AMAZING HEROES #176, February 1990

Arkham's Architect. Grant Morrison talks about everything from Animal
Man to Zenith. Interview by Mike Maddox (from Amazing Heroes #176,
Feb. 1990, pp. 24-41.)

This particular discourse took place in Grant's Glasgow flat on the 3rd and

4th of August, 1989. If you have a copy of Animal Man #8 in the room, I would

strongly suggest that you glance at page one. You will see a gas fire, a word

processor, and a cat. This is the view one gets from Grant's settee. Also, you

will notice a rubbish bin overflowing with junk. This bin remains unemptied.

Four square feet of Grant's flat, his cat's bottom and the bin are now,

strictly speaking, trademarks of DC Comics, Inc.
"All characters featured, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are

trademarks of DC Comics," we are told. However, one also reads that all events

and characters are "entirely fictional." Pfah! I was there. I saw the cat. You

can't fool me. Little bugger bit me twice and brought on my allergy.

Fictitious, my arse ...

AMAZING HEROES: Can we start with mirrors?

GRANT MORRISON: Oh, dear. Okay, we'll start with mirrors.

AH: Mirrors turn up all over the place in your work. In Zenith there's a girl

who falls into one and is never seen again, the same thing happens in Animal

Man. What's the attraction?

MORRISON: Arkham Asylum's full of mirrors as well. It's the principal image in
Arkham. They turn up in everything I do. And the reason is that I was trapped

in a Hall of Mirrors as a child. It was a place called "The House That Jack

Built," which turns up a lot as well. We were on holiday someplace ridiculous

like Sunderland, and I begged my mum and dad to take me into The House That

Jack Built. It was this crooked house, you know, this funhouse. They didn't

want to go in as they'd been on all the rides already, so they just gave us

the money and said, "In you go."
My sister and I went in, and the first room was a Hall of Mirrors - grotesque,
distorting mirrors.
There were these guys standing there, these weird men, and the way I remember
them is as René Magritte figures with no faces. Obviously they were just

ordinary guys. There was also a "What the Butler Saw" machine as well. One of

them was in the corner, grinding the handle round and round. I was thinking,

"Who's the Butler? What can he see?"
The only way out of the Hall of Mirrors was through the Tunnel of Love. It was
this grubby, stained curtain hanging over a doorway. The place just utterly

terrified me. I thought, "There's no way I can go through here, into the

Tunnel of Love. It must be the worst thing on Earth."
We just stood there. Eventually my dad came and said he'd take us through the
Tunnel of Love, and I said, "Don't go in there! Don't go in the Tunnel of

Love!"
Eventually we got back out through the turnstile.
In Arkham there's a scene where this happens, and Dave [McKean]'s done a
brilliant Tunnel of Love entrance which is shaped like a love heart, only

explicitly sexual, with all these horrible connotations. Quite horrible

really.

AH: Well, that's a creepy little start to this. Do you mind if I change the

subject?

MORRISON: Not at all.

AH: What happened to the Mod Gorilla Boss of Central City storyline?

MORRISON: That's now going to be a one-off called Gorillas a-Go-Go. It's
written as if Bob Haney were still alive. Which he probably is. Everyone

appears in it. Scooter's in there, Binky, all these fabulous people. I don't

know what else I can say about it. It's a piece of nonsense. It's ...  well,

Scooter. What else can I say? It's as sublime as that. The return of Scooter.

Don't know who's drawing it yet.

AH: Have they tried Ty Templeton? I think he wants to do Super Turtle ...

MORRISON: Yeah, I'd write Super Turtle ... Ed's Hobby Hints ...
I just think that all that stuff's so much more interesting than what's been

put out recently. I mean, to me, any Ace the Bat-Hound story is so much more

interesting than Dark Knight. How can you resist these things? I mean, the

Legion of Super-Pets ... ?
The one I loved was Proty II. I mean, who the hell was Proty II? What was that
thing? Those characters were absolute pinnacles. State of the art.
I think to a certain extent when Alan Moore waas doing Marvelman [Miracleman],
and whatever else it was he did ... I can't recall anymore ... it was okay to

bring this "new maturity" to comics. But you could take it to a certain extent

and the logic disintegrates. A person couldn't fly, so what's the point of

saying, "Well, this is the scientific way in which he could," because he just

couldn't. If you insist on taking it literally, then it becomes really boring.

As I've said before, my favorite super-hero stories are the ones where the

Flash gets turned into a paperweight, which seems closer to real life. As it

is lived ...

AH: There seem to be two types of story with these people. In one, Superman

saves a train because that's what he does, [and] the second, in which

Superman's head turns into an insect's due to Red Kryptonite. Is that what

you're playing around with here? Stories resulting from the characters' powers

rather than the impossible motivation?

MORRISON: Well, I've never thought of it like that ... it's more the idea of

not trying to pretend that this could possibly be real, or could exist in any

world that functioned like the real world. If these people have ridiculous

powers, then they'd live in a world that was a bit more ridiculous, surrounded

by more obvious images from the unconscious. In Doom Patrol, for instance, I

could've done a story about the very real ramifications of a human brain in a

robot body, which would have been deathly dull. I don't think he'd get very

far. Brain dead within five minutes.
To me it's just a return to the stories I loved when I was a kid, which were

really imaginative, and which in some way sparkled. It's perfectly sensible to

do dull workaday stories about dull workaday people, but to do them about

fantastic, ridiculous super-powered characters seems really pointless.

AH: Why have you created new bad guys for the Doom Patrol? I mean, DC's stable

of villains is as big as the one that holds the good guys ...

MORRISON: I wanted to do things that were new. I mean, in other things I've
done - Zenith, for instance - are just deliberately plagiarized from every

source available, although Animal Man's something else again, but in Doom

Patrol I wanted to use completely new stuff which came out of dreams and out

of my head. I didn't want to use any of the old villains. I mean, there's a

current trend, which I've participated in as well, of resurrecting dreadful

old villains and trying to make them interesting. It's okay for a while, but

you can't really found a career on it.
The characters are all just completely ludicrous in Doom Patrol, and they just

don't care. I mean, the Brotherhood of Dada ... I just love them. Mister

Nobody is possibly my favorite character ever. He's great fun. If you look at

him directly it's like you're looking out the corner of your eye.
In everything I do, I sympathize with the villains more than I do with the

heroes.
I'm sure that if I had super-powers I'd be a super-villain.

AH: What super-power would you want? I'd want invisibility.

MORRISON: Oh, invisibility, definitely. I'd like to be able to walk through

walls just to get into other people's homes. Straight away I'd be a

super-villain. I'd steal all sorts of money and set myself up in luxury.

That's why it's easier to sympathize with these people. I don't understand why

anybody would want to be a super-hero and defend the law.

AH: "Gee, I'm bulletproof. Maybe I'll hang around outside the bank, in case

it's robbed ... "

MORRISON: I'd be straight in there, boring through the vaults ...

AH: What about Damn All, Darling Come Home and Flying Robert?

MORRISON: That story's actually true. Someone told me that she'd had these
imaginary friends, and that she'd killed them all. Damn All and Darling Come
Home ... I mean, you couldn't make these things up if you tried.

AH: The Scissormen. Obviously culled from Old Struwwelpeter. Was that another

thing that scared you as a child?

MORRISON: Well, no. Actually, that was something that scared the wits out of
me when I was about 23, which was when I first read it. Even now it scares the

wits out of me. It's just one of those great things, the sort of thing that we

wanted to get into with Doom Patrol. "Images from the Unconscious," and all

that. Things that work on a primal level.
The comics that I write, I'd like to think that children would be exposed to

them. I don't particularly want to do "Adult" comics or "For Mature Readers"

comics.
Arkham is something that obviously is for adults, but things like Animal Man

and Doom Patrol would, I'd hope, be comics that kids could read. They're

really aimed at kids rather than adults. I'd like to think that adults could

enjoy them as well, like fairy tales. What I want to do is to get into

children's minds, and seriously disturb them. So much of the stuff they're

exposed to is just sanitized rubbish. The school readers we used to get were

full of gruesome European fairy tales, brimming with atrocities. Things like

that really stuck in your mind and gave you bad dreams and terrible sleepless

nights. There's nothing like that nowadays in comics. The cartoon children are

forced to watch Care Bears, for instance. Appalling.

