Wow… it ends even worse than I could have possibly imagined. I like how in Morrison’s reality, a gang of roaming thugs (who bring a vicious dog with them to attack kids) are scared off by a woman in a crappy old car. I guess he needed that one to work for the ending to be as lame as possible.

Beautiful, beautiful art. Murphy maybe outdoes himself with this issue. It’s just fabulous.

Morrison has three or four endings to the comic, which is oversize, but he could have gotten away with one of them. The first one requires not only Joe, the kid, to be a complete inobservance moron but his mom too. And one has to believe his dead father is a trickster jerk who likes stringing people along.

I’m glad I read it for two reasons.

First, Murphy.

Second, I like having examples of awful Morrison writing.

So, it’s been a little unclear—until now—how the present action unfolds in Joe the Barbarian. Since the kid is having a fit, it really shouldn’t matter if Morrison doesn’t make a big deal out of it.

But he finally does—the comic, running eight issues and costing about twenty bucks—takes place over about… eight minutes. Apparently, Morrison saw Inception and liked the way they figured dream-time so much, he adapted it for this one.

It’s hard to be serious about Joe the Barbarian because Morrison opens himself up for some many glib statements. It’s like The NeverEnding Story, if The NeverEnding Story sucked. I’m sure one can think of similar examples.

What’s most amusing about the issue—most of which is a battle scene—is how incapable Morrison is at writing war comics. He should have read some Ennis before attempting this one.

Still, great artwork.

You know, Morrison spends a lot of time this issue suggesting Joe’s journey through his house is some great metaphor for his life. This issue he attacks his newfound friends, dismissing them as kids from his school. He also runs into an analogue of his mother. Except his mother’s not home during his diabetic hallucination, which means it’s all in his head, analogues and all.

Morrison’s got two more issues of this comic to go—I’m curious if they’ll both read as fast as this one. He’s gotten to the point there’s no content or quest anymore, so the thing just speeds along, even with the artwork. Well, actually, Morrison doesn’t give Murphy much interesting to draw this issue.

As the issue just coasts along, it occurs to me Morrison didn’t actually waste any time before now. I mean, other than the plot itself, he kept on task.

Not here.

As far as I remember, the most emotionally honest Morrison has ever gotten was in We3 when he viscously killed his adorable and likable animal protagonists….

Well, he achieves some more emotional honesty as he needlessly, viscously kills another innocent animal. It’s cheap and it might hurt Disney wanting to turn Joe the Barbarian into a Pixar property (if the Marvel deal already hasn’t), but it does work.

Otherwise, the issue has some major problems. Morrison seems to think a widow and her kid in danger of losing their house are immediately sympathetic. Not even The Goonies just made that assumption—Morrison doesn’t understand making characters more real than just their scenes is important and necessary for forming an emotional connection.

There’s a lot of great art from Murphy this issue (it opens rockily, as Murphy’s doing these flying machines out of The Phantom Menace).

It’s cheap, dumb and effective.

It’s a little perplexing how much I enjoy the artwork while still don’t enjoy the overall reading experience of Joe the Barbarian.

Morrison apparently really wants a Harry Potter-like franchise with his name on it—this issue adds the romantic interest in Joe’s fantasy world, who may be identical to the girl who’s nice to him at school in reality. I’m not bothering to check, just assuming.

This issue has a lot more fantasy characters introduced. What’s strange about the series is how Morrison assumes his readers will be fantasy readers—who are willing to put up with stupid names and a million characters—and not comic book readers, who put up with stupid names, but like the million characters gradually introduced, not all at once.

The question of the hallucinations comes up but it’s hard, like I said last issue, to care. Regardless of the reveal, Joe’s pointless.

So is the kid supposed to be a diabetic? Is that why he keeps talking about needing a soda? I can’t remember if Morrison even established that condition in the first issue. He might may and I missed it because I was too busy paying attention to the rest of the cast.

That cast who, it turns out, are absolutely useless to the comic.

This issue resembles the Aardman movie Flushed Away a lot. Good to see Morrison watches some movies for inspiration.

Joe the Barbarian has hit a nice point where each issue can only get better because Morrison’s already bottomed out the concept. Either the kid’s nuts or he’s not and there will be an intergalactic war. Neither one would make the comic any better or worse.

Again, Murphy wins—as Morrison goes further down the drain, the most exotic fantasy, steam-punk material for Murphy to illustrate.

So Grant Morrison doesn’t have an editor and Vertigo will publish anything he gives them.

Good to know.

This issue of Joe the Barbarian is both better and worse than the previous one.

Ryan Murphy’s artwork is definitely better, if only because he’s got all these fantastic elements to illustrate. Joe—the protagonist—is hanging out with a jumbo version of his pet rat, who he’s freed from his cage, both in reality and in his delusion. Giant rats are, being rats, cute. So the issue has that cheap element going for it.

However, it has zero story going for it.

Morrison’s big epical storyline this issue is getting the kid to the bathroom to puke (he thinks his head is in a waterfall). The series’s goal is apparently to get the kid downstairs.

I think Morrison wants to get the series optioned by Pixar.

I’ll keep reading to ridicule.

So why am I reading this comic? Morrison apparently forgets just having his name on a cover doesn’t make a book necessarily special or interesting; Joe the Barbarian is, after one issue, a perfect example of this situation.

It’s about a kid—probably in the UK—whose dad died in a war (he was a soldier), whose mom is busy with work and is bullied at school.

Again, so what?

He’s got a pet rat, which should make him particularly likable to me (a longtime pet rat owner) but the rat’s barely in it.

The issue ends with the kid having a psychotic break and imagining all his toys are alive (not the Batman though, I noticed). It ends there.

Sean Murphy does okay on the artwork, so I guess his mom probably likes the comic a lot, but otherwise….

It’s watching Morrison stoke his ego for twenty-two pages.