The Multiversity #2 - "Superjudge"

[laughing_tree]

'The “crisis” is now the default superhero storytelling mode. Every comic book hero — TV heroes too, like “Doctor Who” — must inevitably, relentlessly, repeatedly face a dedicated threat to his or her very essence and core. It’s no longer sufficient to commit a weird sort of crime in Gotham City; any given baddie has to gnaw at the very roots of Batman’s being, fuck up the private lives of his friends and relatives, make him doubt his raison d’etre, set his postal district on fire and blow up his cave. Poor old Batman seems to lurch from one apocalyptic life-ruin epic to another these days with barely a pause for breath, making me long for the days when he jumped around at night helping people or solving mysteries that didn’t lead to some aeons-spanning plot by the ultimate villain to do the ultimate Bad Thing. And the Caped Crusader’s not the only perma-victim of the Ebola-like “crisis” epidemic. For a while it was genuinely thrilling to watch our heroes facing such directly focused threats to their meaning and relevance, but now the “crisis” approach, where every day is “The Day Evil Won,” is beginning to feel like another grim, played-out sales strategy with diminishing creative returns.' -- Grant Morrison





"Arise, Super-Demon! Etrigan!"











































The heroes travel to meet the force behind the Gentry, the Empty Hand:





Remember, Earth-33 is Earth-Prime, "our" world.





I find these last few panels (which are the final panels of the issue) fascinating, because you can read them as either incredibly cynical or incredibly hopeful, depending on how you interpret them.

Comments

[nyadnar17]

Personally I don't like the fact that the DC universe is a canonically a story. It breaks my connection with the characters? Its kinda hard to explain. In Marvel the gods are made of myths and stories and knowing that adds a kinda tragic air to characters like Loki trying to escape from their fate, but when you apply that concept to the whole universe it just leaves me kinda cold and uninterested.

[leoboiko]

I see what you're getting at, but the Unchangeable Status Quo and the Sliding Timescale kind of tie the writers' hands. They have to give some justification as to why things never really change, and "the universe is a story" is one of the few excuses that fit. So I blame the status quo itself, rather than its justifications.

[q99]

-but the Unchangeable Status Quo and the Sliding Timescale kind of tie the writers' hands. They have to give some justification as to why things never really change-

I really dislike that this meme catches on so much... compare any decade of comics to the previous decade and you'll see significant changes in style (sometimes more, sometimes less). The mixture of heroes change, some are retired and new ones are added. The heroes that do stay around go through different versions. Heck, even some of the side genre assumptions like how events or death or anti-heroes work change around some.


Comics change around a lot compared to most other things that run for a long time. There are some very specific things that don't change, some very basic genre assumptions, but yea, comics change way more than they're given credit for.

[philippos42]

Yeah, I think DC and Marvel sell the false appearance of continuity more than the false appearance of change, whatever the stereotype. Change is inevitable. Avoiding one change creates another.

[locuatico]

i go with Verity in Agents of Asgard "That it is a story doesn't make it any less true"

[sadoeuphemist]

The DC universe isn't canonically a story. It's actually the opposite: that the supposedly fictional stories told within the DC universe are in fact historical accounts of actual events. The idea is that the people who write the comics are in tune with alternate dimensions and transcribing the events that happen in them. It's an idea that's been around since the 1960's, Flash of Two Worlds.

[mrstatham]

Grant, Grant, Grant. You would have a point if YOU HADN'T WRITTEN A BUNCH OF THOSE STORIES YOURSELF AND CAPPED OFF YOUR FUCKING BATMAN RUN WITH ONE OF HIS LONG-TERM LOVE INTERESTS AND HIS SON DEAD AFTER SEVERAL STORIES DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

Pot, meet the fucking kettle.

[leoboiko]

Grant often is like the terminal drug addict who tells the other drug addict "you know, you really should quit, this stuff is ruining your life". I mean, he isn't wrong…

[q99]

Good analogy :)

[halloweenjack]

As someone who's been sober for over three years, trust me, it isn't the people who are still using that helped me get and stay sober.

