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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 21, 2024 21:13:53 GMT -5
I also remember there being some controversy over Morrison's Wonder Woman Earth One that I have some hesitation posting on here. IDK, maybe I'm too sensitive about some things Being kinky or for presenting an African-American man with a slave collar? Either way, it's the usual Morrison trying to provoke a reaction without anything original to say. Well, maybe in Animal Man. Looks to me he was pushing the sexual element to seem edgy, when it was not and misunderstands Marston's use of it as a metaphor. He did the same thing with Jimmy Olsen and Super Woman, in JLA: Earth 2 and in All-Star Superman, with Jimmy and cross-dressing, suggesting it went beyond disguises for pursuing stories, as in the Silver Age. Taken out of context, it looks even worse. Maybe he even addressed that within the story (I didn't read it and am not inclined to do so now...mainly due to my history with Morrison's work).
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Post by berkley on Jul 21, 2024 23:29:43 GMT -5
My personal rule with Morrison is to avoid the Marvel/DC stuff for the most part* but try to read the independent work with an open mind, i.e. don't go into it already half-convinced that he's just a con artist doing weird crap for shock value or whatever. That doesn't mean you have to like everything or agree with his ideas or worldview but I think there are some genuine ideas underlying his best work and a sincere effort to deal with them in an entertaining and thoughtful manner. I also think he's one of the most skillful comics writers out there in terms of his ability to write dialogue, to produce different voices for different characters, to change his narrative style to create varied effects, etc.
* the exception for me would be Seven Soldiers, which I thought was excellent. There may be others that I'm not aware of, because I've mostly stayed clear of his DC/Marvel things. I might probably try Doom Patrol one of these days.
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Post by tonebone on Jul 22, 2024 12:35:30 GMT -5
They have to try something. Maybe it will be a new jumping on point for fans. You couldn't get me to try to figure out their line right now. Personally, I believe DC gave up on that concept years ago and exist solely for trademark maintenance and IT for ideas or characters to exploit in higher profile media (video games, tv, movies, etc). The company has long been in the hands of people with little or no background in actual publishing....and I include Jim Lee in this, as he never really ran Wildstorm like a publishing company, as much as a packager. If they truly wanted to court a new audience and young readers, they would go hard where they exist, which is in bookstores, videogames and tv/movies. Warner is chasing the latter two, but their bookstore attempts at appealing to the same crowds that line up for comics from Scholastic have been pretty mediocre. If that is true (and I believe it is), they are doing a TERRIBLE job of trademark maintenance... changing everything every two years, only to revert back to the characters everyone already knows. Imagine if they were Paws, Inc. (the owners of Garfield), and every two years, when book sales are lagging, they totally revamp Garfield - his look, his back story, his supporting cast, and then fall back to the status quo, only to do it again two years later. That would be EXACTLY how you would RUIN a trademark.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 22, 2024 17:41:22 GMT -5
My personal rule with Morrison is to avoid the Marvel/DC stuff for the most part* but try to read the independent work with an open mind, i.e. don't go into it already half-convinced that he's just a con artist doing weird crap for shock value or whatever. That doesn't mean you have to like everything or agree with his ideas or worldview but I think there are some genuine ideas underlying his best work and a sincere effort to deal with them in an entertaining and thoughtful manner. I also think he's one of the most skillful comics writers out there in terms of his ability to write dialogue, to produce different voices for different characters, to change his narrative style to create varied effects, etc. * the exception for me would be Seven Soldiers, which I thought was excellent. There may be others that I'm not aware of, because I've mostly stayed clear of his DC/Marvel things. I might probably try Doom Patrol one of these days. While most of what I've read by Morrison has been sparse, I've enjoyed what I've read by him with the exception of The Invisibles. Doom Patrol felt like Superheroes mixed with an unhealthy dose of LSD, same with Marvel Boy. The Multiversity also seemed really unique for the time, kind of like a mesh of Crisis and Watchmen
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Post by commond on Jul 22, 2024 17:48:25 GMT -5
I saw Morrison at a comic book convention in New Zealand while he was doing the Invisibles. This was right around the time when he was claiming to have been abducted by aliens and asking everyone to jerk off at any appointed hour to avoid the Invisibles being canceled. I could hardly believe it when I discovered he was doing high profile mainstream books a few years later.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 22, 2024 17:59:49 GMT -5
I saw Morrison at a comic book convention in New Zealand while he was doing the Invisibles. This was right around the time when he was claiming to have been abducted by aliens and asking everyone to jerk off at any appointed hour to avoid the Invisibles being canceled. I could hardly believe it when I discovered he was doing high profile mainstream books a few years later. There's also an instance of him screaming for five minutes at the audience at a panel to help them wake up. I think that was during the time when he was in emotional morning for the 90's being over? IDK, it's talked about in his Sequart documentary from a few years ago
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 22, 2024 20:27:37 GMT -5
Morrison was always one where I would give the Chuck Jones sideways glance..... ...whenever he'd start talking about taking psychedelics or secrets of the universe, or plot ideas or many things. It was a question of whether he was putting the audience on, to get a reaction or did he genuinely have a screw loose or take too many drugs. I feel that way about a lot of Alan Moore's statements, over the years, though his seems to depend more on the audience. Either way, there have been more than a few people in comics who seem like they should be or should have been under a doctors care.