AH: Do you feel in any way guilty for this, what with Zoids, and so forth?

MORRISON: Zoids I liked. I was very pleased with it at the time. The thing I

feel guilty about is Action Force. Seriously deluded career move ...

AH: I thought Zoids was okay, too. The two super-powers having this insane

war, these people caught in the crossfire.

MORRISON: Well, that's what it was. A potent allegory, shall we say?
So ... the Brotherhood of Dada is the supreme expression of the utter
ludicrousness of super-villainy.

AH: Will they actually throw a fish from the top of the Eiffel Tower?

MORRISON: Actually, it's a plucked chicken. We thought we'd overdosed on the
fish a bit in issue #20: 'Have faith in cod' and the plague of fish. So we

decided on this poor plucked bird.

AH: Are there any fish in Arkham?

MORRISON: Actually, there are. There's some major fish symbolism which has
to do with Christ and crucified serpents. Jungian stuff ...

AH: I've seen the picture of Batman pushing a piece of glass through his hand

...

MORRISON: Yeah, the Christ imagery. That's actually a mirror he's using ...

AH: Have you ever been to America?

MORRISON: No, never.

AH: Why write about America then?

MORRISON: That's one of the problems with Animal Man - not knowing what
it's like to live in California. I don't know what television programs they

have or anything. I have to write about domestic life, which is a real chore

for me.That's why it began to get more and more bizarre. It's the only escape

route from having to understand exactly how these people live their dismal

lives.

AH: The whole Baker family seems so normal and likable, though. I mean, they

don't really belong to the DC Universe. Is that why they live in the suburbs

just outside and commute?

MORRISON: That's it exactly. They live outside, and he commutes into the DC
Universe. I just think that's really dull, though. Unless I lived in

California and could introduce all these Alan Bennett-type details and

observations on life, I couldn't keep it up. The only way I could do it was to

turn it into something completely different.

AH: Writing about Glasgow, for instance?

MORRISON: Yeah, well, that's what it's become. A comic book about writing
comics. That whole thing becomes part of what you're doing, that whole
misunderstanding of American culture.

AH: Is that gas fire now trademarked?

MORRISON: It should be. You recognized it, then. Did you notice that the bin
hasn't been emptied? Complete disgrace. Several thousand people get a look at

my living room and I didn't even empty the bin.

AH: I suppose there has to be a final confrontation between you and Animal Man

...

MORRISON: Yeah, that's where it all ends. The one I'm writing at the moment -
#19 - reveals the secret of the universe. The secret of the universe will

appear on page 11 of Animal Man #19.
The Red Indian Guy's a major figure who appears in a two-issue peyote trip

where Animal Man finds out the secret of the universe, and all about how he

came to be.
All the questions that weren't answered in the Secret Origin. The Psycho

Pirate turns up again, and the - uh - the second Crisis is on the way.

AH: Did the Wolfman send you?

MORRISON: No, it was probably leopard men.

AH: Sorry?

MORRISON: Leopard men. You see, I think that's how I'm going to die. I'm
going to be killed by leopard men. I've always felt that.

AH: Seriously?

MORRISON: Oh, yeah.

AH: Are all the little autobiographical bits true? Like the story about Foxy

signalling to you on the hillside?

MORRISON: I'm actually going to go up there and see if he's still around.

AH: I told you earlier that I used to see a fox come into my bedroom when I

was little ...

MORRISON: Yeah, that's great. I mean, did you actually see him?

AH: Oh, yeah.

MORRISON: That's great. I never used to see Foxy, I used to just go out and
signal to him with a torch, and get these answers from the hills.

AH: When I was older I read somewhere about there being ghost animals. I

suppose it's the "If dogs don't have souls, where will Rover spend eternity?"

question. Don't worry, I won't ask you that one.

MORRISON: I've got this worry about souls. I always wonder about
reincarnation. Because it occurs to me that if you trace it right back, where

do souls come from? Either you accept that if it was Adam and Eve, then there

were only two to start with. Or with evolution, if you trace it back, you

encounter protozoa, which shouldn't have souls at all. So if you believe in

reincarnation ... well, there wouldn't seem to be enough souls to go around.

These things keep me awake at night.
What I'm more inclined to believe is this thing in Chaos Magic ... well, not

actually believe, because I don't think I believe anything, but one of their

ideas is that the Earth is surrounded by a "life pool," and that when people

die their souls are simply absorbed into it. Complete ego-death. This life

force is also responsible for animating things, which seems a little bit more

reasonable to me.

AH: Knowing you've got an interest in this, I tried to get someone to explain

all this to me the other evening, but their explanation wasn't particularly

helpful. I think "irresponsible meddlers" was about it.

MORRISON: Who was this you were speaking to? Geoffry Dickens, M.P.?
No, the Chaos people are great. They've actually got nothing to do with the

'Many Angled Ones' that I used in Zenith. They're another bunch of weirdos who

believe that the Lovecraft entities are real. You know, the Cult of the Nine

Angles and all that? They think it's all real. They've devised rituals to

summon up Lovecraft's entities ... which sounds great.

AH: But they're fictitious ...

MORRISON: No, these people are real. I've got the forms next door if you want
to join? But Chaos Magic's quite different. They don't really believe

anything, but the idea is that you can use these - uh - these contradictions.

This point of paradox is where you get magic energy from, and they've got all

sorts of techniques for disassociation and non-behaviour patterns and so on.

You can believe whatever you want. You can do it by rolling dice if you want.

You know, you can devote your life to Christ for a week, and live a saintly

monastic existence, then the next week you can maybe worship Isis or Satan or

a chaotic entity - or Mickey Mouse. It just breaks down all these barriers and

shows that the real power is within. Gods are simply metaphors for getting in

touch with Chaos, the fundamental stuff of which the universe is made.
It ties in with all sorts of other interesting things as well. Like quantum

physics and the Implicate Order, which is another obsession of mine. David

Bohm's theory, which suggests that there's a higher reality, which our reality

unfolds from, I suppose it's just what the Chaos Magicians call Chaos, and

aborigines call Dreamtime. Horribly dry, but there you have it.

AH: Angels. Kind of related. Kid Eternity, the mini-series you're working on

...

MORRISON: That's actually a lovely link, because that's what it's going to be

all about, Chaos Magic.

AH: Is he still going to be the bastard black sheep of the Marvel Family? The

angel helper? Still torpedoed by Nazis , and so on?

MORRISON: No. We've disposed of the incestuous Marvel Family thing. He still
gets torpedoed, though. In more ways than one ... The first one's already

being drawn by Duncan Fegredo. It was fun to do, as it was a different way of

writing for me. I'd just read Ulysses, and I thought I'd do this stream of

consciousness thing.
Obviously it's not Joyce, but you know ... we have our sad pretentions.
The dark secret of Mister Keeper is revealed in #2. What I wanted to do was do

a horror comic. I mean, everybody else in Britain has done one, so I thought

it was about time I did one using all the occult I'm involved in. It's all

really rather unpleasant. We wanted to do something with no moral values in it

at all. He's a wonderful nihilistic character.

AH: What do you think about this "Brat Pack" thing? All these artists and

writers heading off towards America?

MORRISON: Oh, that's all Alan Moore's fault. Blame him. He did so well they
just had to come over here and find this new bunch of horrible people. I don't
actually know. I don't ever see the others. Don't really have anything in

common with them, but you tend to get lumped together. Maybe if I lived in

London it'd be different, but I wouldn't live there.

AH: Do you enjoy writing about yourself?

MORRISON: Yeah. Incredibly. I shamefully admit that it's my favorite subject.

