Joe PradoResenhas

480000

Entertaining coming together of a multitude of characters from parallel universes, all star cast from comics ties into one uniform story. Also serves as an introduction to these various characters and their various incarnations. Typical action-hero / anti action-hero behaviour. Includes Batman, Superman, Swamp Thing, and many more.

Challenging and imaginative and nonlinear—just what I look for from Grant Morrison.

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Grant Morrison's chaos is sometimes magic. Sometimes it's just a mess. This is unfortunately the latter.

Graphic Novel Book Club November 2015:

No. No. Just no. I wish I had never suggested this book, or that I've been aware it was 450 pages before I decided to suggest it. My eyes glazed over. It was not well written, and it had anticlimactically almost no ending at all, which felt entirely out of proportion with everything the first 350ish pages were leading up to. I have no clue what Morrison was trying to do, but I feel like he did not accomplish it at all.

Everyone seems to have left glowing reviews for this, but I found it to be quite underwhelming, especially considering the level of writing we're used to seeing from Geoff Johns. Aquaman's ridicule by the public seems like a forced plot point, almost incidental even though it is meant to drive the story. We're introduced to a nameless, generic foe that is no real test for any hero, and are to believe that Aquaman is incredible for facing it. The explanations of Aquaman's past should leave us with a sense of who he is, but I feel as though I've barely been introduced to the character at the conclusion of this volume. Mera could have added a great deal to the story, but her character falls flat and feels like a pressured new version of Wonder Woman.

I wanted to be impressed by this, and the first few pages seemed to hold much promise. The potential was never realized. I wonder if perhaps poor editorial decisions squashed Johns craft? In any case, this is the least compelling offering from the first New 52 story arcs.

I am loving Aquaman but I kinda wish there was more Mera in this story arc.

Read the individual issues.

I was so not expecting to like this cause...well Aquaman is the butt of many jokes. I'm pleasantly surprised and will be continuing this series now :)

The first four chapters the art was gorgeous but then chapter 5 it wasn't as nice but still good and chapter six the artist changed and overall it looked nowhere near as nice especially the character design.

Admittedly, this was my first Aquaman graphic novel. This was not, however, my first foray into the New 52. Of all of the New 52 I have read so far, this is by far one of my favorites. It was well written, and the artwork was beautiful.
My recent love affair with Aquaman began after playing Injustice:Gods Among Us because, seriously, he is a complete badass in that game. I wanted to learn more about the character, and this series happened to be one of the highest rated. The Trench has officially made me an Aquaman fan. I'm not very far into the series, but what I have read has been very well done.
If you want to give an often disrespected character another chance or you're just looking to try out some of the New 52, you should definitely check out this series.

I was really excited for Morrison to return to some of the concepts from Final Crisis/Superman Beyond, and while this has that in spades, I'm not sure it hangs together as a coherent story. The individual issues are perfectly wrought - normally I would cite particularly good artists here but all of them are a perfect match for their subject matter - but it feels like the big overarching fight against the Gentry could have used a bit more time in the oven. That being said, it's still fun to see how the pieces come together, and Morrison chose some great pieces to (re)build the multiverse with. (I've got my fingers crossed for Etrigan the Superdemon and the Justice League of Earth-13 to show up again.)

Incoherent and lacking in any real character moments but beautiful artwork and fleeting moments of sheer imaginative insanity. But to be honest, I was bored to shit by this book. It just doesn't feel new or fresh anymore.

Morrison, apparently with intent to walk away from the medium where he's frequently judged to be among the top writers, crafted an ultimate, final, incomparable crisis that walks through many of his strengths and gives a send-off that's unlikely to be matched by anyone else.
That he managed to do this without even touching the characters best known in monthly DC titles - while at the same time throwing in a good deal of analogous Marvel characters - is, itself a massive achievement.

