Multiversity Challenge
Post date: Jul 07, 2012 12:38:39 AM
Thanks to Comicbook Grrrl's recent coverage of Grant 'n' Frank's panel at the Glasgow Comic-Con last weekend, we now have a much better idea of what to expect when Grant's latest DC Universe-spanning epic, Multiversity, ships in 2013. I've tried to piece together some of the puzzle below...
First mentioned in a 2008 interview with the late and not-at-all lamented Wizard magazine following the conclusion of Final Crisis, Multiversity is Grant Morrison's exploration of the 'new' DC Multiverse, now two reboots further down the line from it's first outing at the end of 52. It's a revisionist take on some of DC Comics' most iconic parallel worlds, drawing deeply on DC's rich publishing history and, though originally planned as a collaborative project along the lines of 52, Morrison adopted the project as his own when the other writers lost interest. The book, like Morrison's Seven Soldiers before it, is intended as a self-contained statement - seven issues each devoted to a separate parallel Earth, and two bookends, with a common thread running throughout. The linking device between issues is a novel spin on Gardner Fox's conceit from 'The Flash of Two Worlds', that the events on one parallel Earth are documented on others via their comic book stories. Here's what we know about the seven issues so far -
Pax Americana - Art by Frank Quitely, who's been working on the book since at least October 2011. The most eagerly anticipated of the seven books sees Morrison tackle a sequel of sorts to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' iconic Watchmen, a book which Morrison has long been an outspoken critic of. Probably poking fun at Dan Didio's alleged comments regarding the diabolical Countdown, Morrison allegedly described Pax Americana as "Watchmen done right". At its heart, Pax Americana is a murder mystery, though Morrison and Quitely are working flat-out to bring the same kind of stylistic novelty to the book that lit up We3. From the Wizard interview, "It's been fun to do that kind of style but rethink it and try to play a new version of that 'sound' without copying anything directly. We've got 12-panel grids and pages where you're seeing the events leading to a murder, the murder itself and the investigation all happening simultaneously across the same background. I'm right in the middle of that one, so it's fresh in my mind." The book is set on Earth 4, home to alternate versions of the characters DC purchased from Charlton Comics in the eighties, and on whom Watchmen's main cast is based. Briefly seen in the final issue of 52, the characters have all been revised to reflect the post-Watchmen political landscape. Morrison's take on Captain Atom, the Dr. Manhattan-like Captain Allen Adam, played a major role in Final Crisis: Superman Beyond and will return alongside The Question - whose Ditko-esque Randian viewpoint "has been shattered through a prisms of his experience as a crimefighter so that he sees the world through the multicoloured lens of of Spiral Dynamics". Blue Beetle, Nightshade and, in an unlikely turn, Judomaster (as DC have lost the rights to Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt), will, if this image from 52 #52 is anything to go by, also return.
Thunderworld - Set on Earth 5 (Earth S back in the olden days), Thunderworld is an all-ages, Pixar-style take on Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family, sharing some stylistic similarities with Morrison and Quitely's All-Star Superman. Grant announced at the San Diego Comic Con in 2009 that this would be drawn by Cameron Stewart, but I asked Cameron about it recently and he's not seen anything at all for it yet. If memory serves he was quite surprised by the announcement, given that Grant hadn't mentioned the project to him beforehand (feel free to correct me if this isn't right!). Captain Marvel hasn't ever made the transition to modern funny books well, with most hands who've attempted to revive the character inexplicably taking the 'grim and gritty' route, something Geoff Johns and Gary Frank seem to be engaged with yet again at the moment in the Shazam back-up in the New 52 Justice League book. Notably, the most succesful revisions (Jerry Ordway's fairly long running Power of Shazam series and Jeff Smith's Monster Society of Evil mini) tend to try and stick with the character's roots a little more faithfully, so it's entirely sensible for Morrison to do the same. Morrison has written the Big Red Cheese before, in the 'Crisis Times Five' arc of his JLA run and as one of the protagonists of Final Crisis: Superman Beyond, and it'll be interesting to see what he does with the rest of the Marvel Family away from the Death Metal Apocalypse of Final Crisis.
SOS (Society of Superheroes) - DC's heroes as 1940's pulp pastiche, The Society of Superheroes is based on the alternate Earth 20, glimpsed briefly during Morrison's Final Crisis. Battling evil alongside Doc Fate, an occult spin on Doc Savage via the Justice Society's Dr. Fate, are the Mighty Atom, the Immortal Man, Lady Blackhawk and her Blackhawks, and Abin Sur, the Green Lantern. No word on the artist for this issue so far.
The Just - A world of media personality legacy heroes like Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Green Arrow Connor Hawke and Flash Wally West; The Just sounds like it shares some surface similarities with Roy Thomas' "sons and daughters of the Justice Society" Infinity, Inc. title from the 1980's.
From the Comic Book Resources interview - "It’s with all of the nineties characters because I really miss those guys, like Connor Hawke. It’s kind of version where they first had Earth-2 and Earth-2 was the older guys from the Golden Age. This is those guys but they’re not the main heroes. There’s a whole younger generation of heroes – kind of media brats almost."
