Derailed

I had an eventful Wednesday at Big Monkey where I got the World's Hardest Kick to the Crotch. One of the main inspirations for starting this blog told me his dislike of Grant Morrison was comparable to my dislike of Chris Claremont . Kick to crotch.

I was in shock for the rest of the day and most of this morning. There's only one way to shake off that kind of pain.

Reviewing one of the best damn Morrison stories ever printed.

The story opens with a Kree interdimensional exploratory group trying to pilot their damaged dimension-hopping starship through parallel universes. That's them there. It's not looking good, what with their epiphany engines(which run on pure belief!) failing and various parts exploding and it seems some shady character is blocking their distress calls. As they plummet to the last parallel, Merree, the redhead in the crew shot, calls out to her love.


It does not end well.


The only survivor, Noh-Varr, is now held by Midas a pimp version of Iron Man, who not only scavenges the universe for profit, but also exposes himself to cosmic radiation for kicks. Noh-Varr is to be dissected and sold to the rich and creepy. To which Noh-Varr has but one reply:


Dissection is not enough for geniune creeps like Midas. Noh-Varr has to be tortured and examined first, which brings up these interesting facts about Noh-Varr's physiology.
1. His pain signals are rerouted to his auditory cortex. Pain is literally music to his ears.

2. His bodily fluids are nanoactive and all that saliva he's been throwing about is dangerous. Especially to his torturer who now sees Noh as his wife and lets Noh out. Noh's not ungenerous, leaving the confused a gift which .


3. Noh-Varr's triple helix DNA has insect traits, making him super strong, super fast and able to pull off crazy shit like this before the Wachowskis put Reloaded on paper .



Noh makes his escape by stealing one of my Midas' fighter jets and giving Midas one last "f#ck you". Yeah, that line about turning things to his advantage pops up a lot. He reunites with what remains of his ship, which teleported away after it's Plex Consciousness, a mini Supreme Intelligence, was reinstalled by Midas' techs, and makes a vow to fix this "primary-5 planet on the Kree-Vann scale of prime urban barbarism" . His crew(and girl) were killed after all. But what the hell is "vrrp"?



Having grown up without the insanity of Morrison's run of Animal Man or Doom Patrol (I didn't even pick up Skrull Kill Krew, the hell was I thinking?!), I had no idea of the scope of Morrison's ingenuity. Engines that run because you believe they can and rerouting physical stimuli to other senses are concepts that you didn't see in mainstream books. Jones' artwork is so detail oriented, he doesn't take the easy road with backgrounds and poses his characters well. He also has a firm grasp of facial expression and form, so not even random characters look alike. And I'm 97% sure Noh-Varr is meant to look like Johnny Depp, but that's neither here nor there.

What is is that this is an explosive (there were many) start to a great series that has action, angst, daddy issues, cosmic radiation and all the great things about Marvel. Topped off with the angry young man whose series is not really named after him(he's never referred to as Marvel Boy).

Stay tuned.