The Multiversity: Pax Americana: Director's Cut #1

The Multiversity #4

by Grant Morrison, Ivan Reis (Penciller), Joe Prado (Cover Art)

The first monumental issue of THE MULTIVERSITY is back in this new Director’s Cut Edition, presenting Ivan Reis’s pencil artwork! Also included are preliminary character designs by Morrison and Reis, and more!

Genres: Comics, Superheroes, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels, Comic Book, Science Fiction, Mystery

50 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 19, 2014

About the author

Grant Morrison has been working with DC Comics for twenty five years, after beginning their American comics career with acclaimed runs on ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL. Since then they have written such best-selling series as JLA, BATMAN and New X-Men, as well as such creator-owned works as THE INVISIBLES, SEAGUY, THE FILTH, WE3 and JOE THE BARBARIAN. In addition to expanding the DC Universe through titles ranging from the Eisner Award-winning SEVEN SOLDIERS and ALL-STAR SUPERMAN to the reality-shattering epic of FINAL CRISIS, they have also reinvented the worlds of the Dark Knight Detective in BATMAN AND ROBIN and BATMAN, INCORPORATED and the Man of Steel in The New 52 ACTION COMICS.

In their secret identity, Morrison is a "counterculture" spokesperson, a musician, an award-winning playwright and a chaos magician. They are also the author of the New York Times bestseller Supergods, a groundbreaking psycho-historic mapping of the superhero as a cultural organism. They divide their time between their homes in Los Angeles and Scotland.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

∞ systems of 8 ∞

∞ (1)

an ode to Watchmen; a deconstruction of Watchmen; a repudiation of Watchmen; a new Watchmen; an original Watchmen - based on the Charlton characters that inspired Watchmen and created old-new Charlton characters that now in turn inspire new-old Watchmen characters; a moebius strip; an ouroboros; a circle.



∞ (2)

Grant Morrison versus Alan Moore? all things move outward and then back inward versus all things inevitably move downward? open systems versus fixed systems? light versus dark, colors versus void? white dwarf versus black hole? are Morrison and Moore enemies? or are they different sides of the same coin? but neither coins nor colors matter in the end: I've learned from them both.



∞ (3)

I read the comic from start to finish. then I read it from finish to start. then I picked and chose and read it as I saw fit. I followed one narrative into another, doubling back, rereading. I turned the page upside down and sideways. I made it what I wanted it to be. it was a puzzle and then a story and then a puzzle again. a mystery box full of different things that changed depending on how I opened it.



∞ (4)

Jonny wrote on November 19, 2014 at 2:59 PM that "I have been waiting my whole life to read this comic" and his comment pretty much sums up my feelings as well.



∞ (5)

interesting articles on this comic:
1. http://comicbook.com/2014/11/19/pax-a...
2. http://www.avclub.com/article/morriso...
3. http://comicbook.com/2014/11/25/pax-a...
4. http://www.cbr.com/exploring-morrison...
5. http://www.multiversitycomics.com/ann...
6. http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/mu...
7. http://comicsalliance.com/multiversit...

and a guide to Charlton comic characters:
8. http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/c/...



∞ (6)

Violence begets violence and is not the path to change. this is Morrison's thesis in Pax Americana. it has always been his thesis. and yet Morrison loves to display violent tableaux. the ripping apart of bodies and sprays of blood and beloved characters killed horribly, in full color, for hungry eyes to devour. but he despises violence! he sees it as a form of entropy: a way to not make things happen that should happen. alas, Morrison is a hypocrite, as is the rest of the world including me and you and everyone we know.



∞ (7)

:Morrison positions Marvel comics as the death of comics, as a symptom of the world dying.
:in this Multiversity, the Marvel worlds must be destroyed first.
:Morrison has always been a DC Silver Age kind of guy, that age is his golden age.
:the purity, the fellowship, the doing of good for no other reason than to do good.
:the classic icons... the trinity of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman... and Green Lantern too, his past and future selves.
:Pax Americana has been misinterpreted as ending in darkness and pessimism.
:Captain Adam shall return!
:no matter how bleak its story and the world itself may get, Pax Americana does not believe in fixed systems and closed circles: his systems and his circles are always open.



