The Multiversity Review (Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely)

Grant Morrison’s long-awaited Multiversity series is nine extra-long issues of a Crisis-like event that threatens to destroy DC’s 52 universes that make up the Multiverse. 

The Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Doug Mahnke)

Hey - hey, you! Yes, you! The one reading this review right now. Isn’t it weird to meet like this? My voice - or maybe your voice, or what you think my voice sounds like - is in your head right now. Right. Now. Inside your head. The most personal space there is. And even though I wrote this before you’re reading this now - maybe you’re reading this the same day, maybe a few days later, months, whatever - it’s like we’re talking across time, right here, right now. Scroll down to the next paragraph. 

The Multiversity: Mastermen #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Jim Lee)

The Multiversity: Mastermen #1 is a fine Elseworlds one-shot. I’m sure a lot of you have read Mark Millar’s exceptional Superman: Red Son where Millar writes about what would have happened if Kal-El’s pod had landed in Soviet Russia instead of Kansas. Mastermen #1 is basically that but for the Nazis. 

The Multiversity: Guidebook #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Marcus To)

Grant Morrison’s already bloated-seeming Multiversity series gets even bigger with The Multiversity Guidebook, surpassing the lofty price-point of $4.99 per regular issue to $7.99! Well… this better be the best Multiversity issues yet, grumblegrumble… and it’s not! Damn you, Morrison!!

The Multiversity: Thunderworld Adventures #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart)

Even though legally Marvel own the name Captain Marvel (and their character is a woman) and DC’s old Captain Marvel is now called Shazam, I guess DC and Marvel must’ve come to an agreement for this one issue because Billy Batson’s alter ego is called by his original name: Captain Marvel. Which is neat. 

The Multiversity: Pax Americana #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely)

The Multiversity: Pax Americana #1 was built for comics criticism (and that’s just what it’ll do!). 

This is the kind of issue where you can really - and I mean REALLY - go page by page and completely drown yourself in praise; it is, on a technical and visual level, arguably the best single issue of the year and the standalone reason why anyone was excited about The Multiversity at all. 

The Multiversity: The Just #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Ben Oliver)

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.

The Multiversity #2: The Society of Super-heroes: Conquerors of the Counter World #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Chris Sprouse)

Can someone explain to me the appeal of retro pulp in so many contemporary comics out these days? Is it purely an aesthetic thing, with the cool designs? Because I’ve read pulps from way back when and they were never any good. They were badly written, stupidly plotted - in other words, pulp. But apparently its cool these days to do comics in that style for some reason. 

So it is with Grant Morrison’s The Multiversity #2, or The Society of Superheroes: Conquerors from the Counter-World #1 (because they’re all going to be #1 comics in this series). On Earth-20, Doc Fate assembles the Society of Superheroes or S.O.S: the Immortal Man, Al Pratt aka The Mighty Atom, Lady Blackhawk and the Blackhawks, and Abin Sur aka Green Lantern. They face an incursion from Earth-40 led by the evil Vandal Savage with an army of Necro-Men, Blockbuster, Parallax, and Lady Shiva. 

Despite Morrison’s usual sharp cuts and jumps - the war begins, then suddenly we’re five years in the future, then we’re in the middle of the final mission - it’s a fairly straightforward story of good guys vs bad guys done in the usual over-the-top superhero style. It’s presented in a retro/pulp/post-modern (ow, my brain!) style that sees 1930s/40s style craft alongside super-advanced robots and whatnot that’s not that interesting to see, despite Morrison’s attempts to make it so - its just been done so much lately. 

Multiversity must be hell for readers totally new to the DC Universe because Morrison barely bothers to introduce the characters’ backstories. It’s all rushed and very surface level. I’m fairly well versed in DC’s stuff, but there were a number of characters I completely blanked on and even more references I’m sure I didn’t get. At any rate, I was ambivalent throughout as to whether or not Earth-20 prevails against Earth-40, and that’s the real failing of the issue. 

Because here’s the thing: you can’t instantly create dramatic tension or fully-involved interest in the reader just by concocting situations that seem dramatic/etc. If I wrote “the end of the world is happening” without setting up a story where that statement would mean something to the reader, then its totally ineffective - just like it is here. I’m totally detached from what’s happening in the comic and couldn’t care less about anything in it at all. 

The connections to the first issue are the reappearance of the “haunted comic” called The Multiversity and the mention of Nix Uotan, the comics reviewer who gave his life to save the universe, and of course the various DC worlds colliding, but it’s early days yet to understand what it all means besides boring DOOM!