Holding his own w/ Alan Moore's territory (AM has long had an irrational one-sided feud w/ Morrison - and this achievement was likely what prompted him to have an anti-GM tantrum in what was billed as AM's final interview) with a Watchmen contribution, that GM is said to have dubbed his personal Citizen Kane, is worth the price of admission for the whole series. What he and Frank Quietly achieved with the Pax Americana installation was truly inspired, and reads equally amazing both forward and backwards. The panel procession was revolutionary in design and chronological conceptualization.

The Ultra Comics haunted issue walks the reader through their own brain death.

The weight and density of the book is alleviated as often as it is applied. Characters provide constant critique of the pace, of Morrison's detractors favorite complaints, and every deep heavy beat is countered with one designed to lighten the load. It's a feat of tremendous love of the medium, and the villain of the piece is none other than the gentrification of the medium - a treatise to point fingers a the books and treatments that caused comics to take themselves too seriously... while giving an audience who digs that seriousness plenty to chew on.

I have a hard time imagining how I would have felt about Multiversity if I didn't have a long appreciation of the medium (and a collection that has exceeded six thousand books at times) - but the artwork and lighter points would have kept me satisfied, I think. The Thunderworld instillation, for instance - or The Just. In contrast, I thought the WW2 instillation (drawn by Jim Lee, who... sadly, can't play in this sandbox without looking downright awkward) was somewhat out of place. I liked having Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters reprising a role that felt like a New Gods strike on Apokolips - and the weight of the series had some Phillip K Dick weight to it - but the artwork felt substandard and out of place. I get the impression that Lee just wanted a shot at working with GM, and that GM was happy to oblige (they'd tried to make things work together in the past, but books like WildCATS didn't hold enough interest for GM).

Animal Man, Doom Patrol, Invisibles, DC 1 Million, Seven Soldiers, and Final Crisis (and more) all were attempts - by the same man - to achieve something similar, and they all did to varying degrees.

This compliments them perfectly, and I'm sorry to see GM moving on to different projects when he's so clearly one of comic's greatest contributors. I hope I'm wrong about his flagging desire to commit himself to Marvel and DC - in the meantime, maybe bits of Klaus or Heavy Metal will be fine.

Loved the humor, liked the villain and art, and anxious to see more of it.

Book of the Month for Comic Book Club at Criminal Records. Usually, I don't read superhero comics but my heart goes out to Arthur (Aquaman) here. Those monsters pull on all my squicks as a human - humanoid insect primordial creatures, hive mind, frightening. Probably won't continue reading this series, but I do like Aquawoman (Mera) and her cool distaste of everything land based and Arthur's biracial fears. Even superheroes get the biracial blues.

Grant Morrison is maddening. Much of his work can be dismissed as overloading on either sheer absurdity or distractingly meta deconstructionism. His plots can be loopy. His tone can be dismissive or sneering of the very genre in which he works. But when he lets his inner fanboy loose, he can capture heroic and iconic moments better than anyone. For instance, in Multiversity his homages to Alan Moore's Watchmen and C. C. Beck's Captain Marvel are simply amazing. I would love to see either of those chapters expanded to whole works. Same for the chapter featuring Earth-Me. But then the rest of the book revels in and simultaneously mocks every trope of the comic industry major crossover event, using way too many Superman/Batman/Wonder Woman doppelgangers to fill out the sound and fury of it. When I read Morrison I can enjoy moments of his work and then am made to immediately feel bad for having let myself enjoy it. No other comic writer makes me feel as if I am dueling with him as I read him. The challenge can be fun, but it means never letting your guard down and just losing yourself in the story.

As usual with Morrison's best work, this will take more than a few readings to fully absorb, but what's here is a far sight better (in my opinion) than his stint on reorganizing the Batman mythos.

If you've ever loved cross-world stories or alternate realities, this will be a great read for you.

For me, personally, the presence of Captain Carrot as a Superman analogue was frosting atop a very tasty cake.

Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

When I started my readthrough of DC Comics Crises, Flashpoint was the last one, but the endpoint of this journey is ever-receding: now Flashpoint has been followed by The Multiversity and Convergence, and I suspect I'll be adding Rebirth to my list too. The Multiversity isn't a "Crisis" per se (so far DC has kept to its promise and Final Crisis is indeed the final Crisis), but it does follow on from their narratives pretty explicitly: this volume explores some of the worlds of the multiverse introduced in 52 and develops themes and concepts Grant Morrison introduced in Final Crisis.

It's a weird book, maybe even by Grant Morrison standards. Like with Final Crisis, I feel like what it needs is a good reread, and since I bought it, maybe I'll actually do that someday-- maybe after reading Morrison's Action Comics run. This book concerns the attack of the mysterious Gentry, the servants of the Empty Hand, on the DC multiverse, and seems to serve two artistic purposes: it's an exploration of the possibilities of the DC multiverse, as well as a statement on some of the creative possibilities and limitations of superhero comics as a genre/medium. So I'll try to untangle some of each of those in turn.

Back before Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC had an infinite multiverse, then it had nothing. 52 brought back the multiverse, yet DC seemed to do little with it. (Partially this is because of Flashpoint, I think, which ruined some aspects of the multiverse. For example, the Wildstorm characters presented an intriguing alternate take on superheroes when they were officially on Earth-50, as we saw in stories like Captain Atom: Armageddon, while they became quickly cancelled also-rans when incorporated into the "main" DC universe on Earth-0. Like, The Authority can't even have a point if they exist in a world where the Justice League also exists.) It might seem like going from infinite Earths to 52 Earths is limiting, but I actually think it's just the right number. In an infinite multiverse, anything goes, but in a realm of 52 alternatives, there's just enough structure to intrigue and delight; I spent a lot of time poring over the map of the multiverse included here, noting correlations and connections as Morrison tries to squeeze everything from Neil Gaiman's The Endless to Jack Kirby's Fourth World into a coherent mythology.

So what we end up getting is a series of linked but largely standalone stories that play with the possibilities of a multiversal setting. The almost universally acclaimed one is "Captain Marvel and the Day That Never Was!", which takes place on an Earth dominated by Captain Marvel. (By which I mean that though Captain Marvel exists on Earth-0, on Earth-5 he's the superhero.) A multiversal army of Doctor Sivanas attacks Earth-5, introducing an extra day of the week where they can exert their malevolent control and influence. It's fun, it's bright, it introduces concepts up the wazoo; there's seriously a delight to be found on almost every page here, like superhero smack talk referencing Thomas Kuhn. And I like what it says about the DC multiverse too: Captain Marvel will never shine on Earth-0 the way he does on his own Earth. So rather than try to cram him into a world that also contains a million other superheroes, here he gets to breathe and it is awesome. I would buy a series like this, so of course DC will never publish one.

None of the other worlds and stories are quite as good as this one, but they also show possibility: we have a pulp-based 1930s Earth, a ruled-by-Nazis Earth (with a surprisingly touching take on a fascist Superman), a Watchmen-esque realpolitik Earth, an Earth dominated by the descendants of the "original" heroes, a chibi Earth, multiple postapocalyptic Earths, a Jack Kirby Earth, and so on.

Morrison also builds on what was (like so much of DC's cosmology) an accident of publishing history. When introducing the new version of the Flash in 1956's Showcase #4, writer Robert Kanigher established that Barry Allen was inspired by reading about the original 1930s Jay Garrick Flash when he was a kid. But then when Gardner Fox wanted the two Flashes to meet in The Flash #123, he had to explain how Jay Garrick could both be from an alternate universe and be a fictional character. Easy! According to Fox, the Flash comics of Earth-1 were inspired by dreams... of what happened on Earth-2! Later writers went nuts with this idea, to the extent of having writers from our Earth (Earth-Prime) be transported to Earth-1.

