Beyond The Panels #4- I Know I Said Three Team Books, But We're Gonna Talk About FOUR, But First, I'm Gona Bitch About Marvel Spoiling Their Own Shit
So, as the title says, we're gonna go into something pressing before we get to the main subject of the blog- Marvel has spoiled the ending of Secret Empire to the New York Times. There's at least a paragraph or two to unpack here, so let's do that, shall we?
Secret Empire #10 comes out tomorrow. Yesterday, Marvel told the ending to the New York Times and that is basically spitting in the face of all of us that have been reading Secret Empire and the fans of Marvel Comics in general. See, for five months now, I've been paying between $3.99 and $4.99 every two weeks for this book. It hasn't always been great. In fact, it's only been in the last few issues that have really picked up and made it worthwhile. Still, Marvel has been milking it- adding issues and pages to certain issues. Let's be real for a moment- I'm pretty sure this is an editorial thing, because Secret Empire sells and Marvel on the sales front has been playing catch up or inflating sales numbers artificially. And you know what? From an editorial standpoint, I sort of get why Marvel did this. See, this Hydra Cap business was actual news in the outside world, so the ending of it would be, too. I'm not mad about the ending being spoiled, because I figured this was how the ending would go. There's no other way Marvel would allow it to go. What bothers me is what it says about Marvel and how they feel about us, their comic fans.
Marvel is in a weird place right now- fans are pretty angry at them, in a way they haven't been any time that I've been paying attention to comics. They aren't the undisputed sales leader. There have been a lot of high profile defections and no one is excited for their upcoming Legacy initiative. So, now, they're turning outside the comic world and hoping to bait some new fans or movie fans with this news of the ending of Secret Empire. Fuck us, you know, the people who have actually been buying and complaining about the book when it's been bad (and it has been bad) and praising it when it's been good (and it has been good). Marvel is trying to do something it's consistently failed at since the movies got popular- get those fair weather movie fans through the doors of comic stores. It's gotten even more blatant since the Disney take over, too. Disney is a big fan of corporate synergy, but they don't understand how the comic audience works. They don't understand that what they've just done is piss us off more. They don't understand that people who like movies aren't going to read comics. Disney doesn't understand and they're ruining Marvel. Now, that said, I'm not against reaching out for new readers. New blood is good. There are ways to do it that don't spoil the five fucking dollar comic I'm going to buy tomorrow. There are ways to do it that don't make me feel like they don't care about me. Seriously, Marvel, if you weren't still publishing X-Men books with a Logan in them, I wouldn't read any of your shit anymore. (One day, I'm gonna do a whole post about Disney and Marvel and why it's horrible)
Okay, on to the main show.
So, last week, I told you we would be talking about three greatest superhero team books, but in the opening title, I said something about four. Well, the fourth one isn't a superhero book, per say, although there are people with powers in it. And magic. And interdimensional aliens. And sex. Let's get it on, shall we?
Team books are probably my favorite kind of comics. Sure, I like a good issue of Wolverine or The Sandman or Batman or something, but team books give you a bunch of characters, a bunch of action and character work, and all kinds of cool threats greater than a single hero can fight. As I've said, the first book I loved was X-Men, so team books have a special place in my heart. Once you've seen the X-Men throw down with Magneto and the Acolytes in the ruins of Genosha drawn by Jim Lee and written by Chris Claremont, you kind of see the glory of team books and how they give you more than a single superhero book usually can. Some of the highlights of the industry have been team books. Because I'm a comic fan, I have favorites and my three favorite team books go like this, in this order:
1. Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison and Richard Case
2. New X-Men by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, Ethan Van Sciver, Igor Kordey, John Paul Leon, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo, and Marc Silvestri
3. JLA by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter
Notice something there? Grant Morrison, who I've brought up in each of these blogs, has written all three of my favorite team books. Grant Morrison is my favorite comic writer and there's a big reason for that- he has the greatest imagination in industry today. If I had to compare him to anyone, it would be Jack Kirby. They are both titanic minds of fiction, bursting forth with ideas and magic that inflames the senses. A Morrison book takes you all kinds of places. Sometimes, they're super convoluted and out there, but there's always something interesting happening. Morrison tells Silver Age superhero stories on acid. Morrison tells Modern Age stories from the future. His stuff has to be read to be believed.
