Children Have Dreams. Never Grow Up.
Flex Mentallo... is not what I expected. That's not to say I went into it with unfair expectations, I knew the character from Morrison's Doom Patrol. I've read Morrison's Animal Man and some of The Invisibles. With Grant Morrison, you always know not to know what to expect, but eventually you kind of get the 'vibe' and prepare yourself to be confused and possibly blown away. But generally you prepare for a superhero tale with rich complexities and metaphors sewn into the narrative and the subtext, twisted and contorted beyond standard fare.
But Flex Mentallo isn't quite that. It's so much stranger and more unusual than anything I've ever seen from Morrison. It's not even his usual form of bizarreity, it's as if he took his usual works, and put them through the same wringer that he would put a normal story through to become his usual. It's like an autobiography of Grant Morrison from another world, and an essay about superheroes and comics in the form of a superhero comic.
What I'm saying is, to really enjoy Flex Mentallo, you have to be prepared for what you're getting into. There's no real grandiose battles or grand spectacles. There's no 'good vs. evil.' There is plot, but it followed the spandex-wearing rabbit down the hole that BEGAN in Wonderland.
I'm making this out to seem more confusing than it is. Don't get me wrong, this is still pretty trippy, but the 'plot' is surprisingly straightforward. A man tells his life story about comics as he commits suicide via overdose, and Flex Mentallo searches for The Fact. What makes this such a head trip is the struggle to properly connect the two, and the completely bonkers encounters Flex has and other bonkers encounters the narrator describes.
This is DEFINITELY something that reads MUCH better as a trade, while the covers have AMAZING tributes to the various ages of comics, the interior story doesn't follow quite as cut and dry a pattern, which is I think more along the lines of what I was expecting. This is one solid odyssey, and would be far more confusing chopped into bite sized segments. As is nearly standard with Morrison, everything makes sense at the end, but this series saves up far more for the finale than any of his other works. Questions are continuously left unanswered or vague, simply raising more and answering none. Until the end. But since the main narratives are so straightforward in and of themselves, this massive wave of confoundity isn't really headache inducing, it simply gives you some things to contemplate for a bit, then set aside for later; all unlocking almost simultaneously as the finale unfolds.
And then there's the artwork. Basically, you either don't Frank Quitely, or you absolutely adore him. On the art side, simply in terms of straight up quality, this is Quitely bringing his A-game. Everything looks fantastic, if you like that sort of thing. Which I do. I can't say its his best work, simply because that honor belongs to We3, where he experimented with panel layouts to the top of godlike levels. Flex Mentallo doesn't get a lot of that, but it flows very nicely, and it looks excellent.
In Conclusion: 4.5/5
Is this the greatest thing ever? Not quite, but I think its something that any Morrison fan's collection would be incomplete without. This is to Morrison's usual what Morrison's usual is to regular comics. It's NOT a big epic story that'll keep you on the edge of your seat, but it's a superb metaphysical exploration of the very nature of superhero comics, and the world reality as we know it.