Additionally, they discovered that each of these fields of energy had a sentient embodiment which could induce the correlating emotion.Īccording to a prophecy in the Book of Oa, the seven colors of the emotional spectrum would be harnessed by seven different Lantern Corps, which would go to war with each other in a conflict called the War of Light. They discovered that the farther one is away from the center of the Spectrum, the more control the energy has on the wielder. The Guardians of the Universe and their successor races eventually chose to harness the emotions of several different colors. It was previously believed that the Maltusians, the oldest known race in existence, were the first to discover and harness this field, however it was actually originally discovered by Volthoom and his mother from Earth 15 some time shortly before 3079 A.D. Morrison, a charismatic writer with a wild imagination, works on a wider canvas with bigger ideas and characters than most novelists.Inadvertently, sentient beings created seven unique forms of energy based on their emotions, with a color unique to the emotion. He is, says the author, "a bit like God, a bit like Dad, a bit like a celebrity". Meanwhile making Superman interesting, as Morrison does, is a cosmological project.
Invisibles comic book symbol cracked#
With Morrison let loose on DC's biggest characters and Mark Millar the prime writer at Marvel, this is also one industry in which the Brits – or, to be precise, two Glasgow lads – have actually cracked America.
Invisibles comic book symbol series#
As Morrison, who took them on when he wrote the giant story strand mashup series Final Crisis, puts it: "These long-running universes have a weight, and a reality, that is greater than mine." But it also presents amazing narrative challenges. There are drawbacks: practically no one ever properly dies, which does lessen the sense of risk. The Fantastic Four alone probably has that licked by now. In the 19th century, a penny-dreadful series called The Mysteries of London ran to 4.5m words over 12 years. In terms of longevity and complex continuity (all those monthly stories have to dovetail), there's nothing I can think of in the whole history of narrative comparable to the universes of Marvel and DC. Why not inhabit their worlds rather than flee from them in embarrassment?Īs well as that link to primal storytelling, superhero comics have a heritage of their own. As the best writers in the genre recognise, these myths have real force. The Iliad is a superhero story, as are Beo-wulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Morrison approaches it from the other end: "He wanted to bring us into super-world."
As one interviewee in Talking With Gods points out, Moore was interested in placing superheroes in the real world – giving them sexual neuroses, bad breath and anxiety disorders. Morrison, although he shares Moore's occult interests, is much more into the biff-pow-bang. But, rather than being sombre or preachy, it's rollicking good fun.Įver since mainstream comics "grew up", with Alan "Watchmen" Moore as instigator, the way they tended to show their maturity was by ditching ass-kicking in favour of ideas. Its themes are: order v chaos (the Invisibles are fighting the Archons of the Outer Church, a race of inter-dimensional beetles with obsessive-compulsive disorder), time and timelessness, occult magic, and psychedelic or hallucinatory experience. No summary can do justice to how mind-bending and bizarre – and yet compellingly in earnest – this comic is. But Morrison's masterwork remains The Invisibles, a series about a cell of existential resistance fighters – including a transsexual shaman, a grumpy Scouser, a telepath from the future and their bald-headed leader King Mob, who is the dead spit of Morrison himself. His Doom Patrol featured a gang of supervillains called The Brotherhood of Dada, a sentient piece of roadway called Danny the Street and a painting that ate Paris.
They are exhilaratingly strange, and kind of puckish. He's matter-of-fact about it: "Anyone can contact the scorpion gods."Īt their best, Morrison's comics are crammed with ideas. And it works! These fuckers, they will turn up!" Morrison practises magic, and encourages his readers to do the same. The only reason he was abducted by aliens in Kathmandu in 1994, says Morrison, is "because I went to Kathmandu in 1994 to be abducted by aliens. Morrison's friend Warren Ellis, another excellent comics writer, points out that Morrison's occultism is actually very pragmatic. This was a properly interesting – albeit rather worshipful – portrait of one of the most interesting writers in the comics medium. Morrison, who is in the DC comics stable, certainly plays up to his own myth with his shaved head, shades and trenchcoat.
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