According to Wikipedia, Grant Morrison has been quoted as suggesting that he wanted to do something different to these comparatively po-faced takes on superheroes, though there’s undoubtedly influences from both in here, with heroes coming out of retirement to face down an old evil. Superheroes were still largely played straight, though both Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns had been published. (Though this reviewer did notice the description of a failed Cloud 9 test baby in the form of a living whirlwind that "rose up in a storm of shapes, speaking in tongues, and simply would not die.I’m old enough to remember Zenith from the pages of 2000AD when it was first published in 1987. It's a fun comic, even if the Morrison-isms only come out in dribs and drabs.
The art is of a standard superhero style, occasionally panning out to a splash page (some of which are i n c o l o r), but mostly arranged in a typical grid. Together with Zenith, this very British superhero squad takes on Lovecraftian monstrosities, and if the final act is a bit of a deus ex machina, it can mostly be forgiven. John, a mystic turned Tory politician, an alcoholic Welshman known as the Red Dragon, and mild-mannered journalist Ruby Fox as Voltage.
But when Britain is again threatened by crypto-Nazis performing the Ritual of the Nine Angles (Grant Morrison, everybody!), will Zenith have the strength to put aside his fame and get the remaining members of Cloud 9 back together for one last fight?Īs the story goes on, readers learn that just as Germany hasn't lost its Nazis, the surviving Cloud 9ers haven't lost their powers. The second-generation Zenith is himself a Billy Idol-esque rock star who uses his powers as mere stage pyrotechnics.
As one does.) Cloud 9, however, came of age in the swinging sixties, and the ones who don't disappear become hippies and malcontents, eventually losing their powers along with their ideals.
(Its previous safeguard, a superhuman named Maximan, was blown up along with his Nazi equivalent by an American atomic bomb. The titular superhero is the offspring of two other superheroes, members of the government-bred team Cloud 9, which was itself created in the moments after World War II in order to protect Britain from rogue Nazi supermen. This reviewer only knows about the Doom Patrol.) Zenith is one of these offerings, and it's also the first long-form comics work of Grant Morrison, better known as the writer behind the amazing modern relaunch of the Doom Patrol. While best known for publishing Judge Dredd, the long-running British comics anthology 2000 AD frequently publishes stories within different continuities.
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