Final Crisis #7: 'New Heaven, New Earth'

After a tumultuous seven issue run, Final Crisis wraps up with its best issue yet, an issue that manages to resolve all the threads in a satisfying way, and perhaps achieves Morrison’s long discussed goal of making the DCU a sentient entity. The parents of the universe are gone, the gods are fallen and it’s up to the characters to invent their own world. A large part of the issue is about the characters gaining the agency to control their own story and build this fifth world of their own design. It’s at once a return to the pre-Crisis DCU, and a celebration of everything that has come since. It’s a complex issue, and not everything about it works, but the overall impact is huge, I think this is easily the best issue of the entire series, and a great way for Morrison to wrap up his current time in the DCU.

The issue begins with a trip to an alternate world where there’s a black president and a black Superman. I was already talking about the resonance of Obama and this comic, and this opening fuses the iconography of Obama and Superman to foreshadow the emergence of a new, better world at the end of the series. It’s also a pretty badass moment to have the president rip off his suit and have a Superman costume underneath. The discussion afterwards about using the “wonder horn,” and the music they hear makes a lot more sense after seeing what Superman does later in the issue.

The issue is odd because it violates so many seemingly basic rules of writing, and in the process proves that rules are good, but what really lingers about a story is the energy and experience of it. The early parts of the issue are told in flashback, or perhaps narration in the present, it’s unclear. Images flow from the narration in a seemingly stream of conscious way, drifting from fight to fight in a haze of action. What this means is that we don’t get to see some important story points. I’m frustrated that we don’t get a closer view of Shilo activating his boom tube, after all the buildup of his story, he either doesn’t appear or is barely visible in this issue. I also find it frustrating that we never really see Wonder Woman liberated from her Justifier enslavement, we can infer it, and we get an emotional beat when she crumbles the mask, but we don’t get the seemingly critical moment when her mind comes back to the surface.

So, there’s some sloppy story construction on those beats. I’m not sure how much is a product of the art and how much is conscious choice. I will say that Doug Mahnke kills it on this book. I’ve heard a bunch of people say they wish he had drawn the whole thing, and I can’t disagree. JG Jones did a good job when he was on time, but he wasn’t good enough to justify the delays or art mess. He’s not Frank Quitely. If Mahnke could have drawn the whole story in a timely fashion, it would have been great to have him on board. At least in terms of art, the series goes out on a high note.

The other major issue is the amount of deus ex machina in the story. On some level, a story about gods is going to always involve this sort of ending, but the stuff about the monitors doesn’t feel as developed as other elements of the story, and that makes it feel kind of out of place here at the end. Darkseid was the villain of this whole thing, and to end on a different, somewhat related, but not really connected story thread feels a bit off. But, I think Darkseid gets a good finale too, so it works okay. It’s partially an issue of pacing, it might have been better to have Batman do the final strike on Darkseid in this issue, while Superman was off with Mandrakk and the Monitors so they could be intercut instead of happen in succession.

One of the things I love about the issue is the sheer epic quality of the story. I think that all three Crises, for their flaws and merits, manage to feel truly epic and important for the universe. They stand as testaments to the insane over the top storytelling capabilities of the DCU. On a meta level, the tour of all of the aspects of the DCU in this series is a way of showing its strength, the power of its lifeblood, a way to combat the vampiric death that Mandrakk represents.

This issue’s use of narration in particular makes it feel huge. I’d be hard pressed to say exactly what sequence certain events happen in, but I felt the importance of them, and was emotionally engaged throughout the entire thing, Lois’s narration serving as a way to heighten our emotional engagement with what’s going on. Yesterday, I said that Superman Beyond worked on an intellectual level and a pure spectacle level, but it didn’t have the emotional component. This issue has all three firing at full cylinder, reading the pages, I was really excited to see what came next because it really felt like anything could happen. There were a ton of panels in here that just made me smile, and that’s one of the greatest things about Morrison’s work, and superhero comics in general. They can be so huge, so archetypal that it transcends the traditional demands of a story and just hits you in that part of the brain that loves spectacle and excitement.

In Superman Beyond, we saw Zillo Valla claim that Superman’s origin story was the most powerful story in the multiverse, the story that could pull Dax Novu back from the darkness. Here, we see that story invoked again, and replayed as part of the battle against Darkseid. It starts with the rocket full of Batman’s iconography. Batman is just as powerful an archetype as Superman, the core things that make him who he is will survive any threat against the world, he’ll always find a way. I love the idea that in a world made of story, symbols and images are the life essence, if those can be preserved on another world, Batman will find a way back to life.

That’s perhaps the boldest innovation in this miniseries, the idea that the DCU is literally built on stories. It will live on because it’s always “To Be Continued,” and the characters will perpetually deal with the same archetypal story elements. Something like the Joker/Batman conflict is a founding principle of the universe and it will always cycle itself through again and again.

Superman’s confrontation with Darkseid is really well done. At this point, Darkseid has infected virtually the entire populace, the world itself is evil, so what can Superman do? As Darkseid says, “Kill me and you kill everything!” So, Darkseid does precisely that, he fires the bullet at Orion, which he knows will eventually come back to kill him, and in the process, he intends to take the whole world down with him. At least that’s the way I see it, the whole bullet backwards in time thing is pretty hard to fathom, but this view of it makes sense.

I love the payoff on the Flash’s long run through the entire series. They bring death to Darkseid and zip off in a haze of trippy visuals and the sort of crazy science dialogue that Morrison does so well. Lois describes it as “the story of the flashes outrun Death, the Black Racer.” In some ways, this caption is used simply to facilitate the dissemination of narrative information, but I’d argue that the goal is also to transform this story into instant mythology. This is a story so huge they’re already telling it to kids within the DCU, it’s the creation myth of the fifth world, the way that the world was saved and changed and rebuilt. And, the crazy brilliance of the Flashes outracing Death and bringing him to Darkseid lives up to that kind of mythos.

From there, we see the dissolution of the world, conveyed in a series of perfectly chosen scenes that convey what I view as the dissolution of the entire multiverse. We see all the scientists working together to buil this Miracle Machine, even our old friend the Chief from Doom Patrol, whose head is no longer in a jar. This builds to the dizzying assault on Checkmate and the Atoms doing something. These panels are drawn from the pure reservoir of superhero stories. This is what every comic should feel like, filled to the brim with insane images and concepts. Morrison has talked about how comics have to up their game now that films can do superheroes. This is what he means, this is a comic that spans universes and does something you’ve never seen before in every panel.

It’s also a marvel of economy. The Arrow and Canary resolution is touching and funny in just three small panels. I love their hands barely touching as they drift through space, staring down at the Metron symbol. A panel down we can another fuck yeah moment with the appearance of Most Excellent Superbat and his team in action. I don’t know who these characters are on an individual level, but Morrison makes me care about them through the sheer pop joy inherent. Who doesn’t want to save Lolita Canary? Who doesn’t love Lighting Flash dashing between panels, all in a massive buildup of light and fire.

I’m honestly not totally sure on exactly what happens at this point in the comic. I know that the Checkmate satellite explodes, apparently killing Mister Terrific and Hawkman and Hawkgirl, while the Super Young Team and the others evacuate via Mister Miracle’s Boom Tube. Then, there’s a separate JLA satellite where the survivors of all the destroyed multiverse worlds stick around. So, are those worlds entirely destroyed, and then rebuilt later on, or are the only survivors the ones who were stuck in the freezer? I guess it might be that everyone’s possessed by Darkseid, and it takes Superman’s wish to make them better again. It doesn’t really matter, perhaps a couple more reads will make it clear.

The sort of free association storytelling is present in the panels where Renee tells her story. Speaking to Overman about his cousin’s death, we jump to a scene that may or may not have ever happened where he screams in the rain while holding her body. On one level, this is likely an allusion to the original Crisis’ famous dead Supergirl cover, but it also works as a visual way to express the emotion he’s feeling. The walls of reality are breaking down at this point, emotion and logic are converging into a psychogenic reality where idea and feeling are indistinguishable from physical reality.

This brings us to Superman realizing that Darkseid intended to kill himself to bring the whole world down into the black hole with him. If he possesses all their minds, his death will destroy everyone. But, Luthor won’t have that. As I mentioned in earlier reviews, Luthor always exists in reverse moral polarity to the world he’s in. Now that he’s in an evil world, he’s going to fight for good.

Luthor claims that “Libra was the anti-life equation and now he’s not.” So, was Libra a physical incarnation of the concept of anti-life? I’m not sure about that, maybe it’s more that Libra was some kind of vessel used to channel the anti-life into our reality. I’ll have to reread to see what exactly was up with Libra throughout, but the point here seems to be that Luthor and Sivana have created a machine that co-opts the anti-life equation and overrides it. So, using this machine, they’re able to rescue the people under the control of Darkseid and restore their individual will.