∞ (8)

a circle. an ouroboros. a moebius strip. old/new Watchmen characters inspired by new/old Charlton characters that are the Watchmen characters that were once Charlton characters - the orginal Watchmen. a new Watchmen. a repudiation of Watchmen. a deconstruction of Watchmen. an ode to Watchmen.



∞ an infinity of 8 ∞

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Multiversity: Pax Americana #1 was built for comics criticism (and that’s just what it’ll do!).

This is the kind of issue where you can really - and I mean REALLY - go page by page and completely drown yourself in praise; it is, on a technical and visual level, arguably the best single issue of the year and the standalone reason why anyone was excited about The Multiversity at all.

It’s also another feather in the cap for Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, a creative team who can’t seem to make something together that’s bad. All-Star Superman, WE3, Batman & Robin, and now Pax Americana - a special kind of magic happens when these two join forces, and it happens in this issue once more.

Alright, what am I talking about? It’s Earth-4 and the President has been assassinated by a superhero. Backwards. This entire issue is also using Watchmen pieces to tell a new story about saving the world.

Watchmen? Yeah. Morrison and Quitely make no bones about where a lot of this issue comes from. And it’s a fun time, playing “spot the Watchmen” reference. The panels of the first page are laid out in the same way as the first page of Watchmen, there’s the zoom in close up of the blood trickling down onto a circular symbol.

There’s the Comedian facsimile, the Dr Manhattan type who does the thing where he deconstructs something and puts it back together again, and now he’s in the chamber where he gets his powers! There’s Silk Spectre and Sally Jupiter talking to one another, there’s Rorshach, there’s Nite Owl, etc. etc. Obviously they’re not actually those characters but they are riffs on them.

Morrison is at his most cerebrally playful, structuring his saving the world storyline backwards and forwards, jumping about in time, having three different storylines playing at the same time across two pages, throwing in seeming non-sequiturs and inviting the reader to figure out the mystery of the Yellowjacket case - the pieces are all apparently there, just jumbled up and out of order. Or are they? Is Morrison just asking us to construct our own story, our own conspiracy with the details, or to figure out his? Is it a commentary on conspiracies - are we complicit in a conspiracy of our making?

And Frank Quitely - well, remember I said “drowning in praise”? I‘ll try not to go too overboard here but I will say that this issue is Quitely’s claim to being his generation’s best comic book artist and possibly the most exciting one working today. I saw a BBC documentary on Quitely fairly recently and it’s apparent how dedicated he is to comics - he isn’t the swiftest draughtsman but that’s because of how much he wants the finished article to be the best it can be.

He also talked about other job offers he’d had, like becoming a games designer and making scads more cash that way. But he declined to work on comics. That single-minded dedication to his chosen medium is why you get comics like Pax Americana and why this issue is going to be appearing on a lot of “Best of the Year” lists very soon. He’s just incredible and Morrison seems to bring out the best in him, and vice versa.

But I’m not completely in love with this comic - what’s holding me back? It comes down to emotional impact, in that this comic has none, and, because it basically structures itself around having one. It’s why I said it’s technically and visually accomplished, but only that.

The story’s goal is too abstract and corny for me to really connect with: saving the world. Eh. And the characters really aren’t there - you’re too busy thinking about their more famous doubles in Watchmen the whole time you’re seeing them.

There’s also the re-emergence of Morrison’s ideas about time and superheroes, and quite a bit of the comic felt like The Invisibles, like when Peacemaker’s tied to the chair with the trippy backdrop, the idea of violence as a means to peace, and subversive groups going up against The Man. So a lot of the themes felt recycled from past Morrison works. And, like all of the issues in Multiversity so far, you’re left wondering how this all fits together and why Morrison didn’t just opt for a series of standalone issues instead of a loosely related narrative.

Here’s my biggest problem with this issue: for all its accomplishment, at its core, the comic doesn’t say anything profound or meaningful at all.

