At the 1999 Armageddon Comic Convention in Melbourne, Australia, Grant Morrison spoke about the writing of comics legend Alan Moore, and he suggested that Moore wasn't so much a great writer in the sense of generating new and original ideas, but rather that he was a brilliant synthesiser who found fascinating ideas and used them to tell stories in his own unique style. I remember at the time being subscribed to an Alan Moore message board, and when this comment was related to them by an Australian member (not me), it provoked a certain amount of outrage. I didn't understand why it should, though, because I thought that the comment was 1) fair enough and 2) not really a pejorative one in that it didn't deny that Moore was a talented writer.

Reading through Lovely Biscuits, it's interesting to note that the synthesiser stick could just as easily be pointed at Morrison as it could at Moore. Of the 6 pieces (4 short stories, 2 plays) in this collection, only two of them don't directly draw upon real-life cultural phenomena for their characters and subject matter. Characters featured include Aleister Crowley, Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll and HP Lovecraft. Cultural references include the Ripper Murders, Reichian Orgone Theory and Freudian psychoanalysis. The remaining two stories, while not clearly based upon any specific cultural phenomena, are still culturally referential, in that one (The Braile Library) could be seen as a riff on the Marquis De Sade's oeuvre, and the other (I'm A Policeman) could be interpreted as a kind of Jerry Cornelius remix in all its manic effervescent glory (as a side-note for uber-fans, I'm a Policeman seems to be an earlier version of the comic story And We're All Policemen, which was featured in Vertigo's Winter's Edge anthology in 1999).

Not that any of this is a bad thing. Grant Morrison is indeed a manic cultural referencer who takes the ideas he finds around himself and builds new and interesting machines with them. He is continually taking these ideas and putting them to good use in his stories. In a sense his stories are all explorations, expansions and examinations of the potential applications of such ideas.

Lovely Biscuits provides the reader with another perspective on Morrison's style of writing. It lets the reader see what his writing is like when unaccompanied by illustrations, as all of his comic work necessarily is. It is perhaps endowed with a purity of vision due to the non-collaborative nature of the writing. This is a stripped-back Morrison, where the only images are the ones that the words produce in the mind of the reader. For the most part they meet their assigned task very well, but there are brief occasions of seeming self-indulgence, such as the overabundance of sex in the collection, particularly in The Braille Library and The Room Where Love Lives, which could come across as simple taboo-breaking for its own sake, much like a naughty giggly schoolboy saying rude things he knows he isn't allowed to. Lovecraft in Heaven and I'm a Policeman are exceedingly intense and dense in their delivery, but on re-reading they become somewhat clearer and the reader can revel in the cacophony of words that they present.

It's unclear how much of Lovely Biscuits would appeal to people that weren't familiar with Morrison's oeuvre. Its most suited role is probably that of an apocryphal Morrison document, further material for his fans to pore over, to review and discuss and take into consideration. Not that this detracts from its worth as a body of writing, of course - it's simply an indication of the audience who would get the most out of it.

Tentatively Recommended.

adam ford lives in melbourne, australia, and works as a freelance editor and journalist. he's a published poet and an aspiring comic writer. at one time or another he has been responsible for at least three literary journals, and has performed his poetry at galleries, schools and pubs all over australia. he's just learned how to make his own pasta.

Discuss this article at the PopImage Forum.