Morrison on Green Lantern

[Scott Taylor]

Now I need to go back and re-read the run, see the Blackstar connections. That Durlan was in the first issue!

[Vordan]

Great issue. Morrison does know how to end his stories on a strong note. Can’t wait for the Blackstars mini!

[Malachi]

I went through the 12 issues now and I’m underwhelmed.

It feels like Morrison working on 25-50% capacity. Few new ideas and without the vague promise of the grail lantern nothing really stuck for me.

I guess my biggest problem is that Mu , while a schemer, lacks any real power to deploy. We have 3 or 4 blackstars and him. Why didn’t the guardians just send out a team to shut him down early? Take one artifact and leave him be. Or simply expose the durlan? It seems weird that they wouldn’t know if there was a durlan infiltrating them. Chameleon boy was a good spy sure but not on this level, so it must have been some super durlan to fool so many people with tech that interfaces with their user.

The qwa-man also felt underbaked. A lot of talking and showing how he destroys that and this and then Hal slugs him out in expected fashion.

For someone to face and truly challenge the GLC I expect some serious power. Especially since they showed how lanterns responded to big feats with an everyday sigh. Yet an anti-matter being suddenly is special and dangerous without trying to specify why? Anti-matter seems like a normal occurrence for Green lanterns and overall in DC stories. Why so special this time?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I went through the 12 issues now and I’m underwhelmed.

It feels like Morrison working on 25-50% capacity. Few new ideas and without the vague promise of the grail lantern nothing really stuck for me.

I guess my biggest problem is that Mu , while a schemer, lacks any real power to deploy. We have 3 or 4 blackstars and him. Why didn’t the guardians just send out a team to shut him down early? Take one artifact and leave him be. Or simply expose the durlan? It seems weird that they wouldn’t know if there was a durlan infiltrating them. Chameleon boy was a good spy sure but not on this level, so it must have been some super durlan to fool so many people with tech that interfaces with their user.

The qwa-man also felt underbaked. A lot of talking and showing how he destroys that and this and then Hal slugs him out in expected fashion.

For someone to face and truly challenge the GLC I expect some serious power. Especially since they showed how lanterns responded to big feats with an everyday sigh. Yet an anti-matter being suddenly is special and dangerous without trying to specify why? Anti-matter seems like a normal occurrence for Green lanterns and overall in DC stories. Why so special this time?

If the story didn't work for you, that's too bad. As he's gotten older, Morrison tends to move his stories much faster than some readers would like, and, for a lot of readers, all the crazy ideas, concepts, and characters that get thrown at you so quickly means that none of them really get a lot of time to get fleshed out in any meaningful way, because Morrison is essentially doing a modern take on the Silver Age style of writing that was all ideas, but with very little explanation.

It's not for everyone. I can totally understand why it doesn't click with all readers.

As for the Durlan spy. I think it's a foregone conclusion that Mu had enhanced this Durlan to be so undetectable that even the Guardians couldn't use their mental probes to find the double agent. In regards to why they didn't just send a bunch of GLs to defeat Mu's handful of Blackstars, I think the reason is in this story itself. Mu has plans within plans, backups upon backups. If his current crop of Blackstars were taken down and Mu been killed or imprisoned, that wouldn't have defeated Mu's scheme, because on of his countless clones no doubt would have continued it, perhaps in a way that the Guardians couldn't anticipate. The Oans' only play was to try to infiltrate Mu's inner circle to figure out what he was up to. Unfortunately, even that was part of Mu's overall goal.

However, as Morrison has taken pains to point out in interviews, his interpretation of the Guardians is that they are ancient unknowable beings who take such a long view of events that it wouldn't surprise me that they've also anticipated Mu's plans for Hal Jordan and are setting up a trap to defeat him using Hal's own uncanny ability to never do what he's told.

I suspect that Morrison's old themes of free will and control are going to be the central themes of The Green Lantern as well.

[Malachi]

If the story didn't work for you, that's too bad. As he's gotten older, Morrison tends to move his stories much faster than some readers would like, and, for a lot of readers, all the crazy ideas, concepts, and characters that get thrown at you so quickly means that none of them really get a lot of time to get fleshed out in any meaningful way, because Morrison is essentially doing a modern take on the Silver Age style of writing that was all ideas, but with very little explanation.

It's not for everyone. I can totally understand why it doesn't click with all readers.

