SPEAKEASY #76, July 1987

SPEAKEASY: WHAT IS THE BACKGROUND TO THE ZENITH STRIP?

GRANT MORRISON: Last year at the Birmingham Comics Convention I met Brendan McCarthy, and he was interested in doing a superhero strip for 2000AD, because they hadn't done anything like that before. So we talked that over, and Steve McManus (editor of 2000AD) was interested as well, so we thrashed something out over Christmas. As it turned out Brendan couldn't actually draw the strip, but he was prepared to design the characters for it. So that was how the thing started.

CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT THE CHARACTERS, AND THE WORLD THEY INHABIT?

We've tried to get rid of the 50 year assumption that superheroes will be crimefighters from the word go. The superheroes in 'Zenith' are celebrities more than anything else. It starts off in World War II when a character called Masterman is created by the Nazis. He's created as a super soldier during the war, and as a response the British come up with this guy called Maximan, who's kind of a Captain Hurricane, a British soldier who becomes a superman.
The reason the Nazis created a superhuman was to act as a physical vehicle for extra-dimensional entities, who can't possess human bodies. They have to possess superhuman bodies. That comes forward into the present day when the Nazis revive the twins of the original Masterman, and they send them out after the superheroes that are currently active. During the '60s the experiments, that created the British superhero Maximan, were conducted on an Air Force couple. They were given the experimental drug and their children became a superhero team that grew up during the '60s. In 1963 they're introduced to the world as Task Force UK, who are supposed to be the acceptable face of the military. But because it's the '60s and they're young they start to rebel and join CND. They change their name to Cloud Nine, because they want to be like a band. So from a military team they evolve into a psychedelic pop-art happening. Then two super-heroes have a son, who is Zenith, and basically he's just a pain in ihe ass. If you can imagine Nick Kamen with the ability to punch through a brick wall. He's 19, he's good looking, successful, the world's first thoroughbred superhuman. He brings out records and appears on chat shows with Jonathon Ross.
None of these superheroes have ever been involved in fights, they've just been absorbed into British culture, the same way that Quentin Crisp and Boy George have been absorbed into the culture.

HOW LONG WILL 'ZENITH' RUN IN 2000AD?

Well the initial story, which is really just an introduction to the characters and the set up is 15 episodes. But I've actually plotted ahead to the end of the third series, and that's where you find out that absolutely nothing is what it seems. The conspiracy that's going on in the background (involving the extra dimensional entities) comes to the fore then, and we're going to do a sort of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The things that are set up in the first storyline are completely turned on their heads, but I can't tell you about that.

DO YOU THINK YOUR CHARACTERS FALL INTO THE USUAL 2000AD MODE OF CHARACTERS? THE STRONG SILENT TYPE LIKE JUDGE DREDD, STRONTIUM DOG, AND ROGUE TROOPER?

Well, I think we've moved away from that, but I think they fit into 2000AD because they're anarchic and irreverent, even though we're trying to take it seriously. What we wanted to do was to avoid any comparison with things like WATCHMEN, which deal with superheroes in a realistic way. We decided to go for the mundane view of superheroes, if a guy's a pyrokinetic he uses his powers to make toast. Even though it's realistic it goes for a much lighter touch, so in that respect it fits into 2000AD.

HOW DO YOU THINK 2000AD READERS WILL RESPOND TO SUPERHEROES?

Well it's hard to say because super-heroes haven't really been very successful in Britain, despite the innovative stuff we've been coming up with recently. But we've taken a different tack with it, and it starts in World War II. You can't fail in British comics with World War II, we have been fighting it for the last 40 years. So I think that will lead people into it quite easily. We've continued the sort of British comic tradition of superheroes, where most of them just go around in their ordinary clothes, and they look very different from the American superheroes. I think that's where Brendan's involvement was crucial, because he's created a design look for superheroes which is unlike anything seen before. So I think it should be quite interesting.

HOW DID ZENITH'S ARTIST STEVE YEOWELL BECOME INVOLVED WITH THE STRIP?

Initially, as I said, Brendan McCarthy was supposed to be drawing the strip, but he had other commitments. So we had to find a new artist. I'd worked with Steve on the Zoids strip in SPIDER-MAN & ZOIDS for Marvel UK, and as far as I was concerned he was one of the best new young artists who had come along. I think he's going to do some really good work on it, he's an artist who is destined for big things.

WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES 'ZENITH' DIFFERENT FROM OTHER 2000AD STRIPS?

Style. Basically we've gone for the sort of designer superhero. The other important thing is that it's set in the present day, which makes it different from any other 2000AD story. So what we're really doing is reflecting the times a lot more, I wanted to achieve something that will be dated by next year. Something that's completely reflective of its own time, we mention Jonathon Ross and Network Seven. So if it goes out of date next year that suits me, I see it as a pop art icon - something that just reflects the time and is disposable. If people want to see what the '80s were like they can pick up this strip and find out. In that way it is different from most 2000AD strips, which are about the future.

