ARK #32, May 1990

Don't titter, missus! - it's GRANT MORRISON.
In this, his first major interview for over a week, the controversial writer of ARKHAM ASYLUM, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HITLER and NANCY THE LITTLE NURSE talks frankly about his recent 'operation' and discusses comics, manic depression and life as a Peeping Tom.

Interview conducted by Paul Duncan.


Paul: What is your opinion of your work in comics so far, and why?

Grant: I don't know. As far as any comparison with other comics writers goes, I rate my work outrageously highly. In comparison with the so-called 'mainstream' writers I worship and admire, however, I'm a complete incompetent. As I've said a million times before, it's breathtakingly easy to look good in comics. The competition is so inept that any slight technical skill or imaginative flair is enough to elevate one to divine staus. I do feel, however, that the work I've been doing for the last few years has largely been a waste of time. Dave McKean terrified me recently by reminding me just how short life is and how little time we have to produce enduring and worthwhile work. It's true and I've spent forty years writing ZOIDS and FUTURE SHOCKS and God only knows what else.

Paul: Do you enjoy writing what you are doing now?

Grant: What I'm doing now is finishing off a number of long-standing commitments and to be perfectly honest, I'm completely sick and tired of it. Things which seemed like a good idea forty years ago - ZENITH, for instance - have long since lost all savour. My big mistake has always been to take on more work than I could possibly handle. That period is now coming to an end, I'm pleased to say.
I'm much more interested in what I have planned than in what I've already done. I've lain back and thought of England for several years now and the money I've made has pretty much enabled me to do what I want in future.

Paul: Which is…?

Grant: Well the first thing is going to be FOREVER ENGLAND, which I'll be doing with Paul Grist. The first episode for this was written some time ago and, as everyone probably knows, the story is all about an indie band on a tour of Britain. It's going to incorporate a great many of the things that delight me about British culture: St Trinian's films and fabulous 1970's sitcoms like ON THE BUSES, LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR and the criminally neglected CASANOVA '73 with Leslie Phillips - that whole CARRY ON world of platform boots, hotpants and sex maniacs, which seems so optimistic and charmingly naive in these dark days. This piece of tomfoolery will be my big project for 1990 and it'll probably be serialised in REVOLVER. Hopefully it'll introduce Paul Grist's work to a wider audience. Paul is one of the best and most sensitive artists in the country and it's a disgrace that he isn't mobbed wherever he goes.
I'm also planning a graphic novel called W, which will be drawn by Bill Koeb, a fabulous young American artist. Apart from that, I plan to read poetry and hang around the cemetries of Europe.

Paul: Why do you write? And why comics and not some other form?

Grant: Oh, for lots of stupid reasons. I write DC superhero comics for reasons of nostalgia, more than anything else. There's something comforting about snuggling up with all those childhood characters. I expect it has something to do with inadequte breastfeeding when I was twelve. I'm afraid I don't share this currently fashionable hatred for superhero characters. I mean, is it really that important? I can't understand someone like Pat Mills getting so worked up about superheroes. If he hates them so much, why doesn't he write a comic about going to the shops or hanging around public toilets? Alan Moore dislikes superheroes and so he goes off and does a comic about ordinary people in Northampton, which seems to me a much more sensible and rational way of going about things. The only superheroes I detest are the ones bristling with guns and body hair, so I'm quite happy to write about the other kind - the silly, infantile ones - until the day I die. Having said that, I'd immediately take my own life if I had to write exclusively in the superhero genre. It's only a very tiny, tiny fraction of what is interesting or amusing to me.
As for my other writing it's done largely in a spirit of exorcism. That sounds melodramatic, I know, but that's the way it is. I write because, if I didn't, I'd be the huge bald-headed character strapped to a pallet in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.
And—just in case anyone's wondering, I don't really write for money. It's vogueish to appear to be cynical and mercenary and to say, 'I only do it for the money...' but in my case it's not true. Obviously, I don't like being poor and it's nice to be comfortable but money isn't really a big thing in my life. I lived too long without it to really know what to do with it, other than buy tons of sweets. Even the work I'm most ashamed of was done for reasons other than mere money. No-one will believe me, of course. There are so many middle-class, money-obsessives working in the comics business... I hate that attitude. Men with money coming out of their ears, flying into rages because there's a penny missing from their Titan royalties. It's a sad and sorry business.

