The Best Of 2000AD Monthly Nov 1994

Short Review: Wee Grant Morrison from back around 1988

Back before they took over Vertigo wholesale, the Brit-pack had to practice their talents somewhere. And, weekly comics magazine 2000AD being the only game in town, it was graced by names which you'd never imagine seeing 5 or 6 of 52 times a year these days. Okay, that's an exaggeration: not everyone who worked for them went on to rake in the dollars, as you can see from the practical non-existence of Pat Mills' American Career. But there was a lot of good stuff flying around all the same, and one of the best series ever to come out of there was Zenith, a cynical look at superheroes.

Written by Grant Morrison, and showing signs of his tendency to have people hitting each rather than dialogue even then, and drawn by Steve Yeowell (recently reunited with Garth on the brilliant Invisibles), Zenith was a coherent, well-plotted and engaging story of a rock-star superhero, and a multi-dimensional alignment of universes which will release Cthuloid horrors upon all the worlds. This being Phase II that's collected (mostly) in this book, the multidimensional nonsense is only foreshadowed, with the main stage being Zenith's investigation, along with a C.I.A. agent, of where he came from, and why a multimillionaire entrepreneur (who we must stress, bears no resemblance whatsoever to Richard Bransen) is trying to take over the world. Good clean fun, and as little angst as you can imagine from one of these superhero things