As for the Durlan spy. I think it's a foregone conclusion that Mu had enhanced this Durlan to be so undetectable that even the Guardians couldn't use their mental probes to find the double agent. In regards to why they didn't just send a bunch of GLs to defeat Mu's handful of Blackstars, I think the reason is in this story itself. Mu has plans within plans, backups upon backups. If his current crop of Blackstars were taken down and Mu been killed or imprisoned, that wouldn't have defeated Mu's scheme, because on of his countless clones no doubt would have continued it, perhaps in a way that the Guardians couldn't anticipate. The Oans' only play was to try to infiltrate Mu's inner circle to figure out what he was up to. Unfortunately, even that was part of Mu's overall goal.

However, as Morrison has taken pains to point out in interviews, his interpretation of the Guardians is that they are ancient unknowable beings who take such a long view of events that it wouldn't surprise me that they've also anticipated Mu's plans for Hal Jordan and are setting up a trap to defeat him using Hal's own uncanny ability to never do what he's told.

I suspect that Morrison's old themes of free will and control are going to be the central themes of The Green Lantern as well.

I’m sure you are right with the durlan. Still it just shows where Morrison spends his energy and where I want him too.

This reminds me more of the Final Crisis Morrison then the new X-men or seven soldiers one. I was thouroghly unmoved with his Final Crisis mostly because suddenly things where different this time around without any real reason. Reminding me off the old troupe “they where holding back all the other times you fought”. At least that time he could say that they where new gods and existed in another demension. This time around I just have a problem with taking the threats seriously.

I’m sure that I missed stuff. After all he writes for the rereader, witch is smart in this time. Still many of the throwaway ideas didn’t get more then a shrug from me. Especially the vampire countess and her world.

Still I liked the implication of Hal having a more deeper relationship with his ring moving forward. Perhaps even a romantic one. Seems like an idea that would work if it enough time and commitment where spent on it.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I’m sure you are right with the durlan. Still it just shows where Morrison spends his energy and where I want him too.

This reminds me more of the Final Crisis Morrison then the new X-men or seven soldiers one. I was thouroghly unmoved with his Final Crisis mostly because suddenly things where different this time around without any real reason. Reminding me off the old troupe “they where holding back all the other times you fought”. At least that time he could say that they where new gods and existed in another demension. This time around I just have a problem with taking the threats seriously.

I’m sure that I missed stuff. After all he writes for the rereader, witch is smart in this time. Still many of the throwaway ideas didn’t get more then a shrug from me. Especially the vampire countess and her world.

Still I liked the implication of Hal having a more deeper relationship with his ring moving forward. Perhaps even a romantic one. Seems like an idea that would work if it enough time and commitment where spent on it.

Final Crisis was deeply hurt by editorial's handling of it. The current revised edition of the TPB has re-edited the story so that it works much more as it was intended. It's still an incredibly ambitious and challenging read, but it flows much better. It also helps if you've read Rikdad's superlative analysis of the hidden story being told within Final Crisis, which was a revelation to me and made me appreciate what Morrison was doing on a much deeper level.

That said, I totally understand if doing extra work and having to re-read a story again in order to "get" what the author was trying to say is not something that every reader is interested in doing. Late-period Morrison is really swinging for the fences, and it's too easy sometimes for a lot of readers to get left behind because Morrison is moving so fast and expects his readers to keep up with him and all the crazy ideas he's throwing around, which isn't something everyone is on board with.

If you have the time and interest, I would absolutely recommend re-reading Final Crisis though in the new revised edition, but read Rikdad's analysis beforehand, particularly this one: http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2018/02/f...-part-iii.html I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by how much better the story reads once you fully understand what Morrison was going for here, even if his story was perhaps too obtuse at times.

[Talon1load]

I feel like if you have to read a 10,000 word essay explaining a story then it wasn’t very well told to begin with. It’s not great writing if your audience doesn’t know what you’re talking about. It also makes an event comic extremely difficult for new readers to jump onto. Seems pretentious and turns people off who might otherwise start getting into comics. But I generally dislike Morrison’s writing. Except for his Animal Man, I liked that.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I feel like if you have to read a 10,000 word essay explaining a story then it wasn’t very well told to begin with. It’s not great writing if your audience doesn’t know what you’re talking about. It also makes an event comic extremely difficult for new readers to jump onto. Seems pretentious and turns people off who might otherwise start getting into comics. But I generally dislike Morrison’s writing. Except for his Animal Man, I liked that.

That's a perfectly valid criticism, but I think it also depends on the audience you are going for. The average reader of a big superhero crossover event was probably not prepared for something as ambitious and challenging as Morrison was going for with Final Crisis. It's not those readers' fault for not being interested in doing that big a deep dive, but I also can't fault Morrison either, because DC knew full well what they were getting when he pitched the story to them. Morrison wasn't shy about how challenging and experimental Final Crisis was going to be. I think Didio wrongly assumed that Morrison was so beloved that most readers would go along for the ride, but I don't think he took into consideration the audience expectations for this big events.