Paul: You have written plays for theatre and radio. Do you think they were better than your comics work?

Grant: Well, it's what I was saying before; the plays and stories and poems that I write are 'better' only in that they're purer. I'm as proud of ST SWITHIN'S DAY from Trident as I am of any work I've done outside of comics. In fact, ST SWITHIN'S DAY is possibly the only piece of comics work that I'm truly happy with. I like some of the ANIMAL MAN issues and I like a lot of the DOOM PATROL stuff but those things are still me filtered through the constraints of the DC superhero universe. The plays are undiluted me and, for that reason, I'm much more attached to them. The other thing is, of course, that expectations are higher when you write a play. It's tragically easy to write better comics than Tony Isabella but not quite as easy to write a better play than Peter Barnes or Howard Brenton or, for that matter, Shakespeare. Knowing that you will be judged among that company does encourage better writing.

Paul: Will you be doing any more plays?

Grant: I'm doing another one for this year's Edinburgh festival. The working title is DEPRAVITY and it's all about Aleister Crowley. Crowley is a big hero of mine and I hope this play will be truly in his spirit. It will feature an actual ritual live on stage, so it should be a lark. I've also been approached by Channel Four to do something but nothing much is happening with that right now.

Paul: Your plays have been, and will be, about real people like Aleister Crowley, Lewis Carroll and Louis Wain. Do you want to continue writing alternative biographies?

Grant: Yes. The main reason being that I like to do the research which is involved when you choose to write about a real person. Under the guise of research, it's possible to justify several days spent with one's nose in a book. Leisure becomes work and vice versa. I hang around libraries and bookshops in the way that other people hang around Sauna and Massage Palours and I continually buy more books than any one person could possibly read in a lifetime. It's an almost sexual obsession I have with print and I'm sure it has some murky basis in my childhood.

Paul: What is the purpose of documenting the lives of people like Shelley and Andy Warhol in comic strip form when they have been dealt with in other mediums?

Grant: What's the purpose of doing anything? I do these things because it strikes me as an interesting idea and because I'm fascinated by the people I write about. The Andy Warhol thing which Trevs - sorry, Woodrow - Phoenix and I are doing, deals with Warhol's life and work in a way which I think is quite unique and inventive. As far as I know, nobody else, in any medium, has written about Warhol using Warhol's own methods. That to me is reason enough.

Paul: Do you think you are bringing something new to comics?

Grant: I think that's for posterity to judge. I'm sure I am but I'm hardly the most objective person you could ask. Ask me again in a year or two, if I'm still alive.

Paul: How much of what you write is autobiographical?

Grant: All of it. None of it. It's not autobiographical in the strictly naturalistic Harvey Pekar sense but it all comes from me and is affected by the things that happen to me: ANIMAL MAN, for instance, is about me writing ANIMAL MAN so it's autobiographical in a kind of clever-clever post-modern fashion. DOOM PATROL uses my dreams and childhood terrors. ST SWITHIN'S DAY made use of material from my diaries. ARKHAM ASYLUM has lots of real-life incidents in there. Is that what you mean by autobiographical?

Paul: Does it hurt you to talk about yourself?

Grant: That's a weird one, Paul, What is this: 'In the Psychiatrist's Chair' with Dr Anthony Clare? No, it doesn't hurt one bit to talk about myself. I am, possibly, my own favourite topic of conversation so don't get me started.

Paul: Do you feel exposed?

Grant: Not really. I quite enjoy exposing myself anyway. The Boy Scouts of the First Glasgow Troop up the road will confirm that. I mean, I think that anyone who has read my SPEAKEASY column or my rambling reviews in ARK will know that I'm not particularly bothered about revealing the unpleasant details of my life...or anyone else's for that matter... Basically, I've led a blameless and saintly existance and I have nothing to hide.

Fire away.

