COMICS SCENE #12, April 1990

Too Much Weirdness, Too Little Time
Worn down by all his bizarre projects, Grant Morrison doesn't find it the least bit odd that he needs a rest.

By PHILIP NUTMAN
Glasgow-born Grant Morrison, author of the current incarnations of DC's Animal Man and The Doom Patrol, has in three short years proved himself to be one of the most interesting writing talents to have emerged from the British invasion spearheaded by Alan Moore. A 29-year-old former punk musician whose interests run to the more outré aspects of the comics scene, he soon established himself as a name to watch, but with the recent publication of Arkham Asylum, his controversial graphic novel collaboration with Brit Dave (Black Orchid) McKean, the Scottish wordsmith has found himself increasingly in the media spotlight. "And I wonder when the backlash is going to start," he confides.
But Morrison is no overnight success, so however the pendulum of public and critical opinion swings, he appears comfortable with the position he's in. He has paid his dues after 11 years penning comics (although it has only been the last three years that he has been able to make a living at it) and is now excited about the prospect of moving into other areas. But he's fully aware of how success can be as much a curse as a blessing.
"When you start off with nothing, you're too inclined to take on everything offered to you," he notes over coffee in a London cafe while on a short trip to the British capital. "I've recently realized how that can be a terrible mistake. I've been writing seven days a week for nearly three years, juggling numerous projects, and doing that can dilute the quality of your work."
Trying to maintain such a high level of concentration over a period of years has, he affirms, undermined his enthusiasm and taken away much of the the passion he once had for certain series. "I thought I could handle it, but I've noticed some projects are suffering, like Zenith for 2000AD, for example. That storyline was started in 1985-'86, and three years later, it's no longer as interesting as it once was, but it's something I've got to finish. Sadly, it has gone on the back burner, which is a shame."
Work overload and impending creative burn-out are also contributing factors as to why he's quitting Animal Man with issue #26 in July. "While plotting ahead, it seemed to me I couldn't take the story any further after #26, that if I did, I would have to go back over ground I had already explored. And while I could do that, I would rather not as it wouldn't be fair to the material. Animal Man has arrived at a point I don't think anyone has reached before in a superhero title, and if I can't take it any further, it's not worth continuing," he states emphatically. "But I do get many letters from people who are really into the animal rights angle, and it's nice to realize you are encouraging people to think, that they've been looking for something that stands up for those issues. Hopefully, whoever takes on the title will continue in that manner."
What led Morrison to revive the "man with animal powers" was deep-seated nostalgia. "It's hard for me to put a finger on what exactly I did like about the character," he admits. "Actually, in many respects, Buddy Baker was really boring. But when you are 11 years old, you like to find things that are more obscure than your friends are into. For me, Animal Man was a different costume, a different character, and even if he wasn't great, no one else was into him. I discovered him not in the series' original run but as a back-up reprint in Adventure Comics, and I would day-dream about what you could do with the character, so I guess I've been carrying the desire to do something around since then."
Although he has been writing comics since he was 18, it wasn't until three years ago that Morrison got the opportunity to explore his ideas in the DC Universe. "[Editor] Karen Berger, [DC president and editor-in-chief] Jenette Kahn, and Dick Giordano were over in England for the UK Comics Convention looking for new writers and artists. Since I had been working for 2000AD for some time, I was in the position to get an interview, and that's when I pitched Animal Man," he recalls. "Because I've always been interested in animals and have been involved with animal rights, the character was a logical choice for me, but that grew into a platform for the kinds of things important to me — animals, vegetarianism, ecology — rather than just approaching it from the perspective of a superhero title."
Approving Morrison's suggestions, Berger initially requested a four-part mini-series. "I was going to set the character up and leave him to his own devices," the writer admits, "but then DC asked me to continue and I found I had exhausted the nostalgia element, so I had to find something else to do with it, which is where the other material started to come in."
Morrison pauses and then switches back to the subject of working too hard. "I've done some work on Animal Man that I'm real pleased with, but I've got to cut back on the overall workload, which I've already started to do, and I actually plan to take six months off this year, thanks to the money from Arkham Asylum. Writing at the pace I've been going is foolish to try to sustain. But I will be carrying on with The Doom Patrol during that period, because it only takes me three to four days to write, but I need to slow things down. When I come back to comics on a full-time basis, instead of doing comics on a monthly basis, I think I'll concentrate on one-shot projects where you've got much more control and can put more work into it, which I think makes for a better package."

