The Four Color Media Monitor

The Cleveland Plain Dealer did a sugary article about Grant Morrison's Multiversity, and begins with the question:

Can he do it? Can Grant Morrison really make sense of the crazy DC Universe?

The simple answer is: no.

Maybe, Morrison's "Multiversity" series just started and already I'm excited. I have to take it slow because I both love and loathe Morrison's writing.

So often he starts out with these amazing stories and then suddenly everything falls apart and I'm left scratching my head. With only one issue of the eight-issue series out, "Multivesity" seems great.

Yeah, I'll bet. If you can't make a choice between liking and disliking Morrison's work, something is obviously wrong. And Morrison's work is incoherent long before it all falls down.

We have a Superman who is not only black, but the president of the United States, sort of a SuperObama.

I'm not sure when Morrison first planned this miniseries, but already it's beginning to sound like he added that part following Obama's election. If only this came from a writer with a better perspective than Morrison - maybe Len Wein or Jim Starlin - than I'd find the idea of a black Superman more impressive. But with Morrison at the helm, I can't.

The news that has come out from DC about the Multiversity is fascinating. Morrison has actually included almost every universe or concept into one cohesive map. Take a few minutes and check out the real, unseen DC Universe in this presentation. Older fans will go crazy considering all the possibilities. New readers, well, just try to keep up.

I think they're insulting the intellect of older fans, and new readers too. If they mean to say this is something older veterans will go for without determining how good or badly written the tale is, that's an awfully brainless thing to say. And the following paragraph contradicts much of the idea this is a comprehensible book:

We have Nix Uotan, the last of the Monitors, in trouble and heroes from a whole mess of parallel Earths are coming together to save the day. I like it, but as usual with Morrison's stuff, some of it makes no sense. I hope it all comes together by the end in a logical package.

Hey, I can hope can't I?

But I can't. How can this be cohesive if anything doesn't make sense? Parallel worlds should certainly make more sense than time travel.

This article also talks about Original Sin:

It seems like every week some company is promising that a comic will be a major change in a series or character. Or they say they are going to kill a character, which is a lie 99 percent of the time. (It would be 100 percent if Uncle Ben ever returns.)

Is that a wish characters would be killed? That's precisely what's gone wrong, not just with comicdom, but also with mainstream journalism: wishing for all the wrong things and acting as though we have to let go of mistakes and leave them in a shambles. Ugh.

But there have been some major books coming out recently from DC, Marvel that really do seem to live up to the hype.

First up is Marvel's "Original Sin" series, which came out making the usual promises about startling revelations etc. This time the hype was real!

How so? That the story is well written, or that, in their opinion, it kills off Uatu for good? If they're wanting the latter to happen, I find that distasteful.

The plot of the 7-issue series is that the celestial character, The Watcher, is murdered and upon his death his eyes sort of explode and reveal secrets that only he knew. And the secrets are very cool, including the truth about Nick Fury.

SPOILER ALERT

It turns out that Nick is not the nice guy he always seemed to be, he's more of a super hitman, traveling the universe killing people (and things) that need killing. It also turns out that we very rarely saw the real Nick Fury. His "life model decoys" have been living his life on Earth for him.

I don't see what's so cool about Tony Stark having even remote guilt to shoulder for Bruce Banner's transformation into the Hulk. And where have we heard that plot before that Nick's got duplicates of duplicates? This sounds as confusing as Multiversity!

SUPER SPOILER ALERT

In the offshoot book "Original Sins" No. 5 (note the plural title) we learn that the Dum Dum Dugan we've known and loved since World War II when he fought alongside Fury is actually a life model decoy who believes he's Dum Dum. The real character was killed in 1966.

Wow, that's major.

Sorry, but this is absolutely stupid and doesn't serve any purpose. Why couldn't Dugan and Nick just undergo cryogenics if they needed an explanation why they're still around since WW2?

In "Daredevil" No. 7 we learn the secret about why his mother abandoned him as a child and went into a convent.

I think the explanation here was because his mother acted violent. I'll get to more on that in a moment.

And over in the "Fantastic Four" we see that Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) did something so stupid that it's hard to believe Ben Grim (The Thing) will ever forgive him. If you're not reading writer Jim Robinson's take on the FF, you're missing some great writing. Finally, the FF have a writer worthy of their potential again, it's been a long time since I could say that.

Robinson was never worthy of the Big Two's products, and this only confirms it. This is just why nobody with a brain wants to read their books anymore, because all they care about now is causing division and dislike among their heroes and co-stars, along with other meaningless ideas. Now about that "revelation" in Daredevil, here's a review that tells something:

In part two of this story, Matt makes it to Wakanda, brilliantly rescues Maggie and the others, and heads home. During the ride back to the states, Matt finally confronts his mom about why she left, and what follows is a poignant and moving scene where Maggie confesses to postpartum depression that hit the emotional keys, and was even so prophetic regarding Robin Williams’ death as to be downright eerie. We learn that the the scene Matt received was a scene of Maggie attacking Jack Murdock and falling to the floor. This is important for one reason. Matt Murdock idolized his dad. Everything Matt is, he owes to his dad. If it were revealed that Jack was a wife beater, it would have undone Matt’s reason for living, and changed the whole dynamic of Matt’s world. So not only do we get this great tale of Matt rescuing his mom from Wakanda, we’re forced to wonder for a whole month, was Jack Murdock not the man we knew? And Mark Waid was brilliant and mindful of the character, to turn that all around.

Oh, this is tommyrot. His respect for papa is fine, but why should his mother have to be the one to take the fall here? The expansions to Matt's background by Frank Miller weren't enough? Those were a lot simpler, and better. Besides, I don't see why a writer (Mark Waid) who's taken part in a story just serving as an excuse to cause a rift between Tony and Bruce would be doing much better on Hornhead's book, and as recent stories have proven, he hasn't. Nor do I buy the claim he's using a lighter take on DD than previous writers did. By the way, why is Wakanda being depicted so negatively here?

Labels: crossoverloading, Daredevil, dc comics, Fantastic Four, golden calf of death, Hulk, Iron Man, marvel comics, misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Superman, violence