A Fanboy’s Throat-Clearing
Gratn Morrison of The Filth, Invisibles, We3 and New X-Men fame has launched a new project for DC called Seven Soldiers of Victory. The high concept is that there will be two “group” issues bookending seven four-issue miniseries, one for each hero. Johanna Draper Carlson somewhat nervously avers that the inaugural issue of The Manhattan Guardian is the first comic in the project she’s enjoyed. (We’ve previously seen Seven Soldiers #0 and Shining Knight #1.)
Nervously because, presumably, Morrison is as sacred as comics-writing cows get in the community of critics. I sometimes think that if it were revealed that Morrison had secretly written all the scripts of the despised Chuck Austen, it would prompt instant revaluations of Austen’s stories all across the internet, with The Great Curve alone offering a half-dozen different think-pieces about the glorious meta-ness of the whole prank.
But she’s right. So far there’s nothing compelling about the series, and it’s already put the lie to one of Morrison’s boldest advance claims – that each issue of the project would be a complete, satisfying tale in its own right without reference to not just the other issues in the project but even in the same miniseries. In fact, both SS0 and Sknight 1 have been almost pure setup. (If you want a single issue of a comic that tells a satisfying tale in its own right, you must get Daredevil #71, by the now widely mocked Brian Michael Bendis.)
Anyway, the question of comics creator sacred cows is interesting in general. I think the comment thread at Howling Curmudgeons about my fight scene complaint last week identifies another one: Ed Brubaker. Many people like Sleeper, so they talk themselves into imagining that his current work on Captain America is both good and a refreshing departure from what has gone before on the title. In fact, the action sequences are hard to follow and nonsensical once you follow them, and so is the characterization (terrorists afraid to die; intelligence agencies alarmed that Captain America threatened them with death). The plot hardly advances from issue to issue, and when you come down to it, in terms of tone, subject matter and design, the “relaunched” title is indistinguishable from the just-killed Marvel Knights -branded run that everyone so disliked. But the Robert Morales issues of that run were better, by some margin, than what Brubaker has given us so far.
Brubaker is dining out on the warm fan-critic glow surrounding Sleeper and a single arresting visual of the Red Skull drinking wine in his first Cap issue. There is no other there there.
POSTSCRIPT: Yes, in a Borgesian sense, it would be interesting if it turned out Grant Morrison had written all of Chuck Austen. A little.
Comment by Steve Pheley —
March 28, 2005 @ 9:39 am
While many bloggers are ordinarily happy to point out their dissenting opinions, I have a sneaking suspicion that there’s some anti-Seven Soldiers backlash waiting in the wings, which may get kicked off by your post. Morrison’s work picked up a “if you don’t like it, you just don’t *get* it” reputation somewhere down the line, and I think it’s made people a little anxious about expressing their distaste for it.
As for Brubaker — I think the impressive thing was the way the Red Skull’s death was handled (not that anybody expects him to stay that way forever, but it was taken as a mission statement of sorts) but I agree, it hasn’t really moved along much since.
(And, fanboy hat on: what’s he got against Nomad? Whine whine whine…)
Comment by Steve —
March 28, 2005 @ 11:21 am
For what it’s worth, Jim, I really liked Brubaker’s Catwoman, and Morrison’s work on the tail end of The Invisibles (if not some of his hurried, hurried, Authority-filching, and hurried JLA issues) should put to lie the idea that he can’t do hackwork like anyone else.
Comment by Steven Berg —
March 28, 2005 @ 11:46 am
I think, actually, Morrison is not at all safe from criticism. In general, his straight-up superhero books seem to get generally good response, while his non-superhero (and “weird” superhero) books gain popularity proportionately with how much comfort zone Morrison leaves for the “typical” comic-book reader (and I do mean that somewhat derogatorily). So people embrace weirdish superhero books like Flex Mentallo, Animal Man, New X-Men and Seven Soldiers #0, as well as books like We3, but work like The Filth, Seaguy, and the last several issues of The Invisibles are commonly pointed to as examples of Morrison’s imperfection, usually on grounds of his tendency to write “weirdness for weirdness’s sake.” The backlash against the “If you don’t like it, you don’t get it” school of Morrison fandom is ongoing, and it starts up every time Morrison writes another book that comic-book readers find impenetrably strange.
As for Morrison’s obviously over-optimistic claims about self-contained single-issue stories—more proof that artists are dirty liars who can’t be trusted.
