35 Years After His First Appearance, the Weirdest DC Villain Just Returned (And Met the Best Marvel Character Possible)

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Batman/Deadpool #1 brings together several comic greats, both heroes and creators, to tell a story that only they could tell together. The main story has two villains, both of whom were created by Morrison… and one of whom is Morrison. That’s right everyone, the Writer is back and it’s amazing. Some of you know what I’m talking about when I talk about the Writer and others don’t. It’s time for a history lesson for DC’s strangest villain, a character who has their origins in Morrison’s Animal Man.

The Writer Is DC’s Most Meta Character

So, once upon a time, Grant Morrison was a Scottish writer working in the UK comics scene when they were given a chance to work for DC Comics. Their first book was Animal Man which was meant to be a four-issue miniseries, but it sold well enough to be made into an ongoing. Animal Man #5 was called “The Coyote Gospel” and it was about a fictional character escaping into the “real world” to get the people there to stop making stories that tormented him and his fellows. This one issue was everything that Morrison was going to say with the book in one package. The writer told the audience what kind of story they were going to get 21 issues later.

Animal Man is a book about a lot of things, but a big part of it is about the way fiction and reality interact. The final issue of the run saw Morrison meet Animal Man, the two of them talking about what had happened to the character, how and why he had been changing. It’s basically Morrison talking to the audience about why they changed the things they did in the book, like the book’s environmental message, but it was also about why we, as humans, create these worlds and how we treat our creations. At the end, Morrison resurrected Animal Man’s family, to show that maybe, we should be kind to our creations; that we should stop tormenting them for our entertainment.

Grant Morrison appearing in a DC comic meant something else, though: they were now a character in the DC Universe and because they were the one who tormented Animal Man for 26 issues, they were a villain. Writer John Ostrander, at the time at the helm of Suicide Squad, decided that the Writer would be recruited by Amanda Waller and go on a mission with the Squad, bringing his reality-altering Quantum Keyboard with him. The Writer ended up dying on the mission and that was that for the fictional version of Grant Morrison (although Morrison would appear again in their “Seven Soldiers of Victory” as a visual representation of the Sheeda at one point).

Batman/Deadpool #1’s main story revolves around Cassandra Nova trying to get the Writer’s Quantum Keyboard, with Deadpool sent by the TVA to stop her and the Writer having brought Batman in to protect themself. Deadpool getting to meet the Writer is the most meta moment in comics. Both of them are characters who know about the real world, so putting them in the same book was an inspired moment. It’s the kind of story that only Grant Morrison could tell, and it closes the loop, with the writer finally leaving the DC Multiverse, telling Batman and Deadpool that they will never rewrite canon again.

The Return of the Writer Put Batman/Deadpool #1 At the Top of the Crossover Heap

The Writer coming back was on no one’s Marvel/DC crossover bingo card, but that return was a huge reason why Batman/Deadpool #1 was so amazing — it subverted expectations. If there are any problems with Deadpool/Batman #1’s story, it’s that it was exactly what you expected, to the extent that I highly doubt any of you can remember what it was about off the top of your head. It did nothing special to make it stand out. Batman/Deadpool #1’s main is entirely the opposite of that; it’s a story that you won’t soon forget, all because it went places that you never expected.

The story of the Writer in DC is one of the most interesting in the history of comics. It ties into one of the greatest comics of all time in Animal Man, moves to another best of all time book in Ostrander’s Suicide Squad, and finds its end in Batman/Deadpool #1, a comic that will go down as one of the best inter-company crossovers ever. Not too shabby for a character that no one expected to see at all, let alone three times.

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