First, we're gonna talk about JLA.
To understand Morrison's JLA book, you have to understand what had happened in the Justice League books post-Crisis (Editor's note- I'm assuming you know what post-Crisis means, but if you don't here's a very condensed version of events- Crisis On Infinite Earths was a 1985 12 issues series that streamlined DC's convoluted multiple Earth based continuity; post-Crisis continuity lasted from 1986 to 2011, when Flashpoint ended it and began the New 52) DCU. So, in pre-Crisis continuity, the Justice League of America was DC's biggest heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter) along with solid B-listers (Hawkman, the Atom, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna, and many others) teaming together to fight the biggest threats in the Multiverse. Post-Crisis, this changed. J.M DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, and Kevin Maguire relaunched the book after the Legends crossover, changing the title to Justice League and populating the book with second stringers- Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Elongated Man, and others. I'm not going to lie- it's great stuff. It balances superhero action and humor in an amazing way. However, it set a bad precedent.
As time went on, DC kept the Justice League as a team of second stringers, which kind of ruined the whole concept. Sure, some of the big guns would be around, but the majority of the team were all characters that were B or C-listers. Things got worse and worse and eventually, the Justice League was almost dead.
Then Grant Morrison came along and said, "Hey, why don't we bring back the Big Seven and just tell kick ass superhero stories again?"
It's so simple that it's almost insulting that no one thought of it before or that DC didn't find a team to do it. Maybe it was just one of those things where other people's pitches weren't as good as Morrison's. Regardless, Morrison reinvigorated the concept of the Justice League by going back to basics and setting the new precedent for superhero team books, which was also a return to basics- the superteam as the pantheon of gods battling the threats no one could face alone. JLA is all action, all the time, but Morrison makes sure to keep the characters in there. Sure all of the main members of the League have their own books, except for Martian Manhunter, but Morrison had such a grasp on the personalities of the characters that even if you at the time you weren't reading any of their books, you still got a good grasp of who the characters were. It's because of Morrison's JLA that I fell in love with Wally West, the concept of the Green Lanterns, and the Martian Manhunter. It's because of this book that I got into the New Gods. It served as a corridor for me into the greater mythos of the DCU and was the beginning of my love of DC (well, this and Kingdom Come, which we'll one day talk about). I don't think it will do the same to you now a days- things have changed and today's DCU isn't the DCU of the 90s. That said, it's still an amazing superhero book and one of the highlights of team books.
New X-Men is my pick for the second best team book. If I'm being honest, it's also the book that really got me into Morrison. I loved JLA, but it didn't really make me search out his other work. New X-Men did because it's so different. The thing about the X-Men is that mutants are the next evolution of humanity, but they've never really felt like the future, just more of the same. Morrison took the whole next evolution of humanity thing and went into overdrive with it- we get mentions of mutant music, mutant fashion, and mutant culture. Human kids start appropriating mutant stuff. A group called the U-Men start vivisecting mutants and grafting mutant parts to them to get powers. You actually felt like mutants were the coming thing and speaking as a long time X-Men reader, I had never felt that way before. Sure, I had been told that over and over, but it was never a real thing that I was shown. New X-Men showed it to me and what it could look like.
That said, Morrison also did a lot of classic X-Men stuff in his run- the Shi'Ar were there. The Phoenix was there. The Weapon X Program (which we found out was actually the Weapon Plus Program) were there. Magneto showed up. All of it was just subtly different, though, than it ever had been. Morrison took the X-Men mythos and expanded it to the Nth degree, making it classic and modern at the same time. To say that I think it's the best X-Men run is an understatement. Morrison captures all the characters and moments and themes of the X-Men so well, while also changing a lot of stuff. He introduced so many amazing new characters (Fantomex, Cassandra Nova, Glob Herman, No-Girl, Beak, Angel, Martha Johanson, and Quentin Quire). He made Emma Frost into a force in the X-Men universe (for better and for worse) and killed Jean Grey off for the final time (as a huge Jean Grey fan, I'm okay with this because Morrison did it in such a cool way with the required gravitas). He actually made Cyclops into an interesting character. He changed Beast in a lion man. Wolverine was there and awesome.
