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Friday, April 01, 2005
Grant Morrison's Night pt. 1
Last night Grant Morrison appeared at Meltdown Comics to speak to Arthur magazine Editor Jay Babcock, take questions from his fans in the audience and sign some books. I had a blast.
Morrison's a snappy dresser, that's for sure, and can rock an all blue three-piece ensemble. The visual of the current, suave and bald version of Morrison appearing below and to the left of this poster that Meltdown had framed on their wall was quite awesome. It was a healthy sized crowd, filling up somewhere between a third and half of one of the largest comic book stores in America.
Babcock started off by asking Grant about his big project coming up, All-Star Superman, and how it was considered a "contact experience." Morrison went on to talk about how Superman was more real than him or his creators. He's a symbol that will live on and on that stands for the good that mankind can live up to. "It's a symbol for America," Morrison said. Now he wants to "reinvigorate the symbol."
He showed his sense of humor and ability to hold a crowd with his telling of the Mort Weisinger Superman stories, like when Superman convinces Lois Lane he was "a pug-ugly bastard" all along (and if you haven't heard a Scotsman use that phrase, you haven't lived) or when Superman gained a new power that shot a Super-Imp out of his hand. Morrison explained how the bizarre emotions going on with the Superman and Lois were like the stupid emotional stuff we all go through. He admitted that the weird stuff he comes up with doesn’t come close to what made up the 60’s DC books but he wants to bring that back, as well as the human drama that is a reflection of what we all go through.
Babcock wanted to get to the contact experience part, so Morrison went on to talk about how Morrison feels he is working inside the 2nd Dimension and how it’s a place he go into. “It’s just fiction, but it’s not just fiction. It’s not something you make up; it’s something you participate in. You can’t fuck with it, it’s a paper universe.” He said that’s why he’s not too big on when other creators try to bring the grim real world into their superhero stories. He said it was like bad anthropologists bring Christian ideas to their findings. The two things aren’t going to work together. “That world is unfettered and the real world can’t apply to them.”
Morrison then brought up his personal story of having a contact experience with the 5th Dimension. He likened it to being “electrocuted by God” although worried that when talking about it made it sounds “ridiculous.” I didn’t think so, and I hope I do it justice here. It involves Morrison going to Katmandu with a friend to find enlightenment. There, after a few activities that got him somewhere close to enlightenment, “silver blobs” appeared to him and asked him where to go. He figured the obvious answer was Alpha Centauri, which was an easy enough trip through space-time. Afterwards he was “peeled off” space-time and saw the universe as the separate entity in front of him. He could see all of time going on at once, including his death, birth and life. He was told he was a sort of mid-wife how should pass this information along. Immediately after telling this his girlfriend shouted from the crowd to tell him about a crown falling out of his teeth and swallowing it, which led Morrison to first start shitting in the sink and then into plastic bags to find the damn thing. C’mon, who’s to say what the more important event of the two in his life is?
The questions from the crowd started rather early, but these were people who knew their Grant Morrison work and had no trouble delving right into it. The first one concerned fiction suits, and how it can be a protection from karma. Morrison said, when it comes to working with the 2nd Dimension, he’s like one of those higher life forms coming down to working with these life forms of a lower dimension. A fiction suit is an avatar that brings him into the world, like in the last issue of Animal Man or the King Mob character in Invisibles where pretty soon he couldn’t tell what events were fiction and which was real. It can be considered a way of outrunning karma by transferring these different experiences to different characters, but ultimately karma’s about not dying with too many regrets. It’s people thinking about this stuff and giving them different names.
The second question brought up the finding of a new race of humans who lived among giant rats and lizards, and if it’s hard to separate the fact from the fiction when stuff like that happens in this world? He hadn’t heard of the people but used that to talk about how no matter what culture or era of human life you are a part of, human drama remains the same. “People are trying to kill each other or fuck each other.” We all go through the same spectrum of feelings; it’s just the scenery that changes.
