Well, this was quite an improvement over issue 1. Not that issue 1 was bad, it was just so short. Barely anything happened in it, and there were barely any words in it. It took me about two minutes to read. Stuff actually happens in issue 2.
Joe the Barbarian is an eight-issue miniseries Grant Morrison is writing for Vertigo. It's got a great concept. It's about a diabetic boy who goes into insulin shock in his bedroom, and starts hallucinating that he's in a fantastic realm populated by the action figures on the floor of the room. And his attempt to deal with the situation in the real world is paralleled by his adventure in the fantasy world. It's a much more appropriate venue for Morrison's random nonsense than, say, Final Crisis was. Not to turn this into a rant about Morrison, but I've really been feeling like every story he's written recently has made less sense than the last. Possibly going all the way back to Animal Man, which may have been the last time he wrote something that you could actually follow without having to read it several times. Not that I didn't enjoy his runs on Doom Patrol, JLA, X-Men, and other books, but he certainly doesn't make his work very easy to read. Actually, that may make the lack of wordiness in Joe the Barbarian a plus. At least it doesn't take you very long to read it two or three times. Although I'm not sure you'd get a whole lot more out of this on subsequent readings. I feel much the same way I did about Invisibles: the stuff that makes sense makes sense on the first read. The rest of it will never make sense no matter how many times you read it. Fortunately, it seems like there's more of the former than the latter in Joe, which was decidedly not the case in Invisibles.
I'm a little worried about the fact that we're now a quarter of the way through the series, and still barely anything has happened, but I still have a feeling that this is going to be good. I hope I'm right. Vertigo certainly seems to be maintaining its place as the home of the best comics. I can't recommend Mike Carey's The Unwritten enough. It's easily my favorite comic I'm reading right now. Perhaps I'll review the next issue when it comes out. The book's about this guy who was the inspiration for a series of novels his father wrote about a Harry Potter type character, and the guy is gradually discovering that he may actually be the character and have magic powers and stuff. It's pretty cool, although I have no idea how they're not getting sued. Maybe they figure if J.K. Rowling ever says anything about it, they'll just point out that Harry Potter is basically a ripoff of the character from Vertigo's Books of Magic.
Speaking of getting sued, how the hell is Morrison able to get away with putting toy versions of characters like Captain Picard and Snake Eyes into Joe the Barbarian? I know DC doesn't own the comics rights to those characters.
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