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Pop Will Shit Itself with Grant Morrison
Introduction Because of his obsession with time and his prophecies of an apocalyptic future, H.G. Wells was referred to as 'The Man Who Invented Tomorrow.' The same could be said about this man for his own views. Or perhaps 'The Man Who Invented Today' because of his social commentary on the current state of the world and thanks to the part he's played in assisting in the reshaping of the industry through a growing increase of quality works. And maybe, maybe 'The Man Who Invented Yesterday' because of the way he, and a handful of others revived the Silver Age and resurrected characters long forgotten. Or maybe I'm just speaking out my ass while trying to come up with a clever intro for an exceptional talent. Grant
Morrison IS... is the question. But who really knows the
answer? "You
can say what you like.
Why are you writing comics? Shouldn't you be a Guru on a hill somewhere teaching rich yuppies scientology? Scouring the back streets of Tibet as the Scottish Dhali? I fart too readily and too loudly to ever be taken seriously as a guru. In my most miserable moments I have thought of packaging up all my Invisibles cosmology bollocks into a handy bite-sized religion with me as L. Ron God Almighty. It would work all too easily and God knows I may have to resort to it someday for whatever mangled reason of my own but so far I seem to have a built-in guru failsafe. Whenever people really start treating me with slurpy reverence, I react by doing things to make both they and I doubt my sanity. Much of last year has been an attempt to annihilate my reputation in American comics by swearing, acting drunk, being constantly angry and aggressive etc. When I come out of a big intensive period of work (as with the six year period comprising JLA/INVISIBLES) I'm usually so sick and exhausted by it that I like to turn around and stomp all over everything that once meant anything to me. I love my work but I don't want to be emotionally attached to it or have to explain it for the rest of my life. I have my own interpretation of THE INVISIBLES and could probably explain away a lot of the 'mysteries' in the text but I'd rather people brought their own ideas to it. It's designed to be interacted with. It demands to be questioned, adored, torn up, despised, forgotten, remembered, ripped off. I think it's way ahead of its time and right now, let's face it, it's also the most imitated comic book of the last twenty years. So, I'd like people to read the stuff and like it, obviously. I'd like them to be inspired by it, as I was inspired by Robert Anton Wilson or Michael Moorcock, the Sex Pistols, the Prisoner, Chaos Magic and all the rest. Beyond that, my readers are on their own with no guru to guide them but the one in the mirror. Sexuality. A lot of writers stave away from the subject, and yet you embrace it. Do you think this may have a part in your success as a comics writer? I've never really thought about it. Maybe. I like shagging but I didn't have my first kiss scene until I'd been doing comics for ten years. As
far as sex in comics goes, embarrassing images of nude girls covered
in blood and licking Which is to say... there are a lot more overtly sexual comics and images to look at out there so I don't think people come to me for wank fodder but many of the things I've written reek either of oceanic supersex or at least creeping perversion. Some of the upcoming stuff will leave readers feeling date-raped and soiled forever, I think. Write what you know. Where were you educated? You seem to be learned in several areas, religion, mythology, psychology, etc.? How much of that came from self-exploration? I went to Alan Glen's School for Boys in Glasgow. Our tie was the same as the one worn by the anarchist schoolboys from 'If' which inspired many anti-establishment hi-jinks at the expense of the Headmaster but otherwise it was as grim as you might imagine. I left school when I was 18 and went on the dole for 8 Morrissey-esque years so I had no higher education other than to read tons and tons of books and comics, and listen to records. When University and College educated people tell me they can't understand my work I can only utter a hollow laugh. Did you ever study film? I think you may be the only person to ever write Maya Deren into a comic, on more then one occasion no less. I watched a lot of film and studied it the way a cruel angler studies a prize trout. I came across Maya Deren on a Primal Scream single cover, then realized she was the same woman who wrote The Divine Horsemen, my favourite book on Haitian Voodoo. A few years later I saw Meshes of the Afternoon at a surrealist film night down the GFT. I’ve written about her a few times, now that you mention it.  
What were you doing the moment the clock hit 12 on new years 2000? Watching fireworks from the hill near the house with my pal Emilio. It was either that or skydiving off an exploding Pyramid as the clock struck 12 but let's face it...how many times can you do something before it just gets to be a drag? And when it clicked to 01/01/01? Shagging, if you really must know.
