Книга: Grant Morrison, Tony S. Daniel «Batman Unwrapped: R. I. P.»

Grant Morrison (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known^{[by whom?]} for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and Batman.

Early life

Grant Morrison was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1960. His first published works were Gideon Stargrave strips for Near Myths in 1978 (when he was about 17^[1]), one of the first British alternative comics. His work appeared in four of the five issues of Near Myths and he was suitably encouraged to find more comic work. This included a weekly comic strip Captain Clyde, an unemployed superhero based in Glasgow, for The Govan Press, a local newspaper, plus various issues of DC Thomson's Starblazer, a science fiction version of that company's Commando title.

Career

1980s

Morrison spent much of the early 1980s touring and recording with his band The Mixers, writing the occasional Starblazer for D. C. Thompson and contributing to various UK indie titles. In 1982 he submitted a proposal involving the Justice League of America and Jack Kirby's New Gods entitled Second Coming to DC Comics, but it was not commissioned. After writing The Liberators for Dez Skinn's Warrior in 1985, he started work for Marvel UK the following year. There he wrote a number of comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, his final one a collaboration with a then-teenage Bryan Hitch, as well as a run on the Zoids strip in Spider-Man and Zoids. 1986 also saw publication of Morrison's first of several two- or three-page Future Shocks for 2000AD.

Morrison's first continuing serial began in 2000AD in 1987, when he and Steve Yeowell created Zenith, an early example of deconstructing the superhero genre.

Morrison's work on Zenith brought him to the attention of DC Comics, who asked him to pitch for them. They accepted his proposals for Animal Man, a little-known character from DC's past whose most notable recent appearance was a cameo in the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series, and for a 48-page Batman one-shot that would eventually become Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.

Animal Man placed Morrison at the head of the so-called "Brit Wave" invasion of American comics, along with such writers as Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano and Alan Moore (who had launched the 'invasion' with his work on Swamp Thing).^[2]

After impressing with Animal Man, Morrison was asked to take over Doom Patrol, starting his uniquely surreal take on the superhero genre with issue No. 19 in 1989. Previously, a formulaic superhero title, Morrison's Doom Patrol introduced more surreal elements, introducing concepts such as dadaism into his first several issues.

DC published Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth in 1989 as a 128 page graphic novel. Painted by Dave McKean, Arkham Asylum featured uses of symbolic writing not common in comics at the time. (The story was to have included a transvestite Joker, an element toned down by DC.) The book went on to become one of the best selling graphic novels of all time. During the late 80s, Morrison also wrote various other titles for DC, most notably Gothic in issues 6–10 of the Batman title Legends of the Dark Knight.

Whilst working for DC in America, Morrison kept contributing to British indie titles, most notably writing St. Swithin's Day for Trident Comics. St. Swithin's Day's anti-Margaret Thatcher themes proved controversial, provoking a small tabloid press fury and a complaint from Conservative MP Teddy Taylor.

The controversy continued with the publication of The New Adventures of Hitler in Scottish music and lifestyle magazine Cut in 1989, due to its use of Adolf Hitler as its lead character. The strip was unfinished when Cut folded, and was later reprinted and completed in Fleetway's 2000AD spin-off title Crisis.

1990s

The early 1990s saw Morrison revamping Kid Eternity for DC with artist Duncan Fegredo, and Dan Dare, with artist Rian Hughes. Morrison coloured Dare's bright future with Thatcherism in Fleetway's Revolver.

In 1991 Morrison wrote Bible John-A Forensic Meditation for Fleetway's Crisis, drawn by fellow member of 'The Mixers' Daniel Vallely, and based on an analysis of possible motivations for the crimes of the serial killer Bible John. Covering similar themes to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, the story was highly experimental in terms of story and art, with Vallely and Morrison claiming to have used a Ouija board to write the script and Vallely using a series of collages rather than conventional panels to tell the story. Morrison used the term "Forensic Meditation" to refer his mixture of scientific and magical techniques to tell the story. Vallely allegedly destroyed his art work upon the story's completion and left the comic industry. Bible John has not been reprinted.

