GRANT MORRISON: Yes, I do love gorillas but it's society's crime not ours.

Yay!

But then, so does Mr. Morrison.

So yes, WTF.

Morrison becomes DCU God, essentially.

Also, some roffles: Superhuman Advanced Defense Executive = SADE! Sweetest taboo indeed!

I've always said A Glass Of Water is possibly the best comic ever by both Morrison and McKean, but just because they got the signatures round the wrong way doesn't mean it needs to be longer than eight pages, DiDio!

SPOILER WARNING: I TALK ABOUT MORRISON'S BATMAN HERE

SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS, YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT YET

I MEAN IT

Okay, so I just finished reading the first trade of Morrison's Batman run (Batman and Son), and: WHAT? I like it, don't get me wrong, but don't tell me (as I have been told) that #666 is supposed to wrap up the Three Ghosts of Batman plot. I get the insinuation that Damian himself is the "real" third Batman, not the loser Satan Batman, but: what was the deal with the other two Batmen? Is this another of Morrison's revamps of a Silver Age plot ("The Three Ghosts of Batman" sure as hell sounds like one)? What did the corrupt GCPD cops have to do with it? Maddening!

Yes, that second story didn't really lead anywhere. Confusing. Maybe later?

I thought the first storyline of Batman & Son was pretty good. Andy Kubert's art really seems to channel some Neal Adams artwork from the original Ra's stories from the 70s. The panel that really screams of Neal Adams is the one with the reflection of the Man-bats in his eye as Alfred is hunched over with Dr. & Mrs. Langstrom.

This reminds me: I love that JHW3 is doing a different art style for each of the Batmen of many nations, but being an art philistine, I can only recognise the Howard Chaykin pastiche. Anyone help with the others?

Dark Ranger - Chris Sprouse
Frenchy McFrenchalot - I dunno. Maybe Toth.
Knight & SQUIRE(!!!!) - McGuinness
Wingman (aka LOOKOUT! HERE COMES OWLMAN!) - Gibbons
Man Of Bats/Red Ranger - I forget. Barbelith is worth a look.

Man Of Bats/Red Ranger - I forget. Barbelith is worth a look.

And so it is - straight from Williams himself:

okay here is run of style influnces for these characters and the reasons why. all of these choices were made with one sketch and feelings as i drew them for the first time...

cheif man of bats-- sort of a steve rude influence. i wanted something clean and a little goofy retro in this idea and thats what came out first shot. rude's stuff always has this sort of 50's 60's nostalgic feeling to me and i wanted that for this character. but he needed to feel like the feelings you get when you look at those old silver age comics. charming in ways but also a little silly.

raven red-- a very loose influence of basic 70's early 80's superhro comics with an almost generic quality to the costume. cheesy amd redundent. been there done that sort of feeling when you look at him.

gaucho-- chaykin. for that rough around the edges feel and machismo that all of his characters have. his outfit is definitely not based on traditional gaucho clothing. instead i went for the el mariachi desperado films look. again to enhance his macho attiude.

wingman-- very loosely based on gibbons from watchmen era. i wanted the costume to look as if this character could've existed in the watchman reality. it fits well with his attitude and feelings of being original but not really. sort of an interesting comment since watchmen was a very groundbreaking and original concept but used characters that had existed in a different form previously. make sense?

musketeer-- is influenced by mid to late 80's superhero ideas. maybe a little bit alan davis in there too. hence the simple color techniques with smooth grads for a sense of rendering.

legionary-- i wanted to convey the sort of humorous but cynical qualities of some of the comics of the early 90's. with maybe a little hint of kelly jones exaggeration in the mix. particularly with his death scene.

knight and squire-- mcguinness influence. just because i loved the way he handled them previously and i wanted them to sync up to that.

dark ranger-- definitely sprouse. i think that influence came out of the early sketch because the character really needed to feel vastly updated and different from his past appearance. and so he needed to feel really modern.

batman and robin-- no influence here just me.

the only other thing that was necessary for this story was that all of the club characters needed to feel off as well. as if they reached for these ideals that are present in the influences but fall a little short. none of them are quite up to snuff and they know it deep inside and thats why they still are awed by batman. he surpasses them on every level, hence him and robin's more rendered and dimensional quality, deeper. this was taken into consideration as well when i did the first sketches of them.

the whole idea here was to convey characters that have had real history that we haven't been privy to. they were seen a very long time ago and that was pretty much it really. and grant wrote them as if they've been having lives and adventures all along and i wanted to see if i could make them seem as if they had stepped out of their own comics and into this one. so i imagined what those comics might currently look like but none of us have seen or read them. comics from another world? these clubbers needed to have distinct character traits immediately understandable becasue of the way the story moves with them. so i thought it would be an intersting challenge to see what affect 'styles" would have on their personalities as i drew them. a nice experiment i think, which has produced interesting results. as i drew them i felt as if they were fully realized right away. they came alive.

hope this all makes some sort of sense in an exsistential sort of way. and the other reason for doing this sort of thing is because its just plain fun and allows to sort of comment about comics within the frame work of a comic itself.

I've been picking up a bunch of old Batman issues. I finished Legend's of the Dark Knight 6 to 10, which is the Gothic storyline by Morrison with Klaus Janson artwork. I think this might have come out either a bit before or around the same time as the first Animal-man issues. I thought Gothic was pretty good, but I had read it before and I think it was in the last months of comics that I bought. Mr. Whisper was a pretty cool bad guy and I wonder if Morrison might bring him back.

Klaus Janson's pencils don't look that much different than Miller/Janson's artwork in Daredevil. Janson did the artwork on the first few issues of The Punisher written by Mike Baron. I remember liking those comics.

I've also been reading the second collection of The Invisibles. Issue #11 with the John Ridgway artwork about the monster in the mirror is freakin' creepy and maybe the best single issue in the series so far.

The jawline of Knight reminded me of Judge Dredd and Steve Dillon.

I'm caught up on Morrison's run on Batman. It is some good stuff. I'd like to see a continuation on the 666 issue in a mini-series.

For lots of the Daredevil run Miller was only doing VERY basic layouts for Janson to pencil and finish, so it's only really the storytelling that's different on the Morrison Batman comics.

I really dug Janson's work on Death and the Maidens, a criminally underlooked Batman series. Rucka's writing is competent enough, but the visual storytelling is the work of a veteran.

I don't know if it is out or not, but I read on Wiki that there is a Daredevil mini-series called the "End of Days" that has Klaus Janson being inked by Bill Sienkiewicz, which should be a really cool combination.

I started on the Morrison X-men run last night. The artwork by Quigley(?) is really neat and different. I do like the classic George Perez/John Byrne 80s look of the Beast more than the lion king.

I'm through the second Invisibles trade and it has really picked up some steam and gotten interesting. I could not figure where it was going in the early issues about Jack Frost, but by the end of the second trade it is starting to fit together.

Quigley(?)

Deighan.