Writer: Grant Morrison
Artist: Frank Quitely
Colourist: Laura DePuy and WildStorm FX
Letterer: Kenny Lopez
Price: £9.99 (paperback)
Publisher: DC Comics/Titan Books
ISBN: 1-84023-169-6

Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison are currently winning rave reviews for their collaborative efforts on NEW X-MEN, and surprisingly, the strong buzz seems to be coming from all sectors of fandom. Morrison, a writer known for energetic and extreme ideas, is satisfying both his and the X-Men's constituencies by taking the concept of mutants and applying some honest-to-God evolution. Quitely may not match Morrison for speed - and that's an understatement - but his idiosyncratic style has already earned him a strong following.

But NEW X-MEN is actually the third Morrison/Quitely collaboration to emerge from a major publisher. The first, the DC Vertigo miniseries FLEX MENTALLO, was kept out of reprint by a court case alleging actionable similarities between the character of Mentallo and the Charles Atlas 'Hero of the Beach' ads. Even now it remains in trade paperback limbo, despite that case ending in DC's favour.

The second collaboration was given a quite different treatment. JLA: EARTH 2 emerged toward the tail-end of Morrison's run on the main JLA series, as a single volume hardcover prestige format graphic novel. Though the hardback format may be out of the price range of your average fan, and caters mainly for those with a fanatic's or collector's mentality, it certainly gave the impression that DC considered Morrison's mainstream work to be a jewel in their crown.

Unfortunately, it never truly was, and certainly not to the extent that it has become for Marvel. Morrison's real labour of love at DC was the psychotic and psychedelic INVISIBLES, which DC Vertigo were thankfully able to keep in print despite lean times and the best efforts of the writer to die from tropical illnesses. THE INVISIBLES earned Morrison his cult reputation, and showed what he was capable of. The monthly JLA series guaranteed him a marquee name, but was a sadly disappointing effort, suggesting that perhaps the writer was not at that stage ready for primetime.

In the monthly JLA books Morrison took the approach that the ideas were the driving force, and the characters, often bound by the fact that they were simultaneously appearing in books of their own, would remain ciphers in service to the action. A brave design, at least, but one that made for fairly tedious stories, not helped by Howard Porter's stiff, regular art.

Frank Quitely, a close friend of Morrison, has proved a much more rewarding collaborator, as EARTH 2 ably demonstrates. His work is not quite like anything else in comics, but the style has become increasingly appreciated and accepted following his work on Mark Millar's AUTHORITY run, in spite of all the thick chins, small noses, burly women and pouting men.

A superb storyteller, Quitely has an impressive sense of scale and a fine eye for cinema. Morrison is alleged to be a particularly prescriptive writer when it comes to layouts, but with Quitely that approach seems to have mutated into a symbiosis of the two closely attuned Glaswegians.

Quitely inks himself in this work, so the presentation is excellent. Colours come courtesy of Laura DePuy and the Wildstorm crew, and DePuy's bold work on Bryan Hitch's AUTHORITY art clearly provided her with the right grounding for this book. The colours may be dynamic and robust, but there's no doubt that they were chosen and applied with care.

In spite of all the artistic talent on offer, the story in EARTH 2 still sees the characters played largely as stiffs. For once, however, it isn't such a problem. EARTH 2 sees the JLA team, led by Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, learning of the existence of a parallel world dominated by evil versions of themselves. So far, so STAR TREK.

As with any 'evil mirror' story, though, this at least gave Morrison a rare chance to radically alter his characters, albeit strictly in parallel. That alone lifts EARTH 2 above Morrison's monthly run, because here the heroes appear more complex simply due to the presence of signs of a path not taken. And of course, Morrison is not shy about taking the opportunity to have some real fun and desecrate the icons he's otherwise not allowed to smudge, which may well have been one of his principle reasons for wanting to do a story of this kind.

'In any world with Morrison in charge, there are questions of cosmic balance to be considered.' The book is still not fully approachable for those with no strong familiarity with the Justice League. While there's no external continuity to worry about - the book is a singular and self-contained package - the fact that Morrison keeps an emotional wall around the characters is both a blessing and a curse. Readers new to the JLA aren't going to have to fight to get a handle on the heroes, but they're also not likely to develop an attachment to them. Indeed, the villains are more approachable, because at least they seem human.

There is something more to EARTH 2 than the usual alternate reality tale. With the heroes in the 'evil' world, the villains naturally find their way to the 'good' one, and both teams learn that, in any world where Grant Morrison is ultimately in charge, there are certain questions of cosmic balance to be considered. What is right and what is appropriate are not the same thing, he suggests. Sometimes, a world might not deserve saving.

Thus Morrison adds his contribution to the ongoing debate about might and right in the superhero genre. The most notorious contributions to the debate were, of course, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' WATCHMEN and Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, works of such importance to superhero fiction that they are often assumed to be the most important works in modern comics.

True or not, they were the books that gave us heroes with feet of clay, or heroes with a political voice. Ever since then, the revisionists have continued to kick against the question of what superheroes represent, and what they say about the world we inhabit and the world we wish we could have. EARTH 2 uses the Justice League, arguably comics' greatest paragons of virtue, to show us twisted shades of both worlds.

EARTH 2 won't earn itself such a high profile in the landscape of superhero fiction as WATCHMEN or DKR, but it fits comfortably alongside more recent entrants into the superhero debate, such as Warren Ellis' THE AUTHORITY or Joe Casey's WILDCATS, and marks a much better companion piece to THE INVISIBLES or NEW X-MEN than Morrison's main JLA run.

Andrew Wheeler is a London-based entertainment journalist.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.