Joe the Barbarian

I wouldn’t trade “New X-Men,” “All-Star Superman,” or his ongoing “Batman” run for anything, but I still wish Grant Morrison would find the time to do more weird and imaginative creator-owned series like this.  As the story goes, Joe is your average teenager who is currently having the mother of all diabetic freak-outs.  Now instead of slipping into a coma like reality would dictate, he’s slipping into a fantasy world populated by animated versions of his toys, an anthropomorphic version of his pet rat, and new takes on familiar people from his world.  Though having the real world interact with a fictional one (and vice versa) has been a recurring theme in Morrison’s work (see also:  “Animal Man” and “The Filth”) he finds a new angle here by constantly showing us how Joe’s “real world” corresponds to the “fictional” one.  Yes, most of this may be happening in the title character’s head, but Morrison blurs it to the point where it ceases to matter.  Whether Joe is trying to make it downstairs to get a soda to fend off his diabetic coma, or if he’s “The Dying Boy” come to fend off King Death — you’ll be invested in his survival either way.

Now while Morrison’s name may be the chief draw here, most of the credit for making all this work goes to artist Sean Murphy.  I’ve said before that the man would be perfectly suited to drawing “Hellblazer” on a regular basis, as he has Sean Phillips’ ability to make the utterly real and completely fantastic seem believable in his hands.  Here, in addition to drawing Joe’s home, he’s tasked with bringing a fantasy world based on said house and the boy’s toys to life.  It’s a difficult task, but Murphy makes it look like it wasn’t a challenge at all.  You can even tell that he was having fun as he peppers the world with ersatz versions of recognizable toys like Legos, Transformers, Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe, familiar D.C. icons like Batman and Superman and more.  It helps give the work personality, and if you’re of a certain age like I am, and grew up with this stuff, then you’ll appreciate it even more.  With that being said, it should come as no surprise that I think this is certainly worth your money in hardcover, or the inevitable paperback.