Multiversity #1 review


A few years ago DC published Final Crisis. This comic tells the story of the one after that. It mirrors the original Crisis on Infinite Earths by having heroes from parallel universes gathered in a Monitor satellite to be told by Harbinger that Something Awful is Coming. 

It differs in that the writer behind this comic - the prologue to a six-issue look at some of DC's alternate Earths - is Grant Morrison. So where COIE was densely plotted but pretty straightforward, this is trippy from the start. Big ideas are tossed out scattershot style and it's far too soon to say which will prove throwaway and which vital to the series. 

So, we have Nix, the Last Monitor from the Final Crisis crossover, summoned to Earth-7 where an Australian hero named Thunderer is in big trouble. Nix urges him to leave in his own dimension-spanning craft to get help, while he remains behind to face a terrifying, yet stupid-looking, world destroyer. Thunderer winds up in the Monitors' satellite, along with President Superman of Earh-23, Captain Carrot, Dino-Cop and dozens of other strangely familiar, and attractively novel, heroes. After hearing the message from a holographic Harbinger, a few of them set off on a factfinding mission in Nix's living music craft, the Ultima Thule, passing through the Bleed, the extra - or is it, inter? - dimensional spacecraft that allows them to see all 52 parallel worlds. They land on one of them, Earth-8 (they were hoping to reach Thunderer's planet) where there's a new batch of weirdness to face.  

Which is quite enough recap - it ain't easy!

Concepts in this issue feel as if they're newly born from the forehead of Morrison, but of course, such things as parallel worlds vibrating on different frequencies, and comic books that fictionalise real events from sister Earths, go back to the early Sixties, the dawn of DC's Silver Age. Morrison mixes them with his own concepts, such as supergods and under-realities, to make one very out-there, complex comic. 


The opening pages with the by-now expected brand of Morrisonian metafiction and studied weirdness, tried my patience - all surreal entities spouting dramatically enigmatic words and claiming that we readers are part of the story - but when the heroic counterparts and coolest Captain Carrot ever showed up, I began having a whale of a time. 

won't be surprised if the end of this event frustrates me as did Morrison's Final Crisis, but the upcoming issues focusing on particular Earths look very promising. And I love Dinocop, and the return of Lady Quark and Lord Volt, and the JLA Babies, and President Superman's Brainiac belt, and Nix's most surprising sidekick, and ...

And visually, this issue looks amazing, with former Aquaman artists Ivan Reis and Joe Prado drawing up a storm, and Nei Ruffino colouring beyond the call of duty. The characters look splendid, the backgrounds amazing, the action immense. There's also fine work from letterer Todd Klein, whose facility with fonts assigns different voice 'signatures' to individuals, without giving the reader migraine. 

There is a bit of a visual disconnect towards the end as the explorer heroes hit the Marvel-style Earth 8, with scenes of Fantastic Four and Dr Doom analogues not meshing with scenes of the Not-Avengers nearby - I thought we were flipping between two worlds for a second there. 

But overall, I enjoyed this opener. It's big, it's splashy, it's daft - and we're only required to follow a handful of issues to get the story. It's also a callback to the old DC, before someone decided that multiversal adventures were off the table. Maybe Grant Morrison is right, and we readers are choosing the adventure? In which case, we chose well. 

Comments

  1. My problem with Final Crisis wasn't the rape jokes or scattershot ideas, it was that it was Morrison-does-DC-by-numbers, and not a patch on his previous versions of the same story ideas like Rock of Ages, DC One Million, or World War Three (the awesome JLA story, not the terrible 52 cash-in miniseries). It arguably lost a lot by not having tie-in issues to the point it felt more like Morrison being indulged than it did a comics event, and Multiversity looks like more of the same.
    Don't get me wrong, the meta stuff you've scanned and posted here looks just as fun as the last dozen times Morrison did it, and the several times Alan Moore did it before that - I love that shit and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't going to read the bollocks off this - but I have the enduring fanboy problem of wanting my capital-E Event books to feel like they're a big slice of continuity cake, an explosion in the middle of your Regularly Scheduled Comic Book. I don't really get that with Multiversity, it just feels like more Morrison indulgence - not that this is a bad thing if like me you are a fan, but he's always at his best - IMO - when he's accessible and broad.