DO YOU THINK 'ZENITH' IS A REACTION TO WHAT PEOPLE LIKE FRANK MILLER AND ALAN MOORE AND DAVE GIBBONS HAVE MANAGED TO DO WITH SUPERHEROES?

When Brendan and I talked it over our approach was a very conscious decision. I'd come up with the basic storyline two years ago, when David Lloyd was putting together a boys' weekly comic called FANTASTIC ADVENTURE. That didn't get off the ground but I had come up with an idea for a superhero strip. I wanted to do something that paralleled superhero history, so we had characters in the '40s who were very like the early Superman. We had the Maximan character, who was very primitive, we had the '60s characters who were very Marvel pop arty, then we brought it up to date with the realistic '80s characters. When it was revived after two years, because WATCHMEN and DARK KNIGHT had made such a big impact, we obviously wanted to avoid being compared with them. So we very definitely decided that we'd go for a lighter touch and get away from the tormented, demonic superhero. I think it's been done by two very good writers, but I think in lesser hands it's going to become really tedious.

SO YOU'RE TAKING SUPERHEROES, TREATING THEM INTELLIGENTLY, BUT STILL TRYING TO HAVE SOME FUN WITH THEM.

Yes, that's right. The kind of things we're looking at are the '60s Infantino FLASH, we're doing that kind of lightness of touch, but we're doing it realistically in the present day. What we're saying is that not everybody with superpowers has to be completely off the wall or suffering from mental illness. We just wanted to get away from that very dark view of superheroes.

IN WHAT WAY HAVE THE SUPERHEROES IN 'ZENITH' AFFECTED THE WORLD THEY INHABIT? IS THE WORLD IN 'ZENITH' VASTLY DIFFERENT FROM OUR OWN?

No. Again as a reaction to what Alan's done in WATCHMEN. He's got an all powerful hero in Dr. Manhattan, the superheroes we have were designed as weapons, so they've got psychic and pyrokinetic powers. If you've got a pyrokinetic it's really no different from a man with a flame thrower. None of them are so powerful that they could make any difference on their own. So we've placed them on a world that's no different to today, except that during the war Berlin was atom bombed. It is a parallel world because we've populated it with superheroes, but we've deliberately tried to play down that angle.

YOUR SUPERHEROES DON'T GO OUT ON PATROL AND HAVE FIGHTS WITH EACH OTHER.

No. Zenith gets a bit of a shock in the first story because he's asked to fight the revived Nazi superhero, and his first reaction is, 'No way! What do you think I am, a boxer?' I mean you don't ask Daley Thompson to go out and fight crime, and he's a superb athlete. So the superheroes of this world are never thought of as crimefighters, they're not even thought of as heroes, they're just celebrities who happen to have superpowers. All they've ever been are celebrities, so it's a big shock to them when they actually have to do something.

RICHARD BURTON (ASSOCIATE EDITOR ON 2000AD) MENTIONED THAT THERE WERE MYSTICAL ELEMENTS IN 'ZENITH' .

Yes, we've been using occult elements because I correspond with an occult group. We've been using ideas that are on the radical edge of the occult, which is quite new to comics. We've been tying that in with the old H. P. Lovecraft concepts and revamped them with theories of higher dimensions. We've taken a lot of care to get the super science right on 'Zenith'. That's an important element of the strip, we've been using a lot of new theories that I don't think have even been used in science fiction yet.
You find that theories on the cutting edge of science and the occult are moving towards the same place, and that's quite interesting. It's all moving into the realm that has been explored by quantum physics.

COULD YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT SOME OF THE SUPPORTING CHARACTERS IN 'ZENITH'?

Basically there's Zenith himself, who's the young superhero, and the main character in the first story. Then there's a woman who's a magazine editor, an ex-fashion model and '60s superheroine called Voltage. There's a psychedelic superhero called Mandala, and he's a Tory MP, a really cynical, nasty character. The other main character is a Welsh patriot called Red Dragon. He's the one who was more aligned to the military in the '60s, because he was a very conservative type of character. But now he's just a Welsh drunk who quotes Dylan Thomas. He just completely lost everything. Part of the storyline is that they have to try and bring him back up to fighting strength to help them defeat the revived Nazis.

SO YOU'VE GOT A LOT OF SUPERHEROS TO PLAY WITH.

There used to be a lot of them during the '60s, and a few of them disappeared, but that will be explored in the second series. So as I say there's a lot more going on, we've put a lot of clues in the first series, about what it's all leading up to, but there's a lot more going on in the background than is revealed in this first storyline.