STRANGE FRUIT #1, March 1990

Grant Morrison is the writer for Animal Man, Doom Patrol, and most recently the highly acclaimed Arkham Asylum graphic novel for DC Comics. He has also written Zenith for 2000AD and St Swithin's Day for Trident. He lives and works in Glasgow, and is rapidly establishing himself as one of the top names in the adult comics field with a reputation for the bizarre and unexpected matched only by DC's previous superstar, Alan Moore. He has covered such diverse topics as animal rights, political assassination, and at least one guest appearance in Animal Man by Wile E. Coyote, harbinger of doom in the oft-repeated Roadrunner cartoons. We spoke to Mr Morrison about where he gets all these strange ideas from. Interview by Gary M. Gibson.


I WANTED TO ASK YOU FIRST OF ALL HOW THE ARKHAM ASYLUM BOOK HAS BEEN DOING.

GM: It's been doing incredibly well, as a matter of fact. The sales are higher than anything DC have done so far, so they're making a fortune out of it.

I HEARD THERE WAS SOME PROBLEM WITH CROSSOVER, PLOTWISE, BETWEEN THE PLOT OF ARKHAM ASYLUM AND LAST YEAR'S MOVIE.

GM: Well, DC Comics are owned by Warner Brothers, and it was Warner Brothers who financed the Batman movie. They had sunk about 50 million dollars into it, and they saw the book, with what happens in it, as conflicting with the PG licence that the film was given. That was one of the reasons why the book was delayed for so long. We had to wait until a couple of months after the movie had been out. The original release dates for both the book and the movie were seen as being too close. In the end we had to make other changes as well. For instance, we had to take out the word 'masturbate', and in the original version the Joker was wearing a basque. Changing that was a shame.

DAVE MCKEAN'S ARTWORK FOR ARKHAM ASYLUM IS VERY STRIKING.

GM: Well, the way Dave drew Batman in the book, he came across more like this shadow than some guy in a superhero costume. So that way he came across more like a symbolic kind of thing, which makes more sense in the context of the book. It's intended to be an examination of Batman's psychology and sexuality.

SO WHAT DID YOU THINK OF THE MOVIE?

GM: I thought the whole design, the way it looked, was excellent. But apart from that I thought the whole thing was absolutely dismal.

IN THE BACK OF ARKHAM ASYLUM IT SAYS THAT YOU'RE WORKING ON TWO NEW GRAPHIC NOVELS, ONE ABOUT ANDY WARHOL AND ANOTHER CALLED 'SICK BUILDINGS'.

GM: The Warhol book is, I hope, going to be in the nature of his work, in that it's intended to be pretty much the way I think Warhol would have done it. I had this idea of holding a party, getting people 'to talk about Warhol, and taping it, then just transcribing everything that's said and using that as the dialogue for the book. I like the idea of that kind of utter charlatanry, and obviously it would remove most of the work. As for 'Sick Buildings,' that's just something I made up. I liked the idea of this prestigious book that everyone's buying with this piece of total fabrication in the back of it.

YOU WERE UNEMPLOYED FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE YOU STARTED WRITING FOR 2000AD IN 1986. WHAT WERE YOU DOING IN ALL THAT TIME?

GM: I was unemployed for 8 years. I was actually kicked off the dole for about 9 months at one point because I refused to take this job I was offered by the DHSS. It involved cleaning rats with bubonic plague or something like that. I think they must have looked through their books until they found the worst possible job they could give me. If I hadn't still been living at home with my parent at the time I think I would have starved to death after the first week. My getting into 2000 AD was the result of an act of desperation. It was at the tall end of that 9 - month period. I just kept sending them stuff and needling away until they finally gave me something to do.

DID YOU EVER GIVE UP HOPE?

GM: After the first day, yes.

YOU HAD A PLAY ON AT THE EDINBURGH FESTIVAL LAST YEAR, I RECALL.

GM: Yes, it did very well, too. Enough people liked it that it was put on a second time. It was about Lewis Carroll, who wrote 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking - Glass', his psychology and his relation to Alice. I've got another play on at the Festival this year as well; it's about Aleister Crowley, who's something of a hero of mine. It should be pretty interesting, especially since part of the performance will be one of Crowley's rituals performed on the stage in front of the audience.

THERE WAS SOME CONTROVERSY, THE PREVIOUS WRITER OF SWAMP THING LEFT AS THE RESULT OF CENSORSHIP ON THE PART OF DC. DOES THIS KIND OF THING WORRY YOU?

GM: I think DC were worrying too much over the whole thing, about Jesus Christ being depicted in the comic because it seems to me that the whole Moral Majority movement has been undermined by these sex and money scandals, Jimmy Swaggart and the rest. So I don't really understand what the problem was. I don't worry about attracting that kind of attention; I'd do the opposite in fact, do something totally irreligious to annoy people. So no, I don't worry too much.

HOW'S YOUR BAND THE FAUVES DOING?

GM: Not much at the moment. We might release another single later this year. We had one out a while back, a self-financed single, but we never got around to actually paying for it so we had to lay low for a while.

AND FINALLY, ARE YOU PAYING THE POLL TAX?

GM: No, absolutely not. They can come and break down the door, I won't pay.