Grant Morrison has been given the keys to the DC Universe. From somebody who began writing for books such as Animal Man and Doom Patrol, revolutionising the characters, making them rise from obscurity to great recognition. His Batman story, Arkham Asylum, made his name well known among comic fans and years later, he became the writer on the main Justice League title. While I have mentioned the origins of Morrison’s career in my first ever post (JLA: New World Order (click here to read it), this storyline was much more significant as he was writing a miniseries that not only focused on the DC Universe, but would crossover to every other title that the publisher was releasing. This takes us to One Million, a four-issue miniseries that gives every single title a 1,000,000th issue, which serves as a tie to the main event. Now, while this story is a separate miniseries, it is still counted as part of the Morrison JLA series because the league are the main heroes of the story.
Because this storyline covers and crosses over with too many issues, there is no way I’d be insane enough to review it all. Therefore, I will be reviewing the Morrison JLA sections of the story, which are One Million 1-4 and JLA 1000000. The miniseries was released weekly in the November of 1998 with the JLA crossover title being released also in November of the same year. I have read this story in the JLA: One Million trade
paperback, which also features some other significant tie ins to the story which I may reference throughout the review if it features an important piece of plot that is included in the main series. And just a note, that sentence you just read was very wordy, but not as wordy and complicated as One Million, so let’s get the plot details over with.
THE PLOT
Note: I will be detailing where the JLA issue takes place as I will be telling the story in chronological order, making it easier to discuss. The main One Million issues are written by Morrison with art by Val Semeiks and Prentis Rollins. The JLA issue is also written by Morrison by art by train wreck artists Howard Porter and John Dell.
Another Note: I will mention the events of some of the crossovers which are important, but only very briefly.
The story starts three days into a disaster in which the whole planet is in chaos, and all seems hopeless. Then, we go back three days prior in order to see how the Earth becomes a hell of sorts (classic Morrison trait of having the story start in the middle). After the ending of JLA 23, where the Justice Legion arrive from their home in the 853rd century to the present day, the team have come back in time to meet the JLA team. This was because the original Superman in the far future had returned after putting himself in a self-imposed exile in the core of the sun to keep it alive because everyone he knew from the current day era died years ago. However, of course, Superman has a descendent that looked after the galaxy for him when he was in exile who features in the story more than the regular Superman. Anyway, the main (yes, there are more than one of them) Justice Legion are inspired by the JLA and the members are future versions of Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Hourman, Aquaman and Starman. They have gone back to the current day in order to meet the league and take them with them into the future in order to take part in friendly games of sorts. At the same time, Titans members Arsenal, Supergirl, Tempest and Johnny Quick discover that JSA villain Vandal Savage attempts to buy nuclear Red Rocket suits in Russia and the team goes over to deal with him. However, he defeats them all and traps Tempest in one of the Rocket Red suits and he fires him in the suit to destroy Washington. The JLA then prepare to go into the future with Hourman preparing the teleport to the future. However, because he is an android of sorts, he malfunctions and releases virus gas which affects people and robots alike, which is trouble for the JLA. It turns out the virus was programmed by the main villain of the story, a creature that made a deal with Vandal Savage, named Solaris, who was once an evil villain, but was reprogrammed by a future Superman. But clearly, he is evil again.
Around this time, Starman of the future reveals to Ted Knight, the original Starman, that he is really a villain and hated Starman’s legacy. This can be read in Starman issue 1000000 by James Robinson.
The world is now in complete chaos over the spread of the virus, released by Hourman and programmed by Solaris. Another malfunction occurs as the Rocket Red suit explodes over Uruguay, killing one million people, but Tempest lives (and who cares). Heroes such as Blue Beetle search the area, looking for survivors. The Justice Legion arrives to help and explains to Martian Manhunter the origin of Solaris and how the Earth isn’t ready for something as threatening as it (even though the league has fought Darkseid numerous times and in 15 issues time will be fighting Mageddon (JLA: World War Three)). All the heroes in the watchtower grow concerns for the people of Earth, especially with the virus. Because of this, Ray Palmer, the Atom shrinks down to tiny size and enters Oracle’s bloodstream because she has the virus. Meanwhile, the government are not having a good time and they are speaking to General Eiling through video conference. They discuss sending out the Ultra Marine Corps to deal with the attacks (more on that next storyline), but just then, the video changes to Savage, who is angry at the change in course of his nuclear attack and has locked the other three Titan members in the other three suits as he is threatening to fire them, killing more people in the process.
