Morrison,His Place in History

Originally posted by Blackcyclops As I'm re-reading the Morrison stuff I remember how Slott ended She-Hulk, that explains the different Emmas LOL

Oh yeah I loved that explanation, that there were people from our own universe popping into the Marvel universe and masquerading as their favorite super hero, causing mischief and havok in their wake, thus allowing pretty much any Inconvievable behavior to be easily explained.

Edited by Anna Raven - 29-Jan-2011 at 7:27pm

Sadly that Emma never got returned, I mean come on. If I have to see Emma curl up to Scott, all weak and defenseless like one more time(The last time I remember this is in Uncanny book I read, when Kitty came back and Emma gave the "Scott is compassionate!" speech...This is Emma Frost, damn it! She stands tall. Maybe she'd take Scott's hand but ergh, her basically clinging on to him was just gross!

I know that's sort of off topic but Morrison started their relationship.

Morrison never portrayed Emma as weak because of her relationship with Scott. If anything, it was the opposite. Girl's a go-getter! It was later writers that portrayed Emma as whiny, crying, and clingy. Writers like Fraction. And K&Y, to some extent.

Nope. I still think he's the most important writer on the book since probably halfway through Claremont's epic run. It's not that I don't understand people not liking his stuff, it's that I don't understand it on multiple levels. Following Claremont's Neo Plotline, The Twelve, The Magneto War, I don't understand how it can be valued as anything less than an imperative re-legitimizing of the franchise. And without context, it reads fantastically as a stand alone series of stories that set-up and pay-off masterfully. Worst thing you can really say is that it has some art problems. However, these are problems seem quaint compared to Uncanny today. Reading Claremont's run in its entirety reveals some problems and while Morrison's can quite match the impact of what Claremont did, Grant Morrison is the better writer. Which is to say, Grant Morrison is the best writer in the history of X-Men.

I just had two arguments about this particular point recently so I may as well dive back in again. I don’t recall if I’ve engaged in this argument here yet, but here is my thinking:

People who dislike Grant Morrison’s run on New X-Men chiefly deride it as being JUST A GRANT MORRISON BOOK and not an X-Men book. I don’t find this criticism valid for disliking it unless Grant Morrison turned the book into The Filth or something. But he didn’t. He reached back beyond Chris Claremont’s run and pulled out a bevy of Silver Age chestnuts long since forgotten and reinvigorated the series. The Trask lineage…the Rogue Sentinel evoking the spirit of Master Mold…the establishment of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters fully realized…a soap opera love triangle…in fact, I’m inclined to think that people deride his arc as being “Just Grant Morrison doing Grant Morrison” because of the presence of the drug kick. I see nothing radical about the idea of a drug causing inflated powers, especially considering how many loathely uninspired ways in which DC characters get their powers. Or maybe it’s the notion of secondary mutations. The only thing I can really say about the latter is it didn’t bother me. We’ll get into this in the next paragraph, but like All Star Superman I don’t view his New X-Men run as any kind of betrayal of the mythos but rather a distillation of it with new ideas. It’s certainly not as batsh*t as his Batman run. Who would have guessed that Grant Morrison was capable of being the most talented retro writer in the business?

Then there are people who complain that GRANT MORRISON GOT THE X-MEN WRONG. This is a different charge than before, a more specified one, and one that I understand. It’s a lot like turning your back on single-cam sitcoms in favor of Everybody Loves Raymond, to which I can only say you guys have a decade’s worth of Scott Lobdell to pull from and simultaneous runs from Chris Claremont and Chuck Austen to get you through the first half of the Aughties. Xavier coming out, the School as a School, a legitimate mutant subculture…Grant Morrison didn’t built towards these over the course of years. He just dumped us in this world in the first arc, and I think that’s what’s so jarring. My God, how have they not been done so far? In the decades of this coming, have we become so lax in our standards that Charles Xavier can still get away with not being an outed mutant? With the school not being a school? With there being no mutant subculture to speak of? For decades, the book had a hopeless feel to it, with genocide and apocalypse dangling permanently out of reach. I mean, it’s not like Days of Future Past or Bishop’s Future will ever happen! That would involve sides chosen for The Avengers, Spider-Man, etc. To be clear: in many ways, Days of Future Past (for all its awesomeness) was the worst thing that could ever happen to the book, because all it did was point towards miserablist futures hinted at within miserablist arcs. Grant Morrison certainly has his cake and eats it to, but the tone of the book is one that would make Stan Lee proud. It’s full of life and humor! So, to say that Grant Morrison didn’t get the X-Men is more a testament to what Chris Claremont, Scott Lobdell, and a bevy of myopic editors had to say about what Stan Lee et al coined. Beyond this, we have secondary mutations, the drug Kick, and a slew of other ideas that people didn’t care for. All I have to say about them is that if you don’t like Cat Beast or Diamond Emma, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s resulted in a lot of added entertaining dimensions thrown into subsequent storylines, so it’s not as though they were done for no reason. Emma Frost became an asset in combat, which is something that can’t really be said for many female X-Men and Cat Beast fed into the fantastic notion that this brilliant man is sliding down the evolutionary ladder. Hate if you will, but take a moment to appreciate.

