building up to a specific event that in many ways seemed to run philosophically counter to it's hype men.
And then that event set up a mini-series that didn't appear for over 5 years, during which another event had rebooted continuity...
Boy, I wish they had taken Millar, Morrison, Peyer and Waid's SUPERMAN 2000 pitch. We'd have been spared so much...
Final Crisis is a huge story. The first time I read it, I just did the 7 issues (and monthly doses of cgs breaking down final crisis). Boy that was the wrong approach. A few years later I was able to get the tie-ins cheaply and man the story sang. I'm pro Final crisis.
I think people may have given Final Crisis more of a chance had it been called something like Multiversity. Or felt more self-contained, like the interconnected Seven Soldiers of Victory minis.
Or if it hadn't been preceded by a full year of a hot mess called Countdown to Final Crisis...
And 7 months of Death of The New Gods that unlike Countdown, is a good comic, but similarly didn't seem know exactly what it was a lead-in for.
So you had a unprecedented amount of pages building up to a specific event that in many ways seemed to run philosophically counter to it's hype men.
And then that event set up a mini-series that didn't appear for over 5 years, during which another event had rebooted continuity...
Boy, I wish they had taken Millar, Morrison, Peyer and Waid's SUPERMAN 2000 pitch. We'd have been spared so much...
Man, I had forgotten all about Countdown. I think I blocked that out. Yikes. And, agreed.
David D, you make some great points. I also did not completely hate Final Crisis and liked some of it. While I think all of the reasons you cited can play into people not liking some of his work, I'm beginning to wonder if it has more to do with how much success he enjoyed and the presumably growing editorial leeway Morrison is given. (Let me preface this by my acknowledging that alot of this is, of course, conjecture on my part. It is based on what I've read however.)
I say this because I'm reading Batman and Son tpb (cover date to his first Batman issue Sept 2006) now and the most noticeable difference - other than the characters - is how gosh darn easy it is to follow the story even when he's indulging in his "favorite things" (reincorporating "silly" and forgotten one-off characters a la the Club of Heroes, and deliberately making things unclear - a la the 3 Ghosts of Batman). Despite all this I'm enjoying it because it's easy to follow and I can appreciate that he's doing something different rather than treading through more and more confusion. I don't think he's "spoon feeding" anything in Batman and Son but he's certainly making it clear who these Club of Heroes are and why Batman knows them. As opposed to the even later Batman Incorporated which throws old characters - like that British super team - in with no explanation whatsoever. (BTW, I use the term "silly" subjectively. I know many fans love any attempt to bring these forgotten characters back.)
By the time Final Crisis (cover date May 2008) started, he had achieved mainstream successes with his unconventional takes on X-Men (his version of the X-Men was decidely his own), All Star Superman (a tribute to "silly" Weisinger-era), and his run on Batman. Being that he enjoyed success with all those things despite toying with all of them, I would assume he was given much more more freedom to do whatever he wants. (Which makes sense from an editorial standpoint. I certainly would've been very reluctant to get in his way if I were the editor after that many successful "re-imaginings".)
One thing you wrote which I doubt though is that more issues of Final Crisis would have helped. I think that's true as long as the person doing the extra issues was not Morrison or an editor puts his foot down. I think extra-issues would only make him realize that he could also incorporate an Argentinean version of the Legion of Super Pets (one of them would be an ex-Nazi of course), Mandrakk's second cousin by marriage for a final showdown, and have the entire plot hinge on Siegel and Shuster's Funnyman.
By the time Final Crisis (cover date May 2008) started, he had achieved mainstream successes with his unconventional takes on X-Men (his version of the X-Men was decidely his own)
I disagree on this assessment of his X-Men, his run was deliberately evoking Claremont tropes throughout.
Body Transformation - no gender switching, so not full Claremont, but Beast and Emma's transformations are echos of Lorna Dane suddenly switching powers and becoming a female builder, Psylocke becoming Asian or Karma becoming obese. Not surprisingly it's harder to think similar transformations happening to male characters Claremont wrote.
Mind Control - the arch villain is an unseeable mind control device, a la Shadow King.
