Jack Kirby tried and failed with his Fourth World titles.

That was because A) Kirby was not that great a writer B) the comics were cancelled C) it doesn't matter that Kirby was one of the greatest idea creators in creative illustrative history or that his pencils kick ass D) the Fourth World comics comprised four different series of indefinite (yet pre-disposed to be finite) length and scope, telling one over-arcing story. His original Fourth World was supposed to have an end. But no one remembers what it was, and the tale never received a middle.

The four comics in question are the Orion comic (entitled New Gods), Jimmy Olsen, Forever People, Mister Miracle.

Kirby failed. Morrison succeeded. Why? Smaller scope. More faith in the writer. A finite end within a short reach.

writer after writer failed at following Morrison on Animal Man

Peter Milligan succeeded admirably - and Jamie Delano started well before he descended into drivel

Really, when you look at it, everyone has problems following a Grant Morrison run. Mark Waid couldn't figure out how to deal with Morrison's Batman (in the JLA), writer after writer failed at following Morrison on Animal Man and Doom Patrol, and his run on the X-Men, while fascinating, left the series at a point it was difficult to continue from while still maintaining the basic ethos of the Marvel Universe ("just like the real world, only with super-heroes.") Ultimately, you wind up having to wonder whether they're all bad writers, or whether Morrison just knows when to bail on a book.

That's not to say that Morrison is a bad writer; far from it, I think he's great. But I don't think that he really leaves spaces in his work for other writers to inhabit; his work tends to imply more than is actually there, and when people are forced to deliver on the implicit promises he makes, they're the ones who have to shoulder the blame for a situation they inherited.

For example, the Seven Soldiers. It feels, at the end, like they're all set up to get their own series...but really, how much of that is true?

Bulleteer would be a terrible concept for an ongoing series--she's maddeningly passive, doesn't have any sort of compelling motivation to be a super-hero, and those are really her only distinguishing qualities.

Klarion has lots of powers and can zip about the universe, but without a clear set of motivations and a setting to inhabit, he's too vague to get a handle on.

Zatanna is the same Zatanna who failed in numerous other comics incarnations, only whinier and without powers.

Frankenstein...I thought it was a situation where the less you saw of him, the more interesting he was, which is a tricky way to build a series. (Not impossible, though. With a good supporting cast, you'd be able to keep him at a distance and still make effective use of him; this, however, would be work put in by the new writer, not by Morrison. SHADE wasn't nearly as effective a foil for the character as the girl from the first issue was.)

Mister Miracle is swimming against the current; the Kirby versions of the New Gods are just much more exciting than the "cloaked" versions Morrison gave us (not through any fault of his own, mind you; it's just that Darkseid is cooler when he's eight feet tall, made of rock, and shoots lasers from his eyes than when he's a guy in a suit.) So you have a hard time keeping them interessted in the versions you've inherited from Morrison, and suddenly you're "wasting his potential."

Really, the best two are Shining Knight and Manhattan Guardian, and of these Guardian is the only one I'd say is actually fleshed out enough that it could actually be an ongoing series without having a lot of extra work done by the new writer to set up a workable status quo. (For example, the hypothetical Shining Knight writer would have to decide whether to follow through with the set-up at the end where Ystina returns to the past, or keep her in the present as an anachronistic super-hero as she was shown in the mini-series. That alone is a decision that will shape the series and possibly alienate fans of the mini-series one way or another.)

Again, I'm not saying that Grant Morrison is a bad writer when I say that he doesn't set this sort of thing up nearly as well as he appears to. I'm just saying that he's very good at offering these tantalizing hints and letting your own imagination fill in the blanks; it's not the fault of the poor shmuck who follows him that they're having to compete with the story you're imagining Grant Morrison would have written.

One thing that frustrates me deeply about Seven Soldiers is how it restarts all of these characters with a ton of supporting cast and references to previous history/continuity and whatever and NOBODY has even bothered to use them. Zatanna? Probably going to be reverted to a lame cypher character. Bulleteer has already reverted to a lame cypher character when her central conceit is great and full of potential. Frankenstein might be further covered by Morrison as he's said time and time again he's wanted to do, which is cool. Mr. Miracle ESCAPED DEATH for god's sake and nobody can be bothered to use him. Manhattan Guardian also has a really cool concept that is sufficiently modern enough to be workable in the DCU. Shining Knight would be an awesome Teen Titans character along with the supercool Little Barda and Young Frankenstein. Klarion is just begging for a series, a precocious, mischevious teenager who just so happens to control two extremely powerful magical artifacts, access to friggin' time travel and an entire army of creepy future zombie soldiers.

Ah, so disappointing.

Maybe someday I'll be educated enough to grasp it.

This of course doesn't negate its quality as a series- but still, it would be nice if a few writers had followed its lead.