It’s Chris Sprouse’s turn to draw an issue (a different artist will draw a different issue in the series) and he produces some good-looking pages. The lines are very clean, the outfits, as you’d expect, are very retro and uncomplicated - the Mighty Atom’s outfit is just a mask over slacks and a sweater! - and while there’s nothing incredible about his work here, it’s still well-drawn and strong. 

I’m a bit disappointed with how Multiversity is turning out. It’s really nothing new, it’s just Morrison telling generic superhero stories with obscure, little-used characters with the gimmick of parallel worlds colliding (yeah, never seen DC deploy that hacky trick before!). It’s Morrison so the stories are told in a more advanced, less-straightforward way, and sure it’s ambitious, but it’s also unsurprising and dull to read - completely at odds with the hype that built it up. 

So far I’ve yet to see anything truly original in this series and The Society of Superheroes #1 continues that trend - it’s all sizzle and no steak.

The Multiversity #2: The Society of Super-heroes: Conquerors of the Counter World #1

The Multiversity #1 Review (Grant Morrison, Ivan Reis)

I sometimes think that reviewing a Grant Morrison comic is as much deciding on a position to take on reviewing it as it is reviewing the comic itself. Like, do you adopt the position that he’s a genius and then try to academically (ie. drearily) deconstruct everything in his work, or do you shrug and smile weakly, “well, he’s too brainy for me to ever understand!” and avoid doing any kind of heavy lifting in the review? 

Such is the case with The Multiversity #1, Morrison’s years-in-the-making comic that apparently makes Final Crisis look like a spelling test for five year olds. The Multiversity will span 52 worlds in the DC Universe while celebrating the esoterica of DC’s many, many years publishing weird and wonderful superhero comics. You won’t see Batman or Superman here (or will you?), but you’ll see characters who look similar to them. 

TM#1, as broadly as I can put it, is about a comics reviewer called Nix Uotan who becomes a superhero, then sacrifices himself to save everyone, and ultimately becomes a supervillain. He also has a chimp sidekick dressed as a pirate called Stubbs (hey, it’s a Grant Morrison comic!). Obama Superman makes an appearance as does Captain Carrot, Aquawoman, and an assortment of familiar uniforms on unfamiliar people. 

I’m not going to go into which characters pop up from what era or what comics from the Silver Age, etc. because, really, what’s the point? I guess if you enjoy playing spot-the-easter-egg, and you have as encyclopaedic a knowledge of the DC Universe as Morrison does, you’ll be wetting yourself in excitement, but otherwise? I’m in this for a good story. 

And you kind of get that in this issue. There’s some great Morrison bounds of imagination like flying a spaceship playing strings like a guitar, which crop up here and there, and calling this comic “haunted” is funny, but there’s a lot of meta-textual stuff that’s supposed to wow you that instead feels tired and unimpressive. For example, Nix is reviewing a comic that’s the comic he’s in, the pages of the comic in his hands looking exactly like those on the previous pages in our hands. Or later on when Obama Superman reads an issue of Morrison’s New 52 Action Comics starring him - woah. Like, dude. 

Hmm... no. That kinda stuff might seem brilliant to a teenager who’s never read Morrison but for longtime readers this stuff is expected of him. And when he throws out captions like “Stop Reading” at the end of the page and you do stop reading because that’s the end of the page, what’s the point? To make you feel that he’s in control? To make you more aware of the present and what you’re doing? The effect is actually more irritating than anything else. 

The story itself is actually your standard superhero plotline - there’s a powerful threat, the superheroes unite to stop it, and lots of big action scenes happen, though, of course this being the first issue, the villain won’t be defeated just yet. Ivan Reis’ art adds to that feeling of standard DC superhero fare, having worked on other big DC titles like Justice League. I was hoping Morrison would utilise more unusual artists for this project but he went with a DC regular for the opening issue which is a bit disappointing. (Can you imagine if Jim Woodring drew this? The only man in comics weirder than Grant Morrison - it’d be perfect!)

And that’s it for this extended, bookend first issue in The Multiversity. I expect that we’ll see a lot more variety in forthcoming issues but I also hope Morrison doesn’t forget that most readers will be expecting a story worth reading amidst the weirdness and easter eggs. He’s an ambitious writer and that’s great but he can disappear up his own arse a bit! 

The Multiversity #1 is a very Morrison-esque, somewhat enjoyable read that’s quite uneven throughout. Morrison fans will be tickled with it, but critics of Final Crisis would do well to stay away from this, lest they wind up with flashbacks from the last controversial Morrison event comic! Recommended if you want a challenging superhero comic to read.

The Multiversity #1