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Grant Morrison Gave DC Its Own Doctor Who & Wants Them To Use Him

Published Thu, 11 Aug 2022 11:01:14 -0500

It's Grant Morrison time! Nix Uotan was initially created for DC Comics' Countdown to Final Crisis, as a nameless Monitor with only minimal distinguishing features, seeking guidance to combat rising tensions in the Multiverse. Grant Morrison grabbed him, named him Nix Uotan, pronounced "Wotan", as the Monitor of Earth-51, and saw him punished in Final Crisis for failing to protect Earth-51, he finds himself "regenerated" as a human living on New Earth with patchy memories, trying to put his reality together. He rediscovered his old Monitor love, Weeja Dell, and gains new powers as a Multiversal Monitor of the Fifth World, with monitors around his head showing the events that are happening across the Multiverse. Nix Uotan is reborn as a human, the lone Monitor retained by the Over Monitor to maintain his function.

In their latest newsletter, Grant Morrison talked about their plans for Nix Uotan, their disappointment more wasn't done with him and maybe, just maybe, teasing a return to DC Comics with him. Back in April, they wrote;

On the other side of the coin, I created a lot of characters for DC that were never bused effectively again. Nix Uotan the Superjudge was designed to be DC's very own Doctor Who – a Kirby/Starlin level super powerful hero of colour fighting evil across the multiverse with his talking pirate chimp companion in their cosmic yellow submarine – and so far not one other creator has seen any potential in that set-up! Or look at the Manhattan Guardian, again a character of colour with a killer concept and a great look that would make a unique TV show and as soon as I was done, they couldn't wait to bring back the original blond, white, blue-eyed and achingly bland Guardian. The characters are all still around so as I say all it takes is for someone to come along with a good new take and suddenly they're vital again.

In the latest newsletter Grant Morrison returns to the theme, talking about annotations to last week's release of The Multiversity Absolute Edition "with extensive notes on his brilliant Multiversity Map by Rian Hughes, it seemed somehow appropriate to venture a club-footed waddle down memory lane with a few annotations and recollections." I'll be seeing Rian Hughes at the Gosh Comics event tonight, sounds like it might become quite the comics industry shindig. I wonder who else will be there? I promise photos. Anyway, yes, Grant returns to talking Nix Uotan.

I asked Ivan Reis to sex up Uotan's previous A Clockwork Orange look to make it more of a sleek sci-fi superhero costume in black and gold with an impressive cape. I figured he'd have adopted a style more in keeping with his surroundings in the DC Universe. We never really resolve whether or not Uotan's unnamed human identity is hallucinating his adventures as he lies reading comics on Xannies and Zoloft. Are stories real? Monitors move in mysterious ways… Superjudge is an album by psychedelic rock band Monster Magnet. Frontman Dave Wyndorf is a long-time comics fan, often citing Kirby in his lyrics. Dave kindly gave me permission to use Superjudge as Nix Uotan's official superhero name, and he's thanked in the last issue of the series.

If Nix Uotan is Wotan, the God of Wednesday when the comics come out, if Wotan, like The Babylonian Nabu, Roman Mercury, Greek Hermes, Egyptian Thoth and many others is a god of speed, communication, language, then Stubbs represents the so-called 'Ape of Thoth', the cynocephalus that capers around the silver-tongued mage like the Jester taunts the King, pricking pomposity with humour, obscuring wisdom with inane chatter and madcap interpretation. Nix Uotan was created to be DC's Dr. Who equivalent – in this case, a super-powerful black character traversing the many worlds of the Multiverse, solving problems in his cosmic yellow submarine with a wisecracking pirate chimp for company! I've always been a little disappointed no-one has thought to pick him up and run with the concept.

Josh Williamson, this has your name on it. Mind you, Ram V and Chip Zdarsky have been doing their best to prepare the way for Grant Morrison to come back and do it themselves.

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