Sex - That one issue with the word sex repeatedly hidden in the art is a somehow a subtler version of things like the time Calisto kidnapped Xavier and dressed him in bondage gear for no discernible plot reason.
Secondary Mutations - Lee's X-Men tended to have one base power that they'd develop tricks for. With Claremont you occasionally got weird unrelated secondary things like Gambit's emotion control power. In that context, the idea of Emma suddenly getting a second physical power makes sense, and giving this phenomenon a name retroactively makes sense of some of Claremont's character design choices.
Those are just the elements that leapt from the page, picking it over you could find more (obligatory Days of Future story, orientalism).
He also takes cues from Lee particularly in the social commentary aspect.
Overall, it was modernising traditional X-Men values for the 21st century. Which of course was thrown out immediately afterwards to get back to slavishly aping the presentation not the themes.
Brack, I'm not that familiar with his X-Men run so I'll take your word for it. I'm just going to share my own (limited) experiences with it here. Like everyone else, I tried it for a few issues and, unlike most people, it didn't appeal to me at all. It also felt different and Morrison-ian. A sense that the main cast of X-Men were supposed to be "coool"/badass now, but maybe I'm misremembering. If I do a google search of covers when Morrison was on, the characters are always designed to look badass, as opposed to covers when Claremont was on where the X-Men are in action, in danger or defeated. And I remember kooky characters like Beak. The girl with butterfly wings? Were those kinds of characters a joke? A sly commentary on Angel's lame powers? I also didn't find anything Claremont about a character like Xorn. A star for a brain?
To me Whedon's work was far more reminiscent of Claremont. While I have no doubt Morrison was deliberately evoking Claremont tropes "throughout", overall it still felt unusual to me - more like deconstructing in a post-modern way. And I don't mean unusual to what came before it (which I had stopped reading) but unusual to the X-Men I loved of the 80's which Claremont built for 10+ years. (Unlike Whedon's run which to me felt very much like Claremont's best years.)
Regarding Calisto outfitting Xavier in bondage clothing: if my memory serves, I believe that she dressed him in the clothes she had which were also bondage-y. I also don't consider hiding the word "sex" in the comic something Claremont would do, but something Andy Warhol might do. But again if you felt Morrison's work was not unconventional/ throwback to traditional Claremont writing, than I'll take your word for it.
Also, for what it's worth, I used to think that Claremont had some kind of fetish for bondage wear, but I think it may have been more Byrne given the kinds of characters he would come up with on his own like Sue Storm's Malice or Batman's Magpie (how she appeared in Man of Steel). I think Callisto just wore bondage type clothing because it was visual shorthand for "punk", which would be appropriate for this sewer outlaw. Like a ton of writers and artists, I think Claremont also has a tendency to put someone in leather if he wants to show they are becoming more "badass" or "dark" like Storm. (I take her mohawk as a sign that Claremont's thinking more "punk" rather than fetish. Same thing with Yukio's spikey hairstyle.) Not that I'm complaining. I enjoy Emma Frost in her Emma Peel Black Queen ensemble as much as anyone.
And I remember kooky characters like Beak. The girl with butterfly wings? Were those kinds of characters a joke? A sly commentary on Angel's lame powers? I also didn't find anything Claremont about a character like Xorn. A star for a brain?
Beak, Angel, Martha etc, are Morrison revisiting the superpower as disability metaphor that Claremont arguably examined with the Morlocks (and Morrison himself did in Doom Patrol).
Though I think Louise Simonson tended to handle those characters with more humanity than Claremont did. Let us not forget that he frequently pushed the actually disabled member of the original X-Men to the background or got rid of his disability.
Xorn can be read as an ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT X-MAN in the same way the Wein/Cockrum team were - non-American, non-traditional superhero.
Give Claremont another visit. Especially Excalibur where his fetishes are in full bloom. The arc Girls School From Heck is peak Claremont in terms of his id running free. (Kitty is sent by extradimensional Nazi dominatrix, Sat-Yr-9, to a school for lesbians. Also Mesmero is there because mind control, and Nazi incest twins Fenris) .
Also I recommend http://clarmindcontrol.blogspot.com/ a blog that really crystallises Claremont's mind control obsession, catching some of his other recurring tropes on the way.