It was because of this book that I went out and embraced Morrison's work. Maybe it was seeing what Morrison could do with my favorite characters with his imagination that made into a Morrison super fan, but I haven't looked back since. And it led me to the greatest team book of all time.
Doom Patrol is a weird comic with a weird pedigree. Professor Niles Caulder brought together a team of superpowered freaks to fight the strangest menaces- Robotman was Cliff Steele, a race car driver whose brain was put in a robot body after a horrific accident. Negative Man was Larry Trainor, an astronaut who bonded with an entity from Negative Space. Elastic Lass was Rita Farr, an actress who got the power to stretch and grow. The battled the Brotherhood of Evil and Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man and a load of others.
The book kept getting brought back and one day, Grant Morrison got it. For years after the original run of the book, DC had made it into a straight superhero book, but the book never felt right, so Morrison brought it back to it's crazy roots. Professor Caulder, Robotman, and Joshua Clay (a member of one of the more superhero Doom Patrol teams) brought together a new version of the team. Negative Man returned, but was no longer just Larry Trainor or a man- the Negative Entity merged Larry and a doctor from the hospital he was in, Eleanor Poole, into a new hermaphroditic entity called Rebus. Robotman found Kay Challis, a woman with multiple personalities stemming from years of sexual abuse called Crazy Jane- each of her personalities had a different superpower. Dorothy Spinner was a young girl with the abilities to make the things in her mind real.
And then crazy shit ensued.
It's hard to describe the goings on of the book, but the best way I can describe is like this- crazy art anarchy. Superhero horror magic. Serious light hearted deconstruction. Perfectly ordered chaos. For fuck's sake, the team's headquarter was Danny the Street, a sentient trans street that could appear anywhere, later in book. A guy named Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery, hung out with the team. He had mastered his muscles to such an extent he could manipulate energy and matter with his flexing skills. They fought the Brotherhood of Dada instead of the Brotherhood of Evil, which had members like The Quiz, who had every power you hadn't thought of.... until you thought of them. Or Sleepwalk, who had massive super strength when he was asleep. Or Agent !, whose power was that he came as no surprise, so people wouldn't notice him or people with him when they attacked. Or their leader, Mr. Nobody, who looks like a black shadow and can sap the sanity from those around him. The also fought the Telephone Avatar (a mystical being that lived under the Pentagon), the Beard Hunter (who came after Niles Caulder because of his amazing beard), and the Shadowy Mr Evans (a dude with a fetal baby floating above him him whose appearance plunges the world into a massive dream of libido and lust).
Like, I said, crazy shit.
It's not the crazy shit, though, that makes this the best team book ever, although it helps. Nothing about the book is run of the mill. It takes the psychedelic chaos of the 60s Doom Patrol and just piles on more and more weird stuff, not just for the sake of being weird, but because it works. All of the weird shit makes sense. You're reading the book, marveling at it, but everything is explained. Everything is payed off. On top of all that, the character work is top notch. The members of the team are fleshed out and three dimensional. Morrison cares about each one and gives them each something to do, each a moment to shine. None of these characters have their own books. This is their book, the place where their stories are told and a lesser writer would drown the whole thing in crazy, losing sight of the characters and who they are, but Morrison never does that. That said, you can tell who his favorites are- Robotman, Crazy Jane, and Rebus all get the most spotlight, but they are also the most interesting and sort of deserve it- Robotman is an everyman trapped in an extraordinary situation. He brings heart and bluster and a "what the fuck is going on?!" attitude to the whole thing. Crazy Jane snaps between personalities and it takes us time to get her whole backstory- it unfolds throughout Morrison's run and is heartbreaking, devastating, and, in the end, uplifting. She's the wild card in more ways than one and it shows throughout the book. Rebus is the ascended being, a complete enigma, sometimes sinister, but always there with a zen attitude about the insanity.
