Mania - 26 March 1999

The JLA's Mad Idea Machine Is Leaving With a Bang

by Matt Brady

The news came earlier this week - the ever entertaining, ever enigmatic Grant Morrison would be leaving JLA with #40. With any such departures, fans were filled with questions and we here at Mania were no different.

With pad and paper, and a walletful of beer money, Mania caught up with the Scottish writer, bought him a pint, and got him reflecting about his upcoming final JLA storyline, his years on the JLA, The Invisibles, his future plans and, as the conversation went on… some rather strange topics.

First up on the agenda - JLA. While the exact issue number of Morrison's departure has been a source of heavy speculation for the past six or so months, Morrison says he's known all along he'd leave when he was done telling the stories he wanted to tell - it was all just a matter of which issue.

"When I come on a book, I usually set up a storyline and know where I'm going

to end so I give myself a way to get out, and Mageddon was it," Morrison says. "I knew that when I got to this point with the JLA, that it would be time to go, and so I'm going."

While DC's recent announcement was met with a sense of loss from many fans, Morrison promises his final issues will be memorable.

Quo Vadis, JLA?

"My remaining time on the Justice League will primarily be focusing on the Mageddon storyline after I wrap up the War in the Fifth Dimension story that's

running now," Morrison says. "Mageddon is going to take in a lot of different

things - we've got the return of the Injustice Gang and a couple of sudden, noble deaths in there. It's a really big storyline that will cover a whole bunch of little plotlines that we've had running through the book for a while now."

But who will remain? Morrison revealed that it's been his plan all along to leave the JLA with the core seven members - Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Martian Manhunter. What new JLA writer Mark Waid wants to do after that is fine with him. "Mark can play with it however he chooses," Morrison says. "I'm not quite sure what he wants to do, but I assume he might want to add some characters that he likes. My involvement is over at that point though, after #40, Mark will be able to do whatever he wants to with it."

Don't get him wrong or start dusting off your sympathy for Morrison - he's not a burned-out husk of a writer, although he readily admits that writing the JLA for over four years (counting the time he spent in the proposal and development stage) will have taken its toll by the time he steps down. "The book's been great fun, but it's also been quite difficult," Morrison says. "It's been quite a hard four years working on the JLA, because it's so difficult to keep in touch with everything, keep the editors sweet and be in proper continuity all the time. I've always thought that it's a good idea to stay with a book only as long as your heart's in it. A lot of people don't do that, and stay on books past their prime, and a lot of books suffer for it, so I like leaving it while I'm still really into it."

As unsentimental as it sounds, Morrison says he's not going to miss any of the members of the JLA; rather, he'll miss the opportunity writing the JLA presented. "I'm going to miss the outlet for those kind of 'widescreen' ideas," Morrison says. "I was really able to just go crazy on that book. If I'd been working on The Invisibles or something more serious, going back and writing about living suns and guys with X-ray eyes was wonderful. I love writing that stuff - it's a workout for the imagination."

Quo Vadis, Grant Morrison?

While Morrison isn't discounting a return to the JLA someday, he's got no firm plans to come back to DC's pantheon of heroes just yet. However, pots on Morrison's mental stove are always simmering. "I've got other ideas for stories and they may appear later, it just depends on what I can find in the future,"

Morrison says. "But ultimately with the JLA, I don't want to hang on and become boring on it. Also, the JLA founded a certain style, and now everyone is doing it. For example, I just read Warren Ellis' The Authority, which to me, takes Justice League and superhero teams to next level, so I'm glad I'm leaving, because he's doing it much better than me."

"It's a great time now - they're lots of great comics out there, and the JLA has less work to do in terms of breaking new ground, so I want to do other things now and rethink my approaches to superheroes as well."

One of the warmer pots that's simmering in Morrison's mind right now concerns a "Big Crisis Thing" he's currently thinking out and developing for DC. Morrison's new Global Guardians (introduced in JLA # 26) would play a role in the event, which would also, according to Morrison remove a specific thorn from his side and completely explain Hypertime.

"I've been reading articles and stories about Hypertime, and realize that people just don't know about it - they haven't gotten it yet," Morrison says. "Everybody thinks that it's only parallel realities which is actually only the first plane of Hypertime. The 'Big Crisis Thing' I'm doing next is going to involve the subject of Hypertime and explain what it is - we could subtitle it 'Professor Morrison Explains at Last!'" Then people will finally have an idea of what Hypertime actually entails."

But as he said, don't count on Morrison's return to sweeping superheroic epics just yet. While plans for the 'Big Crisis Thing' remain on the back burner for

the time being, Morrison revealed that the JLA void in his life is going to be

filled by… nothing… for the time being at least. "I'm taking some time off, maybe six months to a year," Morrison says regarding superheroes. "I really just want to rethink what I'm doing. I'm also going to do some traveling - spend some of the money that's been building up in my bank account thanks to the JLA, and

get out of the house for a while."

While Morrison may be laying his super-heroic pen down for a while, The Invisibles continues to chug along and gain readers as it draws closer to its inevitable climax with issue #1. Morrison revealed that when the series concludes in the early days of 2000, that will be all for the comic book adventures of the subculture's favorite team.

"The whole conspiracy angle has run its course in the '90s," Morrison says. "It was a real '90s phenomenon and it became the structure for the Invisibles, because the Invisibles was trying to sum up the decade in a comic book form. If they survive and come back at all, it will be in a completely different form, and it certainly won't be about conspiracies. Right now, there's a chance that I'm going to do a short series about King Mob, but it would be quite different from the style and approach of the Invisibles."