Paul: Are you an obsessive writer?
Grant: Well, if that means do I write on toilet walls and scraps of paper napkin? I suppose the answer is yes. I do write all the time, even in my sleep. I've been keeping a diary since 1978. I also keep a dream diary and a magickal diary and a notebook in which I write down everything that's happening to me, as it happens. Also, at night, I do an exercise called 'Sealed Writing'…

Paul: What's that?

Grant: It's something I got from the poet Peter Redgrove, who got it from someone else. Basically, it's automatic writing. You sit down each evening, clear your mind and fill a page with whatever comes into your head. Random words and phrases, meaningless sentences. You know the kind of thing. My work on DOOM PATROL is full of it. You do this for about three months, without reading what you've written. At the end of the three months you go back and read the ninety or so pages you've completed. If it works, and I find that it does, you'll discover all kinds of material bubbling up from the subconscious - repeated images and themes and recurring symbols. Sometimes you can't believe you've written this stuff. It can be as beautiful as poetry. The whole thing's a kind of window into the interior landscape and it helps reveal a personal iconography which can be used to enrich any creative work you may do.
I'm really interested in that whole area of personal mythology. It's why I like Chester Brown's work so much; he's opening up his head and spilling the contents out onto paper. Brendan McCarthy's done this too and I think it makes for fascinating reading. Too few of the writers and artists around today are willing to deal so frankly with their own obsessions and shameful secrets. I'd love to see more of it.

Paul: It took you many years to break into mainstream comics.

Grant: About a hundred, yes.

Paul: What obstacles did you face?

Grant: Just the usual tedious rejections which everyone has to go through. The main obstacle is not being taken seriously when you KNOW that you're the most wonderful thing ever to have lived. The important thing is persistence. In my case, I was in a position where I'd even been thrown off the dole for refusing to accept some disgraceful job which involved drawing the numbers on pressure gauges. I'd already spent a ghastly year as a Clerical Assistant in the Regional Development Grants office and after that I vowed never to work again. So—with no money coming in, it was just sheer desperation which motivated me. Once I'd taken the first step, things began to happen fairly quickly.

Paul: What was the first step?

Grant: Well, I bummed my way over to Paris with my girlfriend, whereupon she fell instantly and mysteriously ill so we had to come back to London. In London, I embarked on a busking career with some friends. We sang MR TAMBOURINE MAN and MR WU'S A WINDOW CLEANER NOW, which were the only songs everyone knew all the words to. Strangely enough, no-one gave us any money. So, that's when I went along to Lewisham Way to see Dez Skinn.
Now everyone's spent the intervening years bad-mouthing poor old Dez but I actually liked him and I'm proud to stand up and wave the flag on his behalf. He may well have been a crook and a swindler but I never saw anything other than his nice side, so I won't hear a word said against him. Anyway, I got into WARRIOR just as it sank slowly beneath the waves but through WARRIOR, I met John Ridgway and then David Lloyd and various other people who guided me on the road to success. It was David who suggested me to Karen Berger at DC, in fact.

Paul: Did you find it easier to get into the music business?

Grant: I don't think I was ever in the music business. It was just a case of stealing a cheap semi-acoustic guitar when I was nineteen and starting a band. There was never really any business aspect to what we did which is why, despite supporting the JESUS AND MARY CHAIN and being part of the Glasgow scene at a fairly interesting time, we were never successful. Add to that the fact that the members of the band found it impossible to get on with each other and you have a clear recipe for disaster.

Paul: What have you done music-wise?

Grant: Arsed around for ten years, basically. I've written hundreds of songs, played loads of concerts, released a few cassettes on indie tape labels, contributed to a couple of compilation albums and released a single called TORTURED SOUL, which was a critical success and a financial catastrophe. We are owed a tremendous amount of money on that record but nobody can be bothered to do anything about it. Which is us in a nutshell really.
Despite everything, we do plan to bring out a new single this year but to be honest, I feel quite past it. I've felt past it since I was twenty-three.

Paul: How do the people in the music and comic scenes compare?