A person asked if he has meant Robert Anton Wilson or Timothy Leary. Morrison said he did meet Wilson but the writer of The Illuminatus! Trilogy was rude and just looked over him. He did feel that some of that stuff going on influenced the comics he was reading in the 70’s by Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart. Babcock asked if Morrison wanted to do a cosmic Marvel book like those creators did, but Morrison admitted that Bill Jemas wouldn’t let him do any of that with Marvel Boy (it seems poor Bill just couldn’t grasp the book at all).
The image that Morrison has as this “druggie comic book writer” was brought up (about the questioner, Babcock: “This man used to read Wizard.” Morrison: “He doesn’t anymore!”). Morrison said it was an easy way for people to pigeonhole him but he actually didn’t take drugs seriously until he was 32. Doom Patrol was written drug-free; instead it was inspired but dreams. Invisibles, on the other hand, was written entirely on drugs, as was Flex Mentallo. Now he says he’s more into the corporate manipulation thing.
Sigils and comic characters as sigils were tackled next. Sigils, Morrison explained, are just taking a figure and condensing unconscious desires into them. “They always work, that’s the scary thing.” Making an extended storyline was his way of making a “hyper-sigil” that handles a lot of psychic energy. “All that is terminology for stuff that’s just happening,” Morrison told us. Now Morrison has his own house in the country with a sun god a top that says “God is in all of us.”
The light and simple theme was further continued by bringing up the next step of human evolution and how that will include a lot more metaphorical thinking. It’s what Morrison tries to achieve in his work “which is why people don’t get my comics.” He said he can’t just see Godzilla, he sees how that’s Japanese pop culture dealing with the atomic bombings during WWII. This also goes into Seaguy which was him talking on the realistic issues of Britain having this Big Brother approach of having cameras everywhere and also having TV stations that are constantly rerunning the same programs over and over again. It was also the “infantilizing of culture” that he saw around him, now we are all stars, all American Idols. “It’s the ultimate sick triumph of individualism over rationalism.” He tried to represent that in a realistic way in Seaguy with his way of thinking that includes sigils and readers de-coding his work.
Terrence McKenna was brought up. He was Morrison’s inspiration to try DMT (which didn’t really work for him). He thinks McKenna’s work was brilliantly written. Everyone can try the stuff McKenna writes if they want to; it’s just a way of thinking.
Somebody asked what other artists speak to this new way of thinking. Morrison liked Nick Curry and his new favorite comic god is the French artist Marc-Antoine Mathieu (Dark Horse has his only translated work, Dead Memory). But mostly he’s doing his own work and doesn’t have time to check out other artists.
Morrison’s Pop Magic book was inquired upon. It’s nearly finished, he promises. He goes from the simple stuff like creating your own sigils to making your own tarot deck. Morrison made his from Polaroids of pictures of stuff around his house. He just gave them meaning. He said we’re all dealing with the same feelings, we just processes the differently, be it Kabala, Buddhism or whatever. Pop Magic is democratic, its ways of dealing with the world. He even made Metron one of his “new gods.” His novel The If… is also almost finished. His agent is the guy who sold The DaVinci Code, so he’s hoping it will go somewhere. The book continues the “war on kids” theme he went over in his New X-Men run.
That was in fact the subject of the next question. In particular, Marvel’s editors scaling back what he has left them. He first went on to talk about how his X-Men were about the next generation coming up, which is what everyone fears, since they’re the ones who are going to take over. It wasn’t about mutant vs. man or gay vs. straight, but the “war on kids” he sees. As for working with Marvel, he had difficulties working with the constraints of the Marvel Universe. It’s so grounded to the streets of New York City. That’s why there’s been a flood of ideas from him since working there.
I’m going to cut this post in half because I’m already up to 17K words now, and I don’t think anyone wants to look at this blog any longer. Coming up in our second half we have “punk magic,” morals and ethics, cosplay, Joe Casey and some very funny things said about Alan Moore. Stay tuned, folks.
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