Grant Morrison Trifecta
True creative genius comes from the heart of insanity. Lacking that fractured existential viewpoint? Another way to rend your own frame of reality is with the power of story. The best stories for enhancing your creative muscles are the genre-breakers; historical-magic realism, modernized fables, absurdist fiction, or metafictional ‘fourth wall’ modes.
Grant Morrison pours kerosene on the ‘fourth wall’ and lights it on fire. Then he laughs insanely at that silly perplexed look on our faces. And we thank him for this, as we should, because in those moments of confused delight are the origins of understanding and learning. Each of these titles below are great examples of Morrison’s storytelling abilities. I claim no responsibility if you are sucked into purchasing years of back issues, but you will thank me for it later.
Animal Man #1
Doom Patrol #1
The Invisibles #1
…Something New
We’ve had something old, now for something new (find your own something blue) Another metafictional tale, this time from Studio 407, Quantum Adventures where “a team of explorers brave the uncharted worlds of fiction to correct anomalies in pop culture”. Seems like something worth following. Studio 407 has a cadre of interesting stories with great art.
Warehouse of Indy Publishers
For those of us financially challenged, the move from $4 paper comics to cheaper PDF comics is a welcome change. Although the larger publisher’s aren’t quite ready to make this move (minus Marvel’s archives) it is a great way for the independent publishers to get their work into fans hands…err…computers. The group behind DriveThruRPG saw how successful lower costs PDFs of gaming manuals were and made the next logical step towards comics. They have a large list of free comics available for the inquisitive. If you find a title you like, pick up the other issues for cheap.
