Embedded Files
GRANT MORRISON WRITES THE WORLD'S GREATEST SUPER-HEROES
Interviewed by SCOTT SIMMONS on June 23, 1997
Reunited after 15 years of being apart, the flagship characters of DC Comics are reasserting their claim to the title "the World’s Greatest Super-Heroes." Over the past year, JLA has rivalled UNCANNY X-MEN in sales and has stirred up more excitement than mainstream super-heroes have in quite a while.
That success is largely due to the presence on JLA of writer Grant Morrison. A Scotsman, Morrison is largely considered part of the "British Invasion" of American comics that took place in the late ‘80s. Along with Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Jamie Delano, Morrison laid the groundwork for DC’s Vertigo line and then left comics for a brief sabbatical.
In 1995, he returned in full force, starting his creator-owned Vertigo title THE INVISIBLES. Since then, Morrison has been busy: THE MYSTERY PLAY graphic novel, a FLEX MENTALLO mini-series, the short-lived super-hero series AZTEK, and Marvel’s bizarre SKRULL KILL KREW mini-series are only the most notable of his work in the past two years.
Strangely low-key for such a busy man, Grant Morrison made time to speak with us on June 23 about his plans for JLA and THE INVISIBLES—as well as a few other topics.
- First of all, I guess we’re both aware that you’re writing DC’s best-selling title right now.
Yeah.
- JLA sells as much at our store as most of the X-MEN titles.
That’s great.
- Let me ask you: Were you expecting that kind of response when you took on JLA?
Ah—"no" is the honest answer. I’d hoped for it, but, to be honest, I didn’t expect it.
- Has the book’s warm reception by critics and readers changed any of your plans?
It made me bolder, actually.
- Oh, really?
Yeah.
- So there are things that you wouldn’t have tried?
Yeah, well, a few of the people are into it, and I kind of think obviously I’m onto the right track ... But I had a feeling that this would be the right time for this type or version of JLA. And the fact that it’s been successful kind of gives me the impetus to go on and do some more interesting stuff.
I have a lot of ideas on where and what to take it, where and what to take super-hero comics in general. So this gives me an opportunity, and it’s great. It’s a responsibility.
- Is there a particular issue where we can look for the change in direction to start manifesting itself?
You’ll start to notice around issue 10, which is the start of the big Justice League epic. That’s gonna be the one.
- How long are you planning on staying on JLA? Do you have a definite time period set for it?
Oh, right now I’ve got three years worth of stuff that I think is really, really good. They’re all right there. But of course as I go on I could come up with other ideas and other ways of saying the same things—but currently it’s going to be three years.
- And do you have a long-term goal? Is there a destination that you’re trying to reach?
Pretty much. I wanted to finish with the book in the year 2000.
- Ah.
And, having finished it, leave the Justice League in a fit state for the 21st Century. [I want to take] the idea of super-heroes out of the 20th Century and into the 21st Century. So I want it to be really ultra-modern, high-tech, futuristic by that time, so that whoever takes it on is dealing with something that we just haven’t seen in the last century.
- Now, I believe that I’ve heard in earlier interviews that you were planning on ending INVISIBLES VOLUME THREE in the year 2000 also.
Exactly.
- So is that still planned to coincide with the end of the millennium?
Pretty much. It’ll probably be somewhere in the middle of the year, maybe, the way things are working out, but definitely I want to finish it off—finish off JLA and INVISIBLES is ideal—then take a rest.
- Oh, really? Take another sabbatical, I guess?
Yeah, probably.
- Let me get back to JLA for a moment.
Sure.
- What can you tell us about the rosters of the Injustice League and the Crime Syndicate? I understand that those are going to be figuring… prominently into your epic.
Yeah. Well, the epic, it’s based around the war between the Justice League and the Injustice Gang, or the new Injustice Gang. ... [T]he thing with that Justice League—the guns, the "big guns"—what it’s going to take for the big guns are the arch-enemies of those guys: Lex Luthor, the Joker, Mirror Master, Ocean Master, Dr. Light, and Circe. The Martian Manhunter is going to be opposed by a resurrected Jemm, Son of Saturn, who’s working for Luthor.