Grant: They're pretty similar, I suppose, except that the people in the music scene seem to lead more active social lives. Big record companies are just as miserable and cowardly as big comic companies. Musicians are just as insecure and insufferably egotistical as writers and artists. Fans are fans.
I haven't played a live gig for about a year now but I did enjoy it - there's something about singing and making records which is so much more healthy and exuberant than sitting alone in front of a word processor on a cold January morning. This is my life, however.

Paul: How much contact do you have with the artists on your strips?

Grant: Not much. We communicate by letter-bomb or with long, meaningful silences. During ARKHAM ASYLUM, Dave McKean and I met once or twice to discuss various bits of Bat-business in the Cafe Munchen. Steve Yeowell phones me quite regularly and is usually quite concerned about my mental health. That's about it. Everyone meets up at conventions and has a knees-up...This is a fairly dull answer, I'm afraid.

Paul: Is it important to you that you know the artist?

Grant: Probably. If you know an artist you can always borrow money off him. Dave McKean's healthy wallet was a godsend during ourAmerican tour.

Paul: Having drawn your own strips for a long time for NEAR MYTHS, CAPTAIN CLYDE and STARBLAZER, how did it feel to have someone else draw from your scripts?

Grant: I don't mind other people drawing my scripts. Most of them are a million times better than I'll ever be at drawing. I also enjoy the process of collaboration. When two people work well together, the result is very often much better than one person working on his or her own. It's the 'third mind' as Brion Gysin called it.

Paul: Do you 'let go' of the scripts when you have finished them or do you try to mould the artist into drawing it the way you'd like to see it?

Grant: Well, yes. Before I start writing I always do thumbnail sketches for the entire story, so that I can see how it will work visually. But, I never ever send these to the artist because I want to see his interpretation. In some cases, the sketches are better than the published work but what can you do? That's the price you pay for collaboration.
I do send reams and reams of character designs though. On DOOM PATROL, in particular, I design just about everything, from bizarre villains to teacosies.

Paul: Would you like to draw everything you write?

Grant: Not at all. If I did, I'd never sleep again.

Paul: Will you be drawing anymore?

Grant: Well, it's funny you should say that...right now I'm working on something called DOCTOR MIRABILIS, which I'm writing, drawing AND self-publishing. Now that I'm filthy rich, I've decided to start slumming it by going back to fanzine-scale productions. DOCTOR MIRABILIS will be cheaply-printed on harsh toilet paper and will have a very small print run. The actual content is a little difficult to describe so I don't know if I should bother.

Paul: Your writing on ANIMAL MAN and DOOM PATROL seems to treat the subject of superheroes as absurd and with levity. Is this your view of the genre?

Grant: In a way. When I was fourteen, I wrote and drew a superhero comic called MONAD, which featured a 'hero in the real world' scenario. This character was a miserable sod who couldn't do anything about Northern Ireland or pollution or ANYTHING really. Perhaps I should revive him for CRISIS... Anyway, having been through that stage at an early age I was pretty familiar with the pitfalls of the 'realistic' approach. That's not to say I didn't enjoy something like MIRACLEMAN, which to me is still the best of the realistic superhero comics. It's just that I didn't really want to repeat that kind of thing. The very idea of sitting down to work out a so-called 'scientific' explanation of heat vision is tremendously sad. I must admit I fell into the trap with early episodes of ZENITH but since then I've managed to make that strip as ludicrous and implausible as all my others.
I've said this to the point of tedium but I suppose it won't hurt to say it again; my favourite comics when I was young were always the most outlandish ones. I still swoon when I see Jimmy Olsen marrying a gorilla or joining the Beard club and so obviously I want to bring some of that to my own work in the genre. I feel that I still haven't gone far enough. I don't plan to write any superhero comics in the future other than DOOM PATROL so that's where all my ideas about superheroes will be finding expression. I'm very fond of DOOM PATROL and the more peculiar it becomes the fonder I get. The only problem is that no-one buys it. The sales figures read like Artic temperatures and DC only keeps the book going because they feel sorry for me. I feel like a voice complaining in the wilderness but I suppose that's the way it has to be. In ten years time, DOOM PATROL will be hailed as a masterpiece. That's the only thing that keeps me going.

Paul: Was ARKHAM ASYLUM an attempt to treat superheroes a little more seriously?

