Welcome
back. I hope you don’t expect to find out how Superman’s multi-universal
Justice League and the Retaliators fare against the corrupted Superjudge Nix
Uotan because the main story won’t be the main story again until the Guidebook
and even then that particular cliffhanger won’t be resolved until Multiversity
#2, the final issue we’ll be looking at, so tough shit – you have to wait like we
all did. The concept in-story (I think) is that because of the Gentry (and their boss)
every Earth is experiencing a Crisis and six of the seven 1-shots (except Ultra
Comics) shows us part of one of these crises, some of which have knock-on
effects for the group trying to stop The Gentry. The Crisis for Earth-0 isn't gone into but I guess whatever the next big event after Convergence is will be
the Crisis going on during The Multiversity.
Conquerors of the Counter-World (The Multiversity: The Society of Super-Heroes;
Conquerors of the Counter-World)
Let’s
get pulp! Quick Summary: it’s Earth 20
and Immortal Man returns to New York and meets Doc Fate’s recruits for the
Society of Super-Heroes: Lady Blackhawk and her Spice Girls team, Al Pratt - The Mighty Atom and current Green
Lantern Abin Sur, during which The Atom reads Ultra Comics #1 and is chastised
for doing so. The team has been brought together because an alternate Earth
(Earth-40) is on a collision course with this one. It has been five years since
then, since Vandal Savage led a raiding party team of exact opposites of the
S.O.S. from Earth-40 and the final battle is here. Here being the Temple of
Niczhuotan, and Atom is injured by Parallax and going into shock, Abin Sur
appears to have died, while treating him Doc Fate tells him about the Monitors
and the Gentry, who have come from behind the Source Wall to fill the void left
by said Monitors. Then Blockbuster busts in and Atom springs back into Action.
A delighted Vandal Savage looks forward to killing Immortal Man, but the
Blackhawks shoot down their plane, as Lady Shiva fights them Felix faust and
his zombies parachute down and break through so he can face Doc Fate, Faust
claims to be a prophet for the Gentry, so Doc Fate kicks him in the balls. Atom
kills Blockbuster, betraying his principals and they move through Doc Fate’s
portal to his lab, outside Lady Shiva and Lady Blackhawk duel and Vandal Savage
confronts The Immortal Man. Green Lantern returns to save Atom and Fate from
Parallax, the Fear-Thing and they use it to power Fate’s version of the
Transmatter Cube so they can contact and maybe even recruit other worlds’
heroes, Abin Sur has been ordered to investigate by the Guardians and goes.
Lady Shiva is shot to death by the Blackhawks mid-monologue and Vandal Savage
falls to Immortal Man, but it’s all good in Savage’s mind, immortal blood – any
immortal bloody – completes his spell and summons Niczhuotan, his temple rises
and Immortal Man calls S.O.S.
Honestly
the only problem I have with this is the lack of sound effects – again we have
characters talking about sounds that aren’t shown and they look like mad
people, or that the letterer’s made a mistake, and it adds confusion that could
be solved by some simple onomatopoeias. Otherwise I like everything going on
here – Immortal Man’s pulp narration is spot-on for the genre, even the
typeface is spot on, all the characters are pretty damn likable, I’m not mad on
Felix Faust and Atom just wearing headgear and street clothes because I’m a bit
sick of ‘street clothes’ style superhero costumes (and would like to point out
the new Spider-Woman costume makes her look like she’s out for a jog, and
that’s horrible) but it works for the pulpish style they’re going for. Chris Sprouce
does the drawing and I fucking love that man’s art, clean, smooth, bold lines
and a really nice style for faces, weirdly I first fell in love with his art on
those few issues of Adventures of the New Men he did for Rob Liefeld (yeah, I
know, right?), New Men might well’ve been the best of Extreme Studios’ output
but that’s still pretty embarrassing.
 |
| Yeah that thing about the Spice Girls? Completely true. |
But
the best thing is how inclusive this new universe is, we have golden age
characters, silver age characters, original characters, all thrown in together
– we have Al Pratt using the symbol of Dr Manhattan fighting the
post-Underworld Unleashed version of Blockbuster while healing from Parallax,
an early 2000s retcon into the world of Green Lantern. We’ll see more of that,
perhaps better examples of it really, in The Just but I love how nothing is
taboo in Morrison’s new Multiverse, everything is worthy and nothing should be
written off just because it came from an unpopular time or an unpopular series.
#earthme (Muliversity:
The Just)
Very-Fucking-Unquick Summary:
it’s Earth-16 and Sister Miracle is chatting via telepathy to her friend
Megamorpho, she’s having a big party later but now the Atom’s in her blood
stream fighting a Techo-Virus from space for her and she needs to think of
something really sad to flood her Amygdala with hormones and kill ‘em off, then
Megamorpho jumps of a roof – the Techno Virus dies. In Gotham Alexis Luthor is
bored, discussing the reportedly haunted/cursed comic Ultra Comics #1 while
Batman watches Superman’s robots stop an invasion form another reality – it was
boring. They go to get down but Superman arrives and Alexis finds herself
bundled into a closet. Superman wants he and Bats to investigate Megamorpho’s
suicide as no one knows why she killed herself, Bats wants to distract Superman
form noticing he was about to bone the daughter of his dad’s greatest enemy –
he fails, Superman is annoyed. Alexis however is beyond annoyed, she is royally
pissed – Batman is ditching her for Superman again and she’s banned from Sister
Miracle’s party.
