RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Pax Americana

Pariah, you'll pee your TACPATT panties over this.

Its basically Grant Morrison and Frank Quietely re-doing Watchmen, but using the old Charleston Comics characters. The Question is pretty much Rorschach. Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) is pretty much Night Owl. Sarge Steel is pretty much The Comedian. Captain Atom is pretty much Dr Manhattan. Super-abundance of Quitely nods to Dave Gibbons. Beautiful art in places.

Its part of Multiversity. I have no idea what that is. But this is a great comic.

http://www.dccomics.com/comics/the-multiversity-2014/the-multiversity-pax-americana-1

Review here:
http://au.ign.com/articles/2014/11/20/the-multiversity-pax-americana-1-review

The Question getting all Rorschach-y here:

http://http://www.comicbookresources.com/prev_img.php?pid=32104&disp=ilib&oty=1&oid=57263

....Kill me now.

I honestly did not think that comics could do anymore to make me feel like shit.

But putting the Charlton characters in the hands of Grant Morrison....Christ.

Considering that watchmen started out as Moore's proposal to revamp the Charlton characters I have to assume Morrison's doing a bit of a pisstake here

All I know is Morrison is so lacking in talent that he proposed, if and when he got ahold of Rorschach, that he change him from an objectivist icon into a spiral dynamics obsessed libtard.

I bet you were nothing but contrary as a child.

Its really good. Read it, you dork, before you judge it.

Fine. I'll do just that. And you'll see how depressed I get.

Is this something I can buy through the DC app and read on my iPad and, if so, do I need to read a shitload of crossover books...or is it a standalone I can enjoy (or not) on the merits, not unlike Morrie's recent Fawcett style Shazam book?

it's stand alone. You do need to be familiar with Watchmen to get the full impact of the story, but I doubt any comic book fan these days is unfamiliar with Watchmen.

In fact, that's all Lothar does these days - watch men.

"I'm giving you choices. A whole spectrum of choices. A rainbow."

Fuck! I fucking KNEW it!


And Frank Quitely art sucks.

Quitely art is a subject of a separate discussion. I confess that sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. I suspect it depends how much care he takes. The more time he has, the better the outcome.



Definitely stand alone. I have no idea what Multiversity is about and have no interest in it.

And Lothar stopped watching men since he copped the mace in the eyes.

And this book is boring as shit. I can see what he's doing from a mile away. Lets break this down inductively:

A Question that no longer subscribes to an objectively quantified reality that is subject to dialectic philosophy, but rather a series of color-coded classifications that sit dead center of black and white. And he's gay.

A monologue by the demi-god that debates the existence of beginning and end in a so called infinity of a metaphysical reality that achieves substance solely through the pages of a book (more of his gay meta-fiction).

The identification of a mysterious, but prevalent--and uncannily numerological--algorithm, the existence of which either makes or breaks the concept of universal meaning. Allegedly, the code has been cracked, and purpose exists by dint of one being conscious of it OR the universe is a random formation of aimless particles that neither start nor finish, but the shape of which is so static as to be calculable by the human intellect. Either way, it's a typical chaos v. harmony narrative (i.e. the book is harmonious to us, the omnipresent reader (and Atom), but chaos to the characters within (except Atom)).

An overarching theme that debates both the virtue and the relevance of linearity, but ultimately tables the argument in favor of non-linearity by giving the being that exists inside, outside, and through time the ultimate say on whether or not it matters by making him the one most conscious of the universe's framework--which can apparently be summed up mathematically.

Obviously, if you do away with linearity, you also eliminate the "beginning and end" binary, but in effect, you eliminate the story as well--a point that Morrison would obviously argue against. A series of jumbled ideas that may or may not allude to a moral does not a story make. You've only established an infinity insofar as you're forced to halt the story in the middle of the book, and thus not actually finish it since it will simply begin again by the final page or end with the first. So FUCK YOU Morrison! Go FUCK yourself you FUCKIN PIECE OF SHIT ACID-TRIPPING COCKSUCKER AND LEAVE THE DECENT CHARACTERS ALONE!!


Morrison knew that he couldn't pull the spiral dynamics shit off with Rorschach, but no one would give a fuck about an alternative Charlton universe, so he had at it like a total douche.

Quite frankly (no, not a pun), Quitely's art seems like it's trying to be Bryan Talbot's.

So...as I surmised, a Pisstake

The thing with the question sounds a little like he did with two face in Arkham Asylum

Might still check it out.

Well, you just lost half your audience except for the invective, which I think everyone could understand.

My only complaint was that he already did the comic book suprareality with Animal-Man. I don't mind Atom being in the position of being beyond linearity - Gaiman just indulged himself in this, albeit in a much more ancillary way, with Sandman:Overture, where Sandman's father is beyond a lineal progression of time and cause and effect.

Watchmen was fundamentally all about chaos theory (as you know) and this seemed to me to be an inoffensive dovetail.

But look at you! You're offended!

