COMICS SCENE #28, August 1992

DOOMSAYER

By Joe Nazzaro

When last encountered (CS #12), then 29-year-old Glasgow native Grant Morrison had just begun to rock the mainstream-comics boat with strange and quirky hooks like Animal Man, Doom Patrol and the ground-breaking Arkham Asylum, created by Morrison and artist Dave McKean.
During a visit to New York, the now-thirtysomething writer addresses some of his past efforts and looks ahead. The word "normal" rarely enters the conversation.
Morrison now considers Arkham Asylum a milestone in his development as a writer. What effect did this journey into the dark side of the DC Universe have on his career? "Quite a lot," he avows. "I was suddenly elevated into a higher rank of recognition. I could be more of a prima donna than I had been.
"Also, it was a watershed for me, because I think I finally found my own voice in comics. Up until then, in early Animal Mans for instance, I was still doing what I thought was expected of British writers, which was to be as much like Alan Moore as possible. It was that post-Watchmen, realistic superheroes kind of thing. After that, I started to realize what I wanted to do, and that bled over into Doom Patrol and what happened later in Animal Man. For me, it was significant in that way."
Reminded of his final months on Animal Man, Morrison smiles mischievously as he recalls the dire straits in which he left his replacement, writer Peter Milligan. It was, after all, difficult to follow Rip Hunter, the Phantom Stranger, Streaky the Supercat, the Inferior Five and Grant Morrison. "I tried to make it almost impossible for someone else to do the book," he confirms, "because I wanted to give the next writer a hard time. The whole thing was planned from issue #5, which was when I decided to do that stuff. It sounds mildly pretentious, but I wanted to do a post-modern comic. American novelists were introducing the idea of the author as part of the work. I wanted to do a comic that reflected that. I also had a heritage in comics to follow, because we used to have stories where the Flash would meet up with Cary Bates and Julie Schwartz. I wanted to apply some contemporary techniques to it."
But Morrison hasn't really continued his association with Animal Man. "I saw some of Pete Milligan's stuff," he confesses, "because Pete is a friend of mine, and I usually keep up with what he's doing. Other than that, I don't read Animal Man at all."
Another character who received the Morrison touch is Kid Eternity, who was featured in a three-issue limited series last year, written by Morrison and painted by Duncan Fegredo [CS #18]. The writer recalls, "DC came to me and said, 'We have this whole bunch of horrible old characters that no one's interested in. Do you want to do Kid Eternity and see if you can make something of it?'
"I thought of Kid Eternity as a '40s look at what it was like to be a teenager or young kid, but I couldn't repeat that, because the idea was no longer applicable to today's world. My idea was based on the modern American teenager — a more aimless, nihilistic, blank-generation youth. It was the same basic idea about a teenager, but a bit more up to date."

For Morrison, who has a deep interest in magic and the occult, one of the most appealing aspects of writing Kid Eternity was the chance to inject some of those ideas into the series. "I wanted to do something about magic which took into account all the theories about chaos," he explains, "because chaos magic is based on the idea that all matter and all manifestations are unfolded out of a primal chaos. It's too complex to get into now, but I was interested in the whole idea of chaos science. What I didn't like was the simplistic way in which order and chaos have been treated in DC comics. I tried to show some of that stuff in a different way."
Morrison was pleased with Duncan Fegredo's artistic contribution. "It was great. I like collaboration because what happens sometimes is what William Burroughs calls 'the third mind,' where two people get together and you get a gestalt that's completely unexpected. That's when the collaboration is working well. Many times, you don't get that kind of thing and it's disappointing, but fortunately in the case of Kid Eternity, Duncan is really good at what he does, and he was bringing something to it that was specifically his. We had a really good combination."
While Morrison enjoyed writing Kid Eternity, he admits that the chances of a follow-up series are remote. "DC has mentioned it and said, 'Would you like to do a regular comic'!" But right now, Duncan and I don't want to do it.
"I wouldn't mind doing an annual, something like a movie series, where two years go by and we do another Kid Eternity."
Also uncertain is a third issue of Morrison's mini-series, Steed and Mrs. Peel, based on the popular British TV program The Avengers. "It was a joint production between Eclipse and Acme," the writer recounts, "which was a British company that has now gone bust. I knew the guys who ran Acme Comics. They approached me and said, 'Will you do this Avengers thing?' I said I really didn't want to do it, and then they bribed me by giving me a whole series of Avengers videotapes, so that's why I did it. I wanted to do a really good pastiche, something that would seem like one of the better Brian Clemens [scripted] episodes. For me, it was an exercise in how closely I could capture that.
"The Avengers always interested me, because — like The Prisoner — it seemed to be an expression of what I call English surrealism. There were programs in the '60s and '70s that had that kind of whimsical, distorted view of English life, and I liked that. I grew up watching that stuff, and it's influenced what I've done. It was a nostalgic thing for me to do.
"I did three issues of Steed and Mrs. Peel, but the third one still hasn't come out. It's a shame, because I would have liked to have gotten some royalties out of it, but there's nothing you can do; you just move on to the next thing."