This leads to the fantastic moment where Frankenstein rides a giant dog and hacks the head off of someone. It’s great to see Frankenstein back in action, I’ll always have great affection for all the Seven Soldiers characters, and particularly with Mahnke drawing, Frank is as good as he’s ever been.

The Morticoccus virus comes seemingly out of nowhere here. Apparently, it was mentioned in Countdown, and is a call back to Kamandi. The way it reads here, it sounds like the “god-bacterium” could easily be Darkseid himself.

So, this all leads up to Superman’s final confrontation with Darkseid. This is another huge fuck yeah moment. The world is seemingly collapsing, but Superman knows the nature of this world, it’s made of “vibrations,” of stories. If you put a better story against this bad one, the good one can win out. Darkseid is the bad virus designed to destroy the world, Superman is an agent of good, rebuilding the world from within. He sings like only he can and Darkseid explodes, unable to withstand the onslaught of pure universal essence.

I love these sorts of moments because deep down I do believe that good and hope will always overcome darkness. As in this series, things can go bad for a long time, but progress will always win out in the end. I don’t think a moment like this is hokey or unearned, it kills it on an emotional level. Love will win out in the end, you can have a whole world of darkness, but all it takes is one little light to make things bright again.

This leads up to the confrontation with Mandrakk, and our intersection with the stuff from Superman Beyond. Mandrakk is the anti-story, the desire to end the universe and prevent the characters from developing any further. He invokes Superman’s origin story, but positions Superman as his father, a man who failed to save his universe. The origin is the powerful keystone of the entire reality, and Mandrakk is trying to twist it to serve his own ends.

Superman igniting the Miracle Machine with his solar battery is a literal representation of the light concept I was talking about before. I love the panel where he reaches his hand out and seems to have a tiny galaxy spinning below him, electricity arcing to create the Metron symbol around his head. There, he truly is a god, the benevolent architect of a new reality.

This leads to another fuck yeah moment when we see a legion of Supermen descending on Mandrakk, shouting “Let the sun shine in!” You can’t help but play the euphoric Fifth Dimension song in your mind, the music that tore Darkseid apart now echoing in your own mind, a truly bizarre bunch of characters stand and tear down Mandrakk.

The choice of such wacky characters as a bunch of Earth-35 animals and Captain Carrot can easily be read as a meta assertion on the health of the DCU. Mandrakk is the kind of reductive writer who seeks to tear down the magic of these characters, while Morrison wants the universe to be strong in all its bizarre contradictions.

The assembly of Supermen also reinforces Superman’s status as the ur-hero of the DCU, the source of everything that has followed. He has inspired all these others, he is the true god and architect of this world, and next to that power, Mandrakk is decidedly insignificant. He is staked, and the cancer eating at this world is gone, the “symmetry of the orrery” is re-established, Darkseid’s hold is slackened and the world can go on again.

Part of this is Nix Uotan’s emergence as a fully realized 5-D aware being. His story is kind of a reverse John a Dreams. He starts out beyond reality a piece of the core universal essence that is chipped away into an individual form to become a monitor. Then he falls in to our reality and gets lost in a human life, forgetting that he was ever anything more than that. But, now he’s fully realized, he has his monitor powers, but also human emotion to anchor them. There is a power in our lives and loves on this world, and that’s what Mandrakk doesn’t understand.

In his power, Nix summons the “Forever People of the 5th World” and the Super Young Team shows up. This reinforces the idea that new characters will be inheriting the roles of the old archetypes in the new world. The Super Young Team are the new Forever People, Shilo the new Mister Miracle, and I’m sure we’ll see a new Orion and others in the future. But, where does that leave the original New Gods? They are seen here watching over the birth of a new Earth, Earth-51, rehabilitating the graveyard world into a flourishing New Genesis. The war is over and a new world can be born.

At this point, the Fourth World gods seem to have passed beyond physical form, and serve more as touchstones for the next generation. They are the archetypal essence of good, and will reign supreme in a world where the archetypal essence of evil has been defeated and fallen deep down in to a black hole. And, they will guide Earth 51 to better things. It’s a classic Morrison trope, the worst, most corrupted thing drawn back to goodness through positive influence. Earth 51 is Quimper, plunged through the worst shit and reborn as a glorious flower.

This all leads up to the Monitors abandoning their post and descending down into reality to live as humans. The Monitors were old order gods, trying to maintain order in the universe, to keep the parallel worlds separated and limit humanity. They are the evolutionary shackles that helped us grow, but have to be thrown out as we advance into a new world. They are in some ways like Barbelith, and the dissolution into white here echoes Jack’s entrance in to the supercontext at the end of The Invisibles.

Superman Beyond equated the Monitors with the DCU’s writers. So, does this ending imply that the DCU is now beyond writers, it’s a self sufficient entity guiding its own way. One could argue that if this is meant to be Morrison’s farewell to the universe, he’s sending it off to a place where malevolent gods no longer control it and the characters are free to live out stories without his outside influence. Throughout Morrison’s DC work, we’ve seen negative portrayals of god-like controlling figures, from Morrison himself in Animal Man to the Time Tailors in Seven Soldiers. Both the Monitors and Time Tailors are mixed influences, but the point of this ending seems to be that it’s time to stop trying to control everything and to let the universe direct itself.

Superman is such a strong idea, he can guide things forward in a fine way. There’s no longer needs for an intermediary, people have shown that they can control their own destiny. Our heroes are now like the gods of old, and the fifth world has begun. We get very little glimpse of what that fifth world will entail, but I guess that’s ultimately up to you. We’re all Nix Uotan, waking up anew, ready to write our own story.

In a lot of ways, the story is comprable to The Invisibles’ liberation from the needs of a structured universe at the end of the series and the journey out to the supercontext. The DCU has been engineered to specific ends by these monitors, they thought that they needed to rule like that to ensure the safe progress of the universe. They sought to keep the universes apart and organized because it was too dangerous to let them mix. But, the people here have shown that they can manage their own reality. The child universe has become an adult and we don’t need the gods to guide us anymore. We can be our own gods. As King Mob said on his way to the supercontext, “I’m ready to play with the grown-ups, babe.”

This leads up to one final big moment, the return of Batman, who’s stranded way back at the Dawn of Man, drawing his sigil on a cave wall. Will the bat symbol become as enduring a symbol as Metron’s sigil? How will he make it back to the present day? Has he become a god? Who knows, but the ending feels right, and I’m eager to see Morrison pick up his story again when he returns to the title in the summer.

So, after all that, what is the major takeaway? The DCU is built on stories, and as such, the Miracle Machine can control it by rewriting the story. When Superman wishes for a happy ending, he’s essentially rewriting his own reality. He’s the ur-hero, the source of all good in the universe, and he’s always going to do just the right thing. This version of Superman seems very influenced by Morrison’s vision of the character in All Star Superman. I think he works even better than Morrison’s JLA Superman, outside of All Star itself, this is one of the best Superman stories of all time.

At this point, he seems to have become meta aware of the nature of the universe. He knows it’s built on stories, and will always continue on, but he’s got to make sure this story goes out on a happy ending.

And it does. After all the messy darkness of the previous six issues, this single issue manages to resolve pretty much all the narrative threads and give us a glorious rush of hope to overwhelm all the darkness. It’s a lot to fit in a single issue, but Morrison pulls it off, and makes it emotionally relevant. I had mixed feelings on Final Crisis throughout, I really liked most of it, but it didn’t hit me in the way that the best Morrison does. But, this issue, he’s at his best, and it’s a great farewell to the DCU for now. I want to read some creator owned work soon, but in a year or so, I wouldn’t mind a trip back to the DCU to check on the Fifth World’s progress.

JLA: Earth 2 and Wrap Up

Last time, I wrapped up my writing on Grant's main JLA run, but now it's back for one more with his graphic novel, JLA: Earth 2. During the main JLA run, Howard Porter's art was generally satisfactory, but nothing too special. So, it's a big jump to the greatest artist working in comics today, Frank Quitely.

The thing I love about Quitely's work isn't so much the aesthetic as the way that his art creates near three dimensionality. This is really evident in his work on New X-Men, and his work on the final issue of The Invisibles makes me wish that he could have drawn the whole series. Of course, if he did it probably still wouldn't be finished. Anyway, his work here isn't quite up to the level of that or We3, but it's still very strong.

One of the themes that cropped up every once in a while during Grant's run on the series was to take the story necessity of having the JLA always win and make it a feature of the universe in which they live. The best longform works are able to the take repetitive story elements necesitated by the form and turn it to the story's advantage. In Buffy, this meant that her attraction to Spike wasn't a retread of Angel, it revealed the fact that the character required some darkness in her mate. With the JLA, it becomes a meta comment on the very nature of superhero fiction, and Earth 2 is concerned with exploring this idea by creating a world that's the opposite.

