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A review by thecommonswings
Olympus by Mike Allred, Alan Moore, John Totleben, Peter Milligan
4.0
So let’s talk Zenith. Grant Morrison takes a wealth of existing and newly created pastiches of British superheroes, and weaves into it a story about pandimensional gods (borrowed from Lovecraft). Even when the “good” superheroes eventually win over the newly perverted “bad” superheroes, leaving a world of devastation and violence and horror that is only hinted at, we cycle all the way back to the idea that these supposedly “good” superheroes rebuild the world in their own, monstrous image all the while lording over humanity because they are now far beyond them
So yeah. I am now convinced Zenith is really Morrison’s own take on Miracleman and... do you know what? It’s actually better. The pacing - which goes to pieces here as if Moore is determined to get to the big climax, with big plotty bits just swept up in third person descriptions - certainly is an improvement. Sexual assault - again! Here it is! TWICE! - is only used as a threat by Masterman and implied in the clone storyline. The nihilistic destruction and perversion of once heroic characters - oh it’s there, but Morrison and Yeowell pull back from showing too much because it would tip the book over into absurdity - which I think is very much the case with Totleben’s masterful but very gratuitous take on Kid Miracleman’s destruction of London. I think the ambiguity of Miracleman’s new world is done better here, but even that’s slightly ameliorated by the fact Moore obviously felt the need to revisit it a bit at the end of Promethea
It’s still a brilliant and important work of art, but Moore feels penned in a bit in terms of his storytelling and can’t decide which side of the fence he falls onto with Marvelman’s eventual fate (not read the continuation by Gaiman yet but it feels wholly unnecessary already) and his culpability in the events of Bates’ rage across the capital. It feels rushed which is so frustrating because with a handful of extra pages to stretch it out the plots would breathe better and hopefully the moral quandary at the end better explored. Otherwise it’s just frustrating and almost brilliant but...
So yeah. I am now convinced Zenith is really Morrison’s own take on Miracleman and... do you know what? It’s actually better. The pacing - which goes to pieces here as if Moore is determined to get to the big climax, with big plotty bits just swept up in third person descriptions - certainly is an improvement. Sexual assault - again! Here it is! TWICE! - is only used as a threat by Masterman and implied in the clone storyline. The nihilistic destruction and perversion of once heroic characters - oh it’s there, but Morrison and Yeowell pull back from showing too much because it would tip the book over into absurdity - which I think is very much the case with Totleben’s masterful but very gratuitous take on Kid Miracleman’s destruction of London. I think the ambiguity of Miracleman’s new world is done better here, but even that’s slightly ameliorated by the fact Moore obviously felt the need to revisit it a bit at the end of Promethea
It’s still a brilliant and important work of art, but Moore feels penned in a bit in terms of his storytelling and can’t decide which side of the fence he falls onto with Marvelman’s eventual fate (not read the continuation by Gaiman yet but it feels wholly unnecessary already) and his culpability in the events of Bates’ rage across the capital. It feels rushed which is so frustrating because with a handful of extra pages to stretch it out the plots would breathe better and hopefully the moral quandary at the end better explored. Otherwise it’s just frustrating and almost brilliant but...