7 Grant Morrison Comics You Should Read Right Now

Grant Morrison is known for their DC work, but they’ve long been one of the most prolific creators around. Morrison has announced a return to Batman, a character they wrote multiple times over their decade long career, exciting their legion of fans. Morrison honed a particular style over the years, one that allowed them to write nearly every kind of comic story there is. Morrison’s DC superhero work was their bread and butter for ages, but they’ve shown that they can write just about anything. Morrison’s career has taken them from the UK to the US, writing comics that have blown the minds of everyone that read them.

While everybody knows about classics like All-Star Superman and JLA, there’s way more to Morrison’s oeuvre than that. Morrison’s best stories run the gamut from mature readers masterpieces to mindblowing Marvel missives. Morrison’s retirement from actively writing comics left behind a brilliant body of work, and these seven Morrison comics — none of them from DC (three are from Vertigo, but who’s counting?) — are perfect for someone looking to dive in the waters of Grant Morrison.

Nameless

Grant Morrison has always drifted into cosmic horror, but for most of their career, it was just a small part of their books. However, Nameless is straight up cosmic horror, one that uses Morrison’s own belief in the occult to inform the tale. The story revolves around Nameless, an occult detective who is hired for a space mission to a massive object that is headed towards the Earth. However, what they find there is much more horrifying than anything they could imagine, as they come face to face with something that only be described as god. That’s only the beginning, as Nameless takes a turn in a direction that no reader sees coming the first time they read, becoming a very different story. Morrison worked with Chris Burnham on the book, and the art is amazing. Burnham goes above and beyond on this one, creating images that will stay with readers long after they put the book down. Nameless is an amazing work, and it shows Morrison at their best.

Marvel Boy

Morrison worked for DC for over a decade by the end of the ’90s, but their relationship soured with publisher, prompting Morrison to move over to Marvel. Their first work at Marvel was 2000’s Marvel Boy, with artist J.G. Jones. Marvel Boy starred Noh-Varr, an alternate reality Kree whose multiversal ship was shot down by Doctor Midas. Noh-Varr vowed revenge, leading to one of Morrison’s brattiest works, which is saying something. Marvel Boy is big concept Morrison goodness, full of amazing action and bold ideas. Jones’s art is the icing on the cake, bringing Morrison’s script to life perfectly. Morrison wasn’t at Marvel long, but their work there was amazing and Marvel Boy is proof of that.

New X-Men

After Marvel Boy and Fantastic Four: 1234, which is good but not one of their best works, Morrison was tapped to take over X-Men. The book was renamed New X-Men, with Morrison and frequent artistic collaborator Frank Quitely teaming up starting with issue #114. Morrison would work on New X-Men for 40 issues, working with artists like Ethan Van Sciver, Igor Kordey, John Paul Leon, Phil Jimenez, Chris Bachalo, and Marc Silvestri. Morrison introduced readers to new villains like Cassandra Nova and John Sublime, telling one long story over the course of their run. Morrison touched on some tried and true X-Men concepts — the Shi’Ar, the Phoenix Force, Weapon X, Magneto — but did them all in new ways, earning the book its title. Morrison’s New X-Men was exactly the kind of big concept writing that make the X-Men work so well. There are some out there who think that Morrison’s New X-Men is the best the X-Men have gotten, and there’s definitely something to that argument. Much of Morrison’s New X-Men was retconned after they left the book and Marvel over what they termed in their book Supergods as “weekly shouting matches”, but some of the best aspects of their run have inspired brilliant X-Men titles like Uncanny X-Force and the Krakoa Era.

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Zenith

Before coming to the US, Morrison was working for 2000 A.D. in the UK. Morrison and artist Steve Yeowell created the character Zenith in 1987, and the character appeared in the series until 1992. Zenith proved to be extremely popular and the stories were collected, allowing readers to get their hands on them. Zenith was the prototype for the superhero as product, as the young hero was recruited by government forces to be their poster boy. Things get crazier from there, as Morrison and Yeowell do their best to tell a story very different from the superhero deconstruction that was all the rage in the late ’80s. Zenith is certainly of its time, its sarcastic, shallow hero a picture of Gen X in all of its slacker glory, but it’s also a timeless picture of a generation on the edge. There’s also the kind of big concept superhero goodness that Morrison would become known for in the ensuing years. Very few people talk about Zenith anymore — it’s pretty hard to find and hasn’t been printed in a long time — but it’s an early picture of Morrison that shows just how great they can be.

