CBI Archive
The failure of Gødland, the death of the postmodern superhero, and why Grant Morrison is partly to blame
- by Greg Burgas
- in Comic Theory, General
Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 7:38 AM EST
Updated: Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 7:38 AM EST
Now, you just know with a title like that, this is going to be one of those long, pretentious posts where I rant about various things in comics using only a small sample size and coming to generalized conclusions based on that small sample size! Those are always fun, aren’t they?
Grant Morrison’s recent output for Wildstorm made me think, which is never a good sign. It made me think of the God Of All Comics and just what the hell he’s doing. I thought the first issue of The Authority was boring (I didn’t buy issue #2) and I enjoyed WildCats while still recognizing it wasn’t anything great. But that’s just me.
But I don’t want to talk about The Authority. I don’t really want to talk about WildCats, either, except that it brings me back to Joe Casey, which brings me back to Gødland. See? I can tie things together with the best of them!
Regular readers may recall that I really enjoy Gødland. It was my favorite ongoing series of 2006, and it’s still doing fine this year. I come not to bury the book, but to look at it in the context of what Joe Casey has done recently. Because, in case you missed it, Casey has been doing some of the more groundbreaking work in superhero comics in recent memory. Yes, not Grant Morrison. Joe Casey. Before we get to that, I want to track a couple of trends in superhero comics over the past few decades and wonder why these trends haven’t become more prevalent. The two trends are deconstruction and postmodernism.
Yes, I’m using fancy (and possibly clichéd) terms. Deal with it! I was an English major, so I’m allowed to fling those things around casually. I rule! “Deconstruction” is a term that people are tired of hearing, which is certainly a reasonable complaint. Simply put, to deconstruct something means to break it down into its component parts and examine what makes a work of fiction tick. In recent years, it has been trendy to not accept the - let’s face it - inherent goofiness of superhero comics. We need to psychoanalyze the characters, explain their powers scientifically, and account for why they are able to perform such wondrous feats. We even go back to before this was trendy and deconstruct pure fantastical superhero comics. I’m as guilty as anyone. Deconstruction, however, can serve to allow us insight not only into what makes people dress up in fetish gear, but how these facets of their personality can illuminate our own screwy psyches.
The Godfather of Deconstruction is, of course, Alan Moore. In Marvelman (which was changed to Miracleman in the U. S. because of a certain comic book company), he introduced the idea of superhero as Messiah/Conqueror. No one had ever taken superheroes to their logical extreme with such brutal realism, and everyone who has since is working in Moore’s shadow. This was not pure deconstruction, as Moore didn’t necessarily psychoanalyze Mike Moran, but he did show us the dichotomy of the “secret identity” and how putting on a costume frees Moran from basic human morality. There are two utterly tragic scenes in Marvelman - when Moran tries to convince Liz to join him in the superhuman future, and she clings to the laughable concept that maybe he should have stayed true to his marriage vows even though, technically, he wasn’t the same person when he was diddling Avril over London; and when Margaret Thatcher says they can’t allow the new super-people to interfere with the market, and Marvelman says, “Allow?” With one word, Thatcher realizes that she is obsolete, and the real tragedy is when Avril scolds Marvelman and tells him they’re supposed to be above that kind of pettiness. But, of course, they aren’t, as Gaiman makes clear in “The Silver Age” (and even, to a degree, in “The Golden Age”). Moore is pointing out that superhumans, for all their strangeness, cannot escape their cultural programming. It’s an interesting take on superheroes, and blew the roof off of what was possible with the genre.
Moore began more deconstruction with Swamp Thing #21, “The Anatomy Lesson,” in which he showed how idiotic a conceit the idea originally was. Yes, the original stories are nice gothic horror, helped by Wrightson’s art, but Moore did something very few people had done before: he sat down and considered how Swamp Thing could function in some sort of stand-in for the “real” world. He thought about Swamp Thing, in other words, instead of just accepting the conventions of the super-hero genre. In doing so, he introduced a new, better Swamp Thing, one that could be used to tell far more interesting stories than had been already done. In his deconstruction, he didn’t necessarily examine what made superheroes tick, but he did try to explain how something like Swamp Thing could exist.
These two titles led, of course, to Watchmen, which is the ultimate deconstruction of superheroes. What Moore understood, and what several other writers haven’t, is that it’s not enough to simply break superheroes down and show what makes them go. You have to put them in a good story (which Watchmen is) and you also have to show why, despite all their human foibles, they are necessary (at least in the context of the superhero world, something else Watchmen does). Moore wanted to show that these people who put on costumes might be a bit messy in the head, but they rise above their complexes and they overcome their fears to act as true heroes. Watchmen is a terribly complex work, but at its core it is deconstructionist.
Ironically, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and even “Year One” (in Batman #404-407) were also deconstruction, even though they are somewhat diametrically opposed to Watchmen. Miller took Batman at the beginning and the end of his career and delved into why he started what he did, why he continued, and why he returned. Batman is a treasure trove of neuroses, and although Miller would probably tell you he was just writing a good noir tale (or two), it’s fascinating to see how well he understands the disturbing corners of Batman’s personality without beating us over the head with it. Miller might not describe his bookend take on the Caped Crusader in such high-brow terms, but that’s what he does. In DKR, he breaks down why a hero is always a hero, despite the ravages of time. He also sets up the dichotomy between Batman and Superman that has been with us ever since: the God of the Sun and the God of the Underworld. Prior to this, Batman and Superman had been two sides of pretty much the same coin, but Miller pointed out their fundamental differences, and, despite Jeph Loeb’s efforts on Superman/Batman, we have never gone back. Frank Miller’s take on their relationship, which is a deconstructionist take, is just so much more interesting than any of the previous ones. In “Year One,” Miller went the other way, and constructed his hero, which is just another way to deconstruct. We were able to follow along as familiar tropes were revealed to have darker meanings, and familiar characters were given deeper backgrounds. These two Batman projects, coming as they did on a flagship character, set the bar high and also, like Watchmen, spawned innumerable, mostly lesser imitations. DC is still looking for lightning to strike again: There are no fewer than five “Year One” mini-series in the pipeline (Green Arrow, Metamorpho, Teen Titans, Black Lightning, Huntress). Deconstruction is still with us, even if we think we’ve seen it all before.
Enterprising writers recognized that once it had been done once, there was little place left to go. How often can you point out the fetishistic nature of spandex costumes before it becomes trite? Enter Grant Morrison and his wacky postmodern ideas! Morrison came into comics at the height of this “Deconstructionist” period, which for lesser writers meant “grim-and-gritty.” It’s ridiculous to join the two, but that’s what a lot of writers in the late 1980s did - breaking down what made superheroes tick meant putting them in the “real world,” with all the inherent bloodiness. Morrison certainly wasn’t immune to this - Arkham Asylum being the prime example of excess - but he also had a love for the pre-Crisis DC Universe and the idea of irony-free superheroics. When he got his big break in American comics with Animal Man, he was apparently given carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with an obscure character. So he deconstructed Buddy Baker … with a twist. Animal Man quickly became a postmodern masterpiece.
But what does that mean, “postmodern”? Unfortunately, no one agrees on a good definition. The best way to describe it is fiction that is aware of itself as fiction. Thus, the author and audience become participants in the text itself, with various effects. Others have defined it differently, but generally, that’s as good a definition as we’re going to get. Literature has done some marvelous things with the idea of the text being a living, breathing entity that changes based on the reader and even the time at which a singular reader enters it. The idea of the reader actively engaging the text has given us several great works of literature, including Slaughterhouse-5, If on a winter’s night a traveler, Picture This, Dictionary of the Khazars and other books by Milorad Pavic, and even horror books like House of Leaves. Postmodernism is just a term by which we can categorize certain aspects of fiction. It’s handy, even if it’s ill-defined.
