Let's Read ZENITH by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell

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By Zack Quaintance — Myself and Comics Bookcase senior staff writer d. emerson eddy have been involved in a serious, long-term read of all comics written by Grant Morrison. We’ve done all this Marvel work, we’ve done the Vertigo classic The Invisibles, and we’ve done my personal favorite, the Doom Patrol to Flex Mentallo combo (we’ve also done Hellboy, but that’s not Morrison, so…). We’ve gone in mostly sequential order so far, but that ends now. Now, we’re going to read Zenith by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell, the 2000AD classic.

Below you can find our projected schedule, reading order, and links to order the books in case you’d like to join us…which you absolutely should!

Zenith by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell

Zenith, for the uninitiated is a superhero created by Grant Morrison, Steve Yeowell, and Brendan McCarthy, within the weekly British sci-fi comic, 2000 AD. The character’s first appearance took place in 1987 (2000AD #535), and he quickly established himself as a sort of more sarcastic take on the superhero. Like most Morrison work, the book sort of synched with/slightly pre-saged the zeitgeist, mirroring the sort of Gen X culture of the times. Morrison’s work with the character is available in four collected hardcovers, but more on that below.

Now with that out of the way, let’s go into the details. Here are the broad strokes:

  • Read each day from the collected hardcovers volumes, Monday - Friday, starting January 31. We’re usually going to do 3 chapters a day, except at the end of each volume, we’ll finish each volume by just reading two, if that’s how the books end up breaking down. For example, the first volume will divide like so…
    M: prologue - 3; T: 4 - 6; W: 7 - 9; TH: 10 - 12; F: 13 - Epilogue; Next M: Interlude 1 and interlude 2

  • Tweet about those chapters with the hashtag #Zenith2000AD (I usually post mine around 8:30 p.m. ET)

  • And use the volumes listed in order below (full disclosure, if you order from those links, it goes to supporting the site via the Amazon Affiliate program)…

Zenith: Phase One

Zenith: Phase Two

Zenith: Phase Three

Zenith: Phase Four

If you prefer to read digitally (as I am), you can get the digital edition’s directly from the 2000AD website.

Finally, check the space below each Friday for a compilation of some of our Tweets from the week:

WEEK ONE, Zenith - Phase One, Ch. 1 - Epilogue

WEEK TWO, Zenith - Phase One, Interludes through Zenith - Phase Two, Ch. 12

WEEK THREE, Zenith - Phase Two, Ch. 13 - Zenith Phase Three, Ch. 9

WEEK FOUR, Zenith Phase Three, Ch. 10 - Ch. 21

WEEK FIVE, Zenith Phase Three, Ch. 22 - Zenith Phase Four, Ch. 9

WEEK SIX, Zenith Phase IV Ch. 10 - Zzzzenith.com

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.