- Jemm, Son of Saturn!
Yeah, he’s back.
- Wow. That’s a bit of continuity I didn’t expect anyone to remember.
Yeah, well, the interesting thing was that JEMM originally started out as a MARTIAN MANHUNTER series. The concept was just too radical for the Manhunter, so they went for the change and turned it [in]to JEMM, SON OF SATURN. But if you read the series again you’ll know ... .
- I haven’t read that since it originally came out.
Yeah, I was assuming no one did. Except me.
- [Laugh.] That leads to another question I was going to ask you in a bit: How many comics do you read? You seem to have an amazing grasp of what’s going on in the shared universe in general.
... I read everything Mark Waid does; I read Alan Moore; I read Kurt Busiek; and a few others. Basically, I read all the good super-hero stuff.
And as far as [continuity], I’m a bit of an odd guy: Where I can, I just make it up. [Laugh.] It seems to work for that sort of thing.
- Well, it’s convincing.
Yeah. I hope so.
- If you know the character, you know enough to fill in the blank spots. That’s one of the reasons I think a lot of people are looking forward to your run on THE FLASH. You’re going to be working on that with Mark Millar, aren’t you?
Yeah.
- Let me ask you a question about your collaborations with Millar in the past: How do you two work together when you co-write stories?
The idea is basically—I mean, we get on. We live in the same town. And, you know, we met up because we were doing the same stuff, and we expected that we would get on.
Basically, we sit and get drunk, and we write these comics. Whenever we do a collaboration, we sit there and we work the thing out, do a thumbnail sketch for it. Then we figure out the basics of the dialogue; we work out the plot together; then one or the other of us takes it away and just sends it in.
- So one of you is standing there ranting, and the other is playing pencil-man and drawing out the page?
Yeah, pretty much.
- AZTEK seemed to read a bit differently than, say, the SWAMP THING story the two of you worked on together, or SKRULL KILL KREW. Was there something different that the two of you did when you were plotting those out, or—?
Ah, no, I think it’s just a different approach, that’s all.
- What’s the status of Mark’s ZAURIEL mini-series? I haven’t heard anything about that in a while.
It’s ongoing. It’s going to be out in time to coincide with Zauriel’s return to the Justice League in issue 15.
- Is there an artist assigned for that yet?
I’ve heard and all, but I don’t know who it is.
- And it’s going to be a regular format, $1.95 book?
Yeah, and it kind of fills in the gaps between JLA # 7 and # 15.
- So, is there any more leeway in DC letting you call Zauriel "Hawkman"?
No, these guys will not let me do it, and I think it’s stupid.
[Both laugh.]
- It was a great subject of debate at the Heroes Con last weekend.
Yeah, to me it seems awfully silly, and I think what they should do is to call the guy Hawkman. And if they want to bring back the Katar Hol character—and I don’t know why they’d want to, ‘cause nobody can seem to make him work anymore—
- Exactly.
And if they do anything about it, it’s the great battle of the Hawkmen, you know. What a great way to sell this comic, when you see this Zauriel and Katar Hol in battle.
- He’s very visually powerful, too. I love the look of Zauriel. Who designed him?
Well, Howard designed that version, but the new version we’re using [in JLA # 15] ... is in his dress uniform from Heaven ... . So that’s a new look for him.
- I’ll be looking forward to that.
Yeah.
- O.K., let me ask you another question about continuity. In the past, you’ve done a lot of work with DC’s continuity. In ANIMAL MAN, you pulled a lot of it together and made it work. In JUSTICE LEAGUE every month you’re busy balancing the continuity of the characters with where they’re appearing, and you’re trying to balance the League’s history with its present. In DOOM PATROL, you brought back Mr. Morden. [Both laugh.] So—do you actually enjoy playing with all that continuity?