(Spending one moment on Scott Summers and Emma Frost before moving forward, I would argue that there aren’t many duller characters in X-Mythos than Jean Grey. I know, I know…but when you say you LOVE Jean Grey and her character, what exactly are you talking about? What moments of strong characterization are you thinking of? Like the boring joyless relationship between Rogue and Gambit, Jean Grey served to dullen Scott Summers. Every moment of their time together in X-Factor was unpleasant. Every moment of the Silver Age soap opera was contrived. There are two interesting things about Jean Grey: 1) she was inside her best friends’ head when she died and became a nutcase, a nutcase quality that was more fully realized in the Ultimate Universe by using the Phoenix as a manifestation of her powers, and 2) she was a mutant who became a God contrasting Boring Jean with Terrifying God. I say that Jean Grey is a broken puppet character who really should never have been brought back, and if so then not like that. I actually like Grant Morrison’s take on the character quite a bit, vaguely school librarian-ish. Emma Frost is a more interesting match for Scott Summers and has resulted in a renaissance for both characters. Also: to hate Scott Summers for his “attitude” is to imply that he doesn’t have hell to pay for his actions, something that is clearly being implied and at the very least is an incredibly interesting and logical evolution of his character.)

GRANT MORRISON AND MAGNETO! First of all, it’s not like we can blame Grant Morrison for the Xorn debacle. That’s the editors, but clearly there’s something to be said for just never killing off characters anymore because my God, they will not stay dead! I will say that I am kind of glad that Magneto has come back because he’s more interesting now that he has been in a non-Morrison arc since mid-Claremont. However, it takes a lot of balls to draw a line in the sand and demonize a characters’ mythology and in doing so publicly piss on a lot of very contemporary wrongheadednes. Which is to say college kids wearing Che Guevara T-Shirts. Grant Morrison shows how a murderer can be martyred and subsequently his legacy misunderstood, but he does so subtly over the course of an arc that we barely register it’s happening, and then when the character reemerges he is immediately irrelevant. Perhaps I’m biased because Magneto’s return is my favorite moment of the past decade, but this is an incredibly important line in the sand made here. It’s worth mentioning that it’s not as though Morrison’s “reimagining” of Magneto came out of the blue. All efforts at reformation in the eighties and nineties were undone by Funeral-Crashing Magneto, Brain-Dead Magneto, Young Magneto, Do-Nothing Ruler of Genosha Magneto, Kind of Old And Dying Magneto…it seems as though nobody could make up their minds who this man was! And Morrison brought it back to light: he’s a terrorist, he wants humans dead, and he almost did it this one time. I do rather like that he’s back and what’s being done with him now, but I would have no problem if he remained headless to this day. At heart, Magneto is not an X-Man. He is a terrorist, and terrorists shouldn’t wear cardigan sweatshirts. For the first time since the Silver Age, Magneto honestly presented a legitimate form of villainy and danger. And it was damn exciting.

And then there’s two that go hand in hand. The first is easy: GRANT MORRISON WAS BORING! Well, different strokes. I find that a lot of people who find Grant Morrison’s run dull to enjoy the X-Men of the Nineties or the entirety of Claremont’s run, so I don’t know what to tell you. I will simply say that I think Grant Morrison’s run is not boring and made me rather dizzy with its ideas. Then there’s NOTHING GRANT MORRISON WROTE STUCK, which is an increasingly dubious claim pertaining only to the awkward retcon of Magneto. But aside from several inklings that have remained, the spirit of Grant Morrison’s run perseveres onward.