In 1993 Morrison, fellow Glaswegian comic writer Mark Millar and John Smith were asked to reinvigorate 2000 AD for an eight-week run called "The Summer Offensive". Morrison wrote Judge Dredd and Really and Truly, and co-wrote the highly controversial Big Dave with Millar.

DC Comics launched its Vertigo imprint in 1993, publishing several of Morrison's creator-owned projects, such as the steampunk mini-series Sebastian O and the graphic novel The Mystery Play. 1995 saw the release of Kill Your Boyfriend, with artist Philip Bond, originally published as a Vertigo Voices one-shot. In 1996 Morrison wrote Flex Mentallo, a Doom Patrol spin-off with art by Frank Quitely,^[3] and also returned briefly to DC Universe superheroics with the critically acclaimed but short-lived Aztek, co-written with Mark Millar.

In 1996, Morrison was given the Justice League of America to revamp as JLA, a comic book that gathered the 'Big Seven' superheroes of the DC universe into one team. This run was hugely popular and returned the title back to best-selling status. It was also influential in creating the type of "widescreen" superhero action later seen in titles such as Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch's The Authority.^{[citation needed]} Morrison wrote several issues of The Flash with Mark Millar, as well as DC's crossover event of 1998, the four-issue mini-series DC One Million, in addition to plotting many of the multiple crossovers.

With the three volumes of the creator-owned The Invisibles, Morrison would start his largest and possibly most important^[4] work. The Invisibles combined political, pop- and sub-cultural references. Tapping into pre-millennial tension, the work was influenced by the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley and William Burroughs and Morrison's practice of chaos magic.^[5] At DisinfoCon in 1999, Morrison said that much of the content in The Invisibles was information given to him by aliens that abducted him in Kathmandu, who told him to spread this information to the world via a comic book. He later clarified that the experience he labelled as the "Alien Abduction Experience in Kathmandu" had nothing to do with aliens or abduction, but that there was an experience that he had in Kathmandu that The Invisibles is an attempt to explain.^[6] The title was not a huge commercial hit to start with. (Morrison actually asked his readers to participate in a "wankathon" while concentrating on a magical symbol, or sigil, in an effort to boost sales).^[7] The first issues were critically acclaimed^{[citation needed]}, but many readers found the second arc in issues 5–8 too confusing or lacking in action^{[citation needed]}. When the title was relaunched with volume two, the characters relocated to America and the style became intentionally more "American", featuring more action while still maintaining Morrison's ideas and themes. Volume three appeared with issue numbers counting down, signalling an intention to conclude the series with the turn of the new millennium in 2000. However, due to the title shipping late, its final issue did not ship until April 2000. The entire series has been collected by Vertigo as a series of seven trade paperbacks.

2000s

In 2000, Morrison's graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 was released with art by Frank Quitely. It was Morrison's last mainstream work for DC for a while, as he moved to Marvel Comics to take over the writing of the main X-Men title, renamed New X-Men for his run, with Quitely providing much of the art.^[8] Again, Morrison's revamping of a major superhero team proved to be a critical and commercial success, with the title jumping to the No. 1 sales^[9] and established Morrison as the kind of creator whose name on a title would guarantee sales.^[10] His penultimate arc "Planet X" depicted the villain Magneto infiltrating and defeating the X-Men in the guise of new character Xorn and developing an addiction to the power-enhancing drug "Kick".^[11][12] This has since been retconned by other writers to portray Morrison's Xorn as a separate character distinct from Magneto.^[13]

Morrison at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International.

In 2002, Morrison launched his next creator-owned project at Vertigo: The Filth, drawn by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine, a 13-part mini-series,^[14] said by Warren Ellis to be heavily influenced by Chris Morris's Blue Jam radio series.

While at Marvel, Morrison also wrote the six-part Marvel Boy series,^[15] and Fantastic Four: 1234, his take on another major superhero team. Morrison helped challenge Marvel's reputation for being closed to new ideas^{[citation needed]}, but after finishing his New X-Men, he returned to DC Comics to work on several titles and help revamp the DC Universe.