This issue made me realise that if I had to choose between a comic with heart and a comic with brains, I’d choose heart every time. Though I’d prefer to have both, and I did enjoy having my brain tickled with all the little bits and pieces that make up this Rubik’s cube of a comic, my favourite comics - my favourite art - move me, for better or worse, and this one doesn’t. This comic doesn’t have a pulse - it’s cold and calculated like an equation.

Don’t take that as an anti-recommendation, or a dismissal of the comic as a whole - this comic is absolutely worth reading. I stayed away from specific details not just because there isn’t enough space to write about how much awesomeness there is in this issue - I fully expect a mammoth essay and/or short book on this comic alone sometime in the future - but because I couldn’t do them justice describing, or posting an image, of them here and I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience either.

Read the issue for yourself - it’s totally worth experiencing this strange superhero mystery firsthand. Pax Americana is easily the best part of The Multiversity yet and one of the best put-together comics of the year that’ll have you flipping back and forth re-reading parts to figure out what’s going on, like any good puzzle will; but, like a puzzle, once you’ve completed it, you go to the next, unmoved.

[Jedi JC Daquis · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a technical standpoint, Pax Americana is something you should not miss. The genius in Morrison is manifested here as it is visually appealing - thanks to Quitely's amazing art skill.

There are tons of Watchmen references here. And coming from a Grant Morrison, I believe an equally crazy Alan Moore would approve of this.

I'm excited on how this Multiversity series ends.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Watchmen influence is very clear here. From the panel layouts to the character archetypes. And I ate it all up and wanted more. I think this is the first issue from Multiversity that I've wanted more than 1 issue, and that's down to what Quietly and Morrison do when they they're together.

[D Jella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grant Morrison set his eyes towards duplicating Watchmen in his series Multiversity, and he did it successfully.

If you've been reading any of the other Multiversity comics and getting confused, you are probably going to be a little confused by this one as well. It reads in two directions. The comic starts off with the assassination of the president, and gives you a reverse panel by panel explosion of his jaw; this happens after world wide peace had been declared under the mighty American Empire. With the death of the president, who has a very interesting story you read about, the safety of the world is hanging in the balance.

There's a nice focus on the Question, easy enough for figure out who that is. You get to see how dark and seeded things are through the mind of one of the greatest detectives in the comic industry.

But what I truly enjoyed was the focus on Captain Atom. He's going to be an integral character in story of Multiversity, and he's likely going to make an epic entrance once he joins the crew. You not only get to see him at the tip of his mental magnitude, peering into the existence of everything everywhere, but you also get to see the time it took him to get to that magnitude and what it took.

I really don't want to give too much away. But this comic made it very obvious that Captain Atom is on a whole other level than the rest of the heroes portrayed so far in the Multiverse story. He also isn't hindered by emotions, which made the sanity and morality of the multiverse judge malleable.

I'm really excited to to get to the wrap up of Multiversity. Morrison is really proving that he is more than capable of not only duplicating story lines, but also mixing them up in a way that provides high level of entertainment that your run of the mill duplicates wouldn't.

This Watchmen remake is like listening to a remix of your favorite song, and liking it quite a bit better than the original.

[Ondra Král · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tohle musím ohvězdičkovat zvlášť, protože to bylo prostě boží. Morrison/Quitley a celkově komiksové médium v plné síle.

[Ευθυμία Δεσποτάκη · Rating 5 out of 5]

Οπτικά υπέροχο, χρονικά ανακατεμένο, ερωτικά ασαφές. Δεν κατάλαβα Χρηστό ή Βούδα. Και δε με νοιάζει.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freaking awesome! I have enjoyed the Multiversity series so far, but none of them have really stuck out to me as exceptional until this one!

A parallel to the Watchmen comics, this one takes that series and puts on its own spin. Though I enjoyed that, it is not what made me instantly fall in love with it.

It was really how Morrison, Quitely and Fairbairn play with time and the entire format of comic books. Much as the Watchmen showed what comics could be, this book goes to extremes to show how the medium can do things that film and print alone cannot.

