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By Harper Harris

Miss out on the ‘Grant Morrison: The Multiversity and Beyond‘ panel at this year’s San Diego Comic Con? Never fear! Hear Morrison talk to DC’s VP of Marketing John Cunningham about his ideas for The Multiversity and how the project took form, as well as info on his upcoming Wonder Woman: Earth One, Multiversity Too, and Batman: Black and White books! Morrison and Cunningham go pretty in-depth here, so feel free to grab your copies of the series and follow along, it’s a fun ride!

With great comics comes great responsibility — that’s something that we believe the Legion of Superheroes’ Arm-Fall-Off-Boy perfectly encapsulates. The character created by Gerard Jones, Ty Templeton, and Curt Swan inspires us to write these great pieces as he forces the staff here at The Beat Manor to keep reading until our arms fall off! How many characters have the ability to use their own limbs as instruments of destruction? Arm-Fall-Off-Boy A.K.A. Floyd Belkin’s visit to the mansion came at an important time in comics history as Marvel is now on the very edge of Secret Wars and DC is in the midst of Convergence. The rejected Legionnaire had some opinions on each that enlightened The Beat staff towards forming some new conceptions about these titles that we will share with the general public below. Our time with Belkin was limited, but he shared all the Superman and Legion anecdotes that we could handle in the span of just one afternoon. Without further ado we would like to present our picks straight from Belkin and The Beat Manor for your reading pleasure!

Alex and Floyd’s picks:

Avengers #44 Writer: Jonathan Hickman Artist: Mike Deodato

New Avengers #33 Writer: Jonathan Hickman Artist: Kev Walker

Belkin advised us that Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers saga was one of the deepest and most bold comics events ever, with over 77 issues devoted to the lead-up into the Secret Wars, he told us that there was much ‘proverbial crap’ to hit the fan. We feel obligated to post anything the esteemed hero mentioned, but these pair of issues surely look interesting. How is Hickman and company going to blow up the Marvel Universe and create Battleworld? Bear in mind that this is comics, so it probably is going to be fun but not make any sense.

The Multiversity #2 Writer: Grant Morrison Artist: Ivan Reis

Floyd expressed some interest in taking a break from the big events and talking up DC’s huge Multiversity event for a short while. This saga is bringing some brand new heroes together for the first direct follow-up to the Multiversity labeled as The Multiversity #2, but how or why would the installment could it be labeled as such with a new selection of characters being introduced? One of the highlights of our afternoon with Belkin was a spirited debate between team Beat on whether Morrison could even follow-up Multiversity! When one Beat staffer mentioned that he or she (I will not disclose their identity) didn’t like Brazilian artist Ivan Reis, they were given a stern talking to — they insulted one of Belko’s favorites!

Kyle’s Pick:

Convergence: Shazam #1

Writer: Jeff Parker, Artist: Doc Shaner, Colors: Jordie Bellaire

Holy F*ck TPB

ACTION LAB – DANGER ZONE

(W) Nick Marino (A/CA) Daniel Arruda Massa

Though we haven’t been able to talk much more about it since the first issue came out in print, Holy F*ck has been a fun ride that makes you feel dirty in the best way possible. A collected edition is the best way to read this:

Sister Maria has recruited two horny drug-fueled weirdos to stop the apocalypse. Their names? Jesus and Satan. Can these biblical frenemies help this nun with a gun defeat an army of pissed off mythological gods?

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Heidi’s Pick:

Super Mutant Magic Academy

Jillian Tamaki

DRAWN & QUARTERLY

 Lacking arms makes it hard to hold a book, so I don’t know where Floyd stands on graphic novels, but anyone with two hands would enjoy this. I know we’ve been Tamaki-crazy here at Stately Beat Manor, but SMMA, based on the long running webcomic, is a limber, darkly humorous take on the much-trodden “superpowered teens in school” genre, as teens learn that magic powers don’t help where self-esteem, misplaced love and growing up are concerned. As they do.

 

 The complete Johnny Nemo

 Peter Milligan and Brett Ewins

Tian Comics

Okay technically this is a relisting, but why not take some time to honor the legacy of the late Brett Ewins, with this ode to Newave haircuts, private eyes and goofball futurism that never goes out of style. Milligan and Ewins in peak form.

