What is Grant Morrison up to these days?

http://www.grantmorrison.com/appearances.htm

Is that for real? Hard to believe that he hasn't done anything since February 2006 (last time the website was updated).

SEVEN SOLDIERS

NEW 30 PART MAXI-SERIES COMMENCING FEBRUARY 2005

from what my brother tells me, it sounds like he's wasting a lot of his time trying to break into Hollywood (srsly)

A reaction to THE THEFTRIX?

At the joint GM/JH Williams panel at SDCC, he mentioned that he and Mr. Willams were working on a collaborative graphic novel, possibly outside the Vertigo scene, but I haven't heard a single thing about it since then.

And isn't Morrison writing FINAL CRISIS? Not that I'm excited about it, mind you, but having him write it was about the only way I'd read the damn thing.

Did anything ever happen with The If or his proposed book about chaos magic? A quick Google search only tells me that The If was supposedly near completion in 2005...

I'd put Animal Man and Doom Patrol outside of the scope of the question. After digging through some old comics, I realized how many things he's done, especially his arc on X-Men, were just better-implemented versions of old ideas. Let's catalogue them!

Whoops, was going to post as a new thread originally so I missed the question. Morrison's recycled a lot of existing material for his plots in mainstream superhero books. What would you put in that category?

he was very explicit about his first year on X-Men being direct revamps of Claremont stories

Apparently the whole "Batman of Xurr-En-Arh" thing in Batman RIP was a reference to some 60s/70s Batman story, but I've never bothered to find it.

Seven Soldiers has many references to Justice League of America #100-102, written by Len Wein, where the JLA meets the original Seven Soldiers of Victory. Oracle/Aurakles, the Iron Hand, and the Nebula Man were all introduced in this story, as well as the idea of an eighth Soldier who will save the day.

Or, by "recycling", do you mean Morrison actually recycling plots (instead of characters/ideas/themes) from older comics?

If it's the latter, Men Shall Call Him - Hero in Doom Patrol is obviously a tribute to Kirby's and Lee's Fantastic Four, and the whole story is actually lifted from some old issue of FF (can't remember the name of that story), where an unnamed bad guy inhabits The Thing's body, but ends up growing a conscience, and finally sacrifices himself to save the Earth. Morrison recycled pretty much the whole plot, he just changed some details.

Tuomas, the 'Zur-En-Arh' story was reprinted (along with all of the other silver age stories referenced in Morrisson's Batman run) in the recent Black Casebook trade.

"This Man, This Monster", Tuomas. FF#51.

He also mentioned some specific moments in ALL STAR SUPERMAN which were reworkings of classic Silver Age craziness (Superman shooting tiny Supermen from his hands, The return of Krypton come to mind immediately.) Still, he manages to make a lot of those fresh and interesting.

Oh, and THE FILTH is THE INVISIBLES turned inside-out. Discuss.

Oh man, I will definitely discuss that one when I get to it later...

Morrison's X-Men run... besides the obvious Days of Future Past analogue in Here Comes Tomorrow, the entire Cassandra Nova attacking bit was incredibly close to the whole Onslaught debacle in the 90s, with a fair bit of other plotlines thrown in.

The whole run was pretty self-conscious about the X-Men comic revamping itself, turning on its history, I think. Or maybe I just remember that manifesto/pitch that got posted where he pretty much laid it down. I mean he ends the run with Magneto and Jean Grey being killed, which of course was never gonna stick (it was just unexpected how quickly the Magneto bit was retconned, like a few months?).

He always does this kind of thing now, doesn't he? I mean you could say it's an excuse to be lazy with redoing storylines but I'll give him credit, especially, with what he did with Batman and All-Star Superman. I never read his run of JLA but I can only imagine how much stuff he mined for that.

surprisingly not much. He was mostly into the idea that hey, JLA it's noon and we've only saved the world from utter disaster like three times. We're slacking! Chop Chop!
Also lots of I don't think you understand; sure we're being crushed beneath your heel at the moment, but we are the JUSTICE FUCKING LEAGUE and batman is gonna be hitting you... NOW

been reading a few trades of Morrisons JLA and one has the martian manhunter being impaled on a spear and another (DC1mill) references the superman squad who are a bunch of Supermen who travel through the multiverse fighting threats to the timestream, it has a piece of kryptonite being buried so that it turns up in the future to be used as a bullet to shoot Prime Superman & it has a civilisation in the future worshipping Superman and a telling of the Superman story by some mercury based woman.

