GRANT MORRISON When Grant Morrison took the stage at the Disinfo.Con event, even though it was only 4:30 in the afternoon when the lights went down, it could've been midnight inside the Hammerstein Ballroom. Grant's drunken but enthralling speech began with a scream, a slosh of his beer as he climbed the podium and an admission that he'd just taken drugs and would be flying high by the half hour mark —"So watch for it!" It was pure punk rock theatrics filled with sublime moments —such as Morrison explaining how to work magick spells to all assembled! — and it was certainly one of the event's highlights. The guy was on fire and he looked spectacularly cool up there in his black leather jacket, Donna Karan suit and his shiny, bald pate, just like a white "Shaft." From what I gather, many of the audience didn't know who Morrison was when they arrived, but after that bravura performance, they sure as hell knew who he was when they walked out!' God, where do you start when you're trying to describe a character like Grant Morrison? The most obvious place to start is that Morrison is Scottish. Make that thickly Scottish; born and bred in Glasgow with an accent so strong you'd think he was French! He's also in a select group of contemporary writers who'd be on a Mount Rushmore of comics if such a thing were to exist, alongside Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller and Alan Moore, writers comics fans still read rather than just store in plastic bags. His resume is pretty impressive. Here're just a few of his credits, taken from his website:26 Grant Morrison has been highly regarded as one of the most original and inventive writers in the comics medium. His revisionist Batman 'graphic novel' Arkham Asylum was the highest-grossing hardback comic book ever, selling over 200,000 copies in its first three months of release and winning most of the industry's major awards. St. Swithin's Day —a story about a young man from the North attempting to assassinate Margaret Thatcher— had questions raised in the House of Commons, as did The Invisibles, Morrison's highly influential six-year long series about a group of anarchist terrorists. Credits also include the 'controversial' The New Adventures Of Hitler, Big Dave, Doom Patrol, Animal Man and Kill Your Boyfriend. He has helmed both Marvel's X-Men and D.C.'s Justice League of America, which he took from 20,000 sales to 125,000, making it D.C. Comics' biggest selling monthly title. He was the first comics writer to be included as one of Entertainment Weekly's top 100 creative people in America. And he's the possessor of one of the finest imaginations on the planet, poised to take over Hollywood any day now. I don't want to forget that bit. I'm not really a comics reader and I haven't been since I was a kid. Although I did read Arkham Asylum when it came out because a roommate of mine had it and I did know who Grant Morrison was and I'd even liked the book, I was none too eager to start reading The Invisibles, a comics series that I knew would be serialized for six years, despite my old friend Jim Ferguson, a musician based in New York, pushing it on me every time I'd see him, usually adding "I'm telling you, it's everything that you're obsessed with..." But six years? Come on, that's quite a commitment! He didn't give up though, and for that I am truly grateful. One afternoon Jim showed up with every issue of Volume I and the first two issues of Volume II. That evening I rolled a huge joint and read every single issue then available of The Invisibles in one sitting. The next day I did the same thing as soon as I woke up. He was right, it did contain most everything that I was obsessed by and I was immediately hooked. After that, for the next few years, I usually visited the comics store the day the new one came out. I'd rip it out of the bag and read it standing right on the street. When issues were late I suffered through withdrawal cramps and night sweats. One of the fun things for me with The Invisibles was finding all of the obscure references within its pages. It was pretty obvious right off the bat that Grant and I must have extremely similar book and record collections, a point brought home when I read what he was listening to when he'd write the comic, as he'd often mention this in his letters 24 Worth mentioning is bow column. When a story arc took The Invisibles back to the 1920's, the many of my female friends (all of whom should have taken songs of Noel Coward would be playing in the background. This amused one look at him and known me due to the fact that I, too, had been listening to Noel Coward a lot at better) approached me that that time. On another occasion Grant wrote that he'd composed one issue day with some variation on the theme of "Introduce me to whilst listening to Japan's top pop combo, Pizzicato Five, who are old that sexy Grant Morrison." I've friends of mine. I've directed a music video for them and my voice is even seen this kind of thing at work on one of their tracks, so in fact at one point or another my favorite comics in the animal kingdom in nature documentaries, with writer was writing my favorite comic with my voice in the background. I the females displaying them- thought that was pretty cool, too. 27 selves before the alpha male, but never in a human popula- tion At least not like this! That said, it seemed inevitable that Grant and my paths would eventually cross and that'd we'd probably get on quite well when they did. Of course this 25 www.grantmorrison.com is what happened and we've become great friends over the years. I always look forward to meeting up with Grant and his better half, Kristan Anderson, when they're in New York or Los Angeles and I always have a great time with them, usually discussing frontal assaults on the entertainment industry over ethnic foods and copi ous amounts of marijuana. The following interview was conducted at the trendy Standard Hotel on LA's Sunset Strip over the course of two evenings. RM: First off, what brings you to Los Angeles? What are doing here? GM: Well, basically the idea is to try and make some money (smiles evilly). This is the place where bullshit turns into money and that's an area of magick that's always interested me. The idea of just turning pure thought into pure cash, and this is the place where light becomes money. It's an interesting place, but LA's a virtual space. None of it connects. You know that, you're living here as well, but it just doesn't add up. But it's interesting that way because it's odd and everything's fake. So I kind of like that and I want to get involved in it and see if I can profit from it (Laughs). RM: What do you see as your relationship to what's being pro- duced by the Hollywood culture machine? GM: I think what's happening, in my terms anyway, is that the ideas that were once marginal and that once only I liked to play with, ten or 15 years ago in the comic books, have become the mainstream of culture and the life blood of the movies and the TV and the records and everything that we watch 27 I am the un-credited English and are listening to. There's Buffy on the TV. We've got The Matrix in the cinema. speaking interviewer questioning Gnostic ideas are turning up everywhere. Ideas about the supernatural, the occult, Pizzicato Five lead singer Maki the power of magick, the disintegration of real ity are all coming from this place. Nomia about her favorite perfume, make up and fashion They have all become mainstream and are fed back into our lives as "the spectacle" designer on "This Year's Girl # 5 " and it's the best spectacle we've ever had. a song on their 5 x 5 E P (Matador). RM: Why do you think these marginal ideas have become mainstreamed? GM: I think it has to happen, even in the sense that we've all grown up to a point where we can make it mainstream. And, that's exactly what we seem to be doing. We're selling weirdness back into the culture. The culture demands it. GRANT MORRISON 99 The culture has come to us looking for ideas that have once been hidden under a mossy stone and ignored. Suddenly, things got boring. They ran out of heroic muscle men. They ran out of Rambos. They ran out of the entire Reagan/Thatcherite-driven philosophy that we were all going on. And suddenly they've turned to the freaks and the weirdoes and the outcasts and the geeks and the Beatniks and the hippies and whoever's left to provide some infusion of interest into a flagging culture.