In Warren Ellis' works alone we must have seen ten different analogues of the JLA, so the idea of yet another crop of JLA dopplegangers popping up isn't inherently that exciting. But, Morrison pushes things to the next level by creating an entire alternate universe that reverses the metafictional rules governing DCU storytelling.

I've gained a lot of affection for the DCU from reading this JLA run and Seven Soldiers, but I'm not a big enough fan to grab all the allusions that Morrison makes in building Earth 2. The first half of the story is so devoted to building up the anti-matter verse that it takes until about halfway through the story to really take off. The best stuff in the beginning is the humor surrounding the illicit relationship between Owlman and Super Woman. The petty humanity of these characters is such a contrast to the godlike JLA. When the JLA finally cross worlds, they're disgusted by the very nature of the world.

My very Quitely page is the big shot of Green Lantern building hands around the moon. That's flashy, but throughout we see Quitely bringing a level of detail that you don't normally get. The panels with the many, many Flashes are particularly impressive. I think Quitely's greatest strength as a storyteller in doing moments in detail, so the constantly moving narrative of this book doesn't necessarily work to his strengths, or rather, it doesn't take full advantage of his possibilities.

Reading this book now, one of the striking things is the rampant destruction of major buildings. Grant's JLA work, and most of the widescreen superheroics it inspired, are of a distinctly pre 9/11 mindset. There's some death, but this destruction is generally treated as a light thing, just a salvo in the war. I think if the book came out today, you wouldn't see this sort of thing. All of Morrison's work from this period has an optimism about the direction of humanity that feels somewhat undermined by the stuff that Bush has put us through post 9/11. I think he still feels humanity's going in a generally positive direction, but right now, the forces of progress are losing the battle with the archons. That's why The Filth is such a critical work in Morrison's cannon, it shows the dirty flip side of this shiny optimism.

We soon find out that Brainiacis behind this cross of worlds. Brainiac stands outside the manicheanism of the JLA/CSA. As he says, he is "Beyond good and evil. Beyond the moral and conceptual framework which limits 3rd-level intellects such as your own." He is such a high level intellect that he does not care that his actions will result in a lot of people dying. Morrison's work frequently focuses on moving beyond traditional conceptions of morality, which makes it a bit hard to reconcile Brainiac as a villain. I thin Brainiac is meant to show a pure intellectual being, whereas in the supercontext, it is love for humanity that motivates the push to higher levels of intellectual consequences. Without that emotional grounding, evolution becomes a destructive force.

The thing that I love about the book is the way it can be read from the matter or anti-matter perspective with equal validity. You get a real idea of the morality of the CSA world, those characters feel totally real and motivated, and you can see how our world would be weird to them. Throughout the book we see the actions of the two groups balance each other perfectly to fit the nature of their worlds. In our world, good will invariably wind up triumphing, so the CSA's destruction is quickly repaired, in the same way that in the other Earth, the good that the JLA does must be undone. Each world must always revert to its status quo. In that way, this work provides the best explanation for why heroes in the DCU are always going to win. But, if you were a reader for the anti-matter verse, you could just as easily read this book as a triumph for the CSA.

So, like a lot of Morrison works, this book functions simultaneously as a meta comment on superhero fiction and a fine example of the form. I would still consider "Rock of Ages" the ultimate Morrison JLA arc, but if you want a condensed idea of what's great about the run, go to this book.

And that brings me to the real end of Morrison's JLA run. Before doing this read through, JLA was one of the rare Morrison works I wasn't a big fan of. This read has changed that, I think his treatment is the definitive address of these characters, he made the big seven more than their mythology and brought real humanity to the large supporting cast. Seeing Green Lantern becoming more confident and revel in his heroism was really satisfying, and Huntress' uneasy move into and out of the group was the most grounding emotional force in the narrative.

Reading all of Morrison's JLA back to back makes you forget just how innovative his stuff is. The fill in issues sprinkled throughout the volumes bring this to the fore, Morrison's work is so far beyond what anyone else is doing, in terms of narrative, character development and concepts, I hesitate to see why anyone would read it after he left the title. Obviously there's love for these characters, but only when Morrison writes them do they feel real, other people just draw on the same couple of traits that they've been whiddled down to over the ages.

Looking through the run, my favorite arc was undoubtedly Rock of Ages. This arc took the kitchen sink approach, throwing everything in. The JLA fought robotic doubles of themselves, battled Lex Luthor and The Joker, went to Wonderworld, and reset the world from a dystopia ruled by Darkseid. I loved that arc because it felt most like his work on The Invisibles, there was more uniquely Morrison in there than anywhere else. I also loved the two issue storyline featuring Daniel from Sandman, an arc which functioned as a simpler version of Flex Mentallo. One Million was in a lot of ways the high point of the run, full of so many ridiculous concepts and a narrative scope that was never matched. Earth 2 and the final issue are also notable.

The run's greatest demerit is the somewhat repetitive structure of most arcs. A foe appears who has figured out a foolproof plan to defeat the JLA, he winds the first round, then the JLA regroup and beat him. Because most of the characters have individual titles, you can't really do heavy character arcs, so these massive scope narratives are pretty much the only way to make a viable threat.

Looking at this run next to Morrison's work on New X-Men reveals a lot about the difference between Marvel and DC. The characters in X-Men are designed to be actual people, they have flaws and are meant to be people the readers can identify with. The core members of the JLA are aspirational figures, so they're frequently read as power fantasies. However, Morrison goes beyond that simple interpretation and positions the JLA as humanity's guides to the next stage of evolution. As Metron says at the end of WWIII, the JLA shows us a glimpse of our future selves, and it's up to us to get to there.

The Complete JLA Review Index

JLA: New World Order (#1-4)

JLA: American Dreams (#5-9)

JLA: Rock of Ages (#10-15)

JLA: Prometheus Unbound (#16-17)

JLA: Return of the Conqueror (#22-23)

JLA: One Million

JLA: Executive Action (#24-26)

JLA: Crisis Times Five (#28-31)

JLA: World War III (#34-41)

JLA: Earth 2

JLA: Classified (#1-3)

JLA: World War III (#34-41)

At the end of the final issue of Morrison's JLA run, Metron says "We have shown you the shape of the world to come. Now you must find the way there." That basically sums up Morrison's goal with the series, and with most of his work, to prevent an aspirational model of the humanity that could be. For him, the superhero is a vision of what humanity could be, the next step in evolution, and that concept is at the center of this arc.

I think the final issue is fantastic, but the earlier stuff is a bit more hit or miss. I do like the way Morrison brings back some old villains, which gives a nice sense of closure to the arc. It's like everything has been building to this point, which is true in some respects. However, the arcs are generally standalone so the payoff in this final arc isn't going to be the same as it is in The Invisibles, or New X-Men, where each arc built on what happened previously, bringing us to a big overall conclusion at the end.

One of the issues with writing for the JLA is it becomes very difficult to keep topping yourself. I feel like One Million was the ultimate threat for the JLA, and since then the smaller arcs actually worked better, where the focus was on character rather than just making massive foes. In this case, Prometheus and Luthor are good villains, but they seem to be here only to show how massive a threat Mageddon is. Side note, but I'll just mention that the Bee Queen seems like a precursor to The Filth, with both her visual design and the nastiness of her setup.

Mageddon works better as a thematic villain than as a an actual foe. He's a concept, and can create destruction, but we don't have a huge emotional stake in his destruction. That said, when you're dealing with the JLA, normal villains don't work. What they're fighting in Mageddon is the destructive force of regression. It is a holdover from a previous world and is trying to destroy the world that has grown up since his time. So, it's the ultimate conservative force, the anti-sun, an impediment to human progress. In this respect it's similar to the Sheeda, who harvest civilizations when they grow too powerful.

Morrison heroes are always about evolution, so Mageddon is the ultimate foe for them to fight. During the arc, there's a lot of different phases of evolution. What we realize by the end of the arc is that the whole reason the New Gods were working with the JLA was to fight Mageddon. They were there to guide humanity through this trial then leave them to grow on their own. If we view the New Gods as humanity's parents, this arc is all about humanity proving that it's strong enough to stand on its own.

However, humanity here is divided into two distinct categories, regular human and superhuman. The New Gods serve as parent figures to the superhumans, and the superhumans act to guide the regular humans. This series has been all about the way that these God like beings have the mandate to inspire regular humans to be better.

The ingenious thing that Morrison does at the end of the arc is reveal that Mageddon is literally preying on humanity's primal, unevolved weakness by activating our dormant reptilian DNA. Side note, but it was great to see Animal Man back in a Morrison comic. I think Morrison gave the character the perfect conclusion to his own series, but it's nice to get to see him just keeping on. Similarly, it's cool to see Zatanna as well, I would love to see Morrison write an ongoing series with the character, his work on her miniseries was phenomenal.