How does this relate to comics? Well, comics have always been somewhat postmodern, as their relationship with the audience has always been far more immediate than “high-brow” literature, and therefore the connection between the creators and readers has always been a bit more symbiotic, if you will. Comics have, for decades, brought the reader into the comic book experience, with omniscient narrators and even characters speaking directly to the reader. In many ways, comics showed what can be done with the idea of the reader actively taking part in the experience of the text itself. This is most evident in letter columns, especially Marvel’s policy of “no-prizes,” where readers were encouraged to explain continuity errors made by the creators themselves, thereby becoming part of the creative process. Perhaps the fact that comics were seen as utterly disposable entertainment, along with their serial nature, helped make them more fast and loose with the “rules” - Choose Your Own Adventure books, which were for children, were also “postmodern” and didn’t care about violating the “laws of fiction” - and this helped create a strange world in which readers were interacting with the writers and artists. If a reader didn’t like where a title was going, it’s conceivable he or she (more than likely he) could change the direction of that title, even if the changes were only subtle. Later on, comics became even more “postmodern:” Creators dropped themselves into stories - Chris Claremont has shown up in more than one issue of X-Men; there was that fun story in which Bat-Mite visited the DC offices and made life unbearable for the people working there; and John Byrne made She-Hulk realize she was actually in a comic book. In each of these instances, the idea of comic book characters interacting with their creators is played for laughs, and in the case of She-Hulk (in which the joke is sustained throughout the series), it becomes little more than a trick among a creators’ entire bag of tricks. Clever, yes, but ultimately simply part of the status quo.
Morrison did something different with Animal Man. The series became a true postmodern masterpiece as it wore on and Morrison decided to turn Buddy Baker into a) his own personal mouthpiece for social issues, notably animal cruelty; and b) a commentary on recent (at that point) comic book history and its effect on both the characters and the reader himself. As Buddy becomes aware of his status as a comic book character, it’s not a liberating event like in Jennifer Walters’ case; it’s a traumatic event that costs him everything good in his life simply to satisfy the whim of “God” - in this case, the writer and the readers. Morrison drew the audience into his comic book not only because he wanted to involve us in Buddy’s fate, but because he wanted to indict us in the “darkening” of comics themselves. We become complicit in the fact that the Crisis on Infinite Earths took away all the great stories of the past, and we can no longer simply sit back and allow DC to do it to us. We are accomplices. Buddy goes on a Grail Quest, at the end of which must sit the creator. Morrison, in issue #26 (aptly if prosaically called “Deus Ex Machina”), claims that he has run out of ideas, but the issue has been carefully built to, and when Buddy meets Morrison, it is the ultimate blending of reality and fantasy, with Morrison no longer being the creative force, but also the passive force upon which the ultimate creators - the implication being that it’s the readers - work. We can no longer be sure which is reality and which is fantasy, which is truth and which is fiction. Morrison lives in a world without magic, yet Foxy answers his flashlight signal at the end - conveniently after he has left. Morrison tells Buddy about his cat and how it died and how he realized he (Morrison) could use it in an Animal Man story. It’s a poignant tale, but it’s Morrison the (fictional) character telling the story, and therefore Morrison the writer could be making up even the existence of the cat to elicit an emotional response. These layers of reality and meaning make this issue, and the series as a whole, a true postmodern classic.
Animal Man didn’t exactly lead to a flowering of postmodern comics, but it at least showed what could be done in the medium. Morrison continued to be at the forefront, however, with works like Invisibles and The Filth, in which he attempted to rewrite history and change the way we view reality. Many of the themes he used in other books reached an apotheosis in Flex Mentallo, which is perhaps the most postmodern book ever written. Flex Mentallo is only four issues long, but it expands upon the ideas of Animal Man and becomes a critique of comic book history, its “degredation,” and whether or not we as readers are in any way culpable. It offers no real easy answers, but does hold out the possibility of reconciliation with our childhood desires and our adult needs. The idea that Wallace Sage, by which Morrison means every reader of every comic book, is creating the world as he goes, allows the audience to actively participate in the book. We become part of the process of creation, and the comic becomes more of a personal artifact with meaning in our own lives. The genius of Flex Mentallo is that we feel, as we read it, that we are assisting Morrison and Quitely as they create it, even though it is already completed. We have become essential to the making of the comic.
Few writers took up this clarion call of expanded meanings of comic books. Alan Moore wrote brilliant pastiche in 1963 and followed it up by recreating the Superman of the 1950s in Supreme. Neither of these books were truly postmodern, but they did bring the audience in and allowed a select group of comic book readers - those with a knowledge of the history of the medium - to laugh along with Moore. Peter Milligan put himself into a few issues of Shade, the Changing Man as Miles Laimling (the last name is an anagram) and commented on the nature of reality and comic books and other such things. Other writers continued to use the “tricks” of postmodernism without really getting into the ideas behind it. At the turn of the century, however, Morrison went to Marvel and began work on X-Men. At the same time, Joe Casey began working on Uncanny X-Men. It was an interesting synchronous beginning, because Casey had picked up the gauntlet thrown by Morrison and run with it, beginning with Wildcats.
Casey’s work on Uncanny X-Men was not terribly interesting, and when it’s compared to Morrison’s X-Men and Milligan and Allred’s mind-blowing X-Force (another fine postmodern book), it looks even worse. However, just prior to getting the Marvel gig, Casey had taken over Wildcats from Scott Lobdell and Travis Charest. He and Sean Phillips went in a new direction and turned the book into something fascinating and, to an extent, postmodern. Despite its pedigree and some nice stories by Alan Moore, Wildcats had never been about more than a big superhero bash. Moore did come up with the idea of the war between the Kherubim and Daemonites being over without anyone telling the WildC.A.T.s themselves, which is a great idea, and once the war was over and the main Kherubim - Marlowe and Zealot - rejected their life on Khera, there wasn’t a lot of places to go with the book. So Casey killed Marlowe, allowing Spartan - in a new identity as Marlowe’s nephew - to take over the Halo Corporation. Casey’s move led to a brilliant new comic book - the superhero as corporate entity. Others had done similar things with this before, but Casey took it a step further and showed that superheroes could have a positive effect on the world of business and, more comprehensively, the world in general. This wasn’t Marvelman or the Squadron Supreme or the Authority taking over the world by force in order to “fix” it. This was Jack Marlowe introducing products that would make the world better. Casey wanted to show what happens when capitalism made things better. Sure, Marlowe had a secret power source, which made his batteries last forever, and he sold the batteries, making money in the process, but he used the money to invest in industries for the betterment of all. In a comic book world where big business is often looked at as sinister - Wilson Fisk (yes, he’s a gangster, but also a businessman), Lex Luthor, Justin Hammer, et al. - Casey changed the paradigm to show that it didn’t have to be that way. Wildcats wasn’t truly postmodern, as it wasn’t aware of itself as a text, but it was a bold step away from what had been done before, and showed what could be done with superheroes. It failed, of course, despite a relaunch with snazzy art by Dustin Nguyen and later Duncan Rouleau. Casey never took it as far as it could go, and fell back into the standard superhero patterns, which left it with nothing to distinguish itself from the myriad other books out there. But it appears that Casey had learned his lesson.