AH: I remember the Luther Arkwright review you did in ARK, where you go on and

on and on and on for pages without mentioning the book once.

MORRISON: Yeah, that was great. Five pages of autobiography, and then a bit
where I have to say something about Luther Arkwright. The thing is, when I

came to do it, this drowsy numbness overtook me and I thought, "Well, I've got

to write about something, so I'll just write about school." So I started

writing this thing and it took on a life of its own. Eventually I just had to

stop.

AH: Are you naturally a lethargic person?

MORRISON: Me? No, I'm always working - 24 hours a day. Haven't been to bed
since 1986. I get my stuff done, but I'd prefer not to have to do it. What I'd

like to do is have ideas and have people pay me for them. Rather than just let

them vanish into the ether, someone could pay me for them. It would be the

ideal way to live.

AH: There was this joke going round a few years ago. Some guy asked some

writer where he got his ideas from, and he said that there was an agency. $20

an idea ... Would you like that for real?

MORRISON: Yeah. "Ideas International." It's got a ring to it ... I'm planning

to retire at the end of the year anyway.

AH: Although you're hanging onto Doom Patrol?

MORRISON: Yeah, that's the only one.

AH: What about Mr. Smith, the thing with Brendan McCarthy?

MORRISON: No, that's another one-off. It's already been written.

AH: Would you like to do more work with Brendan?

MORRISON: I'd like to work with him at all. We keep planning to do things and
end up never doing it ... But Mr. Smith should be a complete watershed in the
history of comics.

AH: Brendan's art is magnificent. People should stick his drawings on the

backs of their jackets.
Which would piss him off no end. Have you ever been a teen idol, do you think?

MORRISON: Not like Alan Moore. He's been a real teen idol. People have
actually surrounded him on staircases. He's been trapped by this sea of

people. No one talks to me at conventions.

AH: Perhaps no one knows who you are?

MORRISON: I should grow a beard.

AH: There's a lad in Brimsby who claims to have Alan's trouser pocket. He

ripped it off his bum while he was having a wee or something.

MORRISON: Actually, it does have healing properties. I wouldn't mind all that.
It'd be okay, really. Like I've said before, it's only a couple days in a

year. That'd suit me. People following me into the toilets, surrounded in the

canteen. It'd be great. Beatlemania.

AH: How're you getting on with the Fauves, the band?

MORRISON: It's going nowhere, really. The drummer left under a could.
Various musical differences. We plan to make another record. I think I'm a bit

past it now, though.

AH: How old are you?

MORRISON: Twenty-nine. It's atrocious. Death's door. It's just everyone I

really love was dead by the time they reached my age. I'm so disappointed. I

don't know what's happened to me. Why should I still be alive? Shelley was

dead, Keats, all the romantic poets.

AH: Coleridge held out for a while.

MORRISON: Blake lasted years. But Lautréamont died at 24. Chatterton was 18,
which is ideal, really ... It just shows no sign of ending with me ...

AH: You don't crave immortality, then?

MORRISON: Genuine immortality? Like the Immortal Man? I't be okay for a
while, I suppose ... but you've got to remember how bored you've been up until
now, and just imagine it going on for hundreds of years ...

AH: Another aspect of your work, which turns up again and again, is where

you'll have someone on the verge of saying something important and have them

give up. Red Jack in Doom Patrol gets to the crucial point and says, "Oh,

bugger," and just dies. The Red Mask in Animal Man was about to tell the world

the story of his life, but instead said, "Screw this," and jumped off a
building. You even did it to yourself in the Spill It page in Heartbreak

Hotel. You were about to give us the real meaning of punk, and then you just

said, "Aww, fuck off," and tore the page up.

MORRISON: You get to this point, especially in comics, where you're talking
about the Great Issues of Our Time, and you do come up to a point where you
think, "Oh, what aload of bollocks." I think it's best summed up by the phrase
"Drop the bomb," which is my all-time favorite, really. That's all it comes

down to.

AH: "All writing is pigshit. " - Antonin Artaud.

MORRISON: Yeah ... When it gets pompous, and people are talking about their
lives, and it comes to this great crisis point, what can you say but "Fuck it.

What a waste this has been." It's a thought that runs through my mind every

day.

AH: What a thought to wake up to.

MORRISON: I wake up with dreadful anxieties. It usually passes after an hour,
after cereal or something.
I think it's got something to do with growing up during punk. Something you

can't help but absorb, and I think it's a healthy thing. It's just too easy to

be pompous.
Even so, I still find myself straying into pomposity at times ... You see, I

just don't have any answers to anything at all.

AH: I hope you won't mind me bringing this up, but in comics there's this

visible surfeit of politeness among a lot of professionals. If someone thinks

- oh, I don't know - Bill Mantlo, say, is a dreadful writer, they'll never say

so openly. Now, that slagging off you gave Black Kiss ...

MORRISON: I wasn't particularly bothered about that until somebody told me
that Howard Chaykin was comin to UKCAC this year. Most of these people detest
each other. I detest most of them, and I'd hate to be hypocritical about it.

Most of them deserve it. Black Kiss, however, deserved to be buried in lead

cannisters ... It's hypocrisy again. Why pretend it's an adult comic? Why not

just come right out and say what it is: a wank rag for teenagers. Which is all

it is. I wouldn't have cared if he'd said that. But to pretend that it's

something else and to elevate it to "Art" ...

AH: I really like the first three ...

MORRISON: Well, if it was decent pornography, which it wasn't ... It was just

a pile of turgid, regurgitated clichés. I mean, you can write good

pornography, which I may well do at some point.
No, most people deserve it. Most of them are utterly loathsome. It's hypocrisy
again. And after all the things I've said about Watchmen, I'm sure Alan Moore

is never going to speak to me again.

AH: Saying that, you've said that the early issues of V for Vendetta, along

with Luther Arkwright, were the two best comics of the '80s.

MORRISON: Are there as many as that? No, er ... Well, Freakwave, as I've said
elsewhere, is the one which still remains the best, and which will continue to
remain so. There was something else I liked ... I can't remember, really.

Violent Cases I thought was good, except for that Glasgow accent, which was so

badly done it was beyond belief. Phonetic writing is such a terribull

mistairke. Y'Shouldnae need to do't. T'Should be in thu rythmns of th'way

peopull tawk ryther tahn thaht.

AH: I really had to struggle to understand that.

MORRISON: Me, too. And I live here. It had nothing to do with Glasgow at all.
Based on Whiskey Galore or something ...

AH: You seem to have a love of the burlesque in comics. A cross between

pantomime and wrestling.

MORRISON: There's a wrestler in Glasgow who's called the Gay One. No
subtlety involved at all. That whole pantomime thing's brilliant. There's not
enough of that in art or real life. It's the sort of thing I'd like to do more

of. Boys dressing as girls, girls as boys, and a false cow ... Actually, if

you look at Doom Patrol, there's not one of them who's sexually 'normal.'

That's something no one's noticed as yet. The Chief's in a wheelchair,

Robotman's castrated, Rebis is half man-half woman, Crazy Jane's the victim of

sexual assault ... I like the idea of these people who are really odd in that

way.

AH: What about Joshua?

MORRISON: He doesn't count. He's been relegated to the background.

AH: Dorothy Spinner, apart from being strange-looking ... ?

MORRISON: What we want to do with her, because she's so ugly and has hairy
arms and legs, is to turn her into the sexiest member of the Doom Patrol. This

will hopefully subvert people even more. Instead of 14-year old boys drooling

over Kitty Pryde, we'll have them drooling over this deformed apegirl. She's

someone we just inherited from the previous team; I think she was intended to

be something completely different, but there you go.

AH: Are you bringing Wayne back?

MORRISON: Yeah, I liked him. Punk rocker - you can tell from the haircut. No
one seemed to really like him, which shows how conservative the readers are.

AH: Do you want to clear up the X-Men/Doom Patrol mess once and for all?