Grant: I wouldn't say so. I don't think ARKHAM ASYLUM really wrestled naked with the idea of superheroes in the way that, say, DARK KNIGHT or WATCHMEN did. Alan Moore and Frank Miller both posed the question, 'What would it be like if real people put on tights and fought crime?' It would, of course, be tragic and hysterical but that's not what ARKHAM ASYLUM was about. The characters in ARKHAM ASYLUM do not aspire towards some vision of 'realism.' Neither Dave nor I were particularly interested in doing one more exploration of what-it-is-to-be-superhuman, so the characters are, purely and simply, symbolic figures in a symbolic landscape. As I said, the whole idea of 'naturalistic' superheroes is one which I find laughable and it was imperative to me that we avoided that approach in ARKHAM ASYLUM.

Paul: Personally, I was very disappointed with the writing on ARKHAM ASYLUM. Do you feel you achieved what you wanted with it?

Grant: Entirely. Which is not to say that I wouldn't write it differently today. When I wrote it, over two years ago now, I felt it was the best thing I'd written so I can still look upon it with a certain degree of fondness. ARKHAM ASYLUM is something that I'm not particularly interested in talking about. A great many people like it and understand it, a great many more people hate it and are baffled by it. I'm only interested in the ones who like it and since they have their own interpretations of the book, I'd hate to ruin it by broadcasting my version. The only thing I'd say is that, among other things, we designed ARKHAM ASYLUM to be a mirror. The mirror is one of the main images in the book and so we wanted the book itself to work like a mirror. That means you get out what you put in. If you think it's shit, you get shit. If you're interested and want to work out all the connections, you'll get a fairly interesting and intricate read. If you're an Aleister Crowley buff you'll read it in those terms and see it as a Magickal parable. If you're familiar with medieval Christian imagery you'll bring that to the text and find that it works as a Christian allegory. Or as a Marxist polemic. Or a Jungian individuation journey. Or a Joseph Campbell archetypal hero story. Or as a recipe for Mississippi Mud Cake, if you like. It's all in there if you can be bothered looking for it. If you can't be bothered, I really don't mind.

Paul: What do you think of all the hype that surrounds a project like ARKHAM ASYLUM?

Grant: I find it tedious and deplorable but there seems no escape from it these days. It works, of course, let's face it. ARKHAM ASYLUM didn't sell because 200,000 people are interested in me or Dave McKean. It sold because any old toss with a Bat-symbol on it will be hyped to fever-pitch. The worst thing about hype is simply that it raises expectations which can't be possibly fulfilled. The IDEA of ARKHAM ASYLUM is always going to be better than the shrunken fact of it. No real book could ever hope to match up to that vague, glamourous 'best BATMAN book ever' which people have in their heads. What I've always tried to do is avoid participation in the hype. I constantly stressed that ARKHAM ASYLUM was 'just a book.' You know... I like it and it's one way of doing the character but it's not the be all and end all, it's not the ultimate cutting-edge BATMAN story, nor was it ever intended to be. If you want the ultimate BATMAN story, then perhaps you should check out a book called DARK KNIGHT, which was written by the guy who's doing ROBOCOP II.

Paul: You went on an American tour for ARKHAM ASYLUM. Did you have any observations to make about the journey?

Grant: The chocolate was horrible. I really don't understand how the Americans can survive without decent chocolate. Snickers bars!... it's like eating the pale and bloodless ghost of a Marathon. It's appalling. It was also very cold. By and large, I hate the country and everything it stands for but all of the people we met were terribly nice. How can they live there? Visiting America was rather like visiting Earth Two but I don't really think I'd want to hurry back.

Paul: Do you find it difficult to persuade publishers to try projects outside the mainstream and in the adult book market?

Grant: It's difficult to persuade someone like DC, if, for instance, you want to do a non-linear prose poem about the comedy home movies of Dennis Nielsen. There's just no way a big, cowardly publisher would want to get involved in anything really radical or potentially controversial. If you want to do something for the adult book market then you go with a publisher who puts out adult books. Nothing could be simpler. I'm fortunate that I'm now in a position where I have Penguin, Corgi and God knows how many others beating a path to my door. Look out for DENNIS AND HIS DRAINS any day now.

