Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Multiversity #1 (DC)

writer: Grant Morrison
artist: Ivan Reis
via DC Comics
Grant Morrison is going supersized again.  The Multiversity is a project he's been teasing and talking about for years, and his fans have been salivating for exactly as long.  Not that it hasn't been kind of obvious for all that time, but as it turns out, now that it's here and two issues have been released, it's kind of a mix between Seven Soldiers of Victory and The Return of Bruce Wayne.

But to be more accurate, it may actually be his bid to make good with Final Crisis.

Even Morrison's biggest fans have had a hard time with Final Crisis, an event that seemed to go in a thousand different directions at the same time without a great deal of coherence to it.  I personally never had a problem with it, but I'm sure that someone like Morrison would've found that to be a considerable problem for his legacy, a project he and DC were certain about being a surefire success instead becoming a critical nightmare.

As a creator Morrison has always been interested in embracing the total experience.  Famously, he broke the fourth wall in Animal Man, which in some ways still dominates his legacy.  Whenever he's done anything remotely like that again, it could then be argued that he was just repeating himself.  But what's he really been doing?  Pushing, always pushing forward.

A lot like Geoff Johns, the other DC mainstay of the modern era, Morrison loves to look at the history of a character or property, and instead of seeing problems sees opportunities.  Where Alan Moore and Frank Miller famously sought to introduce "realism" to superheroes, Morrison has sought to comprehend and therefore translate what it would mean for superheroes to exist in the worlds they've inhabited in their own context.  (Context, after all, is always king.  With apologies to Jack Kirby.)

The problem, if in fact there was a problem, with Final Crisis was that Morrison in fact was overly ambitious.  He tried to tie a bow around the whole DC experience, when in reality he ended up with a knot.

The Multiversity is Morrison undoing that knot.

It features, in this kickoff issue, one of Final Crisis's key figures, the Monitor known as Nix Uotan, who in that story was banished from among his brethren to the "real world."  Consider this a depiction of where he ended up.  Central to at least Superman's experience in Final Crisis was the unique DC storytelling element known today as the multiverse, where alternate realities sometimes explain how characters who used to be published by other companies suddenly exist in DC proper, or where problems of current continuity are resolved (such as the current series Earth 2, which revived the Justice Society).

As it was with the New Gods for a few years, the multiverse in its totality may be something only Morrison can approach and present in such a way that it stands a chance of being taken seriously.  It's one thing to have a standalone story take place in an alternate reality (one of the enduring examples of the abandoned Elseworlds brand is Superman: Red Son, which imagines, well, a Soviet Superman, although Morrison himself probably wouldn't like that example, since it was written by Mark Millar; he and Morrison were once good friends, but they aren't anymore), another to have them all running around at the same time.  A recipe for disaster.

Not for Morrison.  That's why he's taking the Seven Soldiers/Return of Bruce Wayne approach, but with a twist.  Each issue will feature a different alternate reality, but the interconnectedness of it is that it's all a mission to rescue Nix Uotan.

There are what might be considered meta tricks involved.  So what?  This is unabashedly Morrison's love letter to comic book geeks.  Perhaps that's all you really need to know.  It sounds complicated, but it's really just an excuse for him to let loose (hence Captain Carrot), and suitably, it's something of a fanfare for his current run with DC (he's been absent, actually, since Batman Incorporated and his Action Comics run wrapped up, which made the wait for this that much more interesting and all the more rewarding when it was finally announced to schedule, and of course now that it's finally in print).

For me, perhaps the most interesting thing about the debut issue is the appearance of Bloodwynd.
via The Escapist.  That dude in white is Bloodwynd
In his nonfiction book on superheroes, Supergods, Morrison thoroughly dismissed Bloodwynd as perhaps the prototypical DC version of the forgettable, laughable '90s comics image.  To see him in a Grant Morrison comic, then, is not only surprising, it may be the biggest turnaround in pop culture history (a slight exaggeration).  I happen to love Bloodwynd.  He was intriguing for all the right reasons, and perhaps disappeared at exactly the right moment, leaving his best moments still in his fans' imaginations.

Aside from that, the other character I loved seeing again was President Superman, who first appeared in Final Crisis and was also memorably the featured character in Action Comics #9:
via DC Wikia
I loved that issue, and at the time thought it might be a tease for Multiversity.  Turns out I nailed it.

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