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Post by tonebone on Jul 23, 2024 9:40:42 GMT -5
My personal rule with Morrison is to avoid the Marvel/DC stuff for the most part* but try to read the independent work with an open mind, i.e. don't go into it already half-convinced that he's just a con artist doing weird crap for shock value or whatever. That doesn't mean you have to like everything or agree with his ideas or worldview but I think there are some genuine ideas underlying his best work and a sincere effort to deal with them in an entertaining and thoughtful manner. I also think he's one of the most skillful comics writers out there in terms of his ability to write dialogue, to produce different voices for different characters, to change his narrative style to create varied effects, etc. * the exception for me would be Seven Soldiers, which I thought was excellent. There may be others that I'm not aware of, because I've mostly stayed clear of his DC/Marvel things. I might probably try Doom Patrol one of these days. While most of what I've read by Morrison has been sparse, I've enjoyed what I've read by him with the exception of The Invisibles. Doom Patrol felt like Superheroes mixed with an unhealthy dose of LSD, same with Marvel Boy. The Multiversity also seemed really unique for the time, kind of like a mesh of Crisis and Watchmen I'm sort of hit and miss with Morrisson... I loved Marvel Boy and his JLA run. Didn't care for Doom Patrol or Seven Soldiers or Multiversity. Or 1,000,000. We3 is great. I DID enjoy his X-Men run, although I would guess I am in the minority there.
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Post by Batflunkie on Jul 23, 2024 17:44:45 GMT -5
While most of what I've read by Morrison has been sparse, I've enjoyed what I've read by him with the exception of The Invisibles. Doom Patrol felt like Superheroes mixed with an unhealthy dose of LSD, same with Marvel Boy. The Multiversity also seemed really unique for the time, kind of like a mesh of Crisis and Watchmen I'm sort of hit and miss with Morrisson... I loved Marvel Boy and his JLA run. Didn't care for Doom Patrol or Seven Soldiers or Multiversity. Or 1,000,000. We3 is great. I DID enjoy his X-Men run, although I would guess I am in the minority there. I wouldn't by any means call him the "grand wizard genius of the comic book industry" like so many people label him, but he's alright (I also enjoyed bits and pieces of his Green Lantern run). But like Cody said, sometimes he seems to be weird purely for the sake of being weird and not in a way that Steve Gerber could pull off. Still not sure how I feel about paganism and general witchery other than people are well within their right to believe whatever they want to provided that they don't try to infringe on somebody else's beliefs
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Post by tartanphantom on Jul 23, 2024 22:30:23 GMT -5
Not a huge fan of Morrison myself, but he has his moments. I consider his run on Animal Man to be one of his high points.
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Post by spoon on Jul 23, 2024 23:32:16 GMT -5
While most of what I've read by Morrison has been sparse, I've enjoyed what I've read by him with the exception of The Invisibles. Doom Patrol felt like Superheroes mixed with an unhealthy dose of LSD, same with Marvel Boy. The Multiversity also seemed really unique for the time, kind of like a mesh of Crisis and Watchmen I'm sort of hit and miss with Morrisson... I loved Marvel Boy and his JLA run. Didn't care for Doom Patrol or Seven Soldiers or Multiversity. Or 1,000,000. We3 is great. I DID enjoy his X-Men run, although I would guess I am in the minority there. It's funny, because I didn't enjoy his X-Men that much, but guessed I was in the minority. I'm not sure I've read beyond the first hardcover. I'm a fan of old school X-Men. Morrison's work felt to me like it was chucking that out to replace it with something that missed the essence of what I loved despite superficial similarities. I did a giant Doom Patrol binge read a couple years back where I read everything from the beginning in 1963 through the end of Morrison's run, barring maybe a handful of guest appearances. I enjoyed Morrison's run reading it that way, as one take in a tapestry. I imagine if I had been a long-time Doom Patrol at the time he started, I would've hated it. There's a real sense of warmth and family in the Silver Age stories in spite of the struggles with freakiness. Morrison's run kind of takes a crap on that with its treatment of Chief. Although if I recall correctly, there were some bits suggesting the Chief is a little off in Kupperberg's run.