    BTW: If you want to read the closest thing to a final word on choose-your-own-adventure/you-create-the-story comic books, Al Ewing/John Higgins' Judge Dredd: Choose Your Own Christmas (2000ad #2012) is probably it, and has the added bonus of being produced before the joke wore thin in comic book form.

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    1. Thanks for then I moments and too, I'll definitely attempt to track down that Dredd book, with talent of that quality associated with it, it's bound to be a winner.

      I'm OK so far with this series being seemingly divorced from the New 52, it feels very throwback.

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  2. I am a Morrison apologist. And I loved it. You are right. There are beats completely riffing on Crisis: the meeting on the Monitor satellite, the collection of heroes, Harbinger, Lady Quark. But this is Morrison so it is Crisis on LSD.

    Yes, there is too much metatextual stuff about us being characters, or driving the story, but it didn't take away from what I thought was a great first issue. In particular, I loved Captain Carrot! (I can remember Pig Iron being present in Final Crisis when the vampire Ultra Man is finally killed.)

    I think I am going to love this.

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    1. Forgive me Anj, I didn't intend to come across as someone who doesn't like the Crisis homages - I lapped them up.

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  3. "It's big, it's splashy, it's daft" and it's 4.99?!? Sorry to be such a perpetual cheapskate, but five dollar comics are more terrifying to me than any multiversity villain....

    Great review though Mart, as usual!

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  4. Thanks for the nice words. Multiversity had 40 story pages so it's a dollar cheaper than were it two regular priced issue.

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  5. I absolutely adored this book. My only complaint was the confusing cuts to Lord Havok, and even those were addressed just a few pages later. The protagonists, the villains, the high concepts, this was absolutely wonderful.

    After reading this one, I looked up at my wife and said "You know what, I still love comics."

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    1. I think I missed how the confusing cuts were addressed, I even went back. Please explain to a thicko!

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  6. Not a an of DCs current obsession with political correctness but I was told beforehand there would be FF take-offs so it was good just for that.

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    1. I'm not a fan of introducing diversity by reintroducing characters with different genders or races, I'd rather see a wider representation of people cut from whole cloth. But it seems readers are much slower to accept new guys of whatever background, so old slots get differently filled.

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  7. The only good things about this comic were: The return of Captain Carrot and the gay couple Flash/GL. That's it. And even Captain Carrot had to be screwed up and turned into some lame cartoon instead of getting the idea that he's REAL, he doesn't just bounce back when he's hit. He's got real problems and real issues. He's not a cheap whacky character. Of course, I don't expect Morrison who does very little research to get who Captain Carrot is.

    All in all, this comic was a cheap COIE knock off mixed with an Infinity Gauntlet/Cosmic Cube Marvel knock off and Morrison's typical cheap tricks to add "complexity" and "make you think" so some Morrison fans can claim how they're so much smarter than everyone else because they REALLY got the REAL message in the comic that was utter nonsense created from their own head. I saw one Morrison fanboy spouting off how the Gentry, the big bad guys of the comic who are barely mentioned and few people can remember, are really the Big 2 and it's Morrison's slam on the intellectual property and how they're all crap. It was a huge diatribe and a massive stretch all which implied that Morrison is a huge outsider in comics, working on the inside to prove how terrible it all is. Typical over-analyzing to try to find a message in the incoherent ramblings of a mad man. (PS the Gentry is also another name for the Faerie, so I just assumed this was Morrison rehashing his Seven Soldiers villains again since.. so much of this comic is completely unoriginal rehash and very little is new).

    Also dear DC and Morrison, please fix the Map of the Multiverse. The realms of Faerie are in Hell, not Dream and the Fae pay tithe to Lucifer to remain there. It's part of their structure and it proves the point that the fae look beautiful and innocent, but are really deadly and two-faced. I'd expect a GENIUS of Morrison's level to get that, but.. I guess he doesn't.