If most readers are expecting a big summer blockbuster in the vein of Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, or even Michael Bay, don't give them something tin the vein of Steven Soderbergh, Wes Anderson or Terry Gilliam.

[K. Jones]

That's a perfectly valid criticism, but I think it also depends on the audience you are going for. The average reader of a big superhero crossover event was probably not prepared for something as ambitious and challenging as Morrison was going for with Final Crisis. It's not those readers' fault for not being interested in doing that big a deep dive, but I also can't fault Morrison either, because DC knew full well what they were getting when he pitched the story to them. Morrison wasn't shy about how challenging and experimental Final Crisis was going to be. I think Didio wrongly assumed that Morrison was so beloved that most readers would go along for the ride, but I don't think he took into consideration the audience expectations for this big events.

If most readers are expecting a big summer blockbuster in the vein of Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams, or even Michael Bay, don't give them something tin the vein of Steven Soderbergh, Wes Anderson or Terry Gilliam.

This kind of reminded me of something I thought about quite some time back, back in like 2011 or so, when I re-read AA:ASHOSE for a thesis statement in an art class about Dada and a few other related tangents. Which is that while it's a fine story and a good example of early Morrison in the Big Two, and groundbreaking for a variety of reasons ... I think I deep down do believe that most people when they pick up that book (without being directed to it) on a shelf or whatever, stumble across it, discover it, the thing that's making them bring it home with them is like ... 95% Dave McKean.

There's deep-dive Morrison links and themes in that book that we with 30 years of extra time can even retroactively go back and apply ... but even with that stuff, which is stuff that I personally count as one of my top three loves of comic book readership ... I STILL THINK McKean is 95% of the draw there.

And I think that's the case here, too. The Green Lantern is a fine book with all the deep-dive Morrison connections and some hints at some bigger weirder things we all want to over-analyze. Or analyze just the right amount. Or even just enjoy a little more popcornily. But I think there's a strong argument that the draw here is weighted more toward seeing Sharpe draw Silver Age cosmic comics featuring just scads and scads of Fox/Sekowsky type creations. It's hardly Morrison's critical magnum opus, or anything. He even intimated this in interviews, that this is him going for "more straightforward storytelling". It's shallower on purpose. He still can't resist some of the connections or linkages or obscurities but he doesn't appear to be going for mind-blowing.

Anyway, it's not fully possible for me to get total perspective on this run yet but I did have that thought - that sometimes it's just nice to see a good creator play around a little and stretch but not over-exert, just to give a killer artist a chance to do some fundamentally rad stuff.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Anyway, it's not fully possible for me to get total perspective on this run yet but I did have that thought - that sometimes it's just nice to see a good creator play around a little and stretch but not over-exert, just to give a killer artist a chance to do some fundamentally rad stuff.

Completely agree. I think what has made The Green Lantern so fun is that Morrison is clearly having a ball giving Sharp cool stuff to draw. He's not trying anything here that's even close to the ambition of Final Crisis or Seven Soldiers. This isn't to say that Morrison is phoning it in or producing something he isn't proud of, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered doing a 2nd season of 12 issues. He's just playing in a sandbox that he adores and can't help himself but let his imagination run wild, which can be a bit of a hurdle for some readers.

[j9ac9k]

I don't remember which interview I read or I'd post a link, but Morrison said that with "TGL" he was intentionally trying to avoid being super-meta in the way that "multiversity" was.

Morrison is totally playing in the sandbox, but this time he seems to be content to not go outside the box.

[HsssH]

Not sure if it was posted somewhere already, but here are some pages from upcoming Blackstars mini: https://www.comicsbeat.com/check-out...rn-blackstars/

As for Morrison not going outside the box, sure, but at the same time we are only halfway there. Additionally, things like Miracle Machine and anti-matter beings are common theme in Morrison's work so I kinda like that instead of throwing completely new things out there he is doing some work to flesh out his older ideas. Same for Holy Grail as well, that was but a hint in Multiversity and here we got an entire issue for it.

[_Feely_]

This book has been amazing.

But I'm sure you'd've guessed I'd say that.

I won't pretend I've understood even half of it so far, but that's why I love this stuff, there's always something more with each re-read.

This book literally gives no forks if you can't keep up.

EDIT: Buzzing through other posts, it seems I might be trying to over analyse. Still a blast of a book.

[Batgrayson]

When does GL Darkstars #1 comes out? Tomorrow or until the end of the month, as Is listed on Previews World?

https://www.previewsworld.com/Catalog/SEP191704

[Johnny]

Tomorrow.

https://www.dccomics.com/blog/2019/1...n-explains-why