Claremont in the 80s was hi-octane puberty fuel. Setting kids up with all the weird sexual hangups they'd take into adulthood.
Comments
I'm long bored of Spider-Verse at this point, but it's juicy reviews like this that keeps me reading to see how stupid the writing can become.
It sounds like Dan Slott has done for you what Grant Morrison did for me with Batman; create a direction for the character not interesting. Once Batman & Son ended, I knew the new direction wasn’t for me. I haven’t read a current issue* of Batman since September 2006. Once I dropped the Bat-titles, I bowed out of reading DC titles.
* for the podcast, I did read all of the #1 issues (aside from the Batman issue) when we reviewed the relaunch the universe under the nDCU.
The only thing I found more irritating then his run on Batman was when people told me it was the best Batman they’ve ever read. Then advised they didn’t read Batman beforehand. That implies they’re a Morrison fan, not a Batman fan. Although I recognize everyone to have an opinion (even if I don’t agree with it), I just assess the amount of value to it.
The entire point of Hypertime was to allow every previously printed DC story to exist within continuity. Likewise his Batman was designed to acknowledge all prior forms of Batman as legitimate. His new 52 Superman was an attempt to return the character to his socialist roots (likely in response to Eco's Myth of Superman essay that cast Superman as a capitalist myth).
His X-Men run is thematically very close to Claremont's, but his presentation made some people miss that - for example the most criticised aspect, secondary mutations, were just putting a name to a Claremont meme.
I think the real problem is that unlike Moore, Morrison can get so obsessed with his references and subtext, he sometimes forgets to put a text that makes the comic work even if you don't care about the clever continuity commentary he's performing.
Regarding what Matt was saying about Morrison disregarding too much stuff, I can see both of your points. As you said, Morrison's goal is to reclaim all this very old stuff, but in order to do that, he will disregard, at the very least, the tone established over the last 40 years in exchange for stuff from 40+ years ago. So while he does bring in all these old (and sometimes goofy) Batman characters back into continuity, the tone of the Batman comic changes significantly becoming less "realistic" and more "silly". ( How one feels about these changes is subjective of course.)
For example, in Batman Incorporated there were numerous attempts to make Batman more "fun" by casting him as a sort of international playboy/James Bond. Many fans obviously enjoyed this but I can see others hating it (there's also Moriruson's tendency to become inscrutable for an entire page for no discernible reason.) Similarly with All Star Superman and his New 52 Superman, Morrison jettisons the tone and style of superman stories of the past 30 years in favor of a 1950/60s superman and 1930s superman, respectively. For what it's worth: I really liked his new 52 superman, but found All-Star's return to Mort Weisinger-era storytelling too "goofy" to get through.
I'm currently reading Final Crisis and, as usual, with Morrison, I find some of hus ideas wonderful and other portions -his 2-part Superman Beyond tie-in- unreadable.
I know Morrison finds the entirety of comics equally "silly" to whatever he comes up with, but I find that thinking dismissive and glib. Anyway, just my opinion.
I don’t care for Final Crisis though.
I'm liking some of Final Crisis esp his tribute to Alfred and Batman's mental "super" power in his 2 part Batman tie-in.
He had the notion that the Waynes engaged in sex parties, the “clearly Batman killed Joker” in the Killing Joke, and that Batman is a gay character. I recall reading his first TLoTDK arc where he floated the concept of Bruce was a victim of pedophilia in grammar school. One of the teachers was a child molester.
I do want to add, I enjoyed how Morrison wrote the character in JLA, but I think that’s because he was dealing with several “star” characters instead of only one.
On some level I think Morrison fancies himself a "provocateur" which IMO is pretty obnoxious and self-important in and of itself. Certainly anyone who would come up with The New Adventures of Hitler probably takes some glee in ruffling feathers. For what it's worth: he also seems to have said/done things that drove Alan Moore to verbally attack him in public and Moore is generally - at least to my knowledge - not someone who bad mouths other creators (although his long-standing contempt for the Big 2 and Hollywood is legendary.)