Well, I have to remember the little people. The non-English majors--however detestable they might be.

I knew what Morrison was going to do before I even opened the book. I obviously didn't know the context, but I could tell it was going to be a permutation of the meta-fictional concept. He loves playing these little games because he thinks it makes him seem out-of-the-box. He also believes that it's possible to hijack human consciousness for the purpose of reshaping reality.

Dedroidify

• If you actually do what they say, things happen. Things occur, exactly as described. And we can all do it.
  
  So I decided to put this to use in the comic book I was doing, this thing called The Invisibles. And the idea was to kind of get all this down on paper, and somehow look at it. Not to accept it as reality, but to accept it as purely:
  “This is part of human experience. It’s a part of human experience that has been described to us for thousands and thousands of years – but for the last two hundred has been hidden and made occult. For some reason that we don’t understand – but it seems to have something to do with the industrial revolution and corporate culture.”
  So these things happen. Magic works. And I found out when I was doing the comic that you could actually make magic happen by writing things, and changing the operating system of the universe. It works, and I’m here to tell you to try it when you go home tonight. Because it fucking works.
  
  And what happens if we all do it? If everyone in this room decides to take control of reality? I’m talking about reality; I’m talking about quantum physics; I’m talking about taking control of things from the quantum level up, from the molecular level up – and it works. This magic works...
  
  ...What we’re really dealing with here is, as I say, some kind of operating system that can be hacked, using words. Words seem to be the binding agent of this.. thing. Whatever it is.

If I had to put his brand of idiocy to a label, it would be neo-deconstructionist mysticism.

As for non-linearity and other Morrisonisms: I find nothing principally wrong with a character or entire story that calls into question the concept of linear continuity. The problem is how Morrison feels empowered to express the idea with his typically overindulgent, self-obsessed attitude that asserts some kind of enlightenment, which is immediately belied by an ambiguous and esoteric narrative that follows dull subject matter. That being said, I don't have a problem with Morrison being an idiot. I think he should be free to be an idiot--even though its absolutely malignant to the people who read him (just look at Animalman and his lunacy. Although I haven't talked to him in forever). I just don't want his brand of the bizarrely abstract to permeate the realms of characters I care about. If I had actually stuck with DC through his run on Batman in the last decade, for instance, I would have had a nervous breakdown.

If it weren't for the fact that he got ahold of The Question solely so he could eliminate his objectivist precepts and replace them with something as diametrically opposed to Ayn Rand and Steve Ditko as Spiral Dynamics, I wouldn't even have bothered catching a glimpse of this train wreck. I wasn't kidding when I said his writing puts me to sleep. And the fact that he is unable to write accurately a protagonist character with whom his own personality is incompatible further demonstrates that he lacks the same grace held by Alan Moore when it comes to approaching characters not his own. All he's doing is using The Question and, by extension, Rorschach's charisma as a vehicle for his adopted pet theories.

O'neil and Rucka have done enough damage without Morrison sticking his oar into the discussion of how one could possibly fuck up this character to nth degree.



It's not that I think it's inappropriate. I just caught them all so damn easily. He played his entire hand before anyone could place a bet. Now he's going to spend the next half dozen issues explaining exactly what chaos theory, Spiral Dynamics, et al is when it's really not all that relevant to me. I might as well just wait till the last issue and read it for the conclusion.



*shrug*

It's Morrison. I mean, he's Scottish for fuck's sake.

I checked it out.

Best I can say is that Morrison did a competent job ripping off better stories and concepts that Moore (Watchmen), Ellis (the Authority), Millar (S/A) and Ennis (the Boys) already did.

What's S/A?

S/A = "same as". Morrison was ripping off Ellis on the Authority and Millar on the Authority.

Not to mention, arguably, Ellis on Planetary.

Oh....Nah.

I think it's just that this particular batch of writers are all clones of each other, but with tiny interchanges.

Moore: Peyote and Shrooms

Morrison: LSD and Ever Clear

Ennis: Hash and Opiates

Ellis: PCP and Meth

Millar: Jenkem


They should all just OD already.

Wash your mouth, son.

I see it as a signal that the mythos is about mined out. There's only so many ways you can tell the same story. At least Ellis openly admits that it is archaeology.

G-man, you forgot Squadron Supreme. Basically a retelling of the 1980s JLA, eliminating crime through thought control, and ideology /power consuming them all.

I was thinking about this from the perspective of Millar's Authority. Superheroes (Superman archetype, Batman archetype, Dr Who archetype, Metal Men archetype and whatever Jack Hawksmoor was supposed to be) depose Indonesia's government post-East Timor genocide. Then they smash Avengers archetypes. Grise eminence despatches Three Willy Seth who stomps them all, and they are replaced with a more pliable version of themselves. Only through a combination of luck and arrogance were they not all killed. The ending to that, really, should have been Seth murdering the lot of them: would have been more Orwellian that way, less superhero happy ending. Up until then, it was pretty new despite the superabundance of altruistic archetypes.