Anyway, if Mageddon's going to fight them by targetting our primitive weakness, the JLA decides that the best way to combat this is to tap into humanity's potential and evolve the world. On the one hand, this feels like territory Morrison has gone over many times, but I give him a pass because it works wonderfully here. I love the idea that the JLA is giving humanity a preview of what they could be. Morrison's core thematic statement is contained in this speech by Oracle:

"Hi, everyone...don't be afraid...what we're feeling are new structures opening up in our brains...It's like a preview o evolution. All this amazing stuff you're seeing and feeling is what Superman feels like all the time. It's why he wants to save us."

That sums up the whole series right there. The JLA are the ultimate form of humanity, what we hope to be. In a panel right out of Flex Mentallo, but still potent, we see an army of ordinary people flying up to battle Mageddon because they want to thank Superman for saving them. Juxtaposed with this is Superman's crisis of faith while figthing Mageddon. It's this tribute from ordinary people that gives him the strength to absorb the energy of the anti-sun and defeat Mageddon. It reminds me a bit of Buffy's "The Prom," where we see that ordinary people really do notice what these superhumans do for them. It's a really powerful moment that perfectly expresses so much of Morrison's personal philosophy.

For him, superhero comics are a way to examine humanity's future and construct a model of what we want to be. Having the ordinary citizens become superpowered is the equivalent of the reader being brought into the comic to fight alongside the characters. Batman mentions that the JLA always end up winning, and the way the ending is structured implies that it's the reader's faith in the characters that ultimately gives them the power to triumph over evil. On a literal level, the fact that we keep buying the books and seeing the movies means that the characters remain viable properties and there will not die. So, reading the book does keep them alive.

Reading a lot of Morrison JLA can numb you to just how strong his ideas are. But, if you step back, the torrent of crazy concepts in this final issue is unmatched by virtually any other author at any time. And by this point, you just accept it because he's built a world where all this is viable, it's a world where imagination and strength of belief are enough to win the day. Look at Green Lantern, he just has to believe and his ring works again, it's not the ring that matters, it's his belief in the ring.

The series ends with humanity having received a preview of the world it can one day have, and Metron giving the JLA the goal of bringing that world to fruition. One day everyone will be like Superman, and in the world that Morrison's created, great power does not corrupt, it allows you to see the wonder of the world. The bad guys in this series are the ones with petty, individual concerns, the good guys are the ones who can transcend that to fight for the good of the world as a whole. And in the final panel we get one more meta nod to the reader with the hilarious line, "We're the Justice League. You know you love it."

I once heard someone say that Morrison always has problems ending his series. That's absoultely ridiculous, Morrison's endings usually do a wonderful job of wrapping up the loose ends of the series and providing a vision of the characters' future. Animal Man #26, Doom Patrol #63 and The Invisibles #1 are three of the best comics you'll ever read. JLA #41 isn't on that level, but it's still a thoroughly satisfying wrap up to a great run.

Ultimately, World War III suffers from fatigue. By this point, it's very hard for Morrison to surprise us. So he probably made the right choice by exiting the series then. However, the final issue is a wonderful topper to the run, perfectly articulating the thematic concerns that made his work so unique. It was an issue that had me cheering.

Next up, I'm going to do a wrap up of the run as a whole. So, look for that in the next couple of days.

JLA: Crisis Times Five (#28-31)

This storyline works in a similar way as a lot of the other big, multi-part arcs that Morrison has done, piling crisis on crisis, swamping the JLA with the sheer amount of things they've got to deal with. As usual, some of them are traditional superhero stuff while some are crazy cosmic things. Crisis Times Five encapsulates a lot of what's good about Morrison's run, but it also feels a bit conventional. Of course, reading the Mark Waid issues surrounding it show that Morrison's conventional writing still trumps nearly anything else out there.

There are two really fantastic pieces of this storyline. The first is Zauriel and old Green Lantern's trip to heaven to try to wake the Spectre. Here we get a great Morrison concept, the idea that the Spectre has been imprisoned by planting a civilization on him. So, waking the Spectre to save Earth would mean destroying an entire world. It's a clear precursor of stuff that Morrison deals with in The Filth, the idea that smaller microbial worlds are as equally valid as the one we think is real. As above, so below was the big thing from that series, and this civilizatiion on the Spectre parallels the way our own bodies house billions of microbes.

In one of the most stunning pages in any Morrison work, we see Zauriel watch the growth and decline of this entire world over the course of billions of years, experienced in an hour. I love the idea that they move so slow they seem like statues to the people in the world. It's simple, yet mindblowing.

The other really cool thing here is Green Lantern and Captain Marvel's trip to the fifth dimension. In looking at The Invisibles, I was struggling to come up with a way to comprehend the idea of 4-D time as described in the series. Eventually, I realized that people looking at our world from a 4-D perspective would see it much like a comic book, each seperate moment frozen in time, the people involved unaware of their future even though we could see it by just flipping forward a few pages. So, all of time always exists, it's all about which piece it you choose to experience at any moment.

What Morrison does here is take that metaphor but put it to work within the comic book world. In the fifth dimension, Green Lantern becomes a 2-D figure with no depth, just a piece of paper. All the stuff there is great, Captain Marvel's goofiness maximized by the retro coloring and Green Lantern still in awe of the crazy stuff he gets to experience. For Morrison, the fifth dimension is one of pure imagination, by writing something Captain Marvel is able to make it real. Morrison's a big proponent of chaos magic and sigils, the idea that concentrated thought can affect the nature of reality. What Marvel does by skywriting the two colors together is essentially cast a sigil that quickly becomes reality.

The storyline that isn't particularly successful here is Triumph's attempt to defeat the JLA. His elaborate masterplan is too close to what Prometheus and the Keymaker already did and there's nothing particularly interesting about his struggle. The stuff with the two genies is decent, but they end up feeling more like just really big bad guys than a particularly exceptional fifth dimension threat.

That said, I d enjoy the stuff with Huntress and Wildcat fighting them on the streets. I read this trade a few years ago, without reading the rest of the series, and I remember being annoyed by the sudden appearance of these random characters like Wildcat, on top of the already huge cast. However, reading the series through, you really get to know all the main cast, and the guest appearance of Wildcat serves a crucial role in the ongoing evolution of Huntress as a JLA member. Her arc has been the most interesting character development during Grant's run. She's still not sure why she's on the team, but always seems to wind up serving some crucial role in the JLA victory. By this point, and in the subsequent Mark Waid issues, she seems to have realized that her role is to be the ordinary citizen, the voice of humanity on the JLA, and she serves that purpose well.

Back when I started doing these JLA reviews, I talked about the fact that the book was about icons, so the stories couldn't be traditional narratives, they had to play more on the characters as mythology, gods. That's why I think Morrison chose to bring in the secondary cast, people who didn't have huge powers and were actually vulnerable to attack. For one thing, they can actually be in danger, as Steel is in this storyline, but they also have more doubts about the JLA's purpose. All of the secondary seven are uncertain why they're there, but gradually proving themselves through battle. So, there is a clear character progression even though each of these arcs is essentially standalone. I'd previous read the series in just random chunks, but it's definitely something that should be read in order.

Crisis Times Five is perhaps the representative Morrison JLA arc, containing the crazy concepts, subtle character development and innovative use of DC history that make it great and the weaknesses as well, too many villains who seemingly have the ultimate key to the JLA and a repetitive structure of threat appears, creates chaos then gets stopped. But, the flaws don't prevent this from being a really fun arc that towers over the other writers working on JLA. To think that something full of this many crazy concepts could be the top selling comic shows that in at least one medium, you can still do really great, innovative work in a mainstream context.

Related Posts
JLA: Return of the Conqueror (#22-23) (8/10/2006)
JLA: One Million (8/19/2006)
JLA: Executive Action (#24-26) (8/24/2006)

JLA: Executive Action (#24-26)

This JLA arc introduces the Ultramarines, and this seemingly unimportant story will have wide ranging consequences for the future of GM's corner of the DC Universe. Just thinking about the arc of these characters in mindblowing. They start out here as Authority style superheroes, then eventually get used as living weapons then injected in the micro-universe Qwewq. From there, they battle a virus of evil that was injected in the universe, which grows into Neh-Buh-Loh billions of years into the future. There, they succeed in making Neh-Buh-Loh spare Misty, and eventually return to the present and help Frankenstein defeat Neh-Buh-Loh. That's a journey.

I'm assuming that Morrison didn't have these wide ranging plans in place when he wrote these issues. When he went to do Seven Soldiers, he probably looked through his JLA run, saw some cool concepts and decided to bring them into his new series. In the case of the Ultramarines, it's certainly left open for them to return, and they may even return later in this JLA run. But, I would not have been expecting to see the infant universe of Qwewq again.