MORRISON: Not really, it's not my fault. It's someone else's. That's something
we're getting away from. The Doom Patrol had become just another X-Men. I
can't imagine anything worse for something to turn into, so I had to rescue

them.
There'll be no more training sessions in the Danger Room for us ...
X-Men should have ended in 1980. The last good story was the one where they

all went into the future and got killed. I thought that was really good. If

only they'd stopped there. I suppose it's just money, though. And yet these

things just keep winning CBG polls, and stuff like that. I mean, who are these

people who think that this is really good? I was actually utterly insulted to

find myself in the CBG poll of favorite writers. Did you see it?

AH: Yes.

MORRISON: There were only two British writers in it. I think it was Alan Moore
and myself. Alan Moore was second and I was number 300 or whatever.

AH: I think you came in fifth, actually.

MORRISON: Yeah, well. I mean, you're surrounded by these people who never
learned to hold a pen, let alone write. Somebody phoned me up to congratulate
me, and I thought this was reason enough to go and slit my wrists. Obviously

the 130 people who voted for me were people of rare intelligence and

perspicacity, but people who put Chris Claremont above somebody like Alan

Moore. What can you do?

AH: Ten years from now will things be different?

MORRISON: In comics? I used to say no and be really pessimistic about it, but
now I think it might.

AH: I mean, compare 1979 with '89: what we had then and what we've got now.

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no way you could have predicted what
happened. It's just so different.

AH: Do you see a backlash coming?

MORRISON: It's started. The backlash is well under way, and it's all the fault

of the film. I notice that the NME have stopped doing comics reviews. Last

week's Time Out referred to comics readers as trendy illiterates. It seems a

very obvious stance, like comics are no longer worth talking about. It's like

saying all books or all films, or all records are worthless. It's just another

trendy stance.

AH: Actually, I was wandering around London last week, and was moaning on

about how everywhere I looked I saw this bloody Bat-symbol, and how boring it

all had become, until my girlfriend reminded me that, in fact, this was all my

fault. I mean, I had in effect voted for this.

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. I actually hold you personally responsible.
Of course, the really great thing about Arkham is that it's out just in time

to catch the full weight of the backlash. "Not another Batman!" So what I'm

trying to do now is to convince people that this is the underground Batman.

The alternative Batman. So if you're really sick of the film, then this is the

one to read. I'm sure it won't work at all, though. Everyone will hate it.
Like I say, I prefer Ace the Bat-Hound. I think he's a wonderful character.

Any Ace story is better than the Death of Robin.

AH: Do you mention Robin in Arkham?

MORRISON: Only briefly, as part of the Joker's sexual taunting. But then,
Arkham doesn't really connect to any particular continuity. It's not even a

Batman story, really - it's just a story about human psychology where we use

these characters as symbols. Obviously this house, the Asylum, isn't a

physical place; it's somebody's head. All the characters in it represent

different psychological functions and traits, obsessions. That kind of thing.

It was the only way we could think to do it after the "realistic" Batman

stuff, what Batman would be like, and how he'd have runs in his tights and all

that. There's no point in continuing that. So we used him in a purely symbolic

way.

AH: Who's your favorite out of all the loonies locked up there?

MORRISON: Oh, they're all so wonderful. I don't know. The Joker's just great.
If I were a comic villain I'd want to be the Joker. Two-Face is good as well,
though.

AH: Are they all there? In the Madhouse?

MORRISON: Yeah. The Mad Hatter we made a sort of Victorian pedophile. I
mean, a character called the Mad Hatter, you might as well bring out all the

Lewis Carroll material. So he's a cross between a pedophile and a '60s

alchemist, one of these San Francisco drug-dealing acid casualties.

AH: Killer Croc?

MORRISON: He's just this gigantic green shape that's in the dragon battle at

the end, this psychic confrontation. Dr. Destiny, we've put him in a

wheelchair. I thought it funny that in the Who's Who entry it says he was

locked in Arkham, his body all withered away. Then they show this guy who has

a skull on top and a Schwarzenegger physique - this is him withered away!
Really, they don't have any connection in the way they've been done before.
Scarecrow's in there, Black Mask ... All the old slags, really.
Arkham was the turning point for me. Before I'd been doing things very much in
the vogueish "British" tradition of writing comics - like Alan Moore,

basically because I thought that's what would sell, and what people would be

interested in.
Then I did this. Really put myself through all these terrible things to try

and get as close to madness as I could. It was actually quite easy. I'd work

at four o'clock in the morning, take drugs, watch all sorts of films and read

piles of books and try to get as much into it as possible. There's just so

much to it. It's become incredibly complex, but hopefully on the surface it's

so simple that you wouldn't notice.
The structure of the story has been designed like a house, so it's got

foundations and ground floor and basement levels of narrative. Secret passages

between ideas that you can follow and work your way around the house. So it's

got all sorts of things that ... well, that really opened me up to all sorts

of influences. If I hadn't done Arkham, I couldn't have gone on to do Doom

Patrol and the things that I'm doing now in Animal Man, which are of more

personal interest. It's so much more fun than this "This is what super-heroes

would be like if they were real."

AH: "Trotting out the Shelley and the Nietzsche and the Shakespeare to dignify

some old costumed claptrap." Do you believe that?

MORRISON: I do. What annoys me the most about these people is that they
seem to just go to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and find something. And
they always use Ozymandias, and none of them ever sit down and read Shelley or
Nietzsche, they just find nice quotes. You can find every one of these quotes

in that book.

AH: My all-time favorite is from a Dr. Strange from last year. Whoever it was

writing it said, "If you wrestle with dragons, a dragon you will also become,"

and you just know that the poor sap got that from reading Watchmen. He didn't

even go to the dictionary.

MORRISON: I was actually quite annoyed when I found that the phrase "Serious
House on Serious Earth," the title of the Arkham book, is actually in there. I

took it from the Philip Larkin poem "Churchgoing." I was horrified. People

will think I found it in the Dictionary of Quotations rather than coming from

being a lifelong disciple of Philip Larkin.
I take things from everywhere. I use loads of quotes. I use a lot of

"samples," like in Hip Hop, just inserted into the text from songs, or plays

and things. Most of the time I don't think people will notice. Doom Patrol has

lines from Sonic Youth and the Shamen, all sorts of things. The Red Jack issue

of Doom Patrol was stacked full of things from Peter Barnes's "The Ruling

Class," for instance. I don't have to do this, it just gives me a certain joy.

AH: Do you still get a thrill from good plagiarism?

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. It's great.

AH: But you always come right out with it, though. You steal things, and then

you tell everyone.

MORRISON: You have to, really. It's like they say, "There's always someone

with a big nose who knows." Zenith was done deliberately like that. A

scratch-mix super-hero.

AH: Have you got a complete list anywhere of where all these things come from?

MORRISON: I haven't. I suppose somebody will do one sooner or later. A
lawyer probably.

AH: Can we talk about The New Adventures of Hitler and the rumpus it caused?

MORRISON: We can.

AH: How upset were you by the fuss? I mean, the so-called lead columnist of

Cut magazine walking out in disgust, and the slanging match that followed.

MORRISON: Quite considerably. I couldn't eat for days. I just couldn't believe

it.
I thought it was no big deal, so when all this happened I thought it to be

very strange indeed.

AH: My initial reaction after reading the report in The Guardian was "Oh,

Christ ... what's he gone and done now ... ?"

MORRISON: The guy who left over it [Pat Kane, singer in a British M.O.R.
Chart band] just likes to imagine that he's a Marxist. All he's really done is

to assume a few fashionable attitudes. One of those attitudes is that the

mention of the word 'Hitler' is enough to set the blood pressure soaring. I

think he felt that he had to make a statement of some kind, and was so certain

that everyone would agree with him. All that's happened is that we've got all

these letters from people like the editor of Living Marxism and so on, telling

him that he's a complete idiot.
He's also had to put up with my Right to Reply page, after which he'll

hopefully never open his mouth again.
They wanted me to go on television last Wednesday and debate this. I asked

them who the hell I was supposed to debate it with, and they replied Pat Kane

and a few other people who disagree with it. I mean, disagree with what?