Like Animal Man, with his work on The Doom Patrol, Morrison has displayed an offbeat ability to not only expand an existing set of characters and situations but to totally subvert the superhero format. Since he took over the title from Paul Kupperberg with issue #19, the results can only be described as weird, scary and wonderfully entertaining. With Robotman Cliff Steele the only link to the original Doom Patrol (created by Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani) left unchanged, Morrison has introduced and re-introduced characters whose idiosyncratic natures are continually pushing the stories into uncharted territories. This team of heroes is decidedly different, yet in discussing what he sees as setting them apart from other groups, Morrison offers a surprising statement. "Nothing sets them apart, to be honest," he says in all seriousness, without a drop of Scot irony in sight.
"When DC asked me to do The Doom Patrol, I seriously gave the matter some consideration. The only thing about them I found interesting was when I was a kid, they scared the life out of me! I used to hate looking at that comic because I found it scary; these people didn't seem to be what I thought superheroes should be like. But that's what initially hooked me to commit to the series, to approach the Doom Patrol as an abstract superhero team. I guess I could have done a similar thing with another team, but the DP have this heritage of being slightly odd, so basically I thought, 'Let's make it completely odd.' "
As the original comic didn't have a special place in Morrison's reading habits — the Flash was his main hero, so much so he even made a Flash costume and used to run around Glasgow pretending to be Barry Allen — he admits he doesn't have much nostalgia or respect for the original characters. "For me, The Doom Patrol is more about the ideas going into the series than the characters themselves. Hopefully, the characters are interesting to the readers, but my big thing is the series acts as a clearinghouse for my subconscious, which is great fun."
Like the best of today's young writers, Morrison happily swims in the multi-media swamp, influenced by pop culture iconography, music, and a disparate range of literary works and writers such as Lewis Carroll, Lord Byron, Charles [I assume he means Thomas; A.] De Quincey, South American magical realists like Jorge Luis Borges and plenty of non-fiction. Confused? Check out issues #26-28 of The Doom Patrol in which our heroes take on the Brotherhood of Dada. What happened to the Brotherhood of Evil? Morrison got rid of them in true surrealist spirit, so the Doom Patrol was suddenly faced with a bunch of illogical loonies led by Mr. Nobody, who declares himself the patron saint of insignificance. What can anyone do when the "bad" guys pull stunts like standing on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France and dropping a plucked chicken instead of a bomb, claiming to have taken over the world, as in issue #27, "The Painting That Ate Paris"?
"Thinking about it," he confesses, "I probably wouldn't be able to get away with this stuff if I was writing about a better known team, yet with the Doom Patrol, it isn't too much of a push to send them over the edge."
On taking over the series, the first thing Morrison did was to take a long hard look at the characters. "Each character has to have a psychological base to interest me. That's what I mean by ideas, and that has more to do with character traits than being interested in super-powers, which I'm not at all. My interests lie in the emotional states they're in rather than if they can run at 600 miles per hour."
Future issues will deal with elements like the nature of Crazy Jane's madness. Jane, a multiple personality victim, has been trying to identify just how many personalities she has with the aid of Cliff Steele, and in issue #30, Steele will journey inside Jane's head to travel the Underground, the psychic subway network that connects the different personalities. Jane, disturbingly, has her origins in a real multiple personality case.
"I read a book called When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase, a woman who has something like 90 personalities. The idea that someone like this could function at all is incredible," Morrison says with an astounded expression on his face. "This woman doesn't even have a base personality; the real Truddi Chase doesn't exist, all she is is a conglomeration of personalities and different ones take over in any given situation. When this woman sought psychiatric analysis, she started to disintegrate under the process and discovered that who she thought she was was nothing more than a facade erected by the other personalities to deal with the outside world. It's such an awesome idea. I felt a need to explore it, and Crazy Jane provided the opportunity."
Doom Patrol #31-33 will introduce a new character, Willoughby Kipling, whom Morrison describes as "a drunken English sot." Kipling, a member of the esoteric order of the Knights Templar, is also involved with a bunch called The Cult of the Unwritten Book, who are in pursuit of a boy who has a new book of the Bible tattooed on his back. Not surprisingly, the book contains an occult secret. "This idea actually came from a dream I had," Morrison reveals. "I just woke up one night and wrote it all down. Again, it's great to be able to use this subconscious material. The story is a basic 'End of the Universe' scenario, but I had a great time writing it as the Cult has so many subdivisions to it that every bizarre idea I've ever had went into the story in some form or another."
Beyond the End of the Universe, Morrison has decided to give Cliff Steele a new body, allowing the writer to play with the philosophical question of the schism between mind and body. "That's right," Morrison agrees with a broad smile, "there's a mind-body argument where the body decides it wants to go off and have some fun, saying the brain's hindering it. So, we have a dialogue between Cliff's brain in the tank and the new body — the senses-shattering conversation you never thought you would see!" he deadpans.
After this upheaval, the Doom Patrol will continue exploring many of the narrative seeds already sown. "I can't go into specifics right now," he mentions, "as the full details are rather vague right now, but I've got a skeleton plotline that will take me up to issue #60 and brings a lot of what's gone on to a head. But once I get to that point, I might not want to continue, I don't know. The next year or so is going to be fun as I tie together all kinds of threads which will culminate at issue #60."
