grant morrison | the m0vie blog

Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers – Disassembled (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Today and tomorrow we’ll be taking a look at the two Brian Michael Bendis events that kick-started the writer’s work on the franchise.

Avengers: Disassembled welcomed Brian Michael Bendis to the Avengers franchise. The super-star writer had enjoyed long and well-received runs on Ultimate Spider-Man and Daredevil, but his tenure on the Avengers franchise proved much more divisive. Taking over for a three issue arc on the main Avengers title, Bendis literally destroyed the team. Not only did he demolish a lot of the iconography associated with the bunch of superheroes, he also launched a fairly scathing deconstruction of the stalwart superhero team. Bendis wasn’t just going to adopt a caretaker position on the series, he clearly planned some very serious remodelling. That meant that some walls had to get knocked down. In many ways, Disassembled feels like a brutal demolition.

Things come apart…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: alan moore, Avenger, avengers, avengers: disassembled, bendis, brian michael bendis, deconstruction, disassembled, Falcon, grant morrison, hawkeye, iron man, joss whedon, magneto, marvel universe, nick fury, Scarlet Witch, United Nations, Vision | Leave a comment »

New The Dark Knight Rises Trailer

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Darren

You don’t owe these people any more. You’ve given them everything.

Not everything. Not yet.

-Selina and Bruce

The new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has been released and it looks suitably epic. Hm. Looks like it really might be about “the idea of Batman” in a very Grant Morrison-esque sort of way. “I’m adaptable,” Selina boasts, but she could be speaking of Batman himself, who is capable of being anything pop culture wants him to be. I suspect Nolan will be hitting the idea of Batman as a mythic symbol quite hard, and I honestly think that’s the best way to cap off a trilogy that’s been about the notion of a “modern” Batman. In particular, it seems that it might be exploring the notion of Batman as an inspirational figure being more important than the man in the mask. I think my excitement just went off the scale.

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avengers, batman, christian bale, Christopher Nolan, Dark Knight Rises, grant morrison, marion cotillard, Warner Bros | Leave a comment »

Captain America by Jack Kirby Omnibus (Review)

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Today, I’m focusing on one in particular, Captain America.

“All the years of combat against forces of overwhelming power have done little to prepare Cap for the terrifying experience of being thrust under the Klieg Lights amid an undulating sea of precision dancers…”

– Oh no! Cap’s fatal weakness! Precision dancers!

It seemed like a bit of a no-brainer. With America’s bicentennial celebrations approaching, Marvel decided to put comic book legend (and co-creator) Jack Kirby on the comic book. Publishing two annuals, twenty-two issues of the on-going Captain America and Falcon book, and the iconic Captain America’s Bicentennial Battles, Kirby celebrated two centuries of the United States in style, crafting Captain America stories that were at once anchored in the past, yet boldly forging forward. He also seemed to embrace the crazy and energetic potential of the medium he helped define, producing a run on the character that was borderline surreal, occasionally crazy, but never boring.

The most awesome comic panel ever…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Benjamin Franklin, captain america, doctor doom, ed brubaker, Falcon, grant morrison, Henry Kissinger, jack kirby, Joe Simon, joss whedon, Kirby, Klieg light, marvel comics, nick fury, Rolling Stones, stan lee, United States | 2 Comments »

Kurt Busiek’s Avengers – Avengers Assemble! Vol. 3 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Darren

Read our review of The Avengers here.

And so we reach the end of George Perez’s tenure as artist on Kurt Busiek’s Avengers run. Many would claim that the book would never really recover from the loss of the artist, though Busiek would produce over twenty subsequent issues and arguably the climax of his entire run in The Kang Dynasty. I am, to be honest, not quite so sure that this represents a turning point for the series, but I do confess that Perez would be sorely missed as the series moved through a rake of guest artists in the months that would follow. (In fact, I’ll confess to being quite fond of Busiek’s final year or two on the title.