Casey’s next project was Automatic Kafka, which for nine hallucinatory issues showed us what an adult superhero parody could be like. Combining Casey’s razor-sharp scripts with Ashley Wood’s psychedelic artwork produced a comic that took elements of several previous comics and blended them into something marvelous. Kafka is a harsh examination of superheroes and a culture that worships celebrity and bloodshed, and it sold not even a little bit. Instead of trying to “fix” Kafka by changing its tone, Casey and Wood killed it, showing up in issue #9 to tell their hero that he just wasn’t marketable. Kafka’s pathetic line about how he’s a superhero, so he ought to sell is a nice coda to the series. Casey and Wood freely admit that they’re ripping off Morrison (among others) by appearing in the comic, but that’s one of the hallmarks of postmodernism: it’s not only aware of itself as a text, but it’s aware of the texts that have come before, and therefore postmodern writers have no problem ripping off other works and acknowledging it. The key is fitting this into an original work of art. Readers of the final issue of Automatic Kafka would probably know about the previous times a creator appeared in a comic, so Casey and Wood cut off their cries of “plagiarism” by acknowledging it themselves. The fact that they’re copying from others adds to the surrealism of Kafka, and it helps create a comic that is disturbingly familiar yet totally unique. Kafka is a failure as a superhero comic book, actually, but it’s a masterpiece of commentary on the comic book industry and the people who read comics. So of course it failed.
While Casey continued to write typical mainstream superhero stories, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work again with another postmodern comic, The Intimates. This book, which lasted a grand total of 12 issues, is not as brilliant as Kafka, but it is still far more interesting than a lot of superhero books that are published, and it stands as a nice postmodern look at superheroes-in-training. The story itself is standard superheroics, but Casey attempts to turn his book into a strange book/television hybrid, with a 24-hour-news-channel-style crawl at the bottom of each and every page (well, not every page, but almost all of them). In this crawl, Casey comments on the characters, other books he’s writing, and the state of comics themselves. He also addresses readers’ concerns about the crawl itself, as people complained about it because it was hard on the eyes to read (and it was). The fact that these kids are training to be superheroes in a world where superheroes are commonplace, and that they have to learn not only how to use their powers but how to deal with the publicity of being a superhero, makes for a nice idea that gave Casey plenty of opportunity to comment on the essence of superhero comics themselves. The Intimates is not as excellent as Milligan’s X-Force, to compare it to a close contemporary, but it shows, once again, Casey’s willingness to test the boundaries of how comic books can be presented. The readers of The Intimates are anything but passive - Casey drags them into the book and invites them to comment on the proceedings. Granted, all comic books do that, but Casey is also an active participant in this process, and it’s right there as part of the book, instead of being relegated to a letters column.
The Intimates went the way of the dodo, and Casey tackled his next project: Gødland. Gødland is in many ways far superior to The Intimates. Giuseppe Camuncoli’s art on the former book is fine, but somewhat slick. Tom Scioli’s art on Gødland is majestic and crazy, which is just what the book needs. Gødland is wild roller coaster ride, but at the same time, it’s a step back in terms of what can be done with the genre. There is nothing revolutionary about Gødland, and that’s a shame. I doubt if Casey sits down and thinks to himself that he’s going to revolutionize superhero comics. If he did, he wouldn’t be very good. I’m sure he’s simply telling the story he wants to tell, and that’s fine. But I would argue that Gødland is less revolutionary than its predecessors because of the prevailing culture of comic books, and this is where I blame Grant Morrison, if only a little.
What did Morrison really do with the X-Men? Not much, in the grand scheme of things. His forty issues on X-Men, despite being a wonderful story, are possibly his most conventional work (even his run on JLA was slightly more off-beat), so of course it’s probably his most commercially successful (I don’t have the sales figures). During his run, a regime change at Marvel meant that the company pulled back from pushing the envelope, and several books from the early part of the century that tried to explore different aspects of what it means to be a character in the Marvel U. (X-Men; X-Force/X-Statix; X-Factor; Alias; Priest’s Black Panther, just to give a few examples) were allowed to run their course without replacing them with anything similarly boundary-pushing. The Marvel Universe reverted to safe superheroics that can easily be perpetuated when one creative team is replaced by another. Superhero comics that push the boundaries usually have a logical end, and when they do end, it’s just easier to hit the reset button instead of ending the series altogether and trying to come up with something new. Morrison moved on from Marvel and returned to DC. As the godfather of postmodern comics, this move should have allowed him to break barriers, as DC - through its imprints that aren’t plugged into the regular DCU - has always been more willing to give these kinds of experiments a chance. Morrison had a golden opportunity to continue with the kind of groundbreaking storytelling he had done years earlier at DC.
What did we get? Seaguy. This is a good start, as it hearkens back to his earlier postmodern work - a mind-bending puzzle of a comic that invites the readers to look deeper at the symbolism behind the events happening on-panel. Morrison has always been good at casually dropping symbols into his work, and Seaguy is loaded with them. It is a bold story in that it challenges us to reconsider our own habits of consumption, and warns of side effects we may not understand. As he did with Flex Mentallo, Morrison involved the audience actively. The series, though brief, offered us a peek at what Morrison could still do about creating a comic that was outside our expectations and therefore good for us.
The follow-ups, however, were less encouraging. We3 and Vimanarama are entertaining in their own right, and show us some interesting things artistically (Quitely does a magnificent job on We3, in particular, while Bond’s style is marvelous for the Hindu-Kirby thing of Vimanarama), but in terms of story, there is nothing that breaks the mold. He uses some tricks of postmodernism, but as we’ve seen, a lot of comics do that. Morrison’s next endeavor was Seven Soldiers.
Seven Soldiers is an epic in storytelling, but in the end, it’s fairly conventional. Morrison again plays with the tricks of making a text aware of itself and making the audience an active participant in the experience, but ultimately, that’s all they are. Zatanna addresses the audience, true, but it has become shorthand for Morrison, without the emotional impact of Buddy Baker seeing the audience. In the final issue of the epic, Morrison toys with a true interactive reading experience with the crossword puzzle in the pages of the Guardian, but again, this is a trick without much heft. The puzzle does not illuminate much about the text itself. Zatanna’s invocation of the audience as participants in the final battle against the Sheeda again has little emotional impact. Seven Soldiers is a stellar piece of work throughout, but Morrison is not challenging the structures of how comics work, despite his contention of making the DCU something alive (he did say that, didn’t he?). There is some very good work in the 30 issues of the epic, but when we are finished, we’re not any closer to a new form of comics. That’s okay, but it points back to the title of this post. Because while Seven Soldiers was going on, Morrison began work on All Star Superman. When he finished with Seven Soldiers, he moved on to 52. What can we learn from these choices? All Star Superman is almost pure pastiche. It’s a fine comic book, but whereas Morrison’s love for the Silver Age turned Animal Man into something different in comics, there is nothing revolutionary about All Star Superman. Similarly, 52 is unworthy of Morrison - it pays the bills, I suppose, but that’s about it. It’s something that should be left to the superhero fetishists like Geoff Johns and Mark Waid - it’s what they’re good at (and, to be honest, writing good superhero stories is harder than it looks).
