Grant Morrison - Doom or Dud?

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Grant Morrison: Yes, the writer of Doom Patrol, Classic or Dud? My own personal opinion is that he was brilliance personfied during the run of Doom Patrol issue run. The invisibles were brilliant but then after the 10 issues of JLA - Morrison falters/weakens and Invisibles suffer and JLA turns into Corporate Whore book...

-- doompatrol@hotmail.com (doompatrol@hotmail.com), August 15, 2001

Answers

Animal Man is boss.

-- Mary (muzzystar@hotmail.com), August 15, 2001.

Animal Man was boss! But did get a little preachy about animal rights and missing the surrealism edge to it. Doom Patrol had it all....I could talk about Doom Patrol all day. It's almost a charles dickens serial novel it is written so well...

-- doomie (doompatrol23@hotmail.com), August 15, 2001.

I can't comment on Doom Patrol (you'd have to ask me other half but he's not speaking..) but we were so taken by Animal Man that we bought some original artwork in Convent Garden. The page where Grant explains the Animal Man is a cartoon! 'Alan Moore knows the score', though as Pop Will Eat Itself said once and Watchmen / V for Vendetta / Swamp Thing were very very good too. But the my favourite comic book writers has to be Los Bros Hernandez.

-- Mary (muzzystar@hotmail.com), August 15, 2001.

The Animal Man meet-the-author stuff is nicked from a book called Lanark, by Alasdair Gray, though Morrison puts it to better use.

The Morrison run of Doom Patrol is the best run of comics I've been alive to read - it should have changed the medium completely and it didn't. The first issue I picked up - the one with the Pentagon and the Ant Farm - left my jaw on the floor and I've not bothered closing my mouth since. Sometimes the drool gets a bit much but sacrifices must be made.

JLA was great - the comics equivalent of rave: really trashy, fast- paced and with loads of familiar samples in to give you a rush.

-- Number None (whoisnumbernone@hotmail.com), August 16, 2001.


I agree with what you had said about JLA. Trashy and fun like a good sixties comic book. Somehow after 15 issues it went terrible wrong. However, have you read the Flex Mentallo series? I'm still trying to get my head around that one. And the Robotman/Crazy Jane romance was the most heartbreaking thing that I had read.

-- doomie (doompatrol23@hotmail.com), August 16, 2001.


Flex Mentallo was excellent, and looked beautiful too. Loved how it tied up Morrisons comic book fantasies and rock star fantasies. JLA still had plenty of good ideas but it did weaken.

Read his X-Men for the first time today. Better than the average X- Men for certain but the touch seems to have left him.

-- Number None (whoisnumbernone@hotmail.com), August 17, 2001.


Grant Morrison is doing X-Men? Oh how the mighty has fallen.....

What do you think happened? The JLA fame got to him after awhile and then he went downhill? Where could he logically go after the invisibles (or maybe the fact that the matrix movie was a rip off of his psychedelic invisibles...

I think that after the initial run of JLA (according to Grant to keep the Invisibles alive) and then when the invisibles started to suffer (ie. when he took the letters page out of it...)

Then it died.

However, I remember reading the Doom Patrol series and being very sad when I had finally gotten them all.

Today I had pulled out some Invisible issues and reread them. Fantastic and as a youth it introduced me to several things: Terrence McKenna, the Big Book of Conspiracies, The illumintas....

I'll never get rid of my Doom Patrols (Have you read the sixties series?)

-- doomie (doompatrol@hotmail.com), August 17, 2001.


I have thee fanzine w/morrison's jerry cornelius rip-off strip - I forget thee name, but thee neckst episode was to B called "the entropy concerto", if U kan believe that. Gimme Gimme Bryan Talbot n-ztead

xoxo



-- ph33r (k-rad@faycycle.demon.co.uk), August 18, 2001.


oops, seem to have shrunk somewhat.

better now? kiss

-- ph33r (ph33r@ph33r.org), August 18, 2001.


wellthat worked well, didn't it?

booya

-- tiny ph33r (ph33r@ph33r.org), August 18, 2001.



I've read some issues of the 60s Doom Patrol - it was good yeah. Why did Morrison lose it? I think when he had his near-death experience and started identifying too much with the Invisibles characters. Or when he realised he had 12 issues left and too much plot so just dropped the plot. Or when I realised I wasn't that interested in what he'd seen when he tripped out and met aliens.

He's always done mainstream stuff as well as serious stuff. Doom Patrol is his best because you can't see the joins.

-- Number None (whoisnumbernone@hotmail.com), August 19, 2001.


What did you mean when you said: Can't see the joins? I think my favourite and my first issue of Doom Patrol was the Jack Kirby tribute/parody.....

The X-Men thing did come as a shock and I relayed the information to follow invisible fans: he does x-men after he did a parody on x- force?

Crying Boy..hahahaha....

-- doomie (doompatrol23@hotmail.com), August 20, 2001.


The joins? Well Doom Patrol is a great superhero comic - there's a team, there's villains, cases to solve. But everything has a serious or clever twist, and like you said you learn about a ton of stuff from it. I wish I'd been 12 or 13 when it was coming out.

The parodies were great. The X-Men he's doing now looks to be all cool and moody stuff. Like Zenith I suppose but done too seriously.

-- Number None (whoisnumbernone@hotmail.com), August 20, 2001.


Moody? Arrggh...urban vigilantes??? Maybe???? After that brilliant parody of the punisher in doompatrol? Arrgghhh....where is the cheeky Grant? Some side project? Maybe??? No....

-- doomie (doompatrol23@hotmail.com), August 21, 2001.

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