2 crampons out of 5

DC: One Million feels like a rough draft for everything else Grant Morrison would do with his epic crossover storylines.  The collected trade may, understandably, be a compromise – it’s not all of the issues from the series, and for something where the plot does seem to rely on details between issues, that hampers the story – but, regardless, it’s still a fairly uninteresting mess that just sounds good because it’s a wacky Morrison idea.

So versions of the JLA from a bunch of years in the future come to present day to let our modern JLAers know that they’re invited to participate in a contest of sorts in the future.  The future JLA will stay behind to watch things while modern day goes on their little trip.  Of course, the whole things ends up getting wrapped into a time-spanning diversion to something something destroy the world (I think).  Grant went big and loud with his JLA books and One Million isn’t really different, but it lacks the grounding of an ongoing series.  Spread out to several titles and several issues with a core series penned by Morrison and external spin-offs by individual series writers, that big and loud adds disjointed to the mix, making for quite an uneven read.  I was generally confused reading the trade, so I can’t imagine having to wait weeks between books.

But that’s not to say it’s horrible.  The idea is fun, and there’s an undercurrent of fun throughout the whole thing, the overcamp seriousness that kicked off JLA and sort of got tired through Morrison’s run as it was one world-destroying event after another is favorably kept in check by switching to another writer for an interlude, than back to big action with Grant.  You also get a jumble of good artists under one roof.  Alas, this is just the scent of things, though.  Actually reading it just leaves a taste of wondering if there’s something happening between pages that you’re not seeing.

Grant would get a better handle on the maxi-series approach later in his writing career.  I believe this came out during his JLA run, so it maintains some of that punchy flavor, but it feels more like an experiment with the crossover medium.  I would say it’s for JLA or Morrison completists only.