ARKENSWORD #23, January 1988 ZENITH - A TEAM-UP BETWEEN GRANT MORRISON AND STEVE YEOWELL Over the past few months the best strip in 2000AD has been Zenith, a strip influenced greatly by the work of Alan Moore & Alan Davis on Marvelman. This interview was conducted by John Jackson at UKCAC87. John: We'll start with Grant first. What was the first thing you worked on? Grant: Near Myths. That was in 1978. I went to the first comic convention in Glasgow and I met Rob King, (Near Myths editor), there when he was looking for contributors. He already had Graham Manley and Bryan Talbot, who had just started out on Luther Arkwright at the time. I had just left school and was desperately looking for a job that would make me a millionaire in a couple of weeks. So I thought Near Myths was the one for me. It lasted 5 issues, but it was a good experience because we were allowed to do what we wanted and we could go over the top. A lot of stuff, looking back on it, was very self-indulgent, but it was also quite radical for the time. There was a genuine desire to break all the boundaries and create a whole new language and grammar for comics storytelling. Although we weren't entirely successful, at least we were able to make an early attempt. John: What were the stories about? Grant: That's very difficult to say. My own stuff wasn't really about anything. It was a collection of panels, with some symbolic stuff and a lot of nonsense. There were a few clever techniques but the average reader would need a codebook to decipher most of the stories. It took working for D.C. Thomson to teach me how to tell a proper story from beginning to end. I suppose you've heard that D.C. Thomson are terrible, that they clamp down on everything, and you can't do anything creative, but for all that they do insist on the discipline of real story values. John: You went to D.C. Thomson after Near Myths. How did you do that? Grant: I saw their advert in the Sunday Post, a wonderful newspaper published by D.C. Thomson, which has stories like how Mrs. McDonald's cat down the road saw a UFO. Family stories. They were advertising for script writers to work on a new science fiction digest series and that's how I got started on Starblazer. I ended up in a lot of fights with them - they wouldn't let me do a black hero, for instance and I had another story rejected because the hero was a pacifist. I did manage to create the first, and only, strong female character to appear in the Starblazer series though, and she turned out to be so popular that they're still featuring her in stories. I must admit to having a fondness for Starblazer and I try to contribute whenever I get the chance. John: What are their rates like compared to 2000AD? Grant: They're ludicrously small. I don't know why I do it. I need to see a psychiatrist. I didn't do much for a long time because I was playing in a band. I gave up on comics. I didn't think anything was going to happen because of the high hopes I had for Near Myths, which just fell apart. Then when Warrior came out, and Alan Moore started scripting, I thought I'd get back in and work my way up. I did the Liberators thing for Warrior and a prose story for Captain Britain. There was supposed to be a series of those “Tales of the Alternative Captains” but only one saw print. Then I did a lot of Future Shocks for 2000AD. They usually get you to do two years of work on those before you're let loose on a proper strip. Fortunately, just as I was running out of ideas for short stories with twist endings, but they asked me if I wanted to do 2000AD's first superhero series. Brendan McCarthy had done a lot of sketches and was looking for a writer to develop them, so we talked about it at last year's Birmingham Con. Steve McManus (former editor of 2000AD), had been keen on doing a superhero character for some time. So it was a combination of all these things that led me to do Zenith. It took me 6 months to come up with something because I'm so lazy. John: So we won't see Book 2 for a while. Grant: You will, it's just coming up with the original ideas that is time-consuming. I'm really lazy. I hate writing plot synopses. I wish I could jump right into the script straight away. John: How much of Brendan's ideas are left? Grant: None of his original sketches were used. We just came up with all-new stuff for Zenith and Brendan's still got all these great characters lying around. I wouldn't mind doing something with them some day but I don't think I could afford to buy them off him. Steve: You designed the Red Dragon, Voltage and Task Force UK uniforms, didn't you Grant? Grant: That's right. Brendan's very business minded and they offered him 200 pounds to do the designs. Once he'd done 200 pounds worth he just stopped, so I finished off the remaining characters. I don't have a keen business mind so I didn't get anything for my contributions. John: Did you draw them yourself? Grant: Yes. I started out drawing my own stuff but I got fed up because it takes too long, as you well know. I still do the odd bit of drawing though. John: Zenith appeared drunk in the first episode. Grant: We wanted to make him different right away, so that you'd know from his very first appearance that this was no conventional superhero. He comes crashing through the window steaming drunk after a night at a party, and it's just a simple way of showing he's a young guy who just happens to have super powers. We wanted to get that impact straight away. John: That