Before I begin, I would like to re-admit that I don't "get" Grant Morrison. I understand and, to some extent, can appreciate what others find interesting about his work, but for me reading Morrison is akin to arguing with someone who believes that, after death, we enter "the Supercontext ... a fifth-dimensional, informational continuum where things that we don't quite understand go on." (Because that's exactly what it is.) In other words, I don't disapprove of Morrison's grand scheme so much as I think its philosophical underpinnings are as sound and stable as those of anyone else who drops too much acid and claims communion with unseen entities of vast esoteric power. They—being the philosophical underpinnings, not the unseen entities of vast esoteric power—are there, certainly, but they're there to be accepted as revelation, not to be argued with.
That said, I decided to teach All-Star Superman anyway and will attempt to do it justice. Fortunately for me, that's not too difficult to do if I concentrate on the opening pages of the first issue. To wit:
Absent from these four panels is any hint that "[t]hat 'S' is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are." (We're not, truly or otherwise, anything we see on that page.) Instead, Morrison presents the familiar origin of Superman with a narrative economy as impressive as it is moving. (Or because, despite its familiarity, it is moving.) In eight words evenly distributed over four panels, Morrison captures the oft-forgotten pathos of the character.
How does Morrison effect this? By creating an alternating rhythm to the panels. The first depicts a world-historical catastrophe; the second, a medium close-up of two people caught in it; the third, the catastrophe again; the fourth, a first-person extreme close-up of two people whose lives are changed by it. The balance created by alternating between the catastrophic scale in the first and third panels emphasizes, by putting into relief, the personal scale evident in the second and fourth. Put differently: the pained faces in the second panel are both magnified and humanized by the events depicted in the panels bookending it. Similarly, the inquisitive faces in the fourth panel are made meaningful both by the third and the splash page that follows:
The second and third pages aren't typically considered part of the opening sequence, but they seem to me vital to understanding the rhythm Morrison establishes. It's almost as if the Kents' curiosity on the previous page is answered by the magnificance depicted on the two subsequent ones. (The visual impact of the second and third pages is diminished by the necessities of blog-columns, but if you click on the images they should open in their original sizes.) In short, the book opens with symmetry (page one) and transitions to sublime grace (pages two and three), which perfectly prepares the reader for this:
I'm going to avoid plot-points I don't entirely understand and stick with the visuals, beginning with the basics: which panel is the first panel? The page. But in conventional superhero comics, pages rarely function as panels, because conventional superhero comics are orderly and the job of being panels belongs to the panels. (The exception being fights splashed onto pages, but even in those cases rarely do other panels tumble down the side as these do here.) The point being: the symmetry and grace of the preceding pages is disrupted by a page that can't even control its own panels. The calamity befalling the characters in the second through fourth panels doesn't belong to or in the harmonious universe previously described. They're "falling into a sunspot the size of South America" precisely as the pilot in the first panels describes. Like much of Morrison's work, they're performing their own meaning. So too are the panels on the next page:
The page again functions as the first panel, but in this case, the panels it contains are orderly. They may not fit a convention 9- or 6-panel scheme, but they're equidistant from both edges of the page and neatly organized in its central area. Did I say neatly? I meant obsessively: if we were to draw lines up from each panel it becomes evident that Frank Quitely has placed them in such a manner as to frame her face:
The second panel occupies the same width on the page as her hair. The third stops at the inward edge of her right nostril and the fourth begins at the inward edge of her left. The fifth frames the outside of her left ear and extends to the edge of her hair. (I alternated the line on the right edge of the second panel and the left edge of the fifth because it's impossible to see the ears they're framing beneath the lines otherwise.) This orderly composition of this page counterpoises the disorderly tumbling of the previous, and with good reason: that's what Superman does. He restores order when the universe threatens to upset it. Morrison again has his form mirror his content (and vice versa). He wants the reader to both see and understand Superman's function in his fictional universe.
" I don't disapprove of Morrison's grand scheme so much as I think its philosophical underpinnings are as sound and stable as those of anyone else who drops too much acid and claims communion with unseen entities of vast esoteric power. "
Aaaaaand you're a big PKD fan? Is it that PKD was always skeptical about his communion while Morrison seems to take it seriously?
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Monday, 17 October 2011 at 07:28 PM
Is it that PKD was always skeptical about his communion while Morrison seems to take it seriously?
It's not that Morrison takes it seriously, it's how seriously he takes it. The irony being, of course, that I still admire Moore, who also takes his magic very, very seriously. I think the difference is that Morrison's cosmology seems thin and under-thought: he feels, for example, to define the term "metafiction" in Supergods in the way that an undergraduate, flush with an encounter with a new idea, would. There's no depth to the contemplation, just random encounters with drugs, aliens, magic, and the comic metaverse.
Posted by: SEK | Monday, 17 October 2011 at 07:46 PM
I can understand that a lot better than "I don't 'get' Grant Morrison", which was always too vague for me. Yes, his work often seems to be underthought. _Animal Man_, I remember, had a long-running plot about Animal Man becoming involved in the animal rights movement, until the issue where he turns away from them, idealism betrayed, angry that they want to use him as a soldier. And that was it. It was like something that could have been written by an 18 year old. _Doom Patrol_ was great, but it had trouble actually going anywhere. As you can tell by these examples, there are whole decades of Morrison I've skipped.
I do think that this quality is the reason why he's made it so (comparatively) big out of the Brit Invasion writers in the classic superhero comics world. I did read _Seven Soldiers_, and was astounded by how Morrison in the intro page seemingly unironically writes about turning the characters into salable properties, ready for their own individual series. It's not that he's selling out. It's just like he hasn't really thought about it.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Monday, 17 October 2011 at 10:47 PM
This is a nice reading, Scott. I don't know how you can put all of this so well and still say you have no love for Morrison. I won't say that all of Morrison's work is gold; as a writer he can have some serious faults. But I think All Star Superman, with the exception of the Bizarro issues, is just sublime.
Posted by: Adam Kaiserman | Tuesday, 18 October 2011 at 02:53 AM
I see Rich beat me to the quote, but can I steal that?
Posted by: bianca steele | Tuesday, 18 October 2011 at 02:07 PM
"It's not that he's selling out. It's just like he hasn't really thought about it."
Rather, that he isn't bothered by selling out or considers it particularly shameful to be commercially minded in some of his more "mainstream" projects.
Regarding Animal Man and Doom Patrol, you shouldn't really look at these as longform works, as both were written at a time when the monthly floppy was king and clearly written from month to month. There never was an overall arch for either of them and especially Animal Man is Morrison mucking about doing things that interested him that month; attempt to read it as a coherent story in trade paperback and you'll be disappointed, but it works as a monthly comic.
Re the original post: too much talk about Morrison doing this or meaning that with the panel placement while almost entirely ignoring Frank Quitely's input. Even if Morrison dictates the layout of a given page, the artist's intepretation is key to how it'll end up looking.
Posted by: Martin Wisse | Monday, 24 October 2011 at 01:25 AM