Oh, yeah, I do. It’s kind of an jazzy thing. In your head, there would be no jazz gauge or blues gauge. But in reality, you’ve got the twelve-bar blues—and the six-, or whatever you want to use to play it—but within that framework, you can go creative. That’s kind of what Jimi Hendrix did for me. And it’s kind of approaching a comic in the same way.
- That’s a refreshing thing to hear when so many people are talking about continuity as a necessary evil.
Yeah, well, you know, I have a lot of problems with it. But there’s also lots you can do with it. I think it should be a lot more flexible in a sense. For some things, I feel.
You know, someone was talking to me about JUSTICE LEAGUE 5, and I had Metamorpho’s funeral in there. You know Java, who’s the old manservant of Simon Stagg from the first series in the ‘60s? I had him at the funeral, but someone said to me, "You know, Java’s dead." No, I didn’t know it at all.
Continuity can be difficult because it’s just impossible to know everything when you’re working for a company that spins 800 books a month. So I can’t. I’m winging it a lot of the time, hoping it works out.
- You were talking about playing the blues—
Yeah.
- —and you’ve talked a lot over the past couple of years about the punk musicians and their influence on rock-and-roll.
Mm-hm.
- This an arguably comics-related question: Do you consider yourself a punk writer? It seems to show a lot—
Ah, yeah, I guess I do. [Laugh.] Yeah, I mean I grew up in that period. ... [T]here’s no nostalgia in it to me when I look back on it or when I hear the idea of the Sex Pistols reforming, but those attitudes kind of formed me when I was a teen-ager, so I guess it’s still there. In things like THE INVISIBLES and even JUSTICE LEAGUE, you can see it. You know, there’s all this gung-ho, but at the same time I think, hanging around, there’s paranoia.
- Since you’re talking about both THE INVISIBLES and JUSTICE LEAGUE, here’s a question I’ve been wanting to ask you for quite a while: Between the two books, it seems like you’re tackling the whole idea of the team book from two completely different directions.
Yeah.
- And you’re doing it at the same company, which is a nice thing to see.
[Laugh.]
- Ten years ago I don’t know if that would have been possible. What are the similarities and the differences that you can see between the two books?
Ahhh. The similarities are that there’s a team, and both teams are pretty much super-heroes, as such. THE INVISIBLES is set in something like the real world. I don’t know anyone who can do that level of magic or telepathic stuff to that degree, so obviously they’re super-heroes.
[Laugh.]
THE INVISIBLES is a comic book aimed at adults but pertaining to young people. But in actual fact—maybe you’ve asked me this question before, now I think of it—I’m actually telling the same story in both books, you know.
The same ideas and the same responses to the world are going into both books, even though the Justice League kind of represents order and the Invisibles represent chaos. ... But beyond that, I can’t know anymore. Obviously there’s less similarities that differences, but from where I am, you know, I’m writing one one day and then one the next day.
- I was just wondering if that was intentional when you began JUSTICE LEAGUE, since you are planning to bring both books to their climax[es] in 2000, or thereabouts.
Yeah, I don’t think it was intentional, but it’s almost as if it’s psychologically intentional, because somewhere deep down part of your brain is saying, "Do this, do this."
It’s overwork.
- End everything when everything else [ends], I guess.
Yeah. If I can, I kind of trust in that. [Laugh.]
I didn’t really make plans for it, and obviously I didn’t think when I sat down, "I’ll do JUSTICE LEAGUE like THE INVISIBLES" because the two just aren’t the same. But there is a certain spirit from THE INVISIBLES that’s crossing over to JUSTICE LEAGUE. Also, some of the weirder speculations of INVISIBLES are coming up in JUSTICE LEAGUE—in a lot more simplified form.
- That’s interesting. It reminds me of when Gerard Jones was doing the JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE book at the same time he was writing MOSAIC. I don’t know if you read either of those books—
Yeah.
- —but there were similar themes handled differently in both books. It was quite a thrill to see how he juggled both of those at the same time.
Yeah, well, now that’s something that I do like to see, but most writers (and particularly in America) will—you know, they’ll either stay in the mainstream or they’ll do the undergrounds. And never the twain shall meet. And I kind of like to see someone doing both.