Meanwhile, the future Batman visits the Batcave and with the research he finds there and speaking with Alfred, he thinks the only way to defeat Solaris is to create him (huh?). This can be read in Detective Comics 1000000, written by Chuck Dixon.
This next plot is from JLA 1000000. Future Batman tells future Superman about his
theory and they both agree and tell the legion of their plan. They all agree because they know of Solaris’s danger. However, the members of the JLA (who are the only ones in the current day because the rest are in the future) mistake the Justice Legion for bad guys and a massive fight begins, not unexpected because the story doesn’t have enough of those. However, they all come to an agreement. It turns out that in the time they have been stuck in the watchtower, Steel has built a time machine, yeah. They use the machine to power Solaris because without the energy, it wouldn’t have made it to the far future. Just then, Starman meets with everyone and they all looked at him, worriedly. Batman confronts him about his betrayal (from Starman 1000000) and has worked out that Solaris has some coincidental involvement to Ted Knight’s Starman through a relic of sorts, explaining why the future Starman has a dislike for his super hero background.
The legion begins building Solaris with some of the league members as future Batman interrogates the future Starman for his betrayal. Starman tells him that he has been working for Solaris so he could kill future Superman. In his anger, Batman nearly kills him, and he realises the strength of the virus is increasing. Luckily, the Atom finds a method of neutralising the virus, but sending it to everyone would take a very long time. Meanwhile, Martian Manhunter and the Titans locate Vandal Savage and defeat him, which is made easier after the destruction of all of the Rocket Red suits. However, Savage escapes. Then, the new Solaris is complete, and it sucks up the Hourman virus, but it turns out to be all a trick. The virus is absorbed by the new Solaris, but the virus is actually Solaris in disguise, meaning it will make the new one evil and its plan is to destroy the Earth. Starman rushes and creates a black hole in Solaris, which kills him, saving the others and seemingly redeeming himself. Hourman gets all miserable that the defeat didn’t really defeat Solaris as he will still be haunting them for the next however many centuries. Using the time machine, JLA and legion members go into the future using the time machine to save the stranded JLA members.
After his defeat, Savage fights his long-time foe, immortal Resurrection Man. He leaves him to the virus, which will kill him over and over again for the rest of time. Savage teleports away, happy that he has finished off his foe, leaving him to his death. This can be read in Resurrection Man 1000000, by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning.
Both Justice teams meet together to finally defeat Solaris. The fight begins with Green Lantern attacking the star villain, causing it to go supernova, which he contains with his ring powers. After more dull and nonsensical fighting, a shock is shown as the
original Superman, Kal-El returns, who uses his powers to destroy Solaris forever. The heroes celebrate and all return to their respective eras. To finish off, Vandal Savage teleports away after he defeats Resurrection Man, but is sent to Uruguay by Chronos as villainous revenge. The Rocket Red suit falls down to the ground, about to explode which implies that Vandal Savage will die.
MY THOUGHTS
You know Morrison is known to be one of the best in the whole comics field? He has great sense of storytelling and character, along with interesting and genuinely exciting plotwork. Well, let’s just say that if there was an award for the most complicated and dull story, this series would win it four years in a row!
Let’s start with the positives. Firstly, the idea of seeing a future Justice League in some form is very appealing to fans. I was certainly interested in seeing how Batman and Superman looked in the future because of the mentions of history that they have been through. It would add so much depth to the characters and plot. While the story focuses on this to a degree, mainly on Starman (which is actually a good crossover of this event), it doesn’t do it enough. Secondly, I generally like Vandal Savage as a villain and I think his ending in the story really is not only entertaining, but also a bit of a shock. Thirdly, I think that… of, who am I kidding, this story is fu**ing terrible.