An Avengers Assembly...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: affirmative action, avengers, avengers assemble!, captain america, chris claremont, comic books, Comics, george perez, grant morrison, iron man, kang dynasty, kurt busiek, marvel, racism, review, Silverclaw, Triune Understanding, Watergate Scandal | Leave a comment »

Geoff Johns Hawkman Omnibus: Volume 1 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Darren

I’m always glad to see a nice, big and thick DC comics omnibus. Marvel have cornered the market in putting out over-sized gigantic collections of modern and classic runs on iconic characters, and I’m disappointed that it has taken DC so long to follow suit. After all, they have any number of long runs on iconic characters by acclaimed creators deserving some nice love. Geoff Johns’ Hawkman run is perhaps the writer’s run that I was least excited about, but it’s still nice to get the majority of Geoff Johns’ character-defining and continuity-clarifying run on the character handily collected in one gigantic package.

Hawkin' his wares...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: arts, blackest night, booster gold, Brad Meltzer, dark knight returns, dc comic, dc universe, fiction, flash, Gentleman Ghost, geoff johns, grant morrison, green arrow, green lantern, green lantern: rebirth, Greenlantern, High tech, John, justice league, Online Writing, Quantum mechanics, Secret Files & Origins, Television program, The CW Television Network | 3 Comments »

Geoff Johns’ Run on Green Lantern – Brightest Day (Review)

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Darren

It must be difficult to follow an absolutely huge event like Blackest Night, which cemented Green Lantern as one of DC’s largest franchises (perhaps second only to the Batman books under Grant Morrison). After all, the gigantic crossover was the culmination of over five years of work by architect Geoff Johns, and it might have been easy for the writer to pack it all in and call it a day. However, he didn’t. This collection, covering the entire New Guardians story arc, is very clearly a bridge between two big Green Lantern events – Blackest Night and War of the Green Lanterns. It also works a launching pad for a whole host of other titles, from Brightest Day to Emerald Warriors to Green Lantern Corps. However, the collection works at its very best when it is smaller in scope, and more intimate – when it pauses to wonder what happens to a world-saving superhero when the heat of the great big galactic threat has passed.

Hal's still got really poor self-image...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Abin Sur, blackest night, brightest day, Carol Ferris, comic books, dc comics, geoff johns, grant morrison, green lantern: brightest day, green lantern: rebirth, green lantern: the new guardians, Greenlantern, hal jordan, Hector Hammond, lex luthor, Power ring (DC Comics), ryan reynolds, sinestro, the new gaurdians (review), the new guardians | 2 Comments »

Absolute Crisis on Infinite Earths (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” This week I’ll be taking at the event that started it all, Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, reprinted in DC’s oversized and slipcased Absolute line.

It’s interesting to reflect on Crisis on Infinite Earths, more than a quarter of a century after the twelve-issue maxi-series was published. In the time since, it seems like the editorial purpose driving the event – the desire to “simplify” DC’s tangled and messed continuity into one single and unified history by abolishing the myriad of alternate continuities – has been somewhat undone with the return of the multiverse in 52 and Final Crisis, but this arguably allows Wolfman and Pérez’s epic to be considered on its own merit. Although the series might not be as important as it once was in explaining the sometimes bizarre way that all of DC’s published line fit together, I think you can still see a huge influence of this crossover in the stories that the authors at DC are telling, and how they approach them.

Holding out for some heroes...

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: barry allen, batman, crisis on infinite earths, dc comic, dc universe, final crisis, flash, flashpoint, geoff johns, george perez, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, green lantern: rebirth, jack kirby, joe quesada, John, kamandi, lex luthor, Marv Wolfman, marvel, power ring, seven soldiers | 2 Comments »

Flashpoint (Review)

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” I’ll be starting with the most recent one, Flashpoint, following a week full of Flash stories.

Our world is in a violent transition of great change.

