Re-reading Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol for the umpteenth time...

[T Hedge Coke]

Somewhere, Larry Welz is crying in his beer, telling the bartender he tried, he really really tried.

[Desaad]

His Spider-Man is pretty much the only Peter Parker I don't half-hate. His Daredevil was seen by Frank as misguided, but he's a decent guy. GL's big screw up was not carrying money, he was still a decent guy, a good man, and Tommy treats him as such, even if he takes the piss out of him a little.

Batman needs to get fucked with, just for going around being Batman all the time. And Tommy only does stuff like puke on him or call him Lord Vader because Tommy's scared shitless of him and knows flat out it's not like he could take him in a fight.

I don't remember any of the JLA in Hitman/JLA being particularly buffoonish, though, yeah, they're played for comedy as much as anyone else. But it's kind of a funny comic. Everyone got played for comedy. I certainly don't remember psychopathic Wonder Woman or Green Lantern.

Even way back in Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe, Cap gets treated decently, even if he's on the wrong side of the narrative. Cyclops is a dick, but Cyclops is always a dick, and superheroes do have a tendency to defend their own and not worry about collateral damage.

He's limited by the constraints of editorial, but he's made his disdain for superheroes well known. He finds the whole sordid mess ridiculous and, you know, fair enough. (again, with the exception of Superman).

I'm not claiming he went around portraying Batman as a child molester or anything. He wouldn't have been allowed to even if he had wanted to. But his superheroes were all essentially ineffective, morally and socially stunted, and were more often than not the butt of a joke in a way that none of the main players were, and even many of the other guests.

Compare how he treats superheroes in Hitman to how he treats, say, the SAS members. It can't be compared.

You can't tell me that Kyle Rayner hazily recalling his anal rape is not disrespectful in the extreme, that it doesn't denote some disdain for the character.

[Pralaya]

On on the topic....

I LOVE DP! It's definitely on my top ten favorite comic runs

Sorry Desaad, the only comics I could ever masturbate are Corto Maltese and Metabarons.

EDIT: and anything by Moebius

vous êtes un connaisseur, mon ami ;)

[Billy Batson]

LOL @ at a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol thread turning into a discussion about Garth Ennis.
/would rally you broskies up and making it even more off-topic by saying Ennis is better than Morrison (even though he can only write three kind of stories) but doesn't want to do it :p

[Mr. Holmes]

LOL @ at a Grant Morrison Doom Patrol thread turning into a discussion about Garth Ennis.
/would rally you broskies up and making it even more off-topic by saying Ennis is better than Morrison (even though he can only write three kind of stories) but doesn't want to do it :p

Yeah well I imagine Desaad doesn't really mind since he himself has chimed in the most about Ennis.

[Desaad]

Don't mind at all!

But no, I don't think Ennis is better than Morrison.

[Billy Batson]

Lel.
The fact that Ennis got brought up in here made me think what if Ennis had a run on Doom Patrol o.o

[Desaad]

I'm sure he would have done a great Cliff, and established the relationship between characters remarkably well.

I'll always regret that he never did a Superman story, one big 6 or 12 issue run.

[Billy Batson]

Who says he can't still have one?
Wouldn't call 6 or 12 issues a big of a run though, lol.

[Desaad]

Who says he can't still have one?
Wouldn't call 6 or 12 issues a big of a run though, lol.

Haha, no, it will never, ever happen.

[Billy Batson]

What makes you say that?

[LoneNecromancer]

Huh. I just realised that the hillbillies arc on Punisher MAX I attributed to Ennis earlier wasn't written by him and that he did drop the series after Valley Forge. That explains a bit.

[Desaad]

What makes you say that?

Because he's at a place now where he never has to do any book he doesn't want to do, and the books he most wants to do are creator owned, and then after that comes a tier of stuff like Shadow or MAX or whatever; in the one case an itch he wanted to scratch that simultaneously gave him leeway to do what he wanted at that company, in the other a well paid gig with no editorial restriction in content or continuity telling a type of story he's very comfortable with.

Something like Hitman, or his Demon run...that isn't natural Garth Ennis. Those aren't the stories he tells when left to his own devices, freely.

And there is no character more bogged down in editorial constraint than Superman.

I believe Garth Ennis has something to say about Superman, the ultimate immigrant story of the 20th century. I don't think he's particularly passionate about telling that story, and I don't think he'll put up with any editorial feedback to tell it.

So I don't think he'll ever, ever do it. There are hundreds of other stories that he'd like to tell, opportunities to tell them in the way he wants to tell them. Unless DC throws absurd amounts of money and freedom at him - which I don't think they would do, since this project would have limited wide appeal anyway - I just can't envision a situation in which such a run would happen.

If I owned any sort of comic company I'd ask him to write one, though, a la Alan Moore's Supreme. Completely straight, an obvious rip off, whatever.

[Billy Batson]

That's true.
However he can always do an out of continuity Superman book (ie All-Star, Earth and etc.) or just make a homage character if he really wants to tell the story :p
Maybe when he get's tired of doing the same ol' stories, he might do it. There's always chance of things happening. Then again I'm an optimist and find pessimism silly at times.

[FanboyStranger]

I'm sure he would have done a great Cliff, and established the relationship between characters remarkably well.

I'll always regret that he never did a Superman story, one big 6 or 12 issue run.

I bet he would have played up the fighter pilot backstory for Larry Trainor. Probably write a story where the Negative Spirit is trapped, and Larry has to save the day with an F-16. (Or even more likely, a WWII Spitfire.)