Grant Morrison's Batman run.

[Bustronaut]

Some friends on Twitter have read it and liked it.  Was reasonably well regarded in the old DC omnibus thread, too.

[The Natural]

 

Guessing the reaction was something when Grant Morrison introduced Damian Wayne to continuity? I liked him after reading my first issue with him in it, Batman and Robin (Vol. 1) #1 and in the Morrison Batman books after that. A brooding smart arse. It was something reading Batman & Son seeing where Damian Wayne began having previously read the developments he makes.

 

Damian was pretty much universally hated (at least on the forums i visited). when Bruce "died", there were unanimous votes of people who wanted to see it revealed that Damian wasn't really his son and that he just go away forever.

 

fast forward a couple years, and these very same forums and fans preach about how DC "never should have killed Damian", "he's the best character they've had in years", and so on and so forth. I think i've gotten just about as much fun from seeing the complete 180 in the opinions as i have from reading the books themselves.

 

 

Thank you.

 

Is the Black Mirror arc good?  Not Morrison, but it has Grayson under the Batman mask.

 

Batman: The Black Mirror is really good and I recommend it. To date it's still Scott Snyder's best work on Batman and the best story with Dick Grayson as Batman not written by Grant Morrison.

[Raziel]

 

 

And, man, this Morrison hate makes me sad.  I would absolutely listen to an argument that he's the greatest comic writer of all-time.

 

Final Crisis wha?

[The Unholy Dragon]

http://comicsalliance.com/grant-morrison-batman-review-dc/

 

Really good wrap up by David Uzumeri whose annotations on Morrison's Batman run and Final Crisis are basically essential reading. As he points out though, it's a little depressing how Batman goes from the perfect man who can do anything to an overgrown manchild playing games while the rest of the world functions around him, but in some ways it works for both.The more I think of the Hole in Things, the more I think that all of the retcons almost fit given the nature of the story.

[Tele-Viper]

" I would absolutely listen to an argument that he's the greatest comic writer of all-time."

 

Would you listen to an argument for him as being one of the worst?

[Brian Fowler]

 

 

 

And, man, this Morrison hate makes me sad.  I would absolutely listen to an argument that he's the greatest comic writer of all-time.

 

Final Crisis wha?

 

 

You mean the greatest summer cross-over mega-event in comics history?  Doesn't hurt his case.

 

 

" I would absolutely listen to an argument that he's the greatest comic writer of all-time."

 

Would you listen to an argument for him as being one of the worst?

 

I doubt I could hear it over my laughing my ass off at the wrongness of it.

[LooseCannon]

Now I want to see Grant Morrison bring back Wally West in Multiversity just to kill him off so I can see Brian Fowler's reaction.

[Tele-Viper]

Seriously, Fowler, Final Crisis was the worst thing I have read out of DC in a very long time. Pushed me away from the company actually. I've read a lot of Grant Morrison, far more than I ever should've because I think he's pretty bad and hasn't really written anything decent in the last decade at least, and Final Crisis is his absolute nadir.

 

http://acomicbookblog.com/2011/07/final-crisis-the-bane-of-dcs-existence/

[Tele-Viper]

So now I'm really curious: Looking back over my Morrison's bibliography, I've read the all of the following:

 

• 52
• All-Star Superman
• Animal Man
• Arkham Asylum
• Batman: Gothic
• Batman RIP
• Batman & Son
• Captain Britain "Captain Granbretan"
• DC One Million
• Doom Patrol
• Fantastic Four "1234"
• Final Crisis
• JLA, vol. 1 only
• New X-Men, vol. 1 only

The only ones I thought were any good were Gothic, Arkham Asylum, and "most" of Animal Man. The best moments of 52 were clearly not written by Morrison. Doom Patrol was okay. Everything else was pretty bad with Final Crisis and his Batman run being among the worst comics I have ever read. And he messed the X-titles pretty bad too. I think he's a writer who went off-the-rails as he got more po-mo and pretentious. He's the ultimate trickster/huckster, pulling the wool over most reader's eyes, making them think their reading a really smart comic that is sadly just a lot of hot air and noise. I read his early stuff and think 'what a waste.' As a good friend of mine put it, "his utter disregard for what makes flagship titles work makes me loathe almost everything his done with a major title because he doesn't seem to care about what came before nor where he leaves the poor sap who has to clean-up after him."

[The Z]

Man, I really used to be a big Morrison fan for his Animal Man, Doom Patrol and JLA.

But ever since his X-Men run I'm even doubting myself, trying to figure out if Morrison always was a hack and I was  even wrong about his earlier books.

He's definitely far closer to worst than best in my book.

[odessasteps]

So now I'm really curious: Looking back over my Morrison's bibliography, I've read the all of the following:

 

[*]52

[*]All-Star Superman

[*]Animal Man

[*]Arkham Asylum

[*]Batman: Gothic

[*]Batman RIP

[*]Batman & Son

[*]Captain Britain "Captain Granbretan"

[*]DC One Million

[*]Doom Patrol

[*]Fantastic Four "1234"

[*]Final Crisis

[*]JLA, vol. 1 only

[*]New X-Men, vol. 1 only

The only ones I thought were any good were Gothic, Arkham Asylum, and "most" of Animal Man. The best moments of 52 were clearly not written by Morrison. Doom Patrol was okay. Everything else was pretty bad with Final Crisis and his Batman run being among the worst comics I have ever read. And he messed the X-titles pretty bad too. I think he's a writer who went off-the-rails as he got more po-mo and pretentious. He's the ultimate trickster/huckster, pulling the wool over most reader's eyes, making them think their reading a really smart comic that is sadly just a lot of hot air and noise. I read his early stuff and think 'what a waste.' As a good friend of mine put it, "his utter disregard for what makes flagship titles work makes me loathe almost everything his done with a major title because he doesn't seem to care about what came before nor where he leaves the poor sap who has to clean-up after him."