Three prime examples of this are:
1) When we follow the Vice President and his daughter walking down a flight of stair, forcing the reader to read from right to left while the characters comment how "everything goes in reverse."
2) When three separate scenes play out amongst each other over a two page spread. Each scene adding to the ones it is interspersed with.
3) Captain Atom reading a comic book while performing a scientific experiment and commenting "I'm thinking how our universe appears from a higher dimensional perspective. Flat." And then later "I can read your thought balloons" shown, of course, as thought balloons.

Realizing that the majority of the story was told in reverse, I immediately went back and re-read it . . . backwards.

I liked it even better that way.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

With all the potential of the old Charlton characters the best Grant could come up with was to rip-off Watchmen?

Very pretty art and the funky back and forth, multiple -views story telling was really well done and interesting, but the story and characters themselves just did not work.

Maybe I got my hopes up and after decades of neglect and abuse at the hands of DC I thought Grant would do something to remind readers how cool these characters are.
Instead he jams Watchmen into a single issue.

On the bright side, there's way less rape and death in this story.

[Camilo Guerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faltando una pagina para terminarlo, se iba llevando las 5 estrellas...¿que paso?, pues que se termino y lo que nos mostrarón las paginas anteriores quedo como una promesa en nuestra cabeza...¿que sabia Question?,¿Atom estaba muerto?, ¿quien es el asesino?...ah, cuando Grant Morrison es bueno es IMPOSIBLE DE IGUALAR pero las palmas se las lleva un increible Frank Quitely que se marca varias de las mejores paginas de su carrera y eso es mucho decir teniendo en cuenta quien es el mejor artista de comics en activo el dia de hoy .

[A J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever sworn with awe within the first three pages of a comic before. Amazing art and play on 'Watchmen' + Morrison and Quitely's own 'All Star Superman', and I'm sure I'm missing other references.

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing: go find this and read it, and see if it speaks to you, too. I think the great collaborators have a kind of Oliver Stone vibe in this installment of Morrison's Multiversity saga.
Recommended.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is 100% my favorite story out of my Watchmen-associated read. I liked it when it came out even though I don't feel like I ever understood it really; I let it wash over me. I finally have a grasp of what it's saying now, which is that Watchmen is an artistically admirable story while being too confined, too claustrophobic an achievement to let its characters breathe, as opposed to your regular superhero comic which has arcs instead of endings, where characters can grow and change and fracture and split off and so on et cetera; it's ironic that this story, which is a direct criticism of itself and it's style, is so successful because of those points, as the rave reviews of this issue on this website tend to agree; this is likely my favorite story by Morrison since New X-Men, which I guess gets me to my argument that not all superhero stories have to be never ending Mr Morrison. Some stories can end.

All that out of the way, I think it succeeds as a Watchmen property by not being a Watchmen property (but a Charlton one) the same way Watchmen succeeds by not being a Charlton property. The distance skips right over those nagging annoyances Before Watchmen and Doomsday Clock and Watchmen HBO carry, which all try to improve their own stories through using the Watchmen novel but actually just end up making the original novel worse in rewriting it.

Anyway this is truly an accomplishment even if what it's trying to say in a way disregards itself. 40 pages of comics getting across an impressive depth of ideas through an impressive use of style via perfect art by Frank Quietely. It is the only Watchmen media I will return to besides Watchmen itself.

[Tawfek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay this issue was harder to understand than the rest.
We had many unusual scenes, for example the president assassination scene, that was in reverse.
and then we had the detective scene by "Question" a superhero detective, who I didn't even know his name was question lol
The scene showed what the girl who got murdered was speaking about with peacemaker, and then what the girl found out by herself, and the last moments in the girl's life before she got murdered, and by the life of me I don't even know who killed her lol
And then we had the Atom scenes, another superhero who is supposed to see future past and present, and can effect any of them if he pleases, he got asked by a vice-president to save the president who got assassinated, I am not sure what happened on that front either!
So yeah, overall really really long issue, really hard to understand, and unfamiliar environment for me, because I only knew peacemaker from these heroes and he sucks, same as john cena, fuck them both.

