When I heard that Lauren and I were going to interview Grant Morrison at Wizard World, I got pretty nervous as I'm a long-time fan of the man's writing.
Most people like Grant Morrison's writing because of the wealth of ideas that pour out on the page. They see him as some sort of modern equivalent of Coleridge; a fervent, pharmaceutical-fuelled, surreal poet, fever-dream genius. While I admire those elements in his work, other things really drew me into his worldview. First of all, the man knows his pop culture. It's as much his native tongue as that Scottish-tinged English he speaks. I pick up a copy of The Invisibles, for instance, and all these wonderful, obscure pop culture references hit me square in the face! Movies, books, and especially pop music references abound in everything from Zenith (an early masterpiece) to Animal Man. This man has taste up the wazoo.
Secondly, and more importantly, I love the man's way with characters. I challenge anyone to read back issues of Animal Man and Doom Patrol and not feel the incredible compassion and admiration he has for his characters. Grant Morrison always writes the outsiders, the freaks, the grotesques, the aliens, and others who don't fit in to society as if they are his heroes; the people who know they're misfits, yet manage to survive with dignity and triumph.
Thirdly, the man has a marvellous sense of humor.
Fourth, he's a craftsman who knows his comic book history and how to use the medium to its best advantage. As a result of all the above, he writes a hell of a story...which is all that really matters.
We talked to Grant Morrison for about an hour. The time went much too quickly. I could have asked him questions all day, but I knew he had to get back to signings, etc. I kept kicking myself afterwards for everything I forgot to ask.
I found Grant to be incredibly witty, smart as a whip, charming as a con-man, quick on the uptake, a bit of an idealist, incredibly co-operative, and much kinder than two nervous interviewers had any right to expect. Hate to break that news to all of you who'd prefer to see him as a mad genius, but I found him to be just plain nice. Lauren and I thank him so much for his time and patience with us.
Sequential Tart: Is there anyone that you want to collaborate with that you haven't yet?
GM: I always remember the people that i want to collaborate with until I get asked this question and then I write 'nobody'.
ST: In a lot of your story locks and keys are a recurring theme - is there any commentary or information you can give us on that?
GM: You tell me! How Freudian does it sound? [laughs]
ST: So a lot of that - the eyes, telephones etc. just come to you?
GM: Again, it's the same thing - go back three months and I suddenly realise I'm psychoanalysing myself. I go back to The Invisibles and I know what Quimper is - he's an abortion me and my girlfriend had when we were 20 and he's back and he wants to make sure that I knew who he was. You see all these things and you find you unleash them.
ST: Do you go to the movies all the time? I read your stuff and there are so many pop culture references. I know that you love Starship Troopers.
GM: I actually only see about three of four big movies a year with Mark and I don't watch TV any more. All I do is listen to records, go out and write - that's where its coming from.
ST: And to bounce of of that, what did you think of The Matrix? I had just reread The Invisibles, I was in the middle of reading Neuromancer for the first time and then I saw The Matrix and promptly wanted to go home and curl into a little ball because it was almost too much sensory overload and it creeped me out.
GM: I liked it. I wanted to hate it because I heard about it and I thought 'they're just ripping me off - this is my comic and they put it up on the screen' but I went to see it and it was great. Suddenly the idea the world isn't real and we live in some virtual reality that is maybe higher in the scale is hitting the mainstream to the point that every movie is about it now and every TV show has some element of that in it.
ST: Do you think that a lot of it may be End of Millennium tension?
GM: Of course - that's what I'm trying to document. The Invisibles is trying to tap into that feeling. However crazy or however weird it gets just write it down and say 'this is what it felt like to be around at this time' I've been led into what is basically the occult and other worlds and I've been there because of writing this stuff so I ended up mad - I ended up a nutcase [laughs]
ST: Are you working on any more prose or plays?
GM: Yes, I'm writing a book, which is kind of a continuation of The Invisibles comic.
ST: One thing I wanted to know - are you the type of person who works to music and if so what?
GM: It depends what I'm into at the time - right now it's tons of French and Japanese music.
ST: You mean like Air?
GM: Air are okay - I liked the EP and the album was pretty good but the more I listen to it the more it started sounding like the Electric Light Orchestra and that kind of put me off. French & Japanese stuff is what I'm into right now because they're doing all that weird cut-up. These are cultures that haven't had pop music for so long that we've been allowed to hear and they've been absorbing all our influences and suddenly spitting it out in the weirdest kind of ways.