 Writer:

Grant Morrison

Penciller:

Doug Mahnke 

Inkers: 

Christian Alamy

Mark Irwin

Keith Champagne

Jaime Mendoza 

Colorists:

Gabe Eltaeb

David Baron

Comics aren’t meant to make readers feel guilty, but The Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1 paints the fan as the individual leading the protagonist to his ultimate fate. This is it – the haunted story teased since the first installment of Author Grant Morrison’s magnum Multiversity opus. The Multiversity as it stands is my favorite ongoing series from superhero publisher DC, it’s something that’s hard to believe anyone at the Big Two could even think about publishing. Morrison has been circling a sphere of comics self awareness with titles like Animal Man for several years now, and this feels like the natural progression of all those titles. Even though the writer continues to discover new things about self reflexive superheroes, he never feels like he’s repeating himself in this work. The ideas of the Psycho Pirate and Animal Man being erased from continuity is far different from than the mechanically engineered Ultra Comics presented in this work.

Standing on it’s own merits devoid of what came before with the series, is this book good?

Yes. The story can simply be read without that context via the playful opening from Morrison and the exceptional Doug Mahnke (who’s pencils have been sorely absent from Green Lantern.) Nearly every idea within this saga is a reintroduced story beat hatched from the DC vault. Still, this hero (Ultra Comics) emerged from pretty obscure roots and builds on nearly everything that Morrison has done with the DC Universe. There is even a reference to Final Crisis directly in this title showing that Morrison takes this absurdist pillar of the DC landscape that he has built extremely seriously.

The first thing that catches my eye about The Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1 is the Doug Mahnke cover. The piece is elegantly designed yet filled with utter madness reflecting some of the best covers from tales long ago. The text reading “YOU MUST NOT READ THIS COMIC,” should be the first clue that this is one of the most subversive and enthralling DC books you’re going to find this side of Convergence. What follows this is stirring image complete with a warning from Ultra Comics (our protagonist) to not finish this issue for the sake of his own very life. The storytelling stakes are set in this issue, and if we the reader choose to continue reading we’re to believe that the very fate of Ultra Comics has been decided. That’s a lot to take in over the span of just one story, and my own personal guilt regarding what happens next led is my own fault.

The first issue of The Multiversity arguably mixed the most concepts and characters and introduced us to the primary threat featured in this story – it’s essential reading to anyone left scratching their heads with this issue. This can be read stand alone as mentioned earlier, but to enjoy this text to the fullest a background in Morrison DC’s work is ideal. Ultra Comics is a book was first introduced via the live dissection from a Monitor within that issue. As a result, don’t expect this comic to be an easy read without the context of the broader series. It’s tempting to say that the threat of this book will be capitalized on as the baddie for the full Multiversity event, but Morrison has trained readers not to look at his work with such a clear lens. The Gentry are not everything that caused the bleakness in Multiversity – as the Multiversity Guidebook clearly articulated.

Mahnke’s storytelling skills haven’t missed a beat. The artist perfectly captures the detailed linework and impossibly huge facial expressions that make this work something truly special. His haunting images are best utilized in the context of horror, which this series arguably falls under. The villains contained within this story are terrifying, silly, and then maddening all in the context of one issue. Mahnke is called upon to be a really versatile artist in this experience, and does a great job on the static rendition of Ultra Comics nobly glimpsing at the reader. Also called upon are several other small flashes of violence with an exploration into the brutality buried deep within superheroes. Christian Alamy, Mark Irwin, Keith Champagne, and Jamie Mendoza bring this issue to a total of four inkers in this oversized. There are the occasional moments of inconsistency here, but overall this is some admirable work from the four mostly blending into each other and not detracting from the reader experience too much. The important part of the art in this issue is that Mahnke was allowed to draw a riveting horror comic.

There are so many different ideas crammed into this one piece of writing. The self reflexive asides kept the plot from becoming too complicated or too pedestrian. The buffer of Ultra Comics explaining his bizarre inner thoughts to the reader perfectly bring casual fans into the strange world of the title. There are so many different ways in which the story engages with readers, whether it be through Ultra Comics speech patterns, inner thoughts, dialogue trees, word balloons, and even meta-commentary within the context of the work itself.

To say much more about this story would spoil the delightful surprises waiting inside for readers to engage with. The Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1 is the only comic that ever melted off my face and left me in charge of the fate of my new favorite superhero.

I’m sorry Ultra Comics.

The Multiversity: Mastermen #1

Story : Grant Morrison

Art: Jim Lee

Inks: Scott Williams, Sandra Hope, Mark Irwin, Jonathan Glapion

Color: Alex Sinclair

Publisher: DC Comics

Multiversity has been one elaborate Grant Morrison wet dream. We’ve seen the most abstract of ideas become solid concepts under the writer’s architecture of strange Earths. In Mastermen, he doesn’t just bring us an Earth where Superman’s rocket landed in Nazi Germany; he brings Jim Lee along to make the series best incomplete story yet.

