There's Someone More Heartless than Grant Morrison? Really?

When I talk about Grant Morrisson's writing I tend to use harsh terminology. Heartless, monster, sociopath - just a sampling of the hyperbolic invective I`ve levied at the man in the past. Obviously I`ve never meant any of it, I just enjoy making broad rhetorical points when discussing a man that I perceive as representing the worst that comics have to offer. He writes emotionally disconnected, fundamentally nihilistic stories about awful people doing horrible things for no particular reason, other than Grant read something about particle physics or Kabbalah that week and thought he could write a story that weaves those ideas into the plot.

He`s never successful at doing this, however, and what we're left with are stories where people talk for a few pages about dark matter before shooting children in the face. Bleak, pointless, trash.

Except when he`s writing about Batman and Superman. Somehow the mythic power of those characters overcomes all of Grant`s instincts and he, more often than not, winds up writing solid-to-brilliant adventure stories in which the characters are pushed past the point of no return and well into `certain death` territory, only to have them think their way out at the last possible moment with a scheme that startles the reader every bit as much as it does the villain. He`s not in Alan Moore`s league of course - Morrisson has a penchant for lazy plotting and a reliance on his readers not giving characters` motivations too much thought. Still, his superhero stories are always worth a look.

It`s his love for Superman that led to something occurring that I never imagined I would see... an animated adaptation of a Grant Morrisson comic that`s actually darker than the source material!

In this early scene from the All-Star Superman, Samson demonstrates his recklessness by tossing a lizard-man into space with no concern for his flight path. The result:

The lizard man damages a few solar panels. An effective display of how careless use of superpowers can be dangerous, contrasting him nicely with Superman. Now take a look at the same scene in the movie-

That`s right, he destroyed the satellite with the lizard man`s body. And just what was the satellite?

The international space station. Yes, in the All-Star Superman movie, Superman allows the ISS to be destroyed, and all the astronauts on it to be killed. And it`s never mentioned once. Is this because everyone working on the project didn`t know which sattelite that was? Probably - but it`s still inexcusable that this sequence was included.

The funny part is that the filmmakers probably thought they`d removed the comic`s bleakest scene, in which Lex Luthor burns a guard to death while taunting him with the fact that he could have cured the guard`s sister`s cancer had he not been sentenced to death. Little did they know that they`d made the overall story so much worse...

Lex still burns the guard to death, of course, there`s just no taunting.