Anyway, this arc itself isn't particularly noteworthy. It's a lot more grounded and conventional than the outre, mindblowing journey of something like One Million. I find it impressive how Morrison turns the Shaggy Man into a major threat, while simultaneously noting the goofiness of the character. I prefer Morrison's approach to Silver Age concepts like this to Alan Moore's. Moore would do a pastische of the character, a la the untold tales of Supreme, creating something that feels like a 60s comic. What Morrison does it make a comic that gives the same emotional reaction to present readers that those 60s comics did to 60s readers.

The character introductions here are great, all using the superhero's logo to announce their presence. Superman's is particularly cool with its depiction of what time looks like to Clark. We also get some more time with the New Gods. I read the TPB of Kirby's New Gods to study up for a reread of Seven Soldiers, but I'm really glad I did because it's critical to a lot of Morrison's JLA. Metron is a perfect character for Morrison to work with and I'm glad that he got a chance to write for him.

The main story has some issues, namely the fact that the US would choose to try to build their own superhero army and alienate the JLA. In the DCU it should be apparent that the JLA is the ultimate force and you can't build someone to match them. I suppose the point of the arc is that this General is so egotistical he thinks that he's the one who can defeat the JLA, but then we end up with a story just like Prometheus or the Keymaker where we see someone who's found "the perfect solution" to defeat the JLA, a solution that we inevitably know will not work.

I do like the way that Morrison splits the team, by making the ordinary, less powered characters fight the General it builds up narrative tension. Huntress is the most expendable member of the team, so it's smart to put her in danger. So, over with the main team we see a lot of creative uses of powers to battle the Ultramarines. I like the Flash turning the water guy into steam and particularly Superman using his gravitas to stand down an entire battalion of military troops. He commands such respect in the DCU, and that scene pretty much sums it up with the soldier who says "I can't shoot fucking Superman."

However, the more entertaining piece is with Batman and Huntress battling Eiling. This is a really well done fight, with a lot more bruises and nastiness than the typical JLA battle. I love the dynamic Morrison has created between those two characters, with Huntress constantly wondering why she's on the team and Batman as the sage who seemingly knows everything, but won't tell her the answers.

The finale of the storyline sets up another division between an Authority style super team and the traditional JLA. Superman is all about trying to help ordinary people realize their potential while the Ultramarines are more about protecting their own, hence the creation of Superbia. It's good territory to go to because it works on both a meta level and in the story, however I think it was fresher back then than it is today. I do love the final page through, where Hourman appears and says "I expected to arrive in the midst of Earth's war with the fifth dimension." Only in Morrison's JLA.


Related Posts
JLA: Prometheus Unbound (#16-17) (8/6/2006)
JLA: Return of the Conqueror (#22-23) (8/10/2006)
JLA: One Million (8/19/2006)

JLA: One Million

One Million is a big DCU crossover that was overseen by Morrison. Reading this as a linear story is a bit weird because the story branches through various books being published by DC at the time, and major parts of the action were not actually written by Morrison. However, he's clearly dictating the themes and style of this crossover and it succeeds in being one of the best of his JLA stories, going ridiculously over the top with its pop heroics.

If I have one issue with this crossover, it's that it features another alternate version of the JLA. I suppose the whole point of the JLA is that they're so good that the only challenge they could have is fighting themselves. And at least in this case they're not fighting themselves, they're just hanging out together. However, it's still not a fresh idea by any means.

That said, I do love the way that Morrison sketches an entire history of the DC Universe for the next 833 centuries, creating a credible timeline for each of the superhero dynasties. Morrison's great innovation in his JLA run is choosing to take advantage of each characters' archetypal status. Superman isn't so much a man as an idea, and the fact that this dynasty grows up in the future makes a lot of sense.

Superman Returns got a lot of flack for turning Superman into a Christ figure, but it's not a stretch for the character. This book basically lays out a world where Superman is a messiah who inspires many followers who eagerly await his return. Solaris, a being of fire, could be read as the devil, trying to lead Supes' followers away from a belief in light and good, towards a belief in fire and evil. However, Superman's story continues to inspire people and when he does return he's able to form a sort of heaven on Earth. And, like Jesus, he has the dual fact of being both God and man. So, part of his heaven is having Lois back. I also like the way that Superman of the present is surprised that he survives so long, he's not yet aware of the potential he has.

My approach to Morrison's JLA run has been to avoid seeking narrative cohesion and conflict, or character growth, the way you would in most stories. You know that every story will end with the JLA winning and everything being pretty much the same. So, in approaching the stories, you have to learn to appreciate the insanity of the ideas that Morrison puts forth. It's about getting caught up in the absurdity of the story and learning to live by their logic. From a narrative point of view, Green Lantern's ring is awful, because it can solve pretty much any problem. The ring's only limit is the human imagination, and as written by Morrison, you're not going to see a lot of limits on that.

So, if you want to write a situation where our heroes are in peril, it becomes tough. So what you have to do is create situations that challenge the hero and surprise the audience by showing the character thinking outside the box. At the end of the arc, Green Lantern causes Solaris to go Supernova then contains the explosion inside a box created by the ring. This is an inventive use of the power, and because the act has such massive scope, just watching it happen is enjoyable.

That said, Morrison does get some character development in. Over the course of the series, we've seen Green Lantern become more confident and here he even surprises himself by saving the world. It's done in a subtle way, but works. I also like Huntress' questioning of why Batman would put her on the team. She's the most relatable voice on the team, approaching things from the perspective of an ordinary person. The one character I don't like is Plastic Man, his cheesy jokes and pop culture referencing dialogue feel out of place in this epic piece.

The trade includes some of the individual crossover issues, and most of them are actually quite good. I read the first trade of Starman a while back and didn't really like it, but this issue works really well. You get Ted Knight's initial feelings of happiness, that the identity he started lives on into the 853rd century, then his gradual sadness at realizing that this Starman has completely lost sight of the principles he fought for. This issue was actually good enough to make me want to do a reread of that trade and reevaluate the series.

The other cool issue was the Superman dynasty issue. The art in this issue is really poor, but the story it tells is quite interesting. It's a bit of a show, don't tell piece, but it pays off nicely in the final issue of the crossover.

Morrison's own crossover issue, JLA 1,000,000 has a lot of cool things, reading like a computer giving you a Silver Age style narration. It's quite effective in conveying a lot of information in a small amount of space. This would seem to be an ideal way to do digital comics, where you could click on a character and get an infobox telling you who they are and what's going on. I particularly like the intro: "Hello I'm JLA 1,000,000," another example of Morrison acknowledging the reader in the comic. So, on one level it's a distancing device, but at the same time it makes it feel more real. By putting in so many factoids, it gives you the sense that this is really happening and we're just viewers along for the ride. That's one of the things that this whole crossover pulls off really well, Morrison makes it believable that not only does one whole universe of superheroes exist, but that this really is what happens for the next 833,000 years. You could never say something's implausible in a Morrison JLA story, because he's built a universe where anything's possible. Admittedly a lot of that is due more to the accumulation of thousands of DCU stories than his specific writing, but he does play a role.

This is Morrison doing some of his best JLA. There's a ton of crazy concepts and a great resolution to the basic problem, with the switching of objects through time. To pull off a story of this magnitude is quite remarkable, and even though there's a few issues along the way, the quality of the story overwhelms those issues.

JLA: Return of the Conqueror (#22-23)

First up, a few words on the Mark Waid fill in issues that preceeded this storyline. I'm not sure why Waid did four issues, I do know that Morrison was way behind with his Invisibles scripts at this time, so he might have taken some time off from JLA to get ahead, but I'm not really sure what the reason for these fill ins was.

Reading the Morrison JLA, I sometimes wonder if I just say it's good because Morrison wrote it. Some of his stories are special, others aren't quite generic, but certainly aren't as unique as his other work. I was think that perhaps anyone could write the craziness that Morrison brings to JLA. Reading the Mark Waid issues makes it quite clear that this isn't true. Waid's first arc is alright, particularly the second issue. However, he's too reliant on rather artificial cliffhangers, having the JLA disappear isn't particularly exciting or threatening at this point.

However, that arc is a sterling example of comics writing next to the awfulness that is "Mystery in Space," an arc that has some really awful writing. The idea was clearly Adam Strange imprisons the JLA, so we do that for an issue, then spend half an issue on backstory of Strange, flagrantly violating show, don't tell. There's no emotional stake in the story and the reveal that Strage isn't actually evil is so unshocking it makes the whole story essentially pointless. Waid's major problem is that he writes the JLA in a traditional narrative way, putting the characters in danger or having them turn evil doesn't work because they're all essentially static. You can't write the JLA like you would normal people.

So, it was refreshing to return to Morrison and one of his stronger stories so far. The opening of this issue, with Michael Haney drawing Superman is a classic Morrison moment. I was actually thinking that this story was Morrison going back to that thematic well one too many times, but he mixes it up from Flex Mentallo and takes a similar setup in a slightly different direction. Morrison views superheroes as an aspirational model for normal humans, in someone like Superman, people can see their potential. In Flex Mentallo we see how an adult can become cynical and lose touch with the magic that these characters once held. Michael, a child, is the one person who can imagine wonder in a world filled with zombies, for Morrison, it's superhero comics that took him out of a boring world and opened his mind up.

