Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Grant Morrison elucidates All-Star Superman, Superman by era, and three dimensional time planes.

http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/112602239631900.htm

"Some of its basic features have even been echoed in current cosmological ideas emerging from the field of superstring research and M-Theory."   ;D

Yikes!  He does go on a bit...

Everyone seems to be a genius, doing great work, in Morrison's time-plane.  Even John Byrne.

Grant is a weird fellow, but as long as he can keep writing great Superman stories, I couldn’t care less.

I think that's a healthy attitude:  That everyone has something good to bring to the table.

You could warn a guy about all the F-bombs he drops... it kind of takes away from the stuff he says, for me.  I could never see Julie Schwartz do that in an interview!

I just think his science is pretty out there, though it may sound impressive...the cosmology of events in string theory and quantum uncertainty explains things on the subatomic level, but alternate universes that have the same characters with different motivations are probably more rare than alternate universes that diverged close to the big bang and have nothing in common with our universe...and I'm not sure where he's going with the 2-D story creating a holographic reality...does that mean that watching a play (in three dimensions) creates a different kind of hologram than looking at a book with pictures?

Grant Morrison interviews like Morissey, only without Morissey's sense of humor (and the mopiness, but that's what makes Morissey funny in an ironic way, a la "Weeping Gorilla"). Warren Ellis's interviews are inarticulate, venomous, and angry: he reads like an Irish version of Ann Coulter. Kurt Busiek interviews like a Kennedy: he's political enough to make everybody come away feeling like he agrees with them.

I do absolutely love this part:


Very classy praise for a class act like Len Wein, one of the six greatest comics writers of all time right up there with Steve Englehart, Ed Hamilton, Steve Gerber, Alan Moore, and Alan Brennert.

Everyone remembers the Englehart/Rogers DETECTIVE COMICS (and with good reason; not for nothing is it called the "definitive Batman") but one group of stories that was equally interesting was Len Wein's tales, which featured Ra's al-Ghul framing Batman for murder. To say nothing of the extraordinary "A Caper a Day Keeps the Batman Away," which features the return of Calendar Man, in a zany jewel heist crime wave, with an unpredictable ending (not as unpredictable as the ending to "The Malay Penguin," but still).

The one thing that does sincerely bother me about Grant Morrison is this entire attitude and mentality:



First...the purple prose is fruity as hell. You're not Hunter S. Thompson, Grant! "eyesight knackering tyranny of the computer screen?" Is he for real?  :o

The second thing is the idea that characters that aren't successful need to be "fixed." The truth is, you don't fix a character by totally erasing them and making a new version. You "fix" a character not by making them "cool," but by making the reader realize why they already are. If you're going to make the Guardian a black man with a black girlfriend, why bother telling a story about the Guardian AT ALL?

And I fail to see how "his" Shining Knight is in any way an improvement over the beloved character. The Guardian, divorced from the context of the Jack Kirby kid-gang, has no real reason to exist.

Though I will admit, it was very, very cool to see what Grant did with Ra-Man, bringing him back as a colossal cosmic magical being called "King Ra-Man."


This is another attitude that I don't agree with. Just because Dick Grayson started out as Robin does not necessarily mean he should remain Robin. Characters should have the right to grow and change even if it contradicts pop culture images of the characters. It's not a "flaw" that, for example, Dick Grayson is now a confident, heroic adult with his own identity, an identity he grew into gradually.

What I'm trying to say is, characters should exist independently of a frozen status quo where Dick Grayson is "always" Robin and Supergirl is "always" a bubbly, blonde teenager. This does not mean that any kind of change is automatically a good idea, but that it is noble if talented writers make an attempt to allow there to be something like progression, to let stories not be self-contained. I for one, thought it was wonderful when Steve Englehart in his GREEN LANTERN CORPS was given the choice to bring Hal Jordan back but instead he made the choice to tell stories with John Stewart.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: SCREW newbies. The comics are their own entity, with characteristics independent of versions of the characters in other media. 

It is for this reason that I am reluctant to embrace the ALL-STAR lines, and why their spirit is so misplaced: they seek to "boil a character down to their essence," but the thing is, characters don't have an essence to boil down TO: characters are the sum of their history, not a concept that fits on an index card, and if you divorce them from their history, they are no longer the same character.


Ha ha, wuss.  ;D


Despite EVERYTHING I just said about being totally against the ALL-STAR line in theory...you know, as much as I absolutely want to hate it...I do like Morrison's ALL-STAR SUPERMAN. I love the Future Supermen, Atlas and Sampson in the time go-kart, Dino-Czar and the dinosaurs at the center of the earth, Lois getting temporary powers as a birthday present, Superman rescuing a ship from the sun...it's so wonderfully whimsical that it smiles at me and I can't help but smile back.

Still, I much prefer Johns and Busiek's Superman, which is almost a compliment to Morrison, because the extraordinary talents of those two men means that even someone shorter than they is still a giant. Johns and Busiek told tales of a tough, loveable Superman and they took time to build their world.

Julian, I think you're complaining against something that isn't happening.  You state that the All-Star line seeks to "boil a character down to their essence," but that's not what Grant Morrison said.  He said that the goal is to distill "everything we like" into one package; a very different idea.

He's certainly attempting to acknowledge and incorpoate Superman's already-existing extensive history in his work:


In other words, it's intended as a continuation of the Bronze-Age Superman, but told in a new style.  Just as Superman's continuity was always tweaked and adjusted in the 50s, 60s, and 70s; Grant is continuing the character as if there had been more unseen tweaks in the 80s and 90s - totally ignoring the Iron Age/Byrne reboot.  Sure there's a Cat Grant, but this is the previously unseen "pre-Crisis" version of the character, who was introduced in unseen events of the 80s or 90s.

