On Earth-16, the superheroes have done it – they saved the world, for good! They did such an amazing job that, even in death, no evil can harm the planet thanks to Superman’s Super-robots. What does that mean for their children then: Chris Kent, Damian Wayne, and the others? What do superheroes do in a world without a need for them to save it? Besides being celebrities, they don’t do much at all. It’s an incredibly boring life. So much so that some have even chosen suicide over living…!
The Just #1, aka The Multiversity #3, is like a superhero version of The OC. Vapid twentysomething superheroes on their phones, wittering on about parties and who’s sleeping with who… meh. I’m not really sure what Grant Morrison’s going for in this comic. It’s only loosely connected to The Multiversity via previous issues of this series that’ve somehow made it into their world, probably because it’s “haunted” or some such crap. So the characters standing about reading the last issue in this issue is meta but pointless.
But besides that – what? Damian Wayne aka Batman is sleeping with Alexis Luthor aka Lex’s daughter – but Lex killed Clark Kent/Superman and Chris Kent aka Superman and Damian are bros! What about their bromance, yo?! And then later on we see them having a superhero battle re-enactment, like civil war re-enactors, because that’s the only way they can experience fighting global threats. Yeah, they’re lame. But why are we reading about them – they’re not interesting!
So this is the comic: superheroes who’ve had everything handed to them their whole lives turn out to be pampered, spoilt douchebags. It’s a storyline that’s been done over and over before without any real variation or insight into what’s so fascinating about the setup. If Mark Millar’s doing it too (in his rubbish Image series, Jupiter’s Legacy), that should be warning enough to stay the hell away from the subject (though, to be fair, it’s highly unlikely Morrison knows what Millar’s doing, and has done, for the last 10+ years)!
I suppose some fans of Damian Wayne will enjoy the fact that Morrison’s writing a new comic with him in it. In Morrison’s Batman run, Damian started off as a sociopath but towards the end of his life, he’d changed considerably. I imagine this Damian is the man he would have become if he had lived, ie. less mental, more human. Maybe. Even so, I wouldn’t rate this comic a must-read just because Damian’s in it.
This is probably the most accessible issue in the series so far, in that it doesn’t jump around in time, etc., but hardly anything happens so I was horribly bored most of the time. Irritatingly, the only semblance of a story emerges in the last couple pages and then it’s over.
Disappointingly, none of the three Multiversity issues have been very special or come close to living up to the hype. The Just #1 is just crap.
The Multiversity: The Just #1
No comments:
Post a Comment