I guess part of my enjoyment of his run on Batman, and his All Star Superman, is that those characters are so enduring, and durable, and have so many flavors and kinds of stories coming out (including in the same months issues of those titles saw print) that I am especially game for someone to try something. Because, to me, no single writer at any time is doing "THE Batman" or "THE Superman", nor is any idea put forward "THIS IS BATMAN FOREVER AND EVER". It is just some fun with Batman and ideas around Batman, and only one outlet of what are going to be many, across a bunch of different media, at that time. To me, that is not him being dismissive of the characters. Rather, it is humility: He knows that the primary ideas of Batman and Superman are so much bigger and more durable than any story he will ever tell about them, so why not go for it, you know what I mean?
I'm less of a Superman fan (in fact, I would say All Star was one of the few Superman stories I have enjoyed) but I have been loving and reading Batman for as long as I can remember. And while I wouldn't want every Batman title or thing to be done the Morrison way, I did enjoy a lot of what he did. (And he helps that he had some pretty amazing co-authors along the way, like Kubert, Williams, Burnham, Daniel, and others.
Anyway, Morrison brings it on himself with things like All Beard vs No Beard in Seven Soldiers and Captain Adam in Superman Beyond and Multiversity (where he manages to take on two old enemies at the same time in Pax Americana).
Now, I love all of that measuring himself against his peers he indulges in (Thunderworld Adventures' I enjoyed even more), but I can see how it won't work for everyone.
There's a panel in issue 2 with Balder and The Executioner bumping around Hel in a monster truck. That should have been fun. Unfortunately, the blacks are so muddy that it took a while to figure out what was going on.
Having just finished Final Crisis, I would agree that Morrison's work is "more often than not, memorable" and "interesting", but those adjectives can be described to Ed Wood's work as well. I'm kidding but I would say that the level of "fun" will vary radically depending on what you're looking for. When he's at his most Morrison-esque (or moving a lot in that direction like he did with Final Crisis), I hesitate to call what he's doing a story in the traditional sense. It's more like several issues of OHOTMU (or whatever thing he happens to be into at the time) shoved into a story. For something like Final Crisis, I assume the fans who enjoy it, must enjoy it in the same way one enjoys figuring out a Rubik's Cube/reassembling fossil bones.
While I liked some of Final Crisis and was able to figure out what was going on (except for Superman Beyond which I just gave up on after I had grown numb to all the high concept ideas which were flung at me and tossed aside just as quickly to make room for the next 4 high-concept ideas), the fact that it confused so many hardcore comic book fans (presumably most of the people who listen to CGS are really into the medium) that CGS did several podcasts - large chunks of which were devoted to explaining what the heck was going on, makes me think he really needs to be heavily edited if the goal is to appeal to a larger comic book audience. To each his own, but in the case of Final Crisis I just can't bring myself to call something a good story when significant chunks of the primary fan base it's catering to can't always understand what's going on.
I know Morrison doesn't always write that way, but for me Final Crisis (and alot of Morrison's work) is as (unnecessarily) frustrating as it is fun. I'm tempted to say that Final Crisis would have been a lot less aggressively obtuse if it had unspooled over 12 issues instead of 7, but from what I know of Morrison and the way he writes, he would've just crammed 500 more ideas and storylines into those extra issues anyway.
I hear you. And I would say, while I am a fan of Morrison's work, and I enjoyed Final Crisis for what it was, if I were to rank all the work of his I have read, I would not rank it high on that list.
I agree FC would have been better if it had more issues to work with. And I also think one of the challenges of it was that it was a big event book, called Final Crisis. I feel like the expectations that come with being the big, line-wide event book, as well as carrying the mantle of being a Crisis, set people up to want a certain thing out of that book.
My memory of that book (and, again, I haven't read it since it came out so this is fuzzy) is that a lot of it ended up being chaotic, energetic fun, and largely featuring characters that were new to me (and maybe entirely new, or maybe from Fourth World or way back in the DC archives, I wasn't sure). And that is not what readers are used to when it comes to big event books, especially Crisis ones. Especially given that the prior Crisis title, Infinite Crisis, was so focused on the Trinity. And, unlike Crisis On Infinite Earths, it had a smaller cast, and did not see it as necessary to give some screen time to the length and breadth of the history of the DCU. Sure there were a lot of characters in Infinite Crisis, but not to the point that you could do the sorts of companion guidebook Crisis Tapes episodes that CGS does.