- Let me get back to JUSTICE LEAGUE for just a moment.
Sure.
- There’s been a lot of talk about the "mysterious twelfth member." When are we going to see him or her [Morrison laughs] finally joining the League?
Issue 15.
- Fifteen!
Yeah.
- So that’s going to come at the conclusion of the big epic?
Well, no, it’s actually—sorry, issue 15 is the one that’s following the epic. And that’s going to essentially start off a story called "Camelot," and it’s going to involve the team dealing with a new big villain. (We’re going to introduce him.) And it’s the first time we’ve seen the big, bad twelve.
- Well, Mark Waid recently told us that the twelfth member had indeed been a member of the League in a previous incarnation.
Yeah, it turns out he has—after me, I made such a point that he hasn’t.
- O.K. I just wanted to make sure there was some truth to that.
Well, I can say that this is one of those things [where] you’ve got to know your Justice League from the top.
- [Laugh.] Which has everyone around here running back and forth looking for old issues of the JUSTICE LEAGUE and making guesses.
- So—one of the most popular rumors ... around is that the twelfth member is Buddy Baker. Are you really interested in writing Animal Man again after so many years and all the changes the character’s gone through since you handled him?
Ah, I’m interested in it just to take him back. And I’d like to do this as Animal Man after the issue that I finished with. Because I think once it crossed over into Vertigo, it became a completely different type [of] comic, and I don’t think it bore much relation to the super-hero
stuff that I’d been doing. And I kind of felt it lost something.
As much as the comic was well-written, I think it was wrong to take that character out of his costume and turn him into something like Swamp Thing for animals.
But I kind of want—I want to see him back in the costume, but standing for animal rights. It’s always more important to have a guy like that in a super-hero universe than it is to have him in a Vertigo universe where, you know [laughs], everyone stands for animal rights or somebody’s rights.
- Very good point.
And I think he works better as a costumed character. He’s a lot more credible.
And also, "Animal Man" is another good name. It’s a great concept. You know, other companies don’t have ‘em, and it’s at the nature level. The thing I like about those core characters, particularly in the Justice League, are that each one is representative of something simple—and particularly the older ones, obviously, like Superman and Batman. So
even someone like Animal Man, he represents something. He’s kind of the animal kingdom’s representative in humanity. And so he’s destined to model as a super-hero. I think he’s got to meet with other super-heroes.
- That’s interesting.
But I won't tell you who the twelfth member is. [Both laugh.]
- Well, I’m not even going to ask. [Morrison laughs.] I don’t want to ruin the fun of guessing for a couple of months. As long as PREVIEWS doesn’t tell us, I’ll be perfectly happy.
I hope not.
- Many people have said that there are two versions of all the DC characters who’ve "gone over" to Vertigo, that there are two Swamp Things, two Constantines, two Animal Mans— What do you think about that? Do you think there’s a Vertigo Animal Man and a DC Universe Animal Man?
Well, I think that’s obviously happened now. I mean, I don’t think it was a good idea to let it happen, but it has happened, and we’ll just have to deal with it.
And I think characters like Swamp Thing (who still kind of crosses over) are complete ones—and also, Constantine should be in the DC Universe. In fact, when Alan Moore created John Constantine, it was that character—without being changed. He still wore the trenchcoat, he still was running in a different crowd, but he also met super-heroes. And I like that stuff. I think it’s there.
I’d rather ... be forced to write [that] those Vertigo characters are in the DC Universe.
- A lot of people have sort of forgotten how firmly Neil Gaiman entrenched SANDMAN in the DCU.
Oh, again, yeah! I mean, they’ve forgotten that he met the Justice League. And Neil also included words to that effect in a lot of it, and even in "The Wake," with, you know, the Martian Manhunter and Batman and Clark Kent.
- Well, let me ask you this—
And if I can convince Neil, I’m hoping to get the Sandman in JUSTICE LEAGUE.
- Oh, really?
Yeah.
- Now that would be interesting.