Yes, I do believe that Grant Morrison is the best writer in X-Men history. One looks at Chris Claremont and sees immeasurable contributions and shortcomings, and no doubt his run has to be considered the most instrumental in making the book what it is. In terms of the quality of writing, I say Morrison has him beat. I say he has Whedon beat, as Whedon was successful in revitalizing a tone rather than a series of new ideas. I say he has Lobdell beat, Nicieza beat, of course he has Stan Lee and Roy Thomas beat. Morrison benefits unfairly from having an open and closed arc within an ongoing serialized book, and so unlike Mike Carey or a few others he has a leg-up, but that brings us to something particular in Grant Morrison’s arc that I respond to and will lead me to my last point…

…GRANT MORRISON CHANGED THE X-MEN FOREVER! Yes, he did. There is really no going back. Cyclops and Emma Frost are together. Jean Grey is dead. For now. But she became the Phoenix again, and so he did irreparably logical [dis]repair to the convoluted Phoenix mythos. He ended not with a whimper but with a bang. The kind of bang that is the product of ideas, and ideas that have changed the modern mythos. And I ask you…are we seriously not better for it?

Personally I think Morrison reads better in hindsight. The Xorn retcon is one of the best ever done.

Oh, hey, I was looking over this thread and noticed some confusion about Third Species.  Obviously, humans grafting on mutant organs doesn't make them a new species.  It was a wackjob cult suffering from delusions a la... well, I'm not gonna name names but it reads like a religious group.  

(JanO @ Today at 10:44am) (Originally posted by JanO) Again, I challenge ANYONE to explain to me how Magneto having been Xorn all along makes sense on any level. I'll ask this again.... by now my aversion to Morisson's run is practically canon, and Sabin adressed most of my critisism's (and I wholeheartedle disagree, naturally) but nobody has ever answered the above question for me....

Um, do you mean while Xorn was in the Mansion the entire time? Not the nonsense that happened afterwards?

If that's what you mean, I really don't know how to respond because it never bothered me in the slightest. What part of it doesn't make sense to you?

Original Posted by SageBoy Minus Points: Poor, poor Art, for the majority of the run. I really felt this hampered things. Cyclops' characterisation in this run left me cold. Emma should never have been allowed to wear some of those outfits. Jeans death (not the act, but the process). Darkstars Death (Unnecessary, pointless and poorly done). Retcon Retcon Retcon. I really disliked the Xorn stuff. Even with the handy explanation on thsi very site it still makes no sense to me! A lot of questions/issues that may-well never be touched on, but remain out there. For example, Ernst.

Only one poor for the art, and that makes up maybe a quarter of the run. Phil Jiminez, Frank Quitely, and much of Bachalo rounded it out nicely and made up for Igor Kordey's deadline salvaging work. Compared to Uncanny today, the art seems unbelievably strong.
No problem on Earth with Cyclops' characterization. I would argue that before Whedon and Fraction, Morrison wrote the best Cyclops since...geez, I don't know. What problem with Cyclops' characterization do you see? If anything, Morrison found an interesting note for the flailing character, presenting him as a very tall man with an impossibly cool demeanor.
Emma's outfits...um...well, I liked 'em.
Love Jean's death. The act and the process. Love her final moments. What process of her dying didn't you like? Is it that it was done by Magneto?
Never knew Darkstar had such fans. Do you weep for Ariel as well?


...okay, I see the Xorn thing again keeps coming up. This is why it worked for me:

(Keep in mind, I don't care about the fact that it made no sense afterwards. That's not important.)

I had read the Cyclops mini-series and Xorn was established quite well beforehand. So to see his character revealed as such completely surprised me.

What Grant Morrison is doing is a coded critique on liberal sensibilities and how anybody can/will be welcomed into the Mansion if they are a mutant and the more "exotic" they are, the more welcome they are. Putting aside that the manner in which Morrison revealed Xorn as Magneto is masterful (unless you ticked sooner than I did, which I'll just say you're a stronger reader than myself), but what was going on inside the Mansion with Xorn as Magneto...well, it's satire for one, so I enjoyed it.

...And for two, really to take exception with Xorn in the Mansion is to take exception with A) Xavier's Mission of Rescuing Mutants in Need, and B) every possible nutjob they have ever taken in! Xavier has taken in Wolverine, Archangel, Psylocke, Gambit, Bishop, Rogue, Jean After Phoenix, um, I feel like I should say Gambit again. Let's say for a moment that Xorn isn't Magneto and he's just a wandering Chinese man with a star for a head. Then he's the most innocuous person let into the Mansion ever. All that Charles Xavier does is let dangerous mutants walk around his Mansion without really getting to whatever is inside their heads! How did Gambit walk around the Mansion without Xavier knowing his involvement with the Mutant Massacre?! Because Gambit helped the X-Men in their time of need and Xavier was content to keep him around and trust his noble intentions. Same with Bishop. Same with Psylocke. Same with Bishop. Same with Wolverine. Everybody. Take a moment and imagine alternate realities where each one of the mutants I mentioned turned out to be sleeper agents or double-agents? Totally possible. Not for a minute a stretch, right?