he's not as responsible as other superheroes. Grant: He's not responsible at all. John: The history of Zenith in the strip goes back to the Second World War. Grant: The original concept has roots in a strip idea I submitted to Fantastic Adventure, a boys weekly which David Lloyd was putting together in 1985. Steve was involved with that too. In the end, it was never published. IPC went with MASK instead, which was a real pity. I had three stories in Fantastic Adventure and Zenith was the fourth idea I had submitted. It was originally based on the history and development of superhero comics, so we had a 40s character rather like Siegel & Shuster's Superman, we had a Marvel-style 60s super team and we had a grim and gritty 80s character called Zenith. I also wanted to do something about an old drunken superhero coming out of retirement for one last battle. The material, which was inspired by the film 'Cat Ballou' where Lee Marvin plays a drunken gunfighter who's coaxed out of retirement by Jane Fonda, surfaced later with Red Dragon in 2000AD. When I decided to revive the old Zenith stuff for 2000AD, I dropped the original grimly realistic slant in favour of a more light-hearted approach, keeping the old framework and grafting on some new bits. I also did a superhero strip called Captain Clyde for a newspaper in Glasgow, and some of the Zenith concepts had their first airing there. The World War Two stuff is really just a tip of the hat to British comics tradition and our continued reliance on a war that ended 40 years ago. Maximan is an archetypal comic book super-soldier like Captain Hurricane or Captain America - a primitive superhero who just goes out there and gives the Hun what for. John: What else have you got lined up? Grant: I'm doing some work for DC. I was hoping I wouldn't have to start on Zenith Book 2 until next year. Richard Burton, (editor of 2000AD), wanted me to go straight into it but I just finished the first series two nights ago and I'm burnt out. I'm sick of it. After working on it for 6 months, I just wanted to strangle Zenith. So we've compromised and I don't have to start Book 2 until December. That gives me 3 months to get on with the DC work. I'm doing a 4-issue Animal Man mini-series for DC. He's an old 60s character that fascinated me when I was a kid. There's a kind of revival bandwagon right now but I think this one's maybe a little more valid than some because of my genuine nostalgic affection for the character. I'm hoping to capture the feeling of Infantino-period Flash and translate it into the 80s. John: Who's drawing that? Grant: Well, I specifically asked for an American artist on that one so they've given it to a newcomer called Jim Fearn. At least I think his first name's Jim. I've also got an Arkham Asylum graphic novel in the works. Dave McKean's going to be drawing that and it's a real shocker. We're presenting Batman and all his major villains in a way that's very different from what you're accustomed to seeing. If it works out, it'll be a bit like Dennis Potter meets the Dark Knight. The third thing is a Kid Eternity series, another revival. This one's a 40s character which Karen Berger offered to me and said, “Do what you want." What I've proposed is something based on my forays into the occult, specifically into Chaos Magick, the current that's revolutionised the occult world during the last 6 or 7 years. It's pretty strong stuff and DC are a little bit wary because I've turned Kid Eternity into an agent of Chaos. It's really just a reaction against all this simple-minded Order vs. Chaos crap that's been turning up in comics recently. So those are the things I'm working on just now. Brendan McCarthy and I are thinking of doing a biography of Shelley the poet - a Ken Russell type thing. John: Thanks, Grant. Steve, I first saw your work in a pub when Dave Baber passed around pages of Hawker. Was that your first work? Steve: Yes. Dave had met a friend of mine who passed on my details to him, and I did the strip for Totally Alien which you were putting together. John: Yeah. When Dave turned up with those pages, the group of us in the pub decided to do Totally Alien purely on the basis of your sample pages. We got the rest of the strips together to fill it out. Steve: Nobody told ME that. John: After a few issues of Totally Alien, when it became apparent that it was badly organised. you started working for Harrier. Steve: I met Mike Collins at the first SSI meeting I ever went to, and he was writing a mini-series for Harrier which I agreed to pencil. That all fell through, but I got a Lieutenant Fl'ff two-part story to do, which got printed. Then I started a 4-part story, which I never finished because I got some work with Marvel UK. I'd met John Higgins by then, and I'd helped him out on a half page strip for The Street, a teenage hip hop magazine, which I pencilled and inked, and he coloured. He pestered me to send stuff into Marvel UK, and I'd heard from Kev Hopgood that they were looking for pencillers for Zoids, so I sent in some of my work. John socialises with the people from Marvel and one night in the pub they mentioned my samples and John said we'd do a cover together. That never worked out but they offered me a fill-in on Zoids. Kev moved on from Zoids to Action Force and I took over Zoids on a regular basis. John: Did you get all the toys? Steve: I did eventually. I started off just working from photographs in a catalogue, but I got most of the toys