[laughing_tree]

He does say, "For a while it was genuinely thrilling to watch our heroes facing such directly focused threats to their meaning and relevance..." His Batman run ended almost two years ago.

[q99]

Though the crisis-season was already an epidemic at that point!

It might've just been when he hit his saturation point.

[espanolbot]

Prefered Snyder's run to Morrison's personally.

[captainbellman]

I partly read it as "I regret writing stories like 'Batman RIP' since Scott Snyder started using it as the basic template for his run."

[sadoeuphemist]

hahaha wow

[informationgeek]

Nonsense, Snyder's work is far less insane and usually doesn't involve having to break out a Bat Encyclopedia to make sense. Quality of the story is another issue altogether. ;)

[tigerkaya]

And this is why I prefer Marvel over DC too much Multiverse level crisis it just saddens me Marvel is copying off DC with this Secret War nonsense nothing was broken unlike DC. Shame

[halloweenjack]

I think that Marvel was caught between the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand, the movies were based as much on the Ultimate versions of the characters as much as the regular continuity; on the other, the Ultimate universe itself was helplessly broken. At least Marvel hasn't been bouncing from one multiverse-rearranging superevent to another for the last decade. (They've had big crossover events, yes, but none of them quite that cosmic in scope.)

[tigerkaya]

Sadly you are correct, I would have thought the Ultimate Universe would be destroyed by itself rather than involve the 616 in its own destruction.

[starwolf_oakley]

What happens when two beings shout "Stop copying me" at the same time? This!

[lordultimus]

"My whole world. Every super man and woman."

And, y'know, all the non-super people.

[reveen]

Ah, yes. Normal people. Those things exist. I completely forgot.

[drtechnobabel]

Wasn't there a world in the Multiverse where everyone had superpowers? He might be from there, thus justifying why he didn't spare a thought for the 'normal people': there are none.

Then again, maybe I'm mistaken and he's just an asshole.

[lordultimus]

Nope. He's explicitly from the Ultimate Marvel pastiche Earth.

[reveen]

Huh, a Grant Morrison quote that doesn't make me go "Hey, wait what?"

Except I think trying to frame it as a creative problem is a mistake, this happens because of DC's business strategies. If you want the Crisis splurge to stop you need to combat it on a corporate level.

[sadoeuphemist]

I'm interested to know what you think the non-cynical interpretation is of Nix Uotan saving the multiverse from crisis for $800 in order to pay his rent.

[reveen]

$800 is friggin' chump change for saving the entire multiverse. Like, all he wants is enough for the rent, pretty cool of him. I would have asked for $10,000 at the very least.

[sadoeuphemist]

There's always going to be another multiverse-spanning crisis though, that's what makes it such a great racket. The multiverse is going to be threatened once again when the Empty Hand returns (ie when Grant Morrison needs more $$)

[beeyo]

It doesn't seem like that was what his motivation was, just an idea he had at the end of the whole thing. Unless I'm forgetting some important part of the story, which I very well could be.

[laughing_tree]

That it's him fending off the Empty Hand one more time That, yes, she'll come demanding rent again, empty hand open, in one month's time, just like the Empty Hand will always return, but that's okay because the good guys never give up either. It might seem bleak and impossible but take a lesson from the superheroes and their never-ending story (remember, the Gentry are the ones who want to *end* that): Don't give up, keep it up, and you'll triumph again, month in and month out. You'll find a way to make it.

[q99]

I'm reminded of the comic Love and Capes, where the heroes would often complain about 'crisis season' :)

[jaxjyls]

I really enjoyed this. Best multiverse story recent times and didn't even involve the mainstream Earth 0 universe heroes

[silicondream]

I love Super-Obama so much. I'd read an Action Comics spinoff starring just him.

[jaybee3]

I'm going to be generous and say that Hannibal Lecter's sexual fixation on (the underage) Mary Marvel may be Morrison's commenting on DC's sexual fixation with (underage) Countdown!Mary, something he did not approve of (although he gave us DeSaad!S&M!Mary in FC).