This begs a few questions: why is Morrison “partly to blame” for the death of the postmodern superhero, and why does it matter? I would argue that Morrison’s stature in the comic book world is why he is partly to blame. He is a rare writer who can change the way comics are written simply by his output. There are only a few writers like that, and too often these days they are regurgitating what has come before. Mark Millar, who can be a talented writer (read his Swamp Thing if you don’t believe me), wastes his time with ham-fisted political commentary. Warren Ellis has never really shown much of an interest in doing anything truly revolutionary with his work, although he might be able to. Alan Moore dabbled in postmodernism with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Promethea, but he has largely vanished from the comics scene. Many of the other powerful writers in mainstream comics (Loeb, Johns, Brubaker) are either not interested in pushing the envelope or are incapable of it. Morrison is a rare talent in that he is very popular among mainstream comic book fans, but he’s also very good at stretching the boundaries of what is possible in comics. Again, I’m not suggesting that Joe Casey sat down to write Gødland and thought, “I’m not going to push the boundaries of comics because Morrison has stopped doing it,” but perhaps he recognized the moment had passed and it was time to write something that is sheer entertainment.
But why does this matter? I would argue it matters because mainstream comics are slowly withering on the vine. Sales are down, new readership is down, and DC and Marvel seem to rely on fake news stories to increase sales of a particular comic book. There is nothing long-term in their planning, and there probably has to be a paradigm shift or they will die. Maybe not in the short term, which is where most people worry about things, but soon enough. The lack of experimentation means that they have become stagnant, and other, more interesting forms of entertainment have passed them by. Comics, after all, encourage (or should encourage) reading, and they are a marvelous way to get people to read and learn without making it appear they are. But by simply recycling “whatever worked in the past,” comics become redundant and static and dull. What comes out of the superhero comic does nothing to engage the reader, even on a rudimentary level. They are sold to more people than a small independent book, but they make a much smaller impression. Mainstream superhero comics have a perfect opportunity to challenge readers in a variety of ways, but Marvel and DC take the path of least resistance. As with any other money-making venture, they have no intrinsic right to exist. For some reason, they can’t read the writing on the wall. Perhaps a short burst of media attention is enough of a drug that they don’t care to look ahead.
The point is not to simply make comics that are aware of themselves as texts. Not every comic should be “postmodern.” The point is to push the envelope. There is room in comics for old-fashioned superhero comics (like Gødland, Invincible, and Noble Causes, some of the better examples) as well as stuff that challenges the status quo. Kids, ironically, are far more accepting of “pushing the envelope,” because they haven’t been conditioned to what is and what isn’t “normal” in a comic book. Recycling ideas turns quickly into diminishing returns. Being part of the vanguard of new forms of comic books might be cost-prohibitive in the very short run, but it will pay off greatly in the future. Writers who have the sort of power within the comic book industry, like Grant Morrison, don’t necessarily have an obligation to challenge the normal parameters every time out - All Star Superman, after all, is a hoot to read - but it would be nice to see them test the accepted norm of what can be done in comics. Automatic Kafka and The Intimates and to a lesser extent Wildcats were failures commercially, it’s true. Casey, apparently, has not reached the place in the hierarchy where he can dictate the kinds of comics he wants to write and have it accepted unequivocally, especially at DC (it’s noteworthy that the three comics I just mentioned were published by DC under the Wildstorm imprint, while Gødland is an Image book). Morrison is, and I hope to see him use it more often in the future. 52 didn’t need Morrison. Morrison didn’t need 52. Comics need Morrison and others to write something different. We’ll see if that’s what they’re going to get.
Or, you know, I could be full of shit. It’s possible.
106 Comments
Chris Tolworthy
March 19, 2007 at 8:35 am
Fantastic stuff! The best essay I’ve read in a long time. My own interest is in real-time comics, so I shall heavily from your article in future. In a self-aware and ironic way of course.
Chris Tolworthy
March 19, 2007 at 8:44 am
Typo! I meant “I shall quote heavily” or something like that.
Bill Reed
March 19, 2007 at 8:50 am
Ha.
Very nice piece; I loved reading this. And you hit on some of my favorite comics, too. I hope you bought them drinks.
You know I love the inherent goofiness of comics, and I think a lot of people are missing out by choosing not to accept that silliness. However, I would never put together a pitch for a series without thinking long and hard about the concept, and breaking it down and rebuilding it in my head over and over until I could come up with something new and interesting. Lots of writers today really don’t think about what they’re doing, it seems, which saddens me.
I like Grant Morrison because his deconstruction is never negative, unlike a lot of writers who came after him. Morrison’s stories are always optimistic, even if it only shines through in the very end. Flex Mentallo is my favorite comic ever. Seaguy is in the top ten. I’m hoping another Seaguy volume will be coming out one of these years, because the story really really needs finishing.
Joe Casey is one of those writers who I think knows a helluva lot about the industry and medium and does a lot more thinking about it than most humans. I adored the Basement Tapes column he had going with Matt Fraction for that one year, because it was a marvelous in-depth look at comics, how they work, and how to make them work. So Casey talks the talk. Unfortunately, I don’t think he really walks the walk, though I haven’t read extended runs on much of his stuff. Godland does nothing for me, because it feels like he’s trying to hard to out-Kirby Kirby, and failing. I missed out on the majority of his Wildstorm stuff; Kafka seems cool, but I’ve only read the beginning. His stuff for Marvel leaves something to be desired. I’m not big on his execution, but I do still check in to see what he’s up to now and then. (As for Fraction, well, Casanova is amazing; I think Fraction could be the Next Big Gun in comics if his hefty Marvel work doesn’t swallow his soul.)
But yeah, great piece. Get those people thinking!
Ye Olde Iowa
March 19, 2007 at 9:33 am
Great essay and a nice invocation of your English degree (it’s something we lit-nerds probably don’t do often enough). I like the notion of moving from deconstructionist works to the postmodern and the thread definitely works, though it seems that entire notion of being postmodern in comics in this essay centers around the idea of being metatextual. While I think that being “postmodern” is essential to being metatextual, I don’t think that it works both ways. Then again, like you pointed out, finding a concrete definition to postmodernism is damn near impossible.
I’m not so sure the post-modern superhero is dead yet, but I think that (in part because of Morrison) that DC is attempting to both exterminate and integrate postmodernism from and into all of its superhero stories. The biggest example I can see of this is the handling of the Infinite Crisis. In some ways, a lot of the mandates coming out of this are forcing structuralism onto the DCU. The concept of rules governing magic is a prime example of this. Meanwhile, DC is overwhelmingly accepting relativism (which I think is an offshoot and a coping mechanism from postmodern nihilism) throughout all of its books. Characters can be Gods, be produced from Gods, be part of a demonic ruling class, dabble in magic, or have proof of various beliefs being true, yet characters like Zauriel can led superhero mass in a time of “Crisis.” The upcoming reappearance of the multiverse is this concept taken to the extreme.
Sadly though, I think Morrison is losing his touch and part of that is because he is part of the mainstream now. While I wouldn’t say he has sold out, it appears that he is trying to reinvent the wheel on everything that he touches (i.e. his horrific Batman run). Its an amazingly narsisstic act that seems brilliant when done on the fringe, but when its attached to a character like Batman, it feels forced. It could be that the mainstream doesn’t allow him as much freedom. After all, you can only change Batman and his supporting characters so much, which would explain Morrison’s desire to reexamine the comic book structure as he did in the most recent issue that saw the return of the Joker.
Dan
March 19, 2007 at 9:47 am
The title of this article had me scared–I thought you were going to tell me Godland was cancelled!
Any thoughts on Rock Bottom? (which is the name of a comic shop here in Columbia, talk about meta.)
stealthwise
March 19, 2007 at 10:14 am
My thanks to Ye Olde Iowa, who pointed out the distinction between “postmodernism” and “metatextuality,” because that was driving me nuts the entire time I read this provocative essay.
