Let me start with:
All Star Superman Vols. 1 & 2 HC
by Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely
"Fun" is a term that is bandied around a lot nowadays, usually to denote simplistic comics that allegedly hark back to simpler, more joyous days.
Usually "fun" means merely regurgitating material, whose (dubious) quality was dictated more by the exigencies of the market place ("comics are
fer kiddies chum") and the production process ("your deadline is yesterday so a real plot is a luxury") and not so much on artistic
considerations.
I find the spectacle of people like Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek, consciously aping Stan Lee pretty sad. It always reminds me of the great Steve Rude taking 3
months to produce a comic, faithfully channelling prime Kirby, forgetting however, that Kirby's style was partially dictated by the necessity of producing
a zillion pages a week.
But I digress…
Anyway All Star Superman is actually fun, a lot of fun; a riotous romp. Quick-paced, entertaining self-contained stories with an awesome number of
wildly inventive ideas, which Morrison casually tosses at the reader like so much confetti. Morrison's inventiveness is a constant delight. He includes
more ideas in one issue, than some series include in a year and yet he pulls if off without making his stories seem cramped.
IMHO, Morrison is second only to Alan Moore when it comes to originality and inventiveness, with Warren Ellis coming in third by a wide berth. Don't get me wrong, I also hold Neil Gaiman in high esteem but I think his strength as a writer is more on depth and characterisation than on random ingenuity. It also seems to me to be a particularly British quality. As good as many American writers are, they always seem more limited in pushing the creative envelope than their Brit counterparts. I think it has something to do with the heady brew of punkish nonconformity and Thatcherite repression, which many of them grew up in. It was a bleak period in the UK and for many people the only release was tapping the power of imagination.
I don't really know what the rationale is behind the "All Star" line.
Who is it aimed at?
I guess guys like me who don't care about continuity anymore and just want a rousing, good, self-contained story. As far as that goes, All Star Superman is
a success, although there is a cunningly concealed overarching storyline, tying all the ostensibly disparate threads together.
I have to say, I preferred vol. 1 to vol. 2 because the latter seemed to unravel and lose focus, crumbling under the weigh of the ideas
Morrison keeps flinging at the wall. I found myself caring less and less as the story lost direction and limped towards its end but it was a great ride for
most of the trip.
Visually this book is also beautiful. Quitely still tends towards pudginess but in general the art and colouring are wonderful. I suspect my enjoyment of the
artwork has a lot to do with Jamie Grant's amazing colouring, which is so vivid, it distracts one from the (often glaring) deficiencies of Quitely's
art. I really don't understand why he is so popular. His work has a pleasing quirkiness to it but I certainly wouldn't rate him as one of today's
best artists… not by a long shot.