The Earth as we know it is vastly different. On Earth-10 our Clark Kent never existed; instead the baby from Krypton became the right hand of the Furor, a Nazi ultimate weapon known as Overman. Even the Justice League is made up of Axis variants of DC’s mightiest heroes. Though when you read it, Leatherwing doesn’t stray far from the tactics of the Batman we know. Telling the rewritten history of Earth in one issue is a monumental task. One that Morrison takes strategic liberties with and it doesn’t always pay off. In fact without spoiling the story details, the sequence of events goes: rocket landing in Germany, skip ahead 17 years, Overman and the Nazis conquer America, skip ahead 60 years and to the formation of the Freedom Fighters as they begin the liberation of Germerica. Key events in Overman’s upbringing and the war are left out. Though they never feel vital, it certainly would have been an interesting part of the overall story.

Jim Lee brings action packed fury he’s become iconic for. The entire spectacle missing from his WildC.A.T.s collaboration with Morrison is here and it’s just gorgeous. Using four inkers on the book doesn’t turn out to be the hindrance it could have been. You’ll notice differences in the style from page to page, but never so much that it takes you out of the narrative. We’ve seen Jim Lee draw Superman and the rest of the Justice League a ton of times over the last few years, but he manages to make the redesigns in Mastermen feel like it’s Batman #608 all over again.

Mastermen is a sprint through erupting volcanoes in the middle of a gunfight with doves flying everywhere. You’ll never quite catch a break until you’re slammed into the brick wall ending. If the book’s mission was to sell Earth-10 as an interesting world you’d want to know more about then it’s a win. If the aim was to tell a complete story… then it’s missing a few pages. Ultimately it’s Jim Lee and Jim Lee books are like pizza. Even when you had your heart set on something else, pizza never sounds like a bad choice.

Also what’s up with Batman not skipping leg day here:

In the multiverse there’s an Earth where celebrities leak nude photos of you on twitter and we’re all still on dial-up internet because AOL enslaved us with that horrible modem noise.

by Zachary Clemente

On the extremely busy Saturday of this past weekend’s New York Comic-Con, I had the sublime honor of interviewing Frank Quitely (pen name for Scottish artist Vincent Deighan) about his visual narrative process, the cycle of artistic influence, and his once and future work. This was a wild treat for me as Quitely stands as one of my favorite artists in comics. Quitely has worked on We3, Sandman: Endless Nights, Flex Mentallo, New X-Men, JLA: Earth 2, Batman & Robin, Jupiter’s Legacy, All-Star Superman and many more.

Comics Beat: Frank, you’re currently working on Jupiter’s Legacy [with Mark Millar] which is ending after 10 issues?

Frank Quitely: It’s actually two volumes, both five and five.

CB: I see. Something I’ve always loved about your work is how versatile your storytelling can be. Hearkening back to Flex Mentallo, there’s some interesting panel layouts, All-Star Superman is a little more cinematic and straightforward, and We3 deviates a lot. I’m wondering how you approach that you want to train the reader’s eye the way you start talking about the story through your art and panels.

FQ: When I started out, I didn’t know a lot about storytelling because I never got a formal training in comics. It ended up being kind of intuitive and my main thing was about trying to make it clear and interesting. You know, I wasn’t really thinking in terms of narrative flow, it was more just about clarity and trying to make it as good as possible. Gradually, over the years, I just became more interested in storytelling. There was a DC editor I worked with named Dan Raspler – the Lobo editor amongst other things. He was my editor on JLA: Earth 2 and before I did JLA, I did a short Lobo story for them and it was the first mainstream DC thing I’d done; I’d been working for Vertigo and Paradox for a couple years. I sent him the pencils and it was the best thing I’d done up to that point and I thought “he’s going to phone me back and tell me how good this is” and he didn’t phone for a week. I was really panicking by the time he phoned; he started the conversation with “dude, I don’t know how to tell you this…”

Basically what he said was my drawings were really lovely, but my storytelling was really boring. He went through and told me what I should be thinking about and that was kind of a real milestone. As it was, that book never came out for different reasons. For JLA: Earth 2, he made me fax a rough for every page because he wanted to see that I could do art that makes sense in rough with a sharpie, then I could do it properly.

CB: Sort of like doing thumbnails?

FQ: Yeah. In fact, the new version of [JLA:] Earth 2 has those thumbnails in it. That was a big leap for me.

CB: There’s a couple panels I’d like to ask you about, the first from We3. The one where it looks like the panel begins to turn across the page.

We3 by Frank Quitely & Grant Morrison

FQ: With the cat leaping through?

CB: Yes!

