Alan Moore vs Grant Morrison

[king mob]

Alan Moore is a nut job who is full of himself (nothing against his stuff, he just is a ridiculous human being) and Grant Morrison writes stuff that tends to be confusing/hard to follow. So... grant morrison is a more sane version of moore.

I'm glad we've got comments like this instead of another 4,000 word essay on hypertext that's been copied from around the net.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

Good god what have I done?

Read The Garden of the Forking Paths. Here's a translation.

No, this is turning into a piece of performance art or somewhere a village is wondering what happened to it's idiot.

They called looking for you. They were worried, but I told them you were doing fine... Sigh... Is it really necessary to insult each other? If you disagree just say so, no need to act like a jerk.

And sorry, you won't find any of that online.

[king mob]

I'd say don't give up the day job but that doesn't seem right in this case.

[tylenoljones]

Read The Garden of the Forking Paths. Here's a translation.

Oh I'm familiar with the story, thanks.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

i didn't flip. issue six is not fragmented and cosmic.......straightforward actually. this reader (and most), did not go crazy flipping pages or rereading superman beyond.
the series format is also not an example of this even though some people thought they could read fc without beyond. and in issue seven you are still meant to read front to back, not to devise new reading orders. compare to, say, that cyoa unwritten issue.
you're only speaking for yourself here, not "the reader".



beyond is only indespensable. last rites and submit are more dispensable. so "likewise" sets up a kind of false equivalence almost. if I'm remembering, Last Rites really isn't the key to understanding the scenes we see in FC. that happens in FC. the scenes with Anthro are all we need to understand what's up with Batman now.



you didn't describe a labyrinth book though anywhere.



every comic ever has done this. a cliffhanger. this has no relation to supposed "hypertext".



this is just a sort of unnecessarily complicated way to talk about serial comic events and tie-ins, as it just doesn't add anything and illuminate anything to the idea. it's not productive.

I think you're a bit rusty. In FC#6 we see Batman's corpse, in #7, he's alive. Last Rites, which Morrison himself said is structural along with Submit and and Superman Beyond, reveals how Batman escaped, why was he missing but not killed after Granny got him, and explains the corpse.

hhahahaha. I see how you mistook the death-then-alive-thing. My bad. The parallel is death in one chapter, alive in the next, no explanation given in the later. Happens in the fictional book of TGOTFP and Morrison echoes in Seven Soldiers and FC.

The labyrinth is described in Garden of the Forking Paths. It's a short story, more even straightforward than FC for a hypertext, and translation and therei is plenty of pdf files online. This paragraph didn't make it to the final cut:

2. Book of the Library of Limbo ≈ “The Garden of the Forking Paths”. TGOTFP is the novel within Borges’ short story of the same name. It, it describes an infinite hypertext story, which, according to the story, is a labyrinth and its author’s way to see the Universe. In the story, only a few people understood it. Descriptions of the Superman Beyond book include: “No one can read it”, “infinite number of pages, all occupying the same space”, “contains every book possible”, it is basically the story of the Universe, not to mention that its pages make it heavy, yet it looks like a single page.

The library of limbo is also a nod to The Library of Babel (the FC book didn't need to be in a library, anyway).

Tie ins rarely provide half a storyline like Superman Beyond does. Morrison said it's not an editorial thing.

"this text doesn't really indicate that it wants the reader to ever do that" neither does Borges. Who told you that hypertexts come with instructions? There's 2 orders, panel order and chronological order. The chronological order is alternates between 3 periods in the panel order. So, to enhance the experience, you can read in chronological order. I have no idea where you got the idea that hypertext forces readers to read in more than one order... or that hypertexts come with instructions (you might be confusing them with flow charts). I don't think you are visualizing right what hypertext or printed hypertext does, go for a little first hand experience, check conventional examples (unles is pdf, non digital ones, of course).

I'm ware of the Orion thing. He mentions him, but why would he be shooting him and on the same direction Superman was? You might be right, but it doesn't change the point I was making. And by the way, I forgot to mention, yeah, the Levitz paradigm, might make this light form of hypertext a bit common in comics. Te difference with Morrison is that I see a deliberated game of it, like TGOTFP. Borges' short story used it to make the reader feel labyrinths Morrison in FC to reflect chaos and space-time collapse. Although he Morrison is not reinventing the wheel, he is brilliant in his use of Borges themes and gets ahead of the game by mastering the use of hypertext.