I think people may have given Final Crisis more of a chance had it been called something like Multiversity. Or felt more self-contained, like the interconnected Seven Soldiers of Victory minis.
Or, if people didn't want to spend that time with characters new to them, or knew they were not into Morrison, then they could have more easily skipped it. But being the heavily promoted event book, and being called a Crisis, I think a lot of people tuned in to see what the big news was going to be, and ended up wading through a style of storytelling that that was not for them. But they stuck with it because it had been positioned as the thing that was going to show you what was about to happen to the DCU, and ended up buying more issues of something they were not enjoying.
And I think that expectation doesn't play to Morrison's strengths. To me, what is Silver Age inspired about a lot of his DC and Marvel work, especially his long runs, is that it feels like he wants to go big, and try some crazy changes to everything, but when allowed to, he cleans it all back up at the end. This is the kind of thing that would have been done in a single issue in the Silver Age-- a character like Superman could be physically transformed, or have his whole status quo and reality change, and it would be restored by the end. And that kind of story could lend itself to a really bizarre and eye-catching cover.
The way Big 2 stories get published these days, instead of a single story, big changes are now played out across a whole trade, or several. But I feel like his desire was still to make a big mess, but tidy it up before he goes. For example, his plan was to kill Damien Wayne by the end of his time on Batman/Batman & Robin. It seems his intention was not to change Batman's status quo forever.
But DC editorial decided they wanted to keep the character around (to kill him later, and bring him back again later, and maybe kill him again sometime.)
So I think Morrison is just not who you go to for the hybrid narrative/editorial challenge that is a big event or Crisis book. He is not looking to be the brand manager of these characters, like a Johns or Bendis, rather he wants to just tell a fun story with them and explore them as ideas.
This is, of course, not to tell you that you or anyone should have enjoyed something you didn't. I totally get why a lot of people weren't into Final Crisis. (And I liked but didn't love it). I am just adding that I think part of the challenge to how that work was received was the programming and packaging of it, and the expectations that came with it.
And 7 months of Death of The New Gods that unlike Countdown, is a good comic, but similarly didn't seem know exactly what it was a lead-in for.
So you had a unprecedented amount of pages building up to a specific event that in many ways seemed to run philosophically counter to it's hype men.
And then that event set up a mini-series that didn't appear for over 5 years, during which another event had rebooted continuity...
Boy, I wish they had taken Millar, Morrison, Peyer and Waid's SUPERMAN 2000 pitch. We'd have been spared so much...
The first time I read it, I just did the 7 issues (and monthly doses of cgs breaking down final crisis). Boy that was the wrong approach.
A few years later I was able to get the tie-ins cheaply and man the story sang. I'm pro Final crisis.
I say this because I'm reading Batman and Son tpb (cover date to his first Batman issue Sept 2006) now and the most noticeable difference - other than the characters - is how gosh darn easy it is to follow the story even when he's indulging in his "favorite things" (reincorporating "silly" and forgotten one-off characters a la the Club of Heroes, and deliberately making things unclear - a la the 3 Ghosts of Batman). Despite all this I'm enjoying it because it's easy to follow and I can appreciate that he's doing something different rather than treading through more and more confusion. I don't think he's "spoon feeding" anything in Batman and Son but he's certainly making it clear who these Club of Heroes are and why Batman knows them. As opposed to the even later Batman Incorporated which throws old characters - like that British super team - in with no explanation whatsoever. (BTW, I use the term "silly" subjectively. I know many fans love any attempt to bring these forgotten characters back.)
By the time Final Crisis (cover date May 2008) started, he had achieved mainstream successes with his unconventional takes on X-Men (his version of the X-Men was decidely his own), All Star Superman (a tribute to "silly" Weisinger-era), and his run on Batman. Being that he enjoyed success with all those things despite toying with all of them, I would assume he was given much more more freedom to do whatever he wants. (Which makes sense from an editorial standpoint. I certainly would've been very reluctant to get in his way if I were the editor after that many successful "re-imaginings".)