The reason I find All Star Superman such an incredible read is because of this continuity with the old continuities.  Lois' disbelief that Clark is Superman; the incredible cleverness of a small, super heavy key for the Fortress - these ideas work because of Superman's history.  They would not work in an index-card universe.

Grant Morrison says that, but I really don't see it. It reminds me of any given magazine interview with Spike Lee: he mentions all this subtext in his flicks, and my reaction is, "whoa, whoa, whoa, where was THIS in the movie?"

For every interview with Grant where he says something like that, there are other interviews with other people where they give the "goal" and "chief source of appeal" of the ALL-STAR line being that they restore characters to a classic status quo.

The thing is, Grant worked very hard in ALL-STAR to give the All-Star Superman a definite, distinct identity that belongs to that book alone.

(For the most part, I find what he's come up with fascinating.)

This does not necessarily mean that ALL-STAR Superman is his own thing apart from the Pre-Crisis Mythos...but that claims that ASS Superman is "a continuation of classic Superman" have to be examined more critically. There's a literal continuation...and then there's a continuation in spirit as well: some may say Busiek's ARROWSMITH, about a boy that grows to be a man/hero with help from a heroic older mentor, is a continuation in spirit of TERRY AND THE PIRATES, but ARROWSMITH is not literally a "continuation" of TERRY AND THE PIRATES (the most obvious reason being that Arrowsmith is set some time before T and the P happened).

Now, compare ALL-STAR to, for instance, Johns and Busiek's SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS, which explicitly built on what was going on with One Year Later and INFINITE CRISIS (with Supergirl as defender of Metropolis and Superman depowered, Lex a crook as a result of his plan in 52 falling through, etc).

The events that Grant Morrison chooses to build up and elaborate on, are events that Grant HIMSELF placed in the background of All-Star Superman: clearly Dino-Czar and Superman have met before; Samson wasn't a time traveller last time we saw him, and the significance of Leo Quintum and the Project is based on developments we the reader didn't see.

You are right in the case of the Fortress Key, which was interesting, however, there are other details that suggest also that this is NOT a literal continuation from Pre-C Supes: for instance, Steve Lombard shows up in the first issue with all his "classic" macho swagger, when in fact in the late eighties he had been humbled and become much less of a jerk.

Most likely it isn't the case that Grant Morrison is EITHER scrapping the Pre-Crisis universe and building his own thng, OR that he is continuing it directly, but rather, he is using what he wants (the Fortress Key) and ignoring what he doesn't want (Steve Lombard mellowing out, Lois Lane no longer being interested in Superman).

You are of course, correct that this approach isn't entirely the same as making a clean break, but it is also true that "cherry picking" continuity like this isn't the same as a continuation, either.

And it is also true that this approach is used to give characters their classic status quo. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but I do have a problem with this attitude because characters are the result of a process. In ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, Lois wants to be Superman's girlfriend, and Superman feels the same...which is their "classic" arrangement. Jimmy Olsen is a teenager instead of being the young adult "Mr. Action" he later was. Steve Lombard is back to being a jerky guy.

That's where my problem comes in: the idea that characters can progress (e.g. Dick Grayson being an adult and the leader of a team) is somehow inconvenient.

Seems like lots of things could be inconvenient...

Luthor progresses from an overweight guy who teams up with the Prankster and the Toyman in the 50s, and becomes a more fit  and deadly villian in the 60s.

Amalak is a simple space pirate with a lot of technology, suddenly, he is a revenged crazed maniac...

Lois can be obsessed with romance and fuming over Lana in one issue, an smart allie for Superman later.

Superman has almost 20 years of Earth 1 adventures and then suddenly the Guardians are concerned about him impeding mankind...

Why does all the progression have to take place "on screen" (i.e. in the comics), especially given the long lapse between All Star and the Bronze Age...

Seems to me that writers pick and choose all the time...but then I like continuity, but am not that a complete stickler for it.

And I'm never sure how old the "oldest" Jimmy Olsen ever is or if Steve Lombard can't go back to being a blowhard.

There is a passage in "Mongo, Adventures in Trash" by Ted Botha where he recounts seeing an antique end table in the trash next to the box for its IKEA replacement. The history and craftsmanship that went into the original can't be touched by the replacement.

The Morrison Superman reconnects with the history and craftsmanship of all those old Superman stories and extends it gracefully. The "index card" revamp is just like that empty IKEA box.

Hmm.

I think his cosmic theory made more sense to me than his take on the All Star line. In the same breath he talks about it being versions that everybody on the street would know to that it's mainly about letting star creators run wild. Which is it? Seems like DC itself can't decide either.

I mean not to slight All-Star Superman, I'm liking it but I kinda doubt that the Unknown Superman of 4500 AD is imprinted on the mass consciousness. Or that Jimmy Olsen is any kind of man of action. I would think for that goal you would want something of a more straight-foward take on Superman, maybe along the lines of the animated series rather than a Silver Age continuation. Granted not every idea in that series is stuff everybody on the street is aware of either. But I think it's a bit more accessible in comparrison.

Then again, it's easier to explain some of the Silver Age stuff than it is trying to tell someone why Supergirl isn't Superman's cousin but a shapeshifting-goo clone of Lana Lang from a "pocket" dimension.

I also surely doubt that the idea of Batman treating Robin like spit and making him eat rats is something that would make sense to a general audience either. But of course to a Frank Miller audience that's par for the course and why they love him.  ::)