Making It Real

That said however, Morrison promises he'll revisit the Invisibles, albeit in a different form. "I want to write a book about The Invisibles and the creative process behind it after I finish the novel I'm currently writing, because the creation of that series and living through it has been the most bizarre time of my life," Morrison says. "I thought it would be interesting to write a book about how weird it was to write a comic book that becomes real, so they'll survive in some form."

Waitaminute. Back the peyote train up a second. "Comic book that becomes real?" Is Morrison serious, or were the pints of stout addling his over-fertile imagination?

Turns out he's as serious as cancer. There's an old ghost story about a radio announcer who broadcasts a fictitious news report from a 'haunted' house on

Halloween night, reporting that something has climbed out of the swamp in the back and is coming to get him. After the broadcast, the swamp monster does actually come to get him - the audience's belief made the monster exist, crossing over, as Morrison would describe it, from fictional reality to our reality (and yes, that is an aspect of Hypertime).

That's kind of what Morrison is talking about when he talks about comic books becoming real.

"I've made some interesting discoveries through writing these books, especially The Invisibles, not so much JLA, but even there, I've had some really strange experiences which I'll put down one day," Morrison says. "With The Invisibles, the comic has actually become real life - it's almost indistinguishable, apart from the fact that the paranoid stuff doesn't seem to be real, but everything else is. I meet the characters all the time. If I put a character in the book, I meet them a couple of months later - seriously."

"You start to realize that what you can do with fiction is make reality happen. If you make it believable enough, things start to seem to bend towards it. It was almost like a magic spell and it happened all quite unexpectedly. I found weird links between fiction and reality, and I'm starting to think about bigger

possibilities and what I can do with them. I've no explanation for it, but it works."

So what great discoveries has Morrison made at the frontier of the two realities? Well, you've got to remember that he's single, young and still early into the experiments with fictional reality. "So far, I've met several of my girlfriends that way - seriously," Morrison says, despite the interviewer's growing skepticism. "In all honesty, I'm sad that I wrote Ragged Robin out of the new series because I'm really missing her - I keep throwing these other girls into the story, and then meeting them later, but they're just not Robin."

Stepping back from the cusp of what could be its own particular form of madness, Morrison also admitted that you can't write a book like The Invisibles without starting to consider some of the hype, such as the prediction, based on Aztec and Olmec calendars that the world will end on December 22, 2012 - a plot element that weighed heavily in his and Mark Millar's Aztek as well.

"I'm not totally convinced," Morrison says. "The evidence is interesting, but you can make any evidence for anything sound real. I've just been reading a book called The Crazed Prophet, and the author makes the most insane ideas, claiming that George Bush has actually shape-changed in front of him, among others. As you read his book, because of the way he presents his case, and how strong he makes the evidence appear, you end up believing him, but I've read so much of this stuff I realize that most of his sources were crap. He was making a lot of it up, but it's still brilliant - it's utterly convincing. It's part of how you

can make fiction influence reality."

In Cold, Hard Print

What about the aforementioned novel Morrison is working on? "It's kind of taking on themes from The Invisibles into the next century," Morrison explains. "It's about a bunch of people who meet up and realize there's something special about them. The little science fiction seed in it is that kind of like in the movie, Village of the Damned, aliens came to earth, but instead of seeding one village, they seeded the whole earth, leaving one 'weird' kid in every town. Finally all these weird kids grow up and meet each other and start to take over the world."

While from the outset, the yet unnamed novel sounds like it would make a terrific movie, Morrison doesn't agree. "If I do a movie, I'll do a movie," Morrison says. "If I do a book, I'll do something that has to be a book because it just could not be filmed. I want to do a book like Naked Lunch, which cannot be filmed, or if it is, you instantly realize it shouldn't have been."

Speaking of his various film projects, Morrison reports that The Invisibles series that was being produced for the BBC is "flailing in the water" and as far as he's concerned is dead - an idea whose time has passed. "As far as I know, the BBC is just sitting on it," Morrison says. "There's a woman up here who was connected with it that doesn't even know what telepathy is and keeps complaining about the story."

"As far as other movies go, Mark Millar and I still have a big super hero plan which will be the next stage of superheroes in movie form. We figure that the only place for superheroes to go now is into movies cartoons and games, and we're just at the beginning of that now."

And yes, we asked, and no, Morrison wasn't about to tell us. "If I said it now, it would end up in someone's comic next month. No one's thought of it yet, but

it's the next stage of the superhero myth."

With his diverse lineup of projects, Morrison says while he is tempted to be like his idol, Gardner Fox (who came into comics, turned the medium on its ear and disappeared), Morrison loves comics too much to ever leave them for good.

"I'll never leave comics, but I don't really want this kind of intensive workload again," Morrison says. "I'll probably just continue along, picking up new ideas, playing with them and putting them down again. It's what I did with Doom Patrol when I wanted to do a weird comic, and what I did with JLA when I

wanted to do the biggest, most full-on, most commercial superhero comic I could. If I haven't done something, I like to try it out, so the next one will be quite different again. That's the way I work, which is probably why I'll never be really famous, but I'll never really go away either."

In the meantime, Morrison looks forward to enjoying comics in a way he hasn't been able to for awhile - reading them. "I'm really enjoying the stuff that's out right now, and I just want to sit back and read them while I think of something new."