When Alan Moore wrote Watchmen he thought it would be the final superhero story, because there was nowhere left to go from there, he had utterly broke down all the concepts traditionally associated with those characters. Morrison's work digs just as deep as Moore, but with the goal of reaffirming the traditional wonder present in the characters, enhancing the concepts rather than destroying them. Flex Mentallo is the best example of that, we go through the grim and gritty real world but by the end emerge in a shiny new world of heroes and wonder. Morrison sees the rejection of wonder as something utterly adolescent, best summed up by the villain in Flex, he sees nothing wrong with maintaining a childlike sense of wonder into adulthood.

This arc had my attention right from the start because of the appearance of Daniel, the new Sandman from Neil Gaiman's series. I'm a huge Sandman fan and it's very cool to see Morrison writing one of Neil's characters and drawing on his concepts. Neil's Sandman run is the second best longform comics work, behind only Morrison's Invisibles, and like Morrison, he's a stunning font of stories and ideas. The appearance of Daniel here is another really cool cameo moment, normally you read something, it ends and that's it, but in the DCU, characters from previous stories can pop up again. It reinforces the idea of the DCU as a sentient entity, people put their ideas in and then those ideas mutate and are carried by others. Along with Daniel come a bunch of tie in references to Sandman, and some really cool visuals. I love the way Porter draws Daniel, and the stuff in The Dreaming is gorgeous.

This story is all about the conflict between childlike wonder and the conformity of boring adulthood. Michael is trying to hold on to his belief, but It is out to crush him and turn him into something like everyone else. It is attacking the world of dreams, the place where stories and imagination come from, if that's destroyed then humanity is lost. What Superman has to do is prove his existence to the boy and as a result validate his beliefs and prevent him from succumbing to It. This conflict between childhood wonder and adult conformity crops up quite a bit in Seven Soldiers, which features numerous children being corrupted by an encroaching adult world. Without the JLA, those children are not saved and wind up messed up by their encounters with adulthood.

Seven Soldiers is largely about the struggles that lesser people have living up to the example set by the Justice League. Read alone, this story has an upbeat ending, however in light of Seven Soldiers, the boy's need for superheroes only makes apparent how lacking others are in comparison.

It's not only Michael who needs Superman, Superman also needs Michael to validate him. On a meta level, this could be read as superheroes only existing because the readers choose to believe them. It's us who give them the powers, changing an image on a piece of paper into a fully formed character in the world of the imagination. The idea that Michael can draw an image on a piece of paper then make it real is what making comics is all about. It's what all of art is about, taking thoughts and making them real, it's all about hypersigils, craftiing the reality that you want by just believing hard enough.

The end of the story reveals that Michael Haney, the boy from the dream, is an adult in real life, which ties in perfectly with the theme of the story. The adult world tried to take his wonder, but deep down he still has the same beliefs he did as a child. The captions say that he has "too vivid an imagination," but he's happy to believe in something and not be like them. This is Morrison justifying the fact that he still writes these stories and rejecting the boring world that looks down on them.

The final page shows Daniel tucking the previously massive It into a small fishbowl. If we read the It as conforming adult force, which quite literally puts people to sleep and destorys their minds, the ending would imply that there will always imaginative storytellers who will make our everyday reality look insignificant by comparison. The whole arc is a tribute to the power of stories, hence the guest appearance by the king of stories, Daniel.

These are classic Morrison themes, but it's always fun to watch them play out. I loved getting to see Daniel again and I think the arc on the whole finds the perfect balance between exploring Morrison's personal favorite themes and doing really cool action stuff. It's my second favorite of his JLA arcs so far, behind only Rock of Ages.

JLA: Prometheus Unbound (#16-17)

The crazy, cosmic journey of Rock of Ages ended with the breakup of the JLA. However, that was apparently a short lived thing, since a fill in short story by Christopher Priest features the reformation of the JLA. The story's pretty good, particularly the Batman part, but it's not remarkable. Most people write the JLA as just a bunch of superheroes, it's only Morrison who's able to push them to the level of gods. It doesn't work if you write the JLA like the X-Men, because, unlike the X-Men, they're not particularly interesting as people.

This short also features the art of Yanick Paquette, who would later go on to draw Bulleteer. Partially because of the quality of the pages, his art lacks the slickness of his work on Bulleteer. One of the issues with this story is that it sets up a new status quo where the JLA has twelve members. At this point in the series, the amount of people in the book starts to border on unmanagable. With twelve main people, there's very little room for character development, and the fact that the new members are all lower tier heroes means that the pantheon feeling of the early arcs is diminished. There's potential in having the higher level heroes helping out less powerful people, but there's just too many here.

'Prometheus Unbound' begins with an interesting standalone recounting the origin of lead villain Prometheus. This is actually the strongest issue of the arc, because it makes you understand the villain without actually liking him. The confrontation between Prometheus and Retro allows Morrison to do yet another allegorical examination of the comics marketplace. This could be read as the rise of Image style heroes over classic heroes, but it also shows how classic heroes are creatively bankrupt. Retro could be a dig at Alan Moore's work on Supreme, I'm not sure what the time table on those two series is.

The actual stuff with the JLA is some of Grant's weaker material. It's fun to see Superman's pride while giving the press a tour around the satellite, but soon after the press becomes little more than a tension building device. They have very little role in the end of the story.

It is fun to see some of the lower tier heroes stepping up and defeating Prometheus, but this arc has basically the same structure as the Key storyline, a villain comes out of nowhere with the perfect plan to defeat the Justice League, is about to do so, but is soon defeated. Beyond that, there's very little philosophical or thematic significance to what happens. It's just a straight ahead JLA story.

One of the reasons I don't like Morrison's JLA as much as his other material is that I'm more interested in the soapy character based storytelling of X-Men than the action stylings of the JLA. When Morrison wrote a straight ahead X-Men arc, like Imperial, I really enjoyed it, but I probably wouldn't have particularly liked the JLA equivalent. The JLA storylines that work are the ones where Morrison puts more of his personal interests into the book.

Next up is a guest arc from Mark Waid that will apparently feature more stuff with the New Gods. Then a couple more Morrison issues leading into the One Million crossover.

JLA: Rock of Ages (10-15)

I read a smattering of JLA stuff before beginning this whole series readthrough and the one thing I read that I really liked was Rock of Ages. Most of the weaker stories in Grant's JLA run are the ones that are decent superhero stories that just happen to be written by Morrison. The best, like Rock of Ages, are ones where it's a Grant Morrison story that just happens to star the JLA. This was written around the same time as The Invisibles' Hand of Glory arc, in the wake of Morrison's "alien abduction," an experienc that forever changed the direction of his work.

Before the alien abduction, Grant was a great writer, who told some weird stories, but his works didn't have an overarching connecting tissue. It was the abduction experience that gave Morrison the basis for his personal philosophy, the philosophy that informed all his work since. You can see this division quite clearly in The Invisibles, the first few issues explore a lot of things but it's not until the 'Sheman' arc that Morrison's conception of the nature of time becomes clear. As that series develops, his 4-D conception of reality becomes the guiding principle for both the fiction itself and the philosophy that it's trying to bring into reality. Works like The Invisibles and The Filth are a blend of philosophical text and adventure story.

Reading Rock of Ages you can see a lot of the concepts developed in The Invisibles filtered through a different lens, though this series also presents some inconsistencies from the worldview that Morrison forwards in Invis. However, the story doesn't begin with craziness, rather it starts with a pretty basic setup. Lex Luthor has bought the JLA's greatest enemies together to attempt a corporate takeover of the JLA. Despite the appearance of yet another evil version of the Justice League, this is a really nice opener for the arc. It's cool to see Mirror Master return, he was the star of a great single issue story in Morrison's Animal Man. One of the cool things about reading stuff in the DCU is seeing characters from previous runs, it's sort of like seeing an actor you really like pop up unexpectedly in another film. It may not have the same magic as the original appearance, but there's a nice spark of recognition nonetheless.

One of the things you get reading the whole JLA series rather than random excerpts is a better sense of the character development. A lot of the characters here are inert, Superman isn't going to go through a soul wrenching journey of personal discovery. However, we do get to see the younger heroes change. Kyle, despite his vast powers, has to deal with personal unease about his role in the Justice League. One of the scenes that best shows this is the moment where he's arguing with a random guy on the street, insisting that the JLA's just doing their best.