later. Nearly all little ones unfortunately. Only a couple of the big ones, which were the ones I liked. We were supposed to do the Zoids monthly which Grant had written and I'd pencilled but they shelved it. Grant: It was supposed to appear in the States as well but it was too adult for a Star comic. It went off in a direction that they didn't think was suitable. They wanted something with a lot of action and not too much thought so I rewrote the first script as this really nasty Viet Nam type thing with everybody getting blown to bits. I sent it in because I was just pissed off, and the Americans hated it. I thought, if they want action, I'll give them action. I think it was a mistake to involve US Marvel in Zoids. We had a lot of support and encouragement from lan and Richard at Marvel UK but the Americans are so reactionary it's unbelievable. Steve: Because the Zoids monthly was on hold I did Thundercats and Action Force fill-ins. For Thundercats I had an annual for reference, and also some animation plates that were quite nice. I didn't get any toys for that, though I did for the Action Force story. John: Are you happy with other people inking your work? Steve: I'm not entirely happy using inkers, but I couldn't have kept up on the weekly without Dave Hine & co. I like to do everything myself. I'd even letter the stuff if I could, if I was any good at it. Inkers are a vital part of the industry, unless you're Alan Davis, or Dave Gibbons, and then you have a choice. John: A lot of Zenith had already been designed for you, so how much input did you have? Steve: Brendan & Grant did most of the characters and all of the costumes but I designed Siadwel Rhys and Ruby Fox. Eddie MacPhail was mine too. I just ripped him off from the guy in Tutti Frutti. I liked the designs provided, and they saved me time, so it isn't as if I'm working with something I'm not happy with. John: How much do you talk to each other? Steve: We don't really correspond at all. Grant: I write dreadful letters. Steve: We've exchanged letters about 3 times since April. I get the script from 2000AD and just sit down and do it. We work in complete isolation, but the end result just gels. John: What's happening in the future? Grant: The first book is called Tygers, in subtle allusion to William Blake's “tygers of wrath” and Tyger! Tyger! The Blake stuff becomes more relevant as the storyline progresses. The second book is called The Hollow Land and it deals with the origins of the super-heroes. That's where we find out what happened to Zenith's parents and where I finally get to use all the research I've been doing into the Formative Causation and Morphic Resonance theories of Rupert Sheldrake, the radical biochemist. The third book is called War In Heaven which is our version of Crisis On Infinite Earths. Everything you've read before in Zenith gets turned on its head in this series, as the real villains begin to reveal themselves. The tentative title for the fourth book is Jerusalem, which is Blake again. I don't really want to say too much about it but it's not really giving too much away to say that it owes more than a little to Monty Python's “Bicycle Repair Man” sketch and the whole idea of a world where EVERYONE is superhuman. John: You've got it planned for 4 books so far. Do you see him carrying on after that? Grant: Well, actually, we're thinking of killing Zenith off in the second or third series. John: No! Steve: It's the only way you can escape them using him forever, isn't it? John: I know, but he's a popular character, and 2000AD always keep popular characters going. Steve: There always comes a point when the character becomes stale because they drag it on for too long. It becomes a shadow of its former self. John: It depends on the writer. Grant: I don't really want to continue writing about people kicking the shit out of each other for the next 30 years. There's only so much you can do with superheroes before they start hitting each other, because otherwise people don't want to read it. I've tried to avoid it and there are a good many episodes of Zenith where the characters just walk around talking to each other. It always ends up with some kind of physical conflict though, and that's the bit that bores me the most. It may be visually exciting, but writing it is a big drag. Steve: It's not interesting to draw either. I suppose it's interesting for the reader, but it gets boring drawing people hitting each other too. John: How much have you thought about the kids reading it in the early episodes because nothing much happens for them? Grant: Well I just thought 'bugger the kids' basically. There are a lot of other stories in 2000AD with action & fighting and they could read them, but surprisingly we've had a very good reaction from young kids. A lot of them came up to us yesterday saying how much they liked Zenith which was really nice. So maybe the assumptions we creators make about what kids prefer to read are wrong. Maybe they do want more character depth so that they can really feel for the characters. John: There haven't really been any Zenith covers for 2000AD. Steve: I haven't had the time. There's one with my name on it which Brendan actually did. He lifted the figure from a panel in the strip so he gave me a credit for it, which was really nice of him. John: You did have a go at a cover, but that was put as an advert. Steve: Yes, because it was so bad. Richard was right to reject it. I got a reject fee for