ST: Do you ever think that your karma will get fucked up for some of the stuff that you write?
GM: That is my karma - I just get all my karma on the page.
ST: Why did you take on JLA?
GM: One reason was to finance Invisibles to make sure that they couldn't cancel it. I did it to get some money because I needed some money. Invisibles is the laboratory and JLA is the tennis court. You'll notice in JLA things I was doing in the Invisibles two years ago - they're mainstream now - I can do the fifth dimension stuff and things that people just didn't understand and they're now acceptable in a kids comic.
ST: What are you going to do - Invisibles is almost over, JLA is almost over - are you taking a break?
GM: Yes. Six months of travel.
ST: Why do you travel so much - just because you enjoy it?
GM: It lets your head expand and it also throws you on your mettle. I always travel on my own and you find yourself in the middle of Bangkok and you think 'what do I do?' and that's a great feeling to have - you solve it and you go about the world feeling fantastic because no-one knows who you are and no ones putting any personality on you - you can swam into any place and say 'I'm James Bond!" (laughs)
ST: You've been to Australia a lot - weren't you there recently with Warren Ellis?
GM: Melbourne's amazing. That's where I saw The Matrix. I had met all these people through The Invisibles and I was corresponding with them in Australia and they were really cool guys - we came out of The Matrix and I was tripping on acid and I looked around and it was like everyone from The Matrix. It was great - these were like...My People!
ST: Are you the type of person who can sit in front of the computer all day or do you have to get up and go for a walk or something?
GM: From 1996 to now I've been spending 13 hours a day, 7 days a week doing this stuff to the point where I'm living in fiction.
ST: Aztek. I know that you must have had so many more ideas for it - what do you do when something just stops like that?
GM: The reason me and Mark did that was to get ourselves back into the DC Universe. We wanted to do something and we wanted it to be fun too. The idea was we'd set up this guy who was the brightest, happiest, youngest guy and then just fuck him up. By Issue 10 you start to see that coming through - everything that he believes in starts to be undermined and everyone that he trusts he can't trust - we had this whole thing. It was going to be like a superhero version of The Prisoner. And then they cancelled it. One of the reasons they cancelled it as far as I could tell was because they didn't want me on too many books - I had just started JLA - and Aztek was seen as something that could be gotten rid of.
It was only beginning to happen, we had to spend all that time setting him up so that we could then take it apart. Everything was starting to go wrong and them they stopped it. But I'm just killing him off in JLA right now.
ST: How did you decide who was going to be in the JLA?
GM: Greek Gods. I was reading a retelling of the Greek myths and there's twelve Gods in the main pantheon and they're just like the JLA. We've got the seven and they match perfectly - Superman is Zeus, Batman is Hades, Plastic Man is Dionysus...
ST: How did you pick the characters for The Invisibles - did you have archetypes that you wanted to write into the book?
GM: No, I just kind of split my own head into five. In 1994 I had just spent two years of intense weirdo magic and I was doing really strange things - I was doing tranny stuff, I was doing King Mob and I was getting into being Jack Frost who was a little shit who didn't care...so I just gave them all names and set them to do their work.
ST: Must be a lot better than going to a therapist. And you get paid for it!
GM: Once I have dealt with some of the symptoms I notice that they disappear into the background. Like Boy - I could never figure out what Boy was doing in there - she's so ordinary and prosaic but I mnust have needed that at some time and then I thought 'fuck the ordinary, fuck the prosaic' and she's gone.
ST: Is Robin going to be back in the book before the end?
GM: Yes. The last issue is set in 2012. The whole idea is that the last issue issue contains more information than the entire series and the last page contains more information than the whole series put together.
ST: What was your point of view on the whole Marquis De Sade thing? Why was that issue where it was?
GM: The whole Arcadia thing was about Utopia and it was to say that everytime that we have tried a Utopia it has failed. I was just going through using the French Revolution as the spine of that - and De Sade was a Utopian who was twsited and warped by it. But he got jailed and it turned into a hatred of everything decent, ordered and meaningful. Byron was a Utopian as well - a cyncial Utopian, and Shelley was an idealistic Utopian. Those two were great to put in with their different versions of it - and I kind of ended up siding wth Shelley becase he said that it's all inside - that's where Utopia lies.
Grant Morrison
Comixography
The Bomb -
Invisibles Site
The
Annotated Flex Mentallo
The Unofficial Doom Patrol Site
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