Yeah? Yeah, I’ve got so many people [who] think that’s great, but we’ll still have to clear it all with Neil, so it’s still, ah—it’s still a dream.
- That would do a lot to tear down the wall that’s been unofficially erected.
Yeah, well, I think it should be done, ‘cause I think— And, also, just to kind of reply to Neil’s Justice League in SANDMAN, I’d do a Sandman in JUSTICE LEAGUE.
- So if you were to handle Animal Man again, would you attempt to reconcile all the Vertigo stories with what you would want Buddy to be now?
No.
- Or at least give a nod to those [stories]?
No, no. I’d start as if my last issue was the last time we saw Animal Man. Or wherever—even the last issue that he had the costume and everything. I’m permitted to do anything ... .
- That would be very interesting to see.
But personally, because I wrote ANIMAL MAN in the way that it was written—the way that I came out and said, "This guy can change. Whoever writes him will change him"—that’s almost got about it a failsafe that I can come back and everyone knows in the back of their mind again that I don’t mind going back if it’ll come down their way.
- I still think in ANIMAL MAN you managed to create the perfect "out" to explain continuity.
Yeah.
- Actually, I’m rather impressed with that.
Well, I’d like to see more people use it, and not just Alan Moore. [I]t’s an idea just to say every book in the DC Universe is like a committee. The people who run those universes don’t know what’s happening [everywhere], but they do have partial responsibility.
- How did you feel about John Ostrander following up on your continued existence in the DCU by tossing you into the mix in SUICIDE SQUAD?
I was thoroughly amused by it. [Laugh.]
- [Laugh.] I was as well.
Yeah, I’m waiting for them to bring back the Dark Writer as well.
- [Laugh.] I thought it would have been quite a surprise, though, to have you running about through the DCU, sort of amok [Morrison chuckles], the real person trapped in a fictional universe.
Yeah, well, it’s almost happened to our universe. I’m in there, and I’m running amok.
[Laugh.]
- In an editorial for OVERSTREET'S FAN—the next to last issue—you talked about writing comics for kids again—
Yeah.
- —instead of for what you called "an adult readership that never really existed." Now, you’ve been extensively involved with books that are "Suggested for Mature Readers"; you used to be the man who was known for ARKHAM ASYLUM. Is there a Vertigo Grant Morrison and a DC Universe Grant Morrison as well?
Well, no, it’s just that— I think what I do is respond to the time, and that’s why I’ve kept going more years that I should’ve.
And it seems that, at the time, I thought ARKHAM was exactly the way Batman should be done as a psychological entity. As a seeker in the dark. And it got into the newspapers, it got into the stale magazines; it did its job. But those were the ‘80s; the atmosphere was very different then.
[B]ecause of what happened in the ‘80s and moreso [because] ... the kids readership couldn’t be high ... we went to an adult market I ... don’t think really existed. You know, WATCHMEN sold well, and then it sort of came to DARK KNIGHT sold well, ARKHAM did well, and on to an end.
So—even back then, even while I was doing [grim books, I'd] already begun to say I never wanted to do ARKHAM. I was thinking, "God, I do this dark stuff." And that light-hearted, simple plot with an Animal Man—I felt ANIMAL MAN came just to draw us back to [that] edge.
And now it just seems to me that ... the wheel has come right at us again. You’ve got these kids thinking, "Where the hell are and our heroes?" There’s too many guys who are mental cases; too many guys shoot people. It’s just gone on too long, and we’ve who lost the heroes; we’ve lost the child audience. And it seems to me that the time to bring that back, and it’s the kind of now is stuff that fires me anyway.
So that’s why I’ve hung around in comics, because this is the time I want to be around in, when things start to get brighter, more imaginative, more optimistic. But at the same time I haven’t said I wouldn’t want it—the other stuff—not to exist, because we have created
a small readership—again, an adult readership or an older teen-age audience—and they deserve some books as well.
So my big fight here at the moment is to be able to do stuff that you can hook kids [with] when they’re young on something like the JUSTICE LEAGUE JUNIOR book, which is not available, and bring them in, via JUSTICE LEAGUE, as a teen-ager, and then either they can drop out and discover girls or they can come back.