In 2004, Vertigo published three Morrison mini-series. Seaguy, We3 and Vimanarama involving, respectively, a picaresque hero in a post-utopian world that does not need him; cyber-enhanced pets running from their captors in what Morrison calls his "western manga"; and ancient Hindu/Pakistani myths translated into Jack Kirby-style adventures. We3 came in for particular praise for its bold storytelling techniques and artwork by Frank Quitely. Morrison also returned to the JLA with the first story in a new anthology series, JLA Classified, tales set within the JLA mythos by various creative teams.

In 2005, DC Comics started publishing what was dubbed the first ever "megaseries". The Grant Morrison-scripted Seven Soldiers features both new characters and reimagined obscure DC characters: The Manhattan Guardian, Mister Miracle, Klarion the Witch Boy, Bulleteer, Frankenstein, Zatanna and Shining Knight. The maxi-series consists of seven interlinked four-issue mini-series with two "bookend" volumes – 30 issues in all.

Dan DiDio (current editorial vice president of DC Comics) was impressed with Morrison's ideas for revitalising many of DC's redundant characters. Giving him the unofficial title of "revamp guy", DiDio asked him to assist in sorting out the DC Universe in the wake of the Infinite Crisis.^[16] Morrison was also one of the writers on 52, a year long weekly comic book series that started in May 2006 and concluded in May 2007.^[17]

Starting in November 2005, DC published All-Star Superman, a twelve-issue story arc by Morrison and Frank Quitely. Not so much a revamp or reboot of Superman, the series presents an out-of-continuity "iconic" Superman for new readers. All-Star Superman won the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2006, the Best Continuing Series Eisner Award in 2007 and several Eagle Awards in the UK. It also won 3 Harvey Awards in 2008 and the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series in 2009.

In the same year, Morrison and Quitely worked on pop star Robbie Williams' album Intensive Care, providing intricate Tarot card designs for the packaging and cover of the CD.

In 2006 Morrison was voted as the No. 2 favourite comic book writer of all time by Comic Book Resources, beating Neil Gaiman at No. 3 (Alan Moore was #1).^[18] That same year, Morrison began writing Batman for DC with issue #655. He also masterminded the relaunch of The Authority and Wildcats, with the art of Gene Ha and Jim Lee respectively, for DC's Wildstorm imprint. WildC.A.T.S. went on hiatus after one issue, The Authority was discontinued after two. The scheduling of The Authority conflicted with 52 and Morrison was unhappy with the reviews: "I said fuck it.".^[19] It eventually concluded without Morrison's involvement in Keith Giffen's The Authority: The Lost Year.

At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, DC Comics announced that Morrison would write Final Crisis, a seven issue mini-series slated to appear in 2008 with J. G. Jones handling the art. Morrison also announced that 2008 would see publication of the follow-up to 2004's Seaguy called Seaguy 2: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, the second part of a planned three part series.^[20][21]

At the 2008 New York Comic-Con, Morrison announced he would be working with Virgin Comics to produce "webisodes" (short animated stories) based on the Mahābhārata; it would not be a direct translation but, "Like the Beatles took Indian music and tried to make psychedelic sounds... I'm trying to convert Indian storytelling to a western style for people raised on movies, comics, and video games."^[22]

2010s

Morrison signing copies of his 2011 superhero analysis, Supergods, at Midtown Comics in Manhattan, 19 July 2011.

At San Diego Comic Con 2010 it was announced that Grant Morrison would be leaving Batman and Robin with No. 16 and launching a new series entitled Batman Incorporated with artist Yanick Paquette; a more team-oriented Batman book inspired by the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series.^[23][24][25]

Morrison's latest creator-owned work, an eight issue Vertigo series titled Joe the Barbarian, launched in January 2010 with artist Sean Murphy.^[26] Originally a six issue series, Morrison felt that the story would benefit from an extra two issues. The titular Joe is a diabetic young boy who begins to hallucinate a fantasy world populated with his toys and other fantasy characters when he stops taking his medication.^[27]

Following the closure of Virgin Comics, Dynamite Entertainment and Liquid Comics announced a partnership to publish a hardcover of illustrated scripts of Grant Morrison's Mahābhārata-based, animated project 18 Days with illustrations by artist Mukesh Singh, that was released in August 2010.^[28][29]

He is the subject of a feature-length documentary titled Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. The documentary features extensive interviews with Morrison as well as a number of comic artists, editors and professionals he has worked closely with.^[30] Talking with Gods was co-produced by Respect Films and Sequart Research & Literacy Organization, and was released in 2010 at the San Diego Comic Con.^[31]

Morrison was featured in My Chemical Romance's music video "Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)" from their 2010 album Danger Days: True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys as the concept's villain Korse.^[32] He reprised the role of his character in the "SING" music video.