Paul: What will happen in the future if you cannot find a publisher for a project?

Grant: I'll hang myself. What would you do? The future is still far enough away for me not to worry about it. Things are looking a little healthier in the UK anyway - Fleetway seem fairly committed to publishing interesting new work and, as I said, the mainstream book publishers are falling over themselves to participate in the graphic novel boom. Ultimately, of course, there's the option of self-publishing. I've teamed up with James Hamilton, who runs Forbidden Planet Scotland and we've set up something called Snobbery With Violence, which is basically an agency for my work and also a self-publishing outlet. DOCTOR MIRABILIS will be entirely self-published and it may well be that some other, more outré projects will appear under the Snobbery With Violence imprint. Who knows? Life is full of little surprises.

Paul: Do you see a future for comics outside the superhero ghetto? Just because the creators want to write something different doesn't mean that the publishers and public want it too.

Grant: I think it's inevitable that the future of comics will lie outwith the so-called superhero ghetto. The whole dismal concept of the 'realistic' superhero will have to be seen as a blind alley and my hope is that superheroes will ultimately be rehabilitated as imaginative entertainment for children and young people. The best that can be said for the 'adult' superhero is that it has been instrumental in catapulting a small number of interesting writers into the public eye.
It'll be interesting to see how BIG NUMBERS is received. It's certainly not the first comic to deal with real-life situations but it has a very high profile and an impressive pedigree. It'll certainly sell more than a small press 'slice of life' comic from Fast Fiction but will it sell more than LOVE & ROCKETS? And if it sells massively well, will it be because Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz have worked on popular superhero comics in the past or because people finally want to read about life in Northampton? Who can say? I hope it's a roaring success, just as I hope that Dave McKean's forthcoming self-published venture will be an equal triumph. Or mine, for that matter. Or, indeed, anyone else's. There SHOULD be a vast audience out there who are willing to listen to distinctive voices. Whether that audience actually exists or not, remains to be seen.

Paul: Do you enjoy trying to sell your work?

Grant: Not in the same way that I enjoy eating Galaxy Truffle Eggs or walking around Paris... I mean, what kind of question is that? I just put my work in an envelope, write a letter saying it's brilliant and that's the extent of it.

Paul: At what point are you happiest - when you finish writing the script, when the artist completes the art, or when it is published and everyone has read it?

Grant: I haven't been happy since 1974. People laugh when I tell them that but unfortunately for me, it's horribly true. Sometimes there are flashes of torchlight in the darkness of my life but apart from that, happiness, per se, is a thing of the past for me. I know that people see it all as a pose - me trying to be seen as some kind of poète maudit or miserable Morrissey figure - but it's not. I wish it was a pose. I wish I was out drinking and having a good time every night but the fact is that I'm at home watching GREAT RAILWAY JOURNEYS OF THE WORLD and waiting for the electric blanket to heat up.
As far as comics are concerned, it's a relief to finish a script, it's always interesting to see the artwork and it's nice to receive feedback on the story but other than that happiness just doesn't enter into it.
The closest I come to happiness is when I'm in the passenger seat of a car driven by a maniac. At night, with my favourite songs playing. Bliss.

Paul: What do you really want to write about?

Grant: You do ask some crackers—what do I really want to write about? Prince Namor's true feelings towards Attuma, Warlord Of Atlantis. The important stuff. What do I really want to write about? I really want to write about milk machines and Five Boys chocolate bars and the Romantic poets and the Band Of Hope and the waltzers and... I don't know.

Ask me another.

Paul: What do you think of the fan press and fandom in general?

