DVD Town interviews Grant Morrison

Grant Morrison may be Scottish, born and bred, but he has been able to capture the voice of the American superhero like no other. His wildly creative work has challenged preconceptions about what comic books can be. Morrison has worked for both DC and Marvel on their biggest franchises such as Superman, Justice League, X-Men, and Fantastic Four. In addition, he is renowned for his original creator-owned work such as The Invisibles. Currently, he is working with Virgin Comics (founded by Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra) on MBX, an animated project that is a modern re-telling of ancient Hindu mythology. Morrison is also currently hard at work on "Batman: R.I.P." which promises to be the last we see of Bruce Wayne as Batman.

Lee: Last year, you and Deepak Chopra came down and had a fascinating discussion on superhero mythology. This year, you've come back to Con and done another one with Deepak, Gerard Way, and Stan Lee, a random selection of people. What's the common thread that drew you all together?

Morrison: Me! No, the common thread was just basically people from different areas of life who were really into comic books, you know. Obviously, Stan created the Marvel Universe, Gerard Way was an intern with Vertigo in the 90's before he formed his band, so he's a comic guy, he loves comics. The Umbrella Academy won an Eisner the other night. And Deepak is really into comics as well, you know. Virgin is doing their own comic books. Deepak Chopra's always been interested in the idea of superheroes as it applies to spirituality. So for me, it was a way of just bringing people from different spheres and getting them all together to talk about comic books and to show the way the cultural influence that we have.

Lee: You've got your MBX project with Virgin. So what is it that drew you to Virgin and what is it that you can do at Virgin that you wouldn't be able to do at DC or Vertigo?

Morrison: It wasn't so much that. They came to me and we got on really well. I really liked the guys. I'm exclusive to DC for comic books so I can't do comic books for anyone else and they wanted me to do some comics. So we were basically trying to find a project that wouldn't be comic books. And the idea came up of doing these webisodes and doing internet content which allowed me to do it. So it was more of just the need to not be tied to DC for that project. And I never had any idea that I might do something like this, but when it came off it became a really interesting challenge. And so that's what we did. We went ahead and created this animated version of the Mahabharata.

Lee: You've been working in comics for…

Morrison: …centuries!

Lee: Exactly. You're one of the most innovative and imaginative minds to be working in any medium…

Morrison: Thank you.

Lee: So what is it that keeps you coming back to comics?

Morrison: Because you can do anything. You know, the budget is unlimited and there's no real editorial. In movies, there's a lot of money involved in a movie. A movie can cost a hundred million dollars. So the guys that pay that money don't want really something that's going to be too bizarre or that will alienate the audience. So it's a lot more controlled. There's a lot more of a formula for creating a movie. In comics, there's no real budget, there's no money, there's no great editorial control, so what you can actually get is your imagination directly onto the paper which is unique. I don't think there's any other place where you can do just, you can get creative people just banging onto the page with no filter. And that's what I love about it, it's really magical. You can do anything at all and no one's leaning over your shoulder telling you it's not possible.

Lee: What is it about superheroes, in particular, that draw you in?

Morrison: I've always lived in a kind of weird world. To me the world is pretty strange. It's not like black and white kitchen sink comics. It's filled with bizarre things, you know. My mother was a tea leaf reader and she read tarot cards and my aunties were always seeing ghosts. So the world is filled with strange gaps and I think superhero comics are more like reality as I see it then doing something to be straight like soap opera. Superheroes comics are big symbolic ideas. You know, Superman can stand in for something. He can talk about big things, about the American psyche. Or about how people see themselves in the future. The idea of Superman. Comics can explore ideas about the future and ideas about philosophy. They have this ability to range across a whole kind of…a whole bunch of symbolic or metaphorical ideas which I think is really great. To me, it talks to me about the world. You know, the days when we all feel like Superman and it doesn't work and so I can put that in a story and it's on a big scale. You know, Superman's like us. He's got a house, but his house is an Antarctic fortress. He's got a dog, but his dog can fly in space. But, he's still got to give it dog food so he's kind of having to live the life we lead, but on this huge, cosmic epic scale.

Lee: Yeah, because that's what I read into All-Star Superman. This is a guy who loves Superman and he's making it more about the Man, then the Super.

Morrison: Exactly. Yeah, to me it was about the man, you know. Because no matter how powerful…there's been a lot of people in the past who've tried to de-power Superman to make him more relatable and it's never really worked. The best thing to do is to make Superman super and still have the same problems that we have, you know. Lois doesn't understand him. Luthor hates him, even though Superman's a really good, nice guy. Why? Why would anyone hate Superman? But, yet somebody does. So no matter how strong he gets, no matter how powerful he gets, he still can't understand the way people act and how relationships work. So, I think that's really relatable. So I would prefer to see him on a very big stage and, you know, his, as I say, his neighbors are all space people and his relatives come from another world, his friends live in the future, but he's still dealing with the same stuff that we deal with.