One thing that won't be happening is the revival of any characters from the Doom Patrol's past. "I made that decision because the other stuff I've done for DC is me working out nostalgia — all the characters I loved as a kid and thought would be great to bring back and see how they would work, which is something many of the other British guys have done, too. But with The Doom Patrol, I deliberately want to go in the other direction with totally new stuff. Hopefully, kids reading the book today will look back on it in 20 years' time with the same sense of awe as I had when I was young, the feelings I get now when I think back on certain comics I read between the ages of six and 11. It wouldn't be fair for me to dwell upon things that were relevant to me at that age, rehashing them now."

In talking with Grant Morrison, it soon becomes clear that much of what occurred in the late '60s had a profound influence on his outlook and narrative interests. "What I loved most about that decade was the really strange stuff going around like the John Broome/Gardner Fox Flash, which was one of my all-time favorites because it was so peculiar. There's really nothing like that now — comics have become so conventional in many respects — but back then, you could get away with a story where the Flash would turn into a paving stone for 20 pages. That would be the story's departure point and then the ramifications of such a crazy idea would be explored. There was an incredible surreal quality and I want The Doom Patrol to tap into that, to plug into deeper currents from the subconscious."
In the post-Watchmen era, it has become faddish to decry superheroes, to dismiss them as mere juvenilia, but Morrison makes a point of stating where he stands on the matter. "I don't dislike superheroes per se. In fact, it would be dishonest for me to say I can't stand them as they were an important part of my childhood. It's just a case of me finding most of what's happening today in that area as dull and uninspiring. In the '60s, practically everything was offbeat so many people with skewed imaginations were writing weird stuff then. Even the most mundane Jimmy Olsen comic could be really bizarre. Maybe it was something to do with LSD in the drinking water, but there was definitely a lot of strange stuff going on."
Speaking of strange stuff, Arkham Asylum, which Karen Berger discussed in COMICS SCENE #10, certainly fits the bill on that count by taking the Batman mythos into blacker waters than even Frank Miller sailed with The Dark Knight Returns. "I pitched that project at the same time as Animal Man," Morrison recalls excitedly, "and to be honest, I had none of the plot worked out. I was making it up as I talked with Karen. My departure point for the story was the phrase 'the lunatics have taken over the asylum' and the primary focus was the villains. It was going to be a 64-page special, not the 120-page epic journey into the darkness of the human soul."
Surprisingly, in the project's original stages, Batman had little to do with the story. According to Morrison, the Dark Knight insinuated himself into the plot. "It steadily began to grow into an exploration of Batman's psyche through the other characters," the writer notes, "as if each one represented something in his psychological makeup."
As the project grew, Arkham Asylum's publication date was repeatedly pushed back, fueling speculation that Morrison was having difficulties with DC. "I wouldn't exactly term them censorship problems," he says cautiously, "but it was more than just a difference of opinions. Initially, I sent in the first draft and then DC called back to say they loved it — but they had a few problems. The few problems were pages 1 through 80, and what they were saying was 'This has to go.' " Morrison fought hard to ensure his vision remained intact, eventually winning with the support of Karen Berger. "Karen was the only one who understood what I wanted to do, and she was great at helping sort it out." But then the Batman movie reared its head, and the situation changed again. Suddenly, all the elements Morrison was dealing with — the nature of madness and pain — were considered suspect in relation to the film, and DC once again stepped in to forbid the use of certain material.
"So, I got yet another phone call," he remembers, "and it was a question of 'You can't do this, this, this or that.' I was exasperated. Specifically, we couldn't have the Joker dressed as Madonna, despite there being a serious reason for it, and the word 'masturbate' was definitely prohibited. They were 100 percent firm on that, and it seems there is a golden rule somewhere" — Morrison throws up his hands like a TV evangelist — "forbidding the use of that word anywhere in relation to Batman. This was an incidental detail used in a doctor's report, quite clinical, not prurient, and used solely in relation to a mental patient. I couldn't see a problem with that in a book so obviously aimed at an adult audience. But they said no." However, the rest of the material under scrutiny did remain.