[A]nd when they come back with girls, [they can] just go [read] adult comics then, which seems to be a healthy and sane way of making the industry work.
So that, my point is, you are ... right now in this very good stuff.
I’m doing THE INVISIBLES to reach that adult or "pop" audience, basically. I don’t know if it’s an adult audience, but it’s certainly a pop-music audience in that it’s—
- The strange sort of adults who listen to rock.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s the people who, you know, like music are the people who pick that kind of stuff up as part of the[ir] lifestyle. But at the same time I want to do JUSTICE LEAGUE for the teen-age comics fans, to give them something that is good, that they can enjoy, and that will
hopefully wean them into the adult stuff.
- Well, you seem to have an obvious love for super-heroes. It’s nowhere more evident than it was in FLEX MENTALLO last summer.
Yeah.
- Why is it only now that you’re writing a mainstream super-hero book? Would the market not let you do that until recently, or—?
Yeah, pretty much, because the ideas are harder to market properly if it’s the wrong time. If I’d tried to do JUSTICE LEAGUE like this in 1990, it wouldn’t have worked because 1990 was again very different. Super-heroes were more violent, more interesting, and more grown up—and that was the look of the time. But I think what I’m going to see is that disappear and the type of stuff that I’m interested in [is going to return].
- One of the first things I remember reading of yours was ZENITH.
Yeah?
- Why is it that ZENITH, for all the trappings of a super-hero book, seemed to deviate from that pattern so much? Was it at that point when you were interested in exploring the range of deviations on the pattern, or—?
Yeah, well, still, all I can say [is] it was the time for it. The time seemed right, and there was my super-hero. They asked me to do a British super-hero, and I thought, "Well, I don’t want it to look like—"
You know, DARK KNIGHT had come out, and I said, "I don’t want to do that, but obviously people’s expectations are such that you can’t get away with any other kind of super-hero." But, on being noticed, I decided I could get something that was kind of poppy and exciting without being grim—or over[ly] grim. And if I made the super-hero a pop star— [Laugh.]
And because I was into music, and because I was around that age and I was thinking, "If I had super powers, that’s what I would do," you know: I would go out with models; I would get drunk and fly in through the window; and I would never, ever stay clean.
So that, that became a—that was a jumping-off point for that strip. Nowadays it’s become more radical to say, "Super-heroes—remember? We used to fight evil?"
And until that is actually radical enough, I’ll get back into it. Super-heroes who fight evil, who save the world, who actually do their stuff and use their powers expecting to fight the good fight and expecting to use their powers to cause what can be done.
- Even the Invisibles, who are sort of pop figures—
Yeah.
- —are finding themselves in the role of super-heroes battling evil and saving the world from the ... bad guy next door.
Yeah! [T]he stuff I’m doing [in] THE INVISIBLES can wholly be INVISIBLES, and again that will change as the book progresses, but right now I think I’ve got a good thing going.
- Let me ask you, while I’ve got THE INVISIBLES on my mind, how long is VOLUME TWO planned to last? When will we shift into VOLUME THREE?
It will just be 25 issues each.
- Oh, O.K. So they’re all going to be fairly well-balanced, as far as issue numbers and story lengths. I’m trying to think—I’ve been bouncing around in my list of questions—if there was anything else that I’ve managed to skip. I probably should go ahead and ask you what’s coming up in THE INVISIBLES, so you can preview that for us.
Sure. I feel like I should say something about 7. Has issue 7come out?
- I believe it is.
Yeah. Well, issue 7—I’m really pleased about when that one came out. The hinge of this series is that everyone’s been asking, "Why is it so violent? Why is it so PREACHER-ified?" [Both laugh.] And you kind of get the answer in issue 7.
- That’s a shame, considering how much older than PREACHER THE INVISIBLES is.
Yeah, but I’m cold. [Laugh.] And Garth’s hot.