Grant: I'm all for it. Despite the fact that I'm largely ignored by the fan press, I always enjoy reading it. Perhaps it's BECAUSE I'm largely ignored. That's not to say it's all great. I like the COMICS JOURNAL but it can be so po-faced and pedantic sometimes. By and large, I prefer the UK fanzines, which seem to strike a better balance between bollocks about Kierkegaard and heated debate over Michael Keaton's chest measurements.
As for Fandom in general...! don't know if there IS a fandom in general. When I was a fan I was never really involved in any kind of organised thing. I just used to turn up at comic conventions with my plastic bag and an air of melancholy. I still do, in fact. If fandom is like some kind of club then I don't like it. I hate the clubbing instinct. For instance, I detest and despise people who dress up as characters from BLAKE'S 7 and sing fucking stupid songs about elves. These people - generally fat men with beards and tasteless jackets and fat women with hideous print dresses and horrible headbands - are an insult to the human race and should be immediately guillotined. I'm sure that they feel pretty much the same way about me. The difference is that they're unutterably ugly and I'm not. If that's fandom then it's an absolute disgrace and must be stopped now. I am, of course, entirely anti-social and the only club I have ever belonged to was the Tufty Club. The bulk of what is referred to as 'fandom' however, is composed of fairly miserable and solitary adolescents, for whom I have nothing but love in my heart. I remember waiting in line to touch the hem of Brian Holland's jacket and I know what it feels like. It makes me angry when I hear fans described as 'trainspotters' by professionals whose pathetic lives make train-spotting look like a dangerous sport.
That's not to say there aren't some weird and unsavoury characters out there but by and large, the weird and unsavoury characters are working for DC or Fleetway and the fans I meet are generally friendly and interesting. Though that doesn't mean I want them camping in my window box.

Paul: Why did you agree to this interview?

Grant: I'll agree to anything, Paul. I crave attention. I like to witter on about nothing in particular and I've always wanted to have a feature interview in ARK. What more do you want? Blood?

Paul: You have made some provocative statements in the past and I'm sure you'll make some more in the future. Why do you do this?

Grant: I don't know. A demon takes control of me and makes me say all these terrible things about lovely, lovely people who don't deserve to have a word said against them. It's beyond my control.

Basically, it's hypocrisy that gets me going. The Howard Chaykin thing is a fairly good example of that: if Chaykin had put out BLACK KISS as a straightforward wank mag for the easily aroused, I would have completely ignored it. Unfortunately, he chose to have it described as a challenging, ground-breaking piece of adult literature and I just couldn't restrain myself from pouncing. I actually like Chaykin's work but I thought BLACK KISS was puerile and unimaginative. If you're going to do a sex comic, then it should at least be genuinely perverse. BLACK KISS was like a fourteen-year old spotty American kid's idea of sex. It didn't come within a million miles of anything even resembling adult literature. Similiarly, if I read someone somewhere pontificating about how terrible it is for Keith Giffen to steal from Jose Muñoz and then I see that same someone going off to steal as blatantly from someone else, then I can't help but get annoyed.
If I've upset people it's because they've bent over and asked for it. Let them just be thankful that I've pulled my punches and spared them the full fury of my wicked tongue. Chaykin, God bless him, has already launched his own counter-offensive by describing me as 'the most pretentious asshole who ever lived.' A fairly accurate assessment, I'd say.

Paul: One of the most provocative strips you've done recently is THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HITLER which ran for a short time in CUT magazine, before the magazine folded. What happened to it?

Grant: Provocative strips, eh? Who's been talking? The HITLER thing was never intended to be provocative. I don't sit down and draw up lists of subjects which I feel will inflame controversy. THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HITLER is possibly one of the quietest and least provocative things I have ever written. It's about a man drinking tea and arguing with his relatives. That the man happened to be Hitler was what caused a minor upset. The strip is now finished and I don't have much interest in it. It will be serialised in CRISIS and will appear in a collected edition some time afterwards. Apart from that, I can't be bothered talking about it right now.

Paul: A lot of your work features cultural references from all the arts. Why do you put these references in your work?

Grant: Why not? I immerse myself daily in art and music and literature. Obviously, it will come out in the wash. It's not a deliberate thing and I can't really understand the people who think it is. I don't make a point of including a quote from Hölderlin in DOOM PATROL or a reference to Hugo Ball in KID ETERNITY. These things are in my head and so make their way onto the page along with everything else. On the other hand, these references may actually serve a useful purpose if they encourage younger readers to go off and spend their money on interesting books rather than the latest ADVANCED DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS.