[Dean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grant Morrison is marmite, you either love his writing style or you hate it. Your enjoyment of this book will follow that same pattern, as it is VERY Morrison.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of his multi-layered writing style, and thus a huge fan of this. For me, the best of the Multiversity books. It is a many things, with many plots and many layers which can be analysed. No two people will get the same experience from reading this book, I can almost guarantee that.

On one level, this is sort of Morrison playfully using the Charlton characters to tell a Watchmen style story, the Charlton characters being Moore’s original Watchmen of course. On another, it is Morrison berating us readers for putting fictional characters through story hell, because we demand entertainment. All very meta, all very good.

Frank Quitely’s art is simply incredible, both in a technical layout sense (again, homaging Watchmen) and a purely creative one. Just amazing to look at.

Comics at their absolute best.

[Josh Burkey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Famously when Alan Moore pitched the famous Watchmen to DC it was envisioned to be the then recently acquired Charlton Comics characters. Nearly three decades later, Grant Morrison takes a stab at what could have been if Moore had gotten his wish. The iconic team made up of Doctor Manhattan, Nite Owl, Rorschach, Silk Spectre, The Comedian and Ozymandias becomes Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, The Question, Nightshade, Peacemaker and Thunderbolt. While Morrison has good ideas with these characters, it doesn't always come across the best. The art from Frank Quietly is striking and stunning. Though, its the use of non-linear storytelling that is the real trouble. Morrison attempts to do in a single issue what Moore did in twelve. I love the adoration of the inspiration but fails to stand toe to toe with Moore and Gibbons' masterpiece.

[jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll rate the whole series when I finish it, but I had to pause on this issue and give it an individual rating because it left me with the inspired, buzzing feeling that only the best of the medium can elicit. I look forward to digging further in and reading the pages in reverse, as well as unearthing those consistent Morrison themes revering silver age lunacy, spiral dynamics, imagination as the 5th dimension, time as an ouroboros, etc..

[Max Solis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este cómic presenta a la Tierra 4, en la cual el presidente de los Estados Unidos de América forma un equipo para poder proteger al país de los problemas que surjan en este. Sin embargo, dicho equipo estuvo involucrado en una conspiración masiva que involucraba la muerte del presidente Hartley y una misteriosa ecuación llamada Algoritmo 8.

[Rubin Carpenter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story was an edgy tour de force !
The old charlton comic books charcters made
Watchmanesque well done Mr Morrison
A great read
Like the rest in this series
I wish this title wasn't a one shot issue
Still a great read

[Will Dockery · Rating 4 out of 5]

There could have been at least twelve issues of this, Grant Morrison's take on the same Charlton Comics characters that led Alan Moore to create The Watchmen. Peacemaker is here, as is The Blue Beetle, so it could evolve as part of the upcoming new version of the DC Universe.

[CavemanB-Man · Rating 5 out of 5]

A better version of Watchmen.

[Reyel2107 · Rating 5 out of 5]

as good as watchmen and in less pages !!!

[Tropo Alegro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una versión watchmanesca del Universo Charlton mucho más respetuosa con el trabajo fuente que otros álbumes de figuritas similares.

[Kirilov Katsura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Virtuosismo del noveno arte. Morrison coloca sus cartas sobre la mesa.
Morrison gana.

[Alvarex Alvarez · Rating 4 out of 5]

No sé si es homenaje o burla a Moore, definitivamente es un reconocimiento, y además está lleno de efectos especiales que sólo pueden crearse en este medio. Cómo siempre Quitely se luce.

[Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Mum can we read Watchmen?"
"No we have Watchmen at home"
The Watchmen at home:

[Earnie Jordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dumb

Just a bunch of “Blah, blah, blah”.
No action. Just a book that’s trying to be hip.
Just a bad book.

[Ryan Hochstatter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A metatextual masterwork you can read ♾️ times and still gleam new meaning from. The best Watchmen-related story not named Saturday Morning Watchmen.

[Deat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Better than Watchmen.

[Tony Raju · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watchmen But Grant Morrison