Grant Morrison's JLA: S/D

Buck, I was under the impression that the Obsidian Age (and most of Joe Kelly's JLA run) was bunk. What say you?

I liked the massive left turn the story took in the middle and the way it kept getting more cosmic than could possibly be taken seriously, and the little digs taken at the most of the character's personas at one point or another.

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Obisidian Age at least had some novel ideas (yeah, some of them were lame) and I really hated the one-dimensional characterization of Green Arrow as "horny old socialist."

Also, I much prefered the art in OA to that of RofA.
But I'm not really a GM fan, I liked his Animal Man stuff way back when, but I've not been much impressed with his JLA stuff.

The art was third-rate throughout, sadly.

Speaking of JLA, I flipped through the 1st issue of the uber-pimped Claremont / Byrne reunion - ungh ungh ungh. And ungh. I'm holding my breath until the Gail Simone / Jose Luis Garcia Lopez arc is in stores.

Wait - who characterized GA as a "horny old socialist"?

That was Joe Kelly. All Ollie did in that arc was hit on Hawkgirl and Faith. He's probably my favourite character, and it bummed me out to see him just sort of dismissed like that.

It has its flaws though : Porter's art is sometimes absolutely appalling - stiff, poorly framed, terribly disproportionate. Many of the stories are messy : Rock of Ages, though it has its amazing moments (the whole future-set issue with Batman facing Darkseid narrated by the Black Skier is brilliant) is all over the place and loses momentum before regaining it at least twice.

But on the plus side, Morrison understands what is appealing about each of the characters and so they all shine. His Batman is one of the best I've ever read, and he made Kyle Rayner GL interesting to me for the first time.

Plus he managed to pull of a massive crossover (oneMillion) without embarrassing himself, possibly a first...

I liked the point of the first story: that Batman was the most dangerous character on the team, because he's all about the brain.

I finally bought the last collection a while back, and I had forgotten that everything was already heading to hell before the Injustice League turned up and increased the slope:)

I thought Crisis Times Five was far more of a dog's dinner than Rock of Ages.

I love GM's love of old (silver age?) silliness in cliff hangers. "No, Superman! The Injustice League must escape" "I'm officially disbanding the Justice League" (twice?) etc.

The "Steven Hawking!" splash page caused me to completely lose my shit again.

In what sense is Ollie not a socialist?

My fondness for Crisis Times Five stems mostly from GM's use / introduction of the new Johnny Thunderbolt (AKA the guy / kid with the lightning bolt in the pen). He's one of my favorite characters from the somewhat spotty JSA series, but in Crisis, he's less after-school special, more rough & tumble (as tough as you can be when you're ten years old and you carry around a pen holding a genie).

"Quote from him over dinner a few months ago, and you have to imagine this with a very heavy Scots accent: "The whole last storyline I did in JLA was just me metaphorizin' my depression and sayin': 'Superman--help me! Batman--help me!'"

The worst GM story was the Shaggy Man/US army one, aside from the awesome shaving-the-shaggy-man idea. Everything else I thought was wonderful.

The worst GM story was the Shaggy Man/US army one, aside from the awesome shaving-the-shaggy-man idea.

I liked that story for two reasons. 1) It was interesting to see the origin of the Ultramarines since they're currently being grilled and devoured in JLA: Classified, and 2) Shaving-the-shaggy-man is all-redeeming.

So which trade is the last one? Apparently it's too much trouble for DC to, I don't know, NUMBER them.

Last night I read a random old JLA issue that my girlfriend had lying around. #47, written by Mark Waid, with the JLA lost in the Black Forest and forced to deal with all kinds of Grimm Bros. fairy tale logic and monsters by the evil queen who thinks Wonder Woman is Snow White. The hot topic of conversation is how Batman was kicked out of the JLA, and there's a fantastic panel where Plastic Man and Martian Manhunter are talking trash about him and you just barely see his bat-hand in the corner.

My question is: what collection did Batman get fired in? Did Morrison write it? And, any idea if this Waid story got collected so that I can read part 2?

