Grant Morrison Hates Doomkopf
In a recent interview with Newsarama, DC Comics writer Grant Morrison, the man behind Batman RIP, Final Crisis, and Superman: Beyond, does a little complaining of his own about internet complainers. In his words:
Every time I read about the agonizing pains of ‘event fatigue’ or how ‘3-D hurts my head…’ or how something’s ‘incomprehensible’ when most people are ‘comprehending’ it just fine, it’s like visiting a nursing home. ‘Events’ in superhero comic books FATIGUE you? I’m speechless. Admittedly they do tend to be a little more exciting than the instruction leaflets that come with angina pills but… ‘fatigue’?
Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant?
It’s funny, because we complain about event fatigue and 3D glasses giving us headaches all the time around here.
And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve referred to Final Crisis as nothing more than a bunch of freaked out gobbledygook.
Let me defend ourselves a little, though, since it’s clear that Mr. Morrison was speaking specifically about our blog in that interview (hey, there, buddy, thanks for reading!).
“Event fatigue,” first of all, isn’t exactly describing what you’re talking about. Only a great fool would think fans are complaining because stuff is happening on every panel of their comics. Can you really imagine somebody saying, “Boy, this new issue of Captain America sucks because that goddamn Ed Brubaker keeps making Cap get into fights and shit. I wish there’d be 22 pages of him just taking a nap already! Sheesh!”
No, that’s very dumb. Hit the jump, readers.
“Event fatigue” is just a way of saying we’re sick of all these stupid universe-altering crossover events. I mean, I kind of liked the Marvel Universe after Civil War. Now they’ve already changed the status quo so that the bad guys are running the show. And, guess what? I kind of like that, too, but it’d be nice to get more than six months of stories in this new and improved universe. I’m guessing it will have changed by then, though, after another mega-event. And, no, again, what I’m referring to isn’t just Iron Man firing a laserbeam, however “eventful” that may be.
Moving on, let’s talk about the 3D glasses issue. It shouldn’t really be an issue, since nobody should buy a comic for an extra dollar fifty just so he can get a stupid pair of 3D glasses, but, hey, whoever does is probably dumb enough to buy two pairs bundled with both issues of the two-part miniseries. Whatever. You scammed us; that’s fine. I’m over it.
Another point against the 3D glasses is that they’re not actually 3D, or did you forget that? They’re advertised as 4D, meaning we should be able to see through time itself! What a rip off! And, wait a minute, the entire second issue was told in straight-forward linear fashion. What a crock!
They do give me headaches, though. Sorry for having a reaction to something that is out of my control. You should make fun of diabetics for getting sick after they eat too much chocolate. God, what a bunch of whining old fogies!
The last point, that we complain too much about how your stories are incomprehensible, well, that’s just. . . true. You make Faulkner look like John Grisham (in terms of density of narrative, not in terms of quality of writing). So, we’ll quit complaining when you stop writing absolute nonsense.
Way to lump complaining about 3D glasses with nursing home dwellers, Grant. All the hip teens I know are totally raving about their sweet new red-and-blue specs.
I sent an order for a new pair to an address I found in the back of Boy’s Life just a couple days ago. I sure hope they get here by Saturday so I can show ’em off at the sock hop.
I always wanted to order the Venus Flytrap. Instead I just got things like whoopee cushions and lame magic tricks. It’s so weird that I thought magic tricks were cool as a kid, and yet here I am as a grown up liking comic books.
So to clarify: Morrison 1) thinks people who find FC confusing are narrow minded or too conservative in their concept of what makes a good story, despite the fact that 2) he intentionally made the FC narrative confusing as a metatextual literary device. Got it.
This just solidifies my belief that Grant Morrison is a lazy writer. So now we have a vicious cycle. Morrison writes crap, a lot of “fans” say its great because they don’t want to be seen as “uncool”. Then Morrison puts even less effort into the next story because “some people” liked it and the cycle starts over.
[…] off, thanks again to Doomkopf for proving my theory that Grant Morrison is […]
Maybe the actual quality of his writing is a meta-metatextual reference to the entropic nature of mythology or some bullshit.
Nah, everyone’s just Jesus in Purgatory.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory
I dunno, after reading the Newsarama interview, I honestly don’t think Morrison is trying to pull a fast one on anyone. I truly think he’s trying to do something wholly original and vastly complex within the medium of the “cosmic crossover” superhero comic. His explanation of “the total and deliberate disregard for the rules of the ‘screenwriting’ approach that has become the house style for a great many comic writers these days” I think makes a lot of sense.
That being said, he may very well have utterly failed at actually turning these literary theory experiments into any sort of cohesive work. I personally haven’t decided yet; i’m planning on re-reading everything in the order described by Morrison. I will say that, while I was vastly confused throughout much of Final Crisis, I did find it an intriguing read, and it had some pretty god damn good moments.
I don’t doubt his good intentions, but he seems to be incapable of accepting that there might be reasonable and informed criticism of the execution.