(Please take full cognisance of the exclamation mark and the fact that it gets a whole paragraph on its own).

I’ve hung off reading this for a couple of days till my head was clear and it was well worth it. Why five characters though and not six? The nod to Pirandello is clear but you also tip your hat to Milligan (aka Spike, author of ‘Puckoon’).

I’m also reminded of the Scottish writer Grant Morrison’s run on the DC comic ‘Animal Man’. In #5 he reveals to Animal Man that he is really a fictional character and in #26 he actually brings Animal Man into the real world, to his Glasgow flat in fact, and spends the whole issue in conversation with him.

Morrison and Animal Man walk through a world coloured in drab greys — in stark contrast to the imaginative colour of Animal Man’s world of super-beings – where Morrison apologises for his own failings as a writer and tries to justify his torturing of the character while Animal Man reads his own comic and rages about the killing of his family.

Morrison finally kicks down the “fourth wall” and addresses his readers directly, delivering the final words and acknowledgments typically delivered on the letters page of a writer’s final issue. At the end though, Animal Man is reunited with his living family – out-of-continuity – as if everything had been a dream. An epilogue featuring Morrison is one of the few truly autobiographical moments in his work. This was not a kids’ comic.

You can see the covers here: http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/animal-man I just love #25

jb says: I like the pre-title to #1 – It’s a Jungle out there!
Seriously, though, I’m not familiar with the comics, but now feel I should be. Something to be rectified. Pirandello I’ve read, and Milligan. And Animal Man’s ‘real’ name is Buddy Baker, so maybe we’re related.