There've only been two issues of it. No one yet knows what it's about.

AH: I think I can confidently say that I disagree with Hitler. He was an evil

bastard, but that's about it.

MORRISON: Well, yeah. That's about it.

AH: The only thing I'd like an explanation for so far is the title: The New

Adventures of Hitler. I think you're pushing it a bit there. New Adventures of

Superboy, of ... you know.

MORRISON: Yes, well. Deliberately provocative. There again it's a double
meaning. You see, the real new adventures are what's happening here and now

with Thatcher, and ... It was such a great title I couldn't resist it.

AH: In #1 you have Morrissey in Hitler's wardrobe. Will this be a running

feature?

MORRISON: We have different people in the wardrobe all the time. Even now,
super-stars are queuing up to appear in Hitler's wardrobe. John Lennon's next,

I think ... you know "Working Class Hero." Maybe Pat Kane ...

AH: I wonder if I'll be allowed to say that Hue and Cry are a crap band?

MORRISON: Possibly the worst in the history of humanity.

AH: The early years of bitter struggle. How about Captain Clyde? Actually I've

never seen Captain Clyde.

MORRISON: Well, never having seen it, I can honestly say that it was one of

the finest moments in comics art history.
No, it was okay. It was a sort of realistic super-hero, pre-Marvelman. Well,

it wasn't as realistic as Marvelman, but close. I was 14 at the time, and the

first thing I thought of doing when I came to do a strip was a realistic

super-hero. Have him go to Northern Ireland, and all these other by now boring

things you can see in Crisis.
It just seemed so obvious at the time. He spends his days at the dentist or
whatever, in between fighting horribly improbable villains.

AH: I haven't seen a great deal of your artwork, but what I've seen looks at

least competent.
Could you have been a full-time artist?

MORRISON: Oh, I'm sure of it. I could've been better than most people who're
drawing today. It's just that there isn't a fast enough turnover of ideas.

When you're writing, you can do so much more, but if you're an artist you have

to spend a lot more time on one thing. Sometimes I do thumbnails before I

write a story, and the thumbnails look better than the finished art.

AH: I didn't mind the Luther picture in Arkwright #10.

MORRISON: Five minute scribble.

AH: Have you seen book three? Bryan dressed up as Luther?

MORRISON: Oh! Is that what it was supposed to be? I thought he was doing
George Formby.

AH: What time do we have to be at your sister's?

MORRISON: Quite soon, actually. I suppose we can carry on tomorrow.

AH: Yeah. We haven't even mentioned Borges yet, and Orqwith.

MORRISON: Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius?

AH: Yeah, tomorrow.


Writing interviews for these things is a strange thing to do. They differ from

magazine interviews, which have an even more prosaic style. Instead, the

reader is presented with a short play. This interview could be performed with

actors sitting in a bedsit set on stage, acting out the parts of
Grant and myself, AH, which is odd, as my initials are M. M.
Anyway, these interviews don't ever furnish the reader with information like

"After we left Grant's flat we wandered across the road to his sister's flat.

Leigh Morrison shares her house with a young man called Ulric. Both of them

are witty, good-natured people whose company it is a pleasure to be in." These

interviews never say things like that. Nor do they tell of how "Grant, Leigh,

Judy (Grant's girlfriend, who is a nurse in a children's hospital), and myself

then went out for an Indian meal. The proprietors knew these people on sight.

They are regular customers, although Grant never gets to have the lemon

sorbet. Tonight, however, his needs were fulfilled in that department. He was

bitterly disappointed with it, naturally."
Next day after breakfast in a trendy art gallery ...


AH: What did it feel like doing an original JLA story?

MORRISON: It was ... it was great. I got to do the origin of the mountain H.Q.
and to do the Flash. The real Flash, not this abomination that's running

around today. One of the most exciting moments of my entire life, believe it

or not, was writing the sequence where Barry Allen presses his ring and the

costume leaps out.
When I wrote that I was sitting there all charged up with adrenalin. I suppose

that just shows how sheltered a life I've led. It was something I've always

wanted to do.
I used to love the JLA when I was a kid, so that's me done with them. I don't

have to worry anymore. I can grow up now ...

AH: I should have brought this up before, but was Red Jack really God?

MORRISON: I don't know. I mean, what do you think?

AH: Haven't a clue.

MORRISON: Well, there you go, then. Who cares? The way I look at it, most
stories make no sense. It was just another admission of the fact that these

things don't have to mean anything. These people don't have to win anything or

find out anything, I'm sure when we all get murdered by leopard men we'll all

say, "Well? What did it all mean?"
God's in a lot of the things I write, I don't know if you've noticed. The

religious thing obviously dates back to Sunday school and the Band of Hope, of

which I was a zealous member. I took the pledge at the age of four ... God's

just this complete obsession with me. I try to stop it, but it keeps coming

back in.

AH: My girlfriend was sent to Sunday school because you went on these great

trips. As in outings, that is, not as in ...

MORRISON: It's funny you say that, but I used to experience genuine altered
states of consciousness when I went to Sunday school. We used to have to wait
outside the church, and when the doors were opened and we were allowed in I'd

...
I don't know ...

AH: Have you any thoughts on the class structure of the super-hero world? Why

are these people all middle-class, and why are there so few working class

people?

MORRISON: There are working class characters, but they're always seen in such
patronizing and artificial light. Like ghetto stuff, Black Lightning ...

AH: Yo, jive turkey.

MORRISON: Jive turkey. They always use these things to make some boring
point about life in the ghettos. I hate the idea of middle class people trying

to tell unemployed people how they should run their lives. To me it's just

patronizing.
The people I write about are simply floating about. I don't really care what

class they're in.

AH: Fair enough. Do you think you've done anything personally to make these

things more attractive to women? I mean, there's this mainly male audience ...

MORRISON: Well, I'd hope not deliberately so. Again, I think that's
condescending, to go out and create a female super-hero to make a point about
women's rights or the place of women in society. All I try to do is to put in

female characters who are hopefully interesting.

AH: Do you have any favourite women super-heroes?

MORRISON: Are there any? I can't remember any. Give me some names.

AH: Supergirl.

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. I used to like Supergirl. You could see up her skirt when
she was flying. Mary Marvel was another one, when she was drawn by Bob
Oksner.

AH: You could see up her skirt as well.

MORRISON: Um ... those reasons just aren't acceptable in the late '80s,

though.
They should have killed off the entire Marvel Family. I mean, what were they?
Superman, Superboy, and Supergirl. Mr. Tawny the Talking Tiger was alright.

They should have just created him. I always thought there was something pervy

about Uncle Marvel, as well.

AH: You mean that every time you saw him he was haniging around on a street

corner with a group of kids?

MORRISON: Something strange about that. I imagined him loitering around
gents toilets, and ... I think it's best to move on from this.

AH: Violence in your comics. There seems to be this funny animal backdrop at

the moment.
Robotman can replace any limb, cut off Animal Man's leg and he'll grow

another. I mean, these things hurt, but it's not A-Team designer violence as

such.

MORRISON: I think that was just the way it turned out. I suppose it's either

that or the Dark Knight school of "AAARRGGH! Brain embolism! Blood flooding
chest cavity! Must-climb-higher!!" sort of thing. The fact that these people

live in the DC Universe where these things can happen ... It ties in with the

fact that this isn't our world.

AH: Talking of which, Borges. Obvious reference in the Orqwith story in Doom

Patrol.

MORRISON: I had a dream where I was on a train going through a horrible
bone-like station. The name on the platform said 'Orqwith,' so I thought I'd

use it.
Also, part of this dream was that this fictitious world was infiltrating parts

of itself into our world. But like you say, it's got a lot to do with stealing

work of a blind Argentinian writer.

AH: Never knew he was blind.