One thing you wrote which I doubt though is that more issues of Final Crisis would have helped. I think that's true as long as the person doing the extra issues was not Morrison or an editor puts his foot down. I think extra-issues would only make him realize that he could also incorporate an Argentinean version of the Legion of Super Pets (one of them would be an ex-Nazi of course), Mandrakk's second cousin by marriage for a final showdown, and have the entire plot hinge on Siegel and Shuster's Funnyman.
Body Transformation - no gender switching, so not full Claremont, but Beast and Emma's transformations are echos of Lorna Dane suddenly switching powers and becoming a female builder, Psylocke becoming Asian or Karma becoming obese. Not surprisingly it's harder to think similar transformations happening to male characters Claremont wrote.
Mind Control - the arch villain is an unseeable mind control device, a la Shadow King.
Sex - That one issue with the word sex repeatedly hidden in the art is a somehow a subtler version of things like the time Calisto kidnapped Xavier and dressed him in bondage gear for no discernible plot reason.
Secondary Mutations - Lee's X-Men tended to have one base power that they'd develop tricks for. With Claremont you occasionally got weird unrelated secondary things like Gambit's emotion control power. In that context, the idea of Emma suddenly getting a second physical power makes sense, and giving this phenomenon a name retroactively makes sense of some of Claremont's character design choices.
Those are just the elements that leapt from the page, picking it over you could find more (obligatory Days of Future story, orientalism).
He also takes cues from Lee particularly in the social commentary aspect.
Overall, it was modernising traditional X-Men values for the 21st century. Which of course was thrown out immediately afterwards to get back to slavishly aping the presentation not the themes.
To me Whedon's work was far more reminiscent of Claremont. While I have no doubt Morrison was deliberately evoking Claremont tropes "throughout", overall it still felt unusual to me - more like deconstructing in a post-modern way. And I don't mean unusual to what came before it (which I had stopped reading) but unusual to the X-Men I loved of the 80's which Claremont built for 10+ years. (Unlike Whedon's run which to me felt very much like Claremont's best years.)
Regarding Calisto outfitting Xavier in bondage clothing: if my memory serves, I believe that she dressed him in the clothes she had which were also bondage-y. I also don't consider hiding the word "sex" in the comic something Claremont would do, but something Andy Warhol might do. But again if you felt Morrison's work was not unconventional/ throwback to traditional Claremont writing, than I'll take your word for it.
Also, for what it's worth, I used to think that Claremont had some kind of fetish for bondage wear, but I think it may have been more Byrne given the kinds of characters he would come up with on his own like Sue Storm's Malice or Batman's Magpie (how she appeared in Man of Steel). I think Callisto just wore bondage type clothing because it was visual shorthand for "punk", which would be appropriate for this sewer outlaw. Like a ton of writers and artists, I think Claremont also has a tendency to put someone in leather if he wants to show they are becoming more "badass" or "dark" like Storm. (I take her mohawk as a sign that Claremont's thinking more "punk" rather than fetish. Same thing with Yukio's spikey hairstyle.) Not that I'm complaining. I enjoy Emma Frost in her Emma Peel Black Queen ensemble as much as anyone.
Though I think Louise Simonson tended to handle those characters with more humanity than Claremont did. Let us not forget that he frequently pushed the actually disabled member of the original X-Men to the background or got rid of his disability.
Xorn can be read as an ALL-NEW, ALL-DIFFERENT X-MAN in the same way the Wein/Cockrum team were - non-American, non-traditional superhero.
Give Claremont another visit. Especially Excalibur where his fetishes are in full bloom. The arc Girls School From Heck is peak Claremont in terms of his id running free. (Kitty is sent by extradimensional Nazi dominatrix, Sat-Yr-9, to a school for lesbians. Also Mesmero is there because mind control, and Nazi incest twins Fenris) .
Also I recommend http://clarmindcontrol.blogspot.com/ a blog that really crystallises Claremont's mind control obsession, catching some of his other recurring tropes on the way.
Claremont in the 80s was hi-octane puberty fuel. Setting kids up with all the weird sexual hangups they'd take into adulthood.