Journey Into Morrison
I’ve put a stake in the ground at Animal Man vol. 1 and plan to read/re-read everything major Grant Morrison has written for comics.
(I’m leaving out Zenith for now, the work he did prior to Animal Man for some British magazine or another, even though I have it in digital form (it’s out of print). I may try to dabble my way through it at some point.)
So it looks like this means reading, in roughly this order:
Zenith(?)
Animal Man
Doom Patrol
Arkham Asylum
St. Swithin’s Day
Batman: Gothic
New Adventures of Hitler
Dare
Bible John: A Forensic Meditation
Kid Eternity
Sebastian O
The Mystery Play
The Invisibles Vol. 1
Kill Your Boyfriend
Flex Mentallo
Aztek
JLA
The Invisibles Vol. 2
DC One Million
Invisibles Vol. 3
JLA: Earth 2
Marvel Boy
New X-Men
Fantastic Four 1234
The Filth
Seaguy
We3
JLA Classified 1-3
Vimanarama
Seven Soldiers
All Star Superman Vol. 1
52
Batman: Son of Batman (first collection of his run)
I’m leaving out a bunch of stuff—2000AD material, including his stuff with Mark Millar; Skrull Kill Krew (tried it, couldn’t get through it); random short stories; Vampirella.
I also haven’t decided if I’m going to try and mix up the various TPBs and issues of series so that I’m reading things in roughly chronological release order, OR if I’m just gonna read all the series in big sweeping chunks and try to order the reading roughly chronologically. It’s going to be a tough call; a big part of my reason for doing this is to observe Morrison’s development as a creator, and I’m afraid I’ll miss stuff if I don’t hop around a bit. At the same time, I’m never a fan of the constant switching of gears when I’m reading different TPB series, so I’d prefer as a reader to swallow all of one series, then move on to the next.
I’m excited. It’s going to be fun. Expensive, but fun. Looking at the list, I already own about half of the material on it. The rest I’m gonna have to track down.
Right now I’m two volumes through Animal Man. It’s good stuff; there’s big ideas in it, but it’s less…dense than his more recent work, so it’s clearer to see where he’s going. Then again, I’m also coming at it after having read ABOUT the run a bazillion times, so I’m already aware of most of the big ideas and plot twists.
If anyone has ideas on the above (should I read anything I’m skipping, or skip anything I plan to read?) fire away.