Morrison will be completing the first 'season' of Batman Inc with issue #10, before returning in 2012 to complete the story with an additional 12 issues. He will be teaming with artist Chris Burnham for the relaunch.^[33]

In June 2011, as part of DC Comics' massive revamp of their entire superhero line, Morrison was announced as the writer on the new Action Comics #1, teaming with artist Rags Morales, marking Morrison's return to the Superman character after the All Star Superman.^[34]

Morrison's nextcitation needed major comic book project will be Multiversity, a metaseries of eight one-shots set in some of the 52 worlds in the DC Multiverse.^[35][36]

In July 2011, Morrison's analysis of superheroes, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, was published by Random House Spiegel & Grau in the United States and Jonathan Cape in the UK.^[37]

Screenwriting and playwriting

Morrison has become more involved in screenwriting and has written numerous scripts and treatments.

His screenplays include Sleepless Knights for DreamWorks and WE3 for New Line (both in development with Don Murphy producing, John Stevenson is attached as Director for WE3). Most recently he wrote the adaptation of the video game Area 51 home console game^[38] for Paramount (in development with CFP Productions producing). Morrison has written a film to be directed by Adam Egypt Mortimer called Sinatoro, to be released in 2012.^[39][40] He is working on another screenplay called Dinosaurs vs Aliens for Sam Worthington's production company Full Clip Production and when that is done he has said he will be working with them again on a screenplay based on the 2000 AD story Rogue Trooper.^[41]

He has pitched a science fiction television series entitled Bonnyroad to the BBC with director Paul McGuigan and Stephen Fry, which is currently in development.^[42]

Morrison provided outline story and script work for two video games (Predator: Concrete Jungle and Battlestar Galactica) both by Vivendi Universal, though the finished products often did not contain all his contributions.

He has also been a successful playwright, with two plays written for and performed by Oxygen House at the Edinburgh Fringe. The first was Red King Rising in 1989, about the (partly fictional) relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell and the second in 1990, Depravity about Aleister Crowley. Both plays were critically acclaimed and won between them a Fringe First Award, the Independent Theatre Award for 1989 and the Evening Standard Award for New Drama. A film adaptation of Red King Rising is in discussion. Both plays were included in his collection of prose, Lovely Biscuits released in 1999.^[43]

Appearances as a comics character

Grant Morrison first appeared as a comics character with a cameo in Animal Man #14. He made a full appearance at the end of issue #25, and spent most of issue #26 in a lengthy conversation with the comic's title character on the impact of realism on comic books. He is killed off in Suicide Squad #58.^[44]

Morrison would later be counted among the Seven Unknown Men of Slaughter Swamp, the body of "reality engineers" seen throughout the Seven Soldiers miniseries event, all of whom look exactly like him. During the series, one of these – referred to as the "Eighth of Seven" – went rogue, consolidating magical power for himself, releasing the Sheeda warrior-race on their Twenty-First Century ancestors, and becoming the silver-age character Zor, "The Terrible Time Tailor", a figure who looks exactly like Morrison but also wears a magician's outfit and sporting dark hair and a self-described 'magnificent beard'. This Zor was introduced in the original Spectre adventures in More Fun Comics No. 55 before he was re-invented in "Seven Soldiers." Zor is defeated by Zatanna and captured by his fellow Time Tailors who 'judge' him. Morrison himself, bearing a DC Comics-logo tie clip then becomes the narrator of the final chapter, treating the readers as if they were Zor themselves. Zor is eventually dressed to resemble a paedophiliac miser named Cyrus Gold, killed by an angry mob^[45] (in DC history, after being killed by the mob Cyrus Gold's body falls into the swamp, and he is reborn as the Golden Age villain Solomon Grundy.