While I agree that more experimentation needs to be done, I would say that metatextual comics (that reflect upon themselves as texts and actively try to involve the audience) have been done to death at this point, and unless Moore or Morrison is really going to have a good go at another one, it’s probably time for some new kinds of experimentation to come to the fore.
Omar Karindu
March 19, 2007 at 10:49 am
Well, right: one of the earliest novels, Don Quixote, is quite metatextual, especially in its second book.
The next big step, to my mind, will be less n the way of “prosey” sorts of narrative experimentation a la Morrison, Moore, et al., and more in the way of outright formal experimentation in the fashion of, to name a few, Chris Ware and David Mack. There are traces of this in the superhero comics work of J.H. Williams III and so forth.
After all, even at their wildest, Moore and Morrison are generally accepting of a particular use of the comics page, one that still privileges the page as a linear sequence of panels at some level or another — that line can sometimes involve analepses or metalepses in the narrative as a whole, but the narrative in their work still breaks down into something not dissimilar from prose.
Ware and Mack, in very different ways, have played with the page’s ability to project time in ways neither film nor prose can. Ware likes to use complicated simultaneities and multiple timelines — look at one of his “The Building” pages at the back of the first Acme Novelty collection of Rusty Brown — while Mack plays with expressionism in the collage pages he often uses, pages where the idea of “panel” might not even apply. They do things that can only be done with a comic, with sequential art, to use the hoity-toity term.
Seems to me that’s where it needs to go next, and once that’s developed, it can refresh and provide new directions for the twin narrative impulses you describe.
The Mad Monkey
March 19, 2007 at 11:16 am
Ummm…it was Steve Bissette and John Totleben, not Wrightson, on Moore’s Swamp Thing…
Although that would’ve been extremely cool to see…
sleeper
March 19, 2007 at 11:21 am
What a fantastic article, and features the two most interesting writers in comics: Casey and Morrison. Great job.
I’m especially pleased with the fact that you don’t waste too much time gushing over ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. While an enjoyable comic in its own right, it certainly isn’t the savior of the superhero genre that some people make it out to be. Rather than tread new ground, I find it to be the ultimate retro love-fest, a head-over-heels loveletter to DC’s Silver Age. And you might be one of the few people I can think of besides myself who considers ANIMAL MAN to be one of Morrison’s greatest works… I personally thought more highly of it than I did SEVEN SOLDIERS.
As for WILDCATS, I agree that nobody up until Casey did anything truly mind-blowing with that book, but you have to give Moore some credit. Before he showed up, the comic was the perfect example of the loud and stupid superhero comics Image was churning out in the early-90’s. Once Alan started writing, he turned it into interesting, if not particularly deep, socio-political allegory that briefly examines racism and classism. Not Shakespeare, but definitely the best Image comic of the 90’s. I thought it was surprisingly thoughtful and smart, given the context of the story.
Thanks again for writing such a great article and spotlighting AUTOMATIC KAFKA as well as Casey’s run on WILDCATS. Both sold poorly, but were works of comic book genius and merit a much larger readership.
Andrew Collins
March 19, 2007 at 11:48 am
“Ummm…it was Steve Bissette and John Totleben, not Wrightson, on Moore’s Swamp Thing…
Although that would’ve been extremely cool to see… ”
Go back and read that part again. He’s not saying Wrightson drew Moore’s stories, he’s referring to the work Wrightson did on the title before Moore moved it past its Gothic Horror roots…
XyphaP
March 19, 2007 at 12:30 pm
The dirth of new and exciting comics isn’t only because the vanguard has turned its fickle eye of innovation away from subversion and implementation of Superhero tropes in a familiar milieu, but that fresher and younger eyes have popped up in the bushes. The comics mentioned: Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Animal Man (and Doom Patrol, but I know you meant it in your heart of hearts) were so fantastically mind-blowing because they looked and read like regular superhero comcis, with an insidiously literary undertone. Kevin Huizenga and David B. (just to name a few regualrly fantastic comics creators pushing envelopes) can never make comics so brazenly iconoclastic as Miracle Man, when they haven’t had the foundation of thrity or forty years of history to tumble over and burn in such a glorious conflagration. There will likely be much, much fewer revolutions like Miracle Man and Animal Man after those types of comcis have disassociated themselves from the regular comics populace and divided the genre between more literary aspirations (whatever that entails) and easily palatable superheroics. Those were once-in-a-genre deals when isolated development and generic subsumptiom of superhero comics transformed a genre into a medium, while implanting its tropes in the hearts of the reading populace. They were completely amazing because they broke away not only from that which is considered regular or standard in a genre, but because they broke that which is considered sacred: American Comics have entered adolescence, with their training wheels taken away.
And hey, thanks for writing a not What I Bought Column, Greg. It turned out great!
MarkAndrew
March 19, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Yeah, as a fan of the medium I’d like to see more experimentation in mainstream comics.
An’ I’m with Omar, here, too. It’d be interesting to see ‘em at least acknowledge Chris Ware’s existence. Especially since every single comics writer who isn’t writing work-for-hire is fallin’ all over themselves trying to be Chris Ware.
But I think the nature of commercial, factory system, art is to be suspicious of and regulate experimentation, even as the best of the artists who work under these conditions try’n push the envelope.
Also, you need a couple of Godland’s and WE3s on your resume to get people to accept your stuff. If you show that you understand the conventions and can work within them, and that you’re not just breakin’ the rules cause you don’t know any better.
(I’m with Bill Reed on Godland, although for slightly different reasons. It feels soulless to me. The creators were completely clear that the intended it as a tribute to the seventies cosmic epics. (Casey talks about this on the Godland website. Check it if you don’t believe me.) But most of the cosmic epics of the seventies from Starlin, Engelhart, and ESPECIALLY Kirby felt like personal work to me, and Mark Evanier’s comented that, at least in the case of New Gods, this was true.
Godland… doesn’t. It gets the FORM of the cosmic epic down, but it doesn’t try to impart a new way of looking at the world, like Engelhart’s proto-Promethea Doctor Strange run, and I don’t get the sense of personal attachment b’tween Casey and Sicoli and their creations that Starlin had with his. It’s a shell of a cosmic epic, with none of the guts. None of the envelope pushing, either.
(Although I only read the first trade. It might’ve got better.)
And I’ve liked Casey’s other stuff. He’s my favorite post Crisis Superman writer an’ I dug the crap out of the Intimates. And I might look at Automatic Kafka again, someday. I read the Peanuts issue, thought it was a great idea, and also figured Casey hadn’t read the strip IN YEARS and didn’t bother to try to figure out the characters.
Gil Jaysmith
March 19, 2007 at 1:06 pm
There’s been a long enough gap since Morrison’s last ‘personal’ series that I suspect he’s got something in the works. He might not have needed to work on 52, but on the other hand, it might have intrigued him to work with three other writers and see what he could learn from them and from the experience. (I think he’s only ever co-written with Mark Millar before now.)
But I do think his Wildstorm stuff isn’t very interesting, and what with the delays on Batman and All-Star Superman, I feel very Morrison-deprived just now.
I don’t know that criticising Ellis for not advancing the ’state of the art’ in comics is entirely fair. Even if he gives the impression of only writing a handful of distinct characters (a small handful at that), but with those characters, he’s populated hundreds of scenarios and fleshed out dozens of worlds, sometimes for nothing more than a single issue. The man is an ideas machine on a par with Morrison - they’re ‘just’ genre ideas, and not necessarily the superhero genre, but so what? You could argue that while Morrison has advanced the formal capabilities of comics, Ellis has done a lot more to put characters other than superheroes into them.
