Annihilator #1 (Legendary)

writer: Grant Morrison
artist: Frazer Irving

via Previews World

So, Grant Morrison.  The guy who seems to have gone completely crazy tackling Big Ideas.  Considering that he's been doing that for years means either that he's definitely crazy, or that he can't possibly be crazy.  Of course, that isn't necessarily true for his readers, too...

Morrison is part of the class of the '80s British Invasion that included Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.  Of the three, he's the only one who has failed to make a mainstream name for himself.  Either he's tackling his Big Ideas or he's merrily competing with Geoff Johns for the title of Most Iconic Writer on whatever major superhero series he happens to be working, be it JLA, Batman, or Action Comics.  His fans consider such work as We3, All Star Superman, and Animal Man to be among the best comics ever published.  He himself considers The Invisibles to be the unacknowledged source of The Matrix.  His Final Crisis was considered too esoteric by just about everyone, even his greatest admirers.

I think he's a genius.  I swear by Joe the Barbarian, personally; think The Mystery Play and Kid Eternity might be his best work, Arkham Asylum the best Batman comic from a period better known for The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns.

But even I sometimes wonder what will happen to his legacy once Morrison stops working.  Will he become too obscure for later readers to discover him anew?  Do his Big Ideas in fact consume themselves?

Then he goes and seems to try and answer that question himself, not for the first time.  That's Annihilator in a nutshell.  It's the story of a Hollywood screenwriter faced with such a task, working on a new script, trying to come up with a Big Idea and failing miserably, swallowed by all the ways he tries to inspire himself.  He has an Idea, but doesn't know where to go with it.  Then he meets his main character.

This character, Max Nomax, has decided he will tackle the ultimate challenge, beating death itself.  In a way, it's Morrison throwing down the gauntlet on his own greatest ambitions, or as Douglas Adams would have said it, the subject being nothing less than "life, the universe, and everything."

via Superhero Hype

The outlet for this effort is an upstart publisher connected to a movie studio.  Does this mean we can expect another stab at Morrison hitting the big screen?  If so, he's got to know critics and audiences don't exactly go gaga for ambition of this kind, unless it comes from someone like Christopher Nolan.  Does that even matter?  There are five more issues to see where he goes with it, see if Morrison streamlines (as in We3, Joe the Barbarian) or verges on incomprehensible (Final Crisis).  At the start, it looks like, at last, he's found a way to blend the two.  This is a very good sign indeed.

The artist on record is Frazer Irving, who's worked with Morrison before (Seven Soldiers of Victory: Klarion the Witch Boy, Batman and Robin).  He's a master of transcendent horror, humanizing the grotesque (he does a mean Joker, then).  Once again, therefore, an ideal collaborator for Morrison.

As a fan of Grant Morrison, I always love to see a new project become available (or, as in the case of Zenith, finally become available again).  Something like Annihilator is a chance to witness, once again, history in the making.  And perhaps this time, the mainstream will start paying attention.