Partly inspired by Morrison's frustration at DC's inability to move beyond the Silver Age iterations of their iconic heroes - Morrison's JLA featured all of the afformentioned characters rather than their more familiar predecessors, all of whom subsequently returned from the dead to reclaim the mantle. Again, no word so far on an artist for this issue - Howard Porter is probably too far removed from his JLA style these days for a comfortable fit but there are still plenty of artists around riffing off Jim Lee's 90's work. Tony Daniel? Philip Tan anyone?
Master Men - The long-promised Grant Morrison Earth X (or Earth 10 as it's known these days) project. Inspired by a story Len Wein wrote in his 70's Justice League of America run where the heroes DC had bought from the defunct Quality Comics were re-introduced as the Freedom Fighters, Master Men is set on an alternate Earth where the Nazi's won World War II and opens with an infuriated Hitler reading Action Comics #1 on the toilet (?!). No word on the artist but it'd be nice to see either Doug Mahnke or Chris Burnham, both artists who have a healthy love of the grotesque, take a crack at that page. From a 2009 interview with Grant at Comic Book Resources -"There’s Master Man, who is the Nazi Superman. And that’s set on Earth-10. And it’s with some of the characters from Final Crisis, like the Overman character. He’s the Superman who was found by the Nazis at the start of the war. And they kind of retro-engineered these rocket technologies to win the war. So he grows up in the society where the Nazis have basically won the war. It’s horrible and he’s too late to fix anything because so many people have died. So he kind of creates this perfect world but he’s in a state of permanent guilt. It’s a big, dark Shakespearean story. And the Freedom Fighters basically come back to destroy the society that he’s created. And does Superman really believe in it enough to fight for it or does he want it destroyed? It’s a big kind of moral story. It’s a Nazi Justice League fighting the Freedom Fighters. There not real Nazis but they’ve grown up in a post-Nazi world. This is based on the Earth-X Nazi world but it wasn’t really worked out so I did my own kind of version of this one with more story potential."
Ultraa The Unknown - A tale of Earth Prime, our own superhero-less world, where a haunted comic book lures it's readers to a fate worse than death. Another stylistic departure for Morrison, he's called this, "the scariest thing I've ever written." In a neat bit of meta-fiction, Ultraa will not only tell the tale of the haunted comic book, but actually be that comic book itself.
The title comes from pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths hero Ultraa, created by Gerry Conway and George Tuska, who first appeared in 1978's Justice League of America #153. An alien who crash landed on Earth as a baby, he was raised by Aborigines in the Australian Outback and became Earth Prime's only super-hero. He agrees to accompany the Justice League back to their world (as Gerry Conway didn't think we were ready for superheroes back in 1978...), only to fall into a life of petty crime after becoming a bus boy in Atlantic City. Ultraa briefly became a villain and then returned to the Outback to live happily ever after. He was wiped from continuity with a vengeance after 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths - his Who's Who in the DC Universe entry from 1986 concludes with "In the reformed DC Universe, Maxitron [the computer that rocketed Ultraa to Earth] was unable to save any of its charges. The space ark was vaporized by the sun, spelling the end to a once-great civilization." Harsh. I've seen some speculation that Frazer Irving might draw this, but I don't think anything has been confirmed.
Untitled Earth 51 / 'Kirby-verse' Book - Though not mentioned in any of the latest news regarding Multiversity, Morrison confirmed to a fan at Comic Con 2011 that Earth 51, the Kirby world seen at the end of Final Crisis, would return in Multiversity. At the conclusion of Final Crisis, the Global Peace Agency and their OMAC robots were left stranded on Earth 51 - the home of Kamandi and the site of the Great Disaster - where the resurrected New Gods had also come to convalesce following Darksied's attempt to plunge the Multiverse into a singularity. It's difficult to imagine why they would want to do it but DC effectively ring-fenced all of Kirby's 1970's DC creations bar the Demon on a separate world awayfrom the rest of the publishing line. Maybe Morrison's one-shot will give us an idea as to what the purpose of doing this was? Again no solid news on an artist, but it would be good to maybe see someone in the 'Kirby mode' take a crack at this - Godland's Tom Scioli or Dan McDaid maybe?Multiversity - The bookends will feature, amongst presumably many others, President Superman - who first appearead in Final Crisis #7 and was recently featured in Action Comics #9 - Nix Uotan, the fallen Monitor and "surveillance-era superhero" also from Final Crisis; and Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew. Presumably the over-arching story will pick up some beats from Morrison and Gene Ha's superlative 'The Curse of Superman' from President Superman's recent Action Comics appearance, concerning itself as it did with a Musical Meta-Machine that opened doorways between (parallel) worlds.
Art-wise, yet again there's no news but given the superlative job he did on the Seven Soldiers bookends, it'd be nice to see J.H. Williams on these.
And that's that. If you know any more please let me know and I'll share with the rest of the class. In case you were wondering the images above were all taken from 52 #52, apart form the New Gods image at the bottom which is from Final Crisis #7.
All signs point to the book being solicited in 2013, a mere five years after it was first announced. Fingers crossed eh?