– President Obama tells us how it is

I really liked Flashpoint. I liked Flashpoint almost as much as I enjoyed Blackest Night, and far more than I enjoyed most big blockbuster “event” comic books. I think that Flashpoint buckles under the weight of the relaunch that followed – I find it quite sad that so many fans initially ignored the event only to jump on at the last minute because it was “suddenly important.” Does Flashpoint offer a fitting send-off to a version of the DC shared universe that dates back to Crisis on Infinite Earths? It doesn’t really, even if it offers some compelling arguments in favour of the relaunch that followed. Still, it’s a fascinating story about the icons who populate this shared universe, and what makes these enduring characters such heroic figures. Or, rather, what doesn’t make them heroic figures.

Flash sideways…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: alternate universe, andy kubert, barry allen, blackest night, bruce wayne, comic, comic book, dark knight returns, dc comic, dc universe, dcnu, dcu, flashpoint, flashpoint (comics), geoff johns, grant morrison, Hector Hammond, richard donner, the flash, thomas wayne | 3 Comments »

Geoff Johns’ Run on The Flash – The Dastardly Death of the Rogues & The Road to Flashpoint (Review)

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” I’ll be starting with the most recent one, Flashpoint, following a week full of Flash stories.

It’s hard not to look at Geoff Johns’ return to The Flash and wonder what might have been. After all, his original run solidified Johns as a talent to watch in the superhero field, fed into his iconic Green Lantern run and paved the way to his ascent up the DC food chain. And it’s quite clear that DC were putting a lot of energy into pushing The Flash as the next “breakout franchise”, clearly hoping that Johns could find an angle on the character and mythos that would push the book up the sales charts to match the Batman and Green Lantern franchises. That obviously didn’t happen, but it feels like a shame because it very nearly could have happened, had things gone a little differently.

Flash! A-ha! He saves every one of us!

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: comic books, Comics, dc comics, dcnu, final crisis, flash, Flash (comics), flashpoint, flashpoint (comics), Francis Manapul, geoff johns, grant morrison, green lantern, reverse flash, review, road to flashpoint, rogues, the dastardly death of the rogues, The Flash (comics), the rogues, time travel | Leave a comment »

Grant Morrison and Mark Millar’s Run on the Flash – Emergency Stop & the Human Race

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Darren

This January, I’m going to take a look at some of DC’s biggest “events.” I’ll be starting with the most recent one, Flashpoint, but – in the spirit of the character – we’re going to have a marathon run through Flash stories before we get there. Check back daily this week for more Flash-ified goodness… We’ll start with a tie-in to last month’s theme, with the time Grant Morrison wrote The Flash.

Wally, you are definitely spending too much time around Scottish people!

– Linda bends the fourth wall. Quite frankly (or should that be “Frank Quitely”, referencing Morrison’s long-term collaborator?), I’m surprised it’s still standing by the end of the run.

If you believe everything you read, it was actually Mark Waid’s landmark run on The Flash that inspired Grant Morrison to write Justice League in the first place, a run currently being collected in nice deluxe hardbacks. So, when Mark Waid took a year off from the title to pursue his own interests – including the graphic novel The Life Story of the Flash and JLA: Year One – perhaps comics’ most mind-bending Scotsman would make a logical choice to replace him on a character who has always had a bit of a surrealist bent. And Grant Morrison brought a friend with him – Mark Millar, now better known as the writer of Kick-Ass and The Ultimates, but who originally started out with a string of partnerships with Morrison through the nineties involving a prologue to Justice League and Aztek, along with many others. Their collaborations aren’t exactly looked back upon as comic book gold – despite the fact that the two of them, working separately, have redefined the superhero genre – but their year-long fill-in gap on The Flash is irrelevant and charmingly fun. Nothing more (unless you’re a continuity nut – in which case the pair tease several essential Flash concepts) and certainly nothing less (unless your comic book tastes don’t run towards the “wacky” end of the spectrum).