Comics | the m0vie blog

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Darren

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium. We’ve got a special treat for you this week, which is “Seven Soldiers Week”, so check back each day for a review of one of the Seven Soldier miniseries that Morrison put together.

Seven Soldiers of Victory is perhaps the strangest comic book “event” that we’ve ever seen. It’s essentially two issues, with a series of seven four-issue miniseries unfolding between them. The idea is that the seven books each follow one of the eponymous seven members of the superhero team destined to save the world from an evil invasion. Of course, this is a Grant Morrison story, so there’s far more to it than that, but perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the crossover is that (with one exception) none of the seven members of the team actually meet each other.

Seven is a magic number...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: 7, Bulleteer, Cary Bates, comic books, Comics, dc, dc comics, dc universe, Elliot Maggin, Grantmorrison, jh william iii, jh williams, Julius Schwartz, Newsboy Legion, seven, seven soldiers, seven soldiers of victory, seven unknown men of slaughter swamp, slaughter swamp, superhero | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory: Klarion (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Darren

I think that Seven Soldiers perhaps serves to illustrate the connection between Grant Morrison and Jack “King” Kirby. I know that Morrison’s detractors will balk at such a comparison, but I think there’s a lot to this. Kirby defined Marvel, working on flagship titles like The Avengers or The Fantastic Four or The Incredible Hulk, and he was as influential as Stan Lee in establishing what readers could expect from Marvel. However, he also did a considerable body of work at DC. While not as successful or iconic as his Marvel portfolio, I do think that it was some of his more wonderful and outrageous “high concept” work – things like the New Gods, for example, or Kamandi or Etrigan the Demon. I think one of the more intriguing aspects of Seven Soldiers has been seeing Morrison work with these types of crazy and ingenious ideas.

Morrison's on fire of late...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: grant morrison, Grantmorrison, jack kirby, Kirby, Klarion, Klarion the Witch-Boy, marvel, morrison, new gods, Newsboy Legion, Seven Soldiers of Victory: Klarion, Seven Soldiers: Klarion, Sheeda, Solomon Grundy, stan lee | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory: The Guardian (Review)

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Darren

The Guardian really just gives Grant Morrison a chance to play with a whole bunch of high concept crazy ideas inside a loose superhero framework, while allowing the scribe to play with various outmoded comic book concepts. Of course, there are elements of that within the other stories (and, to be frank, within most other major superhero titles the author has ever written), but The Guardian stands out amongst these Seven Soldiers of Victory miniseries as perhaps the most “Morrison-esque” of them.

Making headlines...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Action Comics, alan moore, art, arts, British Isles, Comics, dc comics, dc universe, dcu, final crisis: legion of 3 worlds, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, jack kirby, Legion of Super-Heroes, Manhattan Guardian, newsboy army, Newsboy Legion, seven soldiers, seven soldiers of victory, Sheeda, superman, the guardian | 2 Comments »

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory: Frankenstein (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Darren

Sometimes we all get too caught up in Morrison’s wonderful symbolism, mysticism and deeper meaning. Sometimes comic books don’t need to be anything more than a ridiculous premise executed in wonderful style. The covers to this miniseries tell you all you need to know, as does the opening splash page, featuring the monster striding into action as an off-screen character declares, “Die, Frankenstein, die!” You know you’re in for a wonderful high-concept action adventure which isn’t going try to be anything more than effortlessly cool. It’s moments like this which remind you, quite simply, that Grant Morrison loves comics, just as much as you and I do.

Words cannot describe how awesome this is...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: arts, danny boyle, dc, dc comics, dc universe, dcu, frankenstein, Frankenstein's monster, grant morrison, literature, Mary Shelley, seven soldiers, seven soldiers of victory, seven soldiers: frankenstein, stan lee | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory: The Bulleteer (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Darren

There’s a whole class of people in hospital wards, Mrs. Harrower, people who’d do just about anything to hang out with the skintight crowd. They expose themselves to radioactive materials or drink home-made potions… They interact with venomous insects and dangerous animals in the expectation of receiving some totem power.