It all seems to be ideas and concepts that came to fruition in Final Crisis.

The Superman Squad and the Golden Superman from DC One Million actually appear in All-Star Superman, reading DCOM gives some answers to unexplained things in ASS, like who is the leader of the Superman squad in ASS #6 and what do his cryptic comments mean, and what happens to Superman after ASS #12. But, since DCOM and ASS nominally take place in different continuities, history might take a different route in them. There are some discrepancies between the two: in DCOM the Superman who becomes the Golden Superman enters the sun only around the year 70,000, whereas in ASS it is implied this happens much earlier, during the finale of ASS.

In DCOM Kal Kent, the Superman of the 853rd century, mentions that he'd recently traveled back in time with the Superman Squad to capture the Omnivore. And in ASS #6, which came out almost ten years after DCOM, we finally see this fight between the Superman Squad and the Omnivore. ASS also confirms which exact universe the child universe Qwewq (previously seen in JLA and Seven Soldiers) is, and that ties it to Morrison's final issues of Animal Man and Doom Patrol (maybe Flex Mentallo too?). This is why there's a certain pleasure in reading as many Morrison comics as possible, even not-so-brilliant stuff like JLA or DCOM, because there are many threads and details he keeps returning to in seemingly unrelated works released several years apart. For example, to fully understand the story of Qwewq you have to read the relevant issues of JLA, JLA Classified, Seven Soldiers, and All-Star Superman, and the final issues of Animal Man and Doom Patrol also deepen that story, even though they were released years before Qwewq was even introduced.

GMoz done with hero books.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=40014

The idea was always that I'd keep doing it as long as it gave me a lot of pleasure and allowed me to express myself . And it still does, but I can see the end coming closer. I'm coming to the end of long runs and stories I've had planned in my notebooks for years and the stuff I’m developing now is quite different.

The "Action Comics" run concludes with issue #16, "Batman Incorporated" wraps up my take with issue #12, and after that I don’t have any plans for monthly superhero books for a while. "Multiversity" is eight issues and I’m 30-odd pages into a Wonder Woman project but those are finite stories.

I'm not saying that I'll never write superheroes again. It's just that my relationship to them has changed especially after finishing the book and I’m not sure if I want to maintain the same kind of relentless level of production.

Thank god

I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing... On the one hand, DC in general doesn't seem to be going into a good direction, but on the other hand, with the exception of The Invisibles and We3 (and possibly Zenith, I haven't read that one), all of Morrison's greatest works are mainstream superhero comics. And Joe the Barbarian, his latest non-superhero comic, was a major disappointment.

It's interesting to see how this Happy the Horse thing at Image will turn out, though. The basic concept sounds a bit cliched, but maybe Morrison can still turn it good?

Not sure I agree that his greatest works are mainstream hero titles, mainly because his only mainstream books are Flash, Batman, JLA, a FF mini and X-Men - and now Action. ASS is deliberately not the 'real' Superman, for example, and is more about explorations of Kirby (as is Seven Soldiers). His work on 52 the identifiably non-mainstream parts of it and, again, rooted in Kirby.

ASS is Kirby how now?

I thought it was all based around Kirby's run on Jimmy Olsen (before the whole Forever People arc)? Jimmy is involved with the DNA Project, for example.

I guess... the Project is the only Kirby creation that makes an appearance tho. the rest seems much more Weisinger/Binder/Silver Age-inspired sort of material to me.

I suppose you're right, I was maybe forming too much of a mental link between his Kirby obsession throughout Seven Soldiers for my own good. (Wait, maybe he says in Supergods?)

I think the Kirby angle is really clear in Infinite Crisis/Seven Soldiers but Kirby's impact on Superman mythos as a whole is pretty minimal (imho), and ASS hits all these non-Kirby/Silver Age reference points - Kandorian Super-Squad, Bizarro, Lois+Jimmy with super powers, time travel, Smallville, monsters from outer space, etc. and the whole Luthor thing, Kirby never did a Luthor story afaik.

