Back in early 2015 I wrote about how I almost didn’t continue reading Becky Cloonan and Andy Belanger’s Southern Cross after the first issue.
Wheww. That was a close one.
At the time I was absolutely flooded with new books, ongoing books, books to re-read, etc. and I was so overwhelmed that I don’t think I even really read that first issue. I mean, I read it, but I think at the time I was so hesitant to add another book to the monthly pile that I didn’t really pay attention. Self-sabotage.
Ahh… 2015, another fantastic year for comics. I read a lot of comics this year, mostly indie or creator-owned, not a dud amongst them (though there were a few I stopped following after having done so for some time. Budget cuts). The only book I felt at all disappointed in was Sandman: Overture, which despite breathtaking art by JH Williams III, had a story that felt as though it’d been conceived with a glass to the wall of the office where Marvel’s Secret Wars was being spit-balled. I can’t say this enough: going forward, no more universe-ending apocalypse cataclysms for me. Can’t do it. Sick of ‘em. Especially in Sandman, a book that in its previous incarnation was purely character driven. To see Morpheus tasked with saving the Universe was, well, more disappointing than I can possibly describe. Are apocalypse stories Zeitgeist? Doesn’t matter.
Well, there I was all ready to dive into decoding a new issue of Nameless and, well, Mr. Morrison pretty much did most of the work for me.
Crap.
The enigmatic approach left behind, issue two begins with Nameless and his escorts as they arrive at Paul Darious’s Billionauts base on the dark side of the moon. Once situated we quickly get A LOT more of the Enochian language message we are introduced to in issue #1. We meet Dr. Croft, the base’s former expert on occult matters and see that something has either possessed her or sent her over the edge of sanity. The others on the base have quarantined Dr. Croft and when Burnham flashes to her we see that written on the walls of her cell in what is probably *gag* either shite or blood or a happy mixture of both, what appears to be a continuation of that Enochian message:
Beneath the Panels is my ongoing effort to catalogue/analyze the Occult correspondences I posit Grant Morrison has built into the underlying ‘code’ of Nameless, his new comic collaboration with Chris Burnham and Nathan Fairbairn. Before proceeding with this fourth and final iteration pertaining to the first issue of Nameless, I should point out for new readers that the research and subsequent outlining of this stuff has been an involved, ongoing process and as such if you’ve not read the first three iterations of Beneath the Panels you would be best served to go back and do that. Below are links to those columns, the first of which is on my personal blog and the subsequent two here on Joup:
“Way I see it, everything’s been fucked up since 2001 anyway. Since the towers came down – since the pylons fell on Trump 18 and Malkuth was gathered up into Yesod.”
If you haven’t read the first Beneath the Panels it’s on my personal blog here. Beneath the Panels isn’t going to become a regular feature, but I will probably continue it for the duration of Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s Nameless. After seeing how many words it took me to cover what basically amounted to just the first page of the book in that previous installment, I figured this column would be better served on Joup. That said, the idea of moving that first installment over, with all the re-embedding, setting links and what not seemed like a waste of time. Thus, I’m leaving #1 where it is and getting on with further revealing the MANY occult influences/ideas Morrison has once again worked into the ‘code’ of his new 6-issue book. Also, I’d like to note here that a major influence on my idea to do this column has been David Uzumeri‘s amazing annotations for other Morrison works, much of which can be found at Comics Alliance and also on Funnybook Babylon.
Over the last few months we’ve been living in something of a Grant Morrison renaissance; after what felt like an extended absence following his seven-year run on Batman, which was admittedly peppered here and there with some limited series and a run on Action Comics that, in part, required the eventual release of Multiversity to have the proper context for fully understanding, Morrison’s presence seemed to shift to that of one of the Great Old Ones – you could feel his influence everywhere in comics – especially in DC books as his architecture begun in his run on JLA as a “Maybe one day I’ll be able to pitch my grand design” and over the course of twenty years became the scaffolding upon which DC slowly began to realize they could hang the elaborate fidora of their entire Universe on – but there was no iconic series hitting the stands month after month. We knew this resurgence was inevitable; press for the Legendary-published Annihilator, complete with mouthwatering “What the f@#k images” by series artist Frazer Irving began at least a year before the book had a release date. Morrison’s three appearance’s on Kevin Smith’s Fatman on Batman podcast teased Multiversity and the still to be released Wonder Woman series. But the big question through all of this, perhaps the reason I’ve felt an absence from my favorite comics scribe when in fact, after listing all of this it seems my initial concept of a Morrison-drought seems misconstrued:
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