So, geez, I guess I've come around on a lot of this stuff. I think I just wasn't primed when I read a lot of this the first time.
And Howard Porter is a million times better on the Flash now than he was 8 years ago on JLA. Though the cover in the thread about the cover of the Flash shows he's still not so great at straight-on headshots.

He gets canned in tower of babel, b/c ras al ghul steals his "how to beat up everyone in the JLA" files and uses it to beat up everyone in the JLA. (Nanites give flash a seizure; Superman vs. red kryptonite; Green lantern hypnotized into thinking he's blind--not that creative.) The Mark Waid issues, to me, seemed like bad imitations of the GM stuff, but this seemed like a nice twist on GM's Batman as omniscient mangod.

Martin, you are so right. Those scenes may be my all time favourite superhero moment.

Also great: the story a few issues before with The Spectre, travelling through the minds of Justice League, and we get in Superman's psyche, and they see his subconscious self cowering in fear saying something like "Kill me, kill me now". Spine-chilling! [Actually reading that back, it sounds so stupid. Execution innit.]

for one, the art is fucking terrible. i mean really, really bad, it almost makes it unreadable for me. and i suspect that the art is behind my next couple of criticisms, or at least contributes to these problems: the story has no variation whatsoever in pace or tone. there's no tension-and-release, no colouring of mood whatsoever. it's just THING HAPPENS THING HAPPENS THING HAPPENS THE END.

neat ideas but VERY poorly-executed.

i came back to r-o-a cuz i've been reading the new gods stuff and it really does show how well kirby could do that cosmic stuff, and despite its often apparent silliness, how difficult it is for even a good writer like GM to handle that stuff properly.

Anyways, I think he is self-conscious about variations in tone: that's partially what's interesting about it for me! The beginning of the Darkseid storyline is suddenly first-person after the nonstop action; the GL narration is like a surrealist grail quest; professor light's (?) dialogue about visible light is just like the kind of techno-lyricism you'd see in, say, Ben Marcus. But because GM puts so much emphasis on the fast, elegant plotting, you're probably right about the lack of mood, etc.

Also, I actually like the art! I don't think it's terribly clear or pretty, but I think Howard Porter's clunky, unembarrassed, naive superhero-ness is perfect for GM's similarly garish script. If the art were better, the storyline wouldn't be campy enough!

you know?

would that we could all enjoy JLA despite Porter.

the worst are the "group shots" where everyone is snarling and striking some douchebag pose

OR, it's the One Year Later business spurred by Inf. Crisis.

and shoe

Just got through reading the first four Morrison trades, and it's interesting just how ludicrous it can get in some of the Waid fill-in issues. The Julian September story was a decent enough Morrison imitation, but the Adam Strange issue wretched- especially with Morrison's return for "IT!" immediately after. Starro the Conqueror! A post-Gaiman <i>Sandman</i> crossover that doesn't suck! All kinds of goodness.

Also: DC are missing out on a perfect marketing opportunity; I would pay good money for a <b>DARKSEID IS</b> poster.

CURSE YOU BBCODE
FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE

This is begging for an omnibus sort of edition. Just skip the fill-in stuff, though.

Crazed superhero action like you like it, true believer!

Speaking of which, I just read Morrison's JLA Classified arc from a few years ago for the first time--just like his JLA run, but with the Knight (from his current Batman storyline) and the Sheeda from 'Seven Soldiers'. It was rather cool, although I never like it when Batman goes into space. If the man has Boom Tubes and other similar super-future-space technology, why are his powerless-but-psycho villains such a threat again?

The first issue in that arc (Dalek! Space! SCI-FI CLOSET!) is one of my favouritest comics ever, I think.

As with mosts of my posts (rather redundant), but GOD YES. Those issues pretty much confirmed The Squire as my favorite DCU character ever.

HEY ANYONE!:

Anyone (this means YOU) know which issue(s) of FLASH crossed over with JLA: WORLD WAR 3? Meaning, where and when did Wally meet up with the 300-foot tall fellow with blue or gray (I forget) skin who implored our valiant multicultural cast to "assemble the armies of man"?