Kill Your Boyfriend

While Grant Morrison is mostly known for mindbending superheroes and hallucinogenic horror, they’ve written all kinds of great stories over the years. One of the most interesting is Kill Your Boyfriend, with artist Phillip Bond. This 1995 Vertigo one-shot felt a little bit like Natural Born Killers in England. Kill Your Boyfriend isn’t nearly as dark as Natural Born Killers, a romp of drugs, dance music, and sex, Morrison’s weapon of choice in mid ’90s creator owned work. The story stars a middle class British schoolgirl, who meets a dangerous new boy who convinces her to kill her boyfriend. The two of them go on a cross country crime spree through the UK, ending with a standoff that changes both of their lives forever. Bond’s cartoonish artwork might not seem to work with what is essentially a crime comic, but it fits the tone of Morrison’s story. Kill Your Boyfriend is ’90s goodness, an amazing piece of pop culture ephemera that has been mostly forgotten. DC has reprinted it several times over the years, often with Vimanarama, another Morrison/Bond Vertigo book. It’s worth hunting down, whether you get it as a single volume or as a collected edition.

Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery

Morrison created Flex Mentallo during their run on Doom Patrol. Mentallo was based on the old Charles Atlas bodybuilding ads in Silver and Bronze Age comics. Young Flex was a weakling on the beach getting sand kicked in his face, but sent away for a book that would teach him the secrets of muscle mastery. He learned to flex his muscles so well that he could change reality itself, and Flex Mentallo, the Man of Muscle Mystery, was born. Of course, this wasn’t the whole story. Mentallo was a psychic projection of Wallace Sage, but that’s a Doom Patrol story. Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery, with artist Frank Quitely, takes place in a world where Flex and the heroes Sage created were actually real, as Flex investigates the disappearance of his friend the Fact. Meanwhile, on another level of the story, comic writer Wallace Sage tries to kill himself again, beginning a journey into his past that mirrors the one Flex is going on. Flex Mentallo is a story about stories and where they come from, a part autobiographical look into the life of Morrison in the late ’90s. It’s yet another mindblowing Morrison work, a perfect storm of creativity. Morrison and Quitely work miracles in this book. The art is phenomenal, possibly some of Quitely’s best. The Atlas estate sued DC/Vertigo over the book, keeping it out of print for years until a new edition in the early 2010s. The book was recolored, and this is one of the few times the recoloring actually made the book look better. Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery is Morrison magic, and everyone who wants to really get their work needs to pick this one up.

The Invisibles

The Invisibles is Morrison’s ’90s magnum opus. Morrison is a practitioner of chaos magic, and decided to use a comic as their latest spell. The Invisibles is part of that. The Invisibles follows King Mob, Lord Fanny, Ragged Robin, Boy, and their new recruit Jack Frost, a cell of the organization known as the Invisibles. The Invisibles are a group of ontological freedom fighters battling the Lovecraftian monsters of the Outer Church, dark gods and their twisted human servants secretly in charge of the world. The Invisibles was every ’90s conspiracy brought to life, and is a snap shot of what life was like in the halcyon days of the end of the last millennium. The Invisibles is violent, profane, scary, beautiful, and everything in between, a work unlike anything you’ve ever read before. Morrison worked with some amazing artists overthe book’s six year existence — Jill Thompson, Steve Yeowell, Chris Weston, Phil Jimenez, Phillip Bond, Frank Quitely, and many, many more all graced The Invisibles with pitch perfect art — giving the book a unique flair all its own. The Invisibles is Morrison at their best, and one of the most imaginative and transformative comics you could ever read.

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