Comic book review: The Multiversity #1- Oh crap, this was no fun at all

Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Ivan Reis
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 20th August 2014

Reading comic books shouldn’t be a chore, it should be fun, but this book was a convoluted, tiresome, joyless chore from beginning to end. I had a quick chat with John, the owner of my local comic book shop (https://www.facebook.com/TheIncredibleComicShop), before I bought this book, and he warned me that it was no good, and by God was he right.

The book begins with a focus on an insular loser living in a little bedroom with a pile of comic books, sadly discarded childhood toys and a couple of packets of prescription drugs for depressive illnesses. Is this kind of person that writer Grant Morrison sees as buying his comic books? Sadly, it looks that way. There’s a brief mention of a comic book that curses it’s readers, just like the video tapes in that Japanese horror movie (The Ring) that was a big deal over a decade ago, but this really shouldn’t be the creative basis for a new DC comic-book event in 2014. Is this all they have? Geesh, I hope not.

This is another comic set in a no-time zone that could be anywhere between 1980 and 2014. There’s the usual comic book nod to our times with a computer console and what looks like a web-chat on a Internet forum, but make no mistake about it, this is a comic that reads very much like something that would have bored and confused me in the early 1980’s. There is nothing of our times here, and no attempt to even deal with any of the issues and concerns in a contemporary setting. It’s just another silly comic, and that’s not enough for me now.

The needlessly confusing narrative follows the comic book fan as he turns into a laughable superhero, who is more comedy figure than serious protagonist, and he’s joined in his adventures by his toy monkey in a pirate outfit. I’m not joking; this is what actually happens in the book. What the Hell is going on here? Is the guy hallucinating due to a combination of loneliness and over indulgence in his prescription meds? Probably, but I don’t really care. The character is paper-thin. There’s nothing here for me to relate to, no reason whatsoever for me to care.

As the book progresses it begins to read like the latest Sandman Overture book in that it’s about collapsing universes, but it’s nowhere near as interesting and the art is vastly inferior to the excellent work being done by J.H Williams III. It’s not bad art, it’s just blah, uninspired, exactly like the script of the book.

The different characters that are introduced in these collapsing universes come across as the sort of piss take that you would see on an episode of South Park. I couldn’t take any of them seriously, and I couldn’t force myself to care about any of them either.

The main man, apart from the drugged up comic book loser, is a black Superman. He’s also the president in his particular reality, and he looks suspiciously like Barack Obama. That’s a really dated thing to do in comic books now. Perhaps when Obama first came into power it would have worked, but not now. The real life Obama has been exposed as a globalist puppet and lying war criminal piece of crap, so having him portrayed as a comic book hero in August 2014 looks completely ridiculous.

I’m really struggling to say anything else about this book as it has a very noticeable hollowness at its core. There’s nothing there; there’s really nothing there at all. It’s just silly, and boring, and not that interesting and it has one joke about ‘cartoon physics’ that comes across as an awkward attempt at injecting some fun into it, but it’s really desperate because it really isn’t any fun at all.

John warned me about this book, telling me that it would be confusing, but I told him that I was okay with that as I only had three other books to read this week, and that I’d take my time and read it over a couple of times. That’s not going to happen. No way am I going to be reading this joyless book a second time over. One read was a chore, and if I have to read it again I’m going to suddenly fall out of love with comics and never want to read another one of them ever again.

I think I should listen a bit more to the wise words of John the next time I go into the shop, because he was absolutely right about this book. He told me that it was a confusing mess, and that’s exactly what it is.

Avoid this book. Don’t waste your time and cash on it. I hate to be so mean about it, but you’d think that a writer of Grant Morrison’s tenure, experience and reputation would know how to put together an enjoyable book in his sleep by now. I really enjoyed his work on Batman & Robin, but this Multiversity book is no fun at all. What he has done here is throw up a generic 1980’s child-lite confusing multi-universe bore-fest that is lacking in inspiration, completely unappealing and near enough unreadable. I'm really surprised that it's as bad as it is. What a bloody shame, Grant Morrison is usually a lot better than this.

Rating: 2/10