Grant Morrison's 'Joe The Barbarian' Is An Invisible Man

A most unusual kind of crime took place yesterday in the world of mainstream comics, and it appears to have gone unnoticed.

To make matters worse, the heavy hitters fandom relies upon to report and solve such an injustice also happen to be this case's primary suspects.

If my steady diet of no less than six hours of C.S.I. a day has taught me anything, it's that an examination of the evidence may yield the clues necessary to solve the crime. I'm no Marg Helgenberger, but I can tell you what we know:

Fact: Word of any new Grant Morrison project rockets through the comics industry - and often far beyond - like a honeybee on speed.

Fact: The speculative buzz on Morrison's next DC Comics titles - a post-Final Crisis exploration of The Multiversity and a repeat stint on Batman - began spreading late last year, yet both books aren't scheduled for release until summer 2010.

Fact: Batman and Robin, Morrison's only current project, received similar attention long before its June debut. With a hugely successful opening arc by penciler Frank Quitely and Cameron Stewart's taking over art duties in January, Batman and Robin has quickly become DC's strongest selling title and the flagship title of the new Bat-franchise. And despite being temporarily overshadowed by Geoff Johns' Blackest Night mega-event, the Batman and Robin buzz has yet to abate.

Fact: The Great Ten, a ten issue maxi-series featuring the Chinese super team Grant Morrison created in the pages of 52, has received much recent attention from several of the largest news and promo websites of mainstream comics, including a three-part feature on Newsarama.com

Fact: DC's Vertigo Comics imprint officially announced their January 2010 solicitations yesterday. One of Vertigo's newly premiering January titles is Joe The Barbarian. Featuring art by Sean Murphy, the new eight-issue Vertigo series is written by none other than Grant Morrison himself.

I've gone to great though perhaps somewhat unnecessary lengths to build my criminal case here, and while the facts speak for themselves, reaching a conclusion isn't all that easy. Grant Morrison, as every dabbler well knows by now, is my favorite. I don't miss his news or his interviews; hell, someone could fart underwater in Siberia and if the sound it made even came close to 'Grant Morrison', I'd have heard about it by now.

And I've gotta ask: Why? Could the ongoing Batman and Robin - Blackest Night ruckus justify the Joe oversight? If only DC Comic's marketing efforts were suspect here, I could almost buy that as an excuse. But so much of the company's creative currency is Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns that it's hard to believe DC would pass up any opportunity where either is concerned.

To me, the industry oversight here is even more curious. I'm a huge fan of Newsarama and its sister-site, Comic Book Resources. They're two of the largest -- if not the largest --and most influential providers of comics news on the internet. Both sites frequently run stories with Grant Morrison subject matter -- he sells, so they will. Yet a search of both revealed that Newsarama has yet to write word one of Joe The Barbarian; only the Robot 6 blog hosted on CBR.com made any mention of the series there when they ran a two-paragraph discussion of artist Sean Gordon Murphy's early pencil work back in June, 2009.

Interestingly, Murphy had posted Joe the pencil work referred to in the Robot 6 blurb on his Deviant Art page, and as recently as early September blogged on how that account essentially made his comics career. But when I checked Deviant Art for his account earlier today, Murphy's deviant art homepage had been removed. Murphy also made no mention of Joe The Barbarian on his personal website other than in his most recent blog entry,"Controversy." In it, Murphy asks: Is it okay for a DC exclusive artist to be so honest and sometimes critical of the entertainment industry? Murphy refers to an enormous amount of delays he apparently was subjected to at Vertigo Comics -- most of which, he writes, cannot be blamed on the editors. One can infer that some delays likely were the fault of Vertigo's editors, and that this was a source of conflict between Murphy and Vertigo/DC. Murphy's admissions are linked to what he writes next: As unfortunate (and understandable) as it is that I can't post more Joe The Barbarian pages... I'm not entirely sure what to make of "Controversy," but perhaps disagreements at Vertigo have had their effect on the bigger picture. Murphy made no mention of Morrison anywhere in his entry -- which I expected. I don't feel Murphy had any problems with his writer, and even if he did, I doubt he'd ever cross that line.

So. What's up with Joe The Barbarian? The book's obviously been on the table for the better part of this year, yet unlike any of Morrison's other creations -- even those with significant spoiler potential -- Joe's received cruel and unusual silent treatment.

Aside from the book being literal crap unworthy of any coverage -- which, if you'll excuse my French, it obviously could never be considering the author-- only one logical conclusion remains. Namely, that Morrison kept the book quite close to his chest, and the choice to keep the talkers quiet was deliberate. He's got the clout, respect, and saleability to determine his own PR, especially for one of his creator-owned books.

Yet for a writer and chaos magician like Morrison, intentions (like those) are mundane and logic is a flawed, one dimensional illusion. With Joe The Barbarian, we may already be under the meta-influence of one his spells, lost in a fictional elsewhere like characters within his Mystery Play graphic novel.

Whoever said breaking into comics was hard is an idiot.