I overestimated how much is the printed hypertext exclusive to Morrison. If you read the way the way Borges used hypertext in the narrative TGOTFP (the short story, not the fictional book), you'll see that it it's not really that elaborated. It actually requires less back-and-forth than Final Crisis, but more than the other Borges works or detective fiction (I never moved much with Holmes). So I think Final Crisis is over qualified.

[tony ingram]

Leo Baxendale wrote Marvelman.

He should have done!

I'm glad we've got comments like this instead of another 4,000 word essay on hypertext that's been copied from around the net.

Still totally inaccurate, though.

[T Hedge Coke]

Why'm I doing this to myself? (Don't answer. It'll just depress us all.)

I see how you mistook the death-then-alive-thing. My bad. The parallel is death in one chapter, alive in the next, no explanation given in the later.

Actually, we're told in Final Crisis that the Omega Beams can drop you in another time and place. And we're given dialogue about the army of batclones they're trying to produce. Both are brief and in passing, but they are present in Final Crisis.

Aside from that, yes, there is some minor presence of hypertextuality with Final Crisis and its tie ins, however it is, as others have pointed out, both minor and not most of the points you think it is. The nonlinear structure is not hypertext. Referencing an event seen in another story is not hypertext. Final Crisis in an example of metatextual work, though, to a significant and intentional degree, being a work that makes comment or causes us to understand another text differently.

And, count me as one of those people who feels Superman Beyond aids the story of Final Crisis but is in no way essential. Knowing the backstory of a few extra monitors and their personal devil isn't necessary even if it is nice to have. Knowing why there's a shipful of Supermen from various realities isn't necessary, considering there are other arks being built and used, bridges to get people out, storage for rescue missions, outposts, et cetera. It's nice to have that information, but it's also nice to see why The Question's crowleyan gematrial value wins her a spot on that ship of the supermen, too, but also not necessary and hence, not bothered with in Final Crisis, itself. (Heck, it adds something if you know that Black Canary's slept with the two make superheroes at the JLA base in FC, and she's awful close to the other female superhero there... but again, it's not necessary, what's necessary is you know they're at a JLA base and they are superheroe and FC tells you that.)

[direction9]

I think you're a bit rusty. In FC#6 we see Batman's corpse, in #7, he's alive. Last Rites, which Morrison himself said is structural along with Submit and and Superman Beyond, reveals how Batman escaped, why was he missing but not killed after Granny got him, and explains the corpse.

the corpse doesn't need an explanation in FC. that's bonus info. morrison said last rites is structural, not essential (he said it's structural? surely that's not the wording used). so no.

hhahahaha. I see how you mistook the death-then-alive-thing. My bad. The parallel is death in one chapter, alive in the next, no explanation given in the later. Happens in the fictional book of TGOTFP and Morrison echoes in Seven Soldiers and FC.

FC gives us a full explanation on how batman is alive in the past at the end. it's in the book. last rites just expands on this. So, yeah there is the explanation right there in FC. This has no relation to anything in Borges.

The labyrinth is described in Garden of the Forking Paths. It's a short story, more even straightforward than FC for a hypertext, and translation and therei is plenty of pdf files online. This paragraph didn't make it to the final cut:

i mean, you never managed to describe final crisis this way.

Tie ins rarely provide half a storyline like Superman Beyond does. Morrison said it's not an editorial thing.

a tie-in providing a crucial chunk of the story still in no way relates to borges or hypertext.

"this text doesn't really indicate that it wants the reader to ever do that" neither does Borges. Who told you that hypertexts come with instructions? There's 2 orders, panel order and chronological order. The chronological order is alternates between 3 periods in the panel order. So, to enhance the experience, you can read in chronological order. I have no idea where you got the idea that hypertext forces readers to read in more than one order... or that hypertexts come with instructions (you might be confusing them with flow charts). I don't think you are visualizing right what hypertext or printed hypertext does, go for a little first hand experience, check conventional examples (unles is pdf, non digital ones, of course).

wrong. Borges provides you with an understanding that the text can be read multiple ways, and that this approach is valid (and intentional). Final Crisis does not really pull this trick. Go look up the Unwritten issue i mentioned. this is as clear as day. In FC 7, there is really only one order that the text is asking to be read in.

I'm ware of the Orion thing. He mentions him, but why would he be shooting him and on the same direction Superman was? You might be right, but it doesn't change the point I was making. And by the way, I forgot to mention, yeah, the Levitz paradigm, might make this light form of hypertext a bit common in comics. Te difference with Morrison is that I see a deliberated game of it, like TGOTFP. Borges' short story used it to make the reader feel labyrinths Morrison in FC to reflect chaos and space-time collapse. Although he Morrison is not reinventing the wheel, he is brilliant in his use of Borges themes and gets ahead of the game by mastering the use of hypertext.

well when you shoot through time, you can aim probably wherever in space you want. he doesn't mention orion, he declares who he's shooting at. he calls his shot. "to make the reader feel labyrinths" is not why anyone does this.

