Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery

This review will focus on the edition of the book itself rather than the work of Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely, you can find many great reviews about the story itself right here in Amazon. I'll just say that both artists shine so much in this volume that you will suffer of temporarily blindness after reading it, only to then gain a 4th dimensional vision of what Super-Heroes and Ideas are about.

Fortunately, this book is quite a "Deluxe" edition, as DC/Vertigo applied the Fables Deluxe series standard of quality:

- The paper stock is glossy and heavy weight and the printing quality is great.
- The book features a full-color printed hardback under the dustjacket (unlike the rest of DC/Vertigo HCs that have just a shamelessly dark grey presentation. That's right, dark grey, not even true black).
- It's a solid glued binding book. Of course I would have liked a sewn one, but given that this is a slim volume and there's almost no gutter loss, I can totally live with the glued binding.

Other good things to consider:

- The dustjacket features a new illustration by Frank Quitely, really beautiful.
- The original comics were re-coloured for the ocasion. I'm usually against re-colouring, but in this case I'm happy with the results. The original comics were presented in a typical mid-nineties digital colouring fashion that hasn't aged that well. The new colouring is a great enhancement that respects the original intent, but with a much better use of the tools.
- We get a 14-pages section of extras at the end of the book, with sketches and original artwork by Quitely.
- We also get a 4-pages prologue which was previously featured in issues #2 and #4 of the original series as a 2-part article section.
- Finally, the overall design of the book is quite nice and eye-catching.

This is a great opportunity to get this series, it was out of print for legal issues for about 15 years and was nearly impossible to get due to the insane bidding prices. Get this book, OWN IT, because this is the kind of work that you will read once and again and again and again, and then again and again. That's just how multilayered this book is!

There's no denying the stories writer Grant Morrison comes up with for his Batman books are both brilliant and complex. He's written some great supernatural-tinged story arcs for the Dark Knight I've thoroughly enjoyed. That being said, I found "Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery The Deluxe Edition " a clutter of ideas attempting a sort of "Inception"-like mind-trip that proves to do nothing but cause confusion.

I'm probably not going to make any new friends and might lose some over this review of something many people consider groundbreaking and classic. I wish I would have enjoyed it more. I do enjoy Grant Morrison's writing now, but I'll pass on any more adventures featuring the Doom Patrol and Flex Mentallo.

I knew nothing of Flex when I requested to review this from the vine. I love graphic novels and a good story so I was excited to see one on the Vine Program. I started reading this TPB and with the authors notes was wondering why I have never heard of this character. Stuff like he was so popular it has an issue that is higher than any other on the market that a milk soaked copy sold for 800,000. I started to suspect I had picked up one of those comics that likes to make fun of itself. Well needless to say I couldn't finish it. Out of the four comics collected I made it through 3 1/2 before I said this wasn't worth the time. Summary goes like this a junkie is overdosing and while he is dying he is seeing another reality where Flex is searching for long lost superheros of the golden age of comics. It is completly a metaphysical comic. Kind of on the vain of when I was in college and students would sit for an hour and discuss a one refrenced tree in a story and talk about how it was this and maybe it represents that while the whole time I was wanting to scream it is just a tree people seriously. Flex is a parody on the guy in the old comics who had the add Mr. Atlas wearing the tiger skin undies on the beach and saying if you wanted muscles like him send him money and he would send you a work out. In short this comic was not for me I have never been one to enjoy metaphysical stories. Language is strong and drug use througout with sparodic nudity. A parody on life and comics that I found dry and unhumourous.

Grant Morrison is that rare breed of creative genius who not only reminds us here of how good he is at what he does, but who also reminds us why we seek out such things in the first place. Flex Mentallo is yet another such work in his impressive bibliography.

Don't let the man in leopard-print trunks on the cover fool you, this is heady, deep-thinking, transcendent literature about the power of stories and the endurance of ideas and truths in the guise of a muscle-bound, cosmic detective story. Flex reminds us what a hero is, and what heroes are for, while the over-arching narrative reminds us why humans have always looked to and created such figures. This is a book that may well change the way you look at comics and super heroes. Morrison's absolute command of the medium, as laid down in gorgeous, evocative, ink by Frank Quitely, is on full display here.