Where to start with a mess that complex a big. This story can be summed up as a massive pile of wires behind the desk of a computer that is left there, and you can’t be bothered to sort it out. This plot just isn’t strong enough to be a miniseries, let alone a whole DC Universe crossover event. I think that the plot idea has been chosen terribly and there were a number of different methods in which it could have been improved massively. For example, the story could have been like an old Fox/O’ Neil JLA JSA crossover which could have had both teams teaming up to fight a group of enemies such as the Injustice Gang. This would have not only made the story better; it would have made the whole thing seem interesting for fans because it reminds them of the silver age where the two teams would meet up together. In fact, Vandal Savage would have fit that idea perfectly because he fought the JSA. One of the main problems of the story is the villain, Solaris, a star villain of sorts. The main question is what the hell is it and what is its relevance to Superman. The story is so complex and pseudo-scientific that is cares more about the explanations of made up stuff rather than the legitimate reasons, which is something that I care more about in the story and many other readers care about as well. Solaris is just too flat a character and a villain that it comes across as extremely and not really threatening at all. Its design is stupid as well and for a creature (or whatever is it supposed to be) that has the power to destroy the Earth, it is pathetic. Okay, just to be clear, the main crime of this story is that it is way too complicated and complex while it could have been much simpler. I don’t know why it had to be a huge DC Universe crossover event as it could have been a four-part story in the JLA title. Besides, the league, legion and villains, what is the point of the Titans being in it because it might as well just have been members of the league because in the end, the Titans members just out right disappear from the story, never seen again. Also, is nobody going to question that Hourman is going to remain part of the legion and later the league? This android was programmed in order to wipe out the human race. Sure, it wasn’t his fault but surely, they would have done something in order to keep him away from dangers that could result in him becoming a danger to people. I’m sorry but this plot and sense of aimless direction that the story has is so terrible, that I don’t even care about the characters and how they act because of how bad the story is. Another problem (because the story hasn’t got enough) is that nobody realises that with Steel’s time machine (yeah, that he somehow makes), everyone has the power to time travel at will and no one tells any notice of this incredibly beneficial perk. Using the time machine, they could go back so far in time that they could destroy Solaris, resulting in this cluster f*ck of a story not happening in the first place. This story has so many holes and problems that makes the whole thing downright appalling to read. Casual readers won’t get this mess because of how unclear everything is, and hardcore fans wouldn’t because of how much crap the story expects us to take. Of course, though, I must be wrong because DC have actually released an omnibus of this. Yes, a book that is about one thousand pages which included the four-issue series and every single crossover. If you bought that book, expecting it to fantastic because of Morrison, you are ripping yourself off by the truck load. What happened to Grant Morrison? He gave us great stories in Animal Man and Doom Patrol, exploring the weird, but funny side of comics. He gave us fantastically created villains that are remembered for their charm and did things in comics that had never been done before. The writer of this story is what I like the name, the Other Grant Morrison. I believe there are a number of different Grant Morrison story types, but they can all be divided into two categories. Firstly, you get the original and weird Morrison. This writer read obscure characters and titles, enjoying them as a child and praised their simple, but charming ideas. He remembered characters like Animal Man and he reinvented it to be a comic that explores a variety of different areas in comics that hadn’t been explored before, while staying in the mindset that these comics are for kids and staying incredibly faithful to the original stories in which he is basing his work on. This takes us to the Other Grant Morrison, the one who grew up reading Broome’s Green Lantern and Fox’s Flash and Justice League. These stories delved into made up sciences and strange outer space ideas. He clearly enjoyed those stories, and this is why stories such as this and Final Crisis are written. But he put in too much. Those silver age titles I mentioned were great because it made the pseudo-science, but it was actually appealing, and the plots were still very good. The Other Morrison fills the whole story with science that is overly wordy and complex, resulting in the DC One Million event. While Morrison would of course continue to write the stories that he is most known for, such as Batman, the Other Morrison is still there and arguably becoming more and more prominent, which can be seen in his recent comics such as Green Lantern. These stories are I feel Morrison at his worst, writing stories that are too complex and involving fantasy science that is complete nonsense, ignoring all of his best traits such as character, plot and charm. To summarise, this story wasn’t fun to read.
My opinion on Porter and Dell’s art hasn’t changed and probably never will. For those that don’t know, just read my previous JLA reviews. However, Val Semeiks is the artist for the main four issues and his art is pretty similar to Porter’s meaning that I don’t like it. It may be better in some aspects, but overall, it sucks. These are the type of artists which fit some stories well, but with Morrison’s complex and detailed way of storytelling, they fail because the layout looks pretty dire, particularly in One Million’s case.
VERDICT
Overall, what can I say that hasn’t been said above. Again, one of the worst Morrison stories I have ever read because basically, it doesn’t have the great aspects of a Morrison story, meaning great character and plot while trying things that are new and different. The same applies to the art, it reeks of the time and I am thankful to say that the art has certainly become much better, especially in the way that comics are coloured.
Plot – 1.5/10
Art – 3.5/10
Highlighted Character – Starman (Farris Knight) (the only future character with a decent personality)
Next Review – JLA: Justice for All Part One (JLA 24-31). Written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar with art by Howard Porter, John Dell, Mark Pajarillo, Walden Wong and Mario Alquiza
Expected to be published on 14/04/2019
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