Paul: Your work is very brash and playful and energetic but, in person you seem quite shy and reticent. Is this an illusion, or do you find it easier to 'talk' behind a typewriter?

Grant: I think it's quite possible to be both painfully shy and horribly outspoken. You must remember that, for a number of years now, I've been the cavorting lead singer in a band, so I'm not entirely the shrinking violet that I may appear to be. I was an outrageous extrovert, until my parents were divorced and, given the right circumstances and company, I can still be a loud-mouthed git. Otherwise, I am, as you know, a pale and unhealthy miser who never speaks to anyone.
I think my writing shows that I can be unbearably solemn and pretentious at the same time as I can be wacky and witty. That's just the way it is. Everything about my personality is there in my work. As dear old Whitman said, 'Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) '

Paul: When you write, what is the initial impulse for the story? Do you start from a plot point, and emotion or a structure?

Grant: Oh, a serious question now? The initial impulse is usually an idea. Always an idea, I think. I spend a lot of time tottering up and down the canal towpath and that's where my mind feels free to make the odd connections and quantum leaps that result in ideas. Something as stupid as, "what happens to the ten billion skin cells the human body loses every day?' can haunt me for hours and then lead to a plotline in DOOM PATROL.

Paul: Do you work out your plot structures in advance or give loose guidelines for yourself, which you aim for as you write spontaneously?

Grant: I go for the loose guidelines method because I'm lazy. ARKHAM ASYLUM and the soon-to-be-published KID ETERNITY were worked out very, very carefully but otherwise I just slap it all down and hope for the best.

Paul: Alan Moore, Jamie Delano and Neil Gaiman have written in a style that allows the main character to talk directly to the reader in the first person. You seem to prefer leaving this aspect out of your work. Why is that? Is it a conscious decision?

Grant: Yes, it was a conscious decision but as soon as I realised it was a conscious decision, I started to use the first person narrative whenever I felt like it. I prefer not to use it simply because it's been overused recently, but sometimes it's necessary and desirable. ST SWITHIN'S DAY is written in the first person because the structure of the story called for it to read like a diary. I have even used thought balloons in stories. It just depends on the requirements of a particular story.

Paul: Do you observe people all the time? If so, what do you look for?

Grant: Yes. Usually at night and with binoculars. Sometimes I phone them too. I think most people who write creatively are unrepentant eavesdroppers.

Paul: What do you look for?

Grant: The tell-tale signs, some flicker of undying devotion... I don't know. Ususally I just listen out for odd bits of conversation. I was in the queue at the patisserie in Princes Square the other day and the girl in front of me asked for a Coke. 'Do you want a large Coke or a small Coke?' the assistant asked her and the girl thought about it for a moment and then said, 'How large is the small?'

Existentialism is not dead.


Paul: You've written DAN DARE, which is being painted by Rian Hughes, for Fleetway's new REVOLVER comic. DAN DARE is a very traditional English hero. How have you approached the strip?

Grant: My approach to DAN DARE can be summed up quite simply as 'pissing on the flag.' Other than that, I don't have much to add. Rian, on the other hand, is approaching the artistic side of things in a proper spirit of hushed reverence. He feels quite awed by the whole idea of following in the footsteps of all these grand old men of British comics but as far as I'm concerned, the past is the past and is there to be plundered.
My only problem with DAN DARE is that, three quarters of the way through, I suddenly thought of a better and much more inventive way to do it. By that time it was too late to change things, of course, so the story remains little more than the DARK KNIGHT version of DAN DARE. I regard it as something of a failure on my part but Rian's art is breathtakingly beautiful and well worth the price of admission.

Paul: What comics do you enjoy reading?

Grant: I read SANDMAN, HELLBLAZER, FLAMING CARROT, YUMMY FUR, LOVE & ROCKETS and DEADLINE. Apart from that, I just follow writers around. I like to read most of the stuff by the British guys... Alan Moore, Pete Milligan, Garth Ennis, Glenn Dakin etc. etc.

Why?

Paul: How do you think you can improve your writing? What steps can you take?

Grant: Write, that's all. Keep writing. Don't ever become complacent. No matter how much better I think I've become I have only to look at James Joyce and I realise just how far I have to go.