All of this brings me to the fourth team book I wanted to talk about- Grant Morrison's magnum opus: The Invisibles. Here's the basics- The Invisibles stars a cell of The Invisibles, a group of magic anarchists who are fighting the Outer Church, a group of interdimensional aliens from a universe of pure, horrible order, who secretly control the world. It's fucking mental. There's magic, guns, martial arts, sex, drugs, clubbing, fashion, and conspiracies. It's the the 90s in microcosm in the best possible way. It has the greatest trans character ever in it- Lord Fanny, a Brazilian ex-prostitute witch. It has the next incarnation of the Buddha, Jack Frost, a foul mouthed teenager from Liverpool. There's Ragged Robin, a psychic from the future. Boy, an ex-NYC cop hardass who is the most normal person in the book, fighting the Outer Church for her own reason. Last, but not least, King Mob, a British writer martial arts assassin (who is also a Grant Morrison stand in- a bald dude who looks, speaks, and dresses just like him). They are later joined by Jolly Roger, a lesbian assassin who trained along with King Mob. Much like Doom Patrol, there's crazy shit going on everywhere in this book, but it's also character based to a ridiculous extent. We get backstories for every character (and for a lot of the secondary characters... and there are a lot of them introduced over the run of the series). Morrison cares about the characters and everything so much and it shows on every page.
Morrison excels at this sort of thing. He gets the way to balance to action, character building, plot, and crazy shit so that none of it feels like it's more important than the rest. His team books are perfect. That's the best way to describe them. Perfect. I can't really say anything else about them. They're perfect.
I don't know if I sold any of these very well. I didn't want to get into too much detail with any of it, get too spoilery, because I want you to read them. I want you to experience these stories like I did, without knowing everything going in. I want you to enjoy them like I did and do, and see all the magic within. Maybe these books will make you love Morrison like I do. I hope so, because there's so much amazing shit in his ouevre.
If you can ever find the one shot, Kill Your Boyfriend, buy that shit.
Well, that's all for this issue of....
Beyond The Panels!!!!!
Next Issue: I love Wolverine. We're going to talk about him. Maybe you should stop by and read it. Maybe you should tell your friend about it. Maybe you should friend me on Facebook. Maybe I'll get a Twitter and find new fans and stop caring about you people. Maybe I'll get famous. Maybe this is the last sentence. Maybe this one is. This one definitely is.
Secret Empire #10 comes out tomorrow. Yesterday, Marvel told the ending to the New York Times and that is basically spitting in the face of all of us that have been reading Secret Empire and the fans of Marvel Comics in general. See, for five months now, I've been paying between $3.99 and $4.99 every two weeks for this book. It hasn't always been great. In fact, it's only been in the last few issues that have really picked up and made it worthwhile. Still, Marvel has been milking it- adding issues and pages to certain issues. Let's be real for a moment- I'm pretty sure this is an editorial thing, because Secret Empire sells and Marvel on the sales front has been playing catch up or inflating sales numbers artificially. And you know what? From an editorial standpoint, I sort of get why Marvel did this. See, this Hydra Cap business was actual news in the outside world, so the ending of it would be, too. I'm not mad about the ending being spoiled, because I figured this was how the ending would go. There's no other way Marvel would allow it to go. What bothers me is what it says about Marvel and how they feel about us, their comic fans.
Marvel is in a weird place right now- fans are pretty angry at them, in a way they haven't been any time that I've been paying attention to comics. They aren't the undisputed sales leader. There have been a lot of high profile defections and no one is excited for their upcoming Legacy initiative. So, now, they're turning outside the comic world and hoping to bait some new fans or movie fans with this news of the ending of Secret Empire. Fuck us, you know, the people who have actually been buying and complaining about the book when it's been bad (and it has been bad) and praising it when it's been good (and it has been good). Marvel is trying to do something it's consistently failed at since the movies got popular- get those fair weather movie fans through the doors of comic stores. It's gotten even more blatant since the Disney take over, too. Disney is a big fan of corporate synergy, but they don't understand how the comic audience works. They don't understand that what they've just done is piss us off more. They don't understand that people who like movies aren't going to read comics. Disney doesn't understand and they're ruining Marvel. Now, that said, I'm not against reaching out for new readers. New blood is good. There are ways to do it that don't spoil the five fucking dollar comic I'm going to buy tomorrow. There are ways to do it that don't make me feel like they don't care about me. Seriously, Marvel, if you weren't still publishing X-Men books with a Logan in them, I wouldn't read any of your shit anymore. (One day, I'm gonna do a whole post about Disney and Marvel and why it's horrible)
Okay, on to the main show.