He has also appeared in an issue of Simpsons Comics, where he is seen fighting with Mark Millar over the title of "Writer of X-Men".^[46]

In the notes to the Absolute Edition of DC: The New Frontier, writer Darwyn Cooke mentioned that this version of Captain Cold was visually based upon Morrison.

It has also been suggested by Comics Bulletin's Thom Young that the near-future Batman depicted in Batman No. 666 is based on Morrison: "Oddly, the shaved-headed Batman in the trench coat looks a bit like Grant Morrison and he has a cat named Alfred. In other words, it looks like Morrison (who is known to love cats) made himself Batman in this story. Of course, in Animal Man, Morrison appeared as himself as the teller of tales of Animal Man's life; in Seven Soldiers, the tailors who tell the tales of the universe looked like Morrison; and now he seems to be the Batman of the not-too-distant future."^[47] However, Morrison has stated that the decision to base the appearance of the future Batman on him was that of artist Andy Kubert: "I had written him as having a buzz cut, I think, but Andy drew him bald. I think a lot of people just assumed that I stuck myself into a comic again, but that was never intended."^[48]

Bibliography

Notes

References

• Callahan, Timothy (2007) Grant Morrison: The Early Years. Masters of the Medium. Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. ISBN 9780615212159
• Meaney, Patrick (2010) Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. Documentary film.
• Morrison, Grant (2003) "Pop magic!" in Book of Lies, pp. 16–25 ISBN 0-9713942-7-X
• Disinformation: The Complete Series Disc 2: DisinfoCon. (1999) Speech by Grant Morrison. Distr. Ryko Distribution.
• Meaney, Patrick (2009) Our Sentence is Up: Seeing the Invisibles. Sequart.com. ISBN 9780578032337
• Grant Morrison at the Grand Comics Database
• Grant Morrison at Barney
• Blazing Through the Secrecy, about uncredited authors on Starblazer

External links

• Official website
• Grant Morrison at the Comic Book DB
• Grant Morrison at the Open Directory Project
• The Story of Zero – Morrison's ambient, erotic prose for Cook and Brattell's Skin Two feature
• Grant Morrison at the Internet Movie Database
• Extended look at Morrison's work by Timothy Callahan on Sequart
• Video of Morrison speaking at DisinfoCon
• Video of Grant's performance at Steven Cook's 2002 Alternity show
• Alternity – Morrison performed this spoken word piece at Steven Cook's first solo exhibition in London, (May 2002)
• Grant Morrison on Cracked.com
• Deep Space Transmissions, Fansite with bibliography, interview collection, annotations, proposals, and lists of unpublished works
• Review of Supergods at comicbookgrrrl.com

Interviews

• The Grant Morrison Interview Archive
• Archive of interviews from 1976 to 1997
• PopImage interview, February 2001
• Punching Holes Through Time, Sequential Tart, August 2002
• Barbelith interview, 2 September 2002
• Catching up with Professor M: Talking with Grant Morrison, Comic Book Resources, 2 August 2003
• PopImage interview, 2004
• Comixfan interview, 18 May 2004
• Grant Morrison's big-time return to the DCU, Newsarama, 7 August 2004
• Suicide Girls interview, 4 March 2005
• Three-part interview on: Final Crisis, Batman and All-Star Superman, Newsarama, February–March 2008
• All Star Grant Morrison I: Final Crisis, II: Batman and III: Superman, Comic Book Resources, 15–17 April 2008
• Grant Morrison Talks Comics, Magic, Life, and Death, Publishers Weekly, 12 August 2008
• Killing Batman And The DC Universe, IGN, 26 August 2008
• Klaehn, Jeffery. Grant Morrison, Batman and the Superhero Genre, Publisher Weekly, 13 January 2009
• Alex Ness Interviews Grant Morrison, ComicNews.info,Moviemotion, Ghaneli, 20 January 2009
• Klaehn, Jeffery. Grant Morrison, Final Crisis and the Superhero Genre, Publishers Weekly, 20 January 2009
• Interview with Grant Morrison at comicbookgrrrl.com, 18 July 2011