Not as wierd as you might expect..., 8 Mar 2005

By	Niall Mc Cann (Dundalk, Ireland) - See all my reviews

It's pretty straightforward; Alien teen (Noh-Varr) gets ambushed by evil Megalomaniac and stranded on Earth, where he ends up being hunted by the guy (that old chestnut) but the ideas that play out in the background are what make this. Hexus, the evil sentient corporation; Noh-Varr says "hello" to his new planet from Manhattan; the UN Bannermen and the "pocket battlefield". It's great, wierd and wacky stuff, though if you do know Morrison, you might be expecting it to be slightly less straightforward revenge tale.

That makes no difference though, this is Morrison at his wide-screen, crowd-pleasing best, but in the end he's still Morrison, and therefore still worth reading. Roll on the sequel, i say. I can't wait to see the promised "Cosmic Jihad".

Oh, and PS, i always forget to Praise JG Jones' art; it's phenomonal. Really great stuff.

You can't go wrong with this one. I Promise!

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Grant's most populist creation sets the scene, 16 Jul 2001

You can get a sense of what he's on about with this creation. Marvel Boy comes from a parallel earth and his ship gets shot down by a power-crazed villain called Midas, killing everyone on board except our hero. In each of the six issues that follows we see some of the developing consequences of this - from the release of a sentient corporation from Marvel Boy's ship, to the capture of the Memeplex that houses the collective ideation of the Kree people. It may sound like a surreal super-hero saga, but in a sense it's just scene-setting. Marvel Boy isn't on earth to save people from evil - quite the opposite. To him it's a turgid, crumby backwater with archaic politics that is dirty and unpleasant and almost impotent before him. He's here to make the world a better place, by any means necessary - and when you consider that his homeworld's politics is known as 'Zen Facism', you don't really know what to expect.

Full of wit and charm and spiky evil humour, Marvel Boy is also an attractive read. As ever with Grant, the earlier issues tend to seem quite light reading - but it's fairly clear that we can expect great things out of this interesting populist creation...