This was all pared back with Crisis on Infinite Earths's destruction of all the other Earths, but now that the multiverse is back, Grant Morrison plays with this idea to its utmost: almost every issue in this book has the characters reading some comic book representing the happenings on another Earth. This perhaps reaches its greatest extreme when the chibi Batman of Earth-42 learns about the multiverse by reading a copy of the very comic book he is currently featuring in, a guidebook with a frame story about him reading the guidebook. Comic books thus become methods of sending messages across the multiverse, and Morrison doesn't commit to whether writers on Earth-33 (the new "Earth-Prime") merely record what happens on other Earths, or cause it to happen by the stories they choose to write.

Morrison also uses The Multiversity to present his take on superhero comics themselves. Nowhere does this come through more clearly than in the Ultra Comics one-shot. Ostensibly our Earth is the one without superheroes, but Ultra Comics shows how this isn't true, obviously doing a riff on Scott McCloud's concept of the cartoon from Understanding Comics; one character speaks directly to us: "Sure I'm just a pen and ink representation, but I'm real enough for you to hear my voice right inside your head, right? We can both agree you're interacting with a real, physical object." We can hear the characters and we feel like we are the characters, and thus if we're real, they're real. For McCloud, this is the whole reason for the success of the comics medium, our willingness to insert ourselves into the vacuum of these characters. Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke are just the conduits for the expression of the reality of these characters.

It does get all a bit There's a Monster at the End of This Book except that you're the monster at the end of this book-- not only are you the hero, but your reading of the book is what causes him to suffer. If you didn't read the book, nothing bad would ever happen!

This feeds into the last story, where a massive threat from beyond the multiverse attacks, kind of like Final Crisis over again but bigger. I didn't really get it, to be honest, but I suppose someday I'll give it another go and maybe it'll make more sense. But just as Ultra Comics shows some of the possibilities of the comics medium, so does this, but very negatively. Because on the last page we learn that kind of the whole reason the multiverse was attacked was so that Nix Uotan, last of the Monitors, could earn enough money to pay his rent. Which is obviously a commentary on superhero comics in general and this comic in particular. We're the villains of superhero comics, because our continuous need for more story means that their suffering will never end. This is something the President Superman of Earth-23 actually comes to realize himself-- and so his next target will be us!

DC Comics Crises: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Poo.

2.5 stars, barely.

Overall, this is a mess. I'm not sure where the storyline was for most of the book, and felt like I was being ripped from one story to another related story without any explanation of what was going on or why.

A few of the stories made sense, and seemed like self-contained issues, but these were few and far between. Also, at no point did any of the "regular" heroes make an appearance. You'd think that if something was threatening the entire multiverse, Clark Kent/Superman and the rest of the "real" Justice League would be involved somehow.

I hinted at this for my review of [b:Convergence|25607370|Convergence|Jeff King|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432687356s/25607370.jpg|45417110], but I'll make it more clear this time: DC needs to stay away from these Crisis-type events, focus on developing complex storylines for its core characters, and leave it at that. Enough with the massive crossovers!

Not a light read, or even one much rewarded by casual consumption. It's the kind of grand overview that demands considered attention, which I can't say I gave. I take it that it is an attempt to reweave the various versions to the DC universe into a coherent mythology. It was fun seeing how many of the divergent earths I recognized. But I'm not sure where the story winds up; is the horned figure at the end the same hand that recurs in Green Lantern as holding the original universe? In which case it is someone different than the benevolent prime mover we'd been lead to believe.

Having comics be self-conscious of their status has become something of a running theme in Grant Morrison's work (see, e.g., Flex Mentallo). A little bit of this metaphysics can be provocative, but in heaping doses it risks sucking all the fun out of the medium.

I was very pleasantly surprised bu this comic. Aquaman has been mocked for years and they don't hide from it in these issues but turn it around to show that he's going to prove everyone wrong. I'm looking forward to reading the next volume.