How did Xavier not know about Xorn? 1) Culture novelty that appeals to a man obsessed with mutants, the greatest cultural novelty of the 21st century. It allows him to look progressive. 2) Xorn already helped them in their time of need, and as a healer he came across as passive. 3) It's not like the School didn't already need more teachers and the notion of an Asian Healer Teacher is very...well, see also 1) and 2), and 4) That's All He f**king Does! All he does is let dangerous mutants walk around the Mansion!

Edited by Sabin - 05-Apr-2011 at 6:39pm

 

The first appearance of Xorn, ironically, is the most difficult to pin down as being reconcilable with his identity of being Magneto. Much later, Magneto claimed that the entire situation with Sublime and his U-Men being lured to China in order to “inspect” Xorn for harvesting was set up by his Chinese allies, of which presumably Ao Jun was a member. Further, the entire Feng Tu facility had been constructed by Magneto himself, and the façade of Xorn an invention of his own. The murder of the X-Corporation employee in Hong Kong was presumably also orchestrated by Magneto’s cabal, as it was the impetus for the X-Men to investigate, and ultimately learn of the Sublime and the U-Men’s fascination with the enigmatic Xorn. [New X-Men Annual 2001] While this truly intricate, Machiavellian plot was definitely the most complicated scheme ever hatched by Magneto, it was not outside of his power of intellect. Nevertheless, when the U-Men began examining him, one of their number who had previously been a self-described “keen” amateur astronomer stated that, by the evidence of Xorn absorbing light, there could be a miniature micro-black hole in his skull. Later, when the X-Men arrived, the man reiterated that what they were seeing was consistent with the gravity force of a black hole. It should be noted, however, that there are some instances of possible telepathic manipulation. Earlier, when Emma had attempted to telepathically learn about who the U-Men were searching via the key’s psychic imprint, she had thought that it might have taken hours. Instead, it was instantaneous. If someone or something had possessed the telepathic abilities to psychically imprint the faked memory, it is not out of the realm of possibility that much of what was presented to the X-Men as reality was not just cosmetic sets and props, but altered perceptions, tailored to their benefit. This would have definitely have been a feat, as Magneto could not have known that Emma Frost had recently joined the X-Men, and the telepathic hoax would have had to have fooled Jean Grey-Summers or Professor Xavier. To summarize, here are the tools Magneto would have needed to have pulled off the illusion of Xorn: Chinese agents (including Ao Jun), prepared to perpetuate the façade Construction of the Feng Tu facility Ao Jun luring Sublime and the U-Men to Hong Kong Murdering the X-Corporation employee to lure the X-Men Having a telepath psychically imprint false memories for one of the X-Men’s telepaths to “find”

From the article, Xorn Xplained, by our very own Douglas Magnum here on UXN.net.

 

It's possible, and really, I mean, this is comic books. There have been fare more convoluted schemes and illusions hatched by villians in the Marvel Universe.

 

For those that say that Magneto's plan made no sense, I challenge you to find a ANY PLAN EVER by Magneto as a villian that made sense. =]P

I'm still rather new here, Jan, and I don't claim to know your preferences, predilections, what you like and what you don't, but does that possible discrepancy really get in the way of enjoying the book that much?

Does it ever bum you out that Jean Grey was so incredibly precise as to find out the exact location of that one gun turret on the moon, scan the right mind to figure out how it worked, and make sure she ended up there before blowing herself up?

Originally posted by Sabin Emma Frost became an asset in combat, which is something that can’t really be said for many female X-Men

The ONLY point of that post that I would contest. Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, Shadowcat, M, Husk, Wolfsbane, Moonstar, X-23, Mercury.... if we're talking people you wouldn't want to try to take hand-to-hand, which, admittedly, the last two on the list only really fell into this cateogry post-Morrison due to the date of their conception as characters on an active roster, I'd say the X-Ladies are a fairly formidable bunch. I'm not arguing that Emma's secondary mutation DIDN'T make her more useful in combat, I'm just saying that in the grand scheme of things, the X-Men have a history of their female characters being strong hand-to-hand combatants.

A part of me died. I hope you're happy. 

Shadowcat got into some decent scrapes but it wasn't helped by the fact Whedon had dibs on her and he managed to stretch 24 issues over 4+ years. No other title could use her and when they did continuity errors flared up.