The Multiversity Deluxe Edition

CRISIS EVENT IMMINENT! ALERT! WORLDS WILL LIVE! WORLDS WILL DIE! Ever since Wolfman and Perez's Crisis on Infinite Earths, the worlds populated by superheroes have been rent asunder, remade and put through the wringer whenever an executive decided that a new direction was needed. The “event comic” has often been used as tool to artificially alter these stories, and is largely seen as an executive decision overriding any artistic vision that may have been in place. Grant Morrison takes this multiverse-destroying weapon out of the hands of DC and uses it against them. (He tried this once before to a lesser effect with the beautifully flawed Final Crisis.) Morrison portrays executive DC as a monstrous gentry, taking advantage of these fictional characters at every opportunity. It's confounding as to how this imagery made it through the publication process intact.

Morrison refers to this book as his magnum opus, and I think he may be right. It's a beautiful work of meta-fiction that captures the full-hearted love for comic books that this man has spent his entire career trying to communicate. This is the capstone for a body of work that has been building for many years, but I would be very interested to get the opinion of someone who dives right in. I highly recommend this book. The Pax Americana chapter alone is required reading.