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. It concerns a lot of his later stories. He's quite
philosophical about it.

AH: I'm afraid I stopped reading after the Garden of Forking Paths.

MORRISON: So you haven't finished Labyrinths?

AH: I did read Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and the one about Don Quixote.

MORRISON: I think he's wonderful. I just have baths in this sort of thing.

That was one of the things I wanted to introduce to Doom Patrol. All those

strange paradoxes and philosophical curios.

AH: Could you tell us something about the language of that one? "Grimmer be

fond brevities. Curdle your pilgrimage."

MORRISON: I arrived at that by playing around with the spellcheck on the
processor. I'd spell words wrongly and see what the computer suggested I

should replace them with. Some of the other oddities were done by simply

cutting up books and throwing the pieces into the air, like Burroughs.
Sometimes I just do automatic writing, as well. I sit down and do this thing

called "Sealed Writing" every night. For 20 minutes you just write down

anything that comes into your head, and then put it all away and don't look at

it for three months. Ninety pages later you've got this briliant bizarre

stuff. It's really no good.
You should try it. Even if you have nothing in your head, just write the same

thing over and over again, just so long as you can fill a page.

AH: But must you do it every night?

MORRISON: Well, I've usually got this mad outpouring of disconnected images.
But when you look back at it, you can usually find connections, recurring

images which are important to you. I also keep a dream diary as well, which

helps. I always dream about secret societies, which is ideal when you're

writing super-hero comics - you've always got these great names. There's one,

the Cult of the Unwritten Book, who will turn up in Doom Patrol. Then there

are the Pale Police, who have eggshell helmets and are assassins. Before they

kill someone, they ritualistically draw the victim's thumbprint onto their

masks. Ideal, really.

AH: Anyway ... what comics do you read now? You seem to read everything ...

MORRISON: I don't at all. What happens is that DC sends me this big box of
rubbish and I have to look at it to see what's going on. I miss out on all

these things that I'm told are good. Yummy Fur, for instance. I picked up a

copy of that and it looked quite good.

AH: Do you read Love & Rockets?

MORRISON: I like it, but it tends to meander. Sometimes it's fabulous, and at
other times it goes nowhere. Rather like life, I suppose. Except for the

"fabulous" bit ...

AH: What was the first comic you read - first British, first American?

MORRISON: I can't really remember, except that we used to call the American
comics "thick comics," because they were thicker, but ... Oh yeah. It was

Teddy Bear, early '60s. I also remember being about three years old and having

a terrible fever, where I kept seeing foxes everywhere. The TV was on and

there were these foxes staring out at me. I ran into another room, and there

was a whale jammed up inside. There was a huge eye staring at me. This full

size whale in this tiny room ...
Anyway, to get back to what it was we were talking about, at the same time I

was given a copy of Marvelman. "Marvelman meets Baron Munchausen." I don't

know how I can remember that, as I was only three and couldn't read, but I do.
Then came the "thick comics." The one I always remember was the Justice League
and Justice Society versus Antimatter Man. I used to get Thor and the

Fantastic Four, but I always preferred DC because the Marvels scared me. Those

Jack Kirby things were always awesome spectacles, worlds with faces on them.

Now I think they're great, like the Steve Ditko stories where you walk through

wardrobe doors into other dimensions.

AH: I suppose if you met the Joker in those days he would do something quite

unpleasant to you, but Galactus would just eat your planet whole.

MORRISON: Oh, you know where you are with Galactus. But, yeah, the Ditko
things, especially if you read them as a kid, were truly mindboggling. It's a

whole atmosphere which is starting to creep out into Doom Patrol.

AH: What do you think of  Mr. A?

MORRISON: I only read one when I was young, and I just thought it was really
boring. I read some reprints, and I still think they're boring. Good luck to

him, anyway.

AH: What'll you do when you quit comics?

MORRISON: Sleep. For six months I'm doing nothing. Except I might write
another play.

AH: You were obviously pleased with the reviews your first one got, did you

expect them to be so good?

MORRISON: Well, no, I didn't. I'd hoped they'd be good, as I just can't stand
criticism. I'd have just collapsed in tears or something. I think that's why

it's so funny that I'm always criticizing other people's work, because if

someone says something nasty about me, I simply can't get out of bed. Terribly

thin-skinned. But, yeah, it was great. It was just so good to hear all these

bitter and twisted theater critics say something nice. Also, it's easy to look

good in comics. The competition is so incompetent and unimaginative that

anyone with any small ability immediately assumes Messianic status. It's more

satisfying to have one's work looked upon kindly by critics who deal daily

with Shakespeare and Osborne, as opposed to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. Of

course, after the good review comes the backlash, so that's what I'm waiting

for now.

AH: Is that one reason for quitting comics? Getting out while the getting's

good?

MORRISON: I suppose so. I think I've left it a bit too late for that, though.

I still want to do one-off things, things that I could spend more time on

rather than this relentless grind. I still want to do the Inferior Five. They

were great. Again, it was such a complete refutation of the macho ethic. I

mean, Merryman, White Feather ... such fey characters. I find these people

more interesting than Predator II and things like that. The Punisher ... can

you imagine anything more homoerotic? Good ol' Dolph ...

AH: I thought the Schwarzenegger Sgt. Rock film would have been fun ...

MORRISON: Deep Austrian accent, makes you wonder which side Rock was on.
I used to like the old Stan Lee stories, the Howlin' Commandos and all that

stuff.
They actually used to have fist fights with Hitler. They'd liberate France one
month, all of them diving in, shooting from their parachutes, etc. Conquer the
German army in 20 pages. I'm sure that was the way it really happened. Stan

Lee was there. I'm sure he told it as it was ...

AH: What is the fascination with Hitler?

MORRISON: Well, the thing is you can't really talk about this to the

newspapers, as they're all so keen to prove that you've belonged to the Hitler

Youth since 1939.
I think most people are fascinated by these things. I'm fascinated by

murderers as well. I think that everyone harbors a sneaking interest in the

contest of Dennis Nielsen's sink, for instance. I mean, these people have a

completely different view of the world. The fact that they committed all these

atrocious crimes is obviously upsetting, but it's fascinating to study the

strange delusory systems that such people want to physically impose on the

world. As for me, when I was young I was convinced that Hitler was Chaplin. I

couldn't tell the difference. I used to think it was the same person, which is

why I find it difficult to take him entirely seriously.

AH: Have you seen Brecht's Arturo Ui?

MORRISON: I haven't, actually.

AH: In that, Brecht plays him as both Hitler and Chaplin at the same time.

MORRISON: That sounds great.

AH: I suppose it's just that they're both visually so strange.

MORRISON: You can draw that moustache and haircut and everyone will know
who it is. It's just a major 20th century imprint that everyone has.
I mean, Hitler goes beyond the facts of who he was, into something else

entirely.
Obviously it strikes a chord somewhere. I don't know exactly what it is.

AH: Brecht ends his play by saying, "The bastard is dead, but the bitch that

bore him is in heat again," and you get this incredible cold tingle - like

fear - because it's actually so true.

MORRISON: Well, that's just it. That's it exactly. That's one of the things

we're trying to say in the Hitler strip. They won. The proof is everywhere you

look, all around you.

AH: Do you want to say anything about fractals? I know you did a story about

them, the Hawkman thing in Invasion. Are you interested in fuzzy geometry and

all that?

MORRISON: People ought to be looking to these things, to what's happening in
the forefront of science. People involved in any "artistic" endeavour should

always be looking to science for ideas. I really admire Shelley and people

like him who were interested in the sciences. He was fascinated by galvanism

and electromagnetics, and used these things as metaphors in his work.
Something like the Mandelbrot Set by Alan Moore, or Big Numbers as it's now

called, is good because it uses fractals as a metaphor for human life and the

way that memory works.

AH: Orwell reckoned that the principal image of the 20th century was a

jackboot stamping endlessly on a face. What do you see it as being?

