Grant Morrison's essential comics of the "renaissance age" are:
Please tell me why Morrison feels the titles are "essential" as then I can properly begin to understand why he's picked them, as some might be 'essential' in that they sum up the type of comic in a historical sense, rather than they are 'essential' because they are of quality. For example, one could say that Liefeld's YOUNGBLOOD is an essential part of the 90s, because it is a perfect example of all the cliches of the time, not because it's well written. There are clearly several comics in the list that are of quality, and then others that I think he's picked for being 'groundbreaking' in a theoretical, sociological, historical sense, and Morrison likes things that tickle his critical side and that he can talk about, rather than actually being good comics.
I would suggest that KINGDOM COME, THE AUTHORITY, PLANETARY, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, NEW X-MEN, THE ULTIMATES, and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN are all of high quality, but of them, I would only recommend to a non-comic stranger PLANETARY, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN or THE ULTIMATES. I would say they are 'essential' in the terms that they are works of consistent quality, and in the case of PLANETARY and THE LEAGUE, both are very much examples of the 'renaissance' element of the age in that they were nostalgic and looking to the past for something new, while THE ULTIMATES was the opposite, simply looking to the present and the current world of ideas and making something brand new out of today.
MARVELS, MARVEL BOY, WILDCATS, WANTED, IDENTITY CRISIS, and CIVIL WAR, on the other hand, are really rather poor. MARVELS is a meandering nostalgic love letter to a bunch of old comics that only gained interest because Alex Ross painted everyone and they looked 'real', they looked like the big budget movies we get today, but it predated CGI and mainstream superheroics by a decade. The art is beautiful, and as a portfolio of images, it's wonderful, but as a comic book, as a story, it's pointless and dull. I read it a long time ago, so perhaps if I read it again, I would change my mind. MARVEL BOY was iconoclastic, but unlike NEW X-MEN or THE ULTIMATES, was not only confusing, but rebellious for the sake of being rebellious. It made no sense and people were jazzed by the idea of it being so odd, but when they read it, it arrived as a somewhat dull thud of wonderful concepts with no core. It was just 'random stuff put together'. WILDCATS I remember buying but can't remember any of it, which makes me think that considering I remember titles I didn't like, this was so vapid I can't remember a thing. However, in all three of these, I haven't read them in a while, so I am willing to accept I'm just wrong.
Not so with the remaining three that I recall very clearly: WANTED was a puerile, nonsensical, adolescent attack on superheroics, that was drawn specifically as a storyboard to sell to Hollywood. The characters are drawn to represent specific celebrities in order to court them (Fox is Halle Berry, for example). I couldn't make it past issue #2 or #3 because it was such an unlikeable work with such grotesque characters and gratutious violence and rudeness. The film was no better. IDENTITY CRISIS, as a crossover, was self-inflated, bloated, shallow piece of work, but then all crossovers are. As a murder mystery, it is awfully dull and plodding. The same is true for CIVIL WAR. Both titles have to betray the central premise of their world and characters to get them into a position for the crossover, then resolve meaninglessly. I'm sure that they're essential as they kicked off the mega-crossovers that have long-standing changes in the franchise, except both were overly-contrived 'events'. For example, in IDENTITY CRISIS, you have a murder of a closely trusted member of the DCU superhero community... Sue Digby. I was with some friends and we went into the LCS, and there was the poster for IDENTITY CRISIS. Curious, they asked, "Who dies?! Is it Lois?" (Because even people who don't read comic books can talk about Lois Lane on a first-name basis.) I said, "You don't want to know. You won't care." "No, tell us! WHO DIED?" They were excited because Superman, Batman, and the rest are on the cover looking rather mournful. "Elongated Man's wife." They were not prepared for how little they cared. Not only is it built on a faulty premise; that a major part of the DCU is shaken to the core with this death, but everything in the title rewrites characters to fit the 'event'. Elongated Man is a comical character, not meant to be taken seriously. Brutally murdering his wife is rather inappropriate, as is turning other jokey kid characters into serial rapists who get mind****ed every few weeks by Green Arrow. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons were told by Barbara Kessel and other editors not to use the Charlton characters for WATCHMEN because it would be needlessly shocking and upset the fans because
it wasn't really those characters anymore. Moore and Gibbons wisely accepted this. Now, the editors are demanding people to not invent new characters but mutilate old ones. IDENTITY CRISIS should only be on the list if it's an example of how far comics began to sank. The strange thing is, if IDENTITY CRISIS had been TERRA OBSCURA,
it would've worked. Because then those characters are those characters, new and invented solely for that story, not pre-existing characters that have to be written out-of-character to have the participate. But IDENTITY CRISIS solely works on the premise that the "normal" Batman is the
same Batman who gets mind****ed and builds
giant death satellites to kill Superman but
is too principled to kill the Joker. All of this is true for CIVIL WAR, which put characters on either side of the fight using, what I can only presume to be the 'blindfolded dartboard of choice'. Characters like Bishop on the 'pro-registration' side makes no sense, but then, I remember in the first issue I thought, "I don't buy it. I don't buy Cap and Iron Man would come to blows over this. But," I said to myself, "That's not fair.