There’s not a lot of sympathy among medical staff who have to clean up the mess.

The Bulleteer is a wonderful deconstruction of the superhero world we see so often reflected in the comics of Marvel and DC. These characters were created decades ago, in a different world. Writing elsewhere last year, I wondered if the very concept of a secret identity is outdated, a genre convention which doesn’t reflect the modern world. Clark Kent is a modest cover for Superman, a creation which afford him the opportunity to pretend to be normal, a humble camouflage that seemed perfectly quaint in the thirties. These days, I wonder if people would even bother. After all, in this era of instant celebrity and reality television, with the entire world aspiring to become “special”, why would you ever want to be normal?

What happens when the shine comes off?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: booster gold, Bulleteer, bullets, clark kent, comic, comic book, Comics, dc universe, dcu, final crisis, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, jack kirby, Len Wein, seven soldiers, seven soldiers of victory, stan lee, superhero, the bulleteer | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison’s Run on Batman – Time & The Batman (Review)

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Darren

December is “Grant Morrison month” here at the m0vie blog, as we take the month to consider and reflect on one of the most critically acclaimed (and polarising) authors working in the medium. Every Wednesday this month, we’ll have a Grant Morrison related review or retrospective.

I have, I’m not entirely ashamed to admit, grown quite fond of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman. Despite the fact I’m still not overly fond of Batman R.I.P., I really appreciated The Return of Bruce Wayne and Batman & Robin was perhaps the most fun I’ve had reading comics in quite a long time. So I found myself somewhat underwhelmed by Time and the Batman, collecting Morrison’s work on Batman #700 and the two-issue follow-up that served to make explicit the ties between Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis. It’s not that the book isn’t packed with ideas or even that it’s quite short. I think it’s more that Morrison seems to spend a lot of time here providing exposition and filling in information that perhaps couldn’t fit elsewhere in this tapestry.

Joker puts the gang back together…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: archetypes, batman, batman r.i.p., batman r.i.p.: the missing chapter, batman rip, batman rip: the missing chapter, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, comcis, comic books, Comics, darkseid, dc universe, final crisis, frank quitely, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, joker, review, the batman, time and the batman, tony daniel | 4 Comments »

Ultimate Comics: Doomsday (Hardcover) (Review)

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Darren

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, I’m taking a look at some of the stories featuring the characters over the past half-century.

Ultimate Comics: Doomsday is a bit of a weird beast. After the events of Ultimatum, Mark Millar’s Ultimates was relaunched both as Ultimate Comics: Avengers and the clunkily-titled (and written) Ultimate Comics: New Ultimates, while Ultimate Spider-Man became Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men spun off into Ultimate Comics: X. That meant that the only on-going series that hadn’t fed into a relaunched series was Ultimate Fantastic Four. Perhaps it’s understandable, since the series was arguably the weakest of Marvel’s Ultimate reimaginings of popular heroes, suffering from adapting Marvel’s most innocent scientific heroes in a grim and hyper-modern context. Ultimate Comics: Doomsday collects three miniseries (Ultimate Comics: Enemy, Ultimate Comics: Mystery and Ultimate Comics: Doom), which tell a gigantic crossover crisis set in the shared universe that the “ultimate” characters inhabit, but it’s really just a vehicle to allow Brian Michael Bendis to play with the left-over bits and pieces from Ultimate Fantastic Four.

This little Spider...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: brian michael bendis, marvel, Rafa Sandoval, spider man, stan lee, Ultimat Comics: Doomsday, ultimate comics, ultimate comics spider-man, Ultimate Comics: Doom, Ultimate Comics: Doomsday, Ultimate Comics: Enemy, Ultimate Comics: Mystery, Ultimate Doom, Ultimate Doomsday, Ultimate Enemy, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, ultimate marvel, Ultimate Mystery, Ultimates | 2 Comments »

Mike Carey’s Run on Ultimate Fantastic Four – Vol. 4-6 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Darren

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, I’m taking a look at some of the stories featuring the characters over the past half-century.