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    1. They're alternate reality versions of the characters - and Nu52 reboots - so I don't think they're meant to be the older versions we know.

      I must address the laughable idea of Morrison as an "outsider" or indie darling, as he's always been mainstream - he started working for Marvel writing a comic that tied into a toy line, and his first work for the infamously iconoclastic 2000ad was a superhero strip. He's actually pretty upfront in Supergods that in his career he's always gone where the money is and done his best to create things that he thought would tap into trends existing or upcoming, and any 2000ad fan can tell you he spent a great deal of the 1990s churning out truly godawful comics that were meant to read as print versions of the then-very popular genre of low-budget action movies, which Morrison has admitted himself and largely now disowns the bulk of the material he produced in this period. It's only lately he's tried his hand with indy publishing through Image, but even then, Image have overtaken DC in terms of fan and critical prestige so it's not like he's gone into the wilderness or anything.

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    2. Ta for the comments, Jan. I can only hope you don't spend your money on the second issue after the first one proved such a headache. It sounds as if Morrison could make you happy by introducing a few rabbits in civil partnerships. Which sounds sarcastic, I didn't intend that.

      The gay GL/Flash types will have to prove themselves interesting characters so far as I'm concerned, being gay isn't enough. If it were, I'd be begging for the return of Extrano. So far, the GL guy seems a bit wet.

      Mind, wet people exist ...

      I'm with Brigonos on Captain Carrot, he's not quite the same, but Morrison obviously likes that he was in the DC multiverse so here he is; I'm just pleased it's not Captain K-Rot or whoever.

      I glanced at the map of the Multiverse but never studied it, I simply don't care which lands border which others. There are different realms and they can be reached, that'll do me. But if Morrison's supposed mistake messes up the story, he's a Very Naughty Boy,

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  8. I know they're not the old versions of the characters, but I am just pointing out that Grant Morrison as usual doesn't get the characters he's writing. He doesn't seem to understand the core of the characters or what they were meant to be despite being heralded as the greatest writer there is out there and yet.. he doesn't understand the characters he writes. He more often than not misses what the character is suppose to represent and what they are at the core. Cartoon Captain Carrot just shows that. Magicless magicaholic Zatanna is another. Klarion the Witch Boy that is not anything like any Klarion the Witch Boy that has ever appeared before is another. :)

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  9. I'm genuinely curious, what is Zatanna 'supposed to represent'? She was created as the female, younger version of a backwards-speaking magician in the Sixties. From the Seventies she's had many looks, attitudes and power limitations. I loved the pre-New 52 Zee series, that's my Zatanna - light-hearted, not massively powerful, topper and fishnets - but I wouldn't say she represents anything but a fun character who plays well with others.

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  10. Your review really nails this first issue, Martin. I liked that issue really took off, which event comics are famous for NOT doing, but I'm not too sure about the point Morrison seems to be making, or how the politics of it are supposed to work. If there /IS/ a message he's trying to pass on (beyond the reverse psychology of "Whatever you do reader, DON'T TURN THE PAGE!") it seems to be that DC could use more diversity, high concepts and just plane fun...to say nothing of being themselves instead of "Major Comics".

    Those aren't new ideas and again I'm not sure how everybody (except Red Racer and Power Torch) being either a different ethnicity or a cartoon rabbit is supposed to mean Morrison is doing something about it. Beyond talking about it, apparently. And since the remaining seven issues are supposed to be something new each time, is it even going to be committed to or is it just going to be more obvious "This is how comics SHOULD be done!" points we've heard before?

    Though questions aside, this got me to pick up a DC comic, which I haven't done since Francis Manapul left the Flash, and an event comic at that, which I haven't done since Civil War was something people actually thought was relevant. Will be picking up the rest with interest.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words, Simon. I'm glad you liked this one, now, what else can we get you to try. The new Batgirl looks set to be interesting.

      I know, Scooby Doo Team-Up. Trust me ...

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