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Grant Morrison

Better Than Stranger Things: Proctor Valley Road Review!

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Horror Cinema is rarely kind to the people who make it.

The genre is often seen as a lower artform of ill repute where those who make it, at best, get a reputation for three films while their larger work is ignored as garbage. The best case scenario for many a horror filmmaker is to remake the same film over and over again for a quickly dwindling audience. Even filmmakers like John Carpenter or George Romero are left scrambling for budgets because no one wants to support their endeavors.

But perhaps the filmmaker most hurt by this reputation and systemic failure is Tobe Hooper. For many people, Hooper is the madman who did The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and then nothing else because he was too much of a wild card to actually make a real movie. Some might see him as the guy credited for Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist. Both of these are largely inaccurate claims to make about Hooper that only limit his range as a filmmaker. [Read more…] about Better Than Stranger Things: Proctor Valley Road Review!

All That They Are, All That They Will Be: Grant Morrison’s Supermen in Retrospect

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For their first DC publication – Superman Official 1986 Annual – Grant Morrison wrote Osgood Peabody’s Big Green Dream Machine, a prose story with illustrations by Barry Kitson and Jeff Anderson, where a gang of criminals attempt to discern Superman’s vulnerabilities by peering into his dreams. Seeing fields of bones and assuming they represent a fear of death on the part of the invincible man, the crooks attempt to intimidate him, only to learn they had been tricked and were instead picking up the super-brainwaves of Krypto the Superdog. “And as Superman led Osgood and the others away, the air rang with the sound of his laughter.” The notion of Superman exposed to decay, to time, to failure? A punchline.

35 years later, the extended admission to the contrary that is Superman and The Authority was announced as Morrison’s final DC work. [Read more…] about All That They Are, All That They Will Be: Grant Morrison’s Supermen in Retrospect

All-Star Superman: The Man Of Action

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[Content/Trigger Warning: Suicide]

At the tender age of 16, I was deeply depressed.

My childhood, from about age 8, had been a stressful mess full of fear, anxiety, sobbing, and obsessive worrying. And by my teens, I’d found that I had managed to somehow keep on, if not necessarily ‘cope’ with the circumstances that never seemed to go away. There was a ‘numbness’ as I call it, which helped me take, accept and endure all the rubbish life seemed intent on throwing in my face.

It was tiresome, but it was also, as I came to understand it, life. I’d never known any other beyond it. I could scarcely imagine beyond it. Any alternative I had heard was in stories- hearing others speak, or in fiction. I’d hear it all and feel a deep sense of envy.

Ah. Normal.

I wish I had that. [Read more…] about All-Star Superman: The Man Of Action

The Old 52: Action Comics & The Birthplace of Modern Morrison

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When they began their run on Action Comics in 2011, Grant Morrison was at a crucial juncture in their comics career. After returning to DC in the early 2000s following the end of their run on New X-Men, they launched into a staggering creative frenzy that took them through the first act of their Batman epic, their cult classic take on The Seven Soldiers of Victory, and the multi-Eisner Award winning All-Star Superman with their defining artistic partner Frank Quitely, along with significant contributions to the acclaimed 52. Their mid-naughts imperial phase culminated when Dan DiDio finally handed them the keys to the kingdom and allowed them to do their take on a classic DC Crisis event, leading to the seven-issue Final Crisis with J.G. Jones and Doug Mahnke. Instead of delivering a classic crossover action comic (heh), Morrison wrote a baroque, austere story about the apocalypse powered by symbolism and metaphor as much, if not moreso, than by narrative logic, an ontologically dense exploration of DC’s icons that contrasted them with grimy images of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World New Gods to advance Morrison’s concept of the Justice League as the gods of the Fifth World. [Read more…] about The Old 52: Action Comics & The Birthplace of Modern Morrison

BATMAN & ROBIN By Grant Morrison: Reforging the Dynamic Duo

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The evil in our world is greater than what the human mind can grasp. Beyond time and space lie threats and fears that break the bonds of reality. Only one man can hope to overcome these demons, but what can we do when our hero has been lost to time itself? 

Grant Morrison’s Batman is rooted in the idea of Bruce Wayne transcending his limitations as a human hero and overcoming challenges that cannot be defined by logic or reason. But when Wayne is disintegrated by Darkseid’s Omega Beams during “Final Crisis” and placed back at the dawn of man, it’s up to his friends and family to pick up the pieces and live up to his legendary legacy.  [Read more…] about BATMAN & ROBIN By Grant Morrison: Reforging the Dynamic Duo