Morrison as Prometheus
Grant Morrison is Prometheus. With Animal Man and Doom Patrol, he brought fire to the reading public. Alan Moore and Frank Miller challenged superhero conventions and conventions within the medium itself, but I feel it is here with this series that the potential of the comic book is fully realized. References are made to the esoteric and at no point does the creative team fear challenging the reader. In this first issue, we get an amazingly humanistic and real take on Robotman, we meet the gloriously gothic Crazy Jane, witness the creation of Rebis, and begin to see the early phases of surrealist horror that will be faced by this newly formed drastically disturbed/unhinged super team. Now I realize that I sound like a blithering Grant Morrison fan boy, so I'll try to step back and praise this issue a bit more objectively. The interior art is excellent and DC's switch to "NEW FORMAT" with this book meant that it was a higher quality printing sent to comic book shops instead of newsstands. The paper stock is sturdier and the early use of technology now commonplace in publishing makes this a comic book that quite literally feels better than the issues preceding it in the series. I cannot recommend picking this up enough which can be done for a reasonable price in just about any back issue bin.