MORRISON: I suppose ... I suppose the Mandelbrot set (the figure as opposed
to the comic) would make a nicer view. I can see now there's a change in the

way that people are starting to think. People are moving towards the view that
everything is connected, that you can't make a decision without it affecting
everyone else. The whole ecology thing is starting to take hold at last.

People are beginning to realize that you can't use a toilet cleaner without

destroying the microbes that break down sewage, and so on. I see lots of

things tying up in a unified way. Woven in quantum physics, where this

interconnectedness goes right down to the electron level. So as we exit the

20th century I can actually see things getting better. It might all just get

worse, but I think I can even see Thatcher losing her grip. She's becoming

more and more irrational. It's nice to see her slip and [to] kick her a bit as

she goes down.
So, yeah, I see things getting better, not worse. Then again, I've never been

right about anything before, so we'll probably all be woken up by the tramp of

jackboots tomorrow.
There has to be a huge change in human consciousness. And a return to flares

and beads. Actually, the early '60s might've been fun to live through, as long

as you could have been Brian Jones or someone.

AH: You've got this real thing about not overstaying your welcome, haven't

you?

MORRISON: I suppose I have, really.

AH: Of course the real joke would be if all these people - Jones, Elvis,

Hendrix - were all living up in Tibet, eating royal jelly and so on.

MORRISON: Mind you, that last concert Elvis gave, I'm not all that sure he was
still alive then. I also wonder if Stan Lee's still alive as well - the only

compatible figure to Elvis in comics. He just seems to be represented by this

man with a medallion. 'Stan says,' and all that. Perhaps he never was real.

Just this smiling dwarf. I mean, all those lecture tours of colleges ... has

anybody ever seen him?

AH: I've never met anyone who has.

MORRISON: And what the hell was he talking about?

AH: Actually, you've said elsewhere that the real problem with comics is that

all the creators live such boring lives. What about Greg Brooks, the guy who

drew the Crimson Avenger? He shot
someone ...

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was great. I mean, why don't we get more of
that? Surely all these comics people must have some ambition toward murder, or

at least some minor crime. I've heard people talk about weird days they had
embroidering cushions. It's hardly Comics Babylon, is it? I'm sure that there

has to be more going on underneath that we never hear about. There has to be.

AH: Some of the finest writers ever are people whose private lives far

outshone anything they ever wrote. Some have probably never written a thing.

MORRISON: Yeah, there was no point. They just lived it all. Saying that, I

don't have any sort of life at all so I shouldn't criticize anybody else's.
I stil enjoy vaudeville, though. The fact that I've got lots of money makes it

even more stupid, as I can pay off the fines now. But I'll do things like go

into shops and break biscuits.

AH: Break ...

MORRISON: Break biscuits, yeah. It's really a sad, small rebellion. I crush

them in the happy knowledge that someone will take them home and there'll be

just this powder that falls out when they open the packet. So, yeah, I still

enjoy vandalism.
That and stealing things that I don't really need. It keeps my spirits up.

AH: Would you like to blow something up?

MORRISON: I would, actually. It would have to be something quite big, though
... where's the comic convention being held this year?

AH: You could kill them all and start from scratch. Year Zero. You could be

Pol Pot.

MORRISON: Fresh start. All these young guys who're struggling to reach the top
could move up rank at once, wearing Neil Gaiman's skull on a thong around

their neck. I remember Alan Moore suggesting something like that once in the

days when he was great fun. He didn't ever put it into practice, though.

Unfortunately.

AH: Maybe that's why he's dropped out of sight for a while. Perhaps he's

stocking up on explosives and automatics?

MORRISON: I don't think so. I think he's too busy becoming a Serious Artiste.
We can but hope, though. Maybe he'll storm the UKCAC building this year, guns
blazing ... and I shall run headlong into the first hail of bulletts.

AH: What else do you want to talk about?

MORRISON: I don't know, really. I'm just starting to get warmed up.

AH: All this talk about mass murder ? Have you got a short list of people you

want to kill?

MORRISON: There's too many. You'd have to kill all the readers as well.

There's always someone willing to fill the breach. I've noticed at DC now that

there are fifth generation copyists starting to turn up. It was okay at the

time, and Swamp Thing was really good, but when you start getting the origin

of Congorilla with 'poetic' captions, things have gone seriously wrong.

AH: Do you think that comics people ought to be more outspoken?

MORRISON: I don't know. If they were, then I'd be the first target for them. I
just couldn't handle that at all. No, I hope they carry on being nice to each

other.

AH: But you said they all hate each other.

MORRISDON: They do. You should hear the way they talk about each other.
It's disgraceful. I've heard these people actually discussing each other's

work, and they're just so ... just so vicious. I mean, someone will phone me

up and say something nasty about Neil, and you just know that as soon as they

hang up they're going to be on the phone to Neil to say something cruel about

me.

AH: Maybe it's because none of these people actually know each other.

MORRISON: Well, I think that in London they do spend time together in that
bar near Titan Books. That'd be terrible. Imagine living there and going along
every Friday night? I'm just glad that I'm up here in Glasgow. I almost envy

Jim Baikie, who lives up in the Orkneys. But then he lives next door to Cam

Kennedy, so there's no escape from comics. I mean, there are only two people

living in that remote little outpost of the Empire, and they're both doing

comics.

AH: No one lives in Cornwall.

MORRISON: I quite like Cornwall. I've only been there once. Penzance was
great. Captain Pugwash. All these sailors with wooden legs.

AH: And real feet stuck on them.

MORRISON: It was when I was doing this journey round the world. I only got as
far as Cornwall, then gave up. It was supposed to be the journey to find

myself. I found myself and realized that I wasn't worth looking for. So I just

went home again.

AH: How old were you then?

MORRISON: Nineteen. It was really a traumatic period, crammed with
adolescent horrors. But all the stuff in St. Swithins Day has come out of that

time.
The whole strip is lifted from my teenage diaries. I actually found the

greatest ever line in comics in one of those diaries.  It's the first time

that a character has ever just sat down and said, "Why am I such a wanker?"

That came from the 1979 diary, some tortured moment on the M6.

AH: Do you enjoy traveling?

MORRISON: I do. I don't like it when I get to places, though I do like trains

and things. Space that doesn't actually belong to anyone else. There's nothing

to do there, and nobody can phone you up, it's just dead time. You can sit and

think while the world passes you by outside your window. That's ideal. Just

traveling without ever actually getting anywhere.


In order to break the atmosphere a bit, we steer the conversation towards my

journey up to Glasgow, and of how I had spent three hours listening to a group

of soldiers talk about laundry.
This in turn brings us to the subject of the 'found story.'


MORRISON: I think it's okay to find stories rather than make them up, but you
can't do it forever. Actually, the most moving thing I ever read was this

diary that I found. It was in London. A friend of mine had broken into an

empty house, and I found this diary that some girl had left. I ended up in

tears. It was someone's life.
These banal facts of life that weren't intended to be read, and it was just so

... I don't know, all her doubts and depressions were there. I wanted to find

her and tell her not to worry, it's just as bad for everyone. So, yes, you can

find that sort of truth that can't be invented. St. Swithin's Day tries to do

that, piecing together diaries and things I've overheard people say.
That's one of the things I like about Pete Milligan and Brendan's work ? that
whole Thora Hird mentality. There's just not enough of that in comics. That

and the whole languid, too much champagne, Myrkin the Mystic way of doing

things.
And yet so many people assume that's all you can do with super-hero comics ?
that you can either have an examination of them, or an attack on them, like

Marshal Law. There are, of course, so many other ways of doing things. The

whole idea of people drinking tea and doing nothing seems to be much more

interesting than saving the world.


Judy arrives wearing an incredibly shiny pair of boots.
We discuss how Grant decided to get himself fit recently, and paid a visit to

a local gym. Once in this bastion of healthy living, he mounted a cycling

machine and started pedaling. The only result of this effort was that Grant

went blind from exertion and was very nearly hospitalized.