I'd only be so rude if I was drunk... which sometimes I am. If I really had to do it I'd say 'Don't worry. It's meant to be this way. All is well, all is well and all manner of things will be well. Even if your kid's in the chemo ward with a drip feed needle in his dick because all the other veins have hardened. What would we find in your CD changer right now? On your book shelf? In your kitchen? CD: Salako, Kahimi
Karie, Lolita Storm, Black Box Recorder, Goldfrapp, Muslimgauze, Thievery Corporation,
Momus Traveling the word on a writers salary, where you been and where you going?
Were you ever a 'spray painting revolutionary' in the days of your adolescence? No I was a mindless destruction-style of revolutionary with no revolutionary principles, just inchoate adolescent rebelliousness. My mum and dad were anti-nuclear activists so I spent a lot of time on protest marches or breaking into American Navy bases when I was very young. Maybe that knocked all the protest out of me. By the time I was a punk teenager, my idea of anarchy had devolved into walking through clothes shops ripping things up with a compass point. Or going into record shops and putting all the records in the wrong sleeves, or crushing packets of biscuits into powder. Tiny acts of wanton pointlessness influenced by Peter Cook's Devil in 'Bedazzled'. I'm more plain contrary than revolutionary: when everyone else is taking drugs and trying to be weird, I'm a Straight Edge state cipher in a suit, when the fashion is for gritty realism, I'll be doing surrealism and so it goes... I don't believe in any 'ism' enough to cling to it. Buddhism, modernism, Satanism, futurism, transvestitism, situationism, surrealism... I've enjoyed flirting with them all. with that feeling we had? Nothing else is working like That worked. When I'm all done with guns, you're the First person I'll call." "There's a Death God tattooed on your Bum." -Grant Morrison INVISIBLES. Speaking of the revolutions, there's a lot of talk about 'comic book revolutions'. People intend on glorifying the good, making the industry a better place. I, on the other hand, prefer the term 'comic book terrorist', not just glorifying the good also acknowledging the crap that’s out there as the crap it is. One place to start would be the comic code, do we really need them? The
comics code is a sick joke, obviously. Fifty years after McCarthyism,
witch hunts, Reds under the duvet and moral panics about EVERYTHING,
you'd think nothing of those awful days could remain but you'd be
wrong. McCarthy is dead, Marilyn Monroe is dead, Einstein and Joe
DiMaggio and Eisenhower are ALL DEAD. Otherwise, most of the 'how I'll fix comics' rhetoric is empty posturing designed to boost the profiles of regular columnists with nothing much to say or write about other than their own big heads, myself included. If you want to improve comics do something fucking new and original and learn how to promote it to the wide world outside comics fandom. Let's see what's in your head instead of what's in your library. Let's see comics take the cultural lead and do work NO-ONE else in any other medium is capable of. Talk is cheap, which is why we all do so much of it. We'll all be judged by our actual output in the end. What's your vision of a 'perfect world'? I support any eugenics program which works to phase out stupid ignorant bastards. These people have been messing the world up for the rest of us for way too long. Enough is enough. Leave the world to people who have some good ideas about where to take it. Introduction
All characters, titles, images mentioned or shown are copyright and trademark their respective creators.
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daggers
or girls with broadswords and Victoria's Secret lingerie don't do
much for my jaded palate nor do I have much time for pornographic
comics which try to be PC. Whenever I hear a male writer saying
'I'm trying to do a comic which reflects true female sexuality and
gets away from male objectification etc...' I start gagging. It
always means Laura Ashley with a dildo.
Is
there any better way to bring in the new year? What's your philosophy
on life and the world as it is? If someone asked you to some up
ALL your ideas on the future and significance of mankind into one
sentence, what would you say? Assuming the answer isn't just 'Fuck
off?'
I've
been all over. India. Nepal. Thailand. Malaysia. Singapore. Indonesia.
Australia. New Zealand. Fiji. Tahiti. Rarotonga. Sweden. Mexico.
Canada. Europe. Still intending to climb Kilimanjaro but keep finding
other things to do. I'd like to visit South America, China, Russia,
Pompeii and anywhere else that looks good on the atlas.
But
the comics code, the last relic of the darkest days of recent American
history still exists to vex us in the 21st century. Who the fuck
allowed that to happen? Let's bury this lurching 50s horror now
and set comic books free to compete with video games, movies and
pop music again.