You've got to give the writer his premise. Sure, I don't buy they'd fight, but if I don't get over that, then I can't enjoy any of it." Six issues later, Cap says, "Hey, everybody, I just totally realised we shouldn't be fighting." Pathetic.
Even if we're talking about 'essential' in terms of a historical context of both successes and failures, what about BATTLE CHASERS? Is there a greater example of the "playboy" fly-by-night comic book? Took five years or something to release 9 issues, and ended on a cliffhanger. Christ, I know I took a year to write 50th issue of ULTIMATE CENTRAL: THE FANFIC, but I did that for free, in my own time, and it was 107 pages long.
So I wonder if Morrison actually expresses why he finds these works essential, because if he says they're 'essential'; some due to quality, others due to historical importance, then there might be some weight. But in terms of quality? I
wish I could name 13 titles that came out between 96-11 that I felt were of such surpassing quality that they must be recommended. I probably could easily hit 15 if I could name titles that
aren't superhero stories, but that is
not what this particular list is for. It's for superhero stuff. And really, what was there to really, really recommend? KINGDOM COME, THE AUTHORITY, PLANETARY, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, NEW X-MEN, THE ULTIMATES, aaaaand... EARTH X? Whedon's ASTONISHING X-MEN? TOM STRONG? I can't say GLOBAL FREQUENCY, FABLES, or 100 BULLETS as they're not superhero titles. What about HELLBOY? Or THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY? Morrison's JLA? Where the hell is Garth Ennis' PUNISHER MAX? These are
beautiful works. And very absent when a list contains something like CIVIL WAR.
This will always be the case with any 'list', because fundamentally, I find these things to be rather worthless. But at least if I knew the exact definition and intent of the purpose, I could be more/less agreeable. As it is, I can only presume "essential" means "You should read them because they are important works of quality from this period of time in mainstream superhero comics", and I would say the list is 50% wrong, rather omissive and self-indulgent (three works are by Morrison himself, four are by Mark Millar and it really reads more as a list of 'things my friends wrote' though I think that's just me being bitter), and ultimately pointless.
I agree with Bass, it was during Jemas' reign that I really enjoyed Marvel comics.
I agree. Jemas/Quesada heading up Marvel was almost the best thing that ever happened to the company - it helped them successfully emerge from bankruptcy and the quality of the books coming out was great. Better than they had been in years and better than they are now. It's not a coincidence that he left and things went backward.
As for the slagging off...Marvel guys slag off on DC constantly.
I'm glad you agree. I don't know precisely how much Jemas actually
did, but his presence was clearly affecting the quality. He seemed to really be about making every title the best it could be, whether or not his individual contributions actually did that is up in the air, but it's clear that once he wasn't around, the quality of every mainstream universe book took a dive.
It's also more bizarre that Morrison would say that considering that he listed NEW X-MEN on his 'essential' list when he considers something like SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY to be superior and that NEW X-MEN was taken away from him with editorializing.
I honestly sometimes wonder if my saying all this on the internet will come back to bite me in the ass someday as I try to write for one of these companies. I can be, at times, rather harsh.