This is a book about what it means to be human, and what it means to wish for something greater. Oh, and it's funny, too. The introduction to this collected edition sets a perfect tone with its examination of the history of our titular hero and the men who shepherded him from a great idea to a great character and finally into the Hero of the Beach, who comes full circle as a force of myth. This is a comic about comics and super heroes, but more than that it's a cracking good read on the power of the comic book form and why we need heroes.

If you like Flex, you would do well to check out Morrison's run on Doom Patrol, wherein the pages of which our hero made his triumphant debut and introduced the power of Muscle Mystery.

Awhile ago I learned an important lesson about stories written by Grant Morrison. I have to read them at least twice before making a judgment. A second reading doesn't always raise my score but in this case it improved my enjoyment immensely. I wrote an entire review of Flex Mentallo giving it a more than decent but less than spectacular four stars. Perhaps what hurt the initial reading most was that it was not at all what I expected. With the satirical covers and a main actor dressing like a character from an ad half a century old I expected humor and the book isn't funny. There are a few humorous parts but Morrison wasn't going for humor. My second issue was that this was yet another attempt (albeit one of his earliest) at transcending into some new level of comic writing rather than just mellowing out and producing a story.

But here's the thing, on a second run through I started to consider the possibility that maybe on this occasion Grant Morrison was successful. Maybe what I was reading was one of the best comics I have ever read; one that might even break into my top 10 list that includes comics like Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Kingdom Come. I am so reflexively put off by Morrison's endless attempts at creating a mystical reading experience, an experience that often contains more gibberish than enlightenment that I couldn't see clearly. I absolutely love this book. I've seriously enjoyed other books by Morrison (and despised others) but this one perhaps more than any other really struck home.

Flex Mentallo was created by Morrison way back in 1990 appearing first in the Doom Patrol and then in his own four issue mini-series which is collected here. Holding his place as one of the most bizarre DC heroes ever Flex is essentially a comic character brought to life.... in a comic. Literally, he is Mac from the old Charles Atlas ads who followed Atlas's training routine to gain muscle and beat up the bully who kicked sand in his face. His title of `The Man of Muscle Mystery' is an apt name for his ill defined muscle powers which he only uses a couple of times throughout the series. He walks the streets in animal prints with his ultra manliness and when he uses his Muscle Mystery the words `Hero of the Beach' shine above his head in bright lights. But the book isn't about a muscleman in printed briefs. It's about imagination and creativity and dying and living and the place of comic books in our lives. The capper for me was the great ending that really left it up to the reader to decide what happened.

If you're looking for a humorous book filled with superheroes check out Top-10 by Alan Moore but if you're looking for a surreal almost David Lynchesque experience this is the one. Morrison describes it as `ultra-post futuristic'. I would call it a self aware comic deconstruction. Bravo to Morrison and bravo to Frank Quitely for his marvelous visuals. Morrison has produced a book that is thoughtful and truly deep rather than just mumbo jumbo. I have written probably a dozen reviews on Grant Morrison and have lambasted him on some of his serious misfires but this one is a homerun and will hold a prominent place in my collection. I am now changing my stars from four to a highly deserved five. BTW: If you enjoy the comic deconstruction of Flex Mentallo I heartily recommend `The Supreme: Story of the Year' by Alan Moore.

Nobody ever went looking for the spiritual counterargument to Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' so comic historians brushed right past this masterpiece, content that Moore still had the final word. An unnerving, powerful book, and a comic I strongly believe has the power to save someone's life.

Grant Morrison has an obnoxious tendency to often make his stories confusing and complex in a manner that does not improve the presentation. As a perfect example of this, see the Invisibles. Flex Mentallo is another such work. The reviewers who did not understand the larger themes of this work correctly point out its seemingly inane complexity. To fully appreciate Flex Mentallo you have to understand that Grant Morrison is commenting on the history of Superhero comics. Specifically, he is critiquing what he believes to have been an overall decline in the medium from the Golden/Silver Age to the Dark Age (think TDKR and Watchmen.) To understand this book, you absolutely have to be widely read in the comic book medium and have a general understanding of the history of comics. I only understood Flex Mentallo because I previously read Grant Morrison's book (yes, a 400 page book with no pictures!) Supergods.