it. John: Have you thought of going to America yet? Steve: No, I've got too much work on Zenith to finish. John: Have you ever thought of writing some more comics like you did with Hawker? Steve: No. I don't have the ideas constantly popping into my head that you need, as I'm sure Grant will verify. Grant: Yes. Actually I've just written a Hawker story. Steve: And Brian Cuffe has one that he wants to take to Harrier. How much have you done Grant? Grant: I've written the first 6-page episode, and the second is plotted. It's called The Missionary Position. John: That'll be great. Hawker's one of my favourite characters. What's the story about? Grant: It's about corrupt priests and the bizarre sex rituals of an alien race. John: That's different. Steve: When I get around to drawing it I want to drastically change the whole appearance of Hawker because all my characters look the same. My characters tend to look like me because of the old trick of looking into a mirror to draw expressions, but the jawline of Zenith was Brendan's, and the flat-top hair was Grant's idea. Actually Masterman looks like Hawker as well. I can't seem to get away from crew cuts. John: It'd be nice to collect all the Hawker's together. Steve: No it wouldn't, John. Not that first issue. John: Don't you think that 2000AD has gone down hill now that Bolland, Gibbons, McMahon, Gibson, Moore, Mills, O'Neil, Wagner & Grant have started to do so much work for America? Steve: It's going through a patch where they're having to use people like myself - people who are just starting out. So occasionally some of it is going to look a bit ropy, until we get more experienced. What do you think, Grant? Grant: I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes out. There's still Bad Company, Slaine and others that are good. I think it's just that Zenith is in 2000AD at a time when we're the only good thing in it. John & Steve: (A sharp intake of breath.) Grant: It's true. I would like to be in a comic that is full of great strips, but at the moment it's just us. There's the occasional flash of brilliance from Judge Dredd, like the Democracy storyline. Steve: John Higgins did a great job on that. John: Have you noticed there are very few artists who can do a good job on the colour centrespreads. John Higgins is about the best. Steve: I think they do them well, it's just that they don't come out well when they're printed. The originals are gorgeous. Full process colour is wasted on newsprint paper. They'd probably be better off getting rid of the colour centrespreads and doing full process colour on glossy covers. Jonn: Have 2000AD offered you anything else? Steve: Richard wants me to do pin-ups and a bridging episode between series to help fill in my time, but there's nothing concrete otherwise - Titan have asked me to do the cover to the Zenith reprint. Grant: They never told me there was going to be a reprint. Steve: Now you know. It's supposed to be out next March, but they want the cover by October, and I don't know whether I can make it. Grant: I'm always the last to hear about these things. Steve: That's because you're only the writer. John: And because it's 2000AD you won't get any reprint money. Steve: Not a sausage. By the way, Grant, they want you to do an introduction. Grant: That's okay. I think Titan offer covers and introductions to the creative people so that they get SOMETHING from the reprints. John: What do you think of all these reprints by Quality, Titan, 2000AD Monthly, the Annuals, and the Summer Specials? Grant: It's an inevitable business thing where you make money from the material you have. I suppose we know when we sign the contract that we're not going to get any reprint fees. Steve McManus is working to get that changed though, so I look forward to the day. In the meantime, I'm just dreading the Quality comics version though with stretched photocopies and blind Spanish colourists. Steve: Apparently they have this weird photocopier that stretches the artwork to fit the American proportions. It shouldn't be as bad for Zenith because 2000AD is now nearer those proportions. I just thought of a cover for the Zenith reprint. Because Masterman is in it I could do a cover with a giant swastika on it. It'd put a few noses out of joint, but everyone would pick it up, wouldn't they? Steve & Grant have been in touch with me since the interview and Steve tells me that he managed to get in the cover artwork for the Titan Books reprint, which is being designed by Rian Hughes. Grant wrote a bit extra: “My Animal Man mini-series has been extended into a regular monthly title. The only problem is I'd worn out all my nostalgia after writing 4 issues, so I've had to rack my brains to come up with some way to make it interesting for myself. I found I was really sick to death of super-heroes, particularly 'realistic' ones. I don't think there's a lot of mileage left in trying to show what supeheroes would be like in the real world so I'm going off in the opposite direction from Watchmen. Rather then trying to drag super-heroes into the real world, I'm going to examine what it would be like to live in the bizarre environment of four colour comics - a place of bright colours and ambiguous backgrounds, where 'continuity' takes the place of Einsteinian space/time and where all motivations are simplified and refined. I'm hoping DC will go for the ideas I've submitted, otherwise Animal Man's going to be cut down in the prime of his resurrection.”