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Post by berkley on Jul 24, 2024 0:52:22 GMT -5
I would say that being weird just for the sake of being weird is the one criticism that it's unfair - or, better, simply inaccurate - to make of Morrison. What I mean by that is that I think there's a very consistent set of ideas underlying nearly all his work - including the stuff I don't like, including the Superman/Batman/JLA-worship stuff (as I see it) that especially rubs me the wrong way.
We might think those ideas are weird, or stupid, or complete bulls**t, or even boring, but for me there's no doubt that they're there and that Morrison is very concerned to keep on presenting them in fictional form - not to impress readers with how weird he can be but because the ideas themselves are important to him.
I've been both lucky and unlucky as a reader when it comes to Morrison - or perhaps both lucky and stupid, since it was my own decision in one case: I missed all his 90s stuff at the time because I was completely out of touch with everything Marvel and DC and anything that looked remotely like their product, including all the Vertigo books. I never even heard of Morrison (or Ellis or Ennis or etc) until the early 2000s when I very tentatively started looking at the CBR boards. That was unlucky - or stupid, since no one forced me to ignore or not notice all this stuff for all that time.
But I was lucky in a way because I was also completely oblivious to the whole world of fandom and especially to the personality cults that had built up around many of the most popular or notorious writers. I had no inkling of the whole world of Comics Conventions and how someone like Morrison could become a sort of performance artist as far as this very limited and specific audience went - whether live at a convention or online at one of their self-focused websites - a very unhealthy environment for both audience and performer it immediately seemed to me when I found out about all this. And I think the recent scandals that Ellis and Gaiman have been involved in are not unconnected with it.
I'm a huge Gerber fan, BTW, and totally agree that he is unjustly overlooked by the comics readership at large - as far as I can judge by what I can gather at second remove here and on the old CBR boards. And we should remind ourselves that Gerber was also often accused of the same fault - being weird for the sake of being weird - by many readers during his Marvel days.
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Post by Duragizer on Jul 24, 2024 0:53:58 GMT -5
I absolutely love surrealism and dadaism, so Morrison being weird isn't what bothers me. But I can't stand their ascended fanfiction. Perhaps it's just values dissonance (their ideal Superman and my ideal Superman couldn't be more dissimilar, for one example). Maybe I'd be better able to appreciate Morrison if they focused more on their own creations.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Jul 24, 2024 1:16:48 GMT -5
I probably overrate Morrison's run on Batman because the Batman books were so universally terrible in the 2000s before he took over and he basically saved Batman in my eyes, and then the Batman books severely declined in quality again when Scott Snyder took over from Morrison when the Nu52 reboot happened and Snyder seemed like a poor man's Morrison with his Court of Owls idea. It baffles me that the Court of Owls became such a core part of Batman lore when the original story by Snyder was not noteworthy or impressive in any way. It just had the 'DC just rebooted' hype train.
My biggest problem with Morrison is how he strips villains of all depth they previously had. He reduced Magneto to the same cartoonishly evil dufus from the 60s before Claremont created the modern Magneto and the Xavier-Magneto dynamic. He reduced the Bruce-Talia relationship to 'Talia is crazy evil and was always crazy evil and she and Bruce never loved each other' and essentially ruined Talia forever. What happened with Talia was worse because it was never retconned like what he did to Magneto was and the easy out in how Talia had been tortured to insanity by her sister not long before was completely ignored, ensuring she'd be forever treated as a 100% villain until the end of time and erasing the character who existed from the 70s until Morrison got his hands on her.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jul 24, 2024 7:17:07 GMT -5
Like I am going to lie to myself my parents only had sex twice (my sister and myself) I am also going to say the same about Morrison; Animal Man and We3.
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