Comment by J.W. Hastings —
March 28, 2005 @ 12:30 pm
Jim,
There seems to be a tendency among super-hero fans to embrace or reject a writer’s entire body of work rather than treat each book on its own merits. I’ve come across many more statements along the lines of “I hate/love Warren Ellis’s comics” than I have statements like “I think Planetary is terrific, but couldn’t get into Transmetropolitan.”
Of course, I know people who have the same unconditionally/uncritically love/hate relationship to filmmakers, novelists, and musicians, but, for some reason, it seems to be more prevalent in super-hero circles. This might be a factor of the way hype and boosterism work in the psychology of fandom.
For example, a lot of people obviously want Morrison’s Seven Soldiers to be good and these people seem to have more personally invested in it being good then, say, movie buffs had in the latest Woody Allen movie.
And I think you’re right about Brubaker’s take on Captain America, which, to me, seems kind of pointless. I thought the John Rey-Neiber issues of the MK Cap were kind of wrong-headed/misguided, but I understood the reasons behind his choices even if I didn’t agree with them. And I thought that the Morales issues were on the right track, if a little bit unfocused. But I just don’t get the interest in Brubaker’s issues. They have none of the pulpy-noir appeal of the first 20 issues or so of Catwoman.
Steve,
I have a lot of sympathy for the anti-Seaguy backlash movement because of Morrison’s dismissive attitude towards people who didn’t like the book. I remember reading an interview where he complained about super-hero fans not wanting to read anything that was unconventional. (It echoed his complaints from years ago about how no one “got” the deep symbolic meaning of Arkham Asylum). The problem is that its not just super-hero fans who balk at “impenetrably strange” stories–I know a lot of intelligent, educated, cultured film buffs who just can’t stand stuff like Mulholland Drive. It seems kind of perverse to do something like Seaguy, a book that is written in such a way that it undermines most of the normal pleasures we get from reading super-hero comics, and then complain when more people don’t respond to it.
cheers,
J.W. Hastings
Comment by Steven Berg —
March 28, 2005 @ 12:50 pm
J.W.,
I have to admit I don’t have much sympathy for people who claim not to “get” Seaguy (and, while I can’t comment on your film-buff acquaintances, I do note that there is at least a fine line between dimissing a work like Seaguy or Mulholland Drive as pretentious crap, and dismissing it as incomprehensible “weirdness for weirdness’s sake”). On the other hand, Morrison’s whining was unfortunate and presumably didn’t cause various scales to fall from the eyes of his detractors.
Comment by Gary Farber —
March 28, 2005 @ 3:53 pm
Good old Gratn; whatever happened to him?
I tend to think of Grant as as much the “*Animal Man* guy” or for *Doom Patrol*, but, then, I’m not really a comics fan, I just play one on the internets.
“…a single arresting visual of the Red Skull drinking wine in his first Cap issue….”
A single panel wouldn’t be a copyright violation for someone to post, so the rest of us could see, methinks.
Comment by J.W. Hastings —
March 28, 2005 @ 4:35 pm
I wonder though if some people who say they don’t “get” “Seaguy” mean something more like “that kind of thing doesn’t appeal to me” rather than “I can’t understand it at all.” And I wonder this mainly because this basically sums up my feelings. I understood the book, I don’t think its pretentious, and I think, for what it is, it’s well made. But though it’s weird for a reason, it’s still a very strange book, and I can easily imagine someone dropping it after the first issue.
But to get back to the original topic of the thread, I wonder if Jim’s claim that Morrison is a sacred cow and Steve’s claim that Morrison can’t be a sacred cow because people complain about his “weird” work can’t be reconciled. I think Morrison has achieved “sacred cow” status mainly among a certain segment of articulate-educated super-hero fans who happen to make up a lot of the comics bloggers.
I had the same experience the recent blog reviews of Vimanarama #1 as I did reading the reviews of Seaguy #1 (reviews I only read, incidentally, after reading the comics in question): I got the feeling that a lot of energy was being spent trying to figure them out wthout getting a sense that they were actually worth figuring out. Or rather, that because they were written by Morrison they were a priori worthy of heavy interpretation in a way that other comics–say, Bob Burden’s newish Flaming Carrot series–aren’t.