Funny, most of those criticisms are lobbed more often at his former co-writer, Mark Mmillar.

Among things not mentioned that i really like:

Aztek

Doctor Who

Dare

The mystery play

St. Swithin's day

Perhaps because i was the right age at the right time in my college life, but i love Animal Man and Doom Patrol. coyote gospel is probably one of my all time favorite comics.

[LooseCannon]

I've never read Seven Soldiers, but I thought someone would have brought it up by now.

[Tele-Viper]

He also wrote an issue of Captain Britain for Marvel UK that I thought was okay. I'd be curious about his Doctor Who as his style seems much more well-suited to that kind of story-telling.

[Brian Fowler]

"Doesn't care about what's came before...." 

The fuck?  You mean the guy that brought every Batman story ever back into continuity doesn't care what's come before?  I...  I literally don't understand where that criticism is possibly even coming from.

 

Seven Soldiers is also absolutely brilliant.

[MORELOCK]

"Doesn't care about what's came before...." 

The fuck?  You mean the guy that brought every Batman story ever back into continuity doesn't care what's come before?  I...  I literally don't understand where that criticism is possibly even coming from.

 

Spoken like someone who didn't read his New X-Men run, in which he shit on basically everything that came before him.

 

Also count me among the people that ran from DC after Final Crisis.

 

ETA: Really, as an X-Men fanboy, I could write Morrison off for what he did to Magneto alone.

[Brian Fowler]

I've read it.  I think it was weak by Morrison's standards, but it's among the better X-Men stuff I've ever read.  I don't really have enough affection for the X-Men in general to note what he did or did not ignore, but too go from there and claim it applies to his entire career is to just willfully ignore his JLA and Batman runs, as well as All-Star Superman, all of which are built firmly on the past of the characters/franchises.

[twiztor]

re: Final Crisis

when i read the main mini series as it came out, i didn't understand it and thought it sucked.

i later sat down and read everything, main series, tie-ins, spin offs, all of it, in a single sitting and thought it was just good. not great, not bad, just good.

 

everything else that i've read from him (entire Batman run, Animal Man, 52, All-Star Superman) i've really enjoyed. his launch of Action Comics worked on its own, but when it was supposed to lead the Superman franchise it faltered. I'll tackle the Doom Patrol run at some point.

[LooseCannon]

"Doesn't care about what's came before...." 

The fuck?  You mean the guy that brought every Batman story ever back into continuity doesn't care what's come before?  I...  I literally don't understand where that criticism is possibly even coming from.

 

I think that really means "Doesn't care about what's recently come before".  If you're enjoying a book and Grant Morrison signs on as the new writer, he's probably going to take the book in a different direction and tone, with a different understanding of the philosophical base of the character.  I recall there being some negative reaction towards the beginning of Morrison's Batman run, which had Black Glove and the Batman RIP storyline.  Hush and Under the Hood were relatively recent storylines before Morrison took over, so the criticism is coming from, um, fans who feel that digging deeply into past storylines is part of a zero-sum game that devalues the work of Jeph Loeb and Judd Winick?

 

I don't know enough of X-Men history to know how to apply this framework to X-Men.

[Buy Me a Burrito]

I think Morrison is the best pure comic writer of this generation.

Seven Soldiers, his JLA, Batman and even his X-Men run ranks among my favorite things in comics. I really wish he'd do one run on Spider-Man.

[The Z]

I really feel like I'm living in bizarro world whenever it comes to Morrison.

My two favorite comic book franchises are the X-Men and Batman and Morrison ruined both of them for me. He made me stop reading Batman altogether, which is a hard feat to manage.

The only good thing about Final Crisis was The Legion of 3 Worlds, which was amazing, but the main series and especially the Superman mini were just the worst kind of Morrison.

Seven Soldiers of Victory had great art, but apart from that it was terrible.

Even We3; I thought the concept in itself was interesting, but after reading it I was baffled why people liked this so much.

[Buy Me a Burrito]

He ruined them? You'll never read another story about those characters no matter what? Hyperbole much?

[The Z]

Well, I meant for the time while he was writing them, not for the rest of my life.

I've never stopped reading the X-Men, even when he was writing. His run is definitely my least favorite, though.

The only Batman stuff I read recently, though, was the first Scott Snyder trade, which I liked.

 

The closest anyone has ever come to completely ruining a character for me were probably John Byrne and Howard Mackie. Ever since they wrote Spider-Man in the late 90s I've never read another Spider-Man book again. I did plan to come back at one point though, but then the whole Mephisto stuff happened and as far as I know they still haven't reversed that.

[Brian Fowler]

Man, Legion of Three Worlds was my least favorite part of Final Crisis by a huge margin.  It was just...  not good.  At all.

[sdinma]

Lo3W had nice art and brought back two characters that everyone wanted to see return. Besides that, it was pretty awful.

[J.H.]

Lo3W got me a Kono appearance... that's all I can ask for

 

James