Comics are often compared to soap opera, but one DC Comic was actually inspired by reality shows like Grant Morrison. That comic is The Multiversity: The Just, the third issue of Morrison’s ultimate crossover series.
Released in 2014, The Multiversity was a series that chronicled the various universes that make up the larger DC Multiverse. The story sees a terrifying collection of evil, other-dimensional beings known as the Gentry invading the various universes, with a band of heroes from each gathering together to protect the Multiverse from being taken over. Each issue of the series dealt with a different universe, where audiences are introduced to variants of DC’s classic heroes. The Just — written by Morrison with art by Ben Oliver — takes place on Earth-16, a world where the superheroes have fixed all of humanity’s problems, leaving their bored and disaffected children living their lives as spoiled celebrities in a seemingly “perfect” world. Their world is so perfect, in fact, that these young heroes have taken to re-enact their greatest battles, just so they have something to do.
Recently, Morrison has been providing annotations to The Multiversity via their Substack newsletter, the latest installment of which is devoted to The Just, which Morrison claims is their favorite of the whole series. “I felt that this comic was the most contemporary and exciting to write of the bunch,” Morrison says. “The Just felt for me like a genuinely new way of doing superhero books and I could have written this comic forever – doing endless brief soap opera scenes and non-sequitur conversations, mishaps, blow-ups, pointless non-stories about super kids with nothing to do.” And the inspiration for this particular story? Says Morrison: “I based the rhythm of this issue on a typical episode of The Hills, a popular reality show that ran from 2006 to 2010 and depicted the spoilt, glamorous and generally vapid lives of a coterie of Beverley Hills uber brats.”
The Multiversity: The Just is DC’s Version of MTV’s The Hills
Morrison and Oliver fill their world with a wealth of young characters who would fit seamlessly into a superhero version of The Hills, and provide them with plenty of interpersonal drama along the way. Batman’s son Damian Wayne is dating Lex Luthor’s daughter Alexis, which he has to keep secret from his best friend, Chris Kent, the son of a Superman who, on this Earth, was murdered by Lex Luthor. Morrison further explains how reality TV soaps influenced the structure of the issue, saying, “From The Hills’ bag of tricks, I borrowed the helpful chyrons/captions explaining who everyone was in relation to everyone else and where they were meeting.” The artificial drama of reality TV also informed how Morrison approached the story, with Morrison claiming how he tried to capture the “rapid turnover of short, intensely emotive encounters and the elliptical dialogue that always reads like we came into a scene a few moments too late.”
In spite of Morrison’s enthusiasm for the concept, Earth-16 has made only a handful of brief appearances after being introduced to the DC Multiverse. With any luck, DC Comics will fulfill the promise of Grant Morrison’s series and depict the ongoing adventures of its The Hills-inspired superhero universe.
Source: Grant Morrison’s Substack