On the other hand, any kind of “sacred cow” status in an industry with a constant need for novelty is likely to be short-lived. There was a time when most super-hero fans I knew thought that John Byrne could do no wrong.
Comment by bryan —
March 28, 2005 @ 4:48 pm
well I haven’t read any comics criticism in the last couple of years so I’m really wondering… why is Bendis now widely mocked? The only thing I could see to mock him for is a tendency for all his characters to sound like the same character, although frankly this is a failing of almost all comics writers and is only noticed in the case of Bendis because the characters sometimes say something memorable beyond a single page.
Comment by Steven Berg —
March 28, 2005 @ 5:43 pm
“I wonder though if some people who say they don’t ‘get’ ‘Seaguy’ mean something more like ‘that kind of thing doesn’t appeal to me’ rather than ‘I can’t understand it at all.’”
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That is probably true of some people, yes.
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I think I overstated the case somewhat in saying that Morrison is “not at all safe from criticism.” Morrison is, deservedly or not, a sacred cow, certainly among comics bloggers. Any work by Morrison is likely to generate a lot of discussion, mostly favorable, and the inevitable backlashes/complaining are part of th sacred-cow phenomenon.
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Entirely unrelatedly: Jim, might we get a list of the specific HTML tags allowed in comments?
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 28, 2005 @ 5:56 pm
Steven, as I learn them myself I’ll try to put them out there.
Right now I can say that em is okay but i is not. Also, not a tag, but the colon can get you in trouble too, if it follows the first word in your comment. Bummer. As I get up to speed on PHP and my various modules and plugins I’ll try to update both the workings of the comment function and the information available to users.
Comment by Mike Kozlowski —
March 28, 2005 @ 8:15 pm
I don’t get the Bendis mocking, either. Of course, I don’t read monthly issues, so I’m probably like a year behind the critical consensus, and that Avengers thing really really sucked, so maybe he’s taken a sharp downward dive.
(And there was the creepy monkey sex…)
Comment by Dave Intermittent —
March 28, 2005 @ 9:52 pm
Eightball 23 is another example, imho; people assumed more substance than was actually there merely because it was Clowes. There again, if you don’t like it the standard response critical is some combination of the words virgin, fanboy, idiot,and shit-knife.
In the interest of broadening this discussion. other writers who really don’t deserve their critical status: Gaiman (excepting Sandman, which is admittedly a very big exception), Jamie Delano (though his reputation is not what it was), and Matt Fraction.
Oh, and Steven: what is the difference between “dimissing a work like Seaguy or Mulholland Drive as pretentious crap, and dismissing it as incomprehensible “weirdness for weirdness’s sake’”? In my experience much pretentious crap features weirdness for its own sake rather prominently.
Comment by Steven Berg —
March 28, 2005 @ 10:19 pm
The difference, I think, is that someone claiming the former would agree that Seaguy or Mulholland Drive is sensible and purposeful, just not good or worth reading. Someone claiming the latter would, instead, contend that Morrison or Lynch simply threw together a lot of random weird stuff with no sense of purpose or selectivity.
Comment by Avram —
March 28, 2005 @ 10:47 pm
Whereas I thought Seaguy was good and worth reading, but not sensible or purposeful.
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And I think the list of allowed HTML tags has been classified secret for reasons of national security. The mere fact of your asking has been registered on a list in a shabby little server somewhere in the W3C, and may get you (and everybody with a name similar to yours) added to the national no-google list.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 28, 2005 @ 11:04 pm
Stray responses . . .
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Steven, throwing together a lot of random weird stuff with no sense of purpose or selectivity describes the latter episodes of TWIN PEAKS pretty well. I haven’t seen Mulholland Drive, though, so I have no reason to believe that Lynch was doing the same thing in that movie.
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Dave, yup, EIGHTBALL 23 has less there there than early reactions acknowledged. I’ll take 22 or Ghost World over it in my Clowes pantheon. Ironically, it DID benefit from its superhero trappings in getting attention, as Ellis said, but not in the way he thought: EB23’s superhero critique elements spoke to the preoccupations of certain recovering fanboy critics to an extent that their personal enthusiasm controlled their critical judgment.