Lee: They're kind of stalling with the next Superman movie…

Morrison: Yeah…

Lee: What do you think needs to be done?

Morrison: They've just got to make him strong. You know, the problem with that movie is that he was too weak in it. And they were trying to do a kind of Christ figure of Superman, but what they did was they made him just weak. He seemed really…he was always getting kicked around the room and thrown out of buildings. It just wasn't my Superman. To me Superman is the guy who just…uh…you know, he's told that he's dying and he doesn't cry, he just deals with it. He gets…he's a man, you know, he's every man's ideal of what they would like to be. Compassionate and kind and good and strong and powerful and fighting off the bullies. That's Superman. I think the movie made him weak, but he didn't have the inner strength that Superman should have.

Lee: ["Wanted" creator] Mark Millar has been doing around bragging about what a Hollywood big shot he is now. He's hanging out with Angelina Jolie. I know you've got "We3" in development, you've got the "Area 51" script. How long before we can expect Grant Morrison, Hollywood big shot?

Morrison: It's already happening. You know, Millar's a bullsh---er. I've known him for…he's was my protégé for ten years. I know him better than anybody on the planet and…uh…he's a bullsh---er. (Laughs) And I'll tell you, Millar's banned from writing Superman. He's blacklisted so anything he says about Superman is a lie.

Lee: So all that about him doing the next Superman movie…

Morrison: No, bullsh--. But, don't tell anyone, I don't want to hurt his feelings.

Lee: I know everyone talks about The Invisibles and Animal Man, but one of my favorite works is The Filth.

Morrison: Yeah, me too. You know, that's one of my best-selling books it was.

Lee: I read the first three issues when they came out and I couldn't wrap my head around it. But, then I got the trade and read it all in one sitting…

Morrison: Yeah, you've got to read it in one go.

Lee: Yeah, it just blew me away.

Morrison: I'm glad you liked it.

Lee: It was like James Bond written by Michael Moorcock if he smoked a lot of crack.

Morrison: (Laughs)

Lee: What was it that you wanted to accomplish with The Filth?

Morrison: With that one, it was kind of autobiographical almost. Because it had, I had one year of my life, it was this really horrible year where I was looking after my cat was dying. And I was kind of living on my own, I hadn't gone out with anyone and I was having this celibate life, you know. So I kind of felt like Greg Feely felt in that book. And I just had this notion of doing this story of this ordinary guy who suddenly discovers he's a part of something bigger and we don't know if he's hallucinating this. Maybe we're watching a man having a nervous breakdown or maybe he is actually Ned Slade, super agent and that was my story. It was a kind of Walter Mitty story, but at the same time you could read it in different ways. Maybe he is just imagining all this and maybe it's real and that was it. I just wanted, I don't know, to tell the story about that horrible year of my life and make it into a myth.

Lee: I remember you talked about writing yourself into Invisibles as King Mob…

Morrison: Yeah, I did that as well.

Lee: ...and when bad sh— happened to King Mob, bad sh— happened to you.

Morrison: Exactly. You know, I shaved my head to become the character and all kinds of horrible stuff happened, you know. It was like voodoo.

Lee: Have there been any similar experiences working on other comics?

Morrison: Not so much. I mean, those ones are really personal to me. It's not so bad when you're doing superhero comics, but there's still a connection. I'm doing Batman now and I've been having to run up hills and lifting weights to feel a little more like Bruce Wayne, kind of thing. So I always try and do a little bit of method in writing and put myself into the place of the characters and physically do things that they might do. In like The Invisibles with King Mob, I actually made myself look like the character and every time he went to a different country, I'd try to go to that country. Or if he did a magical ritual, I would do the same magical ritual so it became a kind of diary thing. That was a weird comic book because I started to get lost in the story.

Lee: And you've also got a couple more Seaguy stuff and I know in the first series, he was sort of naïve. Where can we expect to see the character go?

Morrison: The second one, the new series, Seaguy…the first one was child Seaguy and the next one is adolescent Seaguy. He's kind of grown up and realized the world isn't what he thinks it is. He's a bit disgruntled. He's trying to figure out what's happened to me, you know, because they brainwashed him and he's seen through the culture now. He's like a teenager. He's kind of getting itchy and angry and he doesn't know what's wrong. So the second one is basically about the entire culture that's out to destroy him and stop him from becoming a hero.

Lee: Last question, since I do write for DVD Town. What's spinning in your DVD player right now?

Morrison: Ah…what was the last DVD we watched? Apart from the pirate on? "Be Kind Rewind." (Laughs) "Be Kind Rewind" was the last one we watched. It was all right. It was okay.

Lee: What other movies do you usually watch?

Morrison: I just like big movies, you know.