We’ll begin with overstatement–just so you know it’s me:
Grant Morrison’s entire career has been a sustained meditation upon the problem of free will.
In the boggiest regions of the oeuvre (i.e. The Filth), the very notion of a “self” is boiled down into a kind of broth salted by otherness. These narratives strain out those chunks of essentialism that have choked so many thinkers (leaving many a bouillabasketcaisse in their wake), culminating in a briny kiss on the lips that you have the gall to call your own.
In some ways, Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye adopts a similar course, leading the reader on a merry chase through a whole bunch of “comfort zones” that are half sanctuary and half sham. The sets are rearranged with such speed (and just enough convenient sloppiness) that none of them ever quite seems “normal”–but these are habitable worlds, just like ours (I’m talking about Canada here–obviously, it’s quite conceivable that your world isn’t bearable at all).
Viewed through this interpretive lens, the Seaguy saga reads like an amusing game of solitaire in which the author rambles through the deck, reorganizing the cards he’s placed on the table until good ol’ Seaguy turns up in a suit that fits neatly onto Queen She-Beard.
Make no mistake about it–that is one thing that’s going on in this piece.
However, there’s much more (or, more accurately, much less) to this story than that. It’s almost a regression to naive existentialism. Almost. Somehow, Morrison has found a way to tell a classic liberation story without crashing into the ontological wall that invariably rises up to knock all sense out of these tales. And, as usual, he achieves the impossible by burrowing into the hoary conventions of the genre.
His weapons of choice on this adventure?
1. the costume
2. the binary code that powers all superhero tales: “team-up” or fight
The first trope blossoms into something quite wonderful when the book’s protagonist (in the guise of the bull-dresser “El Macho”) sheds his clothing in issue two, ending the confrontation with his raging adversary. The scene delivers all of the delirious charm of “Selfhood–dramatically regained,” without tying the tin can of Monolithic Identity to the moment. It’s an old saw that the clothes make the man, but Morrison and Cameron Stewart prove that a lack of clothes can unmake (and disarm) a world (without, of course, freeing anyone from the need to step into another–equally spurious, but perhaps more congenial–environment and identity). Nakedness, in Seaguy, isn’t revelatory, or REAL–but it can hold up a mirror to an equally contingent Empire (the episteme has no clothes).
The second runs through the entire piece from the beginning of volume one–and of course Morrison is always on the side of a team-up, whenever one is possible. The book is an endless parade of decisions about friends and foes (Carl Schmitt calls this the only real political decision)–made, revised and re-made (with Death the only really consistent enemy)–all leading up to the climactic (and very Dickensian–as Morrison often is) call (which is not made by the supposed protagonist, but by She-Beard… kind of makes you wonder if we’ve been following the wrong story all along, doesn’t it? In any event, by letting go of her sword, she proves herself every bit the equal of the man who dropped his pants in the arena… and if this is really a story about killing machismo, she obviously had the most work to do).
Great stuff, all around.
More soon. Comics. Movies. Poetry. Fiction. Music. Whatever.
Count on it.
Dave
Fun!
Of course I think Death’s Seaguy’s only real friend — it’s just that even Death’s been addled by the post-Dad age. Possibly there is no one even there but Seaguy and Death — the more horror when Death is hauled away: who can be responsible?
But nah, just playing around, forget all that and let me go on. You make a lovely treatment, here. Although I would point out (have I set it up enough yet?) that when we first see El Monstro he is most definitely (and hilariously) clothed, as the bull on a bottle of crappy tequila might be clothed, or as the bull in a shitty commercial for aftershave might be clothed, and I would invoke Joe Camel here except clearly that’s not El Monstro but it’s Xoo instead.
I feel like these are very spotty comments indeed — your first six paragraphs are (I think) the best six paragraphs written on Seaguy thus far. You nail it — and it’s funny, have you been reading my Solitaire Journal? “Make this King end up with this Queen…oh no, here comes that filthy Jack!”
A fruitful way, I think, of talking about how the essence of imagination is the inability to keep stories from getting out of control.
Good stuff. And yes, Morrison *has* always been writing about the problem of free will (and related problems – free will/determinism, order/chaos, mind/body).
thanks folks!
Plok–I think your point about Death is quite apt. He IS the best friend imaginable, if the goal is to emerge from the narrative labyrinth. He definitely doesn’t see eye to eye with the Eye (neither the old one or the new one, whatever that is). And I suppose we have him to thank for Chubby’s timely reappearances.
But Morrison, as always, refuses to embrace Stasis (Seadog’s goal) OR Entropy. What’s left? I’m not sure, but Seaguy and She-Beard appear to be living it, by the end of the book.
Aren’t the pages are like cards? Each volume starts with the same card, and ends with the same card, but from different suits. Volume 2 starts with Death putting Seaguy in check with Claudette, and ends with Seaguy making an initiating move with She-Beard. To me, that last page has the ambiguity of Seaguy’s wink from Volume 1. After all, it’s convenient that a brutalised Seaguy is able fight She-Beard to an impasse. And what does he really know about her except his own fantasies, or about love except what has been fed to him by Mickey Eye? It’ll be interesting to see what goes into Volume 3 after this fairy tale ending.
agreed sir!
this pair is clearly in for a deuce of a time–it’ll be very interesting to see how they deal with what they’re dealt on the next go ’round… Death might even turn up trump after all (although, as Chubby is wont to say: “Death ain’t such a big deal these days”)
I’m definitely looking forward to volume three!
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