MORRISON: My dad once did a parachute jump with laundry instead of a
parachute. There was bad weather that day, so it was called off. He just had

his laundry ... he was great. I'm going to do a comic about him.

Judy: Big Crazy?

MORRISON: Yeah, Big Crazy, as he was known. He went up into the hills in
Burma and shot his own men. There was this sadistic sergeant, so he just

picked him off and blamed it on Japanese snipers.
He was jailed for desertion, but he was such a maniac they allowed him to

return to the front. He was perfect for them, really. He'd just charge into

battle and kill everyone in sight. After the war he became a pacifist. He

joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and became a spy for peace. He was

jailed for breaking into nuclear installations and taking photographs. He used

to take me along as a decoy.
I actually remember seeing all of these really weird places under the earth.

AH: I think that most people's families are interesting. My grandfather did so

many things that I'd never do. He was a member of the I.R.A., a sailor that

jumped ship to become a cowboy ...

MORRISON: So have you bought a pair of chaps? I mean, you can do all these
things now, if you want to.

Judy: Yeah, but there are no new or undiscovered places to go.

MORRISON: Antartica. I've always wanted to go to Antartica, but now they're
going to mess that up as well. They'll just turn it into a vast factory. Or a

theme park.
What we need is Prez.

AH: I'd vote for him. I think my favorite Prez story is "Vampires in the White

House," There's this vampire with no legs pushing himself around the White

House on a trolley, snapping at people's ankles.

MORRISON: That sounds brilliant. I mean, who wrote those things? There was a
time in the late '60s when there were piles of really peculiar comics being

written.
The heroes were people like Metamorpho and Ultra the Multi Alien, absolute
grotesques who couldn't possibly be role models for anyone. They've just lost

all of that with all these chiseled jawlines and pneumatic bosoms. Metamorpho.
Actually, there was an element girl as well. Neil Gaiman's bringing her back.
What about the one where Jimmy Olsen dresses up as a gangster's moll? He's on
the front cover wearing boxer shorts and a wig, putting lipstick on.

AH: Or where Lois moves to the Fortress of Solitude, and Superman has a robot

take his place so that he can watch through the walls while she's spanked for

being a naughty girl.

MORRISON: Kind of brings us back to Elvis, really. The men who wrote those
stories were obviously seriously round the bend and thoroughly enjoying
themselves. I've never actually read the Olsen story. I've only seen the

cover, but I'm sure there must be more delights inside. It was Kurt

Schaffenberger or someone. I just imagine this guy in his Ivy League suit

sitting there drawing this glorious transvestite adventure.

AH: You've expressed an interest in the Man o' Metal ...

MORRISON: I've never seen him, either. I just saw the name in the guide and
that it was featured in Reg'lar Fellers Comics. Not "Regular," even, but

"Reg'lar." I was imagining it being published by these hicks who molested

geese. Funnily enough, on the same page of the guide there's one called Ready

Geese, so ..,
With the Hellblazer story I'm doing I'm trying to get Constantine into a

dress. I doubt if I'll be allowed to, though, which shows how far things have

slipped since Jimmy Olsen's day.

AH: You know, I was so certain that Constantine was going to be the Phantom

Stranger's kid brother or something.

MORRISON: I like Hellblazer. I think it got a bit tedious, but it's picking up

again.

AH: I'm surprised at the way he turned out. I always saw him as some 1973

version of Michael Caine living in some 'pad' in Chelsea.

MORRISON: I might do him like that. The Phantom Stranger's another one I
wanted to do. I wasn't allowed, though. Now they say I can do him if I want,

but I don't because he's been destroyed by Paul Kupperberg. I went to them

with a mini-series, and Neil went at the same time, but we were both too late.

Of course, he's now allied to the Lords of Order which is a serious mistake.

That whole concept is really stupid.

AH: What do you think of this Order/Chaos thing they're moving toward? I mean,

even the Hawk and the Dove got in on the act.

MORRISON: Dr. Fate, the Phantom Stranger, the Spectre, all of them. It's just
what Kid Eternity exists to completely destroy. He's on the side of chaos. The
trouble is that since I've said he's an agent of chaos, everybody's doing it

now.
They've stolen my ideas, as usual.

AH: Anyway, artists you'd like to work with?

MORRISON: Michelangelo ... uh ... Brendan McCarthy. The British guys are all
just absolute geniuses. I had difficulties at first with the Americans, but

I've really grown to love them. But people like Steve Yeowell, Dave McKean,

Paul Grist are just angels in human form. So I think I've done it all, really.

Except for dead people. I wanted Mike Sekowsky to draw the JLA story, but he

dropped down dead the day before. He must've heard that I'd asked for him. I

don't know ... who else is there?

AH: Chaykin, obviously.

MORRISON: Oh, yeah. I'd love to work with him.

AH: Would you do it if he called your bluff on that?

MORRISON: I probably would. But would he, that's the thing. I've got this

great Jimmy Olsen story ...
I wonder if I should mention this Legends of the Dark Knight story I've done?

It's a gothic version of Batman, which is a bit diappointing as the film leans

toward that.
I was trying to imagine it having been written by Ann Radcliffe or Matthew

Lewis in the 18th century. Legends of the Dark Knight could be really a treat

if they allowed different people to do different versions of the character and

just ignored any continuity between them. Apparently, Ty Templeton wants to do

Batman fighting aliens with Bat-Mite, and I think they should let him.

Continuity should be abolished. Completely. I keep telling them this, and they

just won't listen. Batman should always look vaguely 1930s or '40s. I mean,

you can say it's set in the present if you like. In the same way, the Flash

should always be set in the 1960s.

AH: Superboy should be the late '50s ...

MORRISON: Exactly. There's no reason at all why these things can't all exist
together in the 1980s and still take place in their own milieus. It's not

real, after all.
I didn't understand the TV Superboy at all. If Superman takes place now, how

can Superboy be set in the present as well? That seems to be the big move now

? comic writers doing Superboy scripts for TV.

AH: Doesn't work without the dog, anyway.

MORRISON: The horse was another great character. Supergirl was in love with
him ...

AH: Catherine the Great fantasies.

MORRISON: I suppose if anyone could it'd be Supergirl. If she was an alien and
had alien desires ... I mean, he was a handsome looking beast.

AH: "Forbidden Tales of Argo City: The Lust Palace of the Horse People?"

MORRISON: Oh, they really are missing out on so much. There's still so much
potential in these things. I hate the way they have to quantify everyting in

'mini-series.' "This one explains shopping in the DC Universe; this one

explains golf; this one explains the future; this one explains plants."

Everything has to be pigeon-holed, everything has to be explained. It's so

horrible. The 'bibles' are created by idiots and I don't see why I should have

to abide by them. I do tend to just ignore them.

AH: Nothing to do with anything, but a friend of mine said that Black Orchid

was the Laura Ashley view of crimefighting. "Oh, it's about women, we'd better

do something about flowers and babies."

MORRISON: I wish I'd said that. I like Sandman, though. Issue #6 is Neil

finally admitting that he's psychopathic. He only pretends to be this lovely

person who's terribly friendly. Issue #6 shows the door finally creaking open.

It really was quite unpleasant and genuinely disturbing, which was wonderful.

I still think Neil's best work is the 'real' stuff, though, like Violent Cases

or the strip in The Face. He's just so much better than in the super-hero

world. I'm starting to be nice about people.
I think it's time for me to go and do some shopping.


I bid adieu to Grant at the Underground station. He told me that he had been

dreading the interview for weeks, but that in the end it was actually most

pleasant. To thank him for the meal I sent him a copy of the Jimmy Olsen story

"Jimmy Olsen ? Mobster's Moll" from the 80-Page Giant. He tells me that it's

the best story he's ever read in his life and that he will treasure it
indefinitely.
If anyone spots a pale, thin, flapper girl with Doc Martin boots carrying

several pounds of plastic explosives at the UKCAC thing this year ...