By Morrison & Quitely
Publisher: Vertigo
ISBN: 9781401247027
Finally, after a rather lengthy disagreement with a certain third party, Flex Mentallo’s story has made it into paperback. Combining the talents of two of comicdom’s behemoths, this is an outlandish, bold, head-spinning and utterly distinct tale born from Morrison’s run on Doom Patrol.
Flex Mentallo is the only superhero in town. A massively-muscled he-man wearing little more than his leopard-print shorts and leather boots, he assists ordinary folk and the police with his astounding muscle-flexing powers. Flex believes he’s the only superhero because he was accidentally brought to life from the mind of his creator, a child who used to draw comic strips and birthed him from upon the page. But is that really the case? Although Flex is the titular character, the story's other main focus is the man who drew those strips in his childhood, and is slowly having a breakdown as he wrestles with the nature of his reality. So just which reality is true?
Typically Grant Morrison all the way through, the pages are over-flowing with brilliant throw-away ideas, many of which would have sustained a comic series or movie all in themselves. In direct contrast to the Superman mythos, we have a Kansas farmer vowing to send his infant child into space to save him from the turmoil on Earth, and the entire scene feels so much more sinister and futile than the noble hope of the Kryptonian alternative. There’s a whole host of dispensable heroes, many simply wonderful creations, taking comics a step-further into the absurd or magnificent. One of Flex’s villain’s is the Mentallium Man, a hulking great figure with five orbiting featureless spheres for heads. Each sphere, when rotated to become the head’, is like Kryptonite, offering a different kind of danger to Flex. The five varieties of Mentallium are Shocking Pink, Silver, Ultraviolet, Lethal Black M and Lamb & Turkey.
What really makes the book head and shoulders above so many others is that it’s all illustrated by Frank Quitely, the astonishingly ultra-detailed illustrative genius of the medium. With a script half as good this would still be a rip-roaring ride with Quitely drawing it, so the combination of two of comics’ heavyweights guarantees something special.
And if you liked that: Check out their run on X-Men
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