So, last week, I told you we would be talking about three greatest superhero team books, but in the opening title, I said something about four. Well, the fourth one isn't a superhero book, per say, although there are people with powers in it. And magic. And interdimensional aliens. And sex. Let's get it on, shall we?
Team books are probably my favorite kind of comics. Sure, I like a good issue of Wolverine or The Sandman or Batman or something, but team books give you a bunch of characters, a bunch of action and character work, and all kinds of cool threats greater than a single hero can fight. As I've said, the first book I loved was X-Men, so team books have a special place in my heart. Once you've seen the X-Men throw down with Magneto and the Acolytes in the ruins of Genosha drawn by Jim Lee and written by Chris Claremont, you kind of see the glory of team books and how they give you more than a single superhero book usually can. Some of the highlights of the industry have been team books. Because I'm a comic fan, I have favorites and my three favorite team books go like this, in this order:
1. Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison and Richard Case
2. New X-Men by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, Ethan Van Sciver, Igor Kordey, John Paul Leon, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo, and Marc Silvestri
3. JLA by Grant Morrison and Howard Porter
Notice something there? Grant Morrison, who I've brought up in each of these blogs, has written all three of my favorite team books. Grant Morrison is my favorite comic writer and there's a big reason for that- he has the greatest imagination in industry today. If I had to compare him to anyone, it would be Jack Kirby. They are both titanic minds of fiction, bursting forth with ideas and magic that inflames the senses. A Morrison book takes you all kinds of places. Sometimes, they're super convoluted and out there, but there's always something interesting happening. Morrison tells Silver Age superhero stories on acid. Morrison tells Modern Age stories from the future. His stuff has to be read to be believed.
First, we're gonna talk about JLA.
To understand Morrison's JLA book, you have to understand what had happened in the Justice League books post-Crisis (Editor's note- I'm assuming you know what post-Crisis means, but if you don't here's a very condensed version of events- Crisis On Infinite Earths was a 1985 12 issues series that streamlined DC's convoluted multiple Earth based continuity; post-Crisis continuity lasted from 1986 to 2011, when Flashpoint ended it and began the New 52) DCU. So, in pre-Crisis continuity, the Justice League of America was DC's biggest heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter) along with solid B-listers (Hawkman, the Atom, Green Arrow, Black Canary, Zatanna, and many others) teaming together to fight the biggest threats in the Multiverse. Post-Crisis, this changed. J.M DeMatteis, Keith Giffen, and Kevin Maguire relaunched the book after the Legends crossover, changing the title to Justice League and populating the book with second stringers- Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Elongated Man, and others. I'm not going to lie- it's great stuff. It balances superhero action and humor in an amazing way. However, it set a bad precedent.
As time went on, DC kept the Justice League as a team of second stringers, which kind of ruined the whole concept. Sure, some of the big guns would be around, but the majority of the team were all characters that were B or C-listers. Things got worse and worse and eventually, the Justice League was almost dead.
Then Grant Morrison came along and said, "Hey, why don't we bring back the Big Seven and just tell kick ass superhero stories again?"
It's so simple that it's almost insulting that no one thought of it before or that DC didn't find a team to do it. Maybe it was just one of those things where other people's pitches weren't as good as Morrison's. Regardless, Morrison reinvigorated the concept of the Justice League by going back to basics and setting the new precedent for superhero team books, which was also a return to basics- the superteam as the pantheon of gods battling the threats no one could face alone. JLA is all action, all the time, but Morrison makes sure to keep the characters in there. Sure all of the main members of the League have their own books, except for Martian Manhunter, but Morrison had such a grasp on the personalities of the characters that even if you at the time you weren't reading any of their books, you still got a good grasp of who the characters were. It's because of Morrison's JLA that I fell in love with Wally West, the concept of the Green Lanterns, and the Martian Manhunter. It's because of this book that I got into the New Gods. It served as a corridor for me into the greater mythos of the DCU and was the beginning of my love of DC (well, this and Kingdom Come, which we'll one day talk about). I don't think it will do the same to you now a days- things have changed and today's DCU isn't the DCU of the 90s. That said, it's still an amazing superhero book and one of the highlights of team books.