[A]gain, yeah, I’m really pleased about what it’s going to do. [It’s] the most violent thing I’ve ever done, but the entire issue is balanced out with the least violent thing. So it’s getting it out. ... I’m really pleased with that; [it’s] kind of everything that THE INVISIBLES is about.
From there, we start getting into explaining a lot more stuff. The next three issues are kind of set simultaneously in 1924, with the Golden Age Invisibles, and—
- [Laugh.] There’s an idea I’ve been waiting to hear!
[Laugh.] Yeah, yeah, and you’re getting it! So there’s actually—there’s a King Mob from 1924, who’s a different one, and there’s another bunch of people that we’ve seen a couple of them already. And it’s gonna be [an] adventure.
[O]ur King Mob does some psychic time travel to go back and get involved in this attempt to be able to see how to bring through alien beings into Earth in 1924. So he gets kind of caught up in that, and also he ranks in the present-day story, [where] one of the team kind of betrays everyone else and walks away, which is a bit of a shock.
And then it’s leading into a new big story where we take off on the Boy character and the fact that his brother was taken away by, you know, secret government troops and placed in a death camp within the United States. So it’s kind of the Invisibles finding where this death camp is at and getting in there and causing trouble.
- It sounds like that’s going to put you well on the road to wrapping up VOLUME TWO.
Uh, no. Well, sort of, yeah. That would take us well into the second year of it.
- O.K., somewhat off the subject of comics: I touched on this a bit earlier, but I’m sure everyone has noted how much the theme of the millennium has run in and out of your work over the past couple of years.
Yeah.
- If someone were to force you at gunpoint to make predictions—
Mm-hm?
- —what would you say the next four or five years hold for the human race?
For the human race? Wonder!
- That’s a big question.
Yeah, I think it’s full of wonderful stuff, but that’s only me, and other subjective points say, "Oh, well, what do you want." Having survived a near-death experience last year, I don’t want to [be negative].
So now I actually think it’s really good. I mean, every day I hear new stuff, [about] new technology. And for all that technology has caused us trouble in the past, I think that united we’re learning to use it. You know, the thing I saw the other day, I found, was they’ve created anti-gravity in a laboratory.
- Oh, really?
Yeah, they’ve managed to levitate a sandwich, some grasshoppers, and a frog. And they’ve done this by using some kind of electromagnetic field, which is the point when you were a kid, you knew that was going to come to be.
- Exactly.
So the nice thing: For the year 2000, we’re going to levitate a hundred people, one from every nation or whatever. Wouldn’t that be a great gesture? And they’re actually working toward this; they’re not just saying water in the corner. This is humanity, you know. [Laugh.] So to me that stuff is actually, I think—
- It’s a much closer idea than it used to be.
Yeah, and I think things are going to be great. We’re going to discover nanotechnology, and then we’ll become like gods, you know. We’re ten years away from that. Americans are, anyway.
I mean, I see basically major transformation to the sons of humanity.
- It’s amazing now, but my biggest concern is how are WE going to change once our millennium fever has run its course? How do you think the human race is going to react to the year 2000 having come and gone?
Well, what’ll happen is everyone’s going to sit down and think, "Well, we didn’t die [laugh], you know. Christ didn’t come; the aliens didn’t come, after all, so I forfeit," and it’ll be exactly the same thing that happened a hundred years ago when—
You know, back in the 1890s, people like Oscar Wilde and everyone were saying, "Art is dead. Culture is dead. There’s nowhere to go but decadence. Recombine all the elements of the old stuff, but no one will ever think of anything new." Ten years later, you had T.S. Eliot, Picasso, James Joyce—and those were all the people that [had] got over that hundred-year mark. And suddenly someone said, "We’ve got another hundred years, so we’d better do something."
So I think what’s going to happen is we’ll get over that mark and all the kids who have been born now and are pretty young now are suddenly going to take a look around and think, "What do we make our world?" And we’re going to get a whole onslaught of new ideas, new thoughts, new concepts, because it has to happen. And it always does, you know.
