GRANT MORRISON Great Comics Artists Series M. Thomas Inge, General Editor Marc Singer GRANT MORRISON Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics University Press of Mississippi / Jackson www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Copyright © 2012 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2012 ∞ Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Singer, Marc. Grant Morrison : combining the worlds of contemporary comics / Marc Singer. p. cm. — (Great comics artists series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61703-135-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978- 1-61703-136-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-61703-137-3 (ebook) 1. Morrison, Grant—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Comic books, strips, etc.—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. PN6727.M677Z86 2012 741.5’973—dc22 2011013483 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Contents vii Acknowledgments 3 Introduction: A Union of Opposites 24 CHAPTER ONE Ground Level 52 CHAPTER TWO The World’s Strangest Heroes 92 CHAPTER THREE The Invisible Kingdom 136 CHAPTER FOUR Widescreen 181 CHAPTER FIVE Free Agents 221 CHAPTER SIX A Time of Harvest 251 CHAPTER SEVEN Work for Hire 285 Afterword: Morrison, Incorporated 293 Notes 305 Bibliography 317 Index This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible without the advice and support of my friends and colleagues. Craig Fischer, Roger Sabin, Will Brooker, and Gene Kannenberg Jr. generously gave their time to read the manuscript and offer feedback. Joseph Witek, Jason Tondro, Steve Holland, Randy Scott, the Michigan State University Library Special Collections, and the George Washington University Gelman Library provided me with sources and images. Charles Hatfield’s guidance was invaluable. I also wish to thank Walter Biggins for his good counsel and Seetha Srinivasan and Tom Inge for their encouragement. An earlier version of my section on Arkham Asylum appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of the International Journal of Comic Art. I owe editor-in-chief John Lent and exhibition review editor Mike Rhode a debt of gratitude for all they have done to promote the field of comics scholarship. Finally, I want to thank Christy and Eric for giving me the best support and distraction (respectively) any scholar could hope for. EDITIONS, PAGINATION, CITATIONS, AND DATES Grant Morrison’s work has been published and republished in multiple for- mats. In the interest of consistency, I have chosen to refer to the original comic books whenever possible—a decision that also foregrounds their publication as periodicals. For serials published in anthologies such as 2000 AD or Crisis, I have assigned page numbers by chapter, not by their posi- tion in the anthologies (many of which were unpaginated and which remain out of print). I have cited Morrison’s comics by issue or chapter number and page number, with volume or “Phase” numbers represented in Roman numerals when necessary. For example, (Zenith III.1.5) refers to Zenith Phase III, chapter 1, page 5, while (Doom Patrol 34.22) refers to Doom Patrol issue 34, page 22. vii viii Acknowledgments Publication dates also pose a challenge when citing periodical comic books. Because American comic books are typically postdated for two or three months after their release, the copyright dates do not always reflect the actual year of publication; comics released at the end of the year are dated for the next year. When these dates diverge, entries in the bibliography will cite the published copyright dates, but any references in the text will use the actual years of publication. I hope these practices will preserve some sense of the original production contexts for these comics. GRANT MORRISON This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION A Union of Opposites At first glance, Grant Morrison might appear to be an unlikely subject for a scholarly study of comics. In a time when graphic novels have finally gained entry to the classroom, the art museum, and the New York Times Book Review, he continues to work on periodical comic books; in a medium where mem- oirs, histories, and other nonfiction works have garnered the most critical approval, he still writes serialized superhero adventures; in a field that exalts creators who write and draw their own comics, he collaborates with artists who bring his scripts to life. Upon closer examination, however, Morrison is one of a handful of writers who have imported the auteurist sensibility of alternative comics and graphic novels to the popular genres and char- acters that dominate the American and British comics industries. From his beginnings in the “ground level” comics of the 1970s to his most recent work for Vertigo, an imprint of industry giant DC Comics, Morrison has always sought to synthesize the various cultures of contemporary Anglophone comics, alternating between corporate-owned superhero titles and creator- owned work in other genres. His independent streak motivates him to craft stories of considerable range and depth without becoming trapped by genre formulas or conventions; his pop aesthetic leads him to tell these stories in broadly accessible narrative forms, avoiding the equally pernicious trap of the limited audience. He appropriates the most sophisticated techniques of postmodernist literature, drama, television, and film and applies them to popular genres, maintaining his artistic ambitions while working within the comics industry mainstream. His comics include popular superhero franchises, highly personal stories, and, most remarkably, highly personal stories set within popular superhero franchises. His work regularly violates the conventions of realism, the physi- cal boundaries of the space-time continuum, and the ontological boundar- ies that separate fiction from reality, but these transgressions enhance rath- er than inhibit his ability to address the concerns of postmodern culture. 3 4 Introduction: A Union of Opposites Morrison’s comics harness superheroes, fantasy, and other popular genres to formulate self-reflexive critiques of these genres’ conventions, histories, and ideological assumptions, as well as more wide-ranging examinations of the ethics of writing. They promote political, economic, and artistic autonomy while recognizing the consequences of unbridled individualism. They create and explore multiple scales of order, intertwining narrative worlds through elaborate synecdoches. Perhaps most significantly, they challenge structur- alist and poststructuralist theories that characterize language as an unend- ing chain of arbitrary signifiers, defined by social convention and bearing no connection to the concepts they signify. Morrison grounds this challenge in comics’ capacity for visual representation and the fantasy genres’ pro- pensity for literalizing meanings that would otherwise be figurative. From the popular medium of comics and the demotic genres of superheroes, sci- ence fiction, and secret agents, he questions the major intellectual currents of twentieth-century linguistics, philosophy, and literary theory. This variety of subjects and styles has been matched by Morrison’s assort- ment of authorial personas. Over the course of his career he has played the part of the young radical, the team player, the company man, the revision- ist, the nostalgist, the postmodernist, the magical guru, the drug user, the straight-edger, the public speaker who lectures corporations on branding, and the countercultural icon who appears in music videos, among many others. In his interviews Morrison assumes an engaging and mercurial (if not always wholly reliable) presence, providing thoughtful commentaries on his own work while playing up whatever character he has adopted at that moment. He has worked in multiple media, including music, short stories, screenplays, video games, and two award-winning plays for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (“Work Outside Comics”), but his emphasis always remains on comics, which he has written (and occasionally drawn) with few inter- ruptions since 1978. He takes inspiration from all of these forms of expression, mixing pop- ular, canonical, and avant-garde sources. Morrison has cited the influence of Nicolas Roeg’s nonlinear films and Lindsay Anderson’s satires, Dennis Potter’s self-reflexive television dramas and David Rudkin’s occult, pagan plays, but he has also cited British television series such as The Avengers, The Prisoner, Jason King, and Doctor Who (Meaney 347–48; Neighly 248). His literary influences tend towards dissidents and outsiders like the Romantics, the Decadents, and the beatniks (Hasted 71), yet his tastes can also accom- modate the fantasy and science fiction novels of Michael Moorcock and Philip K. Dick and the unsparing realism of Philip Larkin’s poetry. Musically, Introduction: A Union of Opposites 5 Morrison was “utterly transformed” by the punk movement that emerged when he was a teenager in the mid-1970s (Hasted 55). He adopted many elements of the punk philosophy, including its antiestablishment ideology and back-to-basics aesthetic, though not its nihilism or scorn of technical virtuosity; like many punk acts that signed with major record labels, he has also been willing to work with major publishers in order to maximize his audience. Nor has punk been his only musical influence: during the 1980s he played in Glasgow bands such as the Mixers, who developed a garage sound that combined