Action Comics #9 Review (This review will only cover the first story and not the back up) Roland Barthes once wrote a literary essay stating that an authors own thoughts and feelings should not be applied to their work. Once the work has been printed and someone else is reading it the work is out of their hands. What readers pick up from the work will be down to them. Of course this isn’t the definitive way to read a text, there are lots of different theories and arguments that debate this. However I think that might be an interesting theory to apply to reading a Grant Morrison comic. As most of you (if anybody does read this) know Grant Morrison is one of the most polarizing writers in modern comics. The die hard fans adore his work and his detractors can’t seem to stand it. While I love some of his work (WE3, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, The Invisibles, New X-Men and of course All Star Superman) other works of his leave me cold and dry (Seaguy, Batman annnd probably some other stuff). With this being said when he’s on I would class him as my absolute favourite writer working in comics ever. His hit and miss rate has been a bit sketchy as of late, but even when he misses at least he misses in bizarre psychedelic bang. Recently the man stirred up the some fans of comics with his perhaps ill thought out comments on Batman’s sexuality. After reading the discussion on Ifanboy and Comic Book Resources, I got to wonder how many fans or detractors of his run on Batman started going through their back issues looking for subtext that Batman was indeed gay, or his stories were full of gay ideologies. Part of me wonders if that’s a mistake, if you couldn’t find any gayness to the stories before and you don’t want to now (if you do of course go ahead and write an interesting article about it) then don’t bother looking for it. Just because the writer says he sees it in some of the archetypes of Batman doesn’t really mean you have to find it in the work. A lot of writers claim they don’t know what gets in or out of their stories. What I’m saying with this is don’t read Grant Morrison’s comics with that wacky Scottish magician in mind, read them as a story that you may or may not get something out of. It might make reading them more fun. Right, having that got that out the way lets move onto the review of Action Comics 9 shall we? First of I will admit to absolutely loving this issue. After reading it I had a great big smile on my face. Now I haven’t been a huge fan of his run so far but this comic really charmed me. Within the confines of a single 20 pages the issue managed to make a comment on Superman, 90’s comics, editorial interference, the multiverse and so many other things. Beyond that the issue managed to do all of that while telling a fun and inventive one and done story. For me any comic that has Clark Kent travelling around the world and finding a way to create Superman by using Tibetan spiritualism is definitely attention-grabbing right out the gate. We also got treated to a raving mad Lex Luthor who claimed he wasn’t racist but hated everything else about Superman, a sort of silver age throwback stories that was full if ridiculously fun ideas such as ‘Mind Movies’ and so much more. Not only was the story dense while free and interesting but Gene Ha’s artwork complimented the action well. I think it takes a special kind of artist to work with Grant Morrison, a good one can make his big ideas seem comprehensible and show them in a linear clear sequential way. Gene Ha was certainly up to the task here. At the end of the day if you remove Grant Morrison from the pages of the comic, then you’re left with an intriguing and inventive comic that puts forward a lot of big ideas in a clear way. Do yourself a favour and pick it up.