About halfway through the arc, things take a major turn with the appearance of Metron. I first encountered Metron in Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle, a series that caused me much confusion. However, after reading the TPB of New Gods, I was totally prepared for the excursion into Kirby mythology. Metron is the DC Universe equivalent of John a Dreams, a guy who's able to move through space and time at will, however, Metron chooses to remain in his own form rather than subsume himself to another persona.

Metron sends Green Lantern and Aquaman on a mission to retrieve the Philosopher's Stone from a future reality and they bounce into reality known as Wonder World. While on Wonderworld, Green Lantern comes across the infant universe of Qwewq! This is one of those details that's just mindblowing, the infant universe of Qwewq somehow makes it off Wonderworld and later turns up in Morrison's JLA: Classified arc. Qwewq is infested with the black death, but also given a vaccine in the form of the ultramarines, and it eventually grows up to become Neh-buh-loh from Seven Soldiers. Just think about the journey of this infant universe from this issue to the end of Seven Soldiers. No one else is doing this kind of crazy storytelling, chronicling the growth of an entire universe in the background of a bunch of books. The series of events that will ultimately hold back the Sheeda invasion begins here in Rock of Ages.

After Wonderworld, Green Lantern meets up with Hourman. At the end of this book, Metron gives the philosopher's stone to Hourman, and asks him to keep it safe. However, this event actually takes place before Kyle meets with Hourman. So, Hourman is able to show Kyle the stone, and caution him about Metron's betrayal, because the good Metron travelled to Hourman and gave him the stone. Metron's speeches are all about asking people to transcend 3-dimensional logic and perceive all of time as one flowing entity. To understand the story, you also have to accept that logic because it's the only way you're able to understand why Hourman has the stone earlier in the story, but isn't given it until the end.

One of the best things about this arc is just how dense it is. Morrison's throwing out single issues that other writers would have spend twelve issues on, he's just got that much material. The Wonderworld segment leads into a post apocalyptic drama set in a world that Darkseid has conquered. After turning themselves into pure light information, Flash, Aquaman and Green Lantern turn up in this bad future and have to fix it. Sure, it's a little Days of Future Past, but the fact that this massive universe appears for a single issue adventure means you don't have time to dwell on the cliches.

The way that this arc resolves itself relies on a different conception of time than what Morrison uses in The Invisibles. In The Invisibles, it's impossible for there to be an alternate universe because all time exists simultaneously. If you went back in time five years, the changes you made would already be in place because you exist in a universe where you were five years ago. Figuring out this conception of time took me a long time, but I eventually got it by tracing Ragged Robin's journey. In 1996, the younger version of herself sees the older version of herself on the mesa. There was never a universe where the younger Robin saw no one, older Robin was always there, which means that the future she created through her time travel was the one she grew up in. That's why Jack tells her not to worry when she launches, she's already done everything right.

However, here in Rock of Ages, Metron posits a reality in which the forces of good and the forces of evil duel over the direction of reality and the outcome of each battle shapes the development of our world. One could argue that these Gods are essentially serving the same role as 5-D beings like John a Dreams did in The Invisibles. However, if that's true, then where did the evil Metron come from? If the alternate universe did exist, then it's logical that evil alternate future Metron could trick the JLA, however, if you're using the Invis concept of time, that alternate future would be impossible and the evil Metron could never exist.

To reconcile this, we need to turn to Morrison's idea of hypertime. This is the idea that time is like a river, there's the main river, but also a bunch of smaller bodies of water that branch off from the main flow. Sometimes these smaller rivers just stop, other times they'll connect back to the main river. So, according to this, the reality where Darkseid rules the world would be a small branch off the main river, one that eventually reconnects with the main flow.

Metron talks about the Philosopher's Stone as the Worlogog, an incarnation of all space/time. If we're to believe that the stone is a model of the universe, it would be logical that destruction of that model would lead to a new, incorrect universe. So, by saving the stone, they're quite literally saving the universe and ensuring that time proceeds down a good path. The stone, both visually and conceptually, is exactly like the magic mirror that the Invisibles crew encounters in New Mexico. The idea of a liquid that contains in it all moments of spacetime is one of those things I always struggle to get my head around. In this liquid we see all our experiences modeled, all of reality contained in this one object.

The idea that reality could be modeled in a fixed liquid is in line with Morrison's conception of our universe as a massive life chain flowing down from the first organism on the planet to present humanity. Travelling through this organism, freed of our individuality, we could experience reality through anyone's perception at any time.

The end of this arc has a lot of interesting foreshadowing. Metron indicates that the JLA themselves will be the New Gods, the key figures in the next fight for humanity's future. The idea that the JLA become gods is the critical founding component of Morrison's run. He is elevating them to the status of myth, and building towards a fnal battle on a mythic scale.

This is an arc that's just so nuts you have to love it. This is the first arc that feels uniquely Morrison and it's a great companion piece to the stuff going on in The Invisibles at the same time. I think comics can be proud that their biggest franchise isn't just telling the same story over and over again, this book is exploring intellectual territory that very few stories ever touch.

JLA: American Dreams (#5-9)

After the high octane, pop opening that was New World Order, Morrison scales things back a bit for some more tightly focused, short arcs. New World Order functions as a mission statement, showing the new JLA, composed of the world's greatest heroes, fighting huge cosmic threats. In his two longform revisionist mainstream superhero runs, this and X-Men, Morrison used the opening arc as a way of reinvigorating a property that had gotten stale. But where is there left go from there?

The first story in this collection is a nice, if unremarkable storyline about a robot who overcomes her programming to save the world with the JLA. There's a funny bit where the JLA is interviewing new members, but this is one of those stories where the shortness of the piece means that there's just not enough invested to get a really profound emotional impact. But, like a lot of early Transmetropolitan issues, it's satisfying in the way it tells a complete story with some interesting themes in a short time.

The next story is a two parter about a horde of angels invading Earth. My biggest issue with Morrison's JLA is that most of the stories have the same basic structure, some unbelievably massive foe turns up, some of the League are put out of commision, but the rest really to defeat the foe in the end. The most interesting thematic material here is Superman struggling to live up to his own mythology. The whole agenda behind the run was to approach the league as a modern pantheon, so it's logical that Superman would have issues with.

When we reach the end of the story and Superman uses his powers to defeat an Angel and all kinds of huge foes, we see Superman proving his own myth correct. The human part of him may have doubts, but he is able to overcome those human doubts and succeed. One thing that hurts this story is Superman talking about his myth while wearing the stupid electric blue outfit, the classic uniform is intrinsic to the mythology and this goofy outfit undermines some of that.

Next up is 'Elseworlds,' a two plane story in which the JLA is menaced by the Key in the real world, and live through a variety of alternate universes in their mind. I usually enjoy an alternate universe story, but there's always something a bit cheap about them. It's cool to see Batman and Catwoman married, but the fact that it's an 'imaginary story' makes it difficult to engage in the drama of those moments. We're aware it's not happening, so the only interest is in seeing DCU mythology reconfigured. It's interesting, but not particularly illuminating.

I do like Green Arrow's quest to save the JLA, using only goofy arrows. And, the Key's rants, particularly the moment where he says his newfound powers are making him talk to himself, are great. This series is some of Morrison's funniest work, he's simultaneously engaging with the material on a totally straight level and also poking fun at the absurd conventions of the superhero genre. It's like the characters have to play these roles, they subconsciously fall into patterns of behavior dictated by the genre.

This is definitely Morrison's lightest take on the superhero genre, throwing things back to Silver Age style over the top craziness and simple character arcs. Nearly every other superhero has had serious underlying issues, whether it be the acid burnout and petulant adolescence of Flex Mentallo or dark sexual undercurrent of Seven Soldiers, this is the one superhero work that is simple, straight ahead superheroics. Because it's so thematically uncomplicated, I think it's one of Morrison's less satisfying works. It's certainly enjoyable, but with most of Morrison's work, you're not only entertained, you're enlightened.

Of course, a lot of the fun of this is seeing Morrison play with the DC icons. I loved Morrison's X-Men because it took everything great about Claremont's work and hauled it into the present. So, being a huge fan of the X-Men in general, I was able to better appreciate the way Morrison played off character histories. I'm not that familiar with DC, so there's not that inherent sense of excitement that X-Men had.

Still, this was a generally satisfying volume and I'm excited for Rock of Ages next.

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JLA: New World Order (#1-4) (7/26/2006)

JLA: New World Order (#1-4)

After last week's read of JLA Classified, I decided it was time to read Morrison's entire JLA run through. I'd read bits and pieces before, but never went through all the issues in order. After reading this, Zenith will be the only longform Morrison work that I haven't read.

The bits of JLA that I did read were a bit frustrating, I don't think I learned to understand Morrison's approach to the character until I read Seven Soldiers. In reading about the DCU, you usually approach it from the perspective of the most powerful people in the entire universe. I'd read interviews where Grant talks about the way that he saw the seven JLA members as a pantheon, he's essentially telling stories about gods, and as a result, every conflict has to be amped up to a ridiculous level in order to be any sort of threat. Reading a book like JLA is the equivalent of looking at the life of someone like George Bush or Brad Pitt, this isn't an average life and you can't expect average problems.

