Apologies to Mr. Morrison

I’ve been thinking a lot about my post last week, in which I talked about my disappointment in the current state of comics at both Marvel and DC. And I’m mostly happy with what I wrote, but one thing’s been bugging me a bit.

I think I unfairly singled out Grant Morrison, and I really didn’t mean to.

He was the only creator I mentioned by name, but I did that just to demonstrate an example of today’s tendency in comics to have a handful of creators take charge of a character, or a line, or an entire universe.

I definitely didn’t single him out because of something I have against his writing. And, come to think of it, using Morrison was probably the worst possible example I could have used. Because, even though he is in charge of the direction of Batman for both the short and long term at DC, Morrison is, as always, thinking out of the mainstream box.

Something that can't be said for the vast majority of mainstream creators. Way to obliterate your own argument, Alex.

So yeah, not that he’d ever read this blog, but still, Mr. Morrison wasn’t meant to be the focus of the post. And I don’t think he was, necessarily, but I wanted to address it because he caught some of the anti-mainstream shrapnel from that post.

While I’m really not thrilled with mainstream books at the moment, I am a big Morrison fan, and I’ve talked about his work several times on the blog before.

And, as fate would have it, I picked up and started reading, for the first time, a Morrison staple that many people have told me I need to read. Morrison’s Vertigo series, The Invisibles, is one of those books readers say "changed their perception of things."
I’ve even heard some critics whom I respect say that the series changed their entire outlook on comics. Whoa.

Even so, I was hesitant to take the plunge on the series, mostly because there are just some Morrison books that don’t do it for me. And I really, really wanted Invisibles to do it for me.

So I finally bought volume one last week, and I dove into issues one and two last night.

And, almost immediately, there was a scene that hit me like a ton of bricks in issue one. I won’t reveal the characters/people involved, because that would most certainly take away from the impact of the moment for anyone yet to read the book, but the scene involved heroes of mine.

One, in particular.

And, as such, I know quite a bit about this person’s biography. So I got the references and I understood what was happening. And it--well--it hit me like a ton of bricks. Just a brilliant, sad, amazing, hopeful, haunting scene.

I’ve heard from many different folks that there are plenty of those scenes throughout Invisibles, and that Morrison does things never before achieved in graphic fiction. I just didn’t expect to be knocked over so quickly.

So the point of today’s post is really to say sorry to Grant Morrison.

Oh, and if you'd like to check out what I'm talking about in issue one of Invisibles, Vertigo has the entire comic up online, for free, right here. (Be warned, though, that it's a mature readers title.)