Just checked, Alvin Schwartz is the only person he references in Supergods mainly because Alvin believes he met Superman IRL just like Grant does. Also because he invented Bizarro.

So, yes, I was talking out of my ASS.

Final Crisis is also on the slate.

? Binder created Bizarro.

Schwartz wrote the first Bizarro story.

well, the first grown Bizarro.

Final Crisis is in no way a mainstream story, it just has mainstream heroes in it. Actually, looking at the New 52 it's kind of amazing DC published it.

By "mainstream superheroes" I meant stuff that's either takes place the main DC or Marvel universe, involves a variant of it (like ASS), or deals with superheroes in general (like Flex Mentallo). And just because series like ASS or Seven Soldiers were dealing with themes that many other DC comics weren't necessarily doing at the time doesn't still mean they weren't heavily involved by superhero comics in general. The Silver and Bronze Age are still a large part of superhero history, and Morrison isn't the only revivalist. My main point is that Morrison seems to be at his best when he is at least in some way writing within the mainstream superhero mythology and using elements of it, and his forays outside of it haven't generally been as good.

are We3 and Seaguy mainstream superhero mythology, because those are the best things by him that I've read

Also, saying Morrison's comics, which were published by mainstream superhero publishers, involve the biggest superhero characters, are deeply informed by superhero continuity, and have generally been very popular within superhero readers are not "mainstream" sounds a bit weird to me; as if Morrison was the only one who can write good comics involving these characters, and it would somehow taint them if you accept them as part of the mainstream.

(x-post)

dan, that's a no: we and sea are outta continuity

seaguy is all that matters

although I liked The Filth too

dan, that's a no: we and sea are outta continuity

well obv those are in their own continuity; the question really was "Is Seaguy a superhero comic" because I think it's pretty obvious that We3 isn't (and me including it was being intentionally leading re: the assertion that Morrison's best stuff is superhero stuff, although I haven't read some of his acclaimed works)

i would argue we3 is as much superhero stuff as moz stuff goes

Yeah, me too. More of a mainstream hero book than Flex Mentallo , for sure.

But Tuomas' last posts imply again that he is using his own definitions irrespective of content so head/brick wall scenario is imminent.

I think it's yerself that's fading from canon with this "Final Crisis isn't mainstream superheroes"

I think there's some conflation/confusion around "mainstream" and "accessible"

C'mon, Final Crisis is totally about Kirby God Bullet and time shenanigans and Superboy punching the universe. It's mainstream in the same way as Moore's vision of the Burning World is mainstream (both only made properly real through the use of 3d glasses) and closer in tone to the Psycho Pirate's breakdown in Animal Man than anything in a regular DC book.

C'mon, Final Crisis is totally about Kirby God Bullet and time shenanigans and Superboy punching the universe.

Absolutely! And if Morrison's superhero work has a point, it's that these are all totally mainstream.

okay reading the Final Crisis synopsis just made me go "there was a Barack Obama Superman"

lol it's a bit more complicated than that

is there a reprinted edition with the 3D...?

"there was a 3D Barack Obama Superman"

The 3d was Superman Beyond, which takes place between issues. The "4d" glasses are needed to put the reader into a fiction suit, mirroring the 'cosmic suit' Superman needs to enter that reality.

one of the coolest things about language is its ability to put together syntactically-correct sentences that are still entirely mystifying

Grant Morrison's m.o. right there

C'mon, Final Crisis is totally about Kirby God Bullet and time shenanigans and Superboy punching the universe.

Absolutely! And if Morrison's superhero work has a point, it's that these are all totally mainstream.

Exactly! Treating Morrison as if he's some kind of genius who stands outside the mainstream is pretty much against his implicit agenda that all the crazy ideas that have actually been part of mainstream superhero comics should be embraced by modern writers. (And there are other modern writers besides Morrison who have done exactly that.)

What, like Geoff Johns?

I'm not treating him as a genius, but he's in a different stratosphere to JT Krul or Duayne Swierczynskwi. And they're the ones writing mainstream comics. Just because GMoz is using the same characters doesn't mean he's inhabiting the same universe (which, for some parts, he's explicitly not).