For the characters in Seven Soldiers, the JLA are gods and even one meeting with them can put you on the convention circuit for years. I think it's more interesting to read about the struggles of ordinary people to become great than reading about great people being great, so I was more drawn to Seven Soldiers. However, once you understand what Morrison's doing with the book, it's a lot easier to enjoy it. Reading this book is all about just enjoying the over the top action, ridiculous concepts and imagery that Grant puts forth.

Grant worked on JLA concurrently with The Invisibles and the book itself feels a lot like Invisibles volume two. The texture of the pages and the quality of the art has a lot in common with Jiminez era Invisibles. Grant has talked about how similar ideas wound up in both works, filtered through their different lenses, particularly in the upcoming Rock of Ages. But, it's just notable to return to the era of that work and get a glimpse of where Grant's mind was at.

The best moments of the series are the really pop moments where we get to see the ridiculous cool of our main heroes. Page 1.3 is a great example of this, a bunch of b-list heroes are scrambling, but on the bottom of the page, calmly moving in we see Superman and are informed that "The big guy's on the case." I think it's misguided to try to write Superman as a regular guy, the whole marketing pitch behind Superman Returns was he may be super, but he still hurts. This book acknowledges that Superman is on a totally different level from other superheroes, let alone normal humans, and lets him revel in that greatness. One of the best moments is where he says "This is Superman" and Superman is written in the title font.

Superman is a great character, but the star of the series is undeniably Batman. This incarnation of Batman is basically the ultimate ninja special ops guy, Jack Bauer on crack. The character is so nasty, he manages to be mofre effective at fighting people than any of the superpowered people on the team.

The thing that Morrison manages to do really well is give each member of the team an iconic moment that makes you understand how far above ordinary people they are. There's the great scene where the Flash opens a lock instantly, Green Lantern asks him how he knew the combination and Flash says I just tried a thousand different combinations until I got to the one that worked. This guy thinks in a totally different way than ordinary people and I imagine Morrison thinking all the time about unique uses for these peoples' powers.

The major issue I have with the arc is the fact that I think it'd be more exciting to have the Hyperclan come in and actually show up the JLA and be proactive in changing the world, rather than turn out to be rather stock villains. The design on the Hyperclan hasn't aged well and it's odd to see a duplicate of The Invisibles' Boy, only with much larger breasts. The story is rather prescient in presenting an Authority-esque superhero team to challenge the old JLA. I'm guessing that the story is meant to be a meta narrative designed to justify the JLA's place in the world. These new Image style heroes can come in and kill people, but ultimately their heroism is a shallow ineffecient one against the real power and moral authority of the JLA. Their solutions are ineffective in the long term, just like no matter how many new comic books come out, the characters in the JLA will almost always outlast the new trendy characters.

But, at the same time it's a bit odd for Morrison to be promoting the conservative, institutional heroes at the JLA over these proactive guys with new ideas. The Hyperclan have more in common with The Invisibles than the JLA does. But, he does always return to the breaking down of dualism. So, this story shows that reckless shows of surface change aren't lasting, as Superman says, you can't force people to become better, they have to do it on themselves, the JLA are just a security measure there to protect people when they fall. So, this is Morrison creating a vision of a utopian policeforce, one that is there to help people grow, not hold them back.

JLA feels less distinctly Morrison than the vast majority of his works. When Morrison started New X-Men there was the sense of a vast change in the universe to date. I haven't read much other JLA, but this feels much more like an amping up of what was already there than a reinvention. He's not out to reinvent the wheel here, rather he's hoping to tell the craziest, poppest superhero stories possible and I think he succeeds.

The read will continue and I'll be blogging it all. So, look for thoughts on American Dreams soon.

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JLA: Classified #1-3 (7/16/2006)

JLA Classified #1-3

Going through Seven Soldiers, I came across a bunch of references to Grant's JLA Classified arc, which served as a prelude to the series. So, having read all the Seven Soldiers stuff, I figured it was time to go back and see where it all began. Plus, I'll read anything Morrison does, so it was worth a look.

However, the one Morrison extended run I never got into was JLA. I'm not familiar enough with the DC Universe to follow a lot of what's going on. I'm going to go back and read the entire run through soon, but Classified has both what worked and what didn't in his previous JLA run.

The big issue with Morrison's work on JLA, and the JLA in general, is that these aren't so much characters as icons. As Superman Returns showed, it's very difficult to have narrative tension in a story about a guy who's got virtually no flaws, throw in six more similarly powered people and it's impossible to do a traditional narrative. Also, these aren't characters who develop and go through arcs, they just exist as what they are. This is a major difference from Morrison's work on X-Men, and the Marvel Universe in general, the X-Men are characters who can change, Superman is an icon who remains the same.

So, in building this story, Morrison uses the Ultramarines to create some actual tension. I don't know who these people are, but because they're not the iconic JLA, there is the chance that some bad stuff could happen to them. So, you can have a fairly normal narrative structure with them, they're battling Gorilla Grodd, a rather ridiculous foe, but a threatening one nonetheless.

The reason that Seven Soldiers worked so well is that all those characters are expendable, and also subject to change. The beauty of each Seven Soldiers miniseries is watching the character go through a trial and either claim the role of hero or reject it. There is change and growth for all involved. A JLA story can't do this, so once the main crew shows up the joy of the story is in watching these ridiculously powerful people in action.

I enjoyed the read, I don't think it's one of Morrison's stronger pieces, but I feel like I better understand how to approach the series than I did back when I read snippets of his previous JLA run. It's all about getting lost in the over the top craziness of events and just accepting everything that happens. The main villain is a giant gorilla, and that's one of the saner parts of this story.

The coolest concept in this series is the idea of the JLA being stranded in a world without superheroes. This ties into Flex Mentallo's idea that to escape danger, superheroes hid themselves in our fiction. QWEWQ is likely an analogue for our own reality, I love the idea that the JLA would just bounce through our world, it's just one piece of this massive cosmic reality that they exist in. This ties back into Morrison's idea of hypertime, that time flows like a river and certain universes branch off. So, our reality is just a branch on the river that they move through as well.

This would be interesting enough on its own, but the infant universe is also where the series ties in with the meta-plot of Seven Soldiers. Reading this arc reinforces the coolness of a shared fictional universe. Most stories are self contained, they happen and end. In the DCU you can read the whole Seven Soldiers series then branch out and see how these characters connect to others. It makes it feel like witnessing events from a parallel universe, something Morrison has talked about with his claim that he wants to make the DC Universe sentient. I'm not sure what he meant by that exactly, but I feel like it's commenting on the fact that this universe just moves forward, individual people can contribute ideas, but the universe as a whole is more than just the sum of its individual parts, the sheer weight of stories combines to create a universe that operates by its own rules.

This series gives us our first glimpse of the Sheeda mosquito soldiers. Looking at this in the overall scheme of things, the Sheeda used this moment to test the capabilities of the Earth heroes before beginning their invasion. Ironically, this test may be the thing that ultimately brings about their destruction.

Qwewq is an infant universe, its adult form is Neh-Buh-Loh, beloved Seven Soldiers villain. He's here as an observer and leaves when the test is done. Presumably what happens is Qwewq matures over time and finally becomes an adult sometime in the distant future, at which point the Sheeda have outlasted humans and rule the world. So, he is put to work for Gloriana and sent back in time to observe the JLA in preparation for the upcoming razing of this world.

However, as we see in Frankenstein #4, Neh-Buh-Loh is flawed. In his infant form, he's inhabited by the Black Death, the seed that would lead Neh-Buh-Loh to evil. However, to counteract that, the JLA places the Ultramarines into this world. Their influence is presumably what leads him to spare Misty and send her back in time to Zatanna, and they are also what ultimately weakens Neh-Buh-Loh so that Frankenstein can kill him.

If Misty does play a major role in defeating Gloriana, as I'm guessing/hoping she will, then the Ultramarines will have played a critical role in defeating the Sheeda. It's totally crazy stuff and even though this arc has some issues, you have to admire the sheer torrent of ideas Morrison puts forth in here. I can think of no one in film or TV doing the kind of crazy cosmic stuff that Morrison pulls off here. It works on its own, but it's particularly interesting to me because of the Seven Soldiers connection. The October solicitations are out tomorrow and I'm really hoping that Seven Soldiers #1 is on there, I need to get the conclusion of this story.

In the shorter term, I'll be readiing the whole Morrison JLA run pretty soon, and I'll blog that. And reading this and Seven Soldiers made me want to read 52, so once that comes out in trade, I'll pick it up. I hear it features appearances by Zatanna, Animal Man and some other Morrison characters, the chance to check in and see what's up with them makes it worth reading.

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