The stuff about mutant culture was interesting but I felt that it was for the most part, poorly executed. Partly because it just sprang up from nowhere and so it felt unnatural and hard to connect with. If we'd seen that guy just start up a mutant it would have felt a lot more organic. Also I can't recall if it was Morrison who wrecked Genosha(sp?), because that would have been a good place to expand upon mutant culture.
But in many ways I feel Morrison closed, or tried to close a lot of avenues that X-Men could have gone down. People elsewhere on this forum were complaining about how the X-Men have stopped being superheroes, Morrison pretty much started that. Characterisation has also suffered since Morrison's run.
Thanks for the info on Doom Patrol, my nearest comic book shop has a really screwed up layout, Vertigo stuff can be in one of four places. But that narrows it down to two.
Am I a good man or a bad man?@Drenius: YES. Issue 11, in particular, is in the running for the best single issue of a comic I've ever read. I wouldn't call it a work of art, but it's basically everything a comic should be. The entire series, both New Mutants and New X-Men, is available on Marvel's website, so it's as easy as getting an account there.
The followup run, by Craig Kyle and Chris Yost, wasn't terrible, but I do have a lot of criticisms of it that I think are valid, including: dumping essential characters without much explanation, Completely Missing The Point of another character, changing the genre for no apparent reason, and including X-23, who acted like a character out of a particularly awful piece of fanfiction most of the time.
The X-Men after Claremont, before Morrison, had been reduced to a bunch of Pinball Protagonists without a clear goal. Morrison actually gave them a sense and a real direction again by emphasizing the school angle for the first time in ages. The X-Men don't work as actual out-and-out superheroes in the same way the Avengers and the Justice League do. So if anything, I think Morrison got them out of a hole, not into one.
My only real criticism of Morrison's run was his Magneto.
I don't remember Morrison's X-men being that good but I do remember he was generally going in the right direction. X-men have been running an unresolved plot for fifty years. They either have to succeed and change the status quo or they need a sensible reason to fail. Morrison tried Superman Stays Out of Gotham and Bat Family Crossover, good steps but not a enough. If the X-men can't have the long term plot development needed to achieve their goal then they need to get out of mainstream marvel, off of Earth 616, because it is clear them being with the other superheroes doesn't workout, Wolverine Publicity aside.
The movie knew well enough to keep the X-men out of larger Marvel world and this thread has lead me to the sad conclusion Morrison is the one who could have made that happen in the comics.
Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack
More often than not the X-Men have always been separated from the wider Marvel Universe.
Anyway, I've read the first volume of Morrison's Doom Patrol. The four parter is probably the first Morrison multi parter I've ever truly liked, that first page is a brilliant opening. I found the second part of the Red Jack story very disapointing, especialy because he looked so intriguing on the cover. Overall very promising.
Am I a good man or a bad man?To hop off Morrison' cock, New X Men was REALLY COOL. Whether it was good is another matter but is was definitively cool. Check out some of the stuff he wrote on it, say what you will but G-Morrison is a concept man and handing him something like the x-men could only lead to good places. The Art was fantasmic the story arcs were potent, and while he did drag his feet a bit the whole experience was all together very good. It wasn't his best work but , to be a bit cliche it felt REALLY GOOD to experience, it's the same feeling I got watching Avatar or Speed Racer (or The Spirit to a lesser extent) sure in retrospect I might see some problems (or in Speedracer's case NO PROBLEMS) but when you build an environment up to that point you've created a "pizza-sex" effect were even if you wake up the next morning to a pig, that orgasm was FUCKING AMAZING. It's still the only book that's done that to me and a lot of that is part of how easily he expanded the brand in a sort of reverse-Johnsian way , the rest being just how epic he made the X-Universe feel, it's pretty much all the beauty of 52 or Young Justice or Batman The Brave And The Bold and their use of universes as put through this Supercool mission statement. Sure I've never reread any of it, but it was superfucking awesome when I got into it and it's a shame that I cant think of a Marvel Writer who could really take a hold of something like that (they'd probably have to draft an indie guy).
And now I link further readings:
http://4thletter.net/tag/new-x-men/
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-unofficial-guide-grant-morrisons-x-men-580652.html
http://geekdraw.com/main/2011/4/17/new-x-men-8-awesome-covers-from-grant-morrisons-run.html
http://geoffklock.blogspot.com/search/label/New%20X-Men
http://them0vieblog.com/2010/01/29/new-x-men-omnibus-by-grant-morrison/
Geoff's is the best btw, I used it a a companion as I read through.
PS Not Really about GM but the covers were AMAZING!!!!!!!!! I literally couldn't stop staring at them.
edited 27th Mar '12 7:27:25 PM by AgentRook
![]()
The way he dismissed Red Jack, while clever, disappointed the hell out of me. There are so many weird and wonderful uses for a character like that...
I've managed to track down a forum that was around when New X-Men was actually coming out, and I must say it's seriously cool reading the people there attempting to crack Morrison's plot and his symbolism. Some of their guesses were right on the nose, too; somebody actually called Sublime being intelligent bacteria two issues before the big reveal (although a more common, and wrong, guess seemed to be that he'd be Apocalypse).
