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A review by librarylad
The Multiversity by Grant Morrison
3.0
2.5 stars.
Multiversity is a tonally incoherent collection of short stories about superheroes from parallel worlds colliding. At its centre is an intricately constructed story called "Pax Americana", a pastiche of Watchmen, beautifully drawn by Frank Quietly. It's a puzzle box, a political thriller, ambitiously told with a light touch and meticulous attention to detail. Pax Americana is worth a read, and worth a re-read, but sadly not worth slogging through the rest of this volume.
The other stories in Multiversity veer from disappointingly thin to unreadably dense. The bookend stories, intended to tie everything together, are overladden with dozens of barely sketched characters and portentous dialogue requiring detailed annotations to fully understand.
Rather than plodding through this, I'd recommend buying Pax Americana separately, and another of the issues, "Ultra Comics", which has a fun fourth-wall-breaking premise and solid art by Doug Mahnke.
Multiversity is a tonally incoherent collection of short stories about superheroes from parallel worlds colliding. At its centre is an intricately constructed story called "Pax Americana", a pastiche of Watchmen, beautifully drawn by Frank Quietly. It's a puzzle box, a political thriller, ambitiously told with a light touch and meticulous attention to detail. Pax Americana is worth a read, and worth a re-read, but sadly not worth slogging through the rest of this volume.
The other stories in Multiversity veer from disappointingly thin to unreadably dense. The bookend stories, intended to tie everything together, are overladden with dozens of barely sketched characters and portentous dialogue requiring detailed annotations to fully understand.
Rather than plodding through this, I'd recommend buying Pax Americana separately, and another of the issues, "Ultra Comics", which has a fun fourth-wall-breaking premise and solid art by Doug Mahnke.