If you follow my articles whatsoever, you know that I'm a huge mark for the work of Grant Morrison. He's brilliant. Superheroes, creator-owned, Marvel, DC, whatever it may be. That's why whenever a new Morrison project is releasing, I rock back and forth in my chair until the issue finds its way into my greedy little paws.
With Joe the Barbarian, a new 8 issue mini-series from Vertigo with art by Sean Murphy, Morrison delivers another fantastic entry into his eclectic cache of creator-owned work. With Morrison's writing, we often expect high concept, metaphysical through lines. With Joe the Barbarian, the high concept portion is certainly present, but it's surprisingly grounded in a reality that I wouldn't normally associate with Morrison's work, and that's exciting. It shows that Morrison is always looking to expand as a writer and try new things, even if that means bringing things down to Earth.
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Joe follows a young boy, alienated from his peers and misunderstood by his mother, as he goes to visit his father's grave in a war veteran's cemetery. As far as plot goes, that's really all that happens in this issue. It's an incredibly fast read that is laced with so many poignant moments through Morrison's brilliant writing and Murphy's ability to construct a scene for maximum emotional impact.
From Vertigo's solicitations, we know that the overall plot of this series is Joe's eventual escape into the world of his beloved toys. While the beginnings of that scenario are present towards the end of this issue with a brilliant two page spread from Murphy that features characters (or at least, their likenesses) ranging from Batman to Santa Claus to Snake Eyes and Captain Jean-Luc Picard (missing a leg). It sounds nearly ridiculous, but at this point, Morrison has spent the better part of issue #1 building to this moment, and leaves it completely believable that a boy experiencing the things Joe does would resolve to lose himself in (presumably) an imaginary world.
Morrison accomplishes so much with very little, using introspective moments like Joe conversing with his pet rat or single lines of dialog directed at the grave of his father to build a depressingly sympathetic child character. Every step of the way, Murphy is accenting Morrison's work, composing panels that isolate Joe, whether it's amongst a field of tombstones or in his empty house; Joe the Barbarian reeks of loneliness. And finally, Dave Stewart again makes a splash with his hauntingly appropriate color palette, using very dull brown and mustard-yellow tones to populate most of the book, reiterating the blandness of Joe's life.
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Joe the Barbarian #1 is a shining example of what happens when the various elements of a comic book's creation come together seamlessly and each member of the creative team is completely receptive to the others. To say I'm excited to see this series play out would be an understatement. Only one issue in, and Joe the Barbarian has raised my expectations to it being one of the best books of the year.