New X-Men is my pick for the second best team book. If I'm being honest, it's also the book that really got me into Morrison. I loved JLA, but it didn't really make me search out his other work. New X-Men did because it's so different. The thing about the X-Men is that mutants are the next evolution of humanity, but they've never really felt like the future, just more of the same. Morrison took the whole next evolution of humanity thing and went into overdrive with it- we get mentions of mutant music, mutant fashion, and mutant culture. Human kids start appropriating mutant stuff. A group called the U-Men start vivisecting mutants and grafting mutant parts to them to get powers. You actually felt like mutants were the coming thing and speaking as a long time X-Men reader, I had never felt that way before. Sure, I had been told that over and over, but it was never a real thing that I was shown. New X-Men showed it to me and what it could look like.
That said, Morrison also did a lot of classic X-Men stuff in his run- the Shi'Ar were there. The Phoenix was there. The Weapon X Program (which we found out was actually the Weapon Plus Program) were there. Magneto showed up. All of it was just subtly different, though, than it ever had been. Morrison took the X-Men mythos and expanded it to the Nth degree, making it classic and modern at the same time. To say that I think it's the best X-Men run is an understatement. Morrison captures all the characters and moments and themes of the X-Men so well, while also changing a lot of stuff. He introduced so many amazing new characters (Fantomex, Cassandra Nova, Glob Herman, No-Girl, Beak, Angel, Martha Johanson, and Quentin Quire). He made Emma Frost into a force in the X-Men universe (for better and for worse) and killed Jean Grey off for the final time (as a huge Jean Grey fan, I'm okay with this because Morrison did it in such a cool way with the required gravitas). He actually made Cyclops into an interesting character. He changed Beast in a lion man. Wolverine was there and awesome.
It was because of this book that I went out and embraced Morrison's work. Maybe it was seeing what Morrison could do with my favorite characters with his imagination that made into a Morrison super fan, but I haven't looked back since. And it led me to the greatest team book of all time.
Doom Patrol is a weird comic with a weird pedigree. Professor Niles Caulder brought together a team of superpowered freaks to fight the strangest menaces- Robotman was Cliff Steele, a race car driver whose brain was put in a robot body after a horrific accident. Negative Man was Larry Trainor, an astronaut who bonded with an entity from Negative Space. Elastic Lass was Rita Farr, an actress who got the power to stretch and grow. The battled the Brotherhood of Evil and Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man and a load of others.
The book kept getting brought back and one day, Grant Morrison got it. For years after the original run of the book, DC had made it into a straight superhero book, but the book never felt right, so Morrison brought it back to it's crazy roots. Professor Caulder, Robotman, and Joshua Clay (a member of one of the more superhero Doom Patrol teams) brought together a new version of the team. Negative Man returned, but was no longer just Larry Trainor or a man- the Negative Entity merged Larry and a doctor from the hospital he was in, Eleanor Poole, into a new hermaphroditic entity called Rebus. Robotman found Kay Challis, a woman with multiple personalities stemming from years of sexual abuse called Crazy Jane- each of her personalities had a different superpower. Dorothy Spinner was a young girl with the abilities to make the things in her mind real.
And then crazy shit ensued.
It's hard to describe the goings on of the book, but the best way I can describe is like this- crazy art anarchy. Superhero horror magic. Serious light hearted deconstruction. Perfectly ordered chaos. For fuck's sake, the team's headquarter was Danny the Street, a sentient trans street that could appear anywhere, later in book. A guy named Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery, hung out with the team. He had mastered his muscles to such an extent he could manipulate energy and matter with his flexing skills. They fought the Brotherhood of Dada instead of the Brotherhood of Evil, which had members like The Quiz, who had every power you hadn't thought of.... until you thought of them. Or Sleepwalk, who had massive super strength when he was asleep. Or Agent !, whose power was that he came as no surprise, so people wouldn't notice him or people with him when they attacked. Or their leader, Mr. Nobody, who looks like a black shadow and can sap the sanity from those around him. The also fought the Telephone Avatar (a mystical being that lived under the Pentagon), the Beard Hunter (who came after Niles Caulder because of his amazing beard), and the Shadowy Mr Evans (a dude with a fetal baby floating above him him whose appearance plunges the world into a massive dream of libido and lust).