I overestimated how much is the printed hypertext exclusive to Morrison. If you read the way the way Borges used hypertext in the narrative TGOTFP (the short story, not the fictional book), you'll see that it it's not really that elaborated. It actually requires less back-and-forth than Final Crisis, but more than the other Borges works or detective fiction (I never moved much with Holmes). So I think Final Crisis is over qualified.

i don't see how that's possible, because final crisis requires zero of this back and forth.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

Why'm I doing this to myself? (Don't answer. It'll just depress us all.)



Actually, we're told in Final Crisis that the Omega Beams can drop you in another time and place. And we're given dialogue about the army of batclones they're trying to produce. Both are brief and in passing, but they are present in Final Crisis.

Aside from that, yes, there is some minor presence of hypertextuality with Final Crisis and its tie ins, however it is, as others have pointed out, both minor and not most of the points you think it is. The nonlinear structure is not hypertext. Referencing an event seen in another story is not hypertext. Final Crisis in an example of metatextual work, though, to a significant and intentional degree, being a work that makes comment or causes us to understand another text differently.

Appreciate the comment. The mention of the clones rings a bell, I guess it falls back to the Submit category. They would only enhance by clarifying. Their biggest relevance now woul be that Morrison considers them part of the structure. But that doesn't hold as much water, since I kinda consider reading the interview cheating. However, remember that a situation like this is also described in Ts'ui Pên's book and there was really no need to show a corpse wearing the costume (how did it got there? what, Superman missed the other bunch?), added to the similarities of the Limbo Library book, this makes a good case to claim a Garden nod.

Edit: In addition to the nod to the "resurrected" hero of Ts'ui's book, I just noted the simile with Borges' "Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain" in which a fictional book "The God of the Labyrinth" is a so-so mystery novel in which the author hints at the end that the solution of the mystery was wrong, so that the writer has to go back to other chapters to figure out the real culprit. I find it similar in that, yes, as you pointed, you have a bit of information to be aware of the clones, but it's not as loud as Superman holding Batman's corpse in a way that evokes Supergirl's death in COIE. It's the end of #7 that, to regular people (I'm aware that Direction9 knew the corpse was a clone the moment he saw it) makes people go back to find the clone explanation. Keep in mind that Grant orikinally didn't want to show Bruce alive, that was one of the few instances of editorial interference that he recognizes.

I see Final Crisis a bit more hypertextual than in Garden. We disagree somewhat on nonlinear structure, agree on reference (unless needed to make sense out of the plot on a general level), agree on metatextuality. Your comments are welcomed.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

the corpse doesn't need an explanation in FC. that's bonus info. morrison said last rites is structural, not essential (he said it's structural? surely that's not the wording used). so no.



FC gives us a full explanation on how batman is alive in the past at the end. it's in the book. last rites just expands on this. So, yeah there is the explanation right there in FC. This has no relation to anything in Borges.



i mean, you never managed to describe final crisis this way.



a tie-in providing a crucial chunk of the story still in no way relates to borges or hypertext.



wrong. Borges provides you with an understanding that the text can be read multiple ways, and that this approach is valid (and intentional). Final Crisis does not really pull this trick. Go look up the Unwritten issue i mentioned. this is as clear as day. In FC 7, there is really only one order that the text is asking to be read in.



well when you shoot through time, you can aim probably wherever in space you want. he doesn't mention orion, he declares who he's shooting at. he calls his shot. "to make the reader feel labyrinths" is not why anyone does this.



i don't see how that's possible, because final crisis requires zero of this back and forth.

I'm not wrong about Borges. The author in the introduction of the anthology warns the readers about the elucitating efforts required. However, the story alone, doesn't explaing how to read itself, only about how to interpret Ts'ui Pên's book (which has a different sort of hypertextuality than the short story containing it).