And like Morrison, and like Iain M Banks (why has no-one adapted his books to comics?) Ellis is a utopian, which is a damn rare thing in this genre of the status quo - and it’s another reason why he has to work in his own worlds and with his own creations. It’s virtually impossible to glean any real sense of optimism or hope for the human race from current Marvel or DC comics. The real value of All-Star Superman, and the thing which makes it a work of Morrisonian genius for me, is the possibility that in that world, Superman has made a difference to everyone. I think that should have been the unique selling point for the All-Star line, but Batman/Batgirl won’t ever deliver that kind of subtext, so *shrug* I’m left with Superman.
~ Gil
T.
March 19, 2007 at 1:56 pm
To be honest, I think the decline of postmodernism in comics is a good thing. It became so overused and ubiquitous that it lose its impact. I think it’s good as an occasional novelty, or when someone really has something interesting to say with it, but oftentimes it’s just an attempt to show off how smart you (think you) are or an exercise in intellectual masturbation or circle jerking. Seriously, even the crappiest lowest common denominator stuff like Countdown to Infinite Crisis and other DC books are engaging in nonstop metacommentary. It doesn’t even mean anything anymore, it’s just getting to annoying to read navelgazing comics that keep making subtle and unsubtle observations about lack of realism in superhero conventions, fan communities, loss of innocence in comic books, deconstruction, etc. Take Bulleteer for example, it was yet another yawn-inducing banal analysis about comics rather than an actual story about a genuine person and their conflicts. I felt like the Bulleteer and her life were basically just a flimsy pretext to explore feelings about superhero comics and the fan community rather than an attempt to create a genuine, fleshed-out character we should bother to care about. I just get sick of comics about comics.
I feel that the postmodern guys are starting to lose touch with people as human beings and can only relate to humans and their feelings as they relate to superhero comics. I’ll try to give an example: All-Star Superman. I feel the star of the book is Grant Morrison and a certain demographic of comic fans, rather than Superman himself. It’s a love letter to Superman maybe, but the problem with a love letter is that even though its ostensibly about the object of love, it’s actually about you yourself. How YOU feel about the object, how the object has changed YOU, why YOU love the object more dearly than any other suitors, how no one could love the object more than YOU ever could. Every panel of ASS feels like the characters are being used to advertise Morrison and his views rather than to actually get you to form connections with the characters.
Apodaca
March 19, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Wait, it’s Grant Morrison’s fault that other writers can’t write on the scope he does?
Michael
March 19, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I dunno, Greg. In a milieu where dreary, derivative, poorly-executed attempts at deconstruction and post-modernism is the prevalent attitude, doesn’t a return to conventional storytelling, with a commitment to doing it better than it’s ever been done before, itself constitute pushing the envelope?
Greg Burgas
March 19, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Good point, Ye Olde Iowa, about postmodernism and metatextuality - it’s difficult to separate the two, and it would be nice to see writers push the envelope of what postmodernism even means!
Omar - As you should know, I don’t talk about art too much because I’m not as well-versed in the language of it, but you make a good point about the art of comics needing to evolve as well. I didn’t really like Mack’s work on Daredevil, but the pages were certainly interesting to look at, and Williams has been pushing the boundaries of superhero books recently, which is good to see. I was going to mention Williams and Promethea, but I haven’t bought the final trades yet, so I can’t speak about the ending of it, with its mind-blowingness.
Sleeper - I enjoy Moore’s work on WildC.A.T.s, and I thought his use of TAO was absolutely brilliant, but I don’t think it changed the direction of the title too much. Casey did more with the concept, even if anyone wants to argue the quality of Moore’s stories was better (and I wouldn’t).
XyphaP - I agree that it might be impossible to do what Morrison did almost 20 years ago, because of the compartmentalization of the genres within the medium. That doesn’t mean someone couldn’t try!
Gil - I don’t mean to denigrate anything Ellis has done, as he’s one of my favorite writers. As far as I can tell, though, he’s simply writing stories (some great) within the established framework. I have no idea if he’s capable of doing something else or if he’s just not interested. The only thing he’s ever done, to me, that feels like he’s pushing the envelope is StormWatch/The Authority, and that was just walking in Moore’s footsteps, for the most part. I certainly like what Ellis and Ennis and Brubaker and even Waid do (I haven’t read enough Johns to form an opinion), but they seem content to work within the confines of genre fiction. Like I said, that’s fine - we don’t need something revolutionary all the time. But I’d certainly like to see somebody try.
Omar’s point about the limitations of the comics page is very well taken. Some of the books I mentioned in the post - especially Pavic’s - are fascinating to read because of the way they play with those limitations. Dictionary of the Khazars is structured like a dictionary. A Landscape Painted With Tea uses crossword puzzles to create a narrative. Calvino uses the Tarot to create a narrative in The Castle of Crossed Destinies. It would be very cool to see comic book writers trying different things with comics, because as we all know, art and prose make comics unique. It will be interesting to see what’s coming.
T. - That’s certainly a problem with metatextuality, and I make the point that it’s become a “trick” in a writers’ bag. But the nice thing is, we can see how it has evolved and argue about it, and it certainly makes some comics more interesting (not all, of course). But it has been accepted by the mainstream, which is a good thing, I think. We still need writers and artists to continually prod at the mainstream and bring new sensibilities to it, or it will continue to stagnate. I agree with you (to a certain extent) about your assessment of All Star Superman. I like it more than you do, but it’s not revolutionary in the least. It doesn’t have to be, but if all comics go that way, it would be far less interesting.
Greg Burgas
March 19, 2007 at 2:09 pm
That’s certainly possible, Michael!
Greg Hatcher
March 19, 2007 at 2:12 pm
It’s an interesting piece of analysis, but it’s a bit utopian. I am as sure as it’s possible to be that mainstream publishers don’t hire guys like Morrison in hopes of expanding the medium. They do it because they want another giant new-wine-from-old-bottles hit like JLA or New X-Men or All-Star Superman. The fallacy in your article is the idea that big superhero publishers really would print stuff they know they can’t sell to their regular audience in hopes of striking a blow for capital-A Art. Never happen.
Which isn’t to say it wouldn’t be NICE. But I just don’t see it.
Gil Jaysmith
March 19, 2007 at 2:32 pm
*chuckle* If Ellis’s only major contribution to comics has been The Authority, I would say that makes him responsible for even more bad comics than Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke.
I dunno though; Ellis may be best remembered for Stormwatch/The Authority, but that would be to completely ignore (a) Transmetropolitan, which was gripping reading for most of its run, and (b) his desire to brand himself by releasing ’singles’, instant thrills never to be repeated. Half the problem with even an author’s own run, let alone the author who follows them, is knowing when to stop. Ellis doesn’t often run out of puff inside one of his own ideas. His singles may drop off the charts as quickly as any other single, but for the fan they’re amazing. Considering he’s only really been on the mainstream radar for ten years, look at the sheer number of different titles he’s created. That’s a lot of variation in his genre contributions, when plenty of people are content to sit on one or two titles forever.
I think what we need in general is not more breakthroughs and amazing experiments, but fewer crap comics. That’s why it’s so depressing when Morrison writes like an average superhero comics writer; the average superhero comics writer is a bit crap…
~ Gil
Sean Whitmore
March 19, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Great article, Greg! You’ve got me curious to try some of the titles you mentioned that I haven’t already read, and wanting to reread the ones I have.
SEAN
dave
March 19, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Are we taliking about COMICS here, as a medium, or are we talikng about the gnre of SUPERHERO comics?
‘cos if we’re just talking about superhero comics, then yeah, Ellis has done very little to push the envelope, and it’s an envelope that sorely needs to be pushed.
