Grant Morrison began working for DC Comics in 1988, and has more than earned their reputation as one of the publisher’s modern legends. Morrison is known for everything from stellar team runs to mindbending creator-owned masterpieces to brilliant explorations of DC’s greatest characters, telling stories that connect with fans on multiple levels. Morrison has worked on DC’s greatest stories for almost forty years, and as such pretty much got to do whatever they wanted while they were at DC. In the late ’00s, Morrison was working on Batman and got to write Final Crisis, one of the greatest event comics ever, and started hyping their next big DC project, a story called The Multiversity. It was meant to explore the all-new DC Multiverse, but the tumultuous years for DC at the end of the ’00s put The Multiversity on hold until 2014. When it finally dropped, readers realized what they had waited so long for — a pitch perfect comic experience from Morrison. It’s a groundbreaking work and doesn’t get the praise it deserves.
The Multiversity is a two issue story starring Superjudge – created at the end of Final Crisis – Earth-22 Superman, and heroes from across the Multiverse banding together at the House of Heroes to battle against the Gentry, a universe destroying force unlike anything anyone had ever seen. From there, readers got a series of seven one-shots — The Society of Super-Heroes, The Just, Pax Americana, Thunderworld Adventures, The Multiversity Guidebook, Mastermen, and Ultra Comics — that tell stories from each Earth, all connected by comic books. Morrison is known for their statements about superheroes, but The Multiversity is a statement about comics themselves, both as a medium and as objects.
There is a lot that can be said with The Multiversity. The art in each book is brilliant, for example. Morrison worked with Ivan Reis, Chris Sprouse, Ben Oliver, Frank Quitely, Jim Lee, Doug Mahnke, and a veritable army of the best artists ever in The Multiversity Guidebook. The stories are Morrison at their finest. Books like Pax Americana and Thunderworld Adventures are two of the greatest single issue comics of all time. However, what really comes across, what is most interesting is the way The Multiversity talks about comics themselves.
The Multiversity is a guidebook to the universe, published in comic form. Morrison is a person who believes in the reality of fiction — basically, that since we created it, it is real. We have created a thoughtform called the DC Multiverse, and for almost ninety years, we have been populating it with stories. We give those stories physical matter with comics. Every panel is a window into another universe, and each window is brought to life by our attention to it. We let this story enter us as much as we enter it, allowing its ideas into the only place that actually matters — our minds. The flow of time in the comic is controlled by us. We can open the comic to any page. We can pause the story to look back at what happened before. We can skip to the end and find out the whole thing ends. We have created a universe. We have given it cellulose and ink flesh. We interact with it, and our interaction with it powers us. Some of us give our lives to it.
This the main idea of The Multiversity — that comics are a universe, one that we create and interact with. They are our guides to the multiverse. Throughout each of the one-shots, comics are revealing the existence of the multiverse to the characters. Comics are traveling through The Multiversity, informing everyone that the multiverse exists, much like they do in the real world. Morrison keeps up this idea of the comic book as the window to another world throughout the series, but the place where they truly pound home the idea of what a comic is with Ultra Comics. Ultra Comics is referenced throughout the story as the “cursed comic”. The narrative involves Ultra, a character powered by the imagination of the readers literally, meant to battle a hostile thought form that has infested the Multiverse. Ultra Comics really impresses upon the reader the concept of the comic as a physical entity, one that is magically brought to life by us. It is a brilliant comic, using Ultra versus zombies in a post-apocalyptic New York and ultimately tackling one of the Gentry as a way to talk abotu what comics are.
The Mutliversity is a bravura work throughout, but Ultra Comics is the heart of the whole thing. Morrison introduces many ideas throughout The Multiversity, and each of those ideas are weaved into Ultra Comics. Ultra Comics presents the idea of comics as universe, of comics as living entity. It’s a viral idea, one that gets into your head after you read The Multiversity. These cursed comics get into your soul, and suddenly, you’re thinking about how much you interact with the comics, and how the DC Multiverse lives in your head. You’re been infected, just like The Multiversity told you.
I love comic books. I think that comic books are the best storytelling medium because we interact with them. We give them life. I’ve always had this idea somewhere in my head, but I never was able to really articulate it until I read The Multiversity. I do buy into Morrison’s belief on fiction as magical reality, and The Multiversity helped give the words to describe why I thought that way. That’s the power of the book.
You don’t have to buy into Morrison’s ideas about fiction to enjoy The Multiversity and be changed by it. Superhero comics are an amazing form of entertainment, but it’s hard to find anything actually unique. The Multiversity is actually a unique work. Like many of Morrison’s best works, it works on multiple levels, and is also a love letter to comics as a thing. Morrison loves these little portals to the multiverse, just like we do, and it’s apparent on every page of The Multiversity. This is a brilliant work, and we should all read it once a year.
Grant Morrison began working for DC Comics in 1988, and has more than earned their reputation as one of the publisher’s modern legends. Morrison is known for everything from stellar team runs to mindbending creator-owned masterpieces to brilliant explorations of DC’s greatest characters, telling stories that connect with fans on multiple levels. Morrison has worked Read More