I read somewhere from some guy that there are two types of people (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, anyone?), there are difference people, and there are sameness people. Facing similar objects or situation, do you focus on the similarities or the differences? I don't believe this is any official classification at all, but it makes sense and might come in handy to illustrate my point. Neither type is better than the other, but it might explain our perception problem. I, likely along the "Morrison's-stuff-is-ikea" (some enjoy it some not) guys focus on the differences, while others just perceive that it's awesome and move on. I see a lot more hypertextuality in Morrison's work than in the average. Just as I perceive it to be more metafictional (self referential, 4th wall, fiction-within-fiction examples), pastiche (mixes genres), deconstructivist (pushes the way they almost to a breaking point), postmodern (all of the above and then some) or allegorical than the rest, I perceive it to be more hypertextual. Every characteristic to a different degree, according to the work. While I don't believe you're unfamiliar to any of that and more, in general, I get the impression that you're a good-is-good, bad-is-bad type of guy. Seeing someone going from corpse to alive in the past without explanation, as you said doesn't shake you enough to go back and see what happened. Your description of the way yo do things inicate that you have great attention, without being a detail guy, you rather focus on the big pic (good for leadership, if you ask me). This is a good explanation on our difference of perceptions.

And this is the core of it, perception. I'm sure, give or take, the most involved in this discussion have all seen the same material, and still see it different. At this point, I don't think you lack knowledge, just that you see a different shade of gray. I see it very hypertextual, David Faust , surely does, googling <"Final Crisis" metatextual> sure provides a good number of guys claiming the same since 2008 have been claiming similar stuff to different degrees on forms and blogs (along with ergodic, fractal and holografic claims for different works), then you have the coulple of "yeah, a little" from a couple of posters here, and finally you'd be the opposite. Right now, I see all as valid perceptions.

[Karl O'Neill]

This is what happens when you don't award Borges the Nobel Prize in Literature, he comes back to haunt us all!

[direction9]

I'm not wrong about Borges. The author in the introduction of the anthology warns the readers about the elucitating efforts required. However, the story alone, doesn't explaing how to read itself, only about how to interpret Ts'ui Pên's book (which has a different sort of hypertextuality than the short story containing it).

I read somewhere from some guy that there are two types of people (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, anyone?), there are difference people, and there are sameness people. Facing similar objects or situation, do you focus on the similarities or the differences? I don't believe this is any official classification at all, but it makes sense and might come in handy to illustrate my point. Neither type is better than the other, but it might explain our perception problem. I, likely along the "Morrison's-stuff-is-ikea" (some enjoy it some not) guys focus on the differences, while others just perceive that it's awesome and move on. I see a lot more hypertextuality in Morrison's work than in the average. Just as I perceive it to be more metafictional (self referential, 4th wall, fiction-within-fiction examples), pastiche (mixes genres), deconstructivist (pushes the way they almost to a breaking point), postmodern (all of the above and then some) or allegorical than the rest, I perceive it to be more hypertextual. Every characteristic to a different degree, according to the work. While I don't believe you're unfamiliar to any of that and more, in general, I get the impression that you're a good-is-good, bad-is-bad type of guy. Seeing someone going from corpse to alive in the past without explanation, as you said doesn't shake you enough to go back and see what happened. Your description of the way yo do things inicate that you have great attention, without being a detail guy, you rather focus on the big pic (good for leadership, if you ask me). This is a good explanation on our difference of perceptions.

And this is the core of it, perception. I'm sure, give or take, the most involved in this discussion have all seen the same material, and still see it different. At this point, I don't think you lack knowledge, just that you see a different shade of gray. I see it very hypertextual, David Faust , surely does, googling <"Final Crisis" metatextual> sure provides a good number of guys claiming the same since 2008 have been claiming similar stuff to different degrees on forms and blogs (along with ergodic, fractal and holografic claims for different works), then you have the coulple of "yeah, a little" from a couple of posters here, and finally you'd be the opposite. Right now, I see all as valid perceptions.

in other words.................
in some universe you're right about something.

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

This is what happens when you don't award Borges the Nobel Prize in Literature, he comes back to haunt us all!

He's either possessing Morrison or me.

How famous is he in Brit and US culture? Other than Morrison (Doom Patrol if we can't agree on the other stuff), I don't remember other homages. On top of my mind, Paranoia Agent, Sophie's World, Sandman (Destiny has a labyrinth realm and a book about the universe), have that fiction-crosses-to-reality theme, which feels similar to Borges' concerns, even if in his work fiction never really crosses. However, that's just theme, I don't remember many pop-cult references.

in other words.................
in some universe you're right about something.

Easy, master of truth. No need to attack. You have your view, I have my detractors (none of them Morrison detractors); they don't have to match, but I feel comfortable about where I stand online.

Edit: Previous answer was engaging.

[BillyN831]

I enjoy Moore more because of his themes. Does anyone like Morrison more? Why?

[Rafa-Rivas-2099]

Mostly the themes an concepts. I also appreciate that he rarely does character derailment.