This graphic novel is great if you meet the above criteria. Be forewarned, however, that this is not exactly a leisure read. A full appreciation requires contemplation and possibly a full second reading.

Frank Quitely is the best comic artist ever. This isn't his best work, but he doesn't really put out bad work.

Years I've waited for a definitive reprint of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol spinoff from the Vertigo glory days, and now here it is: the collected four-comic miniseries about Flex Mentallo, Man of Muscle Mystery. Flex's bizarre origin was recounted towards the latter end of Morrison's classic run on Doom Patrol, which was, with Sandman and Hellblazer, a member of the holy trinity of Vertigo titles that followed early pioneer Swamp Thing and changed the face of comics back in the late Eighties and early Nineties.

All those great Vertigo titles were more or less loving deconstructions of heroic tropes and storylines, but Morrison pulled out all the stops with the Flex Mentallo miniseries, making it so meta it's impossible to know whose hallucination we're in half the time. The main story follows Flex, a simple hero patterned after the Golden Age greats, as he seeks an old crimefighting colleague and finds himself in the midst of an incomprehensible conspiracy. But this story is frequently derailed by, and woven into, the maundering of a suicidal musician who may or may not be living in the same universe or at the same time as the events of Flex's story; a B-story about a philosophical cop whose apocalyptic fears lead him to consult an imprisoned super-villain; a progressive deconstruction of the great eras of comic-book history; and hints of a secret legend about a world of super-heroes who either love us and want to save us or are already dead. That may sound complicated, but believe me, I've simplified it for you. During the read, it's a hazy, narcoleptic, hallucinogenic odyssey that makes a lot of emotional sense without ever actually revealing what story Morrison thinks he's telling.

Flex Mentallo marks the high-water mark of my interest in Morrison's farther-out stuff. I didn't get The Invisibles and I cared. I didn't get Flex Mentallo -- still don't, really -- but I don't care. Here, the emotional payoffs Morrison builds into the work -- despair in the face of Armageddon leavened with glimmers of impossible hope -- worked well enough for me that I found myself willing to accept my incomprehension of the plot, which is usually hard for me. One of the things that kept me grounded was Frank Quitely's extraordinary art, which has the precision of realism even when he is drawing hyperbolic scenes. But mostly I'm a story guy, and my positive reaction and long memory of this miniseries comes from the way the story made me feel.

The Flex Mentallo miniseries, complete in this deluxe edition, is a fascinating, adult-oriented and intricate story (or tapestry of stories), with the fabulous artwork you'd expect from Frank Quitely, and it bears repeated readings very well. For those of us who were growing up during the Vertigo Revolution, it also evokes nostalgia for that great era of comics. Reading it again was like bumping into an old friend I'd lost touch with and hadn't realized how much I missed.

This book is a must read in the vein of Watchmen or DKR. This is book is a classic by Morrison and Quitely and I've put several friends of mine onto it soon as I finished reading it.

Perhaps Grant Morrison's finest metafictional moment, Flex Mentallo is a work whose depth and brilliance represent the best in comics writing. If you're unfamiliar with the work and wary of the cover price, rest assured that after reading the book, you will be amazed at just how rich the story is despite its relative brevity. Morrison puts so much energy and imagination into Flex Mentallo that it reads like a book twice its size. The multiple interwoven narratives are tantalizingly complex, yet disarmingly straightforward; the characters are unique, yet archetypal. Morrison delivers a story that is at once familiar and wholly original.

Some critics are displeased that the series has been recolored for this collected edition. True, the colors in this volume (which, it should be noted, are by the original colorist!) are less psychedelic than they were in 1996, but one can liken this updating to the recoloring of "Batman: The Killing Joke" several years ago. In both cases, the modern coloring is far more subtle and nuanced, taking full advantage of modern techniques and creating a richer, more timeless version of the story.

Flex Mentallo is that rarest of comic book rarities: a genuine classic of the medium which demonstrates masterful execution of the form's stylistic tropes even as it pushes the medium to places it has never before dared venture.