Despite the frustrations surrounding Arkham Asylum, Morrison was happy to accept an assignment to write issues #6-10 of Legends of the Dark Knight, partially because he wanted to approach the character from a different perspective. "What Dave [McKean] and I wanted to do with Arkham was use Batman in a completely symbolic way, to say this isn't a man at all, he's almost an aggregation of ideas, which is why Dave painted it in a ghostly style with Batman as an almost spiritual force. The Dark Knight story, on the other hand, was an idea I'd had for ages about how it would be if you did a contemporary Batman story set within all the conventions of 18th century Gothic literature, as I thought that would be a natural home for the character. Some of the 1950s stories had that Gothic feel, so the Dark Knight story is almost as if Horace Walpole [a Gothic author of the period] had written Batman. Again, I'm a bit annoyed because of censorship, and again, it was due to the Batman movie. I asked for the character to be drawn in a slightly different way— bigger ears, a slightly hunched back, more spooky — but DC wouldn't have it, so we ended up with him just looking like Batman, which took away some of the fun for me. Believe it or not, DC's editors are now getting memos from Warner Bros. that dictate the exact size and shape of Batman's ears," Morrison laughs.

Controversy seems to follow the writer like a lost dog. Even Animal Man has had its share of detractors, resulting in one of the liveliest letters pages this side of the New York Times. Morrison, however, can't quite see what all the fuss is about. "I frequently have this problem: Things I find perfectly natural in an intelligent work of fiction seem to be considered controversial by many people." Yet Morrison does concede he has sailed close to the edge in a number of Animal Man stories.
"I've become increasingly concerned about the book turning into a 'cause of the month' syndrome, trying not to turn it into a soapbox for my concerns. That's OK to a certain extent, but there comes a point where some readers can feel like they're being bashed over their heads by the writer's social concerns, and I don't want to come off as preachy. Reading something overly political can be annoying, but it's hard to be objective when you feel so passionate about a subject."
Aside from the book's potentially problematic material, another aspect of the series that's attracted attention is the writer's interest in meta-fictional concerns. "Animal Man has become as much a story about writing comics as it has about superheroes and animal rights," he explains. "One of the great staples of modernist fiction is books addressing themselves. Comics already have that in their tradition, and again, this is based on things I read in '60s Flash comics where the character would meet people like Julius Schwartz. It was a great idea that wasn't done with any real sophistication and I wanted to take it further." In issue #14, for example, Morrison appears in a four-page section walking along the Glasgow canal trying to think what to write next. This sequence blended into the overall narrative as a dream experienced by Indian scientist James Highwater, who is starting to suspect he is a fictional creation. This plot element will continue to develop, culminating in issue #26 when Buddy Baker will meet his maker (so to speak). Other than that, Morrison is reticent to go into full details.
"I've been sowing the seeds over the last few issues and the story's various strands will start pulling together in the next month or so. All I'll say is Buddy will be facing a serious personal tragedy and a great deal of conflict, both external and internal."
This iconoclastic approach to comics is something he feels the British are predisposed to. "We've definitely got an in-built cynicism towards the medium, particularly superheroes," he opines. "In this country, we don't appear to have the same kind of editorial conflicts most of us have had with American editors. There's a general acceptance that the medium is wide open in terms of exploring different ideas. We don't have to live up to Boy Scout ideals with our costumed heroes. Take Judge Dredd for example. He's quite antithetical to what you usually find in an American comic."
One of the projects Morrison has recently worked on that substantiates this is "St. Swithin's Day," a four-part tale of "teenage angst based on diaries I kept when I was 19," published in Trident, a black and white bi-monthly British book. Illustrated by Paul Grist, it tells of a young man who decides to go to London to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "Obviously, I didn't do this, but I can't help thinking the world could be a better place if it had happened," he says, aware he's courting controversy again. "But it's one of my favorite stories and it's been great to write as it's as far removed from superheroes as you can get."
Although Morrison will continue to delve into his subconscious with The Doom Patrol, he's going to pursue other avenues over the coming months. "I wrote a play called Red King Rising last year, which was well received at the Edinburgh Festival, and I want to do another one. It's very refreshing to work on something self-contained like a theater piece rather than an on-going series. I've done so much of that it's important for me to know I can do something else." Also on the horizon are some short fiction and perhaps a novel. "I've got an idea that would only work as a book, and that seems the next logical step to take. But at this point, I have no idea when it'll happen." However, he emphasizes he won't be abandoning comics, that the change of pace will act as a creative recharging process.
As for the field's future, Grant Morrison hopes the slow diversification in other areas of the medium will spread to the superhero genre. "If the 'British Comics Invasion' can be likened to the British music invasion of the '60s, then where are the new generation of American writers? Where are the comics equivalents of groups like The Doors and The Byrds — bands that took what the British groups did and turned it around from a unique American perspective. Most of the new American superhero writers I've come across seem to think using a couple of poetic captions like Alan Moore elevates the quality of their work to art — but it doesn't without a fresh perspective. Maybe you can't and shouldn't change the superhero as it is a unique American creation, a pop culture myth. And myths survive because of their consistent nature. I don't know," he shrugs with honesty. "Perhaps I'm being too cynical. The medium's cutting edge might not lie with superheroes, perhaps it's in more personal works like Chester Brown's Yummy Fur."