A review by rebus
52, Vol. 1 by Geoff Johns
3.25
Taking over the X Men was the beginning of the end for Grant Morrison. It's not that that was necessarily bad--the series had been moribund for over a decade and needed an injection of talent--but it was a move toward the mainstream and the big money success that I would guess had eluded him when he was producing much better work (that didn't really sell). The bald, Hunter S. Thompson crossed with Mr. X (and maybe the faux leftist musician Stuart Davis) look he had adopted by this point is a sure sign of his narcissism.
The sell out was complete by the time he returned to DC. Upper middle class privilege permeates the book, with characters like Dibney celebrating the travel that is causing our extinction. There's a great deal of pro forever war propaganda here as well, with tons of anti-Islam, Korea and China rants. He's also perhaps the first to join the mass movement that led to Trans ideology, the now cliched trope of "everyone a Super Man" that was finally exploited well by Garth Ennis and taken to its logical conclusion (that all of these narcissists would bring about the end of the world).
It's not terrible, and it's certainly not helped by the fact that he has to collaborate with 3 other very bad writers, but it's not his 80s and early 90s greatness.
I full expect it to get worse with each volume.
The sell out was complete by the time he returned to DC. Upper middle class privilege permeates the book, with characters like Dibney celebrating the travel that is causing our extinction. There's a great deal of pro forever war propaganda here as well, with tons of anti-Islam, Korea and China rants. He's also perhaps the first to join the mass movement that led to Trans ideology, the now cliched trope of "everyone a Super Man" that was finally exploited well by Garth Ennis and taken to its logical conclusion (that all of these narcissists would bring about the end of the world).
It's not terrible, and it's certainly not helped by the fact that he has to collaborate with 3 other very bad writers, but it's not his 80s and early 90s greatness.
I full expect it to get worse with each volume.