Ultimate Fantastic Four was never really the crown jewel of the Ultimate line. It wasn’t ever as consistent as Brian Michael Bendis’ 100+ issues on Ultimate Spider-Man, nor as zeitgeist-y as Ultimate X-Men (which had the success of the X-Men trilogy to back it up at least). Instead, like Fox’s Fantastic Four movies, Ultimate Fantastic Four was just… well, just kinda there, really. To be fair, I dug Mark Millar’s twelve-issue run on the title. Hell, I even enjoyed elements of the opening arc by Millar and Bendis, and the year-long run by Warren Ellis that followed. However, Mike Carey’s run is somewhat disappointing. This was the run which essentially saw the series through to the big Ultimatum event, and perhaps it justified the decision to clean the slate when it came to Marvel’s Ultimate line. Because, whatever Carey’s run was, it certainly wasn’t consistently fantastic.

That surfer dude looks spaced...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: brian michael bendis, Comics, cosmic marvel, Devil, four cubed, ghosts, god war, mark millar, marvel comics, Mike Carey, psycho man, robert kirkman, thanos, the silver searcher, the silver surfer, ultimate comics spider-man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Ultimate Galactus Trilogy, ultimate marvel, ultimate spider man, ultimate universe, ultimate x-men | Leave a comment »

Fantastic Four by John Byrne Omnibus (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Darren

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, I’m taking a look at some of the stories featuring the characters over the past half-century.

John Byrne’s Fantastic Four run is pretty major as Marvel comic book runs go. It’s generally regarded to be one of the better comic book runs of the eighties, alongside Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Walt Simonson’s Thor, but it’s also widely regarded as the best run on Marvel’s flagship family since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby finished their record-setting run establishing both the series and the shared Marvel Universe. (The length of the run has since been surpassed, appropriately enough, by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley on Ultimate Spider-Man.) This was my first time reading the run, which has received the massive omnibus treatment from Marvel. I have to admit, while not quite blown away by it, I was remarkably impressed by the love and craftsmanship that Byrne poured into the run. I wouldn’t class it as iconic or genre-defining, but it’s a remarkably solid examination of the franchise that launched the Marvel Universe.

Fantastic!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: brian michael bendis, chris claremont, Comics, fantastic four, fantastic four by john byrne omnibus, galactus, hardcover, jack kirby, Jean Grey, John Byrne, Johnny, Latveria, Marv Wolfman, marvel, marvel comics, marvel omnibus, marvel universe, Spectacular Spider-Man, Sphinx, stan lee, Sue, Thing | 11 Comments »

Mark Millar’s Run on Ultimate Fantastic Four – Vol. 3 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Darren

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fantastic Four, I’m taking a look at some of the stories featuring the characters over the past half-century.

Mark Millar isn’t quite the tough guy he makes himself out to be. Asked a few years ago about whether the birth of his child might tame some of his more sensationalist tendencies, Millar replied that – if anything – he would be even more motivated to push the envelope in order to demonstrate he hadn’t mellowed. And, in fairness, the years since have seen ideas like Kick-Ass or Wanted or Nemesis, all excessively and ridiculously cynical, graphic and violent. However, I maintain that Millar is a stronger writer when he channels his inner softer romantic – for example, demonstrating the respect he showed Superman in Red Son. Taking over Ultimate Fantastic Four for a year (perhaps on a trial run before writing for regular Fantastic Four), you get a sense that Millar has a genuine affection for these characters and their world – too much to try to make them “darker and edgier”, for example. While his run on Ultimate Fantastic Four isn’t the best thing he’s written, it is sharp and entertaining – and delivered with enough energy that it can’t help but warm the reader’s heart.