A good deal of Morrison's energy is currently being devoted to The Doom Patrol, which he has transformed over several years into a cornerstone of weirdness in the DC Universe. As with Animal Man, Morrison plans to leave the book in the near future, but promises that few stones will be left standing after his departure. "My last issue will definitely be #63," he confirms. "In the last year of Doom Patrol, many things happen and a lot of people die. It cranks up the tension for the last year, and then there's a big apocalyptic finale."
Will things get even stranger for comic's most bizarre super team? "Not really. I went to the limit with the last storyline. Now, I want to put my foot on the throttle, straight down; take no prisoners. Compared to the other stuff I've done, it's probably more of an accessible storyline; not as outré, as avant garde. I just want to concentrate on the characters' personalities, and because I'm wrapping things up, many fairly unexpected things happen. It will be exciting.
"In this last story, everything that has been unexplained or left up in the air is finally pulled together. From now on, every splash page at the end of every issue has some horrifying, unpleasant event in it. Only one of the characters I've been using will survive into the book's next incarnation."
Pondering the reputation that Doom Patrol has of being a somewhat unusual book, Morrison smiles, as though hearing something he has heard many times before. "It's something that I'm always aware of," comes the dry response. "It does baffle me, because I think that Doom Patrol is actually a fairly straightforward comic. It has some bizarre concepts in it, but everything is usually explained. It's fairly linear, and things happen one after the other; if they're strange things, that's what you're paying your money for."

While many authors of team titles have a particular character they enjoy writing, Morrison admits that he has difficulty in choosing a Doom Patrol favorite. "The core group, which is Cliff Steele, Rebis and Crazy Jane — they're all characters with whom I'm really fascinated. Crazy Jane maybe has the edge because I created her, and the character is so adaptable.
"What interests me about the character is that, psychologically, there's so much that can be done with her. I'm not really interested in the fact that she has 64 different superpowers, which is the most boring aspect. For me, it's the whole personality thing: She's someone who can change her personality with every sentence. The superpower thing is a hassle."
Before starting his final Doom Patrol storyline, Morrison couldn't resist doing a quick change-of-pace for one issue. The story, "And Men Shall Call Him Hero," which appeared in Doom Patrol #53, was actually a homage to some early Marvel Comics, particularly the classic Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four adventures. "That came about because somebody was behind on the book, and [editor] Tom Peyer said, 'Can we have an inventory issue just in case we lose some time? Do anything you want; maybe concentrate on one of the characters.' So, I did a Stan and Jack tribute, and I had a great time doing it. It got me out of the way I had been thinking."
The feedback on Morrison's Lee/Kirby tribute was positive. "People seemed to like it," the writer declares. Then, with a touch of irony, he adds, "The worst thing was that everybody said, 'If only Doom Patrol was like that every month!'
"What I had been trying to do with Doom Patrol all along was to do a comic that had the same level of imagination as the comics I enjoyed, like The Fantastic Four or the John Broome Flash, which had really brilliant concepts. I just wanted to see how long I could keep doing that nonstop. I've finally reached the end of that, so it's time to wrap it up."
Morrison's next project will be Doom Force, a one-issue special (due out this month) that shows what might happen to the Doom Patrol characters in the not-too-distant future, while also taking a few good-natured shots at Marvel's myriad of mutant books. "The idea was to show something of the Doom Patrol that might come after me once I've finished," Morrison explains. "We created this whole bunch of new characters called Doom Force, and what we wanted was to make it look as if this comic had fallen through another dimension one year in the future. While it doesn't really relate to anything, it may well be that a year from now, we may do a Doom Force series.
"Because I had been writing a fairly experimental superhero comic for the last few years, people expect a certain thing. With Alan Moore for instance, after doing Watchmen, where else was there for him to go but to personal projects about life in Northampton? I really didn't want to go that route, but I think that's what's expected of me. What we've done is a real straight-up, 57-page action-adventure comic. Again, it does take a few swipes at things like X-Force and the current X-Men. It's difficult not to."
Morrison has several projects in the works, all of which will wait a bit. "Immediately after I finish Doom Patrol," he reveals, "I'm going on holiday to try and recharge the batteries. I just want to come back with some new thoughts. I've been doing this fairly solidly for the last couple of years. If you're writing on the run, you begin to fall back into your old ways of doing things. You develop certain techniques. What I want to do is take a break for a while and come back with a fresh approach.
"One of the things I'll be doing when I come back is six issues of Animal Man again. I wasn't going to do it at first, but once Tom Veitch is finished, Jamie Delano will be taking over for six issues, and Tom Peyer said, 'Are you interested in doing a short run?' I thought it worked when Frank Miller came back to Daredevil, so it might be nice to come back and do six good Animal Man issues. That's something I'm looking forward to. I've got good ideas for that, and they're going to be very different from the stuff I did before. I'll probably start writing them at this year's end.
"Obviously, I'm still working for Fleetway with 2000AD. I've also done a series [for DC], Sebastian O. It's based around the idea of what would happen if Oscar Wilde met Die Hard. It's set in this retro-future Victorian world and concerns this Victorian dandy who's also an escape artist and criminal. It's full of action, train crashes and stuff like that.
"Again, it was something I wanted to do, because people have developed certain preconceived notions about what I write. Now, I've been tagged 'The Weird Man of Comics,' and I wanted to do a couple of projects to show people that I can write action stuff as well."
Morrison is also drawn to a few of the Marvel heroes of his youth. "I would be interested in doing Spider-Man. I have some ideas, and we could always see what happens. I don't want to do the Dark Knight version of Spider-Man, or Spider-Man: The Lost Years; basically, I would like to do a really good Spider-Man story that goes back to the stuff I really enjoyed, which was the Steve Ditko Spider-Man, the quintessential version of the character."
Are there any other projects that he would still like to do? "Not within comics," Morrison admits. "I keep promising myself that I'll write a book. I know what it's going to be about, but I never get around to doing it. Within comics, I've done all the characters that I've wanted to do now, so I've lost that element of fanboy delight in getting hold of them. There's nothing that I would still like to do."
Asked if he still sees himself writing comic books 10 years from now, the weird man of comics shrugs his shoulders. "If I'm still alive," Grant Morrison says, "which I don't necessarily foresee. To me, comics aren't a stepping stone onto greater things. I wouldn't mind writing films or the great novel, but at the same time I would always want to do comics, because it's a medium that has its own strengths and areas of interest for me. I wouldn't abandon comics for something else."