By now I’ve learned that Grant Morrison is positively out of his mind. A chaos magician unwinding deadpan on his allucinations, how they affected his comics, and how comics affected both his life and his hangouts with the gods. All this in a heavy Scottish accent, dig it.
Apparently this miniseries from the early nineties is more personal than the superhero stuff. This is Morrison’s own Death miniseries, well before Gaiman ever started writing Sandman. In fact this is Vertigo before Vertigo, since it was published by DC Comics in 1991, two years before the launching of the Vertigo imprint.
Morrison’s story is the kind of plot whose pieces fit into place at the end. Book One is a total mess in nonchronological order… and yet very intriguing. Wiki also mentions continuity, which I’m totally unaware of. Most importantly however, this is just brilliant. Very personal as I said: a cosmic vision of heaven and hell, death and the afterlife, chaos and order, predestination and free will; and of why binary opposites are shite.
Quite literate, as usual with Morrison. As when Kid mentions in passing, while flipping The Divine Comedy: “You know, hell’s nothing like this!” (looking particularly at Doré’s Charon).
And Morrison also loves to quote a pop song.
The trip to Hell looks actually like a black heavy psychedelic hallucinated jam gone awry… (and I’m not spoiling anything you haven’t read on the backcover).
Accompanying the writer is Duncan Fegredo, whose drawings are amazing; often they’re organized as double panels, and they jump out of the page–or rather suck you in. Vivid, nervous, acid, majestic, always inventive, always equal to the task.
€9 I’m very happy of having spent.
“A crazy, mixed-up bonsai wants to live forever”.
“That’s shit. That’s total shit”.
Grant Morrison
Kid Eternity (1991)
paintings by Duncan Fegredo
pp. 144, $15
Dc Comics/Vertigo, 2006
Giudizio: 4/5.
