Comics I've Been Reading: MULTIVERSITY

Granted, I am somewhat of a Morrison fan, but I have to admit...he's been disappointing me of late.

Much of his work on Batman...left me a bit cold. It wasn't bad, but Morrison's mix of trippy philosophizing and Silver Age love just....maybe it had worn on me a bit, and it felt a little jarring. So when I heard about DC's Multiversity - which would be a kind of throwback to multiple-earth-storytelling, I was mildly apprehensive....

....and with issue one, I was very underwhelmed. It seemed like a throwback, almost a bad impression of what a Grant Morrison comic looks like. Maybe it was the frequent references to both Infinite Crisis and the just-as-frequent use of Marvel analogues....but the book just didn't do it for me. (Except for Captain Carrot - if you dislike Captain Carrot, you probably dislike democracy. And puppies). At the very least, I decided to give it another issue, and hope it thrilled me.

....and issue 2 (aka The Society of Super-Heroes) really felt like something unique and different. It wasn't just the Golden Age/pulp-style take on the DC Universe; it actually felt like the stakes were being increased. Chris Sprouse's art drives much of the story, and quite honestly, the mix of prose and old-fashioned style really lifts it apart. It seems....well, the least Grant Morrison-y, and....

...ok, I was not looking forward to issue 3. An Earth where the sons and daughters of superheroes were self-obsessed? I get enough of that in my private life. (Self-obsessed people - not sons and daughters of superheroes). I wasn't giving up on The Multiversity just yet - I simply thought that reading issue 3 would be, well, not quite a priority. It probably was just going to be less than what I expected....and those expectations were low to begin with.

But The Just isn't as bad as I expected - it's actually rather OK. On the one hand, I needed to reread this book in order to get at what's happening (which doesn't end with a bang or a whimper, but a kind of "oh well, whatever, nevermind.") It's also a nice callback to the DC Universe in the 1990s....and the fact that I referred to both "a nice callback" and "the DC Universe of the 1990s" should be a bit disconcerting. On the other hand, there's a real sense of both world-building and establishing the nature of the threat.

(This is probably the first book in which....yes, I can see Damian Wayne as Batman. Seriously).

Am I going to continue with The Muliversity? Yes - it may have been a bit overhyped, but it's an attempt to expand the DC multiverse....and hopefully play around with characters and concepts.

And now, Grant Morrison has warmed my heart by managing to surprise me. Go figure.