Like, I said, crazy shit.
It's not the crazy shit, though, that makes this the best team book ever, although it helps. Nothing about the book is run of the mill. It takes the psychedelic chaos of the 60s Doom Patrol and just piles on more and more weird stuff, not just for the sake of being weird, but because it works. All of the weird shit makes sense. You're reading the book, marveling at it, but everything is explained. Everything is payed off. On top of all that, the character work is top notch. The members of the team are fleshed out and three dimensional. Morrison cares about each one and gives them each something to do, each a moment to shine. None of these characters have their own books. This is their book, the place where their stories are told and a lesser writer would drown the whole thing in crazy, losing sight of the characters and who they are, but Morrison never does that. That said, you can tell who his favorites are- Robotman, Crazy Jane, and Rebus all get the most spotlight, but they are also the most interesting and sort of deserve it- Robotman is an everyman trapped in an extraordinary situation. He brings heart and bluster and a "what the fuck is going on?!" attitude to the whole thing. Crazy Jane snaps between personalities and it takes us time to get her whole backstory- it unfolds throughout Morrison's run and is heartbreaking, devastating, and, in the end, uplifting. She's the wild card in more ways than one and it shows throughout the book. Rebus is the ascended being, a complete enigma, sometimes sinister, but always there with a zen attitude about the insanity.
All of this brings me to the fourth team book I wanted to talk about- Grant Morrison's magnum opus: The Invisibles. Here's the basics- The Invisibles stars a cell of The Invisibles, a group of magic anarchists who are fighting the Outer Church, a group of interdimensional aliens from a universe of pure, horrible order, who secretly control the world. It's fucking mental. There's magic, guns, martial arts, sex, drugs, clubbing, fashion, and conspiracies. It's the the 90s in microcosm in the best possible way. It has the greatest trans character ever in it- Lord Fanny, a Brazilian ex-prostitute witch. It has the next incarnation of the Buddha, Jack Frost, a foul mouthed teenager from Liverpool. There's Ragged Robin, a psychic from the future. Boy, an ex-NYC cop hardass who is the most normal person in the book, fighting the Outer Church for her own reason. Last, but not least, King Mob, a British writer martial arts assassin (who is also a Grant Morrison stand in- a bald dude who looks, speaks, and dresses just like him). They are later joined by Jolly Roger, a lesbian assassin who trained along with King Mob. Much like Doom Patrol, there's crazy shit going on everywhere in this book, but it's also character based to a ridiculous extent. We get backstories for every character (and for a lot of the secondary characters... and there are a lot of them introduced over the run of the series). Morrison cares about the characters and everything so much and it shows on every page.
Morrison excels at this sort of thing. He gets the way to balance to action, character building, plot, and crazy shit so that none of it feels like it's more important than the rest. His team books are perfect. That's the best way to describe them. Perfect. I can't really say anything else about them. They're perfect.
I don't know if I sold any of these very well. I didn't want to get into too much detail with any of it, get too spoilery, because I want you to read them. I want you to experience these stories like I did, without knowing everything going in. I want you to enjoy them like I did and do, and see all the magic within. Maybe these books will make you love Morrison like I do. I hope so, because there's so much amazing shit in his ouevre.
If you can ever find the one shot, Kill Your Boyfriend, buy that shit.
Well, that's all for this issue of....
Beyond The Panels!!!!!
Next Issue: I love Wolverine. We're going to talk about him. Maybe you should stop by and read it. Maybe you should tell your friend about it. Maybe you should friend me on Facebook. Maybe I'll get a Twitter and find new fans and stop caring about you people. Maybe I'll get famous. Maybe this is the last sentence. Maybe this one is. This one definitely is.
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