Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Flex Mentallo


As a mark of consistency, Grant Morrison has no real equal in terms of superhero reconstruction.  Since his Zenith stories, Morrison has made a career with a wide variety of characters examining what superheroes are and how they got that way.  He has gone boldly metaphysical several times, and one of the more famous ones has been out of print for years, until this year, when DC finally released a deluxe edition of FLEX MENTALLO: MAN OF MUSCLE MYSTERY.

A Vertigo mini-series that spun out of Morrison’s work in DOOM PATROL, FLEX MENTALLO was originally published in 1996, the same year Morrison launched his visionary JLA.  Again and quite foolishly, I failed to understand at the time that I would one day become a devoted fan of the writer, so I didn’t read it at the time, though it quickly became legendary and I kept hearing references to it, which grew increasingly frustrating because it was so hard to find afterward.

Like his work in ANIMAL MAN or even THE FILTH, Morrison is in full metaphysical mode writing the four-issue MAN OF MUSCLE MYSTERY (and the new collected edition keeps in-step, including an essay that suggests Flex has been published since the Golden Age, when in fact he is a Morrison creation), deconstructing every objection to comic books imaginable while building up the need for superheroes.  One of the characters believes he’s overdosing on drugs throughout the story and tries to justify his obsession with the medium during an extended phone conversation, saying that it is the only thing worth talking about now.  It’s worth noting that in the essay I referenced, it’s suggested that the original (fictional) Flex Mentallo stories were created under the influence (much as 1960s pop music was, notably by the Beatles, among others), which makes Morrison’s story metatextual as well as metaphysical and metafictional (I am not trying to give you an headache).  Many people have argued that drugs are ideally a gateway to a greater understanding of reality, and Morrison writes in such a way (deliberately) to give his narrative the free-flowing feel that one might associate with tripping, so that the narrative feels like the world as seen through the lens of someone creating the story in the kind of mindset necessary to make sense of it in the first place.  (SEAGUY and JOE THE BARBARIAN are versions of this Morrison impulse in a more innocent sense; THE INVISIBLES is a world where the fringe are the mainstream.)

Maybe I’m succeeding in making sense of FLEX MENTALLO and maybe I’m not.  It’s worth reading for all the reasons one might have assumed based on its reputation, in that it’s essential reading.  If you read only one Grant Morrison vision of superheroes in our modern world, this must be it.  Morrison seems to be the only writer capable of countertextualizing everything one might expect from a superhero story, so that he not only writes it brilliantly, but subversively and insightfully, so that he isn’t shocking for the sake of shock but rather to bring all the elements to the surface, using them as necessary. 

In a way, FLEX MENTALLO is necessary to understand what Morrison is achieving when he writes Batman, or truly flexes his own ambitions in projects like SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY or FINAL NIGHT.  Flex is not a parody of Superman and Charles Atlas and Captain America, he’s what they could be if they were thrust into the deep end of their own realities.  And since writing Flex, Morrison has gotten to play with those characters in their own realities.

Now, see what I’m saying?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.