But if we’re talking about the state of the whole medium, then man, you REALLY need to read some comics that AREN’T about superheroes. Stick to creators whose work you know you already like, you’ll find everything you’re looking for in seconds.
Personally, I think the future of Superheroes would be best served by abandoning the concept of the company-wide shared universe. All it does is keep new readers away, and limit the story-telling possibilities for the creators working on them.
Man, I wish every Superhero comic was like Jack Staff, or Savage Dragon, or Planetary (HEY! There’s something pretty amazing Ellis has done!), or Tom Strong; where you have all the benefits of a large world of heroes, villains and monsters; with none of the ridiculous continuity crap that comes with it. And all of them are completely accessible to new readers.
bbsr
March 19, 2007 at 3:43 pm
This has been touched on by Ye Olde Iowa and others but your failure to provide a distinction between metatextual works and postmodern works really did annoy me. I guess mostly because my dissertation is on the subject of metafiction in comics.
As I understand it metafiction is what you mean when you say postmodernism is fiction that is aware of it’s own ontological status as fiction. While I completely agree that postmodernism does tend to do this it is not the defining characteristic of postmodernism. Further you can seperate metafiction from a postmodern context, as one poster has commented Don Quixote is a metafictional text and many fine works of modernism incorporate such self conscious device. The presence of metafiction does not imply postmodernism nor does postmodernism demand metafiction.
Though we don’t really have an agreed definition of postmodernism I agree with Fredric Jameson’s assessment. It isn’t an artistic movement but rather the cultural logic of late capitalism. Rather than a traditional platonic notion of a real world and the world we see postmodernism asserts that we are unable to see beyond our own sense, which are affected by context and so in effect any notion of the real is in essence irrelevant.
If there’s no reality then notions of deconstruction are irrelevant too. They are more properly understood to be modernist.
Once one separates metafiction from notions of postmodernism then I don’t really see any logic in your argument? As far as I am concerned Godland is a postmodernist super-hero text, primarily becuase of its intertextual knowledge of the work of Jack Kirby but I don’t see how lack of on overtly metatextual element affects it in any way.
MarkAndrew
March 19, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Dave — If you’re talking only MAINSTREAM comics that’s a good argument. On the other hand, if you ARE talking comics-as-a-medium, Ellis is about .0000006% as important to the medium as Los. Bros. or, again, Chris Ware. I like a buncha Ellis’ stuff, but the bigger you make the pool the smaller a fish he is.
And I think you’re being mis-interpreted here, Greg. Are you sayin’ that post-modernism (or, as I call it “ripping off Ambush Bug) is ONE way that the envelope was pushed IN THE PAST, and that current writers should look for OTHER ways to push the medium forward now.
markus
March 19, 2007 at 3:55 pm
Please, every time you write one of these, go through them again at the end and replace every instance of “comics” with “North American superhero comics”. Especially in that third to last sentence you’d look less like an idiot.
Then again, there’s certain limits in how far you can get away from that impression if you write a lengthish essay why a particular genre, not unlike nurse novels, which mostly deals in comfort food to a greying audience needs to be more progressive. For one, because no one outside that established audience cares in the least whether that genre survives or in what form. If they did, they’d be buying the books. But mostly, because it’s simply a bit dumb to expect “progressive comfort food” and you have to be completely delusional to assume that the audience doesn’t want comfort food. To take it one step further and assume that more progressive/more postmodern is what’s lacking is a major leap of faith but mostly again a sign of the limited intellectual horizon of the basement-dwelling fanboy. Because nobody else cares whether tomorrows kids love Spider-Man or Naruto.
John Seavey
March 19, 2007 at 4:01 pm
I thought it was interesting that you complained that comics have fallen into “recycling” as a habit, and cited post-modernism and deconstruction as a solution to this problem, when to my mind both deconstruction and post-modernism involve revisiting an established text. In essence, the reader has to already be aware of the genre’s conventions before they can follow you on this journey.
In fact, I’d say that post-modernism and deconstruction are responsible for the recycling, not ways around it; everyone’s revisiting old stories to tell them in new ways, instead of telling new stories. It’s all about revamping old characters nowadays, instead of creating new ones…which, in turn, chokes off the interest of new readers further. Screw literary merit, I say…I’d rather see the next Stan Lee or Jack Kirby than the next Grant Morrison.
Greg Burgas
March 19, 2007 at 4:06 pm
Dave and Markus - I think I made it clear that I was talking about “North American” superhero comics. Forgive me if it wasn’t. It’s in the title of the post, after all. I don’t think I have to put it in there all the time, because it’s pretty obvious. The only reason I write about that is because, despite Warren Ellis’ anger about it, superhero comics are the dominant genre in the medium. I’ve written elsewhere, as have others, about the wonderful things being done in comics, but that’s beside the point in the context of this post. You bring up Planetary, which is wonderful, but it doesn’t do anything new. If comics fans or even people who don’t usually read comics bought work in the medium that WAS challenging the reader, this would be a bit superfluous. But they’re not. I got into other genres and other forms of comics through some of Morrison’s work, and I don’t see that sort of crossover effect in most mainstream superhero comics. It would be nice to.
You’re right, Mark, that I’m not simply calling for someone to re-write Animal Man. Writers need to find new ways to do things.
As for you, bbsr - go ahead and give a definition that destroys my argument, why don’t you!
You could certainly argue that pastiches like All Star Superman and Godland are postmodern, because they do reference earlier works. But they’re not particularly changing anything about the way comics work. That’s what I’m interested in. Sorry I annoyed you.
T.
March 19, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I’d argue that the self-referential postmodern meta stuff is actually what’s shrinking the market, not what it needs to survive and grow. It’s all pretty insular stuff. To be interested in a satire, deconstruction, spoof or parody of a genre, you have to already be interested in said genre, otherwise the satire/deconstruction/spoof is lost on you. That’s why I think the deconstructionist stuff is bad for attracting new readers, it’s like dropping in on a conversation that’s already been in progress for years 40 and is filled with inside jokes and trying to keep up with said conversation.
Whereas all a kid needs to enjoy Naruto is Naruto vol. 1 and his own real-life coming of age experiences to provide a point of reference. It’s a ninja book about people, not a ninja book about the validity and deconstruction of ninja books.
MarkAndrew
March 19, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Marcus — Yeah. Exactly right. An’ almost beautiful.
T — Agreed completely, of course. I mean, I’m the nerdiest comics nerd I know, but I get annoyed by the snake-eating-it’s-own-tale insularity. It honestly seems a little defensive — If we categorize and organize our superhero comics enough, it becomes less nerdy. Somehow.
Still, you can DO post-modernism without being endlessly self-referential. Like Animal Man or the Intimates or any of the examples Greg mentioned.
Rebis
March 19, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Sleeper wrote, “And you might be one of the few people I can think of besides myself who considers ANIMAL MAN to be one of Morrison’s greatest works. I personally thought more highly of it than I did SEVEN SOLDIERS.”
I am quite certain there are more than three of us who value Animal Man above almost all else. Certainly more than Seven Soldiers, which was good, but only great in parts, and overall more ambitious than successful. I can’t think of anything Morrison has done that equals his work on Animal Man and Doom Patrol, where his played with form, gave us plenty to chew on thematically but never failed to engage us emotionally either.
(But I won’t knock ASS, no matter how Silver Age retro it is.)
Bill Reed
March 19, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Grant Morrison *is* the next Jack Kirby. Arguably.