Some of the theories they came up with are pretty cool too. One person thought that the named Weapon Plus subjects, apart from Captain America, are based on the Spiral Dynamics
theory of human development, and holy crap it actually makes sense: Nuke is Beige-level (pure survival above all else), Wolverine is Purple-level (emphasis on the spirituality of nature), Cassandra (not explicitly a Weapon, but a common theory at the time is that she was the missing Weapon XI) is Red-level (emphasis on making things as good as possible for yourself and to Hell with everyone else), Huntsman is Blue-level (emphasis on absolute obedience to one powerful person; this one in particular I think fits great), Fantomex is Orange-level (emphasis on the use of science and strategy), the Cuckoos are Green-level (emphasis on 'group harmony'), and Ultimaton is Yellow-level (emphasis on self-realization).
I also can't help but think that the last bits of the X-Man comic drew from Spiral Dynamics, as well; they revealed that The Multiverse is in fact a giant spiral where the universes get more and more advanced the further "upspiral" you go. Nothing to do with Morrison, really; this book ended before he started his X-Men, but it's possible he was influenced by it, as its final villain, the Harvester
, is rather similar to Sublime, and it had the "Brilliant City
" which sounds similar to Morrison's "Starlit City."
I'm reading Animal Man right now. Superman makes a brief appearance, where he comes off as exceptionally insensitive and rude. I mean, he couldn't have been more hurtful if he tried. This isn't the Superman Morrisson wrote for All Star Superman! Where's my dorky peasant boy? What is this mere plot device, designed to make Animal Man feel inadequate?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.What do you mean that's all folks?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Everyone's Coyote Jesus In Purgatory?
I really liked the Red Mask issue too. One of the better deconstructions of Bad Powers, Bad People I've seen.
Sometimes life just sucks. You have to learn to take the good with the bad. Why should you expect anything different in the mediums?... He just wanted to fly!
I've finished Morrison's run, and it was... well, it just wasn't fair. I've had the same sort of lurching, frustrating stop I felt when reading his Batman RIP. Like, this notion that Vagueness Is Coming, that it's all building up to something incredibly climactic, closure, catharsis, satisfaction, and all I got instead was this frustration, like it was all a "Shaggy Dog" Story. Featuring several shaggy dogs, foxes, apes, and one very shaggy, eternally regenerating, anthropomorphic coyote.
There was that one-page panel that scared the shit out of me; "I CAN SEE YOU!" and I was like FUCK!?! and also, to a lesser extent, poor dude, I wish I could help somehow.
Still, the funny thing about the last confrontation: Morrisson being all pale and black-haired and essentially looking like one of the Endless from The Sandman.
edited 28th Oct '13 2:49:57 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Funnily enough, that was probably one of the last times Morrison was pictured (drawn) with hair before he finally shaved it off.
A big portion of Animal Man's final arc was Morrison starting to come to terms with himself as an author. He's said in the past that his proposal for Animal Man didn't extend past the first arc initially, and when it got expanded he had to come up with new stories quickly. And doing that was what got him into animal rights as the (Hilarious in Hindsight) shout out to PETA in the last issue and the more Anvilicious parts were. Eventually he caught himself and decided to turn it into a metafictional experiment with himself, while Animal Man was the observer.
The last bits in the issue: Buddy reunited with his family, Grant's bitter reminder that his childhood was behind him, and Foxy sending out that last signal that would never be recieved? I'll admit it, it got me teary eyed.
edited 28th Oct '13 3:13:01 PM by biznizz
Sometimes life just sucks. You have to learn to take the good with the bad. Why should you expect anything different in the mediums?Was the "let's quote Nietzsche and Shakespeare to give dignity to crappy comic books" line a dig at Watchmen?
Also, it's really funny who gets knighted nowadays.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I believe it was. I can't remember what Morrison thought of Watchmen itself, but I do know he hated how it ushered in the Dark Age of Comics.
And Alan Moore got knighted? *looks aside to Lost Girls and LOEG's Harry Potter Antichrist & Mary Poppins God* Whatever.
Sometimes life just sucks. You have to learn to take the good with the bad. Why should you expect anything different in the mediums?
No, Morrison has the MBE, the first step towards it. Alan Moore wouldn't accept a knighthood. If anything would have lost him the chance it would have been From Hell anyway.
edited 28th Oct '13 4:59:13 PM by C0mraid
Am I a good man or a bad man?

Personally I think it's because Morrison wrote the situation into a hole which people have since tried to write out of.
What's this hole you're talking about? Personally, I think Morrison's X-Men contributed a lot of interesting ideas to the X-canon that could've been built upon by other writers, but most of them chose to ignore or retcon them. Like the idea that mutants are "real" minority with their own neighbourhoods, culture, music and so on, and that besides people who hate and oppress them there also other who admire or envy them. Since mutants have been used as an allegory for real-world minorities at least since Claremont started writing X-Men, I think this idea would've provided plenty of material for future writers to expand on. But for whatever reason Marvel editors thought that (contrary to real-life minorities) X-Men could be written as a minority only if there are like 200 of them, so the result was House Of M, which got rid of all the other except the most "important" mutants. So I don't think Morrison wrote X-Men "into a hole"... On the contrary, he tried to figure out a way out of the stagnation that X-Men had been for most of the 90s, but sadly most writers/editors ignored his ideas.
Doom Patrol in paticular has intrigued me for years, before I even read New X-Men. If it's in the next comic book shop I visit I'll get it. Just want to check a few things, was it under DC or Vertigo?
There was no Vertigo when Doom Patrol originally ran. It was regular DC series that nominally took place in the DC universe, though mostly Doom Patrol just chose to ignore it (there's a funny cameo by the Justice League though). But the paperback collections are released under Vertigo, I think.