Thursday, May 7, 2009

Grant Morrison's The Multiversity - More Details Revealed

In last week's issue of Wizard, Grant Morrison revealed he was working on a new project that would explore and flesh out the Multiverse called The Multiversity. While I already posted about what little information was given last week, Comic Book Resources managed to get a hold of Morrison and pry a few more juicy tidbits from him in an interview yesterday, which prompted another round of thoughts on my part. Hit the jump to find out more.


Growing Pains

First major detail to come out of the interview with CBR was that the series of one-shots has gone from seven one-shots to eight, with the new issue acting as the self-titled Multiversity book-end featuring characters and story strands from the other seven. Morrison described it as "kind of a big team book".


DC's Post-Blackest Night Event?

Continuing with the discussion of the format, CBR asked if The Multiversity would be DC's next big event after The Blackest Night, to which Morrison responded,
It was never planned to be that way but it may well be. It’s getting bigger by the day. It’s something that I think would work that way.

Regardless of what you may have thought of Final Crisis, it was a huge financial success for DC and was it's top seller with every issue. While not a direct sequel, The Multiversity is by arguably their top creator and is shaping up to be a spiritual sequel or, at least, followup to Final Crisis. Unless DC has something else planned, I could easily see this series expanding into another Seven Soldiers-like event, but with some advertising and push from DC behind it.


52 II?

Continuing with the trend, when asked why not do 52 one-shots for every Earth, Morrison replied with,
That would be crazy. But I’d love to. That would be fantastic if I could do every one of these worlds. A lot of them weren’t devised so some of these were kind of places I came up with.
He continued on talking about how the original plan was for himself, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid and Geoff Johns to each explore the Multiverse post-52 with their own Multiverse book, which prompts me to wonder why DC doesn't just tap these creators to ignore Countdown and do a proper sequel to 52 with this Multiversity concept.

Sure, Mark Waid is out of the picture, but Rucka and Johns are still very much involved with DC and could be brought on to do several issues or one-shots for The Multiversity and expand it into a proper event that explores a large chunk of the new Multiverse, which has been woefully neglected since its creation. Depending on how it goes, they could do a full fledged 52 II weekly with a different one-shot each week or follow whatever this Multiversity team Morrison has devised as they travel around the Multiverse.


Planned Books

With much of the formatting out of the way, Morrison was free to describe most of the Earths he plans to use in The Multiversity and they are as follows:

Earth-4 - Charlton Comics/Watchmen Earth. He described it in much more detail in the Wizard interview, which I discussed here.

Earth-5 - Fawcett Comics/Marvel Family Earth. He described it in much more detail in the Wizard interview, which I discussed here.

Earth-10 - Quality Comics/Nazi Earth. This is the home of Master Man, who is the Nazi Superman, and features some of the Final Crisis characters, like Overman.

Earth-20 - An Earth I speculated would be used, this is the home of the Society of Superheroes and other pulp heroes, like the Doc Savage/Dr Fate mash-up, Doc Fate, the Mighty Atom, the Immortal Man, and even an Abin Sur Green Lantern. Morrison described it as a "1940s retro thing".

Earth-Eight - Morrison described another Earth, which he stated had no designation yet, as an Earth featuring all the nineties characters, like Connor Hawke, and referred to them as "media brats". The old Earth-Eight, which is now the home for the Marvel analogues post-52, used to house all the legacy characters, such as Kyle Rayner and Huntress, and sounds an awful lot like this undesignated Earth Morrison talks about.

Earth-Prime - Not much was mentioned about this one, but he spoke about Earth-Prime and how there will be a haunted horror comic called Ultraa the Unknown, which will also be featured in The Multiversity issue.

Earth-Obama Superman - The final book was left unknown or may have been mashed in with the other details. He mentioned the black president Superman from Final Crisis #7, but it sounded more like he would be featured in the books and not an actual focus. If this is the final book, it is for an undesignated Earth (it wasn't listed what Earth it was in Final Crisis either). As Earth-38 and -39 are the only two Earths we know nothing about in the current 52, I assume one will be used for this black analogue Earth and the other for the new Earth-Eight.

The Multiversity - As I mentioned above, this is the new, eighth book in the series and will be a big team book drawing on the various plots from the other issues.


Thoughts?

What say you all? Would you be interested in what started out as a small, self-contained series of one-shots ballooning into a major event? Would you like to see other creators step up and tackle some random Earths? Are you happy with the Earths chosen so far? Sound off on these questions or anything relevant in the comments below.


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14 comments:

Andrenn said... 1

While I've never really like the multi-verse, I admit, this book is getting my attention.

collectededitions said... 2

It seems some days that the the current DC Comics editorial team receives nothing but bad press (despite what I believe are a number of progressive moves for the comics company), and yet I think the real proof of DC's current success is in the creators that choose to work with them.

For every Mark Waid and Chuck Dixon distancing themselves from DC, Geoff Johns sticks around, and Grant Morrison -- even despite seeming editorial interference with and mishandling of Final Crisis -- still has long-term plans for a new, increasingly larger series with DC. Neither Johns nor Morrison are stupid people -- for Morrison to plan Multiversity with DC for 2010, DC must be doing something right.

Anonymous said... 3

Not particularly excited yet... there was no exposition in Final Crisis, and if Morrison continues with the same style of messy storytelling I won't be buying this.

MONSTRUSS said... 4

you know, I'd kinda rather see Multiversity in the same format as Morrison's other awesome miniseries, Seven Soldiers of Victory. no need to make it into some huge ugly event that meshes poorly with in continuity books.

Anonymous said... 5

in my eyes, anything Morrison does is gold (including Final Crisis) so i will be all over this..

Matt Duarte said... 6

I'm still weirded out by the banner.

Anonymous said... 7

obama superman, lame

ShadowWing Tronix said... 8

Yeah, please tell me that's not the final name choice.

Otherwise, I wouldn't mind seeing Earth-5, if only to hope the Billy Batson series isn't the only place that hasn't screwed over Mary Marvel.

Mike Haseloff said... 9

This is spectacular news!
Another year is too far! Final Crisis Aftermath, not enough!

Daryl Tay said... 10

I started comics in 1997, way past the original Crisis and thus have no knowledge and/or love for the multiverse, and frankly everything that's been done with it so far isn't to my taste. So no, I'm not excited about it and no, I won't be picking it up. I'd rather they just focus on making their current books good (JLA anyone?), rather than starting new books and worlds.

Kelson said... 11

But Daryl, you had Elseworlds. They're essentially the same thing, only cataloged.

You Have Lost The Game said... 12

Um, letting one supremely overrated and guaranteed soon to be hated writer play out the extremely limited number of parallel worlds is the act of retards. They should just leave the Earths be, and let the smartest people in the room (that would be the fans) do the heavy lifting for them in working out what belongs on what Earth in the years to come until DC is sold.

Anonymous said... 13

ahi dice earth prime

Anonymous said... 14

hay alguna fecha de estreno para multiversity si este año sale o el proximo

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