The swirling story here reminds me of the best works of ambiguity and mystery. My default for this is David Lynch, but other storytellers are masters of it as well. Strange narratives which live on the foggy border between fantasy and reality, your hand barely visible in front of your face along with the straightforward account of what in the hell is going on. Unlike the last time I faced Morrison, I have a read this time. It may not be much and it may only be a surface level understanding of what is happening, but the point is that I bring something to this. In the heart of this incantation I bring a counterspell, and the mere act of trying imbues it with meaning. Here goes, then. Annihilator, to me, is a story about adaptation and metafictionality. A story about what a creator brings to a new take on a long-running piece of IP, what may have drawn them to its world, and what that has to say about the artist themselves. Morrison is no stranger to playing in the sandbox of other worlds and offering their own take on it, having done a whole bunch of things for DC. I've not actually read any Morrison Batman books, but I have my own example of this which fits. There's an episode of the 90's Batman animated series, Legends Of The Dark Knight, that uses the framing device of kids imagining what Batman is like to show animated segments of Batman adventures which call back to different interpretations of him, Dick Sprang and Frank Miller respectively. It unfortunately poisons its own well by having a really cheap dig at the then-contemporary Joel Schumacher Batman films. It simultaneously says that all interpretations of Batman, from the campy to the gritty to everything in between, are valid... before then adding "EXCEPT FOR THAT GAY SHIT WITH THE RUBBER NIPPLES, THAT AIN'T BATMAN!". Bad message.
Annihilator, then, focuses on a screenwriter, Ray Spass, adapting a pulp hero called Max Nomax and writing a movie which takes his story and sets it in space. Nomax then proceeds to leap off of the page and bully Ray into finishing his story, all as an antagonist from it tries to kill them and Ray battles a tumor. There's a lot to unpack here from that premise, but let's start with the simple: What does this adaptation of the Nomax stories mean? What does it mean for art to be a remix of a remix of a remix? The Nomax stories over history go from pulp novels written by Satanists to underground 70's Italian comic books, vastly different in tone and language but always using the same building blocks. A criminal calling himself the King Of Ants, his true love under a sleeping spell, the law and authority relentlessly tracking him down, and a house haunted by the hallways of its tiny rooms. What does it mean to take this and adapt it into a dark sci-fi epic for the modern day? For one, it means capital, a new potential big hit for the studio contracting Ray. Raiding the IP wells for that diamond in the rough that will make everyone very rich. That only explains why this is being made, though, and not why it has to be Ray making it. What does Ray Spass, human storyteller, bring to the oft-repeated tale of Max Nomax? As I bring something to this magical ritual, what is it that Ray Spass brings in his own addition to the invocation?
Ray Spass brings being a huge asshole who thinks he's a hero to the story. He was an abusive and uncaring shitheel to his ex-girlfriend, who later is roped into the adventure quite unwillingly. He still keeps her photo by his desk, longing for her, even though she has a restraining order against him. When he looked over the Nomax stories and saw that all of them had their protagonist pining over a lost love, frozen in time and kept out of his reach, before attempting to revive her and get his happily ever after... did he see himself in Nomax? The way Nomax sees his lost love Olympia is how Ray sees his lost love Luna. They mirror each other, and that mirroring is what gets added to the story of Nomax. As Ray writes and creates, he puts more of himself in Nomax, and Nomax becomes a little more like Ray. The pair often bicker, and it all boils down to a simple back and forth. "God, why are you writing me like such an asshole?". Because he is. In the story, Nomax himself becomes a creator, weaving together universes and becoming his own little god, but all of them fizzle and fail. The whole ethos of this read, for me, is right here:
Are we talking about Max Nomax here, or Ray Spass? Yes. Yes we are. Frazer Irving's art reflects this as well, in perfect tandem with the theme. It's realistic but not realistic, with many odd faces pulled and artistic license. Ray in particular mugs quite a lot, grimacing grotesquely in his gurning. Nomax, for his part, does much of the same. Luna has a constant deer in the headlights look, terrified of these monsters mirroring each other. As it turns out, life imitates art: Sean told me, no word of a lie, that fucking Max Landis proclaimed that Ray was based on him. You couldn't make it up if you tried. Max fucking Landis. The only reason I don't hate him more (and he's quite hateable, don't get me wrong) is because I read a book about his dad and that whole Twilight Zone movie incident and it infuriated me. Ray Spass, asshole that he is, doesn't get his happy little ending. Nomax, in turn, gets at least called out for his own toxicity in this version of his story, a toxicity borne of Spass. That, then, is Annihilator. A story of what one brings to the magical ritual of adaptation, and in this case it's the baggage of one asshole which warps the gravity of the story, like the titular black hole. I have brought the magic of this analysis, and I only hope that is enough. I know I can do better. One day, I will.
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