I mean, this is—this is what [the] millennium would be. We just caught the [hints] with the comet and all that, [of crossing] over the hundred-year mark. And most people in the past have thought, "Everything’s going to come to an end," and always once we get past that—and once the people who thought it was going to come to an end start getting too old—then the young people take over it all, you know. And it will happen again.
- What do you think Grant Morrison’s going to do when 2000 has come and gone? Do you have any idea yet?
Hopefully just latch onto the new thing and have fun with it. Keep going, you know. I don’t know if I want to do comics. I think my big hero is John Broome, who did THE FLASH back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
Broome’s a big influence on me. An idea of my own, in fact, that he did comics and then stopped, and he just took off—went around the world, went to Paris, was going [somewhere else], and he ended up in Japan where he started a successful business. And he did nothing like comics.
You know, I like that kind of idea—that you do your stuff and it’s good and then you get out before you become bored.
- So you’re planning on becoming a travelling guru, or maybe going back to working full-time as a playwright?
Well, wherever I may. You know, I’ve been offered—I’ve been offered some things. If I’m going to do crap, then I might do crap for a lot of money. [Both laugh.] And then that means I can do good stuff that isn’t making a lot, just doing a lot to keep me happy. So, yeah, I’ll do something, but right now—up until the year 2000—I’ll just try and document it all in the comics.
- I see. Well, I think I’ve pretty much gone through my list of twenty questions and then some. It’s been a pleasure talking to you this evening.
You, too.
- Lots of answers to many questions. Let me ask you before I go: It’s been a while since we’ve heard you mention that you were practicing Chaos Magic in THE INVISIBLES letters column, which is our (sort of) window into the home world of Grant Morrison.
[Laugh.] Yeah.
- Are you still practicing Chaos Magic?
Oh, yeah.
- And how much influence does that have on the success of JUSTICE LEAGUE?
Ah, probably much. [Laugh.]
Yeah, I mean, I do it all the time. It’s become easier now; I don’t know why. There’s a lot of weird stories I could tell you, but we’d be here all night.
But the magic is that it’s become something else. After I almost died last year, a lot of strange stuff happened, and I felt—this is mad, but basically I felt a healing power knocking. And I’ve used him, and it works, and it blows my mind, but I don’t know what it’s about. But it
works. God. Religious practices all have to be done [while] waiting on a hand to take away character. [Laugh.] It freaks me out when nothing’s there to do it. So the magic, you know, is still there. It’s getting deeper. I want to try to get it in a comic book.
- Well, everything seems to be working well for you. You’ve got the best-selling title DC has right now; you are working on an epic project with THE INVISIBLES; you produced one of the finest mini-series that DC’s had in a while, FLEX MENTALLO, last summer—
Oh, I’m glad you liked that, ‘cause no one really read it. I loved it. That is my favorite piece of work I’ve ever done. In spite of it.
- I think it is the single best piece of work I’ve read by you. I was tremendously impressed.
Thank you for that.
- I’m not a comic-art collector, but the one page of art I would love to own is Frank Quitely’s page for the "all those shitty, amazing comics" scene.
Yeah! Well, I’m glad you liked it, ‘cause that’s the one that I needed someone to.
- Was [Pink Floyd's album] THE WALL a big influence on that, or were the similarities incidental?
Hm… I think—and you’re the first person to mention that, but now that I think about it—yeah, it’s true.
No, I think it’s just—it’s one of those things, you know. I just haven’t had an experience frankly like it [laugh], so that’s what I’ve come to expect.
- It did seem to come at a very interesting time for you.
Yeah. [I]t’s good. I’m always glad when people say they’ve enjoyed it, ‘cause that’s the one that is just the biggest disappointment for me in my whole career, is that that one didn’t really go across well.
- Well, it may not have been a commercial success, but I think it’s going to be a tremendous critical success, given time.
Yeah, I’d like to think so.
- Of course, I could be wrong—
[Laugh.]
- —but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Like I say, it’s the most impressive thing I’ve read that you’ve written, and that’s saying quite a bit.
Well, that’s great then. I must be doing something right.
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