Next Wave is great, but Ellis' caricature of Nick Fury trough his Dirk Anger character got so much on my nerves, that i finnally dropped the book.

Morrison likes superheroes, no doubt about it.  The thing is, he's embarassed that he likes them, and that's where you get the little digs and jabs that crop up in his work.  He wants to write them, but he can't help putting little things in the work to establish he's "cooler" than the material. 

As opposed to Ellis, on the other hand, who does not like superheroes, but enjoys the money they give him (of which he is perfectly up front about I might add, yet no one really seems to care, funny how that works).

I love your "humor" style, JB...I think you may have missed your true calling.

MPH

Although I'm liking two books Morrison is doing right now, a first for me as I haven't liked anything he's done (and trust me, I've tried) since his early ANIMAL MAN issues, I can say with 100% certainty that he is not "the best superhero comic writer working right now." At all.  Not even close.

Andrew W. Farago wrote: If the trade-off is one panel of easily-ignored-if-you-don't-choose-to-get-hung-up-o n-it dialogue for every 15 issues of superhero action, that seems like a fair trade.

By definition, a writer and a story can't be good if the characters have to be written off-model for it to work.  His run on X-MEN is rife with that kind of stuff, not just the panel posted in this thread.  I don't consider it a "fair trade" to get a couple of years worth of stories with the characters written so off-model as to a) not consider themselves superheroes, and b) to consider the costumes/uniforms they've been wearing their whole publishing career as "silly".  That's a commentary by the writer as expressed through the characters he's writing, not the other way 'round.  That they would never, in a million years, say something like that or believe the way Morrison would have them believe, isn't a "fair trade" at all.  It's having to push aside who the characters really are in order to enjoy the work that Morrison is doing.  That's not good writing and that's certainly not the mark of a good superhero writer. That I see a pattern like this in his writing, not just one time, not just on specific characters, but through quite a bit of his superhero work, leads me to believe that it's not written just for me to write off if I so choose.**  It's an expression of belief that has its outlet through his work, no matter if it's one panel or an entire story.

**Why should I have to be forced to write something off?  Shouldn't the writer be doing their respective jobs so that it doesn't come down to me picking and choosing what to accept or not to accept?  What to ignore and what to believe?