'Superhero' is a different thing altogether, and far more confused. What would make Warren Ellis' Supergod different from Firestorm, for example? Is Crossed a 'hero' comic as it has a supernatural/superpower bent to it? Is The Punisher a superhero book?

It all just seems like a different way of carving up the same picture. If things inhabit the same universe they're the 'same'. If they don't, they're not. Trying to draw some vague commonality between WE3 and Fun Home because they're not superhero books is pointless. Even in GMoz it's daft - trying finding common ground between Kill Yr Boyfriend and Dare.

I think you're definitely using a different definition, aldo. It might not do much for you but I'd swap your example - just because JT Krul is much worse than Morrison, doesn't mean either of them aren't both engaged in mainstream superhero comics.

I was earlier going to say that everything we're claiming for is triangulated by things that are definitely mainstream, but you kind of did my job for me above. I mean, Superboy punching the universe is a pivotal point of a massive popular and well-covered summer crossover that changed DC (only for like 15 minutes, but c'mon, that's pretty good for DC). I don't see how it could be more mainstream. It's also dumb as hell, but I'm not really using mainstream as a mark of quality, one way or another.

"either of them aren't both" - time to lay down my keyboard perhaps.

it would probably be easier to type on

I think that's my problem. I'm sure Tuomas is using it as a pejorative.

I also think I might agree with Dan earlier, that we're (or maybe just me) using words to mean other words. Accessible is entirely possibly what I mean, but conflating his work on Flash and Final Crisis as mainstream superhero comics is a difficult and kinda daft thing.

I don't really understand any definition of "mainstream superhero comics" that does not include things like the Flash.

all superhero comics are mainstream comics

on the other hand, with the exception of The Invisibles and We3 (and possibly Zenith, I haven't read that one), all of Morrison's greatest works are mainstream superhero comics.

you are tripping megaballs here.

My own fierce affection for Changes and The World Shapers aside, if you rate Howard Porter above Big Dave, A Glass Of Water, St Swithins Day and New Adventures Of Hitler you don't deserve eyes.

forks also riding some giant testes with We3 as a superhero comic tho

Changes and The World Shapers aside, if you rate Howard Porter above Big Dave, A Glass Of Water, St Swithins Day and New Adventures Of Hitler

are these individual GMoz story titles or something...?

The exclusions are story titles, the others are series or discrete works

i'm curious to see what he does next. do u think he's just done w/ superhero monthlies but will continue to be super prolific? 40 pages into wonder woman self-contained... kinda sounds like a guy who believes he's done w/ superheroes but maybe superheroes aren't done w/ him yet.

i think about we3 everytime i see HELLO THIS IS DOG

we3 is about some good hearted robopets fighting against the system MANNNN
or the plague dogs whatevs

if you rate Howard Porter above Big Dave, A Glass Of Water, St Swithins Day and New Adventures Of Hitler you don't deserve eyes.

Well, I only said that his greatest works are superhero comics, not that all his superhero comics are great. Personally I don't rate the JLA run with Porter among Morrison's best works, even if many do. As for the stuff you mention, I've never read it because it's not exactly easy to find copies of those comics. I guess I should've modified my comment so that it meant only his American works, as most of his British stuff has never been widely available outside Britain.

This conversation is a prettu hair-splitting, even by my standards (although do go on).

Main takeaways are that (a) if Grant's leaving Action #16, I don't really see the comic ever coming together, which is a shame. And (b) much as I love Seaguy, I think I enjoy Grant best when he's on a years-long month-to-month panflet assignment.

Also, I kind of secretly hoped he would just carry on doing Batman forever. :/

Batman Forever was the worst film.

that is impossible given the existence of Batman and Robin

Nipples = +1

Six years on Batman is pretty good, especially as the art idn't get readable until about four years in (the 3 JHW issues aside)

I guess I should've modified my comment so that it meant only his American works, as most of his British stuff has never been widely available outside Britain.

it's hilarious enough when Shakey, in the same hemisphere, makes these sort of statements, but you live on the landmass next door!

Anyway A Glass Of Water was ONLY published in America, by DC, and St Swithin's Day was published in America 8 years more recently than the English collection

the call is coming... from the landmass next door!