Flex Mentallo to be Republished in Fall 2011

DC has just announced that Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s Flex Mentallo will finally be collected and published as a deluxe hardcover in the fall:

If youre a fan of Grant Morrison (and who isnt?), youll be stoked to know that FLEX MENTALLO will be published in book form this year. This marks the first time the four-issue mini-series written by Morrison and illustrated by artist Frank Quitely is being collected. FLEX MENTALLO sprang out of Grants mind bending and infamous run on DOOM PATROL.

Pick up this beautiful Deluxe Edition hardcover with bonus material this Fall.

The story was one of the first collaborations between Morrison and Quitely but has never been republished due to a lawsuit by Charles Atlas Ltd. Flex Mentallo’s origin story is a parody of Atlas’s famous “The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac” ad that ran in comics in the 60s and 70s, and the character bears an undeniable resemblance to Atlas (c.f. the photo of Atlas in this article and the pinup of Flex Mentallo in this one). The case was dismissed but DC decided not to reprint the series, until today. (More info on the case, including Jim Shooter’s afadavit, here, and on its decision not to reprint it here.)

Flex Mentallo is important not just because it’s an early collaboration between Morrison and Quitely, who’d go on to reinvent the X-Men, Superman, and Batman, but because it is an amazing commentary on comics themselves and states many of the themes of fiction vs. reality that Morrison has continued to play with subsequently. It takes a tour of comics from their fun origins through the zany silver age to the dark 80s and toward Morrison’s idea of the future of comics, which he’s attempted to realize in his Batman work and others. Many have called it one of the greatest short comics series ever published, up there with Watchmen. Greg Burgas takes a stab at explaining why here.

The real question, since I own the original copies (and even had them bound into a hardcover), is whether I’ll need to buy the series again in this deluxe format with bonus material. (Answer: yes.)

Batman & Robin 16

It is worth noting that the way this finale plays out only underscores how unnecessary and fabricated the recent Bruce Wayne: The Road Home issues truly were, as if that wasn’t already readily apparent from those forgettable one-shots. It doesn’t take a close reading of this issue to realize none of the events of The Road Home fit logically within the confines of Morrison’s story.

—Batman and Robin #16 Review - Comics Review at IGN

Grant Morrison on the Logo Design for Batman & Robin

Click through for more.

More on Grant Morrison's 18 Days

Perspective Studios has published a set of notes by Grant Morrison on his upcoming animated series, 18 Days, which will retell the Mahbharata as a crazy sci-fi anime. Also, Bleeding Cool reports that Dynamite Entertainment will produce a hardcover this spring containing artwork and behind-the-scenes stuff. Comic Book Resources has a few quotes from Morrison about the Dynamite book.

Update on Grant Morrison’s Joe the Barbarian

“Playtown burns from Teddy Bear Alley to Starbase Heights. And the drains are choked with guts and stuffing.”

Frank Quitely's Daredevil, Superman, and More

Just wanted to share a few amazing Frank Quitely images. He’s one of my favorite artists, partly because he works with Grant Morrison so much, but also because, well, I think you’ll be able to tell why from this Daredevil he drew:

(click to embiggen)

How fantastically dynamic. In Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud discusses how a single panel, like the one above, can show both one moment in time and have a narrative. The drawing originally appeared in Daredevil 65 as a standalone piece of art. It wasn’t part of the issue, just a piece of eye candy by Quitely (along with other artists’ work), so there’s no story to go with this. Just a Daredevil vs. ninja smackdown. But it does have a story. Let me amateurishly draw in a few gutters:

Suddenly we’re not just looking at one moment in time, we’re seeing a story. Daredevil versus a sneak of ninjas, swords flying. We have three different things going on. At the top, two ninjas are prepared, ready, posed, jumping into the fray. In the middle, Daredevil is ably dispatching a few of their friends. And in the bottom, the ones Daredevil has already defeated, their weapons in freefall below them. All in one image. This is visual storytelling.

The piece also makes homage to Frank Miller, who famously wrote Daredevil in the 80s and more or less created the treatment of the character as a ninja. Compare the composition to this iconic drawing by Miller from 300 (along with its movie version):

Birds of Prey

Just for fun, Quitely’s cover to Birds of Prey 125:

All Star Superman

And to show some mood, and not just action, All Star Super­man 1:

This cover, drawn by Quitely, came from an idea Morrison had for his never-realized Superman 2000 collaboration with Mark Millar, Tom Peyer, and Mark Waid (which Tim Callahan and Chad Nevett covered extensively last year). Morrison met a fan dressed as Superman in the middle of the night outside of a hotel and had a long conversation with him, in character. Superman.nu covers the meeting, about which Morrison says:

The thing that really hit me, wasn’t so much what Superman was saying as how he was sitting. He was perched on a bollard with one knee drawn up, chin resting on his arms. He looked totally relaxed… and I suddenly realized this was how Superman would sit. He wouldn’t puff out his chest or posture heroically, he would be totally chilled. If nothing can hurt you, you can afford to be cool. A man like Superman would never have to tense against the cold; never have to flinch in the face of a blow. He would be completely laid back, un-tense. With this image of Superman relaxing on a cloud looking out for us all in my head, I rushed back to my hotel room and filled dozens of pages of my notebook with notes and drawings.