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Mike and Bryan, the sad thing is that Bendis has indeed gotten worse. I was never a Bendis basher. I think some of the early issues of Ultimate Spider-Man are practically flawless, and on balance, I think his Daredevil run is the second greatest on that title ever. It’s not true that all his characters talk alike, nor that they’re talking all the time. But since, approximately, the month PULSE replaced ALIAS he’s been writing more and more books on autopilot. The sole reliable exception, IMHO, is POWERS. Daredevil is still intermittently good, but he’s taken to reusing narrative tricks he’d already gotten their one valid use of. I think he’s overstretched, and substantially become the writer his critics always claimed he was.
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Steves, I had scanted the credit Brubaker earned with Catwoman. And you’re right that the Red Skull’s death in that first issue did impress a lot of people.
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JW: There seems to be a tendency among super-hero fans to embrace or reject a writer’s entire body of work rather than treat each book on its own merits.
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I think you’re right. Too bad, since some writers are good at some things and not others. Bendis really is better, frex, the closer you get to crime drama. Thus, Daredevil very good, Avengers very bad. Ellis is good when he feels like being good. Apparat? Great. Planetary? Great to good. Planetary/Batman? Superb. Planetary/JLA? Blew. Morrison has written really good superheroes (JLA, New X-Men) and very forgettable ones (JLA Classified). Jack Kirby was the perfect artist for New Gods. He could not have put across the scene between Reed Richards and Franklin-Richards-as-Galactus at the end of Earth X to save his life.
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 28, 2005 @ 11:08 pm
Gary, my scanner is burred under 11 inches of strewn paper right now. And I’m not sure where my copy of Captain America 1 (current volume) is either. I did check Google for “Red Skull”+Epting+drink but no joy.
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Did anyone else post that image to their internet web logs?
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March 29, 2005 @ 11:13 am
[...] p
Jim Henley doesn’t think that Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America is that good. Many people like Sleeper, so they talk themselves into imag [...]
Comment by Sean —
March 29, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
I just want to say what I always say, which is that Shining Knight #1 and Seven Soldiers #0 work just fine as weird stand-alone short stories with what the kids call “Hitchcock endings.” On the other hand, Guardian #1 doesn’t stand alone at all.
Comment by Sean —
March 29, 2005 @ 12:14 pm
Also, I continue to praise Morrison and Bendis because I continue to enjoy everything they do. This does not mean that I can’t see there are differences in quality between (say) the first year of Ultimate Spider-Man and the guest-star arcs of Ultimate Spider-Man over the past few months, or that while formally interesting, Bendis’s tendency to stick cliffhangers in the middle of battles, then resume them next issue in the context of flashbacks, is probably pretty frustrating for people who don’t already know everything that’s going to happen six months in advance like certain people who work for certain magazines. Morrison–well, I guess I *do* pretty much like everything he does, except for The Invisibles, which to me was just redundance since I’d already read The Illuminatus! Trilogy two or three times. But again, I think things like New X-Men and The Filth are better than things like JLA or Seaguy. I certainly acknolwedge that my biggest shortcoming as a critic is to extend the benefit of the doubt to artists who’ve impressed me in the past, even if their current output is less impressive.
Comment by dsquared —
March 29, 2005 @ 2:33 pm
Time for me to pull out the biggest and sweatiest “Old Skool” cock imaginable, and inform you all that, “back in the day”, Morrison made his reputation by writing for the short-lived “2000AD” spinoff “Crisis”. He wrote acomic strip about daily life in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. I thought it was shit. Therefore, I believe I started this backlash a clear ten years before you guys had even heard of him.
I also saw Nirvana supporting Primal Scream in 1988 and didn’t rate them.
Comment by dsquared —
March 30, 2005 @ 1:59 am
actually in retrospect I think it might have been someone else I’m thinking about.
Comment by Martin —
March 30, 2005 @ 9:46 am
I’d just like to step in and interject that I don’t recall anything promising that each issue of Seven Soldiers would be stand-alone…I know Morrison said that most of his All-Star Superman would be one-issue stories, but I think what he said about Seven Soldiers was that each miniseries would be stand-alone.
I do agree that these days the internet community is very polarized. It seems like the writers especially are either built up on a pedestal, and you are vilified if you dare to criticize them, or they are horrible and anyone who dares say otherwise is a fool. There is little middle ground.
Comment by Jim Treacher —
March 31, 2005 @ 1:58 pm
“actually in retrospect I think it might have been someone else I’m thinking about.”
Sounds like Garth Ennis.
Guardian is the first Seven Soldiers comic where I’ve been able to follow it all the way through.
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April 7, 2005 @ 1:32 am
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