Greg Burgas
March 19, 2007 at 4:44 pm
T. - I don’t want every comic to be self-referential, obviously. The ones that do it don’t even do it that well. But there does seem to be, in a shrinking market, a tendency to fall back on what worked in the past, which in this case is deconstruction and metatext. Writers need to break out of that!
I came across an example of a book that could become a masterpiece in the right hands, in the context of DC’s mainstream superhero universe. I just read that Peter Milligan will be writing a new Infinity, Inc. If we get the Milligan who wrote Elektra, it will suck. If we get the Milligan who wrote Human Target, it might work. But either way, it’s probably not going to last. I mean, is there really a clamor for Infinity, Inc.? It would be nice if DiDio (or whoever) told Milligan to go nuts on the title - do whatever the hell he wants. It might piss off the hardcore Infinity, Inc. fans (all, you know, 12 of them), but it might bring new readers in who are interested in what he’s doing. Either way, it probably won’t last, so why not take a chance?
John Seavey
March 19, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Bill Reed said:
“Grant Morrison *is* the next Jack Kirby. Arguably.”
I’d argue against that, at least in the context I intended it. Kirby, as part of the Lee/Kirby and Simon/Kirby team, was in whole or in part responsible for the creation of Captain America, the Challengers of the Unknown, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, Darkseid, Galactus, the Silver Surfer, Doctor Doom, the Red Skull, Batroc the Leaper, Annihilus, the New Gods, Mister Miracle, the Molecule Man, the Demon, Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur, Kang, Immortus, and that’s only scratching the surface.
Whereas Grant Morrison created…Marvel Boy.
(Yes, I’m aware he created more than just Marvel Boy, but the main body of his superhero work has been reinterpretations of other people’s characters, not creations of his own. In that regard, he is not the “next Kirby”. Keith Giffen, perhaps, has something of a claim to that, or Erik Larsen, despite the fact that I’m not a big fan of his work. But Morrison, no. This isn’t an anti-Morrison argument, just a statement that he does different things than Jack Kirby did and has different strengths.)
GarBut
March 19, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Re. Ellis:
Someone mentioned Morrison’s THE BULLETEER, from 7S, as being a wasted potential. Someone else mentioned Ellis’s ’singles’ as being indicative of a creator who has no time to stop and be distracted by a great creation.
Both fair points.
Not to denigrate Grant, whose work I do very much love for the most part, but Warren’s single-issue ANGEL STOMP FUTURE, well, STOMPS all over BULLETEER and her four (not including additional 7S appearances). Best yet, Angel — science heroine w/incredibly beauteous bod — sums up the subtext of the entire story (which, by the way, is actually audacious enough to be concerned with other things) in her final word balloon: “(paraphrasing here) What the hell are YOU looking at?”
Simply: brilliant.
Which is what I was hoping 7S would be…
The Kirbydotter
March 19, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Oh please… No, Grant Morrison is certainly NOT the next Jack Kirby.
I think his importance is overrated.
He seem to have become the lead writer/conceptualist at DC, his influence, ideas and concepts are everywhere. From 52, to Seven Soldiers, to Freedom Fighters, Superman, etc.
DC is not my cup of tea these days.
And I used to be a big DC guy. These days, the only ongoing series I buy is Jonah Hex which is kinda outside the main DC universe (He has not appeared in 52 has he?)
Grant Morrison exploded with Doom Patrol and Animal Man.
But most of his stuff since then didn’t do nothing for me.
Too much brain, not enough heart.
I need to care about the characters I read about. I need a good storyteller that will carry me to the end with a thirst to see it through.
That’s why I’ll take a Ed Brubaker, a James Robinson (where are you?), a Alan Moore, a Neil Gaiman, a Darwyn Cooke, and a few other writers over Grant Morrison any day.
With Morrison, I always see the experimenting and the concepts taking over the emotions and the plot. I’m not saying he’s not interesting. He is very creative and never seem to run out of ideas.
I like it when you finish reading a book, and you are almost sad there is an ending. It means that the storyteller has touched you. Just re-read Darwyn Cooke’s NEW FRONTIER and that was my sentiment exactly. When I finish a Grant Morrison story, I will, at best, have found it ‘interesting’. But I will not be left with wanting more or with the intention of return to it someday for a second look… (except maybe for Doom Patrol and Animal Man). Most of his stories don’t touch me.
‘Grounbreaking’ is okay as long as there is also great ‘Storytelling’.
veghead
March 19, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Still waiting for you to write something of substance, Burgas.
MarkAndrew
March 19, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Have you read WE3 though? I was muchmuchmuch more moved by WE3 than New Frontier. Though Greg kinda poo-pooed it here, I think it’s the best thing Morrison’s ever done. Not ’cause it’s smart or meta-whatever but ’cause it’s a perfectly crafted tearjerker.
And I feel like I gotta point out you’re not arguing that “his importance is overrated.” You’re arguing that he doesn’t tell the kind of stories you personally prefer, but you think he’s very good at what he does. Which is fine inanof itself, and a valid critical point.
Most of the praise for Morrison is that he’s the foremost conceptual writer in comics right now, (or at least was last year. :)) an’ that’s a tough point t’argue.
Mike Loughlin
March 19, 2007 at 6:25 pm
With Kirby, linear plot and dialogue seem secondary to explosive action and passion. Morrison throws in better dialogue, plot twists, and attempts to push his concepts further.
Maybe that’s why Morrison can’t be the next Kirby: Morrison tries to push things forward, whereas Kirby did so without trying.
I enjoyed your essay, Greg, but I may be missing the point: are you saying mainstream comic book writers and artists have stopped trying because Morrison, as respected and influential as he is, has stopped trying? Or, comics are too conventional because the big 2 aren’t encouraging experimentalism? Or, as Morrison goes so goes the industry?
I don’t agree. I think the endless crossovers are selling, so the Big 2 order more. If Seaguy outsold Infinite Crisis, we’d be seeing the likes of Chuck Dixon and Fabian Nicieza being told to write waaaay outside their comfort zones. The old “vote with your dollar” idea has brought the industry to its current state.
Speaking of supporting books that push comics further, Kabuki: Circle of Blood & Kabuki: Metamorphosis are much better than Mack’s Daredevil work (which I liked, but didn’t love) and deserve a look.
dave
March 19, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Markandrew… can I meet you halfway and say “anglophone comics”? Superhero comics are not mainstream, not anymore. Warren Ellis is not a mainstream comics writer, because he doesn’t write manga, and that’s what sells in real quantities nowadays.
Which kind of leads me what I think about this… which is that pushing boundaries and doing new things is great, but we’re talking about what is in reality quite a specific little subgenre, one that has been very heavily mined for 70 years. Doing something new in comics is an extremely worthy pursuit, so thank goodness people do it every day. But doing something new and surprising in SUPERHERO comics is practically an oxymoron. Every single superhero comic is a recycled idea right from the start, and it doesn’t really matter where you take it from there, you can’t get away from that.
And frankly I can’t see why you’d want to. I think it’s worth noting that Superheros became so dominant in US comics because of their attractiveness to kids, and I think that’s where their future lies too.
And much as I love Animal Man (and I really, really, do) I wouldn’t reccomend it to the average ten year old.
Sean Whitmore
March 19, 2007 at 7:15 pm
“Please, every time you write one of these, go through them again at the end and replace every instance of “comics” with “North American superhero comics”.”
Well hell, why doesn’t he go a step further and replace every instance of “comics” with the actual names of every single superhero comic currently being made? For the benefit of all the people who were confused.
SEAN
dave
March 19, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Sean:
The tendency of American comic