FQ: Grant [Morrison] and I sat together, both of us with pencils, trying to work out a way of doing this. [...] That kind of “turning the panels” was almost like windows that the cat was going though – that didn’t come right until the last minute because Grant was describing something to me but it was like he knew there was something there we could do but he couldn’t quite visualize it. It was just a case of me sitting, drawing stuff and then asking if we were getting closer – it was very collaborative.

CB: Do you think that kind of collaboration is where you find the best of your work coming out?

FQ: Um, sometimes. Sometimes it works that way and sometimes it’s nice just to be left alone and work it out myself. Like in Jupiter’s Legacy, in the first issue there’s kind of cube thing. In the script, Mark said something like “he puts them in this cell” and I got thinking about “cel” as in animation cel as well as “cell” like a prison cell and it just kind of came together very, very organically in a relatively short time. It really goes both ways.

CB: I actually wanted to ask about that panel. It’s beautiful how it breaks down all the way to the linework and builds it back up again. I find it an interesting visual discussion on comics.

Jupiter’s Legacy by Frank Quitely & Mark Millar

CB: Changing gears a bit, I’m curious about your influences. Not necessarily artistic influences, but what comics have influenced the way you want to do comics, the way your approach working on comics?

FQ: An early one was Hard Boiled by Frank Miller and Geof Darrow. I set out when I was maybe 20-something and when I saw that, I was really blown away by that. More recently Chris Ware’s Building Stories, it’s a masterpiece – the guy’s a genius. I’ve gone plenty – Akira, the big black and white collections of Akira. Moebius, particularly [his] short stories.

CB: The sheer breadth of his influence is remarkable and that’s something I wanted to touch on with you. In my opinion, you and your work occupy a peculiar place in the comics “family tree” where your catalog is intensely influential for many contemporary creators, but it’s not like you’ve gone away, you’re still pushing yourself. Do you find yourself in something of a loop, being influenced by people you might have influenced?

FQ: Oh, yeah.

CB: What is that like?

FQ: It’s really cool. It’s actually really cool. Two artist who work I really like a lot who’re younger than me are Amy Reeder and Becky Cloonan and both of them, in some way, found something in my work that they liked and there’s now something in their work that I like. With Amy in particular, she started off at Tokyopop and she was only interested in manga. Brandon Montclare, who she’s working with now [on Rocketgirl], was an editor at Tokyopop at the time and he gave her a bunch of comics that he wanted her to look at to kind of broaden her horizons a bit. When she first saw it, she didn’t like my work at all; there was nothing there that she liked. Brandon told her to ignore that she didn’t like my drawing but to look at was I was doing because I was going about it a different way from her. After a while, she did actually start liking it and that’s the kind of funny thing – she didn’t like it at all at first but once she kind of get into it, she got something from it and now her recent work on Rocketgirl is just phenomenal.

When I see stuff like that, I always feel slightly threatened by a lot of younger artists. Because to me, a lot of this stuff seems really fresh and I keep thinking “shit, man, I’m going to have to up my game.”

All-Star Superman by Frank Quitely & Grant Morrison

CB: Can that be a little thrilling?

FQ: Yeah – absolutely. I don’t want to get to a stage where I’m kind of quite happy with what I’m doing. Like every other artist I know, I see the mistakes in my work more than the good parts. Even things that work quite well, it always looks slightly better in my head. Every page I start I think “this is going to be the best one yet!” So I don’t want to get to a stage where I’m not influenced or threatened by other peoples’ work.

CB: That’s a very remarkable way to stay relevant. Though something I noticed is your lack of online presence. It seems being active on social media outlets is a big part for many comics creators. Is this something that’s never interested you?

FQ: You know, the thing is I can’t answer all my emails as it is, I answer maybe a quarter of my emails or something. So what’s the point of having Facebook? I’m already insulting enough people by not getting back to them. If I had a Facebook presence, I would never talk to anybody – I’d just never get back to them. Either you just that kind of person or you’re not, you know.

CB: Heading to the end, Jupiter’s Legacy will be wrapping up, what’s next?

FQ: “Pax Americana” – one of the Multiversity books at DC.

CB: And are there any dream projects? Characters you want to work on, people you want to work with, or your own stories you’d like to make?

FQ: I have written a bunch of short stories and some of them are thumbnailed. So at some point I want to get a collection out of just my own dumb stuff.

CB: That sound wonderful Frank, thanks for sitting down to chat.

FQ: Not a problem – thank you.

Frank Quitely lives in Scotland and draws some of the most amazing comics around. I encourage you to watch the 30-minute feature about him, part of a series called “What Artists Do All Day” produced by BBC4. His upcoming works are the next 6 issues of Jupiter’s Legacy and an issue of DC’s Multiversity called “Pax Americana.”