Batman calls Sister Miracle
and she says she saw an image of a big scary lady in Megamorpho’s mind; Green
Lantern meanwhile is talking to Offspring and looking at Ultra Comics #1,
Offspring was Megamorpho’s boyfriend but is more interested in recommending the
Essential Genocide Crossover where the Essential versions of Major Comics’
characters all just got wiped out. At Kon-El’s exhibition Alexis and Harlequin
gossip, Kon-El’s turning Bizarro? He’s also painted images of ‘the Gray Lady’
(Dame Merciless) who came to him in a dream, she’s coming to a lot of people in
their dreams. In Nevada the Justice
League’s re-enactment today is the Red Amazo Crisis but the robot has been
tampered with and nearly kills Alpha Centurion and Wonder Woman, then Green
Lantern freaks out about his girlfriend who was once stuffed into a fridge -
weird. Batman threatens Offspring who finally breaks down and reveals that he
and Megamorpho were reading comics right before she killed herself, Batman
finds something odd about their copy of Ultra Comics #1. Meanwhile Superman is
with Menta, who was asked to look into the last thoughts of the deceased, only
to see the Gray Lady and get freaked out.
While Bloodwynd and Dr
Mid-Nite do an autopsy and Arrowette begs her dad for some trick arrows and
acts like a spoilt brat, Superman and Batman discuss the comics, only one of
the publishers has an address in this world, Batman theorises they’ve bled
through form other universes and people who read them become infected – like
Megamorpho, and Alexis Luthor. Investigating the two figure it out just as
Alexis strikes, she used Jakeem Thunder (Sister Miracle’s ex and also
blacklisted for her party) to take control of the Superman robots. As the party
rages and Batman fights for his and Superman’s life, Sister Miracle tweets
about how great parallel worlds would be – she could meet another version of
her.
Day
in the life stories take a lot of text to recap, mystery stories take a lot of
text to recap, this is both so I’m sorry for how long that was.
I
like this story, few things make me happier than taking shots at arseholes - the
idly rich, the terminally hip, the self-absorbed, the fashion-obsessed and
people who pull duck face in selfies. Of course this book will be horrendously
dated in 5 or so years, it’s one of the major problems with comic books (or any
story) that pushes the ‘up to date with it’ side of the story (it’s one of the
only flaws with Kamala Khan’s Ms. Marvel book), yes Twitter and Instagram are
very popular now but one day they will go the way of MySpace and your work will
look the exact opposite of what it was supposed it, it’ll look old fashioned
and out of touch – and I will laugh, you fucking fad-following gits. So the
Miley Cyrus references, the hash-tagging, will age poorly but as a middle
finger to the sort of pricks most of the super-sons and daughters of Earth-Me
have become should have a little longer a lasting appeal – the fine details
might change but cunts like these will always be around to annoy us and so
stories like this will always be needed.
Yeah
this is a new version of the Super-Sons reality, which dates back a looong way,
originally they were just Clark Kent Jr and Bruce Wayne Jr because at times the
Superman and Batman books were horribly uncreative but now they’re Chris Kent
and Damian Wayne, two rather new character and neither of whom I liked pre-New
52 (Chris doesn’t exist anymore, Damian does unfortunately) which segues nicely
back into the comment about inclusiveness – we have a silver age idea updated
with characters from the 1990s but then there’s Gypsy (an early 80’s
character), Miss Martian, Batman and Superman (2000s) and right up to date
characters like Sister Miracle and Alexis Luthor. Speaking of Alexis Luthor,
Ben Oliver draws gorgeous women but none of them appeal to me as much Alexis Luthor
does, I love bald girls, but bald girls who are fucked up and the odd one out?
That’s me completely smitten. Plus she’s the person to actually do something
about all these bored, disaffected spoilt superbrats and might actually make
superheroes out ‘em, sure it's for petty reasons but I'm grabbing at straws to justify my lust, hush (I also quite like Menta, she always comically misses the
point but she was kind of adorable).
There
is one issue; the Tramatter Cube just turns up from one panel to the next when Supes
and Bats are investigating Alexis’ house, it could have just appeared out of
nowhere (I’m convinced these Transmatter cubes are somehow linked to the Fourth
World’s Mother Box technology, and I’m pretty sure Mother Boxes can just appear)
but WITHOUT ANY SOUND AFFECTS I can’t tell, so I’m just going to assume Ben
Oliver forgot to draw it in panel 3:
 |
| You may notice a very important, plot relevant, Transmatter Cube missing from the top panel |
So
yeah, in conclusion two very strong issues to make up for that confusing, hard
to read wall of Ivan Reis that was Multiversity 1 and Morrison did a good job
of giving each issue a point in the overall story – Society gave us the origin
of the Gentlemen and Just a better look into the Comics as warnings side of
things.
Next
time: fuck all happens on Charlton-Watchmen Earth, further proof that Shazam is
fantastic and chibi Batman and Kamandi read the comic they’re in – meta!
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