Poison Peach is the latest Grant Morrison comic, self-published through their Xanaduum newsletter. Combining the spy-fi antics of the more outlandish James Bond movies with a Bonnie and Clyde-esque “lovers on the run” set-up, the comic is classic Morrison: filled with teenage angst, pulpy action and ridiculous sci-fi concepts.
Written by Grant Morrison and featuring art by their Green Lantern collaborator Liam Sharp, Poison Peach is the latest in the line of Xanaduum Presents one-shot, a series of short-form “trailer” comics designed to pack as much story into fifteen pages as possible.
Poison Peach follows the titular character, the spoiled daughter of a super-villain who is raised in isolation away from the rest of the world. For her eighteenth birthday, all Peach wants is to live like a normal teenager for a day. When her father grants her wish, Peach winds up running off with a washout fast food employee. The two of them are chased by both her father’s villainous organization and government agents with their own agenda.
Poison Peach Is Classic Grant Morrison Zaniness
Much like the previous Eden’s End, the latest installment in the Xanaduum Presents anthology series is another formal experiment in the comics form. Instead of devoting years of work and manpower to an ongoing series, Morrison and Sharp condense their story down into fifteen pages, acting as both a complete story in and of itself as well as something that could be expanded upon later on into larger multimedia projects. Poison Peach is the latest in the line, presenting Morrison and Sharp’s twisted take on a classic pulp genre that plays into well-worn tropes while also turning the whole genre on its ear.
Morrison has also found the perfect collaborator for this series of short-form one-shots, as Liam Sharp’s chameleonic ability to change styles with each new project lends itself well to the overall idea of Xanaduum Presents. While Eden’s End featured an evocative painted style, Sharp changes things up with Poison Peach, stripping the line-work back to stark black-and-white with the occasional splash of color to create its own distinctive look. Sharp’s exaggerated style plays well into the parodic nature of the overall story, with the story’s Bondian aspects reaching almost Austin Powers-esque levels of absurdity.
Liam Sharp’s Artwork Shines In Poison Peach
“What happens when the girl who has everything meets the boy with nothing to lose?” asks the narrator in Poison Peach, setting up the story of two lovebirds on the lam as they encounter everything from miniature flying saucers to undead skeletal warriors. As a bite-sized comic snack at fifteen pages, it is another pop culture confection from Morrison and Sharp that both celebrates and annihilates classic genre and comic book form. In other words, Poison Peach is classic Grant Morrison, through and through.