Look again at how Quitely draws this scene. See how relaxed Superman is as he watches over Metropolis. Now look at how much depth is in that picture. It’s easy to focus just on Superman, but there’s a fully-imagined city below those clouds. You can see The Daily Planet just peaking up by Superman’s boots, with Centennial Park just beyond. The plane of clouds Superman is sitting on is hundreds of feet up, where it’s calm. Quitely captures the scope of the entire world there, floating hundreds in the sky. The city under those clouds isn’t just background filler, it’s the real focus of the image.

More of his stuff at Comic Art Community.

Grant Morrison's 18 Days

Bleeding Cool reports:

Liquid Comics and Perspective Studio are pursuing the property as a CGI drama as 18 Days: The Mahbharata Retold, for broadcast next year in multiple formats depending on territory and format—2×90 minute TV movies, 6×30 episodes, an extended 200 minute DVD release or 18×10 minute web episodes. There will be online and console games alongside the show and by the time it’s out you’ll probably be able to interact with it on your SuperNintendo.

Includes a trailer that looks Star Wars: The Clone Wars-ish.

Grant Morrison Interviews

Grant Morrison Interviews

I don’t want to link to every interview in del.icio.us, so I’ve started a blog on Tumblr to which I’ll post links to Morrison interviews I find. May still post some here, of course.

Never Use Real Names in the Field

I love this Frank Quitely panel from Batman & Robin 1. Look at the body language, how Robin has his arms crossed like the indignant little snot he is. And the dialogue, how obnoxious he sounds. Then Dick/Batman’s response, trying to teach Robin a few things. He’s been there before, sitting in the Robin chair as Bruce Wayne taught him the same lessons. And then the mini punchline, “I’d have killed for a flying Batmobile when I was Robin.” There’s a levity there that writers didn’t seem to be able to give Bruce Wayne after the 80s.

That, and I do like the actual topic they’re discussing. I hate when comics depict characters with super secret identities yelling each other’s real names to each other in the middle of crowded cities. Batman takes this stuff seriously, like special ops military do. He knows to use codenames in the field so that people can’t overhear their identities. I enjoyed parts of Brad Meltzer’s Justice League of America story, but all the characters calling each other “Clark” and “Bruce” and “Diana” bothered me. It’s one thing for them to know who each other are, but I don’t want to see them signing birthday cards for each other.

Grant Morrison Bibliography

Grant Morrison Bibliography

For my future reference.

Grant Morrison's Batman: Annotations and Remarks

Grant Morrison’s Batman: Annotations and Remarks

All Star Superman Complete Retrospective Fun Fest

All Star Superman Complete Retrospective Fun Fest

GeniusboyFiremelon: superman 2000

GeniusboyFiremelon: superman 2000

Discussion of the Superman 2000 proposal and how much of it eventually saw the light of day in other forms.

superman.nu: SUPERMAN 2000

superman.nu: SUPERMAN 2000

The unmade proposal by Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Maid Waid, and Tom Peyer.

Morrison on Obama

Short update on the post from the other day. Apparently the scene was inspired by President Obama’s speech during the campaign at the Alfred E. Smith dinner. Writer Grant Morrison told Scotland’s Daily Record:

I wanted to do something special for the last part of this huge comic book series. As I was writing it, I heard Obama making a joke about being born on the planet Krypton and being sent to Earth by his father Jor-El to save the world. I thought it would be a fitting end to all the darkness in America recently. All the comics have been dealing with darkness recently and, having defeated evil, it’s now time to celebrate.

Worked out great for the story that he won I guess.

Vathlo Prime

Sort of an amusing confluence of events:

1. DC decides to do a political story called DCU: Decisions around election season featuring its characters choosing sides in the race. Except they use fictional candidates, and the story is poorly drawn and written. No one cares.
2. Marvel decides to do a Spider-Man issue that features Barack Obama in a 5-page back-up story of serviceable writing and art quality. It’s a huge, sellout success. (Despite that they botched the covers, releasing the Obama cover as a rare variant, which most customers don’t understand. Still, big success. The second and third printings feature Obama on all the covers. Last night when I was in my comic book store someone came in and bought three copies. The clerk then failed to bother to upsell him on anything, thereby squandering a great chance to sell him something else for himself or his kids that might turn them into regular customers.)
3. At the same time, Marvel bets on the wrong horse in the actual election, having Norman Orsborn, a big-time villain, take over the operations of SHIELD and generally staying with the tone of the Bush administration where we can’t trust our government. No hope to be found.
4. DC releases a book that was supposed to come out in December, but due to artistic delays only just came out this week, eight days after President Obama’s innauguration. It features an alternate- Earth black president who’s also Superman¹.

How did both companies manage to both hit and miss here?

1. DC actually once published a story about Vathlo Island, a nation on Krypton that featured dark-skinned Kryptonians. Morrison here is taking this fairly embarrassing part of DC’s history and turning it around, imagining a world where a Vathlo citizen sent his only son to Earth instead of Jor-El².
2. Jor-El lived in the city “Kryptonopolis”.

GeniusboyFiremelon: When Words Collide BONUS: Morrison's Very First Superman Story

GeniusboyFiremelon: When Words Collide BONUS: Morrison’s Very First Superman Story

From a 1986 UK Superman Annual.

Assorted Things that Never Became Posts

I’ve started to write a few posts over the past few weeks and have lost interest in all of them before coming to a version I wanted to publish. When Twitter lets me say it in 140 characters, why write a whole post?

So here are a few seeds that never grew to full posts, in no order whatsoever.

Politics: Sarah Pailin really worries me. I fear she’s like George Bush in not understanding the nuances and constitutional effects of various positions, like that it’s okay to go aggressively after criminals but still offer them trials. John McCain is making me like him less than I used to, especially with the dirty campaign he’s running. Lies I can understand, all politicians lie, but voter suppression is unconscionable.

Toys: my favorite Batman action figure is from the Hush series that came out a few years ago based on Jim Lee’s art. This week I bought the All Star Superman toy based on Frank Quitely’s art, and I love it. It’s not the definitive Superman, but I like having one of Quitely’s drawings come to life on my desk. (The definitive Superman is, I think, the 1984 Hasbro one that looks like Christopher Reeve. I have that, too, but the cape has faded to magenta.) I’d like a definitive Tim Drake Robin in his most recent red and black costume, but none of them come out just right, and depending on how RIP comes out he might not be Robin anymore.

Star Wars: I rewatched all six movies recently. I’ve been wrestling with a post about the prequel trilogy that I can’t seem to turn into prose that’s worth reading. Summary: I think Episodes II and III would be pretty much fine if a better actor had been cast as Anakin. I think Episode I looks like they filmed Lucas’s rough draft before he took out all the obviously unworkable brainstormed ideas like midichlorians. The overall framework of the film is fine, but you need to fix a few things like make Anakin older, make Jar-Jar a real character, and make the story fit into the trilogy instead of just being the one where Obi-Wan meets Anakin and nothing else important happens.

Comics: All Star Superman makes my heart pitter patter and fills me with hope for mankind, similar to the Juno afterglow. That and Casanova are the two best things to come out in the past year.

Books: I finished George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and am eagerly awaiting the next one. I finished ‘salem’s Lot and am reading The Stand. After that I have a ton of things I want to read and have to keep reminding myself to just enjoy the thing I have in my hand right now.

Movies: Pretty excited about Quantum of Solace.

TV: The shows I’m most pining for to return are Pushing Daisies and 30 Rock. Lots of others of course but those are the standouts. I’m not watching Heroes, Smallville, or Terminator anymore. Fringe hasn’t wowed me but I’m willing to give it a few more episodes.

Apple: I’d really like the AppleTV/iTunes to be a viable competitor to broadcast cable, but the money doesn’t add up. I’d like to see them allow rentals of TV on a full season basis for a sharp discount.

The Savage Critic(s): Obsolescence & Model Kits: Jeff Looks at FC: Superman Beyond #1 and G-Mo in the DCU

The Savage Critic(s): Obsolescence & Model Kits: Jeff Looks at FC: Superman Beyond #1 and G-Mo in the DCU

Good counterpoint to my love of Morrison’s recent crazy stories. For the record, I agree that his stories have become much less relateable and my enjoyment of them has been heightened by reading web pages telling me what I’ve missed. What I appreciate is simply that DC is letting him tell stories like this.

IGN: Killing Batman And The DC Universe

